THE GLAMOUR
by Christopher Priest
For their invaluable help, the author wishes to thank:
Robert and Coral Jackson
Marianne Leconte
Stuart Andrews
Alan Jonas
To Lisa
Part I
I have been trying to remember where it began, thinking about my early childhood and wondering if anything might have happened that made me become what I am. I had never thought much about it before, because on the whole I was happy. I think the reason for this was that I was protected from knowing what was really going on. My mother died when I was only three, but even this was a blow that was softened; her illness was a long one, and by the time she actually died I was used to spending most of my time with the hired nurse.
What I remember best was something I enjoyed. When I was eight I was sent home from school with a letter from the medical office. A viral infection had been attacking many of the children at the school, and after we had all been screened it was discovered or decided that I was the carrier. I was placed in home quarantine, and was not allowed to mix with other children until I ceased to be a carrier. The outcome was that I was eventually admitted to a private hospital, and my two perfectly good tonsils were efficiently removed. I returned to school shortly after my ninth birthday.
The period of quarantine had lasted nearly six months, coinciding with the best part of a long hot summer. I was on my own for most of this time, and although at first I felt lonely and isolated I quickly adapted. I discovered the pleasures of solitude. I read a huge number of books, went for long walks in the countryside around the house, and noticed wildlife for the first time. My father bought me a simple camera, and I began to study birds and flowers and trees, preferring their company to that of my friends. I constructed a secret den in the garden, and sat in it for hours with my books or photographs, fantasizing and dreaming. I built a cart with the wheels of an old pram and skittered around the country paths and hills, happier than I had ever been before. It was a contented, uncomplicated time, one in which I built up personal reserves and internal confidence, and it changed me.
Returning to school was a wrench. I had become an outsider to the other children because I had been away so long. I was left out of activities and games, groups formed without me, and I was treated as someone who did not know the secret language or sighs. I hardly cared; it allowed me to continue with a reduced form of my solitary life, and for the rest of my time at school I drifted on the periphery, barely noticed by the others. I have never regretted that long, lonely summer, and I only wish it could have lasted longer. I changed as I grew up, and I am not now what I was then, but I still think back to that happy time with a kind of infantile longing.
So perhaps it began there, and this story is the rest. At the moment I am only “I” although soon I shall have a name. This is my own story, told in different voices.
Part II
I
The house had been built so that it overlooked the sea. Since its conversion to a convalescent hospital, two large wings had been added in the original style, and the gardens had been relandscaped so that patients wishing to move around were never faced with steep inclines. The graveled paths zigzagged gently between the lawns and flower beds, opening out onto numerous leveled areas where wooden seats had been placed and wheelchairs could be parked. The gardens were mature, with thick but controlled shrubbery and attractive stands of deciduous trees.
At the lowest point of the garden, down a narrow pathway leading away from the main area, there was a secluded, hedged-in patch, overgrown and neglected, with an uninterrupted view of the bay. In this place it was possible to forget for a while that Middlecombe was a hospital. Even here, though, were precautions: a low concrete curb had been embedded in the grass to stop wheelchairs rolling too close to the rough ground and the cliff beyond, and fairly prominent among the bushes at the back there was an emergency signaling system connected directly to the duty nurse’s office in the main block. Very few of the patients visited this place. It was a long way to walk down or back, and the staff were unwilling to push wheelchairs as far as this. The main reason, though, was probably that the steward service did not extend much beyond the terrace or the top lawns.
For all these reasons, Richard Grey came down here whenever he could. The extra distance exercised his arms as he worked the wheels of the chair, and anyway he liked the solitude. He could get privacy inside his room where there were books, television, telephone, radio, but when actually inside the main building there was subtle pressure to mix with the other patients.
He had always been an active man, and although he had been at Middlecombe for a long time, he had still not fully adjusted to the idea of being a patient.
Although there were no more operations to come, it seemed to him that his recovery was interminable. His days in the hospital were on the whole unpleasant. The physiotherapy was tiring, and left him aching afterward. On his own he was lonely, but mixing with the other patients, many of whom did not speak English well, made him impatient and irritable. Lacking friends, the gardens and the view were all he had to himself.
Every day Grey would come down to this quiet place to stare at the sea below. This was a part of the coast known as Start Bay, the western extremity of Lyme Bay, on the South Devon coast. To his right, the rocky headland of Start Point ran out into the dismal sea, sometimes obscured by mist or rain. To his left, just visible, were the houses of Beesands, the ugly neat rows of holiday caravans, the silent waters of Widdicombe Ley. Beyond these, the cliffs rose again, concealing the next village from him. The shore here was shingle, and on calm days he would listen to the hissing of the waves as they broke insipidly at the bottom of the cliff.
Above all, he wished for a stormy sea, something positive and dramatic, something to break his routine. But this was Devon, a place of soft weather and temperate seasons, the climate of convalescence.
It all reflected his state of mind, which had become unquestioning. His body had been severely injured, his mind less so, and he sensed that both would repair in the same way: plenty of rest, gentle exercise, increasing resolve. It was often all he was capable of—to stare at the sea, watch the tides, listen to the waves. The passage of birds excited him, and whenever he heard a car he felt the tremor of fear.
His sole aim was to return to normality. Using sticks he could stand on his own now, and he was sure the crutches were permanently in his past. After wheeling himself down the garden he would lever himself out of his chair and take a few steps leaning on the sticks. He was proud of being able to do this alone, of not having a therapist or nurse beside him, of having no rails, no encouraging words. When standing he could see more of the view, could go closer to the edge.
Today it had been raining when he woke, a persistent, drifting drizzle that had continued all morning. It meant he had had to put on a coat, but now it had stopped raining and he was still in the coat. It depressed him because it reminded him of his real disabilities—he could not take it off on his own.
He heard footsteps on the gravel, and the sound of someone pushing through the damp leaves and branches that grew across the path. He turned, doing it slowly, a step and a stick at a time, keeping his face immobile to conceal the pain.
It was Dave, one of the nurses. “Can you manage, Mr. Grey?”
“I can manage to stay upright.”