2
LET US REGRESS. Imagine the poor old globe grinding to a halt and then with a cosmic creak starting up again but in the opposite direction. Events whizz past in reverse, the little stick figures hurrying backwards, the boat hauling itself off the sandbank with a bump and putting out stern-first to fasten the unzipped sea, the sun calmly sinking in the east. Halt again, and we all fall over a second time and then pick ourselves up, blinking. The fact is, I did find myself outside the gates one grey morning, I did have a brown-paper parcel under my arm. I had imagined this moment so often that now when it had arrived I could hardly believe in it. Everything looked like an elaborate stage-set, plausible but not real. It was early, there was no one about except a schoolboy, with satchel and one drooping sock, who gave me, the freed man, a resentful, murky stare and passed on. A harsh wind was blowing. I hesitated, uncertain which way to turn. It is a desolate spot, this cobbled sweep where the broad gates give on to the road. I suspect it was a site of execution in former times, it has the shuddery, awed air of a place that has known some dreadful dawns. Minor devils surely hang about here, on the look-out for likely lads. I, of course, am already spoken for, by the boss.
I felt, I felt — oh, what did I feel. Well, fearful, for a start, but in an odd, almost girlish way. For the first minute or two I kept my eyes lowered, shy of the big world. It is laughable, I know, but I was terrified someone would see me there, I mean someone from the old life who would recognise me. And then, my horizons had been limited for so long: high walls make the gaze turn inward. For years I had only been able to see beyond the confines of my sequestered world by looking up. I was the boy at the bottom of the well, peering aloft in awe at the daytime stars. In captivity I had got to know the sky in all its moods, the great, stealthy drifts of light, the pales and slow darkenings, the twilight shoals. Out here, though, this morning, all was wide air and flat, glimmering spaces, and the prospect before me looked somehow tilted, and for a moment I had a bilious sense of falling. A lead-grey plume of smoke flew sideways from a tall chimney and a flock of crows wheeled afar in the wind. I turned up the collar of my jacket and set off shakily down the hill, towards the quays.
Sartorially my situation left a lot to be desired; I had, unwisely, as it now turned out, garbed myself for the occasion in the white — by now off-white — linen suit I had been wearing on the day I was apprehended ten years before. It had seemed to me that a ceremonial robing was required, that my outfit should somehow both proclaim my shriven state and mark me out as a pariah, and this was the best I could do. I must have looked as if I had dropped from Mars, an alien trying to pass for human, in my out-of-season suiting, which probably was risibly out of fashion too by now. Also, there was a cutting wind off the river and it was bloody cold.
I have always loved the river, the grand sweep of it, that noble prospect. The tide was high today, the water shouldering along swiftly with a dull, pewter shine. I leaned at gaze on the embankment, just breathing the dirty air, and sure enough my racing thoughts began to slow a little. There are certain harsh, knife-coloured mornings in springtime that are more plangently evocative than any leaf-blown autumn day. On the far bank the nine o’clock traffic flowed and stopped, flowed and stopped, the car-roofs darkly gleaming, humped like seals. By the river it is always the eighteenth century; I might have been Vaublin beside the Seine, I could see myself in a cloak and slouch hat, could almost smell the flowers and the excrement of Paris. The city, this dingy little city for which I have such a grim affection, seemed hardly changed. I scanned the skyline, looking for momentous gaps. A few landmarks had been taken away, a few incongruities added, but generally the view looked much as I remembered it. Strange to have been here all this time and yet not here at all. At dead of night I would lie awake in my cell, in that hour when the beast briefly ceased its bellowings, and try to hear the hum of life from beyond the walls; sometimes I would even get up, haggard with longing, and sit with my face pressed to the meshed window of my cell to catch the tiny vibrations in the glass, telling myself it was the noise of the great world I could feel beating there, its whoops and cries and crashes, that whole ragged, hilarious clamour, and not just the faint drumming of the prison generator.
I leaned out over the river wall and dropped my poor parcel of belongings into the oily water and watched it bob away. It was something I had planned to do, another ceremonial gesture; not very original, I suppose, but all the same a small sense of solemnity informed the occasion. The brown-paper wrapping came undone and rode the little waves like a sloughed skin, undulant and wrinkled. Here it is, I said to myself, here is where it really starts: my life. But I was not convinced.
By the window of a boarded-up shop two derelicts were having a confab. One was a tall, emaciated fellow with a woollen cap and matted beard and drooping, tragic eyes. It was he who caught my attention. I thought I remembered him, from former times; could that be, could he still be going about, haunting these streets the same as ever, after all these years? It seemed impossible, yet I felt sure I recognised him. A survivor, just like me! The idea of it was unwarrantedly cheering. His companion, in burst running-shoes and an outsize pair of maroon-coloured trousers, was short and rumpled-looking, with a babyish back to his head. He was doing most of the talking, jabbing a finger in the air and vigorously nodding agreement with himself, while the tall one just stood and stared bleakly into the middle distance, slowly champing his jaws, on the dim memory of his last square meal, probably, pausing now and then to drop in a considered word. Professional men, exchanging news of their world, its ups and downs. I wondered if I might become like them. I pictured myself falling through darker and darker air, tumbling slowly end over end, until the last, ragged net caught me. Down there in that shadowed, elemental state I would learn a new lingo, know all the dodges, be one of that band, one of the lost ones, the escapees. How restful it would be, traipsing the roads all day long, or skulking in rainstained doorways as evening came on, with nothing to think about but hunger and lice and the state of my feet.
While I lingered there, idly watching these two, I became aware that I too in my turn was being watched. On the humpbacked bridge over the river a man was standing, with one hand on the metal rail, a thin, black-haired, shabbily dressed man. This one also I seemed to know, though I could not say how, or from where; he might have been someone I had dreamed about, in a dream long forgotten. His face was lifted at an awkward angle and although his eyes were not directly on me there was no doubt that it was me he was regarding, with peculiar and unwavering interest. He was very still. There was an air about him that was at once sinister and jaunty: I had an impression of hidden laughter. Standing above me there against the whitening sky, nimbed with soiled light and with people passing to and fro behind him, he looked flat and one-sided, like a figure cut out of cardboard. We remained thus for a moment, he scrutinising me with his covert, angled glance and I staring back boldly, ready to challenge him, why, or for what, I could not say. Then he turned away swiftly and slipped into the crowd and was gone.