‘What did he call it?’ Billing asked himself. It would be nice to be a member of the professional class, as his father had been; to walk away briskly after making a statement, not to have life hanging round you like a question mark. One day, Dr Platt would age and hear noises in his head, too. But not for a long time …
It was strange to be outside again, and even stranger to walk with the metal crutch. He did not dislike the feeling of importance it gave him. He must do something with his life. In particular, he would go and see Gladys Lee.
It was afternoon. He sat in a coffee shop in Knightsbridge not far from the hospital, lacking courage. He talked to the other customers, beckoning them over for a chat, until the manageress came up and asked him courteously to leave. At a second café, the manager spoke less politely. He limped into the park and lay by the Serpentine, watching people go by, hoping to see someone he knew.
His thoughts turned to his mother. She had played a mean trick, leaving her money to that blind idiot. Perhaps he had really hurt her by being afraid of her. After all, what if she was a hypocrite and liar? What if she did swank a bit?
Why had he been incapable of loving her, bereft as she was of a husband? He might then have freed both of them. With her death, that chance had passed away.
The discomfort of his thoughts drove him from the park. Outside a cinema, a woman’s face gazed down from a hoarding. Her eyes were smiling perhaps a little vaguely, the expression was calm, bereft of passion. ‘Night Music’ was the name of the film. Smaller letters said, ‘And Introducing Kathy Cleaver’. Billing stood mute, staring up into her eyes. It was his Cathy. Maybe her dream was coming true. Certainly she was not looking at him.
Early next morning, Billing reached Gladys’s front door and sank down on the step. He dared not unlock the door and go in. She would still be asleep, drugged by the pills she took. He slept himself and was roused two hours later when the old nurse arrived.
‘Why, you’ll catch your death of cold, Mr Billing, sat there like that. Fancy! You’d better come in and I’ll make you a hot cup of tea.’ The glass eye seemed to gleam with compassion.
He stood up stiffly, aware of his injuries, his age. His suit was crumpled. It was true that he felt chilled, yet he entered the house reluctantly, afraid to confront Gladys in case she was angry with him.
For the first time, he noticed the unpleasant closed smell of the place.
The unusual time of day made everything in the house revelatory. As the nurse disappeared into the kitchen, he paused undecided on the threshold of Gladys’s bedroom. It was a room he had never been invited to enter. He looked round uncertainly, examining the landing wallpaper, which exhibited, from floor to picture rail, a faded pattern of stags attacked by wolves. Morning light filled the house with mist and shadows. He entered her room.
She was in bed. He had never seen her so early, just awakened, looking so much more in the clutches of death than usual. An evil smell pervaded her bedroom. She panted unpleasantly, as if she were an old dog, peering at him from the sheets through rheumy eyes, displaying broken pegs of teeth.
‘Go away,’ she said.
He waited miserably in the living room, clutching himself inside his damp clothes, resting his crutch against the cane-backed chair. ‘Sorry,’ he said aloud.
On one of the side-tables lay a parcel which, on inspection, proved to be addressed to him. He recognised Rose Dwyer’s handwriting. She had sent on a few items from his rooms. There was no note in the parcel. So he was homeless as well as jobless. He could say nothing when the nurse brought him in tea and toast spread with melting peanut butter.
An hour later, Gladys Lee hobbled slowly into the room with her stick. Billing stood up, nodding his head to denote affability. After shooting him an angry look, she turned her gaze elsewhere. Her pearls rattled.
‘I didn’t expect ever to see you again.’ Her tone was flat, unsmiling, her head sunk between her shoulders.
He smiled feebly. ‘I’ve had an accident, Gladys. I gave your name to the hospital as my next-of-kin.’
She went and sat by the electric fire, hunched over her stick, staring into the glowing element, not speaking for a long while.
‘You look a mess … What day is it?’
Billing remained standing, propped on his crutch. He said, awkwardly, ‘I’m glad to see you again.’
‘You still haven’t had your hair cut.’ She gestured with a blotched hand for him to sit down.
‘This dream of yours – why did it comfort you?’ She came straight to whatever her point was; she had no time to waste.
‘It always brought me comfort … That is to say, I mean …’ He tried to live with young people because explanations were always due to the old. ‘Each time the dream comes, it has a new significance. It enfolds my life.’
The old lady sat where she was, still staring into the fire. The nurse brought her a tray of breakfast, consisting of half a grapefruit, two thin slices of toast, coffee and pills, which Gladys regarded without apparent recognition.
‘Go into my bedroom, Hugh. Look at the framed engraving hanging on the wall on the far side of my bed.’
Billing did as he was told. The nurse had thrown back the covers of Gladys’s bed and opened the windows to air the room. The curtains billowed inwards. He held a curtain back with one hand in order to study the picture Gladys had designated.
The engraving showed a grand ruin. Ferns and small trees were growing over it, so that it resembled a man-made cliff. The original structure, long in disrepair, had patently been intended for reverential purposes: its proportions, its grand arched windows, indicated as much. Centuries and wars had caused its original function to be lost, and its fabric to be largely destroyed. From the fallen masonry, a modest house had been constructed. It stood within the embrace of the old building. From its windows washing hung and people in the costume of the period stood outside it, idly enjoying the sunshine.
It was a perfect realisation of his dream. He stood transfixed by it, by its grandeur, which he contrasted with his own crude sketches. With a flash of perception – what was it but a flash that visited him, like lightning in a summer night? – he saw that neither building held much interest alone, the ruin or the house. Only in their juxtaposition was there piquancy, a cause for speculation.
As he stood in front of the engraving, he had a godlike view of himself from above, standing before the spectacle of the world. His pains, his losses, were encompassed within the greater panorama of his existence. Even the memories of his parents, his dear lost wife, were less than the love they had shared.
‘It’s one of Piranesi’s Views of Rome,’ Gladys said, bent double in the doorway. ‘Perhaps you can read the inscription underneath. I was never good at languages. The grand old building was the mausoleum of Helen, mother of Constantine.’
The names meant nothing to him. He said – without turning round, without removing his eyes from the picture – ‘Death – a mausoleum. Yes. So with me, a walking bit of antiquity. My makeshift life built within that larger shadow. My flimsy walls the debris of past generations.’
He was aware of the effort she made to speak.
‘That applies to biology in general. Not just to you, or to architecture … Our general inheritance …’
Not seeing exactly what Gladys meant, he said bitterly, ‘Every day of my life would have been different, better, more productive, if my father had lived.’
Yet while the words were leaving his lips, he perceived that, as he interpreted the engraving, so must he interpret his life. If his interpretation of the engraving was not forged by all he had lived through it would be nothing more than a meaningless pattern. His existence had design, meaning, piquancy, even to himself, because of the relationship between the sorrows which overshadowed the past and the understanding granted in living moments. The glimpse of unity made him whole. He clung to it as he clung to the crutch.