Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

Alarm or not, a single windowpane in the front door gaped, broken and unrepaired.

“George Poole. It is George, isn’t it?”

I turned, startled. The man standing before me was bulky, balding. He wore clothes that were vaguely out of joint, perhaps too young for him — bright yellow T-shirt, jeans, training shoes, a chunky-looking cell phone stuck in a chest pocket. Despite his bearlike size you instantly got an impression of shyness, for his shoulders were hunched as if to mask his height, and his hands, folded together in front of his belly, plucked at each other.

And despite the graying hair, high forehead, and thickened neck and jaw, I recognized him straight away.

“Peter?”

His name was Peter McLachlan. We had been in the same year at school, for most of our careers in the same classes. At school he was always Peter, never Pete or Petey, and I guessed he was the same now.

He stuck out his hand. His grip was tentative, his palm cold and moist. “I saw you drive up. I bet you’re surprised to find me standing here.”

“Not really. My father used to mention you.”

“Nice duffel coat,” he said.

“What? … Oh, yeah.”

“Takes me back to school days. Didn’t know you could buy them anymore.”

“I’ve a special supplier. Caters for the style-challenged.” It was true.

We stood there awkwardly for a moment. I always did feel awkward with Peter, for he was one of those people who could never relax in company. And there was something different about his face, which took me a couple of seconds to cue in on: he wasn’t wearing the thick glasses that had always been inflicted on him as a kid in the seventies. I couldn’t see the telltale eye widening of contacts; maybe he’d had laser surgery.

“I’m sorry about breaking your window,” he said now.

“That was you?”

“It was the night he died. Your father didn’t come to the door when I brought him his evening paper. I thought it was best to check …”

“You found him? I didn’t know.”

“I would have had to go into the house to fix the window, and I thought I shouldn’t until you — you know.”

“Yes.” Moved by his thoughtfulness, I gently slapped his shoulder. I could feel muscles under his sleeve.

But he flinched. He said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

“I’m sorry you had to find him.” I knew I had to say more. “And thanks for checking on him.”

“Didn’t do him much good, I’m afraid.”

“But you tried. He told me how you used to look out for him. Mow the lawn—”

“It wasn’t any trouble. After all, I got to know him when we were kids.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t been in there yet, have you?”

“You know I haven’t if you saw me park,” I said a bit sharply.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

“I don’t want to trouble you anymore. I should do this.”

“It’s no trouble. But I don’t want to impose …”

We were circling around the issue, still awkward. In the end, of course, I accepted the offer.

We walked up the drive. Even the tarmac was rotten, I noted vaguely; it crackled softly under my weight. I produced a key, sent me by the hospital that had notified me of the death. I slid it into the Yale lock, and pushed the door open.

There was a noisy bleeping. Peter reached past me to punch a code into a control box set in an open cupboard in the porch. “He gave me the code,” he said. “The burglar alarm. In case of false alarms, you know. That’s how I was able to turn it off, when I broke the window to get in. In case you were wondering how … I was a key holder. But he had a deadbolt and a chain, which was why I had to break the window—”

“It’s okay, Peter,” I said, a little impatient. Shut up. He never had known when to do that.

He subsided.

I took a breath and stepped into the house.

Here it all was, my childhood home, just as it had always been.

In the hall, a hat stand laden with musty coats, a telephone table with a seventies-era handset and a heap of scribbled names, numbers, and notes piled up in a cardboard box, notes in Dad’s handwriting. In an alcove Dad had carved out of the wall, a small, delicate statue of the Virgin Mary. Downstairs, the dining room with the scarred old table, the small kitchen with greasy-looking stove and Formica-topped table, the living room with bookshelves, battered sofa and armchairs, and a surprisingly new TV system, complete with VCR and DVD. The narrow staircase — exactly fifteen stairs, just as I’d counted as a child — up to the landing, where there was a bathroom, the master bedroom and three small rooms, and the little hatchway to the attic. The wallpaper was plain, but it didn’t look as shabby as I’d expected, or feared. So Dad must have decorated since I’d last visited, five or six years ago — or had it done, perhaps by Peter, who stood on the doormat behind me, a great lumpen presence. I didn’t want to ask him.

It all felt small, so damn small. I had a fantasy that I was a giant like Gulliver, trapped in the house, with my arms stuck in the living room and kitchen, my legs pinned in the bedrooms.

Peter was looking at the Virgin. “Still a Catholic household. Father Moore would be proud.” The parish priest, kindly but formidable, when we were both kids; he had given us our First Communions. “Do you practice?”

I shrugged. “I’d go to Mass at Christmas and Easter with my dad, if we were together. Otherwise I guess you’d call me lapsed. You?”

He just laughed. “Since we know so little about the universe, religion seems a bit silly. I miss the ritual,

though. It was comforting. And the community.”

“Yes, the community.” Peter was from Irish Catholic stock, my mother’s family Italian American. Both clichй s, in our way, I thought. I stared up at Mary’s plaster face, frozen in an expression of pained kindness. “I suppose I was used to all this stuff as a kid. Faces staring down at me from the wall. Seems vaguely oppressive now.”

Peter was studying me. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”

Irritation flared. “Fine,” I snapped.

He flinched, and pressed his forefinger to the space between his eyes, and I realized he was straightening nonexistent glasses.

I was suddenly ashamed. “Peter, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not here to make you feel sorry. This is your time.” He spread his big hands. “Everything you do now, you’re going to remember for the rest of your life.”

“Christ, you’re right,” I said, dismayed.

I walked the few paces to the kitchen door, which was open. There was a musty smell. A cup, saucer, and plate sat with bits of cutlery on the table. The plate was covered with cold grease and dried flecks of what looked like bacon. There was a little puddle of liquid in the bottom of the cup, on which green bacterial colonies floated; I recoiled.

“I found him in the hall,” Peter said.

“I heard.” Dad had suffered a series of massive strokes. I picked up the cup, saucer, and plate and carried them to the sink.

“I don’t think the fall itself hurt him. He looked peaceful. He was lying just there.” He pointed to the hall. “I used his phone to call the hospital. I didn’t go into the rest of the house. Not even to clean up.”

“That was thoughtful,” I murmured.

I looked out of the kitchen window at the small back garden. The grass needed cutting, I noted absently, and the pale spires of ant colonies towered amid the green. In one corner of the garden, where they would get the most light, were the skeletal forms of the azaleas, my father’s pride and joy, cherished for years — Christ, decades. But at this time of year they were as barren and stark as at midwinter.