In the Middle of the Wood (14 page)

“In the middle of the wood.” In the enchanted autumnal forest.

“Mother, are you all right?” said Linda.

“No I'm not. I want to get out of here.”

“It won't be long now,” said Linda.

This is the end, thought Ralph, this is what we have always been heading towards, this place with its frozen music, this air of the last cold. He felt angry with himself for being so afraid. After all, all the others there, apart from his mother, seemed to be enjoying themselves. He looked down into the icy chasm below and drew back. He could hear the guide talking in the distance but couldn't make out what he was saying, the chatter of alien water.

It seemed to him suddenly that he would never write again, and he felt a deep nameless sorrow. These extraordinary rounded shapes like sleeping animals, this land of gnomes, icy and bearded, was a world that he had not invented, and it belonged to a foreign frozen continent utterly beyond the power of the mind. These were not the friendly sculptures of Greece. He couldn't control it. It had its own inner music which did not belong to him. What infinite power it would need to set it in motion, like a frozen roundabout. He didn't have the energy, the enthusiasm.

His mother-in-law was still muttering to herself, and when he spoke to her she didn't answer. He was sure that she was uttering fragments of the Bible like spells: she was talking about the valley of death, green pastures. Normally he would have winked to Linda as if to say, “Listen to her”. But he didn't have any inclination to do so: he envied her in fact her simple faith. What was she seeing, thinking about? If one needed a translator to talk to the Yugoslavs, how much more did he need a translator to interpret her? Fragile and frail, she walked through the Valley of Darkness clutching the wooden rail, looking down at her feet lest she should slip on the wooden steps. Death was close to her, but as for him it was panic, darkness, that enveloped him. Like the brown worm the queue unwound itself along. Like a bandage.

And then they were back in the middle of the vast space again. And on the platform were the eerie guards in their green cloaks. How desperately he longed for the heat, the light, for the upper world above. He had a hunger for the sun which illuminated the earth, made art possible.

They took their seats on the train. As it rocked along Ralph remembered the Curtain which, just like any other curtain, hung over an overarching rock down which droplets of water fell. It was white almost to the edge, but the edge itself was brown with shades of orange and red. The Curtain wavered in front of his mind like an after-image. And alongside it there appeared frozen trees, cherry trees of ice: frozen kettles that would never boil: a shape like a cock crowing silently out of the desert of ice.

The air warmed a little as they rocketed along swaying from side to side. His mother was silent, her lips tightly locked together. Linda as usual was gazng around her with her free open stare. The train came to a halt and they climbed towards the hot dazzling sun. Then they were out of the caves completely and near a restaurant and souvenir shop.

“What about a coffee?” said Ralph brightly.

They went into the restaurant and drank their coffees and waited. It would be another half hour before the bus would leave.

“Never again,” said his mother.

“You didn't like it,” said Linda.

“Never again,” she repeated.

“What about you, Ralph?”

“Not much.”

He relished the movement around him, the heat on his head and arms and hands, the women spooning ice cream into the mouths of their children. But he was sweating furiously and he had to wipe his face over and over. It was as if he was melting. The strange terrible tiredness that was like a weight on him: these shapes that would not move: these characters that would not obey him but sat at their cold chess games: the barren script, becalmed drama: all these oppressed him.

“I thought it was beautiful,” said Linda.

As they walked to the bus her mother clung to Linda as she had clung to the railing. They saw their guide in front of them with two girls, laughing and joking.

“He should have been with us,” said his mother-in-law furiously. “He just disappeared. I've a good mind to report him.”

The day they were to leave they were up early. In fact Ralph had been counting the hours till their departure, as was his mother-in-law. This was an undecipherable land, strange and alien. The faces presented to them were masks though behind them must seethe the common emotions, griefs and joys. Ralph felt that he was returning home in complete ignorance. The foreign advertisements glared out at them from the rain that was falling. There seemed to be a scarcity of vowels in the names of the places they passed.

After they had been driven by bus to the airport they joined the queue at the duty-free shop.

“I'll take apricot brandy, and cigarettes of course,” said his mother-in-law.

A man who said he came from Glasgow told them when the plane would be leaving: it had been slightly delayed but it would leave shortly, he assured them. It seemed to Ralph that he was trying to calm himself as much as them.

They crossed the tarmac in driving rain and ascended the steep steps. After they had climbed from the airport a stewardess asked the man from Glasgow for his ticket. He searched his pockets for what seemed to be hours before he found it in his back pocket. It was crumpled up like a sweaty pound note.

“Lucky for you I found it, hen,” he said to the stewardess who smiled thinly. The carelessness of it, thought Ralph, and asked Linda if she had the tickets in her handbag. It was the fifth time since he had entered the plane.

Linda pointed the Alps out to her mother again. The latter recalled the teacher who had told her about them. “In those days,” she said, “we had to bring a kettle to school for our dinner. Imagine that.”

So that was Yugoslavia. Have I been changed in any way, thought Ralph. No, he considered. It had all been a mystery, impenetrable and closed, though the sun shone openly every day. It was a different and unknowable book. He had stared into the whiteness without shadow.

When the plane landed at Glasgow it was obvious that it had been raining there too, for the ground was green and damp. They walked from the plane into a chilly wind and stood watching their revolving cases.

Then they went to the taxi rank. The driver of their taxi helped them with their cases: the three of them looked tanned and prosperous and rich in story. Glasgow though wet and dismal seemed more solid than Porec, its tenements bigger and dirtier yet more spacious. There it was the sun that had cracked walls, here it was the rain.

The driver called the old lady “hen”. He said he couldn't believe that she was eighty and indeed she looked younger, and almost black with the sun. He unloaded their cases for them at the railway station and the old lady insisted on giving him an extra pound.

“Thanks, hen,” he said, and bowed to her as if she were a queen. She blushed with pleasure. As they waited for the train Ralph rushed over to the bookstalls and bought armfuls of magazines, newspapers, and read feverishly as if he were starving.

The train snaked north and he could see his mother-in-law visibly relaxing. Yugoslavia fell away from her like a cloak. This was her own land, reliable, solid, familiar, and reassuringly wet. Birds flew about with drenched wings. Cows grazed. The rivers teemed with water and foam.

Later they all sat in Violet's living room while their mother told her of their journey.

“The airport was called Palma but you should have seen their food. It was mishmash, and spam. You wouldn't have given it to a mouse, and they had no public toilets. They were very strange people. I think they're very close to the Russians: they thought we were spies. No, I didn't like Czechoslovakia at all. You can keep it for me, back of my hand to it.” Now and again she would go out into her garden and touch a rosebush, taking possession again. She would stand in the kitchen and touch a real loaf with wonderment. The holiday had been a dream to her. “And these caves,” she said, “they were like hell itself. I never thought I would come out alive and as for Venice you wouldn't think anything of it. It was just shops with dolls and ships in them.”

“Do you think she might visit Czechoslovakia again,” said Ralph smiling to Linda.

“I'm warning you,” said Linda smiling back.

“And there was one waiter there,” said his mother-in-law. “Looked like Calum Gray. And a big square woman. Thighs like Mrs Simpson.

“And there was a man with a gun at Palma. I thought he was going to shoot us.” As he listened to his mother-in-law it was as if they had been in two different countries. Yet what difference did it make? Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia: Pula, Palma. Reality was what the tourists made of it. He remembered the day they had visited Pula and when he had shut his eyes kaleidoscopic images had wheeled in front of him on a perpetually changing screen. Again he felt the bone-tiredness and wished to go to bed but his mother-in-law was holding court, home at last with her own household gods. The roses in the garden seemed threatening to him and the grass so tall it might devour him at any moment. He had stared deeply at the meagreness and found himself without story or legend or narrative to defend himself with. He shook with fear.

Three

W
HEN HE WOKE
up he didn't know where he was, till the nurse spoke to him. She appeared out of a darkness which had been total.

“You're fine,” she said, “fine.” Her uniform crackled about him, and her round cheerful face was bent over him.

As he lay in the bed he began to shout and swear.

“I want to phone,” he shouted. He tried to get out of bed but the nurse pushed him back.

“I'll bring you the phone,” she said. The phone was wheeled across the floor of the ward. Patients stared at him gauntly but he didn't care. He dialled and heard the phone ringing in Linda's house; he thought of it as Linda's house, not his own. It rang and rang for a long time and then he heard Linda's voice.

“I want to see you at once,” he shouted. “What are you trying to do to me? Who is there with you? I know there is someone there with you.”

“There is no one here but mother,” said Linda who sounded exhausted.

“You're lying,” he shouted. “What's this place I'm in?”

“You're in hospital.”

He grunted. “Come and see me at once.”

“Do you know what the time is?”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said do you know what the time is. It's eleven o'clock at night.”

“I don't care, I want you to come here at once.”

He was frightened that she would never come again, that she had left him in this hospital, if hospital it was, in order to get rid of him. “You've got someone there,” he shouted again. He knew that all the patients were glaring at him, that they were spying on him, but it didn't bother him. The man in the next bed was sitting up cradling his head in his hands and moaning to himself.

“If you don't come …” he shouted threateningly, and slammed the phone down. The same nurse who had brought it wheeled it away again. There was a lot of noise in the ward. Beds were being pushed across the floor making a screeching noise. Trolleys too were shifted. It seemed to him that the nurses were being deliberately noisy, that they could have lifted the beds, the trolleys. They didn't smile but looked at him in a hostile manner.

He felt that he must watch everything that happened around him very closely, and make a mental note of it. He lay in his bed for a while seething and then became so angry that he shouted for the phone again. The nurse unsmilingly brought it and he shouted again at Linda,

“I suppose you've taken the bug out of the car. That was evidence, you know. Who's been working with you. Is it someone who knows how to treat tapes? It must be. You must have met someone who knows about these things.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“That night we went for a walk I noticed that you kept away from the river so that the bug would catch what I was saying clearly. Where did you wear it or did you carry it in your handbag? Why did you take your handbag with you when you went for a walk?”

“You know I always carry my handbag.”

“Oh, I know you. You want my money. Why did you tear my telephone book? Why did you agree to marry me? That's what I want to know.”

He could hardly hear Linda's voice, it was so faint and tired. And then it occurred to him that she wasn't in the house at all, she was in the house of her fellow conspirator, the man who had fixed the tapes for her. Or she might even be in a room in this very hospital, laughing at him. There was something wrong with the phone. Her voice was very far away.

“You can't deceive me,” he shouted. “I'll tell you that. I'm brighter than you. I can work it all out. This isn't a real hospital. If it was a real hospital why is there so much noise? A hospital is supposed to be quiet.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line. “Are you consulting your friend,” he shouted. “And what are you doing to my books and manuscripts? You have plenty of time now to mess everything up. You were always jealous.”

He thought he heard the sound of weeping, but that of course was only a pretence, and he continued implacably to berate her. Her trickery was endless. It was quite clear to him that she had employed someone who knew about electronic devices. Certainly she had a lover. He pictured him as fat and heavy, a slow depraved smiling sexual man, the image of the taxi driver.

He slammed the phone down again lest she should have the satisfaction of cutting him off. The nurse wheeled it away again. The man in the next bed was still clutching his head and moaning. He was rocking with pain.

His own anger was uncontrollable. He nearly asked the nurse for the phone again but decided not to do so. Another nurse came and patted his pillow and handed him some yellow pills. He swallowed them quickly and lay in his bed thinking. All around him were enemies, he was sure of that. The nurses were only disguised as nurses, the patients
weren't real patients. It was quite hopeless. Who would listen to his story, who would believe that Linda was what she was? He would keep silent and watch. There was no one here he could talk to.

His eyes closed and he fell asleep.

When he woke in the morning it seemed to him that he felt much better. A friend of his, a teacher, whom he had asked for without remembering it, and whom Linda had asked to come and see him, arrived with newspapers. He himself had been ill in this very hospital but had recovered. He inquired how he felt, while the sun poured into the ward, among the vases with their flowers, the white beds, the polished floor.

“Better,” he said. “But there's one thing I would like you to do for me. I should like you to tell my lawyer to come and see me. I don't trust my wife. She wants to destroy me.”

“I'm sure that's not true,” said his friend.

“I know her better than you.” For some reason this was the only person he trusted though he couldn't understand when he had asked for him.

They talked for a while. His friend was a teacher in a High School. He told him how a woman had come to the school with a knife ready to attack a young teacher who had just started in the school.

“That didn't happen in the old days,” he said. “But then you're lucky. You're a writer, you can do what you want to do.”

Ralph stared at him as if he were a visitor from another world. Everyone thought that he did nothing, that his writing was a hobby, and he had long given up the intention of convincing them otherwise.

After his friend had gone he tried to read the
Scotsman
but found that he couldn't concentrate. He took twenty minutes to read one column. He almost wept with frustration, he who had read so rapidly and easily in the past. It must be the drugs, he thought, it must be the drugs. Once I finish with the drugs I will be as I always was. But he couldn't be sure that he would ever be again as he had once been. He felt elegiac, posthumous.

To live without books, that would be impossible. For what else was there? Only the random flashes of chance, only this ward of so-called nurses, with their bedpans and their thermometers. In a fury he threw the
Scotsman
away from him to the floor. A man who was making his way slowly to the bathroom clutching his dressing-gown about him, and whose face was dead white, bent and picked it up.

“Can I borrow it?” he said.

“If you like,” said Ralph. Patients walked about the ward, but didn't come to speak to him. It was of course part of the conspiracy: they wished to isolate him. There was probably nothing wrong with that white-faced man. He searched around in his locker and found cigarettes and matches. There were also sweets and fruit that Linda had probably left him and some loose money: he counted the money very carefully. It came to four pounds ten pence. There were three oranges, and two apples and four bananas. His silk dressing-gown was in there as well and his slippers.

The doctor came into the ward followed like an amiable shark by a shoal of nurses. He was a big rather fat sunny man and when he stopped at Ralph's bed he said, “Feeling better?”

“Can I have a cigarette?” said Ralph.

“Of course,” said the doctor. Ralph took a cigarette from the packet and put it in his mouth and before he could light it the doctor leaned forward and lit it for him. However in his hurry to light the match the doctor let it fall from his hand on to the pillow, leaving a mark there, before Ralph could put it out. He stared at the doctor and the mark with hatred. So this was another of their tricks. They would say that he had lit a cigarette contrary to regulations and burned the pillow. Then they would put him in a mental home,

“Sorry about that,” said the doctor. “It just shows you shouldn't be a doctor and smoke.” The nurses smiled as if the doctor had made a huge joke. They would hold the burn on the pillow against him, he knew that.

“Now then,” said the doctor jovially. “Listen carefully. I'm going to tell you a little story and I want you to answer some questions afterwards. Are you listening carefully? Good. All right then. Once upon a time there was a Mr Brown and he lived at 42 Grant Street. He had a sister called Julia who often visited him. His sister was older than him by four years and she had a family of three sons and a daughter. She usually brought them with her as she worked in a factory making tyres. She travelled by bus to see him and on this particular day which was a Monday she arrived. She found him watching television. …” He stopped as if bored with his own story. Then he said casually.

“What was the sister's name?”

“Julia.”

“Very good. How did she come to visit him?”

“By bus.”

“How many children did she have?”

“Three sons and a daughter.”

“What was Mr Brown's address?”

“42 Grant Street.”

“Very good indeed,” said the doctor. “Especially after all these drugs. Now, you remember that address. I might ask you about it again.”

He moved on, humming, accompanied by his coterie of adoring nurses. Ralph stared at the mark on the pillow and then after a while turned the pillow over so that the mark could not be seen. He had to watch what he was doing all the time. That wasn't a particularly good story, in fact it wasn't a story at all, it was a meagre plotless series of facts. What did the doctor think he was? An idiot? Suddenly he was filled with a deep grief. There was that doctor who had a job which he could do every day, a comfortable routine. And he himself was without one. Even the nurses had jobs. What a marvellous thing it was to have a job that one could do, where one didn't have to create afresh every day, invent plots, startling denouments. The ordinary world was richer, safer, than he had thought. But then he considered that the doctor wasn't a real doctor nor the nurses real nurses. After all, would a real doctor be so careless as to drop a match on a pillow or even allow him to smoke? Yet the doctor moved with such assurance, as if the ward belonged to him, the stethoscope dangling from his pocket. And he himself couldn't even concentrate on reading. Reading had been his whole life, he couldn't live without it. Tears came to his eyes as he thought of the books that he would never read again, as he thought that never again would he hear the inner hum of his mind.

A nurse came and patted his pillow and another one wheeled a trolley towards his bed in preparation for giving him a meal. For the first time, as the trolley squeaked towards him, he examined it carefully. There were only two wheels on it, two of the legs had no wheels at all. So that was why it screeched and squeaked. That was another of their tricks. That nurse had definitely wanted him to see the trolley and to see that it only had two wheels on it. It was obviously intended to make him mad, to disorientate him. He wanted to say something to the nurse about the trolley but decided not to. If he commented on things like that, they would definitely think him mad, they would tell others about his odd questions. And again why was the name of the street in the doctor's story called Grant Street? In the novel he had been working on there was a character called Grant. He had taken the name from the telephone book which had been mysteriously torn. The trickery went further back than he had thought. They were all in the plot, not only Linda but the doctor and the nurses. Even the questions had been thought out in advance. There was a beautiful symmetry in the whole business. Maybe his mother-in-law was in the plot too. She didn't like him reading all the time. She would know doctors and nurses. Perhaps there was a secret union such that they looked after each other. If someone was to be got rid of, then the mafia of doctors and nurses would gather together like a mysterious clan and do it. Who checked on them? Nobody that he knew of. People like him could be eliminated by such a mafia, members of the secret union.

He felt entirely at peace as the nurse brought food to him. There was no way in which he could outwit these people except by silence. They expected him to ask questions which would indicate that he was mad, but he would not satisfy them. He would remain buried in his deep silence, he would use exile and cunning against them, for he was on his own, there was no one to help him. And of course Linda was behind it all, like a spider. He imagined her with her fat secret lover drinking wine somewhere and talking about him, drawing the web tighter and tighter, inventing new ideas to drive him mad. Her lover must be that taxi driver. All that story about being a Catholic and having a wife and children was an invention. He and Linda and his mother-in-law were laughing behind his back even now, thinking how naive he had been while this immense plot had been spun round him. What he admired almost professionally was the perfection of the detail. They hadn't forgotten about the trolley. Of course they envied him, all of them, that was why they had decided to play this game on him. They had thought him an élitist and had isolated him. They had resented his ability to sustain himself on his own.

Perhaps that was why Linda had chosen Yugoslavia. She must have known that there would be no English language papers. It was she who had suggested that he hand over all his newspapers and magazines to the people in the hotel. The whole plot was a very intricate one, calculated precisely to deceive him. Every hero must be attacked at his weakest point and his weakness had been his capacity for creating fables, plots, while despising other people. He stared at a vase, blinded by the beauty of it all. Click after click as of the machinery in a safe was heard, elegant, complicated yet sublimely simple. All this had started a long time ago while he had been involved in writing, innocent, naive. Even the visit to the caves, to the colosseum, had been part of it, designed to drive him mad with images of hell and the underground, Orpheus and the icy Eurydice.