In Another Country (17 page)

On the corridor, like the cold itself, it struck the Canon into the heart that he must on no account fall and be crippled. I have to dance, he said to himself. From now on I have to be able to dance. He concentrated hard: over the missing floorboards, step by step down the escalade of ice, through the litter of hurtful debris in the yard. Fay watched for him, lighting where his hands and feet must go.

On the street what they heard first was a yowling of drunks from the marketplace, then sirens, some hastening away, others hastening near. The stars pulsed as though cold were their breath and sustenance, they throbbed like a power, like the dynamo of the remotest orders of life. You go that way, said Fay, pointing up the hill. And you? Through there, she answered, pointing across the street down towards the river. I'll see you around, she said. Yes, he answered. I'll be looking out for you.

That evening, having written a letter to his bishop and made an announcement to his wife, the Canon, unbearably restless, found a torch and his most suitable shoes and went out. At the iron gates he skulked till no passerby was near, then slipped quickly through into the yard. He was in a hurry, he tripped and skidded, till he mastered himself and concentrated on the guiding thought of the night before. He climbed the first steps very slowly, exulting that he had it in him to re-enter the dream alone. In the vestibule, standing below the hanging swords of ice, he took time to follow some sportsmen and captains by name from school to war, from one roll of honour to the next. This fortified him in his determination to stay alive. With pedantic caution, step by step, gripping the brackets, he climbed to the landing and the corridor. And there was the barricade—but with no gangway. He stepped from joist to joist, then over the desks, chairs and the toilet door. Only now did he wonder why he had come to find Goat. Why had he not roamed the streets in the hope of finding Fay? He knocked, no answer, he entered. There in the hearth squatted a dwarfish man with long arms and very bright eyes. The fire was blazing. He was feeding it pages and pages of pencilled script. Goat's gone, he said. It's my place now. You Little Harry? the Canon asked. A nod. And where has he gone? Dunno. To hell, I hope. Those pages, the Canon said, they his? They was, said Little Harry. They're for my fire now. Faster and faster he dealt them into the flames. The writing sped up the chimney like black butterflies. Give me the rest, will you? the Canon said. Little Harry shook his head. Silly fucker was always scribbling. I'll pay you, said the Canon. Too late, said Little Harry. They were all gone. His book, the Canon asked, he had a new black book. This here? said Little Harry, fetching it out from under him. That there, said the Canon. A tenner? Fifteen, said Little Harry. Hail Mary, the fucker's gone to hell. Tell his tart to visit me, will you?

It was a week before the Canon saw Fay. He sat in a café in the marketplace, watching. When they closed he sat on the steps under the horse. Then very late and the cold no less she came up unseen and sat beside him and took his hand. Goat's gone, he said. I know, she said. I got you his book, he said. See how much he wrote that night. I haven't read them of course. They'll be for you. She opened the book and closed it again at once. Little Harry hopes he fell through a hole. He laughed like the devil when he told me that.

Between then and Easter Fay and the Canon were often seen together in the marketplace café, in one or two of the rougher pubs or on the street just walking along. She still did her soup run. She even visited Little Harry. I can't pick and choose, she said. Walking on the streets with the Canon she would usually take his arm and he, everybody said, looked rather lost without her. Whenever he sat reading or doing a crossword or stood or walked, he looked always to be waiting for her. They were an odd couple; but that northern town had more than a few eccentrics and, had they been let, Fay and the Canon would have done okay. Were their relations carnal? Some said certainly yes, others certainly no, and both camps said you could tell at a glance was it yes or no. All agreed that when Fay and the Canon sat together in a café or a pub they had plenty to discuss. Plotting something, so it looked. In fact Fay had an idea for a piece of agitprop or a happening, she was unsure what to call it but if it were carried through it could not fail to make a difference. Her idea was to gather together five thousand of the county's deserving and undeserving poor, the feckless and the unlucky, the hundreds thrown on skid row by the wars, the rationalizations and the closures. And she, accompanied by the Canon, would play them into the cathedral with her pipe, interrupting choral evensong and occupying the place. Once settled in, they would dance, sing, recite poetry, tell stories, stage plays—and paint banners under which to march out in their own good time and carry the movement into all the cathedral cities. But even as they discussed this venture in ever-greater detail the absence of Goat became so palpable their spirits lapsed and they sat and looked at one another dejectedly. I often think he'll pop up again, said the Canon.

The Canon's wife had gone south; he had been evicted from his church house but was living comfortably enough in a bedsit with a view of the railway line.

The cold ended, the river flooded, great trees and dead sheep jostled with floes of dirty ice in the town's lower streets. Bluecoats is a wonder, said Fay, but he hadn't the heart to go and look. Easter was early, so sweetly persuasive with its mildness, snowdrops and blackthorn. Demolition began, the school was trucked away. The Canon found Fay wandering in tears among the market stalls. Goat, his poor remains, had been found in the basement. He had fallen through two floors. In a shroud, they said, curled in a black shroud, otherwise naked. After that Fay and the Canon pooled their funds and began living together but it didn't last long.

In the home just inside the halo of the M25 when anyone knocked at the Canon's door, they heard first, very loudly, Fuck off! Then, very softly, Unless it's you. They went in anyway and it was never you. But he told whoever it was, a doctor, a vicar, a Filipino nurse, that his family, hearing he intended to remarry, fearing he would father better children and anxious to secure for themselves his small estate, had kidnapped him and locked him in a room in hell. And at any least flicker of human interest he would tell the whole story of Goat and Fay, the fabulous cold, the rust- and copper-coloured falls of ice, the dance, the unleashing of the waters. The story was an ever-increasing wonder to him. I shake my head at myself when I'm shaving and I think of it, he said.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memorial

 

 

 

C
aradoc's memorial service was a poor thing. In the little church there were more empty spaces than people. No one still studying at the College had known him. His surviving colleagues had never much liked him. He had published very little and on subjects they found distasteful. His rooms were in a separate house
—
a
petite maison
, the scurrilous called it
—
in the College grounds, and there was bitter wrangling over who should have them now. But the Master, new to the place and wishing to say something kind about him, ascertained that, by general agreement, he had been a good teacher; though even this, by the tone of voice in which it was conceded, sounded a rather louche achievement. Still the Master felt able to say publicly that Caradoc would be remembered with affection and gratitude by generations of undergraduates of the College.

There was tea in the refectory afterwards, but few wanted it. Most hurried away through the graveyard to their own affairs.

Odd among those attending were a man and a woman, obviously foreign, perhaps in their late fifties. They stood arm in arm at the very back of the church, the woman entirely in black, the man in a black suit and tie with a dazzlingly white shirt. They looked to be honouring an old code of conduct. Both were on the stout side with round and candid faces. They were weeping, their faces shone with tears. They stood arm in arm and, perhaps out of deference, let all the congregation leave before them. All saw their helpless faces, and looked away quickly.

It was warmer outside. The graveyard had leafed and flowered; it wore the scents of hawthorn and roses; in its silence there was birdsong. The foreigners stood in the porch. The man dried his wife's cheeks with a large white handkerchief, then dried his own. They stood there, at a loss.

From opposite ends of the graveyard, walking very deliberately, ignoring or not even noticing one another, two men approached them. Met on the flagged path, and faced them. They were perhaps in their late forties. Gino? said one. Lucia? said the other. The fair pronunciation of the names gave Gino and Lucia more hope than the two Englishmen, who introduced themselves as old pupils of Caradoc, could fulfill. But the four went out of the graveyard, turned left and in a café on the corner had tea and did their best to have a conversation.

Gino and Lucia spoke as if by force of wishing it they must be understood. They spoke in turn, a duet it sounded like, melodious, abundant, each heartening the other to remember and utter more. Their faces were so open, eyes and hands so expressive, it felt that in the transaction very little was being lost. Both Englishmen were thinking, How it comes back to you! Their stock, being revived, becoming more copious and useful.

Then quite suddenly it was over. Lucia began to weep again. Gino took out his large white handkerchief. The gist was easy to grasp: she had wanted him to die in her house, she had wanted to look after him to the end, she had wanted him in the little graveyard from where the snow, the fume and sometimes the creeping fires of Etna were to be seen by anyone looking up from tending a grave.

They waited together for the London bus. Lucia had a sister in Hillingdon. They would stay there the night. Then go home. Caradoc's old pupils waved them goodbye.

Then what? Neither asked. Heads down, side by side, they returned to the graveyard and found a seat against the far wall in a mild sunlight.

 

The taller of the two men began: It
was
you that night, wasn't it? But for answer he got a question: It
is
Jay, isn't it?

It was. I took a new name years ago. Thought it might change things.

Did it?

No. So just as well call me Jay. And you're Daniel, or you were then, and it was you that night. You and a girl called Merryn.

Yes, I still am. And it was us. We sat on this wall
—­
nodding behind him
—
and looked out over there
—
nodding forwards
—
at his room where the lights were burning.

Thus introduced, they glanced sideways at one another, for a glimpse of the old faces. Then resumed, hands in their dark-suit pockets, staring forwards to the opposite wall of the graveyard, the five yew trees along it, the little gate in it, the College behind it, and the house and the room that had been Caradoc's.

Yes, said Daniel, we were out most nights, so it seems to me now, getting locked in, getting locked out, climbing over walls and fences, wading the rivers. The rules being what they were back then, we kept off the empty streets and browsed through the parks and gardens. The rules in those days being so ridiculous, if you fell in love and meant it, you went feral, there was no other way, you spent your days sleepwalking and at nights you trespassed. How we trespassed! And to get together in my narrow bed, under the maps that papered the sloped ceiling, what routes we had to negotiate quiet as mice through the grown-ups' private pleasaunces. And what risks to share an innocent black coffee on a roof under Orion who had seen many such as us but liked us specially, we fancied.

I didn't much like you when you arrived that night.

It was her idea, not mine. Back there
—
again the nod
—
they were pulling the Gothic mansions down to raise up blocks of science and we got in through the ruins, into the gardens, to steal their stocks and roses. We had armfuls, lupines too, and peonies and hollyhocks, and though we lost some climbing we still had enough for a wedding and a funeral when we got ourselves comfortable on that wall and she made me tell her again about Caradoc and Italy. I had told her before, but it was in bed and she fell asleep. I carried on. She slept and woke and slept and my voice went babbling on. It was then that I learned you don't need the whole story. Falling asleep and missing some, coming in later, forgetting where you were, loveliest is the voice, the bits and pieces of the story running on and on. But wide awake that night on the wall and staring at his lighted window she insisted I tell it to her again, at least an episode.

Tell some now, said Jay.

Did he never tell you?

Maybe. But tell some again. It's different, his telling it and yours. And different down the years.

He said he'd be passing through Florence at the end of June. Let's say the 30
th
, he said. Be there, he said, and I'll pick you up. Be there waiting at let's say nine in the morning under Michelangelo's
David
(though I much prefer Donatello's) and I'll pick you up and take you as far as Rome. So there I was, and there he came, as the clocks struck nine, strolling across the square, smiling and looking very relaxed.

Yet here, said Jay, the buildings are as beautiful, the great domes and spires, the warm stone, the lanterns waiting for darkness, but did you ever see Caradoc in this place strolling and looking relaxed? Scarcely ever on the street at all.

I saw him once, said Daniel, soon after he had become my tutor, walking very quickly, almost scurrying, along the Broad and into the Turl. How strange he looked, out of place. I said to Merryn that it was like seeing a god, come down and managing the best he could. That was one of the first things I told her about him and it made her curious. Like a god, so out of place. But now I suppose I'd have to say he looked more like a man with a phobia, who couldn't bear daylight, traffic, the touch of people. I guess he was dashing to the indoor market, to the couple of familiar stalls, for a small shoulder of lamb, some cheeses, some fruit, to entertain a guest. I didn't accost him then or follow him, only watched, strangely intrigued and moved. It took me years to see that in the generosity of his entertaining must be included the effort it cost him to go out on the street and make a few purchases like any normal citizen.

But that night I sat on the wall here with Merryn and I tried to tell her what it felt like walking the streets of Florence with him, my teacher, my friend, become almost strange to me again because we were abroad and he was in his element and knew so much and imparted it in abundance, lightly. I didn't think of it then, it comes to me now, only now that he's dead and I'm sitting here looking at his room with you and the wall is behind me where I sat with her, this minute here and now it comes to me clearly what I felt that morning then. It was the rush of learning. It was the gathering force of the pentecost of learning blowing through me body and soul. Things he showed me then, enabled me to see and to go on seeing and see more and more elsewhere and down the years when he would not be there to show them. It was the continuation of his teaching in that room, his asking me questions, his clever inducing me to answer back, his getting me to ask and answer better, and his own questions and answers that would never let me rest. And the bottle of wine he bought, swelling in its straw basket, the cheese, the bread, the olives, the black grapes, his easy manners, how they liked him at the market stalls, how amiable he was and fluent in the language I had a few poor phrases of. I stood aside bashful, wanting one day to do likewise. I wanted his knowledge. Somewhere, nowhere, some remnant of the land of pastoral, we pulled off the road and picnicked under an olive tree. And that night in a restaurant in Orvieto he asked the waiter
—
yes, a very pretty boy
—
to tell him exactly how the little fish were cooked. And said pears were the fruit to eat with that particular pecorino cheese.

Yes, yes, said Jay. And eating pears and pecorino is like reading let's say Ronsard or Montaigne.

You ingest something. And being with a man at ease is a great gift in itself. He was bounteous to me.

So Merryn sitting up there with you and hearing all this and more thought she must meet the man and see for herself the way he worked.

She saw the light on. I said that was his room.

I was at the window. Perhaps you didn't see me. Certainly I had no wish to be seen. But I saw you two in the moonlight on the other side of these tombs up there sitting on the wall with your armfuls of flowers. I was thinking how unlike me you were. Caradoc was in his armchair behind my back. We were listening to Farantouri though neither of us knew a word of Greek. Listen, he had said, how she holds the lines
—
so steady. And I couldn't understand a word but I was listening well, if you know what I mean, truly in the heart, and looking at you two out there on the wall. And my loneliness welled up in me again and I could not see you for tears. Then came a knock at the door. I glanced at Caradoc. He raised his eyebrows. It was gone midnight. But he went and opened and there you were, like children with your silly flowers.

There was more, you see. I had told her more. In the end she could not bear not to know the man. I had told her that when we got to Rome and into the hotel and when he had gone out for a while, I don't know why, I began to be afraid. There were two beds, you see, but they were pushed together to be almost like one. In Orvieto they were far apart. But seeing the situation in that hotel in Rome I began to feel afraid that he would want to make love to me
—
though until then, and I don't just mean on the journey, I mean in all the months of my getting to know him, in the tutorials and going back later, quite late at nights, to his room up there, to carry on talking and drink a glass or two, in all that time and on all those private occasions, not once did he touch me unlawfully, as you might say, nor even make any suggestion, though, if I'm honest, I did quite often think he would. But in that room in Rome I was suddenly afraid, seeing the beds so close they looked like one, and I did a very bad thing: I pulled them apart, I made a gap between them, they were heavy to move, I felt very ashamed and foolish. And no sooner was I finished than Caradoc came back in and saw at once what I had done and a look went over his face, very hurt but then at once forgiving. And all he said was, Time for bed, I think. Would you like to use the bathroom first? When I came in again, carrying my few clothes in a bundle, he was reading a newspaper and didn't look out. And I was in my bed and turned away when he came back to his. We lay in the dark side by side with that ridiculous gap between us. He said good night to me and I said good night to him. Then after a little while, as though talking to nobody, he began telling me about Gino, how they had met in a bar in Naples where the conscripts hung out, Gino was working there, and how he had loved him at once and that same night they had found a place they could stay together. More and more, about the family in a village near Catania, the mother and father whom Gino soon very proudly introduced him to, their poverty, the struggle, their hopes in Gino, who was studying to be an engineer. And it was like with Merryn when I made up stories for her or when I told her the picaresque tale of Caradoc and the student engineer from a mafia village under Etna, I fell asleep listening, woke half-listening, slept again and he was still talking in the dark to me or to the ceiling. Next morning it was late and sunny before I woke and Caradoc had gone. I went down to the desk and they told me
il professore
had left an hour ago. They were gentle, they thought their thoughts, he was a familiar guest. They spoke slowly to me, they seemed to fear I would be sad. He was gone and had paid for two more nights in the room, so I should stay and get to know the city. And it was then that Merryn threw down her flowers, down into the graveyard, close by this seat, and took mine from my arms and threw them down after. And I did as she told me to: hung by my hands and dropped and stood below reaching up for her in her sandals, her bit of a skirt, her schoolgirly knickers, because she said the flowers had to be for him and for no one else, this teacher of mine, this faithful lover. I'm sorry now for intruding on you. But it had to be.