Пит Таунсенд - The Age of Anxiety

The sound of galloping hooves on hard ground. Thudding rhythmically, two horses, breathing hard. Jumps. The whip. Faster. Faster. Then splashing through muddy, shallow water. Climbing a hill, until reaching the top the two exhausted horses and their riders stop to survey the sight we cannot see, but that through this soundscape we can hear. A valley, a distant country, made of the sounds we have been hearing in the play so far. This is the sound of the portents of the end of the world, the death and fading of everything, everything good and bad and in between, everything natural and everything man-made, nature and the environment—all of it. Again there is a strange kind of blindness, blindingly, fiercely brilliant and warm. Clumsy, groping, lost—but making it easier to hear, and to be able to focus on what can be heard. Then finally all the most disturbing sounds resolve into the most musical, into the jazz, the fugues, the song of birds. Ultimately the piano, and Walter’s one song for Floss.

One thing was becoming clear as Walter sat listening to Siobhan discount all his anxieties: she knew him better than anyone, better than any of his friends, no doubt better than I did, and almost certainly better than his parents.

She was the one who asked the most important question, one he probably would never have framed himself.

“How well do you think Floss knows you, Walter?”

“How well do I know Floss?” He was countering, hypothetically now.

Siobhan leaned forward earnestly. “That’s not the right question.”

She knew he hadn’t come to see her to consult her about art or religion. He’d brought the laptop containing his soundscapes as an offering to her, in return for some emotional solace and advice.

“I don’t want to lose Floss the way I lost you,” he said sadly.

“You never had me,” she scoffed, but with a kind smile. “Not in the sense you have Floss today.”

“I must ask you a question.” He was feeling embattled. “Who was the man at the door when I arrived?”

Siobhan smiled conspiratorially. “Why assume the person you saw was a man?”

Walter surrendered. Siobhan might know him, but he hardly knew his first wife, and at last realized how wonderful that was. He was her friend, she was wise and knew him well, and could advise him without conditions. She had never taken anything from him, never chided him, and never tried to constrain him. She had only ever pressed him with her passionate conviction that he had potential as an artist.

They drank two more bottles of red wine, and when she nudged at the fading embers of the fire with a poker and then kissed him and climbed the stairs to her bed, Walter realized that all he had learned by coming to see his ex-wife was that this time he could not turn back.

He lay back on the luxurious sofa, his head surrounded by cushions and the scent of the woman he still loved and respected, and perhaps the additional contrasting scent of a man or woman he might never know, and drifted into a deep sleep. It had been a long, long day.

The long days turned into the better part of a week. Walter lost track of time. No landline phone. No radio. No television. No internet. For two days he let his mobile battery go flat. He didn’t leave the cottage.

He was awakened one morning by Siobhan, holding a cup of tea and gently shaking his shoulder.

“Walter,” she whispered. “Wake up. Something has happened.”

Walter pulled the blanket over his legs and sat up, rubbing his eyes like a child.

“Floss has had an accident.” Siobhan held out the cup and Walter took it, slow to wake up completely. “You must go to London immediately. Call Selena. She called your mobile. I charged it up for you last night.”

Walter descended into a panic unlike any he had experienced in his life. His heart pounded but still did not seem to pump enough blood to his brain to stop him feeling dizzy. He held his breath for thirty or forty seconds at a time. The feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach almost prevented him thinking rationally; it was as though his body had taken over his brain.

Siobhan passed him his mobile phone and ordered him to call Selena. He realized that having to make the call was partly to blame for the intensity of his panic.

“What’s happened?” he demanded, spilling the tea on the blanket as he dropped his cup. “What kind of accident?”

“I don’t know the details, Walter,” said Siobhan firmly. “Selena just called, crying and upset. Phone her.”

Walter’s mind began to race as he threw the mobile phone aside and pulled on his jeans. Selena was, as usual, at the center of things. This thought made him angry. He spoke aloud. “She always seems to know so much more than anyone else about what Floss is or isn’t doing.”

He heard his own voice and was embarrassed for a moment. He asked himself questions silently instead, preparing them for Selena. Had Floss fallen? Or had she and Ronnie had a road accident in that bloody awful horsebox?

However frightened he was of finding out what had happened, he was dreading having to speak to Selena. Why did he have to confer this power on her? He had hoped simply to put her out of mind, and to refuse to face the gossip she shared about Floss and Ronnie. And what was the lifelong secret Floss had kept from him?

Siobhan—now holding his phone out to him as he pulled on a T-shirt—had successfully refocused him on the importance of his work, the absurdity of imagining that relationships, love, sex, marriage, divorce, and even death mattered when art was on the table. Now, all she had done to steady him and settle him was blown away. He saw that it had always been so; Siobhan could be, and would always only be, his creative mentor or amanuensis. She could never go any further in her ministrations. She loved him, that was clear enough, and had immense respect for him, but it was the younger sister who probably better understood his connection with the darkness in his mind, in his aural world, in his soul.

He took breath after breath and handed the phone back to Siobhan.

“I can’t do it.” He was finding it difficult to breathe.

She dialed Selena for him and gave him the receiver.

Selena wasted no words. “Floss is in the critical care ward at Ealing Hospital.” She was weeping.

“Tell me what happened, Selena,” said Walter. “Please stop crying. You didn’t do anything to Floss, did you?”

This seemed to galvanize Selena. “Don’t be so fucking stupid, Walter. She fell off a fucking horse, a week ago. I only just found out. Ronnie tried to call you.”

“Sorry,” Walter said meekly. “He left a message but I missed it. How is she?”

“I understand she suffered some kind of stroke while in the ambulance.”

Walter was amazed at his detachment. As his heart slowed to normal he knew that hearing this news from Selena was probably a good thing. She had, after all, been the one who told him that Floss had been unfaithful to him, possibly for years. He had generated such an emotional distance now through Selena that he almost felt as though he were listening to a report of a tragedy in some far-off place, unconnected to him. It wasn’t that he felt no sympathy, nor was it that he didn’t care; he had been tempered, hardened, by what Selena had told him about his wife’s affair, and even more hardened by his own lapse with Selena.

Selena broke the silence. “Are you OK?”

“I’m trying to work out why I’m shaking so much, but I don’t feel anything.”

“What are you doing with Siobhan?”

“For Christ’s sake, Selena,” he shouted. “What does it matter?”

“There’s something else, Walter,” Selena said quietly.