He Wants

9. He wanted to live in Australia

‘I KNOW WHAT you want,’ says the man, getting up and going over to Lewis’s cupboards. The dog watches him with her tongue hanging out. The man opens and closes the cupboard doors, discovering sets of cups and saucers, some tinned and dried food, baking trays that have not been used for years, and a glass dish that he takes out and fills from the cold tap before putting it down too heavily on the stone-tiled floor. Lewis watches, the thought of breakage briefly raising his pulse.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ says the man as the dog sticks her nose into Edie’s best pie dish and starts lapping. The dog has a barrel hanging from her collar, like a Saint Bernard’s brandy barrel but smaller and plastic. It bangs rhythmically against the dish.

It comes to him suddenly. ‘Sydney,’ says Lewis (with a ‘y’, like the capital of Australia), and it is as if, by typing the name into Google, he has summoned Sydney, like a genie, like Candyman.

When he was a child, Lewis wanted to live in Australia. He wanted his family to move there so that he could live upside down. Everyone seems to know someone who has emigrated to the Antipodes. Lewis’s great uncle went out there and never came home. They have lost touch with him; Ted does not answer — or does not receive — the letters that Lawrence sends, in which he always mentions his cousin Bertie. Lawrence and Bertie, born in the same year and raised together on Small Street, were drafted into the war at the same time. Returning home, both miraculously unscathed, they enjoyed rambling, hill-walking and hunting in the local countryside.

(‘Australia,’ says Ruth’s boy, ‘is a million miles away.’ No, says Lewis, not a million miles, that’s further than the moon. But the boy is quite sure. ‘It’s a million miles away. It’s further away than the moon.’ Mill-ee-on, he says, making the number as big as he can, stretching it out. Or, as if that were not already far enough, ‘A million and a hundred.’)

It occurs to Lewis that Sydney’s surprise when Lewis said to him, ‘You are in my house,’ suggests that Sydney cannot be here to see him. Sydney might not even have recognised him, might not have realised who he is.

‘It’s Lewis,’ he says, touching his own chest, his own heart. ‘Lewis Sullivan. We were at school together.’

‘I know who you are, Lewie,’ says Sydney.

Lewis has not been called Lewie since he was eighteen. He remembers that summer, when he and Sydney had finished school all except for their exams. Lewis spent much of his free time cycling around the village, where, one afternoon, he encountered Sydney, who was also out exploring on his bike. They rode along together for a while, without saying much, and then Sydney said, ‘My dog had puppies. Do you want to come and see them?’

‘Sure,’ said Lewis, shrugging, as if he did not really mind one way or the other. He followed Sydney the half dozen miles to the nearby village that the locals call Nether, the pair of them freewheeling between fields of ripening winter barley, and acres of green grass that had not yet been built on, and the sky was so blue and so empty.

Sydney threw his bike down outside the only unclad house in the terrace and greeted a girl coming by on a horse. She halted, pulling in the reins, and Sydney idly stroked the nose of her shifting, snorting mare while he spoke to this girl, who was their own age but who Lewis did not know. Lewis hung back, still straddling his bike, eating sweets from a bag he had on him, into which Sydney — reaching towards him but not quite enough so that Lewis was forced to come closer — stuck his hand, offering a sweetie to the horse. The horse brought its nose forward, seeking out this treat with its flaring nostrils and its huge lips, and Lewis saw the enormous teeth in the whiskery mouth that nuzzled into the palm of Sydney’s cupped hand.

‘Do you want to give him one?’ said Sydney, but Lewis could not bring himself to do it. Stepping away, he trod in some horse shit that he had not noticed or that had not been there before. He had to leave his shoes outside the door of Sydney’s house and go inside in his socks.

The dog, a golden retriever, was in the kitchen, smiling at them as they walked through the door. It was wearing this collar with the little plastic barrel dangling from it. And there was a puppy, which Lewis picked up and it licked him on the lips. ‘Do you want a puppy?’ asked Sydney. Lewis laughed and the puppy licked him in the mouth. He put it down again. ‘Seriously,’ said Sydney, ‘we’ve got rid of the rest. This is the last one. If you want it, take it.’

‘I’ll ask at home,’ said Lewis.

Lewis, when he asked his father, was surprised to be told that he could have the puppy. He went over to Sydney’s house again a few days later. Sydney was there, but his parents had taken the dogs out. Sydney took Lewis up to his room. There was a map of the world on Sydney’s bedroom wall, with pins in places he wanted to visit. There was one in India, where he had been born, he said, in a British military hospital while his father was posted there. ‘I’d like to go back,’ he said. He talked about growing up on army bases, where he wasn’t allowed to touch the walls of the houses in which they lived because they were only ever temporary residents and when they left they had to leave the houses just as they had found them. Lewis noticed after that that when Sydney moved around a house, even though these were permanent homes, he never touched the walls.

He did steal, though. He took strange liqueurs from his parents’ drinks cabinet, and continental lagers from the fridge, Lewis mixing his with lemonade. Sydney’s father also brewed his own beer. Some of the bottles exploded in the cupboard, the corks blasting out, and Lewis hoped to witness it happening again, or at least to see the aftermath, but he only saw the site cleaned up, the volatile beers moved out. He was not offered the explosive home-brew.

Sydney stole one of his father’s Woodbines too, lighting it and sharing it with Lewis, who put it to his lips but refrained from really smoking it, afraid of getting the smoke in his throat where it would burn, like loud music damaging the hairs inside your ears, making you deaf in old age.

The following week, Sydney brought the puppy over to Lewis’s house on Small Street. He arrived in his father’s Saab, sitting in the driver’s seat and parking too far from the kerb, watched from the living room window by Lewis. When Lewis got to the door, his father had already opened it and was fussing over the puppy and christening him Old Yeller.

Lawrence invited Sydney into the house, taking him through to the living room. He expressed great interest in the fact that Sydney had been born abroad, that he had lived in so many different places and was keen on travelling. Lawrence had learnt all this from Lewis, who was surprised to discover that he had apparently said so much about Sydney to his father. Lawrence said to Sydney, ‘Have you been to Australia?’ and was disappointed when Sydney said that he had never been there. ‘Are you going to go there someday though?’ said Lawrence.

‘Sure,’ said Sydney.

‘My uncle went out there,’ said Lawrence. ‘There are opportunities there. They’re advertising for men. You can make a good living.’

‘I want to go everywhere,’ said Sydney. ‘I want to see the Wonders of the World.’

‘You’re too late,’ said Lawrence. ‘Most of them have gone.’ He moved towards the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea?’ he said. But Sydney, who had only just got there, was already keen to leave.

‘Are you coming for a ride in the Saab?’ he said to Lewis, who did not need asking twice. Leaving the new puppy with his father, Lewis followed Sydney outside.

They drove through the village with the windows down, the mother dog panting on the back seat. It was a glorious car, with a beautiful, rounded shape, and Lewis longed to sit behind the wheel himself. ‘It’s so cool,’ he said, ‘that your dad lets you drive his Saab.’

‘He doesn’t let me,’ said Sydney, accelerating hard. ‘He never lets the key out of his sight.’

‘Then how come you’re driving it now?’ asked Lewis.

‘I know where he keeps the spare key,’ said Sydney.

They drove around the countryside for a while, ‘like two old men,’ said Lewis, ‘like an old married couple out for a Sunday drive,’ except that Sydney drove so fast, and on a particularly narrow lane nearly knocked a man off his bike.

Sydney drove them to Nether, pulling up outside his house. ‘They’re out,’ he said as he parked. Letting the dog out of the car, he squatted down in front of her, took hold of her collar and opened up the brandy barrel. He put the spare car key inside and snapped the barrel shut.

They went into the house and up to Sydney’s bedroom where they sat on the edge of Sydney’s bed. Lewis had with him a book of his father’s that he was carrying around and he showed it to Sydney. He was thinking about the part in it where Rupert proposes jiu-jitsu (‘I’ll show you what I can, if you like’) and the two men end up wrestling, but Sydney was not greatly interested in DH Lawrence. Instead, Sydney showed Lewis the paperbacks he had stolen from a bookshop in town. Lewis read the epigraph in The City and the Pillar — ‘But his wife looked back from behind him and she became a pillar of salt’ — and Sydney said, ‘You can read it when I’m done with it.’

Sydney suggested breaking into the drinks cabinet and mixing up a couple of cocktails, but then they heard the ice cream van coming by and wondered if they’d prefer lollies. In the end they got neither. Sydney’s parents came home unexpectedly while the boys were still sitting on the bed, while Lewis was still looking through the books, and Sydney’s mother came upstairs, to Sydney’s bedroom door, with home-made biscuits.

When Lewis said, ‘Perhaps I should be going,’ Sydney, lounging on the bed, said, ‘Don’t go yet.’ They talked some more and Sydney read Lewis a short story he had recently written, and then, though Lewis lingered, Sydney moved towards the door.

On the doorstep, Sydney’s father asked what Lewis was planning to do with himself now. Lewis mentioned a trip to Manchester that his father and he were going to take, and then, at the end of the summer, he would be going away to university.

‘Good,’ said Sydney’s father.

Sydney had wanted to do his national service in the air force; he had wanted to fly aeroplanes, to go abroad, but by the time he came of age, national service had come to an end. His parents wanted him to join up anyway. ‘They’ll make a man of you,’ his father had said, his gaze sliding from Sydney to Lewis, whose hair had already begun to grow over his ears.

Lewis, who had been banking on a lift, walked home. When he got there, he looked for the puppy but could not find him anywhere. He said to his father, ‘Where’s the puppy?’

His father, looking up from his reading, said, ‘Old Yeller? I let him into the garden.’

They went out there, but there was no puppy in the garden. They walked up and down the road and looked over the gate into the field but the puppy was nowhere to be seen. Lewis kept expecting the puppy to return, to be in the garden the next time he looked, but the garden remained empty. He would have to come back when he wanted his breakfast, thought Lewis, but the puppy never materialised. On a few occasions during that week, the doorbell rang, and Lewis, going to the window, hoped that it would turn out to be a neighbour holding the wriggling puppy, but each time it was Sydney. Lewis had stomach cramps all week and wasn’t well enough to go out with Sydney or even to stand on the doorstep and speak to him. He went to bed. Then Lewis and his father went to Manchester and by the time they returned, Sydney had gone and his parents seemed unable or unwilling to say exactly where to, or to supply his new address. Lewis never had been loaned The City and the Pillar. He went to the bookshop in town but could not bring himself to ask for it.

He ate too many ice lollies that summer. He kept hearing the ice cream van coming, and going outside to meet it. He got frozen insides and his father said, ‘No wonder you got stomach cramps.’

Lewis went south to university without knowing what Sydney would end up doing, but every time a plane went overhead, Lewis stopped and looked up, thinking of Sydney.

At Christmas, Lewis came home and cycled straight over to Sydney’s house wearing tinsel as a scarf, but Sydney’s father stood in the doorway and said that Sydney was not there.

Occasionally, in the years that followed, Lewis would hear rumours that Sydney was coming back, but either the rumours were wrong or Lewis kept missing him. The next time Lewis saw him, Sydney was sitting on a car bonnet with his shirt off and Lewis was on his way to get married.

‘Why are you sitting at my kitchen table?’ asks Lewis.

‘I had a pain,’ says Sydney, ‘in my heart. I had to sit down.’

‘But what are you doing in my house?’

‘I didn’t know it was your house.’

Yes, thinks Lewis, who was still living on Small Street when he knew Sydney. And the dog — even if it had come back after all this time, after four or five dog lifetimes — would not have come to this house, it would have gone to Small Street and found itself standing in a car park.

Lewis says to Sydney, ‘How did you get in?’

‘Your back door was unlocked,’ says Sydney, and Lewis, looking, can see that the bolt is not across. He must have forgotten to bolt it after going to the bin. It must have been unlocked all night. Sydney must have let himself in while Lewis was having his lunch at the pub. Perhaps while he was rejecting the sausages, eyeing the Goldschläger man, choosing a pickled egg, Sydney was here.

Lewis says to Sydney now, ‘Have you ever had Goldschläger?’

‘I’ve tried it,’ says Sydney. ‘You’ve got to try these things, haven’t you?’

Lewis nods, but he says, even as he is nodding, ‘I never have.’

He is missing his spectacles, clarity of vision. He stands and wanders over to the units, opening a drawer and rummaging through unused gadgets, looking for his spare pair. He finds the case but there are no spectacles inside.

‘Pop the kettle on while you’re up,’ says Sydney.

Lewis puts it on, takes a couple of teacups from the cupboard and gets out the cake tin. Inside, he discovers a walnut cake that he has not yet cut into but which is starting to go stale. ‘Shall we have some cake?’ he asks.

‘Go for it,’ says Sydney.

Lewis delivers the cups of tea to the table, and then two small plates of cake. He has put little forks on the plates but Sydney eats with his fingers, not waiting to swallow one bite before taking another, making sounds of pleasure all the while. Lewis finds himself doing the same, grunting happily with each mouthful of cake, each sip of tea.

Sydney, finishing his slice, licks his fingers and tastes his tea. Pulling a face, he gets up and goes over the counter, opens up the sugar caddy and dips in his spoon.

As Sydney comes back to the table, he touches the back of Lewis’s neck. ‘Have you had that looked at?’ he asks. Lewis brings his hand up to the soft, brown lump newly exposed at the nape, between his hairline and his collar. He cannot tell if the lump is getting bigger.

‘I’m having it cut out,’ says Lewis. ‘I’ve got an appointment at the surgery this afternoon.’

‘I’d offer to give you a lift,’ says Sydney, ‘but I was planning on waiting for Ruth.’

Lewis feels a jolt, much like when Ruth says ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ under her breath.

‘Ruth?’ he says. ‘My Ruth?’

Sydney takes a loose cigarette out of his pocket. He does not ask Lewis whether he may smoke in the house, in the kitchen; he does not ask for an ashtray. He puts the cigarette between his lips. Just as Lewis is realising that something is not quite right, Sydney holds the cigarette out for him to see. ‘It’s an electronic one,’ says Sydney. He looks at it in a way that makes Lewis think of a spoonful of cold soup. Sydney puts the electronic cigarette in his mouth again and draws, making the end light up. He sighs and puts it away. ‘She’s not expecting me.’

‘Ruth doesn’t live here,’ says Lewis. ‘She hasn’t lived here for years.’ For a fleeting moment, Sydney looks sufficiently confused that Lewis almost reaches out to cover Sydney’s trembling hand with his own.

‘She comes here, though,’ says Sydney.

‘She won’t come today,’ says Lewis. He touches the back of his neck again, his growth, and looks at his bare wrist. ‘What time is it?’ he asks. When Sydney tells him, Lewis says, ‘Time’s marching on.’ He will have to go soon. ‘How do you know my Ruth?’ he asks.

‘We’ve never met,’ says Sydney. ‘We’ve been communicating.’

‘She gave you this address?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, why did you come here?’

‘You’ve got my book,’ says Sydney. He is looking at the work surface, at a Bliss Tempest book that Ruth must have left out on the side.

‘What?’ says Lewis, following his gaze. ‘No, that’s my book.’

When Lewis turns back, he sees Sydney slumped, as if he has fainted, or, he thinks, it is his heart. Sydney’s head is hanging down near the corner of the table. Lewis reaches out and is just about to touch him when he sees that Sydney is only bending down, fetching something out of his rucksack. Taking out a tall carton with a colourful Oriental design on a gold background, Sydney says, ‘I brought some sake for Ruth.’

‘I’ve never had sake,’ says Lewis.

‘What you really want,’ says Sydney, ‘is to have it in Tokyo, in a bar, with snacks — pickles and fish.’ Putting the carton down on the kitchen table, he mentions the pickled herring eaten with beer in Germany and Scandinavia, and Thailand’s painfully hot and moreish bar snacks, and Lewis thinks enviously of all those flights.

‘I’ve never flown,’ he says.

‘It’s safer than driving,’ says Sydney. ‘It’s safer than crossing the road.’

‘I’m not afraid of flying,’ says Lewis. ‘It’s just something I’ve never done.’ He has no idea why. He has been inside his nearest airport; he has been in the departure hall, where the first thing you see is a sign for the prayer room, and a picture of a little man down on his knees. He has seen the destinations on the information screens, the queues of people in front of the desks where passports are checked, boarding cards are issued and luggage is weighed. He just hasn’t ever been the one going anywhere.

‘You’re most likely to be injured at home,’ says Sydney. ‘You’re most likely to be harmed or killed by someone you know. You’re safest of all in the air.’

‘I believe you,’ says Lewis, ‘although at some point you would have to come down.’

Lewis reaches into the pocket of his coat and takes out a small paper bag. Opening it up, he holds it out to Sydney, who looks inside and extracts a jelly baby. The dog comes to the table, and Lewis gives her a sweetie too. ‘You’re getting fat,’ says Sydney, and Lewis can’t tell if Sydney is talking to him or to the dog.

When Lewis saw the ‘screaming jelly baby’ experiment executed in the chemistry laboratory, he had been teaching for more than forty years and was approaching retirement, but as he watched the demonstration — his colleague, in a white coat and safety goggles, melting potassium chlorate in a boiling tube over a Bunsen burner, dropping in a jelly baby that burst into flames and began to howl — he wondered for the first time whether he ought to have chosen something other than RE, something more dramatic. In truth, though, Lewis could not have handled a career as a high school chemistry teacher. He found the potential for accidents unnerving — the regular shattering of glass slides and test tubes, the explosions caused by adolescents not reading instructions, the constant smell of gas.

‘Did you join the RAF?’ asks Lewis.

Sydney looks puzzled. ‘No,’ he says.

‘You wanted to be a writer too.’

‘I did,’ says Sydney.

Lewis glances at Sydney’s watch, which he cannot read. ‘I’ll have to go in a minute,’ he says. ‘It’s a bit of a walk to the surgery.’

‘I’ll take you,’ says Sydney. ‘I’ve got the car outside.’

Lewis, whose knee hurts when he walks, is quick to accept Sydney’s offer.

Sydney stands, putting on his coat and shouldering his rucksack. Lewis is still wearing his coat and shoes from before. As he follows Sydney and his dog out of the kitchen, Lewis feels strangely as if he has only been visiting, as if he does not really belong here at all.