The Search (2 page)

“You could do that. But there's another thing. He might have changed his name, given the wrong name. You never know.”

“Changed his name?”

“Why not? He might. He did use to work but the last time I saw him he wasn't working.”

“But wouldn't he need his right name for Social Security?”

“He might.” Again Trevor felt the laughter rippling underneath the man's words. He was beginning to wonder whether his visitor was not a psychopath, an essentially malicious man who, hearing him speak on the radio, was determined to uproot him from his sheltered world. And yet he had known that his brother's name was Norman. Or was it he himself who had introduced the name? He couldn't remember.

“What else do you know about him?” he asked.

“About Norman?” Douglas blew smoke away from his mouth and considered. “He said that he had been sailing for a while and that he had been in the Army. He was serving in the Argylls, wasn't he, during his National Service. Isn't that right?”

“I don't know about the sailing. But he was certainly in the Army. Where could he have been sailing?”

“Well, he might have been sailing since he came out here. Or he might just have made that up. A lot of them make up stories, you know. I did meet Norman, you don't have to be so suspicious. He was a very kind and unhappy boy. We stayed in the same room together. And not a very nice room either.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

“He may not be dead. It's possible that he might be still alive. As I say, you get all sorts of rumours.”

“Well, then,” said Trevor, “Well, then.” He knew that he should ask more questions but he couldn't think of any. And in the middle of his indecision he saw Douglas rising to his feet, and he heard him say,

“I'd better leave you then. I thought you ought to be told of his death.”

“What does he look like? Have you any photographs?” Trevor asked desperately.

“No, I'm afraid I haven't. We weren't in the business of taking photographs. You probably wouldn't recognize him now.” Douglas spoke so casually that Travor felt like hitting him: it was after all his brother he was talking about.

However he said, calmly enough, “I'll give you money for a taxi. Are you staying far from here?”

“It's all right,” said Douglas, “I'll get a bus.”

“But it's a Sunday,” said Trevor. “Are you sure you'll get a bus?”

“No worries. I'll get a bus. Glad to have met you. Let me know what happens. Are you thinking of going to Sydney?”

“I'll have to, won't I? Since that's where you met him.”

“Good luck then. Let me know what happens,” said Douglas again.

“What's your phone number then?” Trevor asked.

Douglas hesitated for what seemed like quite a long time and then gave a phone number which Trevor wrote in his address book after his visitor's name.

Douglas then left.

After he had gone Trevor sat in his chair in a daze. Was it Norman the two of them had been talking about? Perhaps it had all been a case of mistaken identity. In any case, what could he do? What was the best thing? He went to the cupboard and drank a huge whisky at a gulp. As he did so, he thought, “I'd better not go the way my brother went.” And then as he rehearsed Douglas's story in his mind he noticed some peculiarities. First of all his brother had never read books, and the second odd thing was about the sailing. When and where had he done any sailing? Not unless he had done some round the Australian coast. On the other hand it was definitely true that he had served in the Army and had worn the diced cap of the Argylls. But perhaps this man Douglas had some twisted motive for what he was doing. Had he come to see him about his brother's presumed death in order to upset him? Was the Pole whom he kept mentioning a complete fabrication? Was Douglas a sadist of some sort? And what about the book he was writing? The whole tale seemed very odd. And what could he himself do even if he did go to Sydney? Lighting a cigarette he began to think; and as he was doing so he suddenly felt intense panic. He went to the door and turned the key in the lock of the main door and also in that of the door which led on to the balcony. Through its glass panes he could see the cockatoos flying about the naked trees. He felt bare and vulnerable in the world like a new-born bird. It was as if a breeze, heavy with deadly odour, had blown in on him from another world which travelled darkly beside the world he knew: everything looked fragile and unguarded. The gravity of that other secondary world — or perhaps it had been the real world all the time — was sucking him in. He picked up the phone and dialled the bus station.

“Do you have a bus going to Sydney?” he asked.

Yes, they had; it left at five o'clock in the evening.

Two

I
N THE MORNING
he rang up Professor Hastie at the university to say that he wouldn't be able to come in that day as he had some pressing business to attend to in Sydney. In the light of morning he felt as if the conversation of the night before had never happened. He began to think of Douglas as some kind of madman who had decided to play a malignant trick on him because he was in comfortable circumstances and in an alien land. Professor Hastie's civilized voice soothed him.

“Of course,” he said. “No worries. Take as long as you like.”

At that moment Trevor nearly told him what he was going to Sydney for but decided against it. Strange speculations absorbed him. What if Douglas followed him to Sydney? What if he was stalking his brother for some perverse reason of his own and was using Trevor in order to find him?

These ideas preoccupied him even when he was in the Tourist Bureau fixing up accommodation. He was told of a hotel called the Australian which was not too expensive, and which, on Elizabeth Street, was fairly central: they had sent many customers there before and had had no complaints so far. Of course at this time of year accommodation was scarce. Trevor only half-listened, thinking of the journey ahead of him. Maybe, though Douglas himself might not be on the bus, he might send someone in his place. Hadn't he said that he had been in jail at least once, or was that something that Trevor had picked up wrong? In a peculiar way, whenever he thought of the conversation of the previous night, he felt as if it had all been an illusion, a trick. The odd, almost mocking smile returned to him.

As he walked restlessly about Canberra, killing time till the bus left, he found himself thinking that he might not be able to come back there if he left. The clean city with its towering offices and tidy shopping precincts seemed suddenly protected and ordinary. Once however he found himself staring at a young, long-haired, bare-footed hippy who was playing a guitar outside a jeweller's shop in the opulent precinct, while beside him on the pavement was a cap with some coins in it. In another part of the precinct a crowd had gathered round a man who was standing on a wooden stage and giving reasons in a loud voice why Australia should send its athletes to the Olympics. He remembered vaguely reading something in a paper about some trouble to do with the Olympics but couldn't recall exactly what it had been.

For most of the day he sat on a bench reading a book, watching the people passing, and once staring for what seemed to be hours at a little bird that was busily pecking at crumbs that were lying on the stone. Around him the bland, timeless Australian sunlight shone.

Once it occurred to him that he should phone Sheila, but eventually he decided against it. There was no point in worrying her; and as yet he had no real information about Norman. As he sat there he couldn't help comparing littered Glasgow with this hygienic city with its clean streets and restaurants.

At twenty minutes to five he was at the bus station with his case. He recalled that as he had left the college he had the strangest feeling that he would never see it again, that he was entering a world from which, even if he did return, it would be as someone who was irretrievably wounded. It was as though a shadow had fallen across the lawn, as if the birds that flew so colourfully among the trees were a mockery of his own life. He was reminded of the manic laughter of the kookaburra which he heard at dawn among the flutey, watery voices of other, but nameless, birds. Indeed at the moment he had left, someone had been playing a flute and he had listened to the notes as if they were saying goodbye to him and to the world in which he had hitherto lived.

As he sat in the station waiting for the bus to leave he looked around him at the other people who were waiting. None of them seemed to belong to the world that Douglas had talked of. There were four girls who, he thought, were Malaysian, and they were giggling like children over some joke or secret of their own. There was an old man and his wife, both with sunburnt, wrinkled faces, and obviously from the United States, for the man was wearing the sort of white hat that Americans wear. There was a young man sitting quietly by himself, and a very old woman with a ravaged face who was wearing a very short skirt which would have been more suitable on a teenager. By the number of labels on her cases she seemed to have travelled widely. There was also a Jap and his wife, both young, the former now and again consulting a huge complicated-looking watch at frequent intervals. No, there didn't seem to be anyone belonging to Douglas's world here, he was pretty sure of that. They all appeared to be simple, sincere tourists, many of them with brochures in their hands.

When the bus finally arrived and he climbed the steps he found that it was very cool, with perspex windows which made the world outside appear blue. He had been assigned a seat at the back next to the window and as he sat there he began to think what he should do in Sydney. The most obvious move was to call at the offices of Births, Marriages and Deaths, and ask if his brother was listed among the dead. As he thought of his morbid journey he felt both anger and sadness, anger because his smooth life was being upset and sadness because his brother might after all be dead. He remembered the two of them as they had been when they were quite young, often fighting as brothers do, but in emergencies combining against outsiders. There was, in particular, the day when he himself, then perhaps nine, had deliberately lost Norman in the woods and the latter had come home to their mother in tears accusing Trevor of having tormented him. His mother had asked Trevor that day,

“Why do you do these things? Are you jealous of him or what?”

In school he had of course been much cleverer than Norman, effortlessly winning prizes, making his easy way to university. But, when he came to think of it, his brother had been physically much stronger than him, a hard, tough fighter, completely fearless. He had once ridden home on his motorbike through a thunderstorm of frightening intensity, blue theatrical lightning at the tips of his gloves: yet though drenched he had been unafraid.

How odd it was that in the unfolding diary of his mind he could find so little in common between them. He himself had never been as adventurous as his brother nor so instinctively generous and hot-tempered. And of course their jobs had been very different. While he himself had been in university Norman had worked in a clock-making factory, coming back home in his overalls. Some nights he would be drunk and often aggressive while he himself was preparing his lecture notes. Norman's cheerful, yet sometimes vicious, face, glowed in the gathering darkness, as the bus raced towards Sydney. As Trevor looked out of the window he could see the brown parched land, dry as a bone, from which the light was fading, and it seemed to correspond to some inner landscape deep in his own nature.

Once he saw a crow pecking out the eyes of a lamb while the exhausted mother looked on helplessly, but most of the time there was only monotonous landscape over which no rain had fallen since he had come to Australia seven weeks before. He could see cattle resting on their shadows in the blue light and later a man riding a horse. As the darkness thickened the lights of small farmhouses glimmered in the distance.

The phrase “Am I my brother's keeper?” swam into his mind without bidding. Norman had liked his period of National Service, had enjoyed the comradeship and adventure. He himself had never done National Service because he had been continually deferred and later they had found that his eyes were weak. It had never occurred to him to ask Norman much about that period in his life. In fact when he came to think about it he didn't know much about Norman from the time that he had left home to join the Army or what events there had made him so restless later. How could this have happened? And yet when he had heard of his death, or presumed death, the tears had sprung to his eyes. It was lucky that their mother was no longer alive or the revelations, if true, would have shamed her. And yet he couldn't imagine that his brother would have been in trouble with the police, and least of all could he imagine that he would ever have stolen anything. Sheila, of course, hadn't wanted to get in touch with him. He should have been more insistent than he had been.

Sheila. … He blinked and turned his eyes again on the dim landscape through which the bus was travelling. The last light had drained out of it. Now and again a truck lit up like a Christmas tree with red lights loomed in front of the bus and then disappeared. They passed through the empty streets of small towns whose shops were illuminated and shut: launderamas, jewellers, petrol stations with their flags. And then they were out of the towns and on to the open road with the flicker of farm lights well away from the road.

He glanced to his right and saw that the old woman with the short skirt was asleep, her mouth open and slack. For some reason she reminded him of his mother and he imagined her trailing his brother through Australia with a Bible in her hand. Her voice came back to him across the years, “Make sure that you put on your tie, and comb your hair.” He and his brother were setting off to school in the early morning, the berries shining redly on the trees among the heat haze, while they swung their schoolbags carelessly. The other boys were shouting “Sissy” and “Swot” after him and Norman was grim-faced and angry, as if ashamed of him.

He calculated, glancing at his watch, that they would reach Sydney at about ten o'clock. The driver had taken to using his microphone and was telling them a little of the dark country through which they were passing, and about the small town where they were to stop for refreshments. Trevor heard a woman with an Irish accent saying, “I prefer Melbourne. My daughter lives there. Do you know Melbourne?” Another bus passed them going in the same direction and the driver said,

“I beat him last week so this week he's trying to beat me.” Another huge truck loomed out of the darkness, and then was gone. What was he doing on this road so far from home? He felt himself engaged on a rescue operation which at the same time appeared absurd. He thought of himself rushing into a room and saying to his wounded brother, “I have come to fetch you home. I have come to save you.” But what would Sheila have to say about that? And would his brother be able to get a job when he came home? No, that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was to find him.

All the time that he had been lecturing on Robert Louis Stevenson that other world, of deprivation and despair, had been in existence, dark and enigmatic. How had he managed to evade it? Simply by winning the rewards that he had won. In the gathering darkness he saw the bare-footed guitarist playing for money while no one listened to him. Men were beaten up in parks, in police stations, beggars walked the streets.

Your brother has changed, Douglas had said. He had even taken to reading books. What if he passed him and didn't even recognize him? What if the man Douglas was talking about wasn't his brother at all? He felt badly in need of advice, of the opinion of an outsider. This burden which had been placed on his shoulders seemed too heavy for him. On the other hand he had been used to burdens, he had looked after his parents in their old age. And there was many a time when he had cursed his brother who had vanished so conveniently into the blue when he had needed him, not even sending a Christmas card home. Not even a present to his mother. He had eeled so easily out of his responsibilities as if sliding out of his overalls when coming home from work.

And to tell the truth he felt frightened. What was this huge city Sydney like? What would he find in the office to which he was heading like a missile through the night among all these sleeping people, with their heads lolling back on seats? Even if he found that Norman was dead he would have to discover whether he had been given a proper burial. He might even have had a pauper's funeral, interred hugger mugger somewhere. But the worst thought was that he might not be able to find him at all and he would forever after wonder what had happened to him.

The old woman sat up with a jolt and smiled at him. The girl sitting in front of him went on remorselessly reading her book. The Malaysian girls were giggling secretly together in the hooded light.

Why hadn't Douglas kept in touch with his brother all those years if he had been so interested in him? Why had he so suddenly and brutally told him of a death which wasn't even definite but had been accepted on hearsay? Was he like the Pole of whom he had spoken, an unmitigated liar?

The bus drew up in front of a restaurant and the driver said, “Well, folks, this is where you get your refreshments.” Trevor stayed where he was, not feeling like eating, while the others woke as from the dead, rubbing their eyes, stretching.

“You wouldn't recognize your brother now,” he heard Douglas saying. And then he heard his brother's voice, “You didn't even do your National Service.”