England and Other Stories (25 page)

It became rather difficult to eat his bread and jam. It felt wrong while his father was pronouncing such things. It had been wrong perhaps of his father to prepare it for him. But his father had only been doing, decently, what was expected, what his mother would have done. And, until moments ago, he’d been a hungry boy, home from school.

He’d remember always that slice of bread—it was rather thicker than his mother would have cut—that he wasn’t able, even with an effort, to finish. His father must have seen his struggle, but, caught in a quandary of his own, been unable to say anything. He was talking about St Peter.

He’d remember always his challenging bread and jam, the blue-orange glow of the gas fire, which his father had turned on, and the noise behind him, through the window, of their gate knock-knocking in the wind.

‘Can you imagine that?’ his father had said. ‘Can you imagine when there wasn’t any such thing as Easter?’

He couldn’t. Easter was something that came round every year, like birthdays and holidays, like Christmas. Then his father had told him the story that, even at eight, he probably mostly knew, and even knew mostly from his father. But his father had never told it like this, as if it were a story that had never been told before.

It was important to remember that there’d once been no such thing as Easter. It was important to remember that when Jesus spoke to Peter on the night before Good Friday it wasn’t the night before Good Friday, because Good Friday didn’t exist then. There was no such thing. And Peter wasn’t a saint either. He was just Peter. But this was nonetheless the night, the real and actual night before Jesus was put on the cross, if no one but Jesus understood it. Peter didn’t understand it, and didn’t believe it when Jesus said to him that before the cock crowed in the morning he, Peter, would deny him three times. Peter didn’t know what was happening. He was only Peter.

Jesus had gone to a place to pray, and though he knew what was to come he’d begged God to spare him. He’d said, ‘Let this cup pass from me.’ All through the night Jesus had stayed awake and prayed, but the three disciples who were with him had just slept in a huddle close by. Despite what their master was going through, they’d just slept. One of them was Peter.

More than once Jesus had woken them, but they’d just slept again, even at such a time. Because their eyes were heavy, his father had said, and they were only human. They didn’t really know what was happening. Jesus had already that night named the disciple, Judas, who would betray him, but he’d said to Peter too those words about the cock crowing. Even knowing this, Peter had just slept.

His father had said all these things not like a vicar speaking in church, but as if they were being said for the first time. Some of his father’s words were just words from the Bible and perhaps, even at eight, he knew this, but he felt them, saw them, like real things. He felt the weight of the disciples’ eyes. Saw that cup, though it was only a cup in Jesus’s mind. Felt the passing of that long night and the stern exactness of those three times.

He couldn’t finish his bread and jam. It was what his mother had said, almost immediately, when she came in: ‘You haven’t finished your bread and jam.’ She’d noticed very quickly the little remnant of bread with the small half-moon shape in it of his mouth. But she must have noticed too that there was an atmosphere inside the house. An atmosphere. She must have noticed it more than the piece of bread.

Let this bread and jam pass from me.

It was only a story. But he lay awake that night, listening to the wind and feeling somehow that he should stay awake the whole night, he should do this, for his father’s sake. But he’d slept too, despite the story. He’d simply fallen asleep. He was eight years old and he slept deeply and sweetly and when he woke up it was bright daylight and he knew that he didn’t have to get up to go to school. He could shut his eyes and go back to sleep if he wished. It was a delicious feeling. For a moment he hadn’t remembered his father speaking to him or anything about the previous day. Then there was a sort of shadow in his head. Then he remembered.

Outside, the sky was clear. The wind had stopped. It was Birmingham, and no cocks crowed. In a while his mother would come in to see if he was awake. She would stoop to kiss him. Sometimes, so as to enjoy her kiss, he’d pretend he was still asleep and that it was her kiss that had woken him. He wondered if she guessed this. It was a little like wishing she wouldn’t come to the school gates, but being glad, inside, that she did.

He’d surely have remembered if his mother had kissed him that morning.

Peter Wilson was a teacher at the primary school. Peter Wilson had once taught him. He’d become a friend of the family, as teachers can become, perhaps a particular friend of his mother. He’d been Mr Wilson, then he became Peter. Then he became his stepfather.

If his father had known that Peter Wilson was something more than just his mother’s friend, then he’d have known, when he became more seriously ill, that if he died it would give her her freedom. And if he’d died knowing—or even wishing—this, then that would, surely, have been not unsaintly. In any case, being a Christian, a vicar, his father would have known that he’d have to die without anguish or bitterness, accepting that it was God’s will.

When his father died—it was early December and now it was Christmas that was coming—his mother hadn’t cried, or not much, or not in front of him. But then she too had to behave with composure, like the wife of a vicar. But she cried a lot, and in front of him, when Peter Wilson, many years later, left her, just suddenly left her. It’s more uncomfortable, perhaps, for a mother to cry in front of her twenty-year-old son than in front of her eight-year-old son—setting aside which is more uncomfortable for the son. But she cried anyway, uncontrollably, as if she were crying two times over on the one occasion. He’d hesitated to embrace her.

What’s in a word? Words aren’t things. Cup, stone, rock. He didn’t really believe, even at eight, though his father must have believed it, that St Peter had a pair of keys that opened the gate to heaven. How could heaven have a gate? How could heaven have the same arrangement as his school, or even their front garden? People say of themselves, it’s the commonest excuse, and he must have said it of himself more than once in his life, ‘I’m no saint.’

He’s no saint. Or: She’s no angel.

Could he have thought it, of his own mother, as she stooped like that to kiss him in the morning? She’s no angel.

His father had said that it had all happened just as Jesus had said. Those who came to accuse and arrest him accused Peter too—of being a follower of Jesus. Three times, in fact, Peter was accused and three times he said that he had nothing to do with Jesus. Even though he’d been told by Jesus that this was just what he’d do—which should have been the severest and most unbreakable command not to do it—Peter had gone ahead three times with his denials.

His father didn’t say about this that it was because Peter was only human and he was afraid. He just said it was what happened. Peter had slept because his eyes were heavy. Now he made his denials, three times. Immediately after the third time the cock suddenly crowed. Then Peter had wept.

N
EARLY EVERY WEEK
now—more often if he could and if the weather was good—Terry would catch a train to the country and take a walk in one of the places where, not so long ago, he and his late wife Lynne used to walk together. They’d discovered these places and the appropriate train timetables when he’d had to give up driving because of his Parkinson’s, and because Lynne had never learnt to drive. In just an hour or so from town they’d be stepping out into quiet countryside with good walks, fine views and maybe a handy pub. It was all a lot better, in fact, more free and easy, than driving somewhere. They’d never have discovered these places in a car. It made him less miffed about not being able to drive, even about his altered state of health.

He’d always thought that, with his Parkinson’s, he would go first, but it was Lynne.

Now Terry went on these same walks, caught exactly the same trains on his own, because it was the nearest he could get to being with Lynne and enjoying it. At home, in the house they’d shared for years, the same theoretically applied, but it wasn’t enjoyable, it was the opposite. He needed the countryside, the trees, the open air, the familiar paths.

On these walks he’d sometimes say to himself: This is as good as it gets. It was something he’d never have thought of saying to himself when he was young, it would have seemed foolish, but there’d come a point in his life when he began to say it quite often, like a reminder. He used to say it to himself nearly every time he walked with Lynne. But he said it also now. It was important. It wasn’t true now, because when he’d said it to himself while walking with Lynne everything had been so much better. But it was also true now. It was true and it wasn’t.

When Terry took the trains for these walks he would look at other passengers as if he were a complete outsider, as if he might be invisible. He’d listen to their chatter. All of this wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling, in fact he sometimes felt a strange tug of warmth, of soothing fascination for these creatures he was no longer one of. He couldn’t have had these feelings driving in a car.

It might have been that on these walks he would have just felt lonely, but it was the opposite. It was only on these walks that he felt totally free to imagine that his wife was walking beside him, that he could be uninhibited about talking to her out loud, not even in his head. He couldn’t do this at home, it would seem like the first sign of madness, but on these walks he’d initiate and conduct whole conversations with his wife, and, yes, as he spoke or even as he just walked he’d sometimes really believe, turning his head quickly to check, that she was there.

It might have been, too, that, wrapped up in this process, Terry wouldn’t have been so attentive to the countryside around him, to the pleasing views, to the observation of nature. Yet it was all the more important to notice these things, to point them out to his wife, to see the butterfly, or the woodpecker, like a speck of paint, against the tree, or the kestrel quivering in mid-air. These things were alive.

So, in fact, he was all the more observant. He’d sometimes be drawn, with a surprisingly tender concentration, to just a cluster of primroses or a clump of moss. He’d notice things even at a distance.

So he noticed very quickly now, through the ferns, the patch of bright colour—bright red—up ahead.

There was a place where if you left the main path and struck out through the undergrowth you emerged onto the brow of a hill. There were bramble bushes, a thick bank of ferns, then a small clearing of grass and more ferns. Then the woods encroached again. It was a semi-secret place and, with the grass and the view and the enclosing bushes and ferns, a perfect spot in fine weather just to sit for a while and rest before walking on, or walking back. Or (with Lynne) to have had a small picnic—to have got out the thermos and the plastic box of stuff he’d carry in his backpack. He’d sat here with Lynne many times and, surprisingly, they’d never found it occupied by anyone else.

He thought that this might be the case now and that he should stop, back-track into the woods and circle round. Too bad, that the place was taken. But the red patch, though it seemed like a patch of clothing, didn’t move and there were no sounds. He concluded that it was something left by somebody, and this at first annoyed him. How could anyone leave behind anything so glaring?

After a few more steps and without yet emerging from the narrow gap through the ferns he saw that the red patch was indeed an item of clothing. It was a woman’s red T-shirt and it was being worn by a woman in her mid-twenties, and the woman was alone and very still and dead.

He knew this at once and for certain, without ever drawing close: the woman was dead. She was lying on her side in a curled-up position, in what is known as the foetal position, but she wasn’t asleep, she didn’t stir. She was dead. If he were questioned—and he soon realised that he would be—as to how he knew the woman was dead, it wouldn’t be easy to explain. He’d never come across a dead person in a clearing before, but some ability in him that perhaps all humans come equipped with, to recognise another human who is dead, instantly asserted itself. Perhaps he possessed this ability more keenly now that Lynne was dead.

There was nothing else in the clearing and the woman appeared unmarked, but she was dead. There was the unavoidable impression that she’d lain there for some time. There was a total immobility about her and a sense that the passage of hours, the weather and other, more mysterious processes had worked on her to claim her as just an inanimate part of the surroundings.

Apart from the red top, she wore blue jeans and lightweight, stylish trainers—clothes for a summer’s day, but not for sleeping outside through a summer’s night. This thought was merely technical. The thought that she would have been cold was irrelevant. The clothes seemed attached to her in a way that was not the usual way of clothes. Her hair was strangely tangled about her face as if the hair and the face were only incidental to each other. There were tiny bits of vegetation, things that might fall from trees or be blown about the air, dotted all over her. A small leaf was lodged in her exposed upturned ear.

He was no expert, but he didn’t need to go any further to verify that she was not alive and had lain there like that, without stirring, since at least the preceding evening. He was sure of this, if he was sure of nothing else.

It was now not long after ten on a warm Sunday morning. He’d taken a fairly early train.

He stood still. He didn’t want to emerge from the screen of the ferns. He peered carefully around. There was only the innocent sunny aspect the scene would have had if he were the only one there—which he was in a sense. Or if nobody was there. Indeed the absurd phrase came to him: ‘first on the scene’.