‘You ought to go away for a while, have a holiday from George.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘You should, you should go to some foreign city.’
‘He’ll lose his driving licence.’
‘Poor George!’
‘He wanted us to walk away.’
‘You mean last night? Just walk away, after that? Before the police came, I suppose!’
‘I would have walked if I could,’ said Stella.
‘Oh God, here he comes.’
Through the open door of the room Gabriel saw George approaching along the corridor.
‘Good-bye, Gabriel, thank you for coming to see me.’ With a little wave to Stella, Gabriel moved out of the room. George advanced, walking with a characteristic self-conscious deliberation as of someone fairly confidently walking on water. He leaned forwards as he walked, setting his feet down noiselessly on the thick, soft, spongy pale grey hospital linoleum. His arms swung in a light poised manner. He looked like an athlete, off duty, aware of being photographed. When he saw Gabriel he narrowed his eyes and smiled a faint amused smile. Gabriel, disturbed by mixed emotions, made an impatient gesture with her hand. She frowned, but her mouth could not help smiling in an involuntary nervous spasm.
George McCaffrey had been spared the visit of his brother Brian by having left the house before Brian arrived. Before leaving, George had telephoned the hospital and learnt that Stella was ‘comfortable’. He set off, but went first of all to the canal.
The canal was no longer in use. It ought to have been beautiful, as it curved into the town, with the cobbled road beside it and the huge square granite slabs at the edge of the quay and the great rings upon the walls where the painted barges used to tie up. The elliptical foot-bridge was reproduced (reflected in still water) upon postcards, and the small elegant container (still in use) of the nearby gas works, with its fretted cast- Iron coronet was a period piece prized by industrial archaeologists. But somehow the sluggish brown stream looked dirty and melancholy, and attempts to rejuvenate it for purposes of pleasure always failed. The canal remained in mourning for its useful past, expressing the grim puritanical character of local history rather than any desire to be reborn as charming. The area on the far side remained derelict, except for a scattering of poor post-war housing, mostly condemned, and was known as ‘the wasteland’. Against the rusty railings which fringed the road only the uglier weeds grew; the grass between the tilting cobbles was flabby and sad, and the glittering points in the square granite slabs looked like symptoms of a post- Industrial disease.
It was beginning to rain when George arrived. Several people were standing looking down at the car. (The drama had of course been reported in the Gazette.) Aware of being recognized, George joined them. Several of the on-lookers walked hastily away. Those who remained removed themselves to a little distance.
The car was upright, its white roof just breaking the surface. It must have settled down in the mud since last night. The brown rain-pitted canal water, very slowly passing it by, possessed it as if it were a rock or a clump of reeds. It looked peaceful.
George had never had any fantasies about driving cars over quaysides, though he had had plenty about drowning, death by water, his own or another’s. He had fantasies, or were they dreams, of drowning someone, as it might be Stella, and burying the corpse in a wood and visiting the quiet grave regularly as the months passed and the years passed and the seasons changed and the wild flowers grew upon the place and no one ever suspected. Sometimes he dreamt that he had killed Stella and then suddenly met her again alive and then realized that it was not her, but a twin sister of whose existence he had never known.
How could I have done that, he thought, looking down. As on similar occasions in the past, he felt a cleavage between himself and the George who did things. Yet he was that person and felt easy with him, chiding him gently. What a damn stupid thing to do, he thought, now that he was in the land of consequences. I was fond of that car. What will the insurance people say, I wonder. God, if only we could have got away before the police came.
Stella had started crying again when George arrived. She was very anxious indeed to stop. She regarded crying as a kind of rather shameful and unusual disease. It gave her no relief. She rolled her head about, trying to breathe slowly, but could not stop her lower lip from shuddering convulsively and her heart from racing. She put her hand to her damaged side and panted, turning her wet mouth away from her husband.
‘How are you?’ said George.
‘OK.’
‘Are you feeling OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve got a black eye.’
‘Yes.’
‘So have I, at least it’s swollen, can’t think how I got it.’
‘Oh — yes — ’
‘The people here seem nice, the nurse was nice to me.’
‘Good.’
‘You’re not in pain?’
‘No.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I can’t stop crying.’
‘Not to worry.’
‘I suppose it’s hysterical. Not like me.’
‘No. Gabriel got here early.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she say to you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What did you say to her?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘I told her nothing.’
‘I can’t remember much about last night.’
‘I’m glad you can’t, neither can I.’
‘If you can’t remember, why are you glad I can’t?’
‘It was a horrid accident, better to forget it.’
‘We do a lot of forgetting. How long will you be in here?’
‘I don’t know. You could ask matron.’
‘Do you want anything, flowers or books or anything?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘I feel awfully tired.’
‘You’re suffering from shock.’
‘Yes, that’s it, I suppose I am.’
‘Better go home and rest.’
‘No, I think I’ll go swimming, that always does me good.’
‘Yes, go swimming, that’ll do you good.’
Pat-ball, thought George, pat-ball. It’s either this or rows. Stella can’t talk to me, that’s her trouble; she can’t make silly jokes or play about like other people, she can’t really talk to anyone, she’s cut off from the human race. She’s grand like royalty, I married a princess. I hate seeing her crying, it’s so unnatural, she looks like a wet pig. She hasn’t any soft warm being, no haven there, no safety. Oh God, how much fear I feel now, how much help I need, with him coming. Why must I always suffer so, this is hell. Familiar black resentment rose in his heart, in his gorge. I am poisoned, he thought.
‘Here’s Alex,’ said Stella, and checked her weeping.
George rose quickly and made for the door. His mother stood aside to let him pass. They exchanged a quick bright look but no words.
PRELUDE
ii Our Town
I am the narrator: a discreet and self-effacing narrator. This book is not about me. I knew, though not in most cases at all well, a number of the dramatis personae and I lived (and live) in the town where the events hereinafter recounted took place. For purposes of convenience, for instance so that my ‘characters’ may be able (very occasionally) to refer to me or address me, I shall call myself ‘N’. But as far as this drama is concerned I am a shadow, Nemo, not the masked presence or secret voice of one of the main characters. I am an observer, a student of human nature, a moralist, a man; and will allow myself here and there the discreet luxury of moralizing.