You Are Not A Stranger Here Page 11

  passes from the mind. But there he was, dripping rain, a dopey half smile playing across his face.

  "Come in," James said.

  Patrick hesitated, glancing at James in his bathrobe and slippers, unshaven, sensing, it appeared, that he'd wandered into something larger than expected. "Simon was worried,"

  he said. In the twilight of the hall, he narrowed his eyes. "You don't look so great. Have you been sick?"

  "Yeah. This rash, I . . . It won't go away. I've had a head cold too. I was going to call but there was some problem with the phones--in the building, I mean."

  Patrick was looking through to the living room, taking in the clothes strewn on the furniture, the mantel cluttered with jars of ointment and old prescription bottles.

  "As a matter of fact, I won't be coming back to the office. I'm moving."

  "What's this, then? Does Simon know?"

  "No. I should tell him. You see, I've decided I need to spend some time with my family, so I'm not going to stay on here. It's a bit sudden, I know." He felt himself balking at the ruse and yet beneath that feeling was a relief, an unsentimental farewell to the bond of simple honesty, to the assumptions they might ever have shared. He had occupied himself with the idea of this man's happiness and now he could cast at him a distant glance, fiddling with the truth.

  "Pardon me, I should have taken your coat," James said, suddenly all politeness. "Won't you come in and sit down?"

  "I should be getting back." His expression grew con133 fused, the expression of a man who has wandered into the wrong cinema and finds himself in the dark with strange or disturbing images.

  Before he knew what he had done, James had his hand on Patrick's cheek and was passing his thumb over the soft, freckled skin beneath his eye. "Thank you," he said, "thank you for everything."

  Blushing, Patrick turned his head away and reached back for the handle of the door. "I must go."

  He stepped down the walk to the gate and didn't turn back on the street but kept moving until he had disappeared behind the bus shelter and was gone.

  J A M E S D I D N ' T C A L L Simon. At first, he harbored a feeling of guilt, a worry he had let someone down, but as the weeks went by, his sense of the world became ever more abstract. He began to doubt that if he went to the office there would be anyone there he recognized, or who would recognize him. The doctors had said this could happen, one's memory might go, confusions could overtake you as the virus entered the brain.

  Slowly, time began to evaporate, the process swallowing whole periods of his life. He forgot Simon and the office, Patrick and the year he had spent worrying over his affections. One morning he no longer recognized the flat he was occupying and began to imagine that the real occupant might return and send him onto the street. He wandered about the unfamiliar rooms, thinking at times that he was in the yard of 134

  his childhood, crouched by the birdbath, where he would wait as dusk fell.

  There was a common nearby and he would walk there in the evening. Often, as he approached the far corner, where a bench sat empty in lamplight, he would feel nonplussed. From somewhere would come a barely audible whisper, one that vanished as soon as he stopped to listen, as a dream vanishes beneath the effort of recollection. Returning from his walk one evening he was accosted by a young woman. It was by the pedestrian crossing. She had just come over the road and was about to pass by when she came to a halt before him and looked intently at his face. She had the overlarge eyes of a lizard and a gaunt face that matched the color of her hair. She began to speak to James, asking him questions about his health, exclaiming how much weight he had lost. Did he need money? she asked. He smiled and answered the questions as best he could, hoping she would continue on her way. He had seen her at a bad time, she said, riffling through her bag to find a cigarette; things were different now, she was out of all that racket. He nodded in agreement, and this seemed to comfort her, for her hands ceased to move so rapidly, and she placed one briefly on his arm. She was sorry about everything, she said, she hadn't meant to bother him about herself. Was there nothing she could do? Politely, he declined, imagining she had mistaken him for someone else. J A M E S S AT I N a room by a window trying to read a book. It was afternoon, and outside a steady rain fell. The novel was 135

  about an old man who captivated his grandson with stories of his ancestors, drawing closer and closer to the present, until finally he was telling the boy the story of the boy's own life, and the narrative became a prophecy that frightened the listener. He read a few pages at a time, resting his eyes now and again, or just staring out onto the street. There, shawled women queued for the bus and old men with their caps pulled down hung in doorways, waiting for the rain to pass. Their silhouettes appeared fuzzy, blurred by the weather, their dark shoes blending with the wet pavement until it seemed to James as though they were sinking in mud. He shook his head a bit and returned his attention to the page. But he had lost his place in the story and he found himself reading the same sentences over and over until the words made no sense at all. He put the book down and, looking out, was transfixed by what he saw: his father standing across the street, gazing up at the window. He was in his blue suit, his arms hanging straight at his sides, the corners of his mouth turned down. Motionless, he stared at James, who felt as though heavy cables were being cast from the sockets of his father's eyes over the street and through the window until they wrapped themselves around his skull. He rushed to the window and put his hands against the pane, but when he looked again, the figure was gone, dissolved into the rectangles of concrete and the soot-stained wall behind. It was later that day that he fainted, standing over the sink with a glass of water in his hand. He saw the counter begin to move quickly to one side, then blackness. When he came around he was lying on his back on the linoleum floor. The 136

  room was dark, and by the projection of car headlights sloping across the ceiling, he could tell it was dark outside as well. He lay there awhile, listening to the cars pass, and farther off the sound of jumbo jets descending to earth. When he moved to rise, he found he had no strength in his arms, and shifting about on the hard floor, realized he was lying in a pool of sweat. For a moment, panic gripped him and he felt he might scream. But just as it had arisen, so it passed, and he stared again at the sloping lights on the ceiling. Gently, images flowed before his mind, and the inscrutable enormity of remembered life washed back over him, leaving him weightless and expectant. He thought of Stockwell, and the exhilaration he had felt on winter afternoons when games were through, running back over the fields to where the parents waited in their heated cars. And he thought of his sealed letters gathered on the living room shelf. He was calm. Soon he would be home again, resting beside his father's grave, just as the minister's letter had promised.

  137

  D I V I N A T I O N

  2

  O N T H E F O O T B A L L pitch, daylight had begun to fade. The other boys were inside already. Samuel had stayed on the field half an hour to practice penalty kicks with his friend Giles, who stood now in front of the goal, waiting for another shot to come. Samuel took ten steps back, then ran at the ball, kicking it high and to the left, missing to the outside by a foot or two.

  138

  "Shall we pack it in?" Giles said, dragging his foot across the grass to clear off the mud.

  "Don't you want to have a go?"

  Giles shook his head. "I'm knackered, let's go in."

  It was as they were walking back toward the old manor house the school occupied that Samuel became aware of the cooing and flapping of wings inside the crumbling dovecote, the muffled sounds echoing over the lawn. At that moment, for no apparent reason, he thought: How sad that Jevins should die now, like this, alone in his apartment over the sixth-form dormitories.

  Mr. Jevins, who had stood over them just that morning in his gown and oval glasses, reciting Latin--by whom, or what it meant, none of them knew. They'd discovered if they set the wall clock forward ten minutes and rang Be
nnet's alarm, Jevins, half deaf, would imagine the sound to be the bell and let them go early. Eighty he must have been, or older. His voice a gravelly whisper, only now and then rising to a pitch, on about some emperor or battle, Samuel guessed. Boys ignored him freely, chatting and throwing paper. Ever since he'd come to Saint Gilbert's, Samuel had felt a pain associated with this man, a feeling he couldn't articulate or conceive. This morning for the first time Jevins had slammed his leather book down on the windowsill and with a strain shouted, "Do you boys want me to continue with this lesson or not!"

  The thug Miller had stood up and addressed the class.

  "Proposition on the floor, gentlemen. Do we want Jevins to continue with the lesson? Show of hands for the nays."

  Most of the boys had raised their hands, covering their 139

  mouths and tittering. Jevins had just stood there and watched. Then Bennet's alarm clock had rung and the boys had begun stuffing their satchels and heading for the door. Samuel was slow gathering his books; he'd been trying to study for a geography quiz. When he looked up, the room had emptied, except for Mr. Jevins, still at his post. He'd been a foot soldier in World War II, they said, shot off the beach at Dunkirk and sent back over the channel on D-Day. The wrinkled skin beneath his eyes twitched, a tic of the nerves, the expression of defeat unchanged as he stared at his last remaining pupil. Samuel had grabbed his satchel and run from the room. Walking now, back from the playing fields through the dusk with Giles, Samuel could see lights on in the library, where the upper-form boarders would be studying for their entrance exams. At the top of the building he could see the lights still on in Mr. Jevins's apartment, the curtains pulled. For a moment he wondered if the old man lay shut-eyed on the bed or in the green leather chair in his front room, where he'd sat two autumns ago elaborating the rules for the new boarders: how to treat matrons, whom to speak to if there were difficulties--deputy prefect, then a prefect, and only then a master. It felt wrong trying to picture where his teacher's body lay, as if he'd come upon Mr. Jevins in his pants in the upstairs hall at some odd hour, an embarrassing thing he wouldn't soon forget.

  In the courtyard, before Samuel could decide whether to say anything, Giles turned off into the changing rooms for Lincoln House. Samuel kept walking on toward his own dorm. When he entered the main hall after showering and 140

  eating supper, he saw Mr. Kinnet, the new master, smoking a cigarette at the window by the door to the library. He had night duty this week and was watching the study hall. Samuel wanted to tell him what had happened to Jevins. Someone should know, he thought, an adult.

  "Got a problem there, Phipps? Need to use the loo or something?"

  "No, sir."

  "You look as if you've been sick."

  "Just tired, sir."

  "It's barely half seven, shouldn't you be off being terrorized by your superiors?"

  "It's Friday, sir. Most of them have gone home."

  "Make friends with the day boys, that's my advice. Some local tosser with a big house and a pool. Get his mum to drag you home on weekends."

  He extinguished his cigarette by reaching out the window and mashing it against the iron casement.

  "Mr. Jevins," Samuel blurted. "It's a pity."

  "What's that, Phipps?"

  "Nothing." He walked quickly up the front stairs, their creaking awful and loud, and then up the next flight to the landing and along into his dorm. The room was empty. From the window he looked back across the darkened lawn. He wished he were with Trevor, his older brother. He felt an aching kind of sadness, but right away a voice in his head told him not to be a weakling.

  Though it wouldn't be lights-out for another hour, he climbed into bed. He read three geography lessons that 141

  weren't due until Monday and worked over figures in his chemistry lab book, doing the sums in his head, putting a mark next to each figure he'd recalculated. The Latin textbook he left on the shelf behind him, wondering, despite himself, how long it would take them to find a new teacher and whether the old man had suffered as he went.

  " P H I P P S Y ! O Y ! "

  Giles was shaking him awake. It was long before breakfast but all the boys were up and out of bed.

  "Jevins croaked! They're carrying him down right now!

  The ambulance's right out front! Bennet's been crying for ages, the wus. Come on--get up!"

  Samuel ran to the window, wriggling between taller boys to get a view. There were no sirens or flashing lights. The ambulance looked almost abandoned sitting in the empty gravel car park, its back doors hanging open, its headlights on though the sun had already peeked over the lip of the field.

  " 'Bout time," some little second-former said. "He was bloody ancient."

  "Younger than your mother's twat, Krishorn."

  Silence fell as two men dressed in navy blue jackets and trousers emerged from the portico with a stretcher held between them, on it a long mound of a shape covered over with a sheet, the body too wide for the conveyance, arms rolled out to the side, hands visible. Bennet's weeping could be heard from the back of the room. The lead man stepped up into the van and the stretcher disappeared from sight.

  142

  "No deus ex machina for Jevins, hey? Plot over." Giles stared at the ambulance with a wistful look, as if he were staring at his parents' car pulling out of the drive. Samuel gripped the cool stone of the window frame, the sounds around him seeming to fade from his ears.

  At breakfast, the headmaster stood up from the head table and said he had a sad bit of news. Mr. Jevins had died of a heart attack the previous evening. "He served this school for forty-two years and was the finest teacher of Latin I have ever known." At this, a few snickers. With reproving emphasis, the headmaster went on, "And just so as there won't be any idle talk on the subject, it was Mrs. Pebbly who found Mr. Jevins at rest in his rooms this morning. There will be a service in chapel Monday at four. Your parents are being notified. Out of respect for Mr. Jevins I think it fitting we eat the remainder of our breakfast in silence." And with that he sat down. T H AT A F T E R N O O N , S A M U E L tried watching Giles and a few others play a game of French cricket out by the field house, but his gaze kept wandering up to the billowing white clouds. The sight of the stretcher, the clean white sheet, the open palms. It had stilled a part of Samuel's mind he'd never realized had been moving. A tiny ball in the middle of his brain had spun to a halt. It scared him. He'd always thought fear would be something fast, a thing that pushed you forward. Up in the dorm that morning after breakfast, he'd still hoped for an explanation of his knowing, a conversation between masters he'd overheard without realizing, some 143

  comment made at supper. But when the headmaster had described what happened, the timing of it, all of a sudden Samuel saw the food on his plate and the boys opposite him and the whole dining hall as if through the wrong end of a telescope. It was as though the everyday world, all that was familiar to him, had been revealed as a tiny, crowded dwelling, full of noise and chatter. A house on an empty plain. Beyond its walls a vast landscape.

  The barely noticeable pace of the clouds' approach across the sky seemed like evidence of this hidden enormity, his classmates' frantic motions on the pitch nothing but the buzzing of insects against the window of an attic room. Sitting there on the playing fields, he longed more ardently than he ever had to be with Trevor, hanging out in his room, watching him at his desk fiddling with his computer, talking on and on about computer things, the books he'd ordered by mail open beside him, his brother not listening to half of whatever Samuel said, but nodding. His brother who'd never seemed happy at his own school, who never seemed to make friends. In that room with Trevor, he might still be safe. By the time his parents' Peugeot turned into the car park at ten to four on the Monday, it seemed he hadn't spoken to another person in years. He ran to the car. His mother in her black dress and handbag had barely risen from the passenger's seat when he began, "Mum, I knew, I knew before everyone else, before they told us, I knew they'd have t
o get another teacher and it was right when it happened, just after seven, I knew he was dead before anyone."

  He burst into tears, pressing his face against his mother's 144

  body, hugging her. Her hands came down to rub his back, arms cradling his head.

  "All right, dear, it's all right."

  "But I knew," he mumbled into her dress. "Why? Why?"

  Her hands came to a stop and she pressed him harder against her.

  "It's okay now, it'll be all right . . . Of course you didn't know, dear. He was a good teacher . . . you liked him. It's hard, that's all."

  Samuel looked up into her face. She had long black hair a bit ruffled now in the breeze. She never usually wore makeup but today she'd put on pale lipstick, the look in her eyes the look she had when he got sick. He wanted to comfort her, to explain.

  "Mum, I knew on Friday. Mrs. Pebbly didn't find him till Saturday morning."

  She smiled weakly, looking down at the gravel.

  "You remember when Granny died," his father said across the top of the car, his voice weirdly loud. He was staring intently at Samuel, his shirt and tie done tightly up against his throat. "You remember we were all sad then. You're sad now. You see? And sometimes you think things when you're sad. It's natural."

  "But it was Friday. I was playing--"

  His father turned his head away abruptly, glancing across the field. He closed his mouth and swallowed, his eyes squinting into the distance, lips turning down into a kind of grimace, as if he were forcing something nasty tasting down his throat.

  145

  "Come on," he said to Samuel's mother, turning around and heading across the lot. "We'll be late."

  In the chapel, the headmaster recounted Mr. Jevins's life, his days in the army, a military cross, teaching in Rhodesia, the years of service to Saint Gilbert's. His elderly sister said a few words. The ceremony ended with a recorded playing of Jevins's favorite church music, Allegri's Miserere. The boarders all knew it, having heard the recording the third Sunday of every month, when the old man had doubled as minister. Each time he played the song, he reminded them that the Latin sung was Psalm Fifty-one, which he would recite to them afterward in English. Samuel remembered vividly him standing on the step of the altar in his gown, the only master left who wore one. He would pause in his reading before the last line of the penultimate verse, his voice dropping so low it seemed as if he were talking to himself: The sacrifice accept- able to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.