The square was moving towards morning. Railings that had gleamed under the street lamps were black against the first light of day. But it was a dark dawn. Weekend weather. I went back to the flat. It was much closer inside. I felt as if I were being smothered in wet sheets. I opened all the windows. The window frames were sooty and my hands got dirty. The air outside joined the air inside, all of it was like wet sheets.
I looked down at where I had been sitting in the square. The bench was empty, the square was green and vacant in the early light like one long uniflected vowel. It seemed to have lost all particularity. The trees, the bushes, the benches had no reference to anything, were altogether incomprehensible. The fountain that wasn’t there was doubly not there, was incapable of being associated with the square.
It was half-past five. I was drowsy but I didn’t want to go to sleep, I didn’t want to dream. I lay down and of course I did fall asleep. I dreamt that nothing had a front any more. The whole world was nothing but the back of the world, and blank. No shape to it, no colour, just utter blankness. How could even the buses have lost their shape and colour, I thought. Even from the back they’re red and bus-shaped. Some part of all this blankness must be a bus. But there was no bus, no anything. Just blank terror.
Then another of those dream thoughts came to me: every action has a mother and a father and is itself the mother or the father of the action that comes out of it. An endless genealogy branching back into the past, forward into the future. There is no unattached action. I woke up and it was half-past seven.
I looked at the telephone again. Don’t be ridiculous, the shape of it said. The daylight in the windows threatened rain. I had breakfast and a cigarette and then another cigarette. I walked about the flat picking things up and putting them down, shuffling through unanswered letters and unpaid bills and dire things in brown envelopes On Her Majesty’s Service. In the spare room are cartons of books demoted from the active shelves. 16 Giant ARIEL, said one. OUTSPAN Lemons, said another, and in my lettering: SITTING ROOM BOTTOM. That cardboard box is twenty years old, I labelled it when we emptied the shelves at home and packed the books to move to London. The longevity of impermanent things! I sat down in the chair again, dozed off, woke up at a quarter to nine, left the flat quickly and went down to the bus stop.
The bus came sooner than I expected, they always do when I’m early. I sat next to a man with a newspaper in which I read about a ‘Vice girl’ who’d entertained various businessmen for a pop singer. She’d been instructed to sleep with Mr X for a fee of £5, said the girl. She’d been requested to dress and act like an eleven-year-old schoolgirl and to refer frequently in her conversation to certain breakfast cereals and other products by their brand names. Mr X was in advertising it seemed. He proved incapable, said the girl. Incapable of sleeping, I thought, smiling at the ambiguities of polite speech. I shouldn’t be surprised if Mr X did have difficulty in sleeping what with all those brand names dancing in his head.
It occurred to me then to imagine lives packaged and labelled and ranged on shelves waiting to be bought. I couldn’t think of any likely brand names right off except Brief Candle. And what if the ingredients were listed on the box? Many lives would go unsold, they’d have to discontinue some of the range. Sorry, we don’t stock that life any more, there was no demand for it really. Hard Slog for example or Dreary Muddle, how many would they sell a year? On the other hand Wealth and Fame would move briskly even with a Government Health Warning on the packet.
It was only five past nine when I got to the bookshop, and I spent the next twenty minutes looking at the books in the window. I observed that Taura Strong continues to be productive, ecology was enjoying a rising market, sex was holding its own but a little more quietly than formerly: there were glossy books with photographs of naked people kneading each other thoughtfully. Gangsterism in government was under examination in America and government in gangsterism was being looked at as well. The backs of things are getting into print more and more these days and heterosexuality is increasingly thin on the ground in biographies. Fallopia Bothways, smiling a virile smile on the showcard for her new novel, has changed her haircut. Through the glass doors I could see the books on tables and shelves resting quietly and holding themselves in reserve until opening time. I found myself mentally turning away from the too-muchness of them.
At 9.25 a girl who seemed to have bought Hard Slog arrived with keys and unlocked one of the glass doors top and bottom. She smiled briefly, went in and locked the door behind her. I waited while she picked up the morning post, turned on the lights, went to the office at the rear of the shop, came back with brown paper bags and put money into the till. Then she looked up, seemed gratified by my patience, smiled and opened the door.
‘Good morning,’ I said.
‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Will Mr G. be here today?’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘It’s his Saturday off.’
‘Can you tell me where to reach him, his phone number?’ I said. ‘It’s rather urgent.’
She looked at me carefully. Did I look like an old girl friend who rings up and breathes into the telephone, I wondered. I didn’t think so. She shook her head with some reluctance I thought but still she shook it.
‘Our manager, Mr Meager, is quite firm about that,’ she said. ‘Best thing is to come in again on Monday, Mr G.’ll be here then.’
‘I think he might not be,’ I said. I watched a bus go past the door, first the front then the back. ‘I think he may be quite ill. Would you mind ringing him up yourself just to make sure he’s all right? I think it really is urgent.’ By then I was quite possessed by my fixed idea and feeling a little demented about it.
‘He looked perfectly well yesterday,’ she said. ‘He’s probably not up yet. It’s early for a Saturday off.’
I didn’t say anything. I must have looked a fright.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring him. It’s a little odd, you know. After all if you’re a friend of his you’d have his number, wouldn’t you?’
I couldn’t think of anything to say, just looked at her dumbly.
‘All right,’ she said again. ‘Who shall I say it is?’
‘Neaera H.,’ I said.
Her face changed, her manner as well. Little softenings and flutters. ‘The one who does the Gillian Vole books?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well,’ she said with a fleeting smile, ‘I’ll see if I can raise him.’ She went back to the office and closed the door. Through the little office window I saw her look up the number on a list she took from a drawer. She dialled, waited, spoke while watching me through the window. I couldn’t hear what she said.
‘I’ve rung the house where he lives,’ she said when she came out. ‘They say he doesn’t answer his door. He doesn’t seem to be at home.’
‘This isn’t anything personal,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing personal at all really.’ I could feel my face not knowing what to do with itself.
An American lady came in. ‘Have you anything on Staffordshire figures?’ she said.
The girl went to the shelves, took out three books.
‘I have all of those,’ said the American lady. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘That’s all there is just now,’ said the girl.
‘Oh, dear,’ said the American lady. ‘Thank you.’ She left.
An intense-looking young man with long hair, a beard, an immense mackintosh and a large shoulder-bag came in and headed for the Occult section.
‘Would you leave your bag at the counter, please,’ said the girl. The young man flashed her a dark look, left the shoulder-bag with her, went to the shelves and appeared to be deeply interested in alchemy.