Джулиан Барнс: The Only Story

Whatever happened, I wasn’t going to be a furrow-dweller. Or a breeder of dogs.

‘What you have to understand is this,’ she says. ‘There were three of us. The boys got the education – that’s how it was. Philip’s took him all the way, but the money for Alec ran out when he was fifteen. Alec was the one I was closest to. Everyone adored Alec, he was just the best. Naturally, he joined up as soon as he could, that’s what the best ones did. The Air Force. He ended up flying Sunderlands. They’re flying boats. They used to go out on long patrols over the Atlantic, looking for U-boats. Thirteen hours at a time. They gave them pills to help them keep going. No, that’s nothing to do with it.

‘So, you see, on his last leave, he took me to supper. Nowhere posh, just a Corner House. And he took my hands in his and said, “Sue darling, they’re complicated beasts, those Sunderlands, and I often don’t think I’m up to it. They’re too bloody complicated, and sometimes, when you’re out there over the water, and it all looks the same, hour after hour, you’ve no idea where you are, and sometimes even the navigator doesn’t either. I always say a prayer at take-off and landing. I don’t believe, but I say a prayer nevertheless. And every time I’m just as bloody scared as the time before. Right, I’ve got that off my chest. Corners up from now on. Corners up in the Corner House.”

‘That was the last time I saw him. He was posted missing three weeks later. They never found a trace of his plane. And I always think of him out there, over the water, being scared.’

I put my arm around her. She shakes it loose, frowningly.

‘No, that’s not all. There always seemed to be these men around. It was wartime and you’d think they’d all be off fighting, but there was a jolly lot of them around at home, I can tell you. The lesser men. So there was Gerald, who couldn’t pass the medical, even though he tried twice, and then Gordon, who was in a reserved occupation, as he liked to say. Gerald was sweet-tempered and nice-looking, and Gordon was a bit of a crosspatch, but anyway I just preferred dancing with Gerald. Then we got engaged, because, well, it was wartime and people did things like that then. I don’t think I was in love with Gerald, but he was a kind man, that’s for sure. And then he went and died of leukaemia. I told you that. It was beastly luck. So I thought I might as well marry Gordon. I thought it might make him less of a crosspatch. And that part of things didn’t work out, as you may have observed.’

‘But—’

‘ So , you see, we’re a played-out generation. All the best ones went. We were left with the lesser ones. It’s always like that in war. That’s why it’s up to your generation now.’

But I don’t feel part of a generation, for a start; and, moved as I am by her story, her history, her pre-history, I still don’t want to go into politics.

We were driving somewhere in my car, a Morris Minor convertible in a shade of mud-green. Susan said it looked like a very low-level German staff car from the war. We were at the foot of a long hill, with no traffic in sight. I was never a reckless driver, but I pushed hard down on the accelerator pedal to get a good run at the gradient. And after about fifty yards I realized something was seriously wrong. The car was accelerating at full throttle, even though I’d now taken my foot off the pedal. Instinctively, I rammed it on the brake. That didn’t help much. I was doing two things at the same time: panicking, and thinking clearly. Don’t ever believe those two states are incompatible. The engine was roaring, the brakes were screaming, the car was beginning to slew across the road, we were going between forty and fifty. It never occurred to me to ask Susan what to do. I thought, this is my problem, I’ve got to fix it. And then it came to me: take the car out of gear. So I put in the clutch, and moved the gear stick to neutral. The car’s hysteria decreased and we coasted to a halt on the verge.

‘Well done, Casey Paul,’ she says. Giving me both names was usually a sign of approval.

‘I should have thought of that earlier. Actually, I should have just switched off the bloody ignition. That would have done it. But it didn’t cross my mind.’

‘I think there’s a garage over the hill,’ she says, getting out, as if such an event were entirely routine.

‘Were you scared?’

‘No. I knew you’d sort it out, whatever it was. I always feel safe with you.’

I remember her saying that, and me feeling proud. But I also remember the feel of the car as it raced out of control, as it resisted the brakes, as it bucked and slewed across the road.

I must tell you about her teeth. Well, two of them, anyway. The middle front ones at the top. She called them her ‘rabbit teeth’ because they were perhaps a millimetre longer than the strict national average; but that, to me, made them the more special. I used to tap them lightly with my middle finger, checking that they were there, and secure, just as she was. It was a little ritual, as if I was taking an inventory of her.

Everyone in the Village, every grown-up – or rather, every middle-aged person – seemed to do crosswords: my parents, their friends, Joan, Gordon Macleod. Everyone apart from Susan. They did either The Times or the Telegraph ; though Joan had those books of hers to fall back on while waiting for the next newspaper. I regarded this traditional British activity with some snootiness. I was keen in those days to find hidden motives – preferably involving hypocrisy – behind the obvious ones. Clearly, this supposedly harmless pastime was about more than solving cryptic clues and filling in the answers. My analysis identified the following elements: 1) the desire to reduce the chaos of the universe to a small, comprehensible grid of black-and-white squares; 2) the underlying belief that everything in life could, in the end, be solved; 3) the confirmation that existence was essentially a ludic activity; and 4) the hope that this activity would keep at bay the existential pain of our brief sublunary transit from birth to death. That seemed to cover it!

One evening, Gordon Macleod looked up from behind a cigarette smokescreen and asked,

‘Town in Somerset, seven letters, ends in N.’

I thought about this for a while. ‘Swindon?’

He made a tolerant tut-tut. ‘Swindon’s in Wiltshire.’

‘Is it really? That’s a surprise. Have you ever been there?’

‘Whether I have or not is hardly relevant to the business in hand,’ he replied. ‘Look at it on the page. That might help.’

I went and sat next to him. Seeing a line-up of six blank spaces followed by an ‘N’ didn’t help me any the more.

‘Taunton,’ he announced, putting in the answer. I noticed the eccentric way he did his capital letters, lifting the pen from the page to make each stroke. Whereas anyone else would produce an N from two applications of pen to paper, he made three.

‘Continue mocking Somerset town. That was the clue.’

I thought about this, not very hard, admittedly.

‘Taunt on – continue mocking. Taunt on – TAUNTON. Get it, young fellermelad?’

‘Oh, I see ,’ I said nodding. ‘That’s clever.’

I didn’t mean it, of course. I was also thinking that Macleod must certainly have got the answer before he asked me. So then I added an extra clause to my analysis of the crossword – or, as Macleod preferred to call it, the Puzzle. 3b) false confirmation that you are more intelligent than some give you credit for.

‘Does Mrs Macleod do the crossword?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Two could play at this game, I thought.

‘The Puzzle,’ he replied with some archness, ‘is not really a female domain.’