Shuttlecock

[14]

It is almost the end of May. The weather is getting hotter. In the Tube at rush-hours people are getting restless. I can tell by their quick eyes, by the way they barely tolerate each other’s sticky, jostling bodies, each other’s need to occupy space of their own. Something must happen soon. All this packing together of nature into unnatural circumstances must lead to something.

Two or three times, when I’ve emerged at Clapham South onto the pavement, I’ve had this urge to take off my tie, my socks and shoes — to go no further — and simply to walk away; as if Clapham Common were some endless, enveloping savannah. But, of course, I don’t. I turn to my left, along Nightingale Lane, and shamble home, like any man returning from work, clad in his weariness, his perplexities, his frustrations. If you were to pass me by, it would not surprise me if you noticed my brows contract tightly every so often (I have inherited from Dad that intermittent little knot of lines above the nose and between the eyebrows, though in my case it makes me look simply harassed, not nobly thoughtful) and my lips move and mutter indistinct, garbled words. They say if you want to see a man as he really is, catch him unawares, when he isn’t thinking of being seen. Well, that’s the time to catch me. When I’m not under the eye of Quinn or of my family — and I’m free from the scrutiny of the Tube. That’s when I am what I am, I don’t deny it. But recently I’ve been keeping a check on myself, even during these permissive moments. I’ve been developing an eager, erect carriage as I step homeward, a brisk, confident pace (in this heat) and imitating the zeal of some of my fellow commuters. For not all of them drift home like zombies capable of walking under a bus without noticing it. Some of them launch themselves from the station with an energy unsapped by the rigours of the day, shirt collars seemingly undirtied, briefcases and papers jauntily gripped, and sail buoyantly along the pavement, eager to embrace wives, dandle children and nurture gardens; and whether they are acting or not I don’t know. But I’ve been induced to ape them in a quite fraudulent manner myself.

That evening — after I’d seen Quinn about C9 — as I came up out of the Tube, I had the distinct sensation of being watched. I don’t know whose eyes I expected to see — suddenly averted when they met my own, peering maybe from a parked car or from behind some screening newspaper — or whether I felt less under the gaze of particular eyes than of some nebulous presence. I brushed the feeling aside. But it suddenly struck me later, when I was half way home and I had lapsed into my usual distracted manner: what if someone with an interest in me were really to see me, slouching home like this, my expression vexed and brooding, mumbling inanely to myself? That would hardly bear investigation. If someone had their spies … I had been thinking — so absorbedly that I was scarcely conscious of my route along the pavement — of that afternoon’s bizarre interview, of C9, of what Quinn would do next, what I should do; and then suddenly, as if, had I looked behind me, Quinn himself or Quinn’s agent would have been there, I automatically straightened my shoulders, smartened my pace and put on an alert, ebullient expression. I had to look normal, cheerful and undaunted, not to betray my confusion, my suspicion. Even when it least seemed I could be under inspection.

And it was just then, as I walked along the edge of the common that I really did discover someone watching me. It was not Quinn. It was Martin. He was standing some thirty or forty yards away, out on the common, and such was his attitude when I saw him that I somehow knew we hadn’t just spotted each other by accident: he had been following me at a distance, stalking me, perhaps all the way from the station. I stepped onto the grass, raised my hand, and was about to shout ‘Martin!’ when he turned abruptly and began walking off in another direction, as if pretending he hadn’t seen me or I had made some mistake. But I knew it was Martin. He was wearing Martin’s yellow T-shirt and jeans. I don’t believe in mirages on Clapham Common. What was he doing? I readily admit that I have this recurring hope (which is not such a far-fetched and fantastic hope, after all) that one day my sons will come to meet me at the station. That seems the sort of gesture that children who care for their fathers are glad to màke. And, believe me, I’d be chuffed to bits if they did. But Martin hadn’t come to meet me. If he had he would have been waiting by the newsagent’s or the florist’s. He had come to observe his father, as one observes some creature under glass, at just that time of day when I am most, so to speak, in my natural state. And it struck me — even as I stood with my hand half-raised and my mouth open as he walked away — that he must have witnessed enough to label me as a pretty sickly specimen; a shuffling, half-crazed figure; a figure who scarcely merited his esteem — if that had not already been established by the episode of Dad’s book. And not only this, but he must have seen, just before I spotted him, that sudden change come over me as if I were putting on a disguise and pretending to be a different man. Would he have interpreted this as the seal upon my patent hypocrisy — a little process I went through every evening in order to present myself to my family? Or as a guilty reaction (nearer the immediate truth) to the fear of being observed? Either way, a complete sham. I stood at the edge of the grass watching Martin’s yellow back slipping into the shadows of the chestnuts. I thought of calling him again, but I didn’t. And why had he walked away like that? As a deliberate display of spurning me? Or as some subtle indication of our relations? Shadowing me all the way from the station, like some Indian brave watching the pale-face pass along the trail, and then turning at the moment of being, perhaps quite calculatedly, glimpsed, as if it were for me to settle the question of our future hostility or friendship. I remembered the feeling I had had that morning Martin gave back Dad’s book, that I must make amends to him, not he to me; that I was the one to seek forgiveness, not he. I lost Martin’s yellow T-shirt. All around — I had scarcely noticed them up to now — people were relaxing in the evening sun, playing games or lounging on the grass, like inmates in some institution allowed time for recreation.

Almost the first thing I said when I got in was: ‘Where’s Martin?’

‘He went out.’

‘Where?’

‘He just said “out”.’

Marian was washing lettuce for a salad and she said nothing more and scarcely looked up. I have noticed she is getting like this of late. Quieter, shrinking, far-off. More and more thrifty with her words, as she is becoming, in bed, more and more thrifty with her body.

‘You mean you just let him wander off and you haven’t a clue where he’s going?’

Peter came down the stairs from his bedroom. I am still trying to work out whether he was in on the business of Dad’s book. He has a way now, when I get in from work, of coming dutifully to the front door and saying mechanically, ‘Hello, Dad.’ But there is this anxious, timid look in his face which, until very recently, both pleased me and puzzled me. I’ve arrived at the explanation now. It’s not that he’s in awe of me. Not at all. But he’s in awe of his brother. Whether he was an accomplice to it or not, he’s impressed by Martin’s daring, and for the first time in his little life he is feeling the onus of something to live up to. He wonders if he could do what Martin did, if he could be so bold. It’s a strange thing how your own kids suddenly start to reveal to you the implicit shape of their lives. If Martin will take after his grandfather, Peter will take after me. Poor mite. Already, in these few weeks, Martin’s face seems to have become firmly moulded; Peter’s is soft and elusive.

‘Hello, Peter. Know where Martin is?’

His eyes sharpen. Of course, all my theories could be wrong.

Then I said, to both of them: ‘Well, didn’t he say when he’d be back?’

They looked at me without speaking, as if they had detected some tell-tale symptom in my behaviour.

Then it almost seemed that a cloud passed over my eyes. Supposing they’re all in it, all together? Quinn and Martin and Marian and Peter?