‘No, it will not do,’ he thought as he held the door open
for the woman struggling with the push chair and the toddler at her side. The
shopping bag fell from the handle of the pushchair, Wagon Wheels dropped to the
ground, ham shaped like a bear’s face, alphabetti spaghetti.
‘Waaagh,’ cried the child by her side, seeing the loss of
the sustenance as final and irreversible.
‘You may cry now, just wait until you’re older and the
realisation hits you that This Is Your Life. This is life. You will lose your imagination
and all the magic will spill from your childish mind into a pool by your feet,
lost to the boredom of gravity’s inevitable pull, lost to the soil that is
calling your bones back down down down.’ He handed her the ham shaped like a
bear’s face and she shoved it in the bottom of the buggy and off she went. She
did not say ‘thank you’.
Would the ham bear face sustain the child? Would it cause
growth? He suspected not. He wondered of what precisely it consisted, as he
watched her dragging the screaming child along by the wrist. He could see the
child spelling out its first words in alphabetti spaghetti: ‘Fuk yew,’ little
Benny’s first written words, aged eight, a proud little smile on his
tomato-sauce encrusted face as he swings his stunted legs with glee under the
table, just managing to kick his little sister in the process, making her cry.
This, little Benny felt, was his finest moment.
He worried about little Benny and all the other children
that didn’t stand a bloody chance, probably unwanted and barely loved, dragged
into life and dragged through it, just about scraping through. Just about
scraping through; that was how he felt every day.
He pondered his theory regarding the frequency of crying
within the human life: We cry more when we are babies and children because we
are only just getting used to the inconvenience of life and the shock of coming
out of the warm womb into a life of too hot, too cold, hungry, full up, sick, tired,
bad dreams, awake, constipated, sitting in your own shit, waiting for someone
to come and clean it all up. But as you get older, you realise that no one is
going to come and clean it up, not when you’re an adult. And as you get used to
a life outside the womb, you grow more acclimatised to the little
inconveniences of life until you accept them and then you stop crying. At least
you stop crying outwardly. The inner tears drip constantly. They needed a
washer but he knew you couldn’t buy one the right size. Not in B&Q.
He thought about Anne. After he had told her this theory,
when they were very young, she had looked at him as though he had shat in her
handbag and then had knighted him ‘Eeyore,’ tapping his shoulders with her fork.
Dear Anne. Every time he thought of her this way he had a brief holiday from
his loneliness but it returned again with a vengeance. Now he was back on
familiar ground and he trod it alone.
He opened the door to the offices, helped Robert Glew carry
some boxes upstairs (another thankless task, he noted) and was about to push
the door to his office open when something stopped him. He stood motionless at
the door, his breath condensing on the pane of glass, his nose an inch away
from the eight hours of futile boredom which awaited him beyond the door.
‘No, it will not do,’ thought he, turning on his heel and
walking down the steps, guilt and a sense of duty hot on his heels but he shook
them off at the door where he burst out into the fresh air of the day, the endless
sky opening up before him. ‘No, it will not do.’
He was fifty three. He felt he had achieved nothing but the
days kept turning and so he kept on going, like a cog driven by the movement of
the sun, yet disconnected from all else around him. A cog without purpose. As
sure as the sun would come up, he would rise, do his exercises, have his cup of
tea, water the plants and then water himself in that pathetic dribble of a
shower. He must remember to buy that limescale remover. And that washer. The
plants. He must always water the plants. That was his purpose; to keep them
alive, to keep them green and growing for Anne. For Anne.
He walked across the heath, noting the beautiful browns and
oranges of the autumn emerging. Leaves had begun to fall. He felt at home in the
autumn, when everything was curling at the edges, when everything was getting
tired. He was at ease in the melancholy end that autumn brought. Autumn was
bittersweet; such vibrancy, such beauty, yet an end nonetheless. He felt an
affinity with the autumn. He wanted to be as beautiful, to be as colourful and
as noticeable as the leaves. Only Anne had really seen him. Why could no one
else? He wanted to be like the leaves, to burn as brightly before fading away.
‘No, it will not do.’ He kept walking, up the steps to the
hilltop that overlooked the town, the harbour, the sea. Since Anne had gone he
no longer felt attached to the town, to other people. He felt attached to the
plants; they kept him rooted to her. He kept them alive and they kept him
alive. They swapped vapours, they breathed life into him, they gave him
purpose. He was more at home here, amongst the ferns and the trees than down in
the town, amongst the unfathomable people.
He felt he could be closer still to his leafy cousins. He
stopped in a patch of ferns, beneath a horse chestnut tree. He watched a curled
leaf fall to the ground. He took off his shoes and socks and placed them at the
foot of the tree. Another leaf fell. He removed his carefully ironed trousers,
folded them neatly and placed them beside his shoes. He unbuttoned his jacket,
undid his tie, his shirt. He watched the leaves falling. He folded his
underpants and placed them on the top of the pile of clothes.
He felt calm and free and honest. He stepped out from under
the tree, onto the footpath. The sun shone brightly on the sea. The air was
crisp and fresh, the ground soft under his bare feet. He walked. He felt the
air about his body. He thought about the movement of each muscle as it worked
to move him along the path on top of the cliff. It really was beautiful.
His heart leapt when he saw a middle-aged woman approaching.
He would nip into the nearest bush. Too late! She moved her hand to her gaping mouth.
He had been spotted. What to do? He kept walking, nonchalantly, as if all were
well. She reacted in the correct and English manner by concentrating on her dog
and pretending he was not there at all. As he passed her he said, ‘Sorry.’ She
glanced at him, disgusted, wrapping her Barbour jacket around her as if his
nakedness might be infectious.
He felt offended that she could be so offended by his body.
Then he felt amused. He smiled to himself and walked boldly onwards. She had
noticed him, at least.
The ground, the path, the air, the view belonged to him as
he belonged to it. He could be there in his body, in his honest form. Life
suddenly seemed simple to him. He belonged here amongst the trees and the ferns
and the sky. There was no confusion. Nature did not rush or shout. Nature took
its time, stayed as steady and true as his footsteps.
