Читать книгу Comfort Zone - Brian Aldiss - Страница 9

A bright morning greets Justin as he lies in bed. He looks out on his garden and finds it brimming with blossom. The apple trees, plum trees, cherry trees, all blossoming. He is particularly fond of the cherry trees. He planted them as seeds and tended them, transplanting, then eventually planting out the saplings to form a short avenue. Something strikes him as odd about this spring and summer. Finally, while struggling to sit up, he realizes what it is: he has not heard a single cuckoo with its haunting call: once the very voice of early summer. He sits on the side of the bed, considering getting to his feet. He remembers that Eleanor yesterday had said something about Britain continuing. He could not remember what exactly she had said; indeed, he could scarcely remember yesterday. But after all, when you thought about it: To the East, President Putin turning Russia into a gangster state. To the West, at least thirty-two youngsters shot up on campus, victims of crazies and gun culture. Yes, with all its faults, there was much to be said for Britain. Then … that fatal madness of invading Iraq …

His thoughts drift as on a light breeze. Only rarely now does he conjure up the past. When his parents float into mental view, that view concentrates mainly on his plump little mother, with her good humour and generosity. Her kindness once had to centre on attempts to console Janet and him when their only child, David, was born with Down’s syndrome. His mother had wept with them. They had looked after and loved David. He deflected his attention from Janet’s illness and death as being still too painful. That deeper despair had lingered for years, remaining for ever as a quietly incurable regret. As counterpoint, his love for Kate Standish existed more as an atmosphere, an atmosphere embracing him, than as anything as individual as a thought. He gulped her love down without analysis. He thought of the pallor, the symmetry of her lovely buttocks. Dearest Kate Standish – the happiest chance ever to befall a man … Chance. The roll of the dice … His good fortune still enlivening him, he leans over and switches on the bedside radio.

Some mornings on, some mornings off, depending how he feels. This morning, the English cricket team is playing someone or other and losing – ‘because of bad fielding’, says the commentator. Putting on a pair of socks and a dressing-gown, Justin moves slowly downstairs to get himself a cup of tea. Legs are stiff. He goes down one step at a time. He tells himself he is not feeling lonely. He wonders what his old mother would say if she could see him, coping on his own. How long had she been dead now? He thinks again of Kate Standish, due to return from Egypt any day. He longs to see her again. Yet he is not desperate. They love – this is the miracle that continuously thrills him – they love each other so completely … but cannot verbalize it. He only knows that this love in old age is such a wondrous gift, beyond speech – yet he and Kate often talk about it, exclaiming how their lives have been changed, how each has changed the other’s life for the better. Though they are not slaves to their delight, yet a sense of joy prevails. They greatly care for each other’s looks, bodies, ways of speech … Their love, their particular love, makes them feel wonderful. They spend almost every day apart, alone. Both have work to do. Yet they meet together most evenings and sleep together most weekends. And he adores and admires his Kate Standish as much as he knows how – marvels, yet is certain – that she loves her Justin. Her early life had been one of difficulty. Kate had two brothers older than she was. A week before her third birthday, the three children and their mother had been turned out of their house. The father, Stan Standish, had sold the house over their heads in order to launch a hire-car business. They never saw him again, although Kate did think she glimpsed him once, helping an old woman out of the back of a cab. Kate’s mother established them in one room in Stoke Newington. She went out to work, comforting herself with a bottle of beer every evening. Kate looked after her brothers. They were sad and self-pitying. Justin made Kate laugh by claiming that when young lovers first got together, the sweet nothings they whispered to each other were complaints about their parents. Even older lovers did it. No doubt it was Kate’s hard-learned expertise with deprived children which had led her to set up the refuge in El Aiyat. Wonderful, wonderful Kate Standish! That this extraordinary woman should … Oh, everything … She had been rather formal, rather correct, rather spinsterish, at first. And he had dared to grab her, to dance with her in her kitchen and sing to her – ‘Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll …’ And they had become delighted with each other – and consequently themselves – for all of three years now. And that delight grew. And she was coming home. The radio in the kitchen announces that some police officers needed to carry tasers. He is preoccupied with his thoughts of Kate, but the word ‘taser’ catches his attention. Or is it ‘tazer’? You can’t determine by just hearing it spoken. A rather nice word, though, as words go. Perhaps it is a corruption of ‘blazer’. People don’t wear blazers as they used to.

Moving at a snail’s pace, commenting to himself, ‘I’m moving at a sodding snail’s pace,’ Justin carries his mug of tea into the study. The mug says ‘Carlisle’ on it, printed in blue, above a picture of Carlisle Hall. It is his memento of that day, long past, when Janet and he had visited that northern city. He has owned it for many years and fears that, inevitably, he will break it one day. Shit happens. Today the venerable mug remains intact. He sits at the desk that catches the morning sun when there is sun, and switches on his iMac. With the tea, he washes down the two diuretic pills he has been clutching, the furosemide and the spironolactone, which latter is marketed under the patent name of Aldactone. It will be about an hour before their effects are felt. Few emails appear on the computer screen, most of them boring, either trying to sell Viagra or asking for money. The consolation is one from Eliza Blair. Eliza is no relation to the present Prime Minister Tony Blair. She is young, intelligent, beautiful, lively and a pupil at Swarthmore College in the USA. Justin met her on his travels. She has just had her first story published, and rejoices in the fact. Justin shares her rejoicing at a distance. He hopes her life will be a success.

He potters about, adjusting a few of the piles of paper in his study. He can hear Maude’s radio upstairs. All today, but for Maude, he will be alone, as if on a desert island, unless the builders happen to turn up. This he does not greatly regret, because he will have time to prepare his lecture for the day after tomorrow, when he addresses a group of Christian ladies in a nearby church. He is not looking forward very much to this occasion. After he has showered and dressed, he walks round his garden. This always brings contentment, although Justin sees much that is neglected. He pulls up a strand of bindweed as he passes. A molehill has appeared on the upper lawn. The birds sing in the bushes. A pigeon cries monotonously ‘Walpole stinks, Walpole stinks’ – or so he imagines. But which Walpole is the bird criticizing? Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of Otranto, Robert Walpole, Prime Minister, or Hugh Walpole, author of Jeremy at Crale?

That sad creature, Hughes, had by chance directed him to the Book of Ezekiel. He rested on a bench in his courtyard and looked into the old Bible that had belonged to his mother. I heard also the noise of the wings of the living creatures that touched one another, and the noise of the wheels over against them, and the noise of a great rushing. So the spirit lifted me up and took me away … No doubt of it. Stark raving. But beautifully expressed. The noise of the wings of the living creatures … The living creatures. What if Om Haldar were no longer among the living … Not many weeks ago, Maude had suggested that the young woman should come and live with them in their house. She could have the spare room for her own and be more comfortable than in the Fitzgeralds’ summerhouse. Justin rejected the idea indignantly, saying he refused to have his peace disturbed. His thought was that Kate would not like it, although he did not say so. Now a parallel case occurred to him. His aunt Phoebe, long dead, lived in a small house in St Clements. No garden. When World War Two broke out, there were many Jews trying to escape the cruelties of Nazi Germany. Two little sisters had been brought to Phoebe’s door by a charity worker. Phoebe had taken them in. Phoebe had loved and cared for those troubled and displaced girls. In consequence, the girls had grown to make their way in the English world, successful, well regarded, one as a lawyer, the other as an academic historian. Justin clutched his cheeks. He felt the shame of it that he had turned Om Haldar away. She might well have proved a parallel case with the children from Czechoslovakia. ‘Oh God, I am such a selfish bastard,’ he reproached himself aloud – but quietly, in case the neighbours overheard.

He spent some while ripping ivy off a trellis before returning to his study. There, a woodlouse was crawling over the carpet. Justin liked woodlice and would never harm them, but he believed that each female woodlouse could lay a thousand eggs at a time. Since he could not tell the sex of this particular louse, he dropped it gently out of the window to the earth below, before settling down to compose his lecture. He banished the thought of Om Haldar from his mind.

Breakfast was a small bowl of one of the many kinds of Kellogg’s cornflakes, with some canned raspberries added and milk poured on top. No cream nowadays. Kate had counselled against it to help control Justin’s weight. He washed down his daily diuretic pills with a glass of Volvic water. He unlocked the side gate in case the builders arrived, and stood for a minute or two in the sun of the courtyard. The morning sun shone in the back of the house and the evening sun in the front. It circumnavigated No. 29 during the planet’s daily duties. While he was standing there, Scalli arrived to do the cleaning and deal with his washing. They exchanged a few words. Justin apologized for taking the name of her god in vain. He felt too embarrassed to accuse her of the disappearance of the bodhisattva. It was a trivial matter compared with the disappearance of Om Haldar.

‘How is your son David?’ Scalli enquired. He said that Dave remained much as ever. Regarding her gravely, he enquired after Skrita.

‘Oh, she is so bad. She needs her mother to be by her. She has messed her bed in the night and so they hate her. Were they never sick? That I ask myself, that they don’t have pity?’ She went more thoroughly into the events of the night, from which it could be inferred that her daughter had an anal fissure. Once in the safety of his study, Justin checked his emails. Again, not a word from his agent. Not a word from Kate. Going to the other desk, on which his older computer stood, he began to tap out a sentence or two for his talk to the Christian ladies on Thursday. This he had intended to do for weeks. He continually put it off. Procrastination was the very making of time. Today the task must be faced. One possible subject was the prevalence of chance in people’s lives. It could be some kind of mischance which had overtaken Om Haldar. Her disappearance brought all that to mind again. He had used the theme of Chance in a TV documentary he once produced. But, according to his interpretation, chance ruled out religious belief. It was not the kind of theme to offer Christian ladies on a sunny afternoon. He decided instead to talk about ancient inventions which had reinforced civilized values – notably, the restaurant and the orchestra.

Justin recalled that Marie had once played violin in the Oxford Symphony Orchestra. He phoned her in order to check on a few details, and then they chatted for a while. Something Marie said reminded Justin that mention had been made of Ken’s sister Catherine.

‘Is Catherine married? Why doesn’t she come and live in England, or have she and Ken quarrelled?’

There was a silence on the line, until Marie said, ‘It wasn’t quite like that, dear. Best to leave that subject behind a closed door, comprendez?’ So Justin returned to his lecture notes.

Once he had decided upon a subject, the piece flowed easily. The doorbell rang. There stood his accountant, John Stephens. Justin had forgotten the appointment. He might once have been vexed by the interruption of his thought. But it was accountancy, in a way, which kept him afloat. He welcomed John in and got them both cups of coffee. Instant coffee. Douwe Egberts. ‘I see the old Anchor has closed down,’ John said. ‘There’s a For Sale board up.’

‘It’s not much of a loss. People living nearby were always complaining about the noise.’

John was a pleasant man. He wore a grey suit and tie, as became a respectable accountant, and made the collection of documents for VAT as painless as possible, despite Justin’s awful muddle of papers on both his desks. John was also Justin’s lady love’s accountant. Justin’s lady love – when not in Egypt administrating the Aten Trust in El Aiyat – lived nearby, in Scabbard Lane. Justin had lent Kate his Toyota while her car was being repaired; the Toyota was locked in her garage. He needed to take a suit to the cleaner and he wished to go into town to buy a particular book. When he asked John if he would mind giving him a lift, the accountant readily agreed. Justin suffered from getting into and out of cars, so John kindly carried his suit into the cleaner’s for him. As they drove into Oxford, John talked of this and that; his character was on display. One focus for his interest was the sale of the site of the Anchor, currently awaiting demolition. He delivered Justin to the very door of Blackwell’s bookshop. ‘Tremendously good of you!’ Justin exclaimed. He was amazed by John’s kindness and the kindness of others.

The assistant in Blackwell’s was agreeable. They did not stock the book Justin was after, but the assistant looked it up on the computer. ‘The British Occupation of Indonesia, 1945–46. By Richard Macmillan. Routledge/Curzon. Seventy-five pounds.’

‘Heavens! Seventy-five pounds!’ Justin exclaimed. ‘I’m going to have to look at it in a library before I stump up seventy-five pounds for it. Keen though I am to read it.’

‘It is a bit steep,’ the assistant agreed. ‘And no paperback available.’

But when the troops disembarked at Padang Docks, he said to himself, they had no idea that this was Indonesia. To them, it was just Bali. Sixty years ago, still vivid in mind … Bali! Had it been Bali and not Padang? He was unsure. And supposing Om Haldar had lost her memory and was wandering lost somewhere nearby? He ought to do something. Even though it was not exactly his business.

Making his way slowly to Queen Street, Justin stopped at the Gents in Market Street to relieve himself. In Queen Street, he went into Marks & Spencer to buy a packet of their Rich Tea Fingers. He invariably ate one Rich Tea Finger with his early morning mug of tea. He picked up one or two other things on the way. That was how stores made their profits – from human greed. He also bought a Lemon Loaf Cake. One of the things he disliked about capitalism was the way in which it encouraged greed. All commercial television was founded and funded on greed. With that profound thought, he crossed the road and climbed on a No. 8 bus for Headington. His left leg was painful today, both above and below the knee. It still hurt even when he was sitting down. He wondered how many other people on the bus were concealing aches and pains. Perhaps you keep quiet about it in the hope of arriving at an imagined Heaven after death, when aches and pains are swept away, along with the Oxford Bus Company and all.

When he entered his house, he found the phone was ringing. He rushed for it.

‘Oh, you’re there! Thank goodness! Justin, dear, I am back early and I’ve had a shock. Can you come round?’

‘Kate! Are you okay, Kate?’

‘Yes, yes, please come round.’

‘I’m on my way.’ As he dumped his plastic bag full of Marks & Sparks goodies, he caught sight, through the kitchen window, of Maude wandering about the lawn. Like a lost soul, he thought, with some distaste.

Kate’s house was brick built, probably about 1875, in an imitation cottage style. It had a rustic porch, covered by honeysuckle, and a smart kitchen at the rear, recently added and installed by Kate. The house was approached by a shingled drive, fringed by pyrocantha and laurel. Before Justin had reached the door, Kate came out on the drive and flung her arms round him. She was a fair-haired woman in her early seventies, sturdily built, grey-eyed, her face showing a few wrinkles and browned by the Egyptian sun. She was wearing a light khaki suit, crumpled from her travels.

‘I had a fright,’ she said, when they had finished kissing. ‘I’m really being silly about it.’ She hugged him. ‘Oh, good to see you again.’

‘And you, darling. I have missed you so much.’ As always there was an air about her as if something pleasant was about to happen, even as if there was something pleasant happening at that very moment. He marvelled at it; it was an air he never quite achieved. Kate explained that a taxi had brought her to her gate. As she was walking up the drive with her luggage, she saw a black dog lying sprawled by the porch. It wagged its tail in a lazy way. The shock came when she got up to the porch and found a man sitting on the bench there, in the shade. He gave every appearance of having settled in for good. ‘He seemed apologetic, but did not move. He asked me if I wanted a gardener.’

‘Oh! Don’t tell me …’ Justin enquired what the man looked like. Kate said he was nondescript, untidy and dirty, wearing a yellow jacket with torn jeans. Justin said his name was Hughes. He seemed to be a wanderer. A vagabond – and a nuisance.

‘That would be he,’ Kate said. ‘He said he liked the look of my house, and had never had a house of his own. He said that hundreds of people were murdered for their houses every year. That did scare me, and the way he looked at me. I told him I needed to get indoors because I had an appointment with a police inspector. He did then get up and move out of the porch. As I was picking up my luggage, he said that his dog – who was tied on a length of rope – needed a drink of water. Could he bring it in?’

‘I hope you didn’t let him in!’ said Justin.

‘I certainly didn’t!’ Kate said she had bundled in with her luggage and hastily locked the door behind her. Hughes stared in the window. She got a cereal bowl, filled it with water for the dog, and offered it through the window. He took the bowl with one hand and tried to grab her wrist with the other. She remembered him saying, ‘Let me in – I won’t hurt you. I never hurt no one.’ But she managed to bang his wrist against the edge of the window and then slam it shut.

‘Very nasty for you, darling,’ Justin commented. ‘But he didn’t threaten violence, did he? Did he clear off then?’

‘He sort of hung about and then he disappeared.’

‘Did you ring the police?’

‘I rang you!’

They went inside. Kate sat on his knee and they kissed and cuddled each other.

‘It’s so good to have you back.’

‘Oh, I missed you. But I was busy.’ And so on.

‘How’s David?’

‘As usual. It’s time I went to see him again.’

‘I’ve heard you say that before.’

He looked down at the ground. ‘For once, things have been happening here,’ he told her. ‘A woman from Saudi or somewhere has disappeared. And they are beginning to demolish the Anchor.’ He paused before saying with a laugh, ‘And Ken and Marie took me to see a strange old lady in Elden House. It’s been a full life, despite your absence.’ He was determined not to tell her how much he missed her. That would seem wimpish.

‘And how’s Maude?’

‘She’s okay. Could become – well, Muslim.’

‘Couldn’t she go into Elden House?’

‘Can’t afford it.’

At length, Kate remarked that Justin was looking rather pale and unwell. He hated such observations coming from anyone, and in particular when the observations came from those on whom he depended; he needed them to see him looking as far as possible from either pale or unwell. ‘A spot of eye trouble, that’s all. In the hall, for instance. I thought I saw a headless being, confronting me in a rather headless way. It was just my raincoat hanging on a hook. Really ought to get to the optician. It’s been three years since I last went … How’s your hearing, by the way?’

How curious life was, full of chances, coincidences, serendipity! The Fortuitous reigned. That evening the subject of Bali emerged again. No, not Bali. Sumatra. Of course, Sumatra. Kate had no sooner returned from El Aiyat than she was working again. She had much to say about the refuge she had founded, as she and Justin sat together on her blue sofa. The condition of some of the poor children they took in to the shelter was appalling. Many were orphans and needed a hug almost as much as they needed food. ‘It breaks your heart,’ she said. ‘We need a million pounds to increase the work on hand.’

He could well believe it. He sorrowed for the poor. He sorrowed for Dave, his son – his son suffering from what he had been persuaded to call ‘learning difficulties’. More like Learning Impossibilities, poor dear … He started to tell her about Dave, and his worries for the boy, but she cut him off. Although she admitted she was tired, Kate was now busy preparing supper for friends who were coming. ‘So the Anchor’s been sold off? Why’s that?’ she asked over her shoulder.

‘It didn’t pay. They sold it firstly to some Russians. It’s being demolished.’

‘It was a rowdy place. There’s still the White Hart. Much nicer.’ As they talked, he studied Kate’s profile. To him, she was not old; her face bore the proud irreplaceable weather of experience. Seventy? It was nothing.

Friends were coming to dine, and of course Justin was invited. He regretted not being alone with her, but said nothing of that regret. The two guests who came to the meal were relations of Kate’s ex-husband, Eve and Jannick. They were in Oxford to attend a wedding on the morrow. ‘They’re just flashing through,’ said Kate. ‘It will be lovely to see them again. I’ve known them for donkey’s years.’ Kate was well connected. She had known everyone for ages. Eve and Jannick were important members of Oxfam and had recently married. Jannick was Danish. He heard what she was saying. Both were people Justin respected, both had worked in some of the danger spots of the world. Both knew of and praised the refuge at El Aiyat. Eve had returned from Aceh a few weeks earlier. The news that Eve was to visit this secretive part of the world had stirred Justin. He had lent the young woman a book on the history of Java and Sumatra, which had included a chapter on Aceh. Of course it was Sumatra, not Bali. His mind was going. Now, almost a year later, here she was and returning his book! It smacked of the miraculous. No one else ever returned a borrowed book, particularly books that had been halfway round the world …

Aceh had always been reclusive and hostile territory. Situated in North Sumatra, Aceh had been opened up by the great tsunami which swept the lands bordering the Indian Ocean in the new year of 2005.

To Justin, Aceh was not history, more a kind of myth. He stared at the photographs on Eve’s laptop, which she had brought with her, first at dark mountains fringing a new coastline, where a flooded road ran and not a single building was to be seen. Next he gazed upon a flattened, ruined land on which Oxfam personnel had built water tanks and green-painted toilets. An old man sat by the side of a track, holding his grizzled head in his hands. Here and there, tall palms, nature’s flags, still waved in the ocean breeze. The grand mosque still survived. But mainly all was desolation. Eve had photographed some of the brave people she worked with. Many women appeared, smiling stoically for the camera, women who had lost children or husbands and all their possessions. Women who clutched small children to their breasts. Many were homeless and living in hastily erected ‘barracks’. One woman was thanking Oxfam because they had given her new underclothes. All her old clothes had been lost to the great wave. Certainly reconstruction was in progress. But there was a difficulty. The Acehnese were Muslim and under strict Sharia law. One foreign aid worker, a French woman, had crossed a street from one Oxfam office to another without covering her head, and had been threatened with whipping by a local mullah. No ameliorating consideration that these Christians – or at least people from a nominally Christian country – had come freely to assist them through their catastrophe. Such was the kind of impediment which blocked their progress. ‘The blind prejudice against the female’, as Eve called it. Photographs of Nias were less depressing. High ground had formed a bastion for the mysterious island against the gigantic wave. Eve had found the people there gentler and more likeable than on the mainland. Justin gazed with reverence at these shots in particular. So unknown was Nias that he had once applied to work an Army wireless station – only to be turned down – there in that dot in the southern ocean, some fifty miles off the coast of Sumatra. Or was it Java? He was forgetting. Emotion – something grander than mere nostalgia – seized Justin at the sight of these photographs of distant lands, scarcely known in England.

‘You should visit Nias before you are too old,’ said Eve, on parting.

‘I’m already too old,’ he told himself. Perhaps he did not like Eve.

Wind was getting up as Justin made his way home. Maude was already in bed. As he went into his study to find a reference book, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Janet running across the lawn. ‘Janet!’ he called, rushing to the back door, flinging it open, hurrying into the courtyard. ‘Janet, darling!’ Fitful gusts of wind played with his hair. No one was there, not Janet in her green summer dress. Only the wind blowing and a graceful syringa bending in the strengthening breeze. He stood there with arms spread, staring, tears in his eyes. Of course, she had left him. He was victim of an illusion. He returned to the study, to look out. To hope the illusion would return. Misery overtook him. Perhaps he had not made enough fuss of Kate. She seemed so preoccupied. He resolved that he would go and buy her a really nice chocolate cake the next day.

No builders appeared the next day, a Wednesday. The business of getting up, showering and dressing, was always slow. Justin was looking forward to a visit from an old friend, Martin Sands, whom he had met in a television studio many years ago. Martin was coming down from London on the coach. The idea of the chocolate cake escaped Justin’s mind. Martin had attended Justin’s wife’s funeral, some years previously. Martin arrived punctually at twelve thirty. The two men took coffee together in Justin’s living room. Martin talked about the parlous state of publishing, and how the cult of ‘celebs’ and television told against regular authors, or even irregular ones such as he. ‘Highly irregular,’ he added. To cash in on TV and sport, publishers were now spending good money on flash-in-the-pan projects. ‘Autobiographies of people who haven’t been alive for ten minutes,’ Martin said, laughingly. In a thoroughly good mood, they walked together up the road to Headington’s finest feature, the Café Noir, where a table was booked in Justin’s name.

Justin’s legs were bad. He walked with the grand stick his friend David Wingrove had given him. ‘I’m partly ashamed, partly proud, to be walking with a stick. At least I can drive off any sheep that get in my way.’

‘They’re an ever-present danger,’ Martin agreed. The owner of the café and his wife were as always friendly and attentive. Both Martin and Justin chose the lamb dish, which they ate accompanied by a bottle of a good French Merlot. This was followed by crème brulée, after which they buttoned everything down with more wine. Justin paid the bill. The two men discussed many things, including past prime ministers. Both found a soft spot for Harold Wilson, who had withstood American pressure to send British troops to fight in Vietnam. If only, they said, Tony Blair had shown the same sagacity regarding Iraq. ‘“Iraq” will be the word on his tombstone,’ said Martin. ‘Preceded by the word “Bugger”.’

The two men had to part at four o’clock, Martin heading for the coach stop up the road, Justin hobbling home in the other direction, aided by his stick. His luck was in. He met no sheep on the way. It was then raining slightly. Birds sang under the street lamps. He had taken his furosemide tablets that morning, and the other diuretic, and had twice visited the toilet in the café. Now the urge, possibly prompted by the pain in his legs, came upon him again. He hobbled ever more slowly, whilst trying to get home as quickly as possible. When he reached the drive to the JR hospital, Invalid Walk, he had to give in to the demands of his bladder. Just inside the gateway was a short but steep slope on which chestnut trees grew. Beyond the trees, a little way off, stood offices in long huts. One had to gamble as to whether anyone would look out of a hut window, but Justin took refuge behind one of the stalwart chestnut trunks and there, to his great relief, let forth a stream of urine. He leant there for a moment, gasping. Turning, he started down the slope. Rain had made the grass slippery. He found himself rushing down the slope, out of control. He knew he would fall, crashing knees and possibly face against the inhospitable asphalt road surface. With quick thinking, he grasped an overhanging branch to stop his precipitate rush. It certainly saved him, but he swung round on the wet grass to find himself sitting, still clutching his stick in his right hand, on the edge of a muddy bank, close by the entrance to the side road. He was unable to get to his feet again, try as he might.

This inability to arise from a low sitting position was one Justin had found himself in before, though not in this outdoor situation with rain still falling. Ingenuity had previously seen him through. Sitting damp-bottomed, he summed up his prospects. Not more than a yard away from where he sat stood a large moss-covered stone. It might once have served as an old milestone. He shuffled towards it on his behind, hoping he might get enough leverage from the stone to raise himself to his feet. Shuffling quickly exhausted him. He was resting for a moment when a young man on a bike came from the direction of the hospital buildings. He stopped and got off his bike. ‘You all right, mate?’

‘I’ve just got a bit of a leg problem. I’m afraid I can’t get up.’

‘Let me give you a hand.’ He did so, but the pain when the leg bent was too extreme. The left leg Justin decided was impossible. Luckily – just by chance – another cyclist entered from the direction of the road. He too stopped and dismounted.

‘We can’t leave you there, old chum.’ Both men took his hands and pulled. Done quickly, with equal pressure on both legs, the pain being distributed was bearable, and Justin was vertical again. He poured out grateful thanks.

‘No sweat, mate. We couldn’t just leave you there, getting soaked to hell.’

‘You could have done so very easily, so I’m profoundly grateful.’

‘That’s all right, mate. If you’re okay, we’ll crack on.’ So then he hobbled home, heart full of gratitude for people’s kindness. He felt proud of England, not for its economic success but for the way one stranger readily helped another. All the same, he had not helped Om Haldar.

Kate had pleaded she was so busy unpacking. He sat down. The house was silent; Maude had probably gone to see her friend two doors away. He glanced into the garden, hoping again to see Janet’s ghost. Nothing was there. He rang the local Queen’s Bakery, but they had sold out of chocolate cakes. They had some cheese-and-bacon puffs. He was asleep in his armchair when the vicar called. Ted Hayse’s rubicund face looked smilingly at him. He said, ‘Justin, my dear, I had to come and apologize for not greeting you properly the other day. I meant no offence.’

‘And no offence was taken, Ted, thanks.’

‘That young man was telling me all his troubles. Well, most of them, to be honest, and I could but listen. The young have much to bear.’

Justin nodded. ‘Frankly, old age is to be preferred to adolescence, to my mind. Not that one has much choice between them.’

Ted looked contemplative, as if deciding what he might say. ‘Yes, that young man … well, he has a bad father and much to struggle against. A great deal depends on one’s father at a certain time in life. A good model is a great help. Our Heavenly Father of course is the best model of all.’

Justin agreed in part. ‘My father was a brave man. He was awarded a DSO for his role in Bomb Disposal in World War One – the Great War. To me he was a hero, someone to look up to, but it always made me feel I was a coward.’

Ted said sympathetically that he was not a coward. A short laugh from Justin. ‘I’m being brave about my age. Who was it said that old age is not for wimps? You know what Doris Lessing said about John Osborne?’

‘No,’ said the vicar, with vicarly honesty.

‘She said he just wasn’t very competent at life. I often feel like that too.’

‘Jesus loves the incompetent, my dear Justin.’

‘How about the incontinent?’

Ted managed to sigh and laugh at the same time. ‘You know what He said in the Gospels? “The pee-ers are always with us”.’

‘What about those who aren’t with us?’ When he started talking about Om Haldar, the vicar chipped in, saying that of course she was not a Christian but nevertheless she was one of his parishioners for a while and he had visited her, taking some of his wife’s buns with him.

‘And did Mrs Fitzgerald mind?’

Ted Hayse looked searchingly at him. ‘After all, Justin, Mrs Fitzgerald is a regular churchgoer. I cannot listen to any criticism of the lady. That would not be right.’

‘Right!?’ echoed Justin mockingly.

‘That’s what I said.’

Justin asked what they should do about the foreign girl. The vicar replied that he had phoned the Salvation Army. He told Justin that the Salvation Army was good at finding lost people and kinder than the police were when they found them.