Read Somewhere Beyond Reproach Online
Authors: Tim Jeal
Somewhere Beyond Reproach (7 page)
I had little difficulty in choosing what to give Andrew. My memory of the toy soldiers I had once possessed and the guns I had aimed at them decided me to give much the same to him.
When I got home to my flat I examined my purchases more carefully: a particularly fine tank and some larger than standard-sized toy soldiers in modern battle dress. I looked at them and, as I did, recaptured exactly the feeling of pride I should have experienced to possess them at Andrew’s age. No; these would not be sent back without a very
considerable
fuss. The tank was beautifully made, powered by electricity and able to fire small metal dummy shells. I was specially impressed with the spring-loading mechanism. I looked at the construction of the thing. It almost appeared to have been made in sections like the real article; rivet marks were clearly visible. The detail picked out on the soldiers’ firearms was exact. Their toecaps were shinier than the rest of their boots. I had bought a dozen of them.
My lack of concern for my domestic environment at that time has been reflected in these pages by lack of reference to it. I then lived in a flat just south of Kensington Gardens. The block had probably been put up in the early thirties. I had been lazy about the furnishing of my half a dozen or so rooms. I had had fitted carpets all over the flat except in the kitchen. I had not taken the trouble to choose different colours. A uniform grey covered the whole floor area. I had been equally lazy about the curtains: all these were a warm yellow ochre. The effect, if monotonous, did not
displease me. I had not bothered to furnish my second
bedroom
or the hall. The sitting room contained a black
leather-covered
sofa and two arm-chairs to match. A white
marble-topped
table, nothing much else. I lived alone. What point is there in living in a beautiful house if there is nobody you care about enough to show it to?
I took the tank and several of the soldiers out into the long thin hall. At one end I placed two soldiers; I walked to the opposite end and knelt down with the tank. I loaded, looked down the barrel and fired. One of the soldiers toppled. I fired again. The other rolled over. I looked at the tank with even greater satisfaction.
I wondered what Simpson’s attitude to these deadly toys would be. I started to hum ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ as I packed them up.
That afternoon I rang up the Simpson flat, as had previously been arranged. Andrew answered. His mother had already gone out. I put down the receiver and snatched up my parcel.
I was outside the well-known mansions within quarter of an hour. The hall was at least clean. On a large sham-Jacobean table the letters of the residents living in flats 18 to 36 were placed. Simpson’s flat was 23. I crossed the tiled floor and got into the antiquated lift. The doors were heavy and stiff. The sides of the lift were decorated with marquetry work, several elephants, the odd palm tree in
different-coloured
woods.
When I got to the relevant floor Andrew was waiting outside the lift. He had evidently been watching for my car. For a moment I thought that he was not going to ask me into the flat. He turned, however, and beckoned me along the corridor, silent as a native guide not wishing to disturb hostile animals. The door was open. I looked in on an uncarpeted hall. On one side was a long table covered with comics, papers and opened letters. Beside it was a folded wheelchair. A well-filled laundry basket half blocked the floor. A towel was sticking out of one side. As we stepped over it I saw the bathroom to my right. A pulley arrangement over the bath to aid Simpson. On the shelf above the wash
basin were bottles of cream and a large assortment of
cosmetics
. Various toy boats and animals lay about on the floor. Andrew shut the door as though conscious of the direction of my gaze. The next room we passed appeared to be a study. I saw a desk and bookcase out of the corner of my eye. I would not make the mistake of seeming inquisitive again. I was led into the sitting room. At the far end was a french window leading out on to a balcony with elaborate Victorian railings. The room was light and not unpleasant. The chair covers did not match, one a bold chintz, another yellow, another olive green. A selection of worn rugs covered part of the parquet floor. Simpson would have to be careful on that surface with his stick. Andrew knelt down by the window and started to unwrap my offering. He did it
carefully
, without hurrying, as though loath to lose any of the pleasure of anticipation. I recognised the blue china vases that Dinah had once had on her mantelpiece at her old Paddington flat. These were on top of an upright piano to the left of the door. In the centre of the mantelpiece was a carriage clock in a leather case, on each side of it were matching china bowls. On a table by the french window was a large toby jug and a Chinese plate on a stand. How unlike my own home! There was something accidental about the layout of the whole room, a feeling that the objects and furniture themselves had been acquired by chance. I wondered where the bedroom was. Would there be clothes lying about, a rumpled bed? Judging by the bathroom, quite probably. Did Simpson now sleep in a separate room?
Andrew had undone his parcel. He stared in complete silence. I watched him without as much attentiveness as I had thought I would. I was more absorbed by my
surroundings
. I longed to be able to go into Simpson’s study. To read a diary, letters, anything that might tell me more about him. I regretted having caught a cold the morning I had followed him. I could smell nothing, not even catch the slightest tang of one of Dinah’s well-remembered scents. Where might she keep her letters? Where did she normally sit? How much time did she spend in this room? Did she ever
sew? Andrew had just loaded the tank. I walked over to the balcony. In spite of my cold I opened the glass balcony doors and looked over at the roofs of the houses opposite, at the doorway where I had waited for Simpson. I leant against the green-painted metal railings. I heard Andrew say:
‘I think it’s one of the nicest presents I’ve ever had.’
He came out on to the balcony and stood next to me.
‘Thank you very very much.’
‘I enjoyed choosing it,’ I replied truthfully. ‘I had a go with it myself.’
Suddenly there was the noise of the released spring.
‘Damn, I caught the catch with my sleeve.’ Andrew looked down into the street miserably. ‘It went down there. I think it’s in the gutter on the opposite side.’
‘But you’ve still got some more shells.’
‘I don’t want to lose any.’ He rushed back into the room. ‘You wait up here. I’m going down to find it.’
I could hardly believe my good fortune. As soon as I heard his feet in the corridor outside the flat, I quickly left the room and headed for Simpson’s study.
The study was dark. A single window faced on to the well in the centre of the block of flats. In this room there was a new fitted carpet, probably put in after his illness. The writing desk had a number of drawers. On top were several letters and a large office-type diary. I flicked through the pages. There was hardly anything there. The odd address, a name here and there: a purely utilitarian document. One of the letters was from his father, another I found too
time-consuming
to read. The top drawer was locked; so was the one immediately below it; the bottom drawer had a key in it. Inside were a number of typewritten pages. They didn’t seem to be in any kind of order. At the top of one I saw the words ‘Mapham Hospital’ and a date ‘November 1958’. I picked some of them out, preparing to read. I had not taken off my overcoat, which was fortunate. I heard footsteps in the corridor. He had been quicker than I expected. I picked a sheaf of papers out of the drawer and stuffed them into one of the deep pockets of my coat. I snatched up several more.
Hastily I shut the drawer and walked out into the hall. When Andrew entered the flat I was admiring a print in the hall; London Bridge in 1740. The sky was haphazardly patterned with damp spots.
‘A man in the street saw it land,’ said Andrew with relief.
I looked at my watch.
‘When does your mother get back?’
‘Crikey,’ he gasped. ‘Any minute now.’
The fire-escape led out from the bathroom. I was sorry not to have seen another room, but I had done extremely well. As I started to go down the black metal staircase, he called out:
‘Thanks.’ Then, aware that this was inadequate, ‘Thanks awfully.’
I waved. I had been instructed to use the back entrance, which led through the basement and the boiler rooms. In a dark pipe-lined corridor I bumped into a porter. ‘You can’t get out this way, sir.’
‘I was told this led out to the back.’
‘There’s builders there now, sir.’
I turned round and started to retrace my steps uncertainly.
‘I’ll show you the front way.’
‘I’m sure I can find my own …’
‘I’m going that way anyway.’
I looked at the carefully polished brass buttons on his green uniform. From his manner I guessed that he might have once been an army N.C.O. As soon as we got into the hall I saw Dinah standing in front of the Jacobean letter table. She looked up as she heard our footsteps. I couldn’t possibly risk talking to her until she had seen the presents, until I had read what was in my pocket. I side-stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the floor above Dinah’s. I had not looked at her face for more than a split second. No chance to work out whether she had recognised me. As the lift started to move, I heard the porter say: ‘Funny bloke.’ When I got out I was trembling. The palms of my hands were sticky and my mouth felt dry. I remembered my meeting in the shop years before. I forgot the fact that she had injured
me
and would probably be more embarrassed than I. Did it matter if she had seen me? I decided it was not crucial. The important thing was that I hadn’t had to talk to her. I
suddenly
realised that on the two times I had seen her I had not seen her face properly. It was impossible that time could have ravaged her in the same way as it had Simpson. I had almost purposely not thought about her. I had followed Simpson and taken some private papers inadvertently
unlocked
. I had won Andrew’s friendship, but Dinah I had kept firmly till last, unable to think about the possibility of change in her. I would have to talk to her. There could be no taking for granted a relationship based on mutual and silent communication this time. After all my planning, what then? That could not be similarly planned.
With a feeling of panic I heard her voice in the lift. She was talking to another woman.
‘… I don’t think so. I haven’t heard anyway.’
The lift gates opened on the floor beneath. I heard her high heels on the tiles of the corridor. I could go down. What hadn’t she heard? Something very ordinary, very easily explicable. Dinah Simpson, age thirty-five, housewife, mother of a nine-year-old child. Yet I was still trembling.
In the hall the porter smirked and asked me if I’d forgotten something.
‘Anyway you’ve found your own way out now.’
As soon as I got home I started to read some of the
typewritten
pages that I had ‘borrowed’. Before I write down their contents I must say that though I had been shocked by Simpson’s disability I had not thought that it obliged me to revise my plan of action. Disease, like death, is often
arbitrary
in its choice of victim. The sufferer is involved through no willed choice, so can claim no special merit, can expect no special consideration. This is perhaps too categorical. Had the picture I had been given by these papers been one of a saint I might have been impelled to try and think again.
I sat down in one of my black leather arm-chairs and started to read. The pages, as I have said, had no numbers. The contents were sometimes developed thoughts and
sometimes
isolated ideas. Whether he had written to clarify things for himself I do not know. I suspect that loneliness, and a fear of there being no point in thought without any recipient for that thought, both played their part. Boredom may well have accounted for much. I cannot pretend not to have been moved by much of what I read, to have admired. I also hated. Here then is part of what I took from that drawer.
I have been here three months. So much time for thought. It would be so easy to surrender to the routine. The tank, the parallel bars, the ramps, the arrival of food. There is no need for thought. ‘How are you today?’ The rhetorical question … only one answer expected, only one answer possible: ‘Better.’ This lack of conversation, lack of
contact
with the outside world, has helped me. I have been completely undisturbed. I have begun to resent any change
in the expected routine of the hospital. Dinah came
yesterday
. Already she comes from a very alien world. I felt tired when she left. Why do people have to be cheerful when they visit hospitals?
I can now understand why the Hebrew idea of
conversion
is more like repentance than conversion in the Christian sense.
My reading of the Old Testament has been instructive. Atonement is through sacrifice. In Isaiah we have it already. The elect must suffer. I am writing down the fifth verse of the fifty-third chapter: ‘He was wounded for our
transgressions
, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.’
When I arrived they performed a tracheotomy to stop me choking with my own mucus. They thought the nerves in my
medulla
had gone. I am better but my legs weigh so much. I know this by moving them with my hands. Only my toes are living. My legs look all right, the muscles have not yet shrunk with atrophy. I can see my body now with a strange detachment. I don’t think I ever
saw
my knees till now. I have read that men when dying feel that they are somewhere else, participating in some action. I have felt that I have been dying. It is strange now that I am better to be typing this.
It is quite easy to think of oneself as a limpet clinging to a rock. One accepts that one has no control over one’s life that is at best a fleeting one. The waves break, and one concentrates on the process of living, clinging on. It is very simple to regard the order one lives in as natural. I have done this. Only when I think of all that I have taken for granted suddenly changing, am I able to realise the
fatuity
of a life of acquisitiveness and acceptance. My life has not changed with a national revolution or a
bereavement
, simply the loss of the use of my legs.
I do not consider that people turn to religion when there is nothing else left. Or at least I grant some truth in this.
In my case my misfortune has not been the direct cause of my reorientation. My new thought is not engendered by any certainty that life without it would be unbearable. I have come upon it because I know that satisfaction with a profane life is fatuous. Here I am very much aware of the passing of time. What have I ever achieved till now?
I have put these two passages together to show the kind of contradictions which Simpson was attempting to
reconcile
. To my mind unsatisfactorily. The egotism of what I am transcribing next amazes me.
The healthy often say with scorn that sickness is God’s opportunity. They say that affliction is arbitrary. But God tortures those he loves. He tortured Abraham.
Adversity
is our test and our opportunity to see more clearly. Suffering is a warning of our inadequacy, which we may reject or choose to take. Illness shows us just how
self-sufficient
we are. Abraham was tested because God loved him. I hope that I too may prove myself worthy of his calling. Now I can no longer ask with resentment: ‘Why did this happen to me?’ I can see the connection with
sacrifice
. The king dying to bring rain, the corn rising from his blood. The seeds that fall when the flower has died so that the flower can live again. I understand the fakir’s living death upon his bed of nails. Out of his suffering he knows wisdom will come. I have been lucky to have been reminded in the way I have. I had to do so little. I can return the will, that I once considered to be mine, so easily.
I would not attempt to improve those I did not love.
Yesterday I heard some Mozart on the radio. I cried to think of the pain and poverty he had suffered, he who had given such pleasure to so many. I cried until I thought of the strength that he had found to go on with his work. I asked for a book of his letters. Today I have it. I am not surprised to see that he was a deeply religious man. He gave what he did because of suffering.
I wonder how I can ever have thought myself
self-sufficient
when I consider all the things beyond my
control
. The names I have forgotten, the things I have said by mistake, the moods I have not asked to have, the people I have not asked to love. I have never asked to be smitten with apathy, nor ever been able to predict a period of prolonged creative thought. I could drive a car, eat
without
thinking, the process in my mind continuing without my being aware of it, allowing me to think of something else. And then there is the darker side. The areas of mind that I cannot regulate at all. My fears and visions that come in the night. Excrement, monsters with human flesh, the bubbling in the guts of rotting flesh I recognise to be my own. In my hand is a gun, I am shooting,
shooting
out of fear. I am killing an animal that will not die. All these I recognise are mine, all these I did not summon. Self-sufficiency is a myth.
My right leg has swollen to almost twice its size. I am not allowed to move it. Ironically thrombophlebitis is caused by insufficient movement. They take blood from my arm every morning. I have little other than fruit juice. The leg is raised in a cradle and the fluid has started to drain to the thigh. My air cushion does little to relieve the pains round the coccyx. In spite of the frame on the end of my bed the bedclothes are still heavy. My feet are braced against boards to stop them dropping.
I assume that what follows belongs to a later period. It is understandable. It should not have made me angry and yet it did. In spite of the fact that in it I found the justification I needed, I still felt anger.
Andrew came this afternoon. I have got some
movement
back in my left leg. I shook it around to impress him with my progress. Although the movement of the actual leg is slight, the bedclothes heaved as though the leg were almost normal. We found little to say to each other. He seemed nervous and I must have appeared grumpy. I was thankful when he left. Dinah started off being ‘
marvellous
’. Her visits were frequent. The flowers and fruit in my room were abundant. Her visits now are limited
to one a week. I feel that this is through no fault of hers. Some people respond to hospital by being thankful for anything that reminds them of their
natural
life. I have seen a child in a respirator reading a Latin text book, a machine turning the pages. They yearn for visiting hours, for the gramophone record on the radio that reminds them of a holiday taken when they could walk. I have reacted very differently. While I am here I have wanted to forget everything connected with my previous life. Dinah’s visits force me to consider the order of life I considered natural and inevitable. Here I may depend on people to crank up or let down my bed, to help me into the lift to the gymnasium, and yet this is an impersonal dependence. I am more helpless but I feel more free. Now there is nothing like the need I felt for Dinah, the necessity for her presence. The self-absorption I experience here has made me more truly myself.
Three weeks ago I had a new therapist. I started by feeling no curiosity at all. Her professional attitude to me has been in perfect accord with my desire to be left alone. I was an object that was out of order and had to be put right. She treated me much as I should imagine a mechanic would a machine that had been brought in. On my way to the gym she is always with me, walking just behind as I struggle onwards with the help of my crutches. My legs are braced. If there is any danger of my falling it will be backwards. She is there to catch me. For the first time since I entered this place I feel envy, the envy of the sick for the healthy. If I take too many rests I am told to hurry. The first time I fell she reproved me: ‘I haven’t taught you how to do that yet.’ If my performance is worse than usual because I am not trying she never loses her temper. The nearest she has come to anger is irritation that I am unable to bend my knees more. I am placed on a table and she gently pulls them downwards. On these occasions the pain is terrible. I cannot, as I look at the healthy bloom on her cheeks, bring myself to scream. I try and keep up a jovial conversation as my voice falters. She has chestnut hair and green eyes. One of the nurses tells me she left her husband. She makes my Christian name sound more
formal than my surname. Jane and I are together for over three hours a day.
Last week she was away. I did not make so much
progress
. I heard her say to the therapist I had been with: ‘He does better with me.’ I feel that this is pride in her work rather than affection.
When my new brace came for the left leg it did not fit properly. For the first time I saw her angry. This has happened to other of her patients and she has not shown the same emotion.
I have begun to look forward to my sessions in the gym and in the water tank. The progress I have made in the last couple of weeks has surprised the orthopaedists. Jane is pleased with me. I think there is something personal about this. She is pleased for
me
. I do not think that her
encouragement
is now solely to get better results for the purpose of enhancing her reputation. Only now am I starting to realise that we have been working as a partnership. I feel from some of the things she has said that her earlier stony attitude was due to her sorrow for my plight. ‘Anything,’ she has said, ‘is better than showing pity for a patient.’ I have noticed several of the nurses looking at us with interest. Has she been talking about me? Dr Adams has suggested that now that I am better I should be moved to a public ward to let a more serious case have my bed. I have been touched by the way Jane has objected to this. She views my writing with interest. I am ashamed to say that I have told her I am writing a book. I wonder what she would think if she knew what I have typed. It is a standing joke in the hospital that polio does not diminish sexual feelings.
I am now able to walk with considerably greater ease. Yesterday I was allowed out into the garden for the first time. How pleasant the sun felt. I regretted not being able to kneel down and feel the grass. I walked over a hundred yards before resting. Jane and I sat on a bench in front of a large group of rhododendrons. For the first time we were really alone. The hospital was hidden behind the bushes. ‘You’ll be going home soon, if you go on like this.’
I detected some sadness. I suddenly felt something like terror at the prospect. She must have sensed this. ‘It’s never easy.’ Neither of us said anything for some moments. ‘Anyway you’ll be back with your wife and son. They’ll be surprised at what we’ve done.’ There was a time when I could think of little else but Dinah. I looked at Jane and realised that in different circumstances I could have loved her too. How much this has taught me. I know now that I am free of human dependence. I looked at Jane, who loved me I am sure. I looked at her and knew that I was free.
Had I simply taken the pages that Simpson had written about himself? Had he ever thought about what it would be like to be left alone at home? I thought of how lonely Dinah must have felt. Did he ever give this a thought while experiencing the pleasures of the mind in the delightful company of his therapist. I felt his neglect of Dinah as an insult to
me
. If I cared, why didn’t he? We’d see how much the hobbling philosopher could practise what he preached. I have chosen only the pages that seem relevant. Many of the pages had crossings out and thoughts so undeveloped as to be incomprehensible. Not once, I noticed, had Simpson complained about being in pain. At the time I read his words I did not think of this at all. Only now am I forced to concede that he was brave. Then, the omission made him seem
inhuman
.
It was four o’clock in the morning when I finished reading. My absorption had been so great that I had not noticed the acute pins and needles in my left arm until I finished.