Джулиан Барнс - The Only Story

You are home one evening when the phone goes. It is one of the lodgers.

‘I think you’d better come round. We’ve had the police. With guns.’

You repeat the words to Anna, then run for your car. In Henry Road there is an ambulance outside the house, its blue light revolving, its doors open. You park, walk across, and there she is, in a wheelchair facing out towards the street, with a broad bandage around her forehead which has pushed her hair up into a Struwwelpeter shock. Her expression, as often when a sudden crisis has worked itself out, is one of slightly amused calm. She surveys the street, the ambulance men fixing the wheelchair in place, and your own arrival, as if from a throne. The blue light revolves against the steadier sodium orange. It is real and unreal at the same time; filmic, phantasmagoric.

Then the chair slowly rises on its hoist, and as the ambulance doors are about to be closed, she lifts her hand in a pontifical blessing. You ask the ambulance men where they are taking her and follow in your car. When you get to the A&E department, they are already taking preliminary details.

‘I’m her next of kin,’ you say.

‘Son?’ they ask. You nearly agree, for speed, but they might query the difference of surname. So, once again, you are her nephew.

‘He’s not really my nephew,’ she says. ‘I could tell you a thing or two about this young man.’

You look at the doctor, lying to him with a slight frown and a tiny movement of the head. You collude in the notion that Susan is temporarily off among the nutters.

‘Ask him about the tennis club,’ she says.

‘We’ll come to that, Mrs Macleod. ‘But first…’

And so the process continues. They will keep her in overnight, perhaps run a test or two. It may just be shock. They will call you when they are ready to release her. The ambulance men have said it was just a cut, but as it was on the forehead there was a lot of blood. It may need a stitch or two, maybe not.

The next day, they release her, still in full dispossession of her faculties.

‘About time too,’ she says, as you walk her to the car park. ‘It really has all been frightfully interesting.’

You know this mood only too well. Something has been observed, or experienced, or discovered, which has little to do with anything, yet is of extreme, overwhelming interest, and must be reported.

‘Let’s wait until we get you home first.’ You have slipped into the language of the hospital, where everything is done or asked for in the name of ‘us’.

‘All right, Mr Spoilsport.’

At Henry Road, you take her to the kitchen, sit her down, make her a cup of tea with extra sugar and give her a biscuit. She ignores them.

‘Well,’ she begins, ‘it was all so fascinating. Such fun. You see, these two men with guns got into the house last night.’

‘With guns ?’

‘That’s what I said. With guns. Do stop interrupting before I’ve barely even started. So yes, two men with guns. And they were going round looking for something. I don’t know what.’

‘Were they robbers?’ You feel you are allowed to ask questions which don’t challenge the essential veracity of her fantasy.

‘Well, that’s what I thought might be the case. So I said to them, “The gold bullion is under the bed.”’

‘Wasn’t that a bit rash?’

‘No, I thought it would put them off the scent. Not that I knew what the scent was, of course. They were both quite polite and well mannered. For gunmen, that is. They didn’t want to bother me, they would just go about their business if I didn’t mind.’

‘But didn’t they shoot at you?’ You indicate her forehead, now decorated with a large gauze patch.

‘Lord, no, they were much too polite for that. But it was rather an interruption to the evening, so I felt obliged to call the police.’

‘Didn’t they try and stop you?’

‘Oh no, they were all in favour. They agreed with me that the police might help them find what they were looking for.’

‘But they didn’t tell you what that was?’

She ignores you and continues.

‘But the thing I really wanted to tell you was that they had these feathers everywhere.’

‘Gosh.’

‘Feathers sticking out of their bottoms. Feathers in their hair. Feathers everywhere.’

‘What sort of guns did they have?’

‘Oh, who knows about guns?’ she says dismissively. ‘But then the police came, and I answered the door to them, and they sorted everything out.’

‘Was there a gunfight?’

‘A gunfight? Don’t be ridiculous. The British police are far too professional for that.’

‘But they arrested them?’

‘Naturally. Why else do you think I called them?’

‘So how did you cut your head?’

‘Well, of course I can’t remember that. It’s the least interesting part of the story in my view.’

‘I’m glad it all worked out in the end.’

‘You know, Paul,’ she says, ‘sometimes I’m really disappointed in you. It was so enjoyable and so fascinating, but you keep coming up with these banal comments and banal questions. Of course it all worked out in the end. Everything always does, doesn’t it?’

You don’t answer. After all, you have your pride. And in your opinion, the notion that everything works out in the end, and the counter-notion that nothing ever does, are both equally banal.

‘Now don’t sulk. It’s been one of the most interesting twenty-four hours of my life. And everyone – everyone – was very nice to me indeed.’

The gunmen. The police. The ambulance men. The hospital. The Russkis. The Vatican. And all’s right with the world, then.

That evening, over takeaway pizzas, I recounted the whole lurid episode to Anna. I told it fondly, concernedly, almost amusedly, if not quite. The fantasy gunmen, the real policemen, the gold bullion, the feathers, the ambulance men, the hospital. I omitted some of Susan’s strictures on my character. I was also aware, however, that Anna was not reacting as I had expected.

Eventually, she said, ‘That all sounds a great waste of public money.’

‘That’s an odd way to look at it.’

‘Is it? Police, firearms squad – Special Branch – ambulance, hospital. All of them dashing around making a fuss of her, just because she’s gone on a bender. And that includes you too.’

‘Me? What do you expect me to do when the lodger calls and says there are armed police in the house?’

‘I didn’t expect you to do anything different.’

‘Well then—’

‘Just as I wouldn’t expect you to do anything different if we were going out for a meal, or a film, or leaving for a holiday and already running late for our flight.’

I thought about this. ‘No, I don’t expect I would. Behave differently.’

We were reaching a stand-off, I realized. One of the reasons I’d gone for Anna in the first place was that she always spoke her mind. This had a downside to it as well as an upside. I suppose all character traits do.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘We talked about… all this when we first got together.’ Somehow, I couldn’t say Susan’s name at that moment.

‘You talked. I listened. I didn’t necessarily agree.’

‘Then you misled me.’

‘No, Paul, you didn’t explain the full extent of it to me. Maybe in future when I get out my diary to write in a dinner date or a play or a weekend away, I should always add a note saying: subject to the extent of Susan Macleod’s alcoholic intake.’

‘That’s very unfair.’

‘It may be unfair but it also happens to be true.’

We paused. It was a question of whether either of us wanted to take it further. Anna did.

‘And while we’re about it, Paul, I may as well say that Susan Macleod… is not really my kind of woman.’