Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

The following day he goes to the bank to get hold of some cash. He has a vicious hangover, a bandage over his face, no proof of identification and a very short fuse. He leaves before the police are called but returns to find another locksmith has come, employed by the bailiffs who have now repossessed the house. There is an envelope Sellotaped to the door explaining how he can retrieve his possessions. He tries to smash the blue recycling bin through the front window but the individual panes are too small. The glass shatters, the top of the box comes free and bottles fall around his feet, some shattering, some emptying dregs of wine and beer onto his trousers.

He has five and a half thousand pounds in a deposit account he cannot access and six pounds forty-three in his pocket. He wants a strong drink, he is hungry and he needs painkillers. He can afford only one of these things. He buys a packet of Paracodol from Boots then has to return and ask for a glass of water so that he can swallow them because his throat is too dry. He sits in the library for three hours, reading the newspaper and staring into space.

He does not consider contacting any of the people he has called friends over the past few years. It is not what the word “friend” means to him and, indeed, if they had treated him in a similar way he would have seen it as an imposition. His main concern is that other people do not find out about his present state.

When the library closes he heads up to the Star and Garter Gate and into the park. He needs to walk long and hard to burn off a churning anger. He is not homeless, he is simply without a home for the present. He has made mistakes. They can be undone. He walks for five hours and spends the night in the Isabella Plantation, sleeping in short bursts from which he is rapidly woken either by the imaginary stranger or by real animals moving through undergrowth nearby.

The following morning he returns to the bank in a more conciliatory state of mind. The woman at the counter says, “It’s Mr. Cooper, isn’t it?” She is excited for a second or so then goes very quiet. He is ushered into a private room. He explains to a man in a cheap suit that he was burgled. He recites his mother’s maiden name, his pin number and his last three addresses and walks out with an envelope containing two thousand pounds. He takes the bandage off his face and throws it away.

He calls the bailiffs who explain that it will cost seventy pounds to retrieve his possessions. He counts silently to three and puts the phone down.

If he spends the next week in a hotel he will rapidly run out of money and find himself back at square one. He needs to ration his resources and ride out this period of turbulence.

He buys a sleeping bag, a cheap one-person tent and a waterproof coat from Millets in Epsom. He buys two packs of sandwiches from the reduced section in Sainsbury’s and two plastic litre bottles of water which he can refill. People stare at him, either because of his broken nose or because they recognise him. It is impossible to tell which. If they stare for too long he stares back. If they do not look away he tells them to fuck off. He buys more Paracodol. He does not think about going to the Citizens Advice Bureau. He does not think about finding a hostel. He does not think about foodbanks or day centres. He wants nothing to do with homeless people or those who make it their business to care for them.

He sleeps in the park for a second night, camping in the trees at the end of Pen Ponds. He is woken by the police in the small hours. They are very polite. He packs his tent and makes a show of walking towards Robin Hood Gate but veers into a stand of trees when they can no longer see him. They’re less polite when they wake him the following night.

He walks upriver. Eel Pie Island, Ham Lands, Kingston, Hampton Court. He climbs a fence and pitches his tent behind the waterworks on Desborough Island. The following day he stands under Chertsey Bridge and watches heavy summer rain stipple the Thames for two solid hours. Laleham, Staines. He passes under the M25. He has now left London. Above him, one by one, planes rise from Heathrow and are swallowed by the sky. Wraysbury, Windsor.

The days are warm and long, but the path is busy so he must pitch his tent after dark and take it down soon after dawn. He camps in a little copse near the A332. He camps in a wood near Cliveden.

It is August. He does not know the precise date. A year ago he was diving in the Maldives with Emmy, accompanied by manta rays and blacktail barracuda, living a life that seems fictional now, its inhabitants as glossy and shallow as actors in TV adverts.

He is embarrassed by his filthy clothing and his unwashed smell but the dirtier and more ragged he becomes the less he attracts people’s attention and this is some relief. He does very little. He spends most of his day by the river, walking, sitting. He has never taken much notice of the non-human world. He rowed for two terms at Cambridge but the river was little more than background. He sees mink, he sees water voles, he watches iridescent-blue dragonflies hover among the reeds. He sees a shiny, black terrapin with red eyeballs sitting on a wet stone. He likes it best in the early mornings when the water is a mirror and flotillas of geese and ducks sleep in the last of the mist.

August becomes September. The weather turns. The Paracodol which previously kept him asleep till four o’clock are becoming less effective. He is wary of damaging his liver and kidneys by taking more.

He falls into conversation with a man who has already pitched his ramshackle tent in the little wood where Gavin himself was planning to spend the night. Terry has worked as a librarian and a cook and a gardener. He is reading a battered copy of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table .

They talk about the crayfish Terry has caught in the river and will be cooking for his supper. They talk about Cornelius Drebbel who piloted a submarine ten miles from Westminster to Greenwich in 1621 under the eyes of James I. Gavin asks him why he is camping rough and Terry explains that he knows the identity of Prince Harry’s real father and for this reason he is being hunted down by the security services. He weeps a little and apologises for this. “I’ve been running for a long time. It’s hard to keep my spirits up.” Gavin wishes him well and continues walking in order to pitch his tent elsewhere.

There are tiny insects of some kind in his hair. He has a rash up his right arm and over his shoulder which might or might not be scabies. He has what feels like a constant, low-level chest infection.

He discovers that staff at the Co-op in Pangbourne throw food past its sell-by date into a skip at the rear of the shop at the end of the working day.

One morning he sees a boy walking over a bridge. He is certain that it is Thom. He fights his way up a steep bank and through a hedge but when he reaches the road he can see no one. He sees the boy several more times, never his face, only ever the back of his head. He vanishes when Gavin gives chase.

September becomes October. Goring, Moulsford, North Stoke. He sees a dead dog float past, its legs in the air like a cartoon of a dead dog. He gives up buying food. He saves his remaining money for Paracodol. He doubles his dose then triples it. A security guard finds him going through the bins behind Tesco in Wallingford and attacks him with a fury out of all proportion to the offence, pushing him to the ground, kicking him repeatedly and calling him “you thieving, fucking scum.”

He understands now that taking your own life might not be a weakness. He has travelled a long way. It is a different country out here and everything looks different. To carry on living or to end one’s life in a manner of one’s own choosing? The answer is not obvious. To fill one’s pockets with stones could be a decent bet against poor odds.