Thomas Maloney - Learning to Die

Goodbye, too, to the arms race between means to destroy and motives to desist, galloping to its inevitable, poetic end: the bomb. Stuff of myth. Only one outcome. But the species holds fire, we hold fire — screw that, we want to live, too much, more than they do in the myths. We dance Gangnam Style instead. Savour a brief heyday of partial peace and unequal plenty. Indulge in glass phalluses half a mile high, engrave poems on grains of rice, stick flags in the moon. Build colossal experiments underground. Kick a ball around. Sip flat whites and chillax.

Yes, the involuntary wide game of humanity is something like this. Its players come and go. Meanwhile, nature maintains a ruthless blast of indifference, cleansing, laying waste without vengeful motive, by storm or by disease; but not always — sometimes sympathetic to our predicament or seeming so, in a moment of dappled calm, or in swifts flying low at twilight, crying out the very same tuneless song of sorrow.

Goodbye to all that.

Dan stirs and blinks, his bout of orienteering complete for now: the foundations laid. He is not ready to address his goodbyes closer to home. Larger spots of rain peck at his face and eyes, and streak the great stones of the pedestal beside him. There is an inscription: PATRI OPTIMO . Best of fathers. A mocking eulogy that finds an accidental mark two centuries on. Putative pater-to-be Dan bumps and wobbles down the slope to the start of the walk.

There he pauses, a small, sedentary figure, parked on the starting line of this monumental home straight. Suddenly the brooding sky unveils a flood of late summer sunshine, and, at the same instant, fills the air with hard, shining, autumn rain.

From our distant vantage on the Walk we can only just make out Dan’s hand pulling a plastic bag from the side of the chair and covering his precious joystick. A few figures hurry past without noticing him, in search of shelter. The chair rolls forward along the rain-slick asphalt, wheel-deep in golden spray. From here we cannot see the finger finding the new switch or hear the wavering hum of the auxiliary electric motor, and we do not expect what happens next.

With a soft, distinct thwack , a black umbrella opens above the wheelchair, whose occupant continues resolutely towards his rendezvous.

The lane runs on and on before the headlight beams, straight and narrow as a chute, while the dashboard clock adds another minute to its damning score. There are no signs, but James F. Saunders can feel the sour, potent gravity of the sea. Here, at last, are some houses; a pub, The Gun; a small car park, and beyond it a suggestion of yachts’ masts and a primeval darkness.

The car park is deserted apart from a few vehicles crouched and frosted in the shadows and two cars incongruously gleaming beneath a lamp: an Aston Martin and a Motability car.

‘They’ve gone without us.’

‘They wouldn’t.’ James swings the van alongside, stops the engine and opens his door to the cold, silent dawn. ‘Not when we’ve come so far.’

‘I told you they would.’

But they haven’t. The outer silence is broken by the unmistakeable sound of a hand-dryer and a door banging, and a procession makes its way into the car park from what is evidently a public toilet.

Natalie Mock feels ridiculous in her wellies, waterproofs and woolly hat. Dan and Mike cooked up this escapade while Dan was in the hospice. Sea-fishing in November. Will it be safe for you, she asked; Dan can still do withering looks. Fine. Whatever. She slings the rucksack over her shoulder (medicines and other necessaries — each month it grows heavier) and follows the conspirators out into the car park; two newcomers are standing under the car park’s single lamp.

‘It was them,’ says Mike, pushing his old friend’s chair. ‘Time and tide, people — time and tide!’

James has changed more in eighteen months than in the previous decade. He has a beard now — not like Dan’s regrettable Crusoe tribute (they abandoned the daily shave last summer because of skin irritation), but a neat goatee that suits him. His characteristic forward hunch — to Natalie always a signifier of eagerness, of leaning in, rather than weakness or burden — has been ironed straight. He shakes Mike’s proffered hand with ironic emphasis, then without hesitating stoops and warmly grasps both of Dan’s gloved hands where they rest on the arms of his chair.

‘Dan. Good to see you. Sausage for your thoughts — remember?’ Now, finally, he turns to her. ‘Natalie.’ The name still sounds odd on his lips. He leans to kiss her and gets a faceful of hat and waterproof jacket.

‘Hi.’

Beside James stands a woman — yes, it is Mike’s sister, though she’s changed too since Natalie met her, just once, at one of Mike’s parties, perhaps six or seven years ago. She seemed very young then, an awkward, big-boned student dressed in black. She’s still dressed in black, and has been sort of squaring up to Dan, not sure how to greet him, but now gratefully follows James’ example.

‘Have you got wellies and things?’ asks Natalie, stupidly. It was Brenda who told them all what to bring. ‘The fisherman guy — Reg, Ron — he’s waiting for us on the boat.’

‘We’ll be ready in two shakes,’ says James, throwing open the back doors of the van.

‘Have you got the provisions?’ asks Brenda.

‘Vittles for both fishy- and humankind are all aboard,’ replies Mike. ‘Sandwiches still hot. We’ll sort the ramps out and see you there. You can’t miss her — name of Andromeda .’

Jupiter is the last survivor in the dawn sky as the squat, rusty Andromeda chugs along her buoyed channel, past the mud flats, the lighthouse, the old fort on its precarious sickle of land, and out into the mile-wide neck of the Solent. Though the morning is perfectly clear and still, the sea bears in a remnant of swell from the Atlantic. It glints like molten lead under the bow and then reappears astern, savagely sculpted into rearing, glassy waves that hang, slump and tumble into lanes of foam.

Dan Mock taps a question into his keypad with his left thumb, his last moveable digit: How deep . The electronic voice is drowned by the engine, but Nat reads the words and relays them to Mike, who ducks into the cab and asks Ron. ‘Eighteen metres.’ Is that all. Strange.

Dan allows his senses to feast. After the well-meant, comfortable blandness of the hospice, every authentic world-morsel is precious — the mewing retinue of gulls, the bright, tangerine glow seeping up behind the Isle of Wight, the mingled smells of diesel and marine sulphur. And bacon: Mike, Brenda and James are all attacking their butties. Dan hasn’t bitten into a rasher of bacon for at least a year. But he isn’t vexed by the others’ enjoyment — or only a little. He’s grateful to be reminded.

They round the ghostly chalk spires of the Needles just as the late autumn sun peeps over the island, narrowing the friends’ five pairs of eyes and painting their faces with a wash of gold. The engine stops, the anchor chain rattles, and a deep quiet descends. The Channel plants gentle, slapping kisses along the Andromeda ’s hull.

Mike Vickers feels triumphant. The weather is perfect, Dan’s assurance that he’s comfortable and enjoying himself quite believable: the controversial outing is already a success. The small matter of inadequate insurance was resolved with a couple of fifties. There were no bites from the first drop, but does it matter whether you catch anything?