The Underground Man (6 page)

The case she presented to me under the cherry blossom contained a gold timepiece. An old-fashioned Hobson and Burroughs fob watch. In its lid a delicately scrolled inscription declared her lasting affection for me.

I have opened up that watch ten thousand times. On its face I have seen countless New Years come about; each one, it seems, in less company and to fewer whistles and cheers. Even now I must open it up twenty or thirty times each day, to count the hours until the next meal or fresh pot of tea. Ten days ago I used it to time our carriage as Clement and I raced up and down my tunnels. But what that watch has measured most precisely is the unwinding of the slow decades since Fanny Adelaide refused my hand in marriage and was laid in the ground by a bad piece of fish.

It is a beautiful watch, and perhaps ironic that such a fine example of craftsmanship should sit in my waistcoat pocket and be a neighbour to my heart which, being merely human, has functioned so poorly since the two were introduced.

Last night I had my first sound night's sleep in a fortnight. I drifted happily in the ether until I was woke by the crackle of
the fire. Clement is a wizard with a few twists of paper and the odd dry stick and his broad back was still bent over the hearth when I opened up my eyes. The firelight gave the room a rosy glow which helped chase off some of the chill I acquired from my spell in the woods. Clement strolled purposefully from the room and while I coaxed myself closer towards consciousness the fire's crackle was joined by the gush and splutter of hot water from my bathroom next door. Then Clement re-entered very grandly in his own small cloud of steam, which slowly evaporated about him as he swept over towards my wardrobe. (He's as big as a bear, is Clement, but his step is as light as a kitten's.)

My dressing gown was held open for me and as I snaked my arms into the sleeves' deep recesses I became aware of the extent to which my body ached. Those lost hours spent crouched on the boulder last night appear to have left their mark.

I followed Clement into the bathroom like a faithful old dog. Picked up a hand mirror from a dressing table and found a wicker chair while I waited for my bath.

I should know better than rest a mirror in my lap. It makes the bags under my eyes look like pastries and my face-flesh hang down all over the show. But it is quite likely that this morning a mirror from any angle would have returned an equally awful aspect. So, doing my best to ignore the general prospect of collapse and decay, I concentrated my efforts on those corners of my head where a little repairwork might still do some good.

With nail scissors I carefully clipped at my nostril hairs. Ditto, eyebrows. Then hacked back the bracken sprouting from my ears – my ears, for pity's sake! – and which make them look more like the verdant openings to forgotten caves than the ears of a civilized man. The hairs from all three regions of my head look surprisingly similar – all are dark
and disturbingly thick. All grow in a most anarchic manner and at a tremendous rate. I am sure if I did not keep at them with the scissors I should one day look in the mirror and see a wildman staring back.

Just as there is an art to starting a fire, so there is an art to running a bath, and it would perhaps be too much to hope that everyone could master it. Some years ago, when Clement's sister was poorly and he took a week's leave to look after her, Mrs Pledger had one of her girls take over the running of my baths. To be fair, her first effort was not so bad – a little too quickly run and not properly stirred up but, all in all, a not altogether unpleasant experience. Her second attempt, however, was a disaster. An insult to bath and bather alike. It seemed she'd put the hot and cold in back to front and at completely the wrong speed. The whole thing was utterly ruined and had to be thrown away. I sent her back to the kitchens, post-haste, to spoil the potatoes no doubt, and for the rest of the week had to wrestle with the damned taps myself.

Clement cleared his throat. My bath was ready. I blew the trimmings off the mirror and, with my hand clamped on Clement's forearm for support, got first one foot then the other up and into the bath, with my gown and nightshirt still on. Stood there until I was sure I had my footing, then let Clement carefully lift my clothes over my head (which he did with his usual politely-averted gaze, as if he had just that moment noticed a speck of dust on the shoulder of his jacket and was considering how best to get shut of it). Then I gingerly lowered my old bones into the water.

Something is certainly up inside of me. I am in no doubt about that. Organs which, only a month ago, pushed and pulled in a businesslike manner seem to have slowed their undulations to a near halt. But as the hot water crept over my goosepimpled flesh and searched out armpits and frozen toes
I felt that at least some vital heat was being restored. I let myself slide slowly down into the bath until the tip of my beard dipped into the water like some riverside bush, wondering how on earth mankind ever managed to properly relax before hot water was invented. (Apparently, in his declining years, Napoleon rarely left his bath. And the Minoans, I have heard, were so fond of theirs they would often be buried in them.)

As I say, Clement is a Master Bath-Runner and likes to give every bath its own unique character – usually a combination of depth and temperature along with other, less easily identifiable qualities – in order to satisfy what he reckons to be my most pressing needs. I am never consulted on the matter; I leave it entirely up to him. But when a bath is in the offing I sometimes feel his big brown eyes looking me over as he makes his calculations.

This one was hot and deep and soapy. My head lay in a high collar of suds. My kneecaps remained an inch or two clear of the water and were soon the only part of me not turned an impressive lobster-red. My ribcage is like a scrubbing board and as it rose and fell the bathwater crept up and down it like the ebb and flow of rapid tides. As I lay there I wondered if the great to-ing and fro-ing of the world's oceans might not, in fact, be the result of the swelling and shrinking of continents instead of some weird relationship between the sea and a distant moon. It was very much an idle theory, weakly held, and in a minute had drifted off, along with all other coherent thoughts.

This was one of Clement's deeper varieties and the water came right up to the overflow beneath the bold brass taps. As I sank deeper into the suds I set in motion a small wave of water which momentarily covered the overflow's circled sieve before returning up the bath. Then, as the water level gradually resettled, I could clearly hear the gargle of the released water as it went racing down the pipe.

Somewhere above me I heard the distant creaks and wheezes of the hot-water tank restoring itself. A minute later, the turning of a tap somewhere else in the house – the kitchen, perhaps – sent a new chorus of whines and screeches juddering up and down the pipes. I listened most intently, picking out ever-more subtle sounds, until at last I began to see myself as a conductor in charge of an orchestra whose concerts consisted of nothing but watery whistles and groans. I lay there quietly contemplating all the pipes in the house – hidden beneath the floorboards, winding in the walls – and found myself strangely cheered by them. I thought of the fountains out in the gardens and their own small water systems. I thought of all the guttering and the miles of drainpipes. The water closet's violent flush. And for a moment I felt that by simply lying there in my warm bathwater I was part of the house's complex circulation which, despite its whole range of rattles and shudders, continued to function in a most admirable way.

I was still lying in this happy stupor when I heard a tap-tap-tapping come down the corridor. I recognized it straight away as the footfalls of some long-lost loved one – of some errant friend. Emotions which had lain dormant for many years rose up in me, filled me and I was altogether very glad. The footsteps came closer and closer and with each one I became gladder still. Then they were right outside the bathroom door and on the verge of entering. With a full heart I waited, breathless, but they simply would not come in. They fell insistently– tap … tap … tap …

‘Open the door,' I think I said.

I opened my eyes and watched as the footsteps slowly transformed themselves into the sound of a dripping tap. As each drop hit the water it rang out, and sent a series of ripples sweeping across the surface. I clambered from the bath, still groggy, and all but threw myself at the door, but before my
hand had even reached the handle I knew I would find nobody there.

Returned to my bath and sat stewing in it for quite a while, tearful at my failure to be reunited with the owner of the footsteps, yet curious to know whose they might have been.

All morning we rolled up and down the tunnels, checking no birds had got in. Went down one after another until I was absolutely sure. Had a fine jugged hare for lunch.

Following my recent disappearance, Clement insists I do not wander too far from the house, so this afternoon I took a gentle stroll out to Norton village and had a scout around. Called in on Miss Whittle at the Post Office and told her all about the jugged hare. We exchanged our views on various broths and sauces until another customer interrupted us and I set off home again.

The climate of late has been not the least bit kind so I was all wrapped around with scarves. Had on my famous beaver, two frock coats and carried a third one over my arm, so I was a little put out when I came across two infants playing on the common in nothing but their shorts and vests.

I stood at a discreet distance, trying to make sense of their game, which appeared to involve a great deal of running and shouting and the occasional violent shove, but after two minutes' intense observation any rule or clear objective had still to make itself known to me. The whole thing seemed utterly lawless, but the two boys kept relentlessly at it and
would have probably gone on all day had one of them not spotted me as I attempted to sneak by.

The other lad continued running and shouting until he became aware that the game had been held up. Then both the boys simply stood and stared at me, their mouths hanging slightly ajar. Their play, with all its tupping and skipping, had made me think of mountain goats, so I greeted them with a hearty,

‘Hallo, young goats,' which was met with a stony silence. The young goats continued to stare.

One was much larger than the other but it was his little friend who finally spoke up. He had recognized me, apparently, and bade me a very good day, so I bade him a very good day in return. He then asked me what it was I had on my head and when I introduced it as my beaver their eyes fairly lit up. The larger and quieter of the two asked me how I had caught it and I explained that I had not been present and therefore could not say for sure, but supposed that most likely it was caught with a trap.

The three of us then proceeded to have the most stimulating conversation, in which I was quizzed with disarming ingenuousness on my appearance, wealth and newly completed tunnels. The smaller boy earnestly informed me how it was his intention to one day own a beaver very much like mine and we soon found ourselves agreeing on the many virtues of tunnels and beaver hats.

As we chatted the boys became a good deal more relaxed and did not stand so rigidly. The quieter of the two showed me a trick with a piece of string and the other tried to teach me how to whistle by inserting my forefingers in my mouth. At last I got round to the game I had just seen them playing and asked what the rules of it were. Well, they looked at one another, quite baffled, standing there in their tatty vests and
shorts, and the small boy looked up at me and said, ‘It wasn't the kind of game which has rules, sir.'

Feeling altogether old and foolish, I thanked them for a most pleasant conversation and said that I must be getting along, else my valet would start worrying. They both nodded, as if they too had trouble with worried valets, and I gave them each a penny and a pat on the head.

I was a hundred yards down the road when I thought to myself, ‘How hot their little heads were.' If an adult's head were half as hot, he'd be put to bed and a doctor called for straight away. I turned to find them already fully re-immersed in their unruly game and for a second I stood there and thought how like little furnaces children are. Little engines – that's how one might see them – with their own enviable reservoirs of power.

This got me thinking about how, sometime last year, as I was walking along the Cow-close path I found a dead sparrow lying on the ground. It appeared not to have a mark on it, so there was no knowing how it might have died. I picked up the motionless creature and held it in my hand, half expecting it to suddenly revive itself and fly off in a flurry. ‘How little a sparrow weighs,' I remarked to myself at the time, and, ‘How unconvincingly dead it seems.'

But I knew in my heart that it was indeed dead, for it felt cold in the palm of my hand. Its tiny feathers were finely frosted and its colour was all gone. I thought at the time how all creatures are just vessels of heat and how this one's small quota had been used up or had somehow leaked away.

So, perhaps every creature carries inside it a living flame – a modest candlepower. If, for some reason, the flame falters the creature's existence is put at risk. But if our inner flame flares up and engulfs us, madness is the result. I think that makes some sense.

But there are so many different creatures in the world –
from flitting insects to great lumbering beasts: it is inconceivable they all possess the same candlepower. It stands to reason that the twitching sparrow lives at a speed wholly different to the worm it drags from the ground, and that the inner flame of the cat which slowly stalks the bird must burn at a rate wholly different again.