Graham Swift: Out of This World

‘Besides, I’m getting too old for running around any more.’ (As if it were a sport.)

‘You’re the youngest sixty-four-year-old I know.’

And how is the cottage? she asks. And I feel embarrassed again, because this would be the fifth or sixth year of Ray’s retirement. It’s fine, I say. It must be nice that, she says, a cottage in the country. And do I still go up in the planes? Yes, I still go up in the planes.

‘There you are, you see, at your age.’

And never once, in nine visits, has she voiced any outrage, any fury, that Dad got the hero’s treatment, the front-page funeral, and Ray was just the poignant sub-plot. ‘The loyalty that inspired loyalty …’

We sip our tea, gazing at the white grandstand. The car we sit in has been scrupulously scoured for any sign or scent of a feminine presence. Jenny’s comb, long hairs in its teeth, peeping from under the passenger seat. I wouldn’t dare and couldn’t bear, on this of all days (though, God knows, she’ll have to know some time), to tell Marion that, actually, I am happy. That in spite of everything (and at my age!) I am actually –

I swallow my tea carefully, like a guilty husband. You won’t blame me, Mrs Evans, laugh at me? Refuse to meet me again?

On Epsom Downs people exercise dogs, and fly kites and model aeroplanes. And there are the horses. He liked horses. Picked the winners. Groomed my daughter’s horse. Chauffeur and stableman.

Marion used to invite me to stay for dinner. But after the third or fourth time, because I always said no, she stopped asking. I drive her home. Marion is sixty-eight, but I always feel vastly her junior. Her semi-detached in Epsom is trim, immaculate, lovingly cared for. I’ve looked at many things that are difficult to look at, but when I leave and she stands at the front door, brushing hair from her forehead, upright, unsmiling, it breaks me up. My chest starts to heave.

I go to Dad’s grave too. It’s on the way back, and I deliberately leave it till the evening, so I won’t stumble upon anyone. Upon Frank perhaps, piously making a personal visit. The Surrey churchyard, the lych-gate and yew trees always depress me. What did they put in that coffin? And I’m troubled by the litter of tributes that, even after ten years, festoons the grave itself. The biggest wreath, as always, from BMC. Another from his regiment (that was over sixty years ago). Others from the hospitals in Guildford and Chiswick (left them several grand apiece), from old colleagues and pals in the M.O.D. and the Royal Ordnance. One, with a fulsome message, from the Conservative Club. Flowers from the parish and local big-wigs. Even an offering from the primary school.

The blast was big enough. The police concluded that Ray must have shut the passenger door, got back into the driver’s seat and shut his own door before the bomb, a crude device operated by simple pressure, was detonated by some shifting of Dad in his seat. Death instantaneous. The shut doors acted to contain but also to intensify the shock. The explosion not only totally destroyed a Daimler New Sovereign but gouged a crater in the gravel drive, shattered every window in the front of the house — in several cases damaging irreparably the Queen Anne window frames and lacerating the furniture inside — gashed the brickwork and stucco, blew in the front door, and deafened the other three occupants of the house on that Monday morning: namely Mrs Keane, Dad’s housekeeper, Sophie Beech, his grand-daughter, and Harry, his son.

I stand for a few moments by the grave, hands in my pockets. I won’t be tricked. How do we make such decisions? How do we decide that one life matters and another doesn’t? How do we solemnize one death and ignore a thousand others?

Usually, after leaving the churchyard, I take the minor road past Hyfield. Past the Six Bells pub, the cricket ground. I slow down where the road skirts the garden wall and the entrance. There are solid metal gates, replacing the former wrought-iron ones which used to give a glimpse of the house. The dog warnings. And perched in discreet but strategic places above the wall and the barbed wire, the cameras.

You could say I put you there, Frank. So if you feel like a prisoner too, you can blame me. But perhaps it doesn’t feel like a prison, perhaps it just feels like a well-guarded home. And it’s where you always wanted to be. For thirty-odd years you were my alibi, my decoy. You were part of my scheme, though you probably assumed — I know you assumed — I was part of yours. No, unlike Ray Evans, I was never the innocent victim. No saint. Just your usual bastard. A bad father and, some people would say, a bad son. But I was a good husband for seven years to Anna. And if she were still alive I might be sitting where you are now. I might never have become Harry Beech the photo-journalist, the ex-photo-journalist. I might have done all that: become what you are, what Dad was. Just for her sake. Just for simple, selfish love’s old sake. So perhaps you should thank me.

But doesn’t it get to you, Doctor K? Other people’s minds. Other people’s mess. How do you feel at the end of the day? Kind of dirty? Kind of tainted? Or what do you do? Put your notes away. Stretch your arms and crack your knuckles. Cut off. Fix a drink maybe and make some calls. Look out from your window over the chasm of 59th Street.

Do you think of me when I’m not with you? Do you have thoughts?

Okay, so, like you tell me, I’m not so dumb. I know I’m just one of many. I’m ‘File under “C” for Carmichael’. Not ‘S’ for Sophie. This fast, promiscuous life you lead. A gigolo of the psyche. Rule number one: make each one of them feel special, make each one of them feel they’re the only one. (A subtle and mature gigolo, with silvery temples and a dry, seasoned style. Old enough to be my —)

‘Let’s talk about you, Doctor K.’

‘Oh no, Sophie.’

A shake of the head, a wag of the finger, a patient smile. Like a gentle, kindly schoolmaster. Rule number two. ‘You do the talking, Sophie. I’ll ask the questions. Yes, it’s a tough deal, isn’t it? You have the work to do, and I’m the one who gets paid. But isn’t it nice to have someone who’ll listen, who’s there to listen? You don’t need to know about me. Just think of me as a hired listener. Just think of me as two ears and a notebook.’

I bet you give the same patter to all the girls. Make the same wisecracks. I bet you take them all for walks in the Park, buy them tea and let them slip their hands through your own well-crooked, well-tailored arm.

‘If Central Park is the Garden of Eden, Sophie, it is surrounded by the Fall of Manhattan.’

(A leather-bound notebook. And two very cute ears.)

What do I know about you? You’re married? Have kids? You’re divorced? You like little girls? Or muscular young men?

But maybe you’re right. If I knew only a little more about you maybe I wouldn’t think of you as Mister Calm, as Mister Wonderful, as Mister Well-adjusted and Oh-so-civilized, gazing out with your Martini, over this most anxious city on earth.

Look at these men in their fifties, jogging, red-faced, round the Park. They look so ill, they look so desperate. They look so in need of punishment and penance. Not you, eh?

You have it both ways. You see and you’re not seen. You take a good long peek, but you remain immune.

(But don’t you think about me, just a bit?)

What you never know will never hurt you. Is that it? And what you know, you can’t ever unknow. Though you can have a damn good try. But when you try to remember what it was like long, long ago, you can’t ever do it without knowing the things you were going to find out later, without seeing yourself like those people in dreams you try to call out to and warn, and who never hear you.