The sleeping man in the next bed did not awake. The trumpets were too faint, and the two hours that had passed were over, and his wife had to leave.
Titus watched her as her steps took her back to the locked door and into the world outside. He did not take part in the formalities that followed the ending of a life, but once more, with his work companions, had to soothe the agitation of the living.
And so the days wore on, the nights wore out, the lives wore down. Titus was drawn daily to a feeling towards the artist that he could not explain to himself. As though there was an indefinable link between his life and that haunted man for whom he had to perform duties that in his younger days would have affronted his dignity. Despite the haggard eyes, the remnants of teeth discoloured and decaying from too many drugs, there was an intelligence so forceful that it probed the inner life of everyone in the ward. His words would not make the sentences that he searched for, and in his frustration he would hit out at those around him, but with so little force there was no danger for anyone. Titus watched sometimes as his wife handed him paper and pencil with which to draw, and as the hand faltered over a few marks, he would brush them away with a sigh so piteous and profound it almost rent his being.
Sometimes, when the day was fine, they would go out to the vast gardens, lovely and cared for. Huge, rich, generous rhododendrons of many degrees of red led to an apple orchard of old trees.
The artist could not walk without assistance, but dragged his feet and made no movement with his arms. Whichever arm was not in his wife’s lay rigid, totem-poled to his side. Their progress was slow, but aware. The squirrels that teased their steps, and so endearingly cradled in their tiny human paws the crumbs and nuts that had been scattered to them, were a delight to them both. They would stand still, just looking, until the husband swayed on his feet; then an arm would act as a brake to forestall the inevitable fall backwards.
Sometimes, when the wife did not come and the weather was fine, Titus would clean and feed and dress the artist and take him out into the gardens himself, linking his arm for protection only. There was no verbal communication, for it had ceased. Only the eyes looked and searched Titus. The eyes saw. They, the only remaining conscious sense, were more alive than any eyes Titus had ever seen, in his childhood, adolescence, young manhood, in and out of every world that he had ever traversed. He felt understood. He was one with this man. Whatever physical humiliations he had to perform were nothing. The truth spoke from the eyes, as he had never before heard, but sometimes when the tragedy seemed too intense the eyes smiled and a little gesture like a clown’s would be conjured up by the deprived hands, and Titus could smile back, and for a few moments there was peace.
Towards the artist’s wife also Titus felt the same closeness. Never very articulate, he had no need here, either, of verbal communication. They all seemed to be one person. He automatically performed all his duties outside these two. He was efficient, kind and far from lazy, and was respected by his companions, who all the same noted with surprise his affection for the patient in bed 10.
There was not always much said between the men who carried out their duties in the ward and the pompous officials who by their demeanour showed their importance, but it was with a great sense of shock that Titus was told one morning to get the artist ready to leave. Not that he was cured, but that he should never have been sent there in the first place. He had an illness that did not belong with them, and he was being sent elsewhere. His wife would go with him in an ambulance and that would be that. Titus must see that he was shaved, dressed as cleanly as possible and fed, and oversee his removal from the ward to the car.
The morning dawned and the wife arrived. Titus fulfilled many duties, then turned to bed 10. He shaved, dressed and cleaned the poor limbs, and made the patient ready for the departure. The man had all the intuition of an animal, which knew that something was about to happen that would affect his life, and a terrible restlessness manifested itself. He tried to move, and the wife sat in a chair by him, trying to calm him, showing him books, which she told Titus were his work. He pushed them aside with an impatience of gesture that for all the sluggishness of movement was a powerful negation of ownership.
The day wore on, and there was no sign of departure. It was not until late afternoon that a chair, with none of the elegance or grandeur of a sedan chair, was brought by two men into the ward, and the patient from number 10 bed was lifted into it and wrapped like a mummy in red blankets. The little procession made its way out of the ward, gathering the few paltry possessions, and Titus took the wife’s arm and followed with her, down the long, bleak, dimly lit corridors, and out into the grey evening to the waiting ambulance. As the patient was lifted into the back of it he made a final gesture of farewell, and a faint voice whispered, ‘Titus.’
30
Happening in a Side Street
NOT FOR THE first time in his life Titus felt the void that parting opens up so violently, but in this case it was not he who had left. He could feel a little of the sense of loss he had inflicted on so many people. An emptiness when he awoke, and when he went to bed, and all during the day when he was working. An ache he had only once before felt. He had lost something irreplaceable, but no rational explanation came to him as to why he should have such strong feelings for a man who had not spoken, whose outer life was destroyed, but whose eyes and inner life haunted him.
He knew that he wanted to leave the hospital and let his life drift wherever it took him. He spoke to Peregrine, who only expressed surprise that he had stayed at all. There were no formalities and nothing to await, no farewells, no broken hearts. He left, walking down the long drive, and as he reached the lodge and the large iron gates, which shut in or out this world within a world, the heavy sense of his own secret and unexplained loss became intolerable, and he let his legs lead him, for neither his head nor his heart could do so.
As he walked along the isolated road, he could just see the tower on the hill to his right, which brooded over the enclosed world he had left. As far as he could see, in every other direction was scrubland. Barren and bleak and unbeloved. Gorse bushes and bracken. He was in tune with this landscape as he walked. He saw no human beings and very little in the way of traffic. He was passed once by an old woman riding an antiquated tricycle. In the front of it was a basket from which appeared the heads of a motley collection of dogs, their bodies covered by an old blanket.
His feet led him along the road, and he felt neither tired nor active. He refused to think of anything. Ahead of him he began to see the lights of a town. He had money in his pocket with which to find some place to stay, and he continued walking. It must have been a couple of hours, and the light began to go as he neared the outskirts. A few scattered dwellings to begin with, then the dreary uniform dinginess of terraced houses.
As the daylight faded, so he saw ahead of him the rectangles of yellow-lit windows, and the skyline of the town taking on its untidy silhouette, with here and there the ugly uncompromising blocks, which seemed to bear no relation to the rest of the townscape. Coming closer to human beings, he started to feel an intense hunger, and despite his mental lethargy, he began to increase his speed of walking.
As on the outskirts of most towns and cities, there seemed little life, on or out of the street. The lights from the windows were gradually extinguished by the drawing of curtains. Towards the end of a line of houses he noticed that one of them had its curtains drawn to display two large candles in the window, and there was a certain amount of activity; people in ones and twos and threes making their way to its front door, which was ajar, and disappearing behind it. Titus heard the murmur of voices and muted footsteps overtaking him. A man and a woman drew level with him, ‘Good evening. A sad evening this – yes, yes. She was a fine woman. A fine woman.’