“I know,” I say. “You are brave.”
“You were brave too, last night.”
“That was different. I was sick then, and cold and bombed out of my mind. Maybe I still am. I don’t know. Last night is a long time off.”
“Is it?” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Just about everything has happened since then.” I feel her hand grow stiff, she starts to push, and then I tighten my grasp of her shoulder and hold her fast, and say:
“Why did you look at your watch, out there by the hospital?”
She grows softer in my arm and laughs deep down in her throat.
“That was so silly. I saw you standing there in front of the main entrance, and then I thought, is there time to go up to him for a moment, I just wanted a look at your face, and then, instinctively, I glanced at my watch. I didn’t even see what time it was. It was just daft, we had a man to save.”
“It was half past four,” I say. “How is the man doing?”
“He died on the way in. He’d had a collision in the fog on the motorway. His chest was crushed against the wheel.”
There is not much I can say to that, and I really do not feel like saying anything, so I just go on standing with my arm tightly round her shoulder, and it is a fine shoulder, and it fits me well, not being a tall man. Everything is almost perfect. I feel her relax with her cheek on my neck, and her breath tickling, and her hair too, and I stand waiting for the feeling that will push me on, for the ball is in my court now, I know the next step, and it is no more than right. But the feeling does not come. I do not know what is wrong. Perhaps it is the boy on the sofa.
“Why don’t you ask why I was at the hospital?” I say.
“Because I know. I found out,” she mumbles.
I see. She has found out, and now that she knows why I was at the hospital, she will give me the comforting hug. But she does not, she stands quietly without changing position, just breathes on my neck and she is not here to comfort me, but to get what she is entitled to, and I am all with her there, and we cannot go on like this for many more seconds before something happens. I do not know what to do. Then I suddenly remember the film about Zorba the Greek, the scene where Anthony Quinn bawls out the Englishman Alan Bates because he has committed the greatest sin a man can possibly commit. He had made a pass at the proud widow and succeeded, and perhaps she gave him a chance because he was different, but when it came to the crunch he had not the courage to go through that door she held open for him, and that stripped her bare and cost her her life.
I bend down slightly and put an arm round her back and the other behind her knees, and pick her up with a jerk. She clings to my neck, giggling.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“I am Zorba,” I say.
“What?” she asks, but I do not reply. I walk across the room with Mrs Grinde in my arms, thinking: let the brain take the first step; and on the way into the bedroom I feel her weight like a tugging in the pit of my stomach, and then the feeling is there. I laugh aloud and shout:
“Here comes Zorba, make way, make way,” and I lay her down on the bed not quite as elegantly as I had planned, and it is like a lousy film we both enjoy, although Zorba is not a lousy film. I stroke her hair and undress her as carefully as I possibly can, and she says:
“You don’t have to be that chivalrous,” and I reply:
“Oh, but I do,” and under her clothes there are other garments she would never have worn on an everyday evening, and there is no doubt they are meant for me. That makes me pretty shaky and even sad, for she certainly has taken a chance, and I do not know if this is something I am able to receive, this boy she has carried in her arms past all the windows in the block, these clothes or rather lack of clothes right next to her skin, and she sees what I am looking at and blushes and bites her lip and refuses to meet my eyes and almost gets angry. Then I sink to my knees with my hands on her knees and a lump in my throat, and if it is not like it was last night it still is great and even more, for Christ’s sake, and afterwards she lies quite still listening for sounds from the living room. But all is quiet there too, the boy is sleeping, and she turns to me with her face aflame and says:
“Tell me some more about your father.”
“There’s not much more to tell.”
“Isn’t there?”
“No.”
“I must have missed something,” she says.
11
THE LAST TIME I spoke to him was on the telephone. He had been ill. It was cancer, but the operation had been successful and he was better now. He called on a Thursday, I was at work in the bookshop where I was still employed. We rarely talked to each other on the phone, and the few times it happened it was usually I who called my mother to give a message or to ask her advice, and it was he who picked up the receiver. Then it would not take him long to pass it over to her.
Now he said:
“Hi there, this is Dad. How is the writer doing?” And then he laughed, embarrassed, before stopping abruptly.
He was seventy-eight, I was thirty-seven, and it was so strange hearing him that I just stood there behind the counter with the phone in my hand, gazing into the air. There were books everywhere and lots of people, but I saw nothing. You had a very strange expression on your face, said my colleagues later.
“Hi,” I said. “Well,” I said, “not so bad.” Around me were boxes of books sent all the way from America, and the books were all by Raymond Carver. He had died two years before of lung cancer at just fifty years old, and we were going to have a memorial exhibition of all the titles published in stylish new editions. I had one of them in my hand. It was called Where I’m Calling from.
“Where are you calling from?” I asked.
“I’m at home,” he said. “I’m standing here in the hall.” And I saw him standing there in the hall with the striped wallpaper in white and gold I thought was tasteless, and I had thought so since I lived at home almost twenty years earlier. He stood by the mirror and the small table with its open drawer and the telephone directory open at T in front of him, for he could not remember the number of my workplace although I had been there for ten years. Before that I had been a workman like him for six years, but that was by my own choice, whereas he never had a choice.
It was just before Easter. On Saturday they were going down to Denmark by ferry as usual, but there had been a mistake over the tickets, he said, and sounded bewildered. They had been made out for this particular boat, but now that had been sold to the Swedes as a dormitory for refugees, and there was to be another one. He did not even know what it was called. When he called the firm and asked, they were as confused as he was at the other end of the line. Was there going to be a boat at all? Did I know anything about it? And wasn’t I supposed to go with them?
I had forgotten that. I was supposed to go with them. My mother had called me one morning and said:
“Now you just come along. I will pay for your ticket if it’s a question of money.”
“I have my own money,” I said.
There were things they had to bring with them, and things that must be done in the spring, heavy things he could not manage any more; the old willow hedge needed clipping, a spruce tree must have its roots cut off and be pulled down with a rope and later chopped up and stacked for logs. Other things had to be taken away, and they had no car, nor a driving licence.
“Your father is an old man now,” she said, “do you understand what I’m saying? I do not want him to do it all on his own.” But he had always been old and he had always been strong, and on the few occasions I tried to help him he just pushed me aside and said: