Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

It was early morning when I woke. I sat up, shivering. Drawing my blouse close, I found a piece of paper in my pocket. I unfolded it and spread it flat on the ground. It was the bird’s-eye view of central Lagos, one of the hand-drawn maps from the demonstration, which I had collected when the speaker with the deep voice had had his soldiers scatter them from the stage. As the sun rose I examined the map. And there I saw, laid flat before my eyes, the island on which I had spent my whole life; and at its centre I could pick out the nearly complete rectangle of Tinubu Square, the grey lines indicating the principal streets, with black dots representing the palm trees, as well as the lighter, more intricate paths of the market district, where the occasional forked outline marked the artist’s impression of a passer-by. And later, when I rose and ducked under my shelter and walked beneath the highway, over rubble which in places still smoked, I was myself standing on the grey streets lined with palm trees. I was myself the pale outline on the market path, a tiny blot on the wasted land. I looked around at the high buildings quivering in the new day’s light. And I felt crushed.

This afternoon I travelled to Edinburgh to visit Mr Rafferty. Stepping from the bus on to his street, I heard the church clock strike three. It was starting to get dark. A chill wind blew across my legs. By the churchyard gates I stopped to remove my earplugs: ever since I finished the chapter on the pits of the nightsoil workers, when the noise of the earth blighted my dreams, my tinnitus has become louder and louder — my head is filled with all kinds of whizzing, popping and hissing noises. I’m finding it harder and harder to press on with this history. Every now and then, if I am lucky, I manage to write for an hour or two. But it’s slow work.

On the street I stopped to listen to a group of children running from school. Above the shapeless hubbub now and then I heard a cry — perhaps of joy, or of fear. A trio of cyclists coasted past. Did one of them ring her bell? I couldn’t say. I stood shivering, listening to the sounds. This occupied me for a while. Finally, the green man’s pips started up, and I crossed the road and entered the hospital grounds. It was getting colder. Nevertheless the December sun shone richly on the twisted grass.

The door to my grandfather’s room was open, and I entered without knocking. He was waiting for me, dressed in his greatcoat and hat.

‘Hello, Evie,’ he said and kissed me on the forehead. Happily he knew me this afternoon. Happily he seemed to know himself too. This was a good sign, for I had come to ask him about 1961, the year I arrived in Scotland, of which I recall very little.

I do remember my first visit to Mr Rafferty. Even then, his needs were minimal, like my own today. He no longer travelled, rarely left the institution, and his main pastime was restoring clockwork. Now the staff have confiscated his tools, but then my father and I would bring him watches from the junk shops on Cockburn Street. We would look on as he squinted at the silver cogs and loosely sprung coils, picking them apart. Then, hunched over the hands restored behind glass, he would wind the mainspring and wait for the miracle.

Now Mr Rafferty was struggling with his laces. He had shaved off his moustache (I felt before I saw it) and grazed his upper lip. It was difficult to connect this pale old man with the masterly watchmaker he had once been. I looked away. The whining in my ears climbed in pitch, and for several minutes I sat on the bed.

‘Shall we get going?’ I said. I was keen to leave the institution. My grandfather is more likely to engage in conversation outside the building.

As we left the institution I saw he was in a happy, helpful mood. He led me through the hospital grounds, saying, ‘I want to show you something.’ The late sun fell on his face, which seemed naked and embarrassed without his moustache. We walked along a ridge by the perimeter wall, then joined a walkway cut between rose thickets. Mr Rafferty said, ‘It’s brisk out,’ and his breath rose visibly. This seemed to please him. I took his arm to stop him slipping on the flagstones, and after a while he led me to a clearing. In front of us stood a hothouse. Lately I have noticed that when I stop still after walking I hear a deep sound in my head, like a funeral chord. I heard it now. Perhaps that is why I let Mr Rafferty pause outside the glass doors: the bass notes made me forget my purpose.

The hothouse is a big, square building with arched windows set in pillars of stone. A sweep of glass forms the roof. Mr Rafferty said, ‘Let’s go inside.’ I wanted to leave the institution and get to the park, where I planned to question him about our first meeting, and about my father’s state of mind in those days. But now the funeral chord shifted several keys higher, acquired dissonance, distracting me. Mr Rafferty was tugging at my sleeve.

‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘look!’ As the sun sank lower in the sky the clear arches with their glistening panes flamed with colour, and smoke rose from the roof. I looked through the windows at the fire and gasped, then pointed, and Mr Rafferty laughed, then I understood: the fire was not fire, but the sun reflecting off the panes; the smoke, not smoke, but vapour rising where the hot glass met the outside air. Mr Rafferty took my arm and led me through the doors.

‘The building is never so beautiful as at this hour,’ he said.

Inside, the air was wet. We wandered among the rotting plant life, brushed ferns with our hands, smelled the stink flower and mounted a narrow gantry spanning the north wall. Large climbers grew on the trunks of the banana trees, and blue moisture dripped from the ceiling. The drops hit, then slid along the serrated leaves, then fell; and the whole canopy seemed slowly to dip and rise.

Mr Rafferty peeled off his greatcoat and loosened his shirt. Sweat-beads had formed on his upper lip, clinging to the graze, and his temples were dark and flushed. I mopped his face and neck and retied his laces. On entering the building the shift in temperature had been sudden, and I had welcomed it. Yet I saw that Mr Rafferty was suffering. And I myself was feeling restless and fatigued, although not on account of the heat. It was rather because of the swollen, almost meaty quality of the leaves, and the unreal greenish colour of the light. Breathing deeply, my grandfather stepped back down on to the hothouse floor. I followed him along the pathway, and we came to a pond with a mechanical waterfall, buzzing and whispering. It was cooler here, where spume from the falls sugared our faces, and we sat to take a rest. A coin fell from his pocket and rolled into the pond, but he didn’t notice.

‘May I ask you something?’ I said. He didn’t answer. His eyes were following a movement in the foliage.

‘Well, isn’t that Perry?’ he said. An old man in a motor-powered wheelchair was steering clumsily towards us. ‘I think he ought to stop driving that chair. His hands are too shaky.’

Perry did not advance smoothly. He kept veering from the pathway, cursing the undergrowth.

‘There’s not a day passes without his baking himself in the hothouse,’ Mr Rafferty said. ‘It’s the only thing keeping him alive.’ The old cripple lurched forward then puttered to a standstill. For a moment he adjusted the vehicle and then he raised his face to us — pale, with a bony nose, powerfully hooked, and thick grizzled eyebrows. It was the only hair left on his entire head. In spite of the heat, his shoulders were wrapped in a blanket. He squinted up at me. Mr Rafferty said, ‘Old Perry, he’s virtually a tropical plant himself,’ which made perfect sense, as all at once I took in the waxy skin, the thick, blighted fingers, his corpse-like smell.