I told Miss Kincaid so when I was leaving. I think she replied that Autumn could be quite a satisfactory season, but being tipsy I may have imagined that.
SWAN BURIAL
I PHONE OUR ADMINISTRATOR and say that in ten minutes I will bring her the overdue assessments. She says, “Thank you, Doctor Gowry. And will you also bring the introduction to the new handbook?”
“That will take a little longer, Karen, perhaps another hour.”
“Then don’t bother bringing me all these things today. Leave the assessed portfolios and introduction in my front-office pigeon hole when you go home tonight. I’ll process them first thing tomorrow.”
“Thank you Karen, that would be much more convenient.”
“I’m Phyllis, Doctor Gowry. Karen left three months ago.”
“Haha, so she did. Sorry, Phyllis.”
I finish assessing the portfolios on my desk, look for the others and remember I took them home three days ago. Never mind. I’ll rise early tomorrow and bring them to the front office before Karen arrives. So now I tackle the introduction, though I fear this job is getting beyond me and I should apply for something less demanding. Which reminds me that I have applied for another job, with Human Resources, and must soon attend an interview for it. But first, the introduction. This should be easy. I need only bring the introduction to last year’s handbook up to date by changing a word here or there.
But revising the old introduction turns out to be almost impossible. I wrote it only a year ago but the language now strikes me as long-winded official jargon, misleading when not practically meaningless. It was written to attract folk with money into an organisation I now want to leave, but surely that can be done in a few simple, honest sentences? I try and try to write them and have almost glimpsed how to do it when I see the the time is nearly four P. M! My interview with Human Resources is at four fifteen! If I run to the main road and catch a taxi at once I can still be in time so run.
Rain is falling, every passing taxi is engaged, at ten past four I decide to phone Human Resources, apologise, blame the weather and if possible postpone the interview. I rush into a familiar pub and find the public telephone has been replaced by a flashing machine that gives the users an illusion of shooting people. I groan. A man I know asks why. I say, “No telephone.”
“Use my mobile,” he says, holding out what looks like a double nine domino.
“Thank you — thank you — but I don’t know how to use such a machine.”
“I’ll dial for you. What number?”
I cannot tell him, for the number is in a diary on my office desk. He offers to dial directory enquiries but, suddenly full of black certainty that I have now no chance of the Human Resources job, instead I order a large whisky for each of us.
He says, “Thanks. Cheers. You seem troubled. Tell me your woes.”
I do so in great detail, during which he buys us each another drink. At last he says, “Remarkable. Remarkable. But why apply to Human Resources? It doesn’t even figure in the Dow Jones index. You’re a metallurgist so you should apply to Domestic Steel. It died in the late sixties but a renaissance is due and your age and experience would make you a valuable link with the past.”
I ponder these words and find that they also strike me as meaningless official jargon. I order another round of drinks and tell him I mainly regret losing my chance with Human Resources because of my wife. She feels my job with Scottish Arterial is killing me. The man says, “I suspect you need a total change of scene. Any plans for a holiday this year?”
I say, “Not this year,” and explain that my wife hates leaving home, even for a few days, because she is sure we cannot afford it. She says such suggestions threaten our marriage and make her feel I am battering her. I then notice it is twenty minutes to ten, say goodbye and leave, but as usual nowadays I call for a quick drink at two or three other pubs on my way home.
I open our front door shortly after midnight and hear gentle snoring from the darkened bedroom. I undress without switching on the light but the window curtains are not completely drawn. By gleams from a street lamp outside I see a tumbler of clear liquid on my wife’s bedside table. Is it water? Gin? Vodka? Does she drink as much alcohol in my absence as I do in hers? I refrain from investigating and slip in beside her. The rhythm of her snores alters slightly as she snuggles cosily against me. I lie basking in that cosiness. This is now the pleasantest part of my life; perhaps it always was. She mutters something that sounds like “I wish she had chosen a different star.”
“Who are you talking about?” I ask. She is obviously talking in her sleep, but even then can sometimes answer questions. After a moment she mutters that they’re burying the bird.
“What bird?” I ask, trying to imagine the dream she is having. After a while she says, “A swan.”
Her dreams are as impenetrable as my own.
I continue basking in her warmth, dimly haunted by a feeling that tomorrow I should rise early and do something. I cannot remember what, but Karen will know. Karen is amazingly efficient and good at covering up for me; besides, nowadays in Britain no professional person as close to retiral as I am is ever sacked for inefficiency.
I wait patiently for sleep to cover me all up like a cloak.
SINKINGS
SUCCESS IS OVERRATED. The best proof of our worth is how we respond to failure. Herman Melville said that or something very like it. My marital partner still loves me, so do our children, I have recently retired with a cosy pension from a professional job which did some good and very little harm, so I have never been tested by really big failures. Yet the moments I remember with most interest are not my happiest ones, but those times when the ordinary ground under my feet seemed suddenly to sink, leaving me several yards lower than I thought normal or possible. This lower level did not prevent pleasures I had enjoyed at higher ones, but the pleasure never seemed to raise me up again. These sinkings (depressions is too mild a word for them) were never caused by irrevocable disasters, like the death of a parent. I am no masochist, but disasters on that scale stimulated and bucked me up. What let me down worst were failures of common decency, especially the first two.
My father was a businessman who died leaving just enough money for mother to send me to what was thought a very grand boarding school — the sons of many rich, well-known people went there. My immediate dislike of the place on arrival increased with time. The sons of the rich and famous were a social élite to which the teachers also belonged. Boys without much pocket money were excluded unless a brilliant appearance or talent for sport or clowning got them “taken up” by the smart majority. I belonged to a minority who were not physically bullied but usually treated as if invisible. I suppose if we had not existed the rest could not have felt so exclusive and fashionable. If we invisibles had united we would have formed a class more exclusive than the rest because smaller, but we despised ourselves too much to do that.