New World in the Morning (29 page)

“Well, that we're always going to remain good friends, aren't we? We're always going to have a bit of a thing for one another—right? That's all. I wanted to make sure you understood that.”

Then she blew me a last kiss, withdrew into her flat, and quickly closed the door.

29

Despite the continuing drizzle, I stood on a corner out of sight of Moira's window and kept cave. Finally I saw him. His umbrella partly screened his face but there wasn't any doubt that it was him. He all but cannoned into me. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry,” I said. Ships that pass in the night, exchanging a brief toot. Golden boys that pass in the rain, smiling an apology. Little trace of tarnishing. After a moment I saw him glance back. Something of sympathy flashed between us. Something containing a charge that was almost—!

Christ, no! Not true!

But the closer I got to Kilburn the greyer everything became. Scarcely to be wondered at: the time was now approaching ten. As I stood near the underground station and scanned the notices on a newsagent's board—to which some passers-by had drawn my attention—it occurred to me she hadn't said, Come back if you can't find anywhere; or Give me a ring to let me know you've got something.

It occurred to me she hadn't asked what was likely to happen to
Treasure Island
. Nor had she refloated—or, for all I knew, even remembered—that bolstering notion of my applying to university.

There was a private hotel advertised in Admiral Road. There was also a scrappy piece of paper offering in red crayon a single room, not large but clean, in a quiet house in the same street.

Any nationality. Thirty-five pounds a week. Three spelling mistakes in just four lines.

The woman who came to the door was small and wizened. Lumpy, too, because she had on several layers of clothing, including a jumper, cardigan and overcoat. The overcoat was only partially buttoned. There was a grey woollen scarf—long, like a student's—wrapped around her head and tied beneath her chin. She wore fingerless grey mittens.

But I didn't see those mittens, nor the broken nails nearby, until I'd told her why I was there, twice apologized for having come so late (this had been my day for apologizing to everyone for everything) and until she'd at last decided to remove the chain. A welcome contrast: the hall was pleasantly heated. Well-carpeted and furnished, too—although the light was pretty dim. The landlady was Polish. She'd lived in this country for seventeen years and said she had the toothache and had been just about to go to bed. Also that her husband lived in the basement; her own bedroom was the coldest room in the house; and the summer wasn't going to get here till July. Her English was as weird as her apparel but she was amiable enough. While I waited in the doorway of her fuggy, cluttered, cat-infested room she collected a key and a rent book and an After Eight, which she pulled out of its envelope and held hospitably towards my mouth, appearing like a slightly unconventional representation of Eve. I couldn't really fancy the offering but didn't have the heart to shake my head.

She led me slowly up three flights of stairs, breathing heavily and pausing on each landing. During our initial stop she asked about my home.
Home?
She hadn't heard of Deal but when I told her it was on the sea, and was the spot where Julius Caesar had first landed in Britain, she puzzlingly supposed it was also the place from which Sir Walter Raleigh had set off for El Dorado. I felt vaguely surprised she should have known the English appellations for either the man or the destination but she then informed me—and with an air of clearing up any mystification on this or any other topic—that she had a daughter married to a drunken docker in Limehouse.

On the next landing she pointed out the bathroom—with its enormous, maybe prehistoric geyser—and the separate lavatory, which, even from a distance, smelled as though the drunken docker might recently have used it to be a drunken docker in.

It brought back certain memories.

The vacant room was one of two on the top floor. My prospective neighbour was playing glee songs at a volume that belied the advertised kwiet (glee songs, I ask you!) and on this landing the yet dimmer bulb had no shade and the paintwork and carpet looked grubbily neglected. But certainly the room itself, after the old woman had fumbled with its heavy key, appeared relatively clean. Nor was it as small as I'd imagined, although the crude wallpaper, repeatedly emblazoned with three plucky galleons proudly conveying their master towards his glorious discovery of the New World, did nothing to open things up. It seemed instead to make a mockery of the gimcrack wardrobe, table, bed, chair—cooker, fridge, sink: a mockery of everything. But in fact the room was about the right size. A refuge. Sanctuary. The proper place to lick one's wounds.

I gave the woman forty pounds. Told her I'd collect the change tomorrow; also the rent book, which she'd been going to fill in then and there. But all I wanted was to close my door. Close my door upon the world. A world still irredeemably flat, despite the reminder—so frequently repeated—of my illustrious, pioneering roommate.

She showed me where the meters were and showed me the little trick required to light the gas fire. My bed was made up but she explained about the laundering of the sheets and pillowcases. Hoover and dustpan, she said, were kept in a cupboard in the hall—I must remember to look into it, explore, when I came down in the morning. I didn't mention I'd be staying for only one week:
The Passing of the Third Floor Back
: at last, you see, I get to play the title role.

But I didn't mention that, either.

The moment she'd gone I took off my raincoat—and discovered there weren't any hangers, nor any coat hook on the door. I was about to call after her; then found I couldn't face it. I removed my splattered shoes. Remembered I hadn't brought my shoetrees, nor even my shoe-cleaning materials, and felt the instant rush of tears.

Crybaby! Crybaby!

I set my suitcase on the bed; but as soon as I'd done so decided I couldn't face that either—the unpacking.

Oh, God! What was I meant to do? What
was
I meant to do?

No polish; no shoetrees; probably a score of other things I had forgotten. All equally essential. And I couldn't afford to replace them.

I was missing my wife and family. That's what it all came down to.

Missing them like hell.

But I knew I couldn't go back. I knew this with a certainty that underlay the ache, the emptiness, the gnawing sense of loss: underlay my feeling of impending doom, my conviction that nothing would ever work for me again. Underlay and overlay and wrapped it all around.

I was going to be on my own. Forever.

Unloved. Uncherished.

Ill-equipped to deal with even the ordinary details of everyday existence. Afraid of them, almost. Crybabily afraid.

And it stuck like a sickness in my throat and a pressure on my stomach: the ever-present yet recurring knowledge that I had truly burned my boats.

Just bits of debris scattered on the water. With nothing useful I could salvage.

Nothing

I'd left the cake tin on the table. Listlessly I started to untie the string. Caught sight of my reflection in the window. Was distracted; even startled—for one split second imagined I had seen a stranger. Recalled my reference to a doppelganger.

Yet this man couldn't be that. Not sinister enough. As I moved towards him I had the laughable illusion he looked much nicer than I did. Somehow kinder, more compassionate. More trustworthy.

Wiser. More humorous.

More everything, in fact, that you would ever wish to be.

I saw him as the Ghost of Potential Unfulfilled. But not a frightening ghost—far friendlier than any who'd appeared to Scrooge. I didn't feel that he was there to judge me…rather, to welcome me, take me in his arms, encourage me to bond, show me how to proceed.

Therefore I remained by the window. It was now so dark I wouldn't normally have seen much, apart from that welcoming newcomer. But someone on the ground floor had their light on: probably my landlady: her room was at the back and I retained an impression of its having tall windows and of the curtains being undrawn. Even so, I really couldn't make out much: merely a patch of scrubby grass with a birdbath at its centre… which instantly made me think of my grandmother's garden; made me think, as well, of the night I had climbed out on the windowsill that overlooked it.

This window, too, had sash cords.

This window, too, had a bottom half which proved intractable.

But, just as before, I finally managed—having moved the table well out of the way—to jerk down the top half. To jerk it down completely.

And, just as before, I was then able to straddle it.

At my grandmother's house there had been concrete where I would have fallen. It was the same here.

I was soon fully on the outside. For support I hooked my elbows over the double thickness of wood and glass. The sill creaked; but in spite of its deteriorating paintwork—and, no doubt, galloping dry rot—seemed firm enough to bear my weight.

Presently the light went off downstairs; the grass and birdbath disappeared. The forty watts from my own room scarcely supplied illumination. No moon; no stars. Now left with all but nothing.

Nothing.

I braced myself. Sought to reinforce my dissipating courage.

In just three seconds—five?—everything could be done with. Splat! Like being caught in the full force of an explosion. Nothing.

I really didn't mind.

Nothing?

And if I myself didn't mind—then who on earth should?

I thought about the landlady, my funny little Polish landlady, who had presumably just settled down to sleep.

I thought about the effect of a body falling right outside her room. The ground-shaking thud, or squelch; the shock it must produce; the mess and horror left behind.

Remembered she was suffering from the toothache.

Wondered if it were possible she might already—doped—be drifting off towards oblivion.

Then how could I do this to her?

Could
I do this to her?

Yes. Yes, I could. I felt deeply sorry for her—her in the coldest room in the house, with a toothache, and a husband who lived in the basement—but, yes, yes, I
could
. Had to. I had passed the point of no return.

Besides, I thought. It's an ill wind…and every cloud has a… Once she had recovered from that initial trauma, that first horrendous impact, mightn't the self-destruction of a golden boy make the rest of her own life seem marginally more bearable?

The passing of the third-floor back.

Eponymous hero.

Which reminded me: I'd never got around to finishing that paperback. Damn. I'd have liked to, even though I naturally realized how it was going to end: justice would be done, reparation made, personal growth assured. On earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Exterminating Jack Bradley
. The title was a good one but misleading. I knew only too well that even without his hugely missed family a happy ending lay in store for that particular eponymous hero. Lucky guy.

But, no, I'd got it wrong, hadn't I? The book wasn't called
Exterminating Jack Bradley
. It was called
Exterminating Jack Mangam
. Mr Bradley had been the old man I'd met on that other train journey, the old man I'd meant someday to take Junie and the kids to visit, the one who was chiefly waiting, so he'd said, to see his wife again. Jack, I only hope you make it, I told him now…and as soon as possible, if that's really what you want. (And who amongst our fellow passengers would ever have thought that, of the two of us, I should be the first to go? Indeed, just three-and-a-bit days later!) Though not, Jack, as the result of being exterminated. As the result of something a whole lot gentler and more merciful. Please.

Please, God.

Then, believe it or not, I smiled. Poised on a ledge in rainy darkness, some forty or fifty feet above my own apparently less than gentle fate, I honestly did smile. Ascribe it to hysteria or insanity. Or to whatever you will.

“Exterminate! Exterminate!”

And for an instant I was back with my children and we were all watching reruns of
Dr Who
. Junie was there as well—in the TV room, I mean—but I was the one who was afterwards being chased throughout the house and having to clutch his chest or belly as theatrically as any well-intentioned corpse could manage…though finally being called on “to remain dead next time, darling, if you would. Supper's ready. Hands have to be washed!” All this, to promote the triumphant malevolence of a pair of ecstatically rule-breaking Daleks—amidst the lickings and excitement of a white-haired, tail-wagging, black-eyed pup.

“Exterminate the brute! Exterminate the brute!”

It seemed like yesterday.

Yesterday… I was a big man yesterday but Lord you ought to see me now.

Now I was a little boy lost.

A lost boy.

A lost boy without the prospect of an awfully big adventure? Well, we'd have to reserve judgment on that one, clearly. It wouldn't be long before we had the answer. Or before
I
did, at any rate.

But I wished I could have measured up to that man who'd been looking through the window. Was there any chance, when the judging began, he might agree to represent me?

Or would he have been subpoenaed by the prosecution? Their star witness?
Samuel Groves, if only you had looked ahead! This is the man you had it in you to become!

There'd been a trial scene in that show two nights ago.

A Broadway musical, yes, but since the writers—or producers or angels or whatever—had chosen to name it as they had, you
would
have thought, wouldn't you, that there'd be at least
some
glancing reference?

And you would also have thought—wouldn't you?—that at nearly midnight my neighbour wouldn't have chosen to turn up the volume of his gleeful choristers? After all, tomorrow was another day (right, Scarlett?) and people had to rise and shine.