Collected Stories (27 page)

From the window he watches her go, and is happy that at least her determination hasn’t gone. There is, though, nothing left of their innocence.

Baxter digs a hole in the garden and throws in the odoriferous paint pot and saucers. To avoid his neighbour, he will have to be sure to look both ways and hurry when leaving the house.

He gets the boy up and lies on the floor with him. The kid crawls about, banging a wooden spoon on a metal tray, a noise which delights him, and keeps away all flies. He seems unaffected by the strange tensions around him. Every day he is different, full of enthusiasm and curiosity, and Baxter doesn’t want to miss a moment.

He looks up to see the Operative waving through the window. Baxter has never seen him so genial.

‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’ve nabbed some of the latest development and rushed it straight to you.’ He puts several tins of a sticky treaclish substance on the table. ‘It’s a free sample.’

Baxter pushes him towards the door. ‘Get out.’

‘But –’

‘Pour the tins over your head!’

‘Don’t shove! You’re giving up, are you?’ The Operative is enraged but affects sadness. ‘It is a common reaction. You think you can shut your eyes to it. But your wife will never stop despising you, and your child will be made sick!’ Baxter lunges at him. The man skips down the steps. ‘Or have you got a solution of your own?’ he sneers. ‘Everyone thinks that at some time. But they’re deceived! You’ll be back. I await your call but might be too busy to take it.’

When Baxter’s wife returns they sit attentively opposite one another and have a keen discussion. The visit to her friend has animated her.

‘She and the house and the children were immaculate and practically gold-plated, as usual. I kept thinking, I’m never going to be able to bring the subject up. Fortunately the phone rang. I went to the bathroom. I opened her closet.’ Baxter nods, understanding this. ‘She loves clothes, but there was virtually nothing in there. There were powders and poisons in the bottom.’

‘They’ve been married six years,’ says Baxter.

‘He’s lazy –’

‘She’s domineering –’

‘He’s promiscuous –’

‘She’s frigid –’

‘Just shut up and listen!’ She continues, ‘The rich aren’t immune but they can afford to replace everything. When I brought up the subject she knew what I was talking about. She admitted to a slight outbreak – from next door.’ They both laugh. ‘She even said she was thinking of making a radio programme about it. And if there’s a good response, a television investigation.’ Baxter nods. ‘I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it. There’s this man they’ve found. All the top people are using him.’

‘He must be expensive.’

‘All the best things are, and not everyone is too mean to pay for it. I’m not ready to go back to work, but Baxter, you must.’

‘You know I can’t find a job.’

‘You must stop thinking you’re better than other people, and take anything. It’s our only hope. They’re living a normal life, Baxter. And look at us.’

Once he loved her tenacity. He thinks of how to close this subject.

‘What will I wear?’

‘You can go to my mother’s in the morning and change there, and do the same in the evening.’

‘I see.’

She comes towards him and puts her face close to his; her eyes, though darkly ringed and lined now, shine with optimism.

‘Baxter, we are going to try everything, aren’t we?’

Feeling she will stand there for ever, and ashamed of how her close presence alarms him, he talks of what they might do once the contagion is over. He thinks, too, of how little people need, and how little they ask for! A touch, a hug, a word of reassurance, a moment of warm love, is all she wants. Yet a kiss is too much for him. Why is he so cruel, and what is wrong with him?

For a few weeks he thinks that by keeping away from her, by self-containment and the avoidance of ‘controversial’ subjects, she will forget this idea. But every few days she brings up the subject again, as if they have both agreed to it.

One night when he leans back, the new cushion disintegrates. It is a charred pile. He jumps up and, standing there, feels he will fall over. He reaches out and grabs the curtains. The entire thing – gauze, he realises – comes apart in his hand. The room has darkened; shadows hang in menacing shapes; the air is thick with flies; the furniture looks as though it has been in a fire. Flies spot his face; his hair turns sticky and yellow even as he stands there. He wants to cry out but can’t cry out; he wants to flee but can’t flee.

He hears a noise outside. A quarrel is taking place. Crouching below the windowsill, he sees the bearded man on the doorstep of his own house, shouting to be let in. A window opens upstairs and a suitcase is flung out, along with bitter words and sobs. The bearded man eventually picks up the suitcase and walks away. He passes Baxter’s house pulling the wheeled case. Certain that Baxter is watching, he waves forlornly at the window.

Baxter feels that if the plague is to be conquered it is unreasonable of him not to try everything. Even if he doesn’t succeed he will, at least, have pleased his wife. He blames and resents her, and what has she tried to do but make him happy and create a comfortable home? No doubt she is right about the other thing: in isolation he has developed unreasonably exalted ideas about himself.

But he goes reluctantly to work. The other employees look at him knowingly the day he goes in to apply for the job. It is exhausting work, yet he soon masters the morose patter, and his body becomes accustomed to the physical labour. The spraying is unpleasant; he has no idea what effect the unavoidable inhalation of noxious gases will have. Seeing all the distressed and naive couples is upsetting at first, but he learns from the other men to detach himself, ignore all insults and concentrate on selling as many packs as possible in order to earn a high commission. The Operatives are a cynical and morose group who resemble lawyers. None of the many people who need them will insult these parasites directly – they can’t survive without them. But they can never be liked.

Baxter and his wife have more money than before, but to afford the exceptional Exterminator they must save for much longer and do without ‘luxuries’. Baxter is hardly at home, which improves the atmosphere during the day. But there is something he has to do every night. When his wife and baby are asleep he turns off the light, sinks to his knees and turns onto his back on the living-room floor. There, as he hums to himself, working up a steady vibration from his stomach, moths graze on his clothes, in his hair, and on his closed eyes. It is a repellent but – he is convinced – necessary ritual of accustomisation. He tells himself that nothing can be repaired or advanced but only accepted. And, after acceptance, there will occur a liberation into pure spirit, without desire, a state he awaits with self-defeating impatience. Often he falls asleep here, imagining that the different parts of himself are being distributed by insects around the neighbourhood, or ‘universe’ as he puts it; he regards this as the ultimate compliance. His wife believes that his mind has been overrun.

One morning a youngish man in a black suit stands at the door. Baxter is surprised to see he carries no powders, illuminated electrifying poles, squirters, or even a briefcase. His hands are in his pockets. Gerard sits down, barely glancing at the chewed carpet or buckets of powder. He declines an offer to look in the wardrobe. He seems to know about it already.

‘Has there been much of this about?’ Baxter asks.

‘In this street? A few cases.’

Hope rushes in again from its hiding place. Baxter is almost incoherent. ‘Did you cure it? Did you? How long did it take?’

Gerard doesn’t reply. Baxter goes and tells his wife she should talk to Gerard, saying he has a reassuring composure. She comes into the room and looks Gerard over, but she cannot bring herself to discuss any of their ‘private matters’.

Baxter, though, tells Gerard the most forbidden, depressing and, particularly, trivial things. Gerard likes this stuff the most, persuading Baxter to see it as an aperture through which to follow the labyrinth of his mind. After, Baxter is more emotional than he has ever been, and wheels about the flat, feeling he will collapse, and that mad creatures have been released in the cage of his mind.

When Gerard asks if he should come back, Baxter says yes. Gerard turns up twice a week, to listen. Somehow he extends Baxter’s view of things and makes unusual connections, until Baxter surprises himself. How gloomy one feels, explains Baxter, as if one has entered a tunnel which leads to the centre of the earth, with not an arrow of light possible. Surely this is one’s natural condition, human fate, and one can only instruct oneself to be realistic? The wise will understand this, and the brave, called stoics by some, will endure it. Or is it very stupid? suggests Gerard. He turns things around until revolt seems possible, a terrifying revolt against one’s easy assumptions.

Baxter begins to rely on Gerard. His wife, though, resents him. Despite all the ardent talk, the flat remains infested. She claims Gerard is making Baxter self-absorbed, and that he no longer cares about her and the baby.

Baxter wonders about Gerard too. Does this man know everything? Is he above it all? And why is he expending his gifts on Baxter without asking for money? Why should the ‘clean man’ be immune from the contagion? What can be so special about him?

One time the Operatives bring up the subject in the canteen. Baxter, who normally pays no attention to their conversations, looks up. ‘There are people now who think they can talk the contagion away,’ they scoff. ‘Like people who think they can pray for rain, they won’t accept it is a biological fact of nature. There is nothing to be done but await a breakthrough.’

Baxter wants to ask Gerard why he is interested in these conversations, but it soon ceases to matter. Something is different. Gerard has aroused in him a motivating desperation. At night he no longer lies on the floor being devoured. He paces, yes; but at least this is movement, and nothing will stick to him. There is something still alive within him, in both of them, which the flies have been unable to kill off.

Near dawn one night Baxter wakes up and can’t go back to sleep. In his cot the boy sucks at his bottle. Baxter places his finger in the boy’s fist; he holds his father tight. Baxter waits until he can withdraw without waking him. From the cot he takes a little wooden rattle. He dresses in silence, puts the rattle in his pocket, and walks towards the wardrobe. It is a while since he has poked at anything in there. It seems fruitless now.

He steps out onto the street. As he goes past the bearded man’s house and that of his female neighbour he sees a black cloud in the sky ahead of him. There will be a storm, no doubt about it. Soon he is lost, but he keeps his eyes on the cloud, making his way through narrow streets and alleys; he traverses wide roads and, eventually, crosses the river, trying to think of what, yet, might be done. He sees other men who are, perhaps, like him, travelling through the night with mementoes in their pockets, searching for different fears; or popping out of doorways to stand still and stare upwards, thinking of too much to notice anyone, before walking determinedly in one direction, and then in another.

The cloud, as he walks towards it, seems to explode. It separates and breaks up into thousands of tiny fragments. It is a cloud of flies which lifts and breaks, sweeping upwards into the indifferent sky.

Can you hear me? No; no one can hear me. No one knows I am here.

I can hear them.

I am in a hotel room, sitting forward in a chair, leaning my ear against the wall. In the next room is a couple. They have been talking, amicably enough; their exchanges seem slight but natural. However, their voices are low; attentive though I am, I cannot make out what they are saying.

I recall that when listening through obstructions, a glass can be effective. I tiptoe to the bathroom, fetch a glass, and, holding it against the wall with my head attached, attempt to enhance my hearing. Which way round should the glass go? If people could see me crouched like this! But in here I am alone and everything is spoiled.

This was to be my summer holiday, in a village by the sea. My bag is open on the bed, a book of love poetry and a biography of Rod Stewart on top. Yesterday I went to Kensington High Street and shopped for guidebooks, walking boots, novels, sex toys, drugs, and Al Green tapes for my Walkman. I packed last night and got to bed early. This morning I set my alarm for six and read a little of Stanislavski’s
My Life in Art
: ‘I have lived a variegated life, during the course of which I have been forced more than once to change my most fundamental ideas …’

Later, I ran in Hyde Park and as usual had breakfast in a café with my flatmates, an actress and an actor with whom I was at drama school. ‘Good luck! Have a great time, you lucky bastard!’ they called, as I headed for the station with my bag over my shoulder. They are enthusiastic about everything, as young actors tend to be. Perhaps that is why I prefer older people, like Florence, who is in the next room. Even as a teenager I preferred my friends’ parents – usually their mothers – to my friends. It was what people said of their lives that excited me, the details of their description, rather than football or parties.