‘Keep your eye on him for a moment,’ said the girl. ‘He pinches books.’ She went back to the office, returned quickly and handed me a slip of paper with William G.’s address and telephone number on it.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘You look as if it’s important.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and hurried away.
Someone got out of a taxi and I got in. Just like a film, I thought. People never have to wait for taxis in films. Old films, that is. They never used to get change when they paid for anything either, they just left notes or coins and walked away. Now they get change. Perhaps they sometimes have to wait for taxis too. I gave the driver the address, it was in SW6.
‘Do you know the street?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I’m a suburban driver,’ he said as he turned down the Brompton Road. ‘I don’t know London all that well. Most of the lads graduate to London after a while, go about on a moped getting the knowledge but I haven’t bothered. I’m a Jehovah’s Witness and we think God’s going to step in and put things to right in a couple of years. There won’t be any taxis then.’
‘What will there be?’ I said looking in my A to Z. ‘I think it’s off the Fulham Road.’
‘The Lord will take care of the righteous,’ he said as we came to the Brompton Oratory and turned left into the Fulham Road. ‘We’ve been interested in the year 1975 for some time.’
‘You go to Fulham Broadway and turn left into Harwood Road,’ I said. ‘What’ll you do if nothing happens in 1975?’
‘A lot of people ask that question,’ said the driver. ‘We’ll…’ We’d come to a place where they were tearing up the street and I couldn’t hear what he said.
‘Sorry,’ I said, leaning close to the opening in the glass partition. ‘I couldn’t hear you.’
‘We’ll …’ he said as a plane screamed low overhead.
I sank back in the seat, didn’t ask again.
The house was on a crescent opposite a football pitch, a paddling pool and a playground. The far end of the crescent looked more posh, the houses a little grander and overlooking the common. William G.’s end was Georgian terraced houses, three storeys, quite plain. I paid the driver and as he drove off I wished I’d asked him about 1975 again. I really did want to know what he’d do if it came and went without the Lord’s taking a stand either way. Too late, the chance was gone.
There were no nameplates, only one bell. I rang it. A fiery-looking foreign-looking man with a violent moustache answered the door. He was wearing a Middle-Eastern sort of dressing-gown that had more colour and pattern than one really cared to see in a single garment. Red velvet slippers, very white feet and ankles with very black hair. He looked as if he had strong political convictions.
‘I’ve come to see Mr G.,’ I said.
‘Top,’ said the man and stood aside.
I went up, stood outside William G.’s door waiting for my heart to stop pounding. Too many cigarettes. The violent-moustached man had come upstairs too and was producing violent smells in a tiny kitchen on the landing. I could ask him to force the door if necessary. I tried not to think of what we might find. I knocked.
William G. opened the door, looked startled. ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Come in.’
I gasped, found nothing to say. The room was not as I had imagined it, had white walls, an orange Japanese paper lamp. Modern furniture, mail-order Danish.
‘You look quite done up,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you some coffee.’
21 William G
It was absolutely uncanny, gave me the creeps. That woman actually thought I’d been thinking of suicide.
I had been thinking of it right enough, I often do, always have the idea of it huddled like a sick ape in a corner of my mind. But I’d never do it. At least I don’t think I’d do it, can’t imagine a state of mind in which I’d do it. Well, that’s not true either. I can imagine the state of mind, I’ve been in it often enough. No place for the self to sit down and catch its breath. Just being hurried, hurried out of existence. When I feel like that even such a thing as posting a letter or going to the launderette wears me out. The mind moves ahead of every action making me tired in advance of whatever I do. Even a thing as simple as changing trains in the Underground becomes terribly heavy. I think ahead to the sign on the platform at the next station, think of getting out of the train, going through the corridor, up the escalator, waiting on the platform. I think of how many trains will come before mine, think of getting on when it comes, think of the signs that will appear, think of getting out, going up the steps, out into the street. As the mind moves forward the self is pushed back, everything multiplies itself like mirrors receding laboriously to infinity, repeating endlessly even the earwax in the ears, the silence in the eyes.
When I was a child there was a mirror in the hallway and at some point I became aware that the mirror saw more than what was simply right in front of it. It privately reflected a good deal of hallway on both sides out of the corner of its eye so to speak. By putting my nose right up against the glass I could almost see round those corners, could almost see what the mirror was keeping to itself, the whole hallway perhaps. All of it, everything, things I couldn’t see. Spiders in webs in the shadows, the other side of the light through the coloured leaded glass of the door. The shadow of the postman today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.
My father did, I think. Commit suicide. Although they called it an accident. His car went over a cliff into the sea. On to some rocks that you can see at low tide but not high water. No collision, no skid marks or anything. My mother kept the newspaper cutting, I still have it somewhere. Who knows what might have appeared in the road coming towards him. The rest of his life maybe. At Paddington I’ve seen pigeons on the tube platform walk into a train and out again while the doors were still open, knowing where they didn’t want to go.
Neaera H. can’t be in very good shape either if her mind is running on that sort of thing. She was deathly pale when she turned up at my door. It took her a while to come out with it, then she said in a half-whisper looking down at her coffee cup that she’d had all this green water in her mind and a white shark coming up from below. Well of course they’re always in me I suppose, coming up from the darkness and the deep-water chill. But I wouldn’t say I’m broadcasting sharks, and if she’s pulling them in out of the air she must be pretty well round the bend.
She told me a little about herself, and her kind of life isn’t much better than mine. At least in the shop I’m out in the world, get out of myself a little. She goes for days sometimes without seeing anyone, staying up till all hours. No wonder she gets morbid. And now it seems she’s on my wavelength. That’s all I need. My mind isn’t much of a comfort to me but at least I thought it was private. She’s going to wear herself out if she keeps tuning in like that. The inside of my head is a pretty tiresome place for someone whose own head isn’t all that jolly.
I must find out about a van. It’s well over two hundred miles to Polperro, closer to three hundred I should think. Night driving. I’d rather drive at night than during the day but either way the thought of it fills me with dread. And I’m scared of the turtles. That big male loggerhead could take your hand off with one bite. I could ask George Fairbairn to come with us and he might do it but that’s no good. Whatever this awful thing is that I’ve got myself into, it’s my thing and I’ve got to do it alone with that weird lady.