45 William G
Tuesday morning. I woke up and groaned. I ached all over, and when I got out of bed I could scarcely walk. If Sandor was going to fling down the gauntlet again I didn’t know whether I had the strength to pick it up.
The bath was clean. The cooker was clean. What had happened to Sandor? He was as regular as clockwork, never overslept. Had I done him a serious injury? For a moment I hoped so, then I hoped not. I knocked on his door. No answer. I knocked again, looked at the threadbare musty carpet where my face had been the other day, heard a train go past beyond the common.
‘Who is it?’ said Sandor’s voice from inside, a little more distant than last time.
‘Me,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Come in,’ he said. He was in bed wearing some sort of wild Islamic pyjamas. He had a sticking-plaster across his nose, his face was flushed, his moustache looked dismayed. There were stacks of foreign newspapers, a chessboard with the pieces standing on it in the middle of a game, flowers in an art nouveau vase that incorporated a naked lady. There were framed photographs of men with moustaches, sad-faced women, young Sandor in shorts and a jersey with some school team, a river with a bridge. The wallpaper was old and dark, the furniture was dark, the room had a dark and foreign smell. There was a thermometer in a glass on the bedside table.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. He looked as if he might be wearing a nightcap but wasn’t.
‘I am grotty a little,’ he said. ‘I have 39 degrees temperature, maybe a touch of influenza.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’ I said.
‘I have slightly vertigo,’ he said. ‘I stand up, room goes round, floor is slanty. Not hungry.’
‘I’ll make you some tea and toast,’ I said.
‘Not to bother,’ said Sandor. ‘I get up later.’
‘It’s no bother,’ I said.
‘Very kind of you,’ he said. ‘You are pacific this morning. You don’t make aggression.’
‘I don’t usually make aggression,’ I said. I made the tea and toast, brought it to him.
‘What do you usually have for breakfast?’ I said.
‘Half grapefruit,’ he said. ‘Seaweed, squid, coffee. Very healthy. Top protein.’
I nodded. Cookers simply have to take what comes to them, that’s life.
‘You don’t like foreigners, yes?’ he said. ‘England for the English. You don’t like foreign breakfast on cooker. Not nice, yes?’
‘I don’t dislike foreigners,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea completely.’
‘Cobblers,’ said Sandor. ‘You make effort, put fake smile on face, make politeness. You nod hello but you don’t look at foreigner like regular human person. You look at me as if you think I carry in my briefcase nothing but sausages.’
‘What do you carry in your briefcase?’ I said.
‘Sausages and newspapers,’ he said. ‘I read and speak Hungarian, Russian, German, French, English. How many languages do you have?’
‘Only English,’ I said.
‘Wonderful,’ said Sandor. ‘Let the rest of the world learn to talk to you. You don’t waste your time with such foolishness.’
‘Maybe not,’ I said, ‘but I leave the bath and the cooker clean for the next chap, the next human person. I’d better be going now or I’ll be late for work.’
Sandor lay back on his pillow, closed his eyes. ‘Thank you for your visit,’ he said.
46 Neaera H
When I got back to my flat after leaving George Fairbairn the sky went hard and blue, the sun came out in real postcard style. I didn’t like it. Sunny days have always been more difficult for me than grey ones.
The snails grazed slowly on the sides of Madame Beetle’s tank, the little china bathing beauty turned her back on them, Madame Beetle stayed under the filter sponge. Everything seemed stupid. I walked about from room to room, took books from shelves and put them back, dug up old letters and read lines here and there.
The place seemed suddenly intolerably full of things. The cupboards were bursting with clothes and shoes I’d never wear again, the drawers were full of rubbish, the files choked with defunct correspondence.
I began to thin out my belongings, tied up clothes in bundles, stacked old newspapers, filled carrier bags with what had filled the drawers. Then I felt exhausted, had some lunch, drank coffee, smoked.
I didn’t want to be in my flat for the rest of the day. I put some paper in a file envelope and went to the British Museum. I sat on a wooden bench on the porch. Pigeons and tourists were active all round, the sunlight seemed tolerable there. I held the envelope on my lap, feeling the weight and thickness of the blank paper inside. I closed my eyes, thought of all the years of Gillian Vole, Delia Swallow and the other animals and birds I’d written about and drawn. They led such cosy cheerful lives, that lot. I’d written them but there no longer seemed a place in their world for me.
With my eyes closed I could still see the sunlight. For a moment I saw ocean, sharp and real, the heaving of the open sea, the sunlight dancing in a million dazzling points. The turtles would be swimming, swimming. It had been a good thing to do and not a foolish one. Thinking about the turtles I could feel the action of their swimming, the muscle contractions that drove the flippers through the green water. All they had was themselves but they would keep going until they found what was in them to find. In them was the place they were swimming to, and at the end of their swimming it would loom up out of the sea, real, solid, no illusion. They could be stopped of course, they might be killed by sharks or fishermen but they would die on the way to where they wanted to be. I’d never know if they’d got there or not, for me they would always be swimming.
I was in my ocean, this was the only ocean there was for me, the dry streets of London and my square without a fountain. No one could make me freer by putting me somewhere else. I had as much as the turtles: myself. At least I too could die on the way to where I wanted to be. Gillian Vole! Not enough, not nearly enough.
I took paper out of the envelope, took a pen out of my bag. What was there to write? Anything, everything:
Madame Water-Beetle lived in a plastic shipwreck in a tank by the window. In the same tank lived seven red snails. The snails did the snail work and she did the beetle work.
The perversity of the human mind! I folded the sheet in half, put a fresh one on top of the stack, sat there with it blank for a long time. I wished I had somewhere to go besides my flat. Somewhere bright and empty with uncluttered shadows, somewhere not crusted with years of me. Like George’s place.
47 William G
Sandor stopped in bed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and for those three days I found the bath and cooker clean every morning. If he used the cooker at odd times when I was out there was no evidence of it. Maybe Mrs Inchcliff was looking after him. And of course he wasn’t buying fresh supplies of squid and seaweed while he was laid up. Maybe he was cooking things that left no trace. I wasn’t quite interested enough to visit him again.
Friday he was up and about again. The bath was almost clean, only a hair or two. The cooker was just that tiny bit mucky but without the usual smell. Well, I couldn’t make a career of it really. The two fights had been sufficient satisfaction, or almost. I could fight Sandor every day and maybe even win now and again by foul means if not fair but I had no way of forcing him to clean the bath and the cooker.
At the shop Harriet and I were polite to each other. It had come to that. Instead of brushing against each other and touching as often as possible we now avoided contact like thieves wary of a burglar alarm. With no prospect of getting her clothes off again I found the thought of her naked charms vivid in my mind from time to time but I didn’t want to be half of the ‘We’ who did this and that and were invited here and there. I didn’t want to be expected anywhere as a regular thing. I didn’t fancy any more early music either, and there were still two recitals left in the series we’d subscribed to. I’d give her the tickets, she could find someone else to go with easily enough.