Graham Swift - Out of This World

In Switzerland, by the shores of Lake Lucerne (ducks scooting and clucking in the thin sunshine), I told Anna about Dad, spinning this tale of a life-long enemy, an implacable ogre who would bar the door against me should I so much as dare to seek shelter, with my new wife, under his roof again. I should have predicted — I should have learnt by then — that it would be otherwise. That when I summoned up the nerve to break the news and even to propose a visit, I would suddenly become the Prodigal Son, while to Anna he would be the model father-in-law.

I still see them, walking in the orchard. Him talking, her listening. November leaves on the grass. I had slipped in to fetch Anna’s scarf. But I stood for a while at the window, twisting the scarf in my hands, and twisting something else inside me. I didn’t feel angry, not even wrong-footed. I didn’t feel I should have to protest to Anna: But this is all an act, you wait and see. I didn’t answer the voice that was whispering in my head: You see what he is doing, you see what the old bastard’s doing — he’s going to try to bring you round through her, he’s going to hope that now you will change your mind. (I even thought: And suppose —? And supposing —?)

That afternoon — after suffering all morning the worst anticipations — Anna had given me the first, fleeting glance she had ever given me of distrust. As if she had said: Do we share the same reality, you and I? But then her glance had flickered on, in happy credulity, to take in the weathered brick and old oak of Hyfield. And I didn’t feel a sting (I could bridge that gap of suspicion) at that look of reproach.

They paused under one of the apple trees. He was extolling, perhaps, like some benign old landowner, the virtues of the English pippin. Be careful, Anna. Just remember what really grows in that orchard. A moment when she laughed — laughter at Hyfield! — and the chime of her laughter, and the clatter of his, reached the house in the damp, melancholy air.

Hyfield. Autumn in England. A smoky stillness. A settledness.

And why didn’t I feel all those things? Why did I stand at that window, unwilling to break the glass of that little vision, the spell of that little scene. Because I could see — it wasn’t an act — that he was captivated.

A lover’s pride. But more than that.

They turned to walk slowly back towards the house. (Should I go out now — interrupt? — with the scarf?) The familiar, limp hang of his right arm seemed at that moment to accentuate rather than detract from the life in the rest of his body. What shall I say — he looked young? As if, right then, it wasn’t Anna I loved, so much as him. As if for me too that picture I had drawn for Anna of my father, along with all the grievance and hate that had been etched into it, were an illusion.

And you see, Doctor K, I don’t want to screw up that letter and throw it away. (Though I’ve hidden it from Joe.) And I don’t want to say: And screw you too, Harry, for an old fornicator. I don’t even feel — do you know what I mean? — cheated. Jilted. The truth is I want it to be wonderful. Wonderful. I want to go. Can you believe that? I want to write back to him and say, Yes, yes, I’m coming. I’m coming, for your wedding. I want to pack a suitcase and bundle the twins into a cab to JFK and tell them on the journey all about that little old country where I was born. I want him, and her, whoever she is (but I hope she’s as lovely as a princess), to be waiting at the airport. I want to throw my arms around him and feel his arms round mine. Harry Dad Father. Your grandchildren. And I want to hug her too and kiss her like a sister, a younger sister, and say, I hope you’ll be happy with him, because I never was. Shit, I know this is pure theatre, I know this is like a bad movie, like the way it isn’t. But what’s the point of life, and what’s the point of goddam movies, if now and then you can’t discover that the way you thought it isn’t, the way you thought it only ever is in movies, really is the way it is?

Well, if you ask me, I know there was never any big thing going for me, no plan, no special assignments. I was what you call an ‘accident’, or an almost-accident. A visitor, that’s all. An extra guest at the party.

And the truth is I’m happy when other people are happy round me. I’m glad when other people are happy. And there are plenty of people who can’t give that for an excuse.

People say to me, people I know and meet at work, ‘Hey, Joe, you know, you’re an easy-going kind of guy. Always good to be with. What’s the secret?’ And I say any number of things. Like: ‘It’s policy.’ Or: ‘It’s the new after-shave.’ Or: ‘It’s the influence of this fair city of yours, and your fresh American way.’ Or I want to say, But it’s the other way round: I’m looking at someone who’s smiling at me , and the reason why I’m smiling is because smiles are infectious. But the fact is I really don’t have an answer.

People like to be with me. They like to be with me! And I never knew how to explain it or exploit it. And maybe if I could do either, they wouldn’t like to be with me. Mr Nice. Mr No Threat. Mr No Complications. People like a regular dummy. One of the girls we once had here once said to me: ‘Mr Carmichael, you’re kinda good company — you could take advantage of that.’ Crossing her legs and biting her pen. And I said: ‘But that might spoil all the innocent fun we’re going to have.’ When she left about a year later there was a little packet from her sneaked into my in-tray. A pair of pink panties appliquéd ‘Love from Arlene’, and a message: ‘Now you can’t say you never got them off me. Thanks for the innocent fun.’

But that was years ago (I put them in my desk drawer: what do you do with a pair of panties especially inscribed to you?), before Sophie got like she wasn’t interested any more. Nowadays, maybe …

And, come to think of it, it’s been a long time since anyone at the office has said to me, ‘Hey, Joe, you’re fun to be with.’

A couple of months ago Gary and Jack and Karen made a point of keeping me at Mario’s, the beers coming one after the other. I could see what the plan was. They were thinking: Our Mr C’s actually starting to look a little distant, to lose his smile. They were thinking maybe they could get me to talk, just a little. About Sophie. Maybe they could ask. But before we could get that far, I put down my beer and looked at them all, and just said, ‘You’re good people.’ There was this pause and they lowered their eyes. Then I told a joke about Reagan and zero options. Then we had a fun evening anyway. I called Sophie and got home half drunk. She didn’t mind. I wish she had.

She used to drop by, of course, once. Sometimes with the boys. When she went on shopping sprees. She used to try and embarrass me by doing this imitation, in front of everybody, of the spendthrift wife, taking things out of bags from Macy’s and Gimbels. And I used to go through this act of madly feeling my pockets, as if I couldn’t find my wallet or my charge cards. No one was to know she has her own income from the money her Grandad left her. We’re still cushioned by that money: what she started to call some while back her ‘stock-pile’. But I wouldn’t have cared anyway. I’d have let her burn hundreds, thousands. When she came in like that, all mischievous and breathless, and only a little too shrill, I used to think: It’s all right. It’ll be all right.

I go to Mario’s most evenings. Sometimes with some of the others, sometimes alone. More often alone these days. Just for a beer before I head home. Mario pours the beer without my asking, brings over the dish of pretzels, and always comes out with a line. ‘Mr Carmichael, I see you’re offering tours to the Falkland Islands now.’ ‘Yes, Mario, you want the Canberra or the QE2 ?’ Always ‘Mr Carmichael’. He loves it. So English upper class. And that accent! (My accent, Mario, what part of it hasn’t turned American, is North London: Tottenham. That’s a cheap accent.)