Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

One day, I said to the barman, ‘Do you think you could do me thin chips for a change?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know, like in France – the thin ones.’

‘No, we don’t do them.’

‘But it says on the menu your chips are hand-cut.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, can’t you cut them thinner?’

The barman’s normal affableness took a pause. He looked at me as if he wasn’t sure whether I was a pedant or an idiot, or quite possibly both.

‘Hand-cut chips means fat chips.’

‘But if you handcut chips, couldn’t you cut them thinner?’

‘We don’t cut them. That’s how they arrive.’

‘You don’t cut them on the premises?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘So what you call “hand-cut chips” are actually cut elsewhere, and quite probably by a machine?’

‘Are you from the council or something?’

‘Not in the least. I’m just puzzled. I never realised that “hand-cut” meant “fat” rather than “necessarily cut by hand”.’

‘Well, you do now.’

‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t get it.’

I retired to my table and waited for my supper.

And then, just like that, the five of them came in, accompanied by the young minder I’d seen from Veronica’s car. The badge man stopped as he passed my table, and gave me his bow from the neck; a couple of the badges on his deerstalker chinked quietly together. The others followed. When Adrian’s son saw me, he turned his shoulder as if to keep me – and bad luck – away. The five of them crossed to the far wall but didn’t sit down. The care worker went to the bar and ordered drinks.

My hake and hand-cut chips arrived, the latter served in a metal pot lined with newspaper. Perhaps I had been smiling to myself when the young man arrived at my table.

‘Do you mind if I have a word?’

‘Not at all.’

I gestured to the chair opposite. As he sat down I noticed, over his shoulder, the five of them looking across at me, holding on to their glasses, not drinking.

‘I’m Terry.’

‘Tony.’

We shook hands in that awkward, elbow-high way that being seated imposes. He was silent at first.

‘Chip?’ I suggested.

‘No thanks.’

‘Did you know that when they put “hand-cut” chips on a menu, it just means “fat”, it doesn’t mean they’re actually cut by hand?’

He looked at me rather as the barman had.

‘It’s about Adrian.’

‘Adrian,’ I repeated. Why had I never wondered about his name? And what else could he have possibly been called?

‘Your presence upsets him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I replied. ‘The last thing I want to do is upset him. I don’t want to upset anyone any more. Ever .’ He looked at me as if he suspected irony. ‘It’s all right. He won’t see me again. I’ll finish my food and be off, and none of you will ever see me again.’

He nodded. ‘Do you mind me asking who you are?’

Who I am? ‘Of course not. My name’s Tony Webster. Many years ago I was a friend of Adrian’s father. I was at school with him. I used to know Adrian’s mother – Veronica – too. Quite well. Then we lost touch. But we’ve seen quite a bit of one another over the last weeks. No, months, I should say.’

‘Weeks and months?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Though I shan’t be seeing Veronica again either. She doesn’t want to know me any more.’ I tried to make it sound factual rather than pathetic.

He looked at me. ‘You understand that we can’t discuss our clients’ histories. It’s a matter of confidentiality.’

‘Of course.’

‘But what you’ve just said doesn’t make any sense.’

I thought about this. ‘Oh – Veronica – yes, I’m sorry. I remember he – Adrian – called her Mary. I suppose that’s what she calls herself with him. It’s her second name. But I knew her – know her – as Veronica.’

Over his shoulder I could see the five of them standing anxiously, still not drinking, watching us. I felt ashamed that my presence bothered them.

‘If you were a friend of his father’s -’

‘And his mother’s.’

‘Then I think you don’t understand.’ At least he put it differently from others.

‘I don’t?’

‘Mary isn’t his mother. Mary’s his sister. Adrian’s mother died about six months ago. He took it very badly. That’s why he’s been… having problems lately.’

Automatically, I ate a chip. Then another. There wasn’t enough salt on them. That’s the disadvantage of fat chips. They have too much potatoey inside. With thin chips, not only is there more crispy outside, but the salt is better distributed too.

All I could do was offer Terry my hand and a repeat of my promise. ‘And I hope he’ll be all right. I’m sure you look after him very well. They all seem to get on, the five of them.’

He stood up. ‘Well, we do our best, but we get hit by budget cuts almost every year.’

‘Good luck to you all,’ I said.

‘Thanks.’

When I paid, I left twice the normal tip. At least that was one way of being useful.

And later, at home, going over it all, after some time, I understood. I got it. Why Mrs Ford had Adrian’s diary in the first place. Why she had written: ‘P.S. It may sound odd, but I think the last months of his life were happy.’ What the second carer meant when she said, ‘Especially now.’ Even what Veronica meant by ‘blood money’. And finally, what Adrian was talking about on the page I’d been permitted to see. ‘Thus, how might you express an accumulation containing the integers b , a 1, a 2, s , v ?’ And then a couple of formulae expressing possible accumulations. It was obvious now. The first a was Adrian; and the other was me, Anthony – as he used to address me when he wanted to call me to seriousness. And b signified ‘baby’. One born to a mother – ‘The Mother’ – at a dangerously late age. A child damaged as a result. Who was now a man of forty, lost in grief. And who called his sister Mary. I looked at the chain of responsibility. I saw my initial in there. I remembered that in my ugly letter I had urged Adrian to consult Veronica’s mother. I replayed the words that would forever haunt me. As would Adrian’s unfinished sentence. ‘So, for instance, if Tony…’ I knew I couldn’t change, or mend, anything now.

You get towards the end of life – no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong? I thought of a bunch of kids in Trafalgar Square. I thought of a young woman dancing, for once in her life. I thought of what I couldn’t know or understand now, of all that couldn’t ever be known or understood. I thought of Adrian’s definition of history. I thought of his son cramming his face into a shelf of quilted toilet tissue in order to avoid me. I thought of a woman frying eggs in a carefree, slapdash way, untroubled when one of them broke in the pan; then the same woman, later, making a secret, horizontal gesture beneath a sunlit wisteria. And I thought of a cresting wave of water, lit by a moon, rushing past and vanishing upstream, pursued by a band of yelping students whose torchbeams criss-crossed in the dark.

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.

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