Authors: Jim Powell
‘Hi, Anna. How are you?’
‘Matthew, what the hell are you doing?’
‘Trying to wake you up. Didn’t realize you were already awake.’
Anna walks up to me and looks around at the chicken feed. There’s rather a lot of it. There would be. I’ve needed to use a lot because she wasn’t there. Surely she can work
that out. She looks at me in this strange way and I wonder if she’s quite all right.
‘Come inside and I’ll make some coffee,’ she says. Why would I want coffee? I’m perfectly awake and so is she.
She takes me by the arm, leads me to the front door and opens it. The door appears to be unlocked. I expect she has a remote-control thingy, or laser eyes, or something. Anna guides me to an
armchair and sits me down. She goes to the kitchen and puts on the kettle. She doesn’t say anything. I’m feeling better already. Anna’s here and everything’s all right. All
I need to do is to remember why I came and explain it to her. I rehearse my speech and it sounds excellent. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Anna returns with two mugs of coffee and gives me one. She perches on the edge of the sofa, still with that peculiar look on her face. I smile at her reassuringly.
‘Matthew, can you please explain? Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’ve come back.’
Anna doesn’t say anything for a moment. She doesn’t seem to realize that I’ve finished. What more does she expect me to say?
‘You’ve come back.’
‘Yes,’ I say; and then, to make sure that she gets the point, ‘I’ve come back.’
‘Why have you come back?’
‘Because you said I could after I’d sorted everything out.’
‘That was only a few hours ago.’
‘No, it was years ago,’ I say. ‘After we got back from France. Anyway, it’s sorted now.’
‘What have you sorted?’
‘I’ve left Judy,’ I say. ‘She’s my wife. My ex-wife, rather.’
‘You’ve driven back to Barnet, had a conversation with your wife, and driven back here?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘What, then?’
‘There are telephones, Anna. Surely you’ve heard of them?’
‘You telephoned your wife and told her you were leaving her?’ Anna seems incredulous, as if she’s having trouble grasping what I should have thought was a fairly simple
point.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve telephoned your wife. You’ve told her your marriage is over. And now you’ve driven back here.’
‘Spot on.’ It has taken a while, but Anna’s got it now.
‘Why?’
‘Because this is where I live. Where else would I go at this time of night?’
‘I see,’ says Anna. I can see that she can’t see. She’s not blind, but she can’t see. Funny things, words. They contradict themselves. ‘But I live
here.’
‘We both live here,’ I say. Anna doesn’t look convinced. Ah yes. I know there’s something else I’ve been meaning to say.
‘I love you.’ I smile at her, with great fondness.
‘Well, thank you, Matthew, but you barely know me.’
‘Yes I do. I lay in a field with you once, and had a lovely afternoon in bed. You can’t have forgotten already. Your bedroom’s there,’ I say, pointing at the ceiling.
‘And the field is out there.’ I point out of the window, because Anna’s being a bit slow tonight.
‘Matthew, how much have you had to drink?’
‘Just a minute.’ I get up and go to the car. I bring back the whisky bottle. ‘This much,’ I say. Actually, it isn’t very much. A quarter of the bottle at the most,
I would say. That’s only about four doubles. Hardly anything. I unscrew the top and take another slug. Remembering my manners, I wipe the bottle and offer it to Anna. She doesn’t take
it. Nor does she say anything.
‘I don’t know about you, Anna,’ I say, ‘but I could do with a bit of shuteye now. Perhaps I should go to the spare room. I hope you’re not offended, but I’ve
already heard your dream about Uncle Tom Cobnut.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Anna.
‘I insist on it.’
‘Is that really all you’ve had to drink?’
‘Of course. I can prove it. This is what’s left, so that’s what I’ve drunk. Unless you think the bottle was more than full when I started.’ I laugh. Anna
doesn’t laugh. She’s frowning, I’m not sure at what.
‘Matthew, I don’t think you’re very well. I’d be drunk on a quarter-bottle of Scotch. I don’t think you would be. So, if you’re telling me the truth, there
must be something else the matter with you. Do you think you might be ill?’
‘No. I don’t think so. I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at. Are you suggesting I’m having a breakdown?’
‘Well, perhaps some sort of episode.’
That would explain it, wouldn’t it? An episode. Yes, that must be the scientific word for it, I imagine. Not very threatening, I would say. One episode where this happens, then lots of
episodes where other stuff happens. Like a soap opera. Or a sitcom. No, more like a soap opera, I think. Whichever. Nothing serious anyway, because serious things don’t happen in soap operas.
Or in sitcoms. Serious things happen in documentaries, or on the news. Quite different. They don’t have episodes.
‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘Possibly I had one earlier this evening, in the car somewhere, after I’d called Judy. I’m not sure I’m having one now.’
‘Have there been other episodes recently?’
‘I don’t think so. Well, a few maybe. I lay down under the barrier in Wellington car park a few weeks ago. I wanted to shelter from the rain. Only the barrier got narrower for some
reason, so it didn’t work. That might loosely be called an episode, I suppose, if you want to split hairs. Possibly a few other things that I’ve now forgotten.’
‘Have you been to see anyone about them?’
‘Some years ago I did. Tuesday, I think. Some quack I found on the internet. I didn’t care for him. His eyes were too close together.’
‘What did he say?’
‘I don’t know. Lots of medical mumbo jumbo dressed up in monosyllables. I can’t remember now. He gave me some pills.’
‘Did you take them?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Are you still taking them?’
‘In principle, yes.’
‘When did you last take one?’
‘They ran out. I thought I had enough for the weekend. That’s what I thought. I was feeling a bit edgy on Friday for some reason, so I may have taken more than I should have.
Doesn’t matter. The banks will be open tomorrow.’
‘So you’re not on any medication at the moment.’
‘Only this.’ I tap the whisky bottle and smile. Anna doesn’t smile. Anna gets up, takes the whisky bottle and pours it down the kitchen sink. Not the bottle, of course. You
can’t pour a bottle down a sink. Unless it’s a miniature, and even then it’d be difficult. The whisky, I mean. I am now definitely concerned about her. Only a mad woman would do
something like that.
‘Matthew, I think it’s time to get some sleep, don’t you? And I think your idea of sleeping in the spare room is a very good one. So why don’t we go upstairs, and I can
give you a couple of sleeping pills. And tomorrow we can go and see someone who can help you. How does that sound?’
‘Most excellent,’ I say. ‘I wish I’d thought of it.’ In fact, I had thought of it. Some of it. I don’t want to point that out. I think Anna is in rather a
fragile state.
I am lying in a striped deckchair on Anna’s lawn. The sky is the blue of swallows’ wings and the sun has nearly gone down. It is not especially warm, as warm as one
can expect in late October. Anna has asked if I would rather be indoors. I would not. This feels like the last day of summer, and the proper obsequies should be observed. Of course, it might be the
first day of winter. No one can tell these days.
In my hand is a glass of white wine, all Anna will allow me, and I had quite a fight to get that. It is nicely chilled, as am I. I’ve tried to draw a veil over yesterday. The veil is
opaque and parts of the day shine through. The simplest thing would be to admit that I am ill. I rebel against the notion because I am not ill, and because I don’t have a high opinion of men
who say they are. But several people have suggested that I’m ill and, if I fight their opinion, they’ll only think I’m more ill. It’s no use my saying that they are the ones
who are ill, that I am now taking the first steps towards sanity. When more or less everyone believes the same thing, however mad it is, it becomes the benchmark for sanity. I’ve known that
for a long time. It’s at the root of my quarrel with life.
I slept until lunchtime. When I awoke, I couldn’t work out where I was. I looked out of the window and saw Anna bending over a row of carrots. Carrots that had not had their tops chopped
off. Carrots as they were intended to be. I realized I was at home. Of course, I wasn’t at home, or not yet, but I was still unwell, not ill but unwell, and I thought that I was. After lunch,
Anna drove me into Bridgwater. I had assumed we were going to visit her doctor. She took me to a psychiatric hospital, which gave yet more people the opportunity to tell me I was ill. They
considered keeping me in under observation. Anna told them that I lived in London and was only visiting. I suppose that it didn’t seem the right moment to insist that I now lived in the
area.
I had bits of paper in my pocket that related to the pills I’d been on, possibly a prescription, I really don’t know, so I was given some more of them. Then the doctor had a private
word with Anna about some matter. And now we have come home, to Anna’s home, possibly mine, who can say, and I’m sitting on the lawn with a glass of wine. Anna is in another deckchair,
looking at me. She is smiling now.
How do I feel? Well, not normal, for a start. I certainly can’t say I feel normal. I felt a lot more normal yesterday, funnily enough. Perhaps that means I now am normal, or more normal,
whatever that is. Normal is the way we behave. When other people behave in the same way, we think them normal. When they don’t, we think them abnormal. It doesn’t really prove anything
either way. So I may or may not be normal. I do feel calm, though, a lot calmer than yesterday. Someone has installed double glazing between me and the world. I feel detached, as if I’m
looking down on myself and my life from an extraordinary height. So high, in fact, that Anna and I are two little specks on a green lawn, set amongst patchwork fields of grass and plough. I can
hardly make us out.
I think Anna is waiting to have a conversation, trying to judge whether I am up to it. I don’t really want to have that conversation, or any conversation, only to be here. I suppose
she’s right. There are matters we need to discuss. Many things happened yesterday that I’m not clear about. I do know that I telephoned Judy and told her I was leaving. I’m quite
clear about that. I am also clear that it was a good decision. I don’t know how I was in a position to make good decisions yesterday. It seems that I was. One way and another, there is a lot
that needs to be sorted out.
Sometime soon, I shall remind Anna about 1967. It seems the right time. Then we were sprawled together in the long grass, with only a transistor radio for company. Now we sit in deckchairs on a
mown lawn, glasses of wine in hand, an old folk album playing through the open window. This is what life is, I tell myself: this is what it amounts to. Two deckchairs, two Ikea glasses, a bottle of
cheap white wine, a hi-fi system and a lawn-mower. I had hoped to achieve more, but I’ll take it. I’ll take what’s on offer. It could have been one deckchair, one Ikea glass.
The words of a Phil Ochs song float towards me from the house. Some long forgotten song of yesterday. A song whose time has now come. A song that talks of warm memories of younger years. A song
that speaks of changes.
‘How are you feeling, Matthew?’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Really good. Thanks for looking after me.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘It wasn’t nothing, Anna. It was a lot.’
‘You’d have done the same for me.’
‘Would I ever need to?’
‘I hope not. Not now. Once, yes. Once I was in a very similar place to you.’
‘So you knew what to do.’
‘No,’ says Anna. ‘I knew what not to do.’
‘I think I got confused when you weren’t here last night. Where were you?’
‘I help out with a local charity. That’s where I was. And on Saturday too. Normally the hours are regular. From time to time there’s an emergency and there were two this
weekend. Well, one in fact, but it came twice.’
‘And then there was me.’
‘And then there was you, yes.’
‘I think it’s fantastic,’ I say, ‘doing something like that. I wish I did something like that.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘It’s a bit late now.’
‘No it isn’t. You’ve got plenty of time. What else are you going to do with it?’
‘Good question,’ I say.
‘Well?’
‘I don’t know. I need time to think about things. I can’t seem to help myself at the moment, so I don’t see that I could help other people.’
‘That might be the best way of helping yourself,’ says Anna.
‘Is that why you decided to do it?’ I ask. ‘Was it what had happened to you?’
‘Not really. I think you could say it was a recognition of limitations. Like you, I once had a long list of everything I wanted to change. Some time around fifty, it occurred to me that
not only hadn’t I changed anything, but I never would. Some things had changed of their own accord, a bit, no thanks to me. I hadn’t made any difference at all.
‘I began to wonder how I could make a difference, and it came down to small things. It came down to forgetting about the world, forgetting about grand schemes and causes, and considering
how I lived each day. The only thing we can control is how we behave towards other people, so we might as well try and get that right.’ She pauses. ‘Did you really tell Judy you were
leaving her?’
‘Yes.’
‘By telephone?’
‘Yes.’
We sit for a while, not saying anything.
‘Can I have another glass of wine?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘One more?’
‘I shouldn’t have let you have the first, Matthew. No more.’
We sit for another while, not saying anything.
‘What are you going to do now?’ asks Anna.
‘Can I stay here?’
‘No, Matthew. Sorry. You can stay tonight. Tomorrow, I will put you on a train to London.’