and wished I had accompanied him on it just once more than I had. By
the time I reached the undertakers’, my mind was on his first stroke and his
recovery from it, and in the bank I tried to imagine what his mental life had
been like afterwards, with sufficient success to send me straight across to the
George and Dragon at eleven thirty sharp. I had had just enough attention to
spare for what I had been doing to notice how trivial and dull everything about
it had been, not momentous at all, not even dramatically unmomentous, registrar
and undertaker and bank clerk all pretty well interchangeable.
After
three quick double whiskies I felt better: I was drunk, in fact, drunk with
that pristine freshness, that semi-mystical elevation of spirit which, every
time, seems destined to last for ever. There was nothing worth knowing that I
did not know, or rather would not turn out to know when I saw my way to turning
my attention to it. Life and death were not problems, just points about which a
certain rather limited type of misconception tended to agglutinate. By
definition, or something of the kind, every problem was really a non-problem.
Nodding my head confidentially to myself about the simple force of this
perception, I left the pub and made for where there was a fair case for
believing I had left the Volkswagen.
Finding
it took some time. Indeed, I was still looking for it when it became clear that
I was doing so, not in Baldock, but in the yard of the Green Man, where I saw I
must have recently driven the thing. There was a bright dent at the rear
offside corner that I was nearly sure I had not seen before. This bothered me
to some degree, until I realized that no event that had failed to impede my progress
to this place could have been particularly significant. The next moment I was
in the hall talking to David Palmer, very lucidly and cogently, but with
continuous difficulty in remembering what I had been saying to him ten seconds
earlier. He seemed to think that my anxieties or inquiries or reassurances,
though interesting and valuable in their own right, were of no very immediate
concern. Accompanied for some reason by Fred, he saw me to the foot of the
stairs, where I spent a little while making it plain that I did not need, and
would not brook, the slightest assistance.
I made
it to the landing perfectly well, but only after a great deal of effort,
enough, in fact, to get me on the way to coming round. I had not had one of
these time-lapse things at such an early hour before, nor after so few drinks
immediately beforehand. Well, today was a special day. I was crossing to the
apartment door when the woman I had seen the previous evening, almost at this
very spot, suddenly came past me—from where, I had no idea—and hurried to the
top of the stairs. Without thinking, I called out after her, something quite unmanagerial
like, ‘What are you doing here?’ She took no notice, began to descend, and
when, after a not very competent pursuit, I reached the stairhead, she had
gone.
I got
down the stairs as quickly as I could without falling over, rather slowly, that
is. David was just approaching the couple of steps that lead down to the
dining-room. I spoke his, name, louder than I had meant to, and he turned round
abruptly.
‘Yes,
Mr Allington? Is anything the matter?’
‘Look,
David…’
‘Hallo,
Dad,’ said the voice of my son Nick. ‘We got here earlier than—’
‘Just a
moment, Nick. David, did you see a woman coming down the stairs just now?’
‘No, I
don’t think I—’
‘In a
long dress, with reddish kind of hair? Only, God, ten or fifteen seconds before
I started speaking to you.’
David
considered this for so long that I wanted to scream at him. I had time now to
notice whether we were attracting any attention, but I did not use it.
Eventually David said, ‘I wasn’t conscious of anybody, but I walked straight
across from the bar, and I wasn’t really noticing, I’m
the time I reached the undertakers’, my mind was on his first stroke and his
recovery from it, and in the bank I tried to imagine what his mental life had
been like afterwards, with sufficient success to send me straight across to the
George and Dragon at eleven thirty sharp. I had had just enough attention to
spare for what I had been doing to notice how trivial and dull everything about
it had been, not momentous at all, not even dramatically unmomentous, registrar
and undertaker and bank clerk all pretty well interchangeable.
After
three quick double whiskies I felt better: I was drunk, in fact, drunk with
that pristine freshness, that semi-mystical elevation of spirit which, every
time, seems destined to last for ever. There was nothing worth knowing that I
did not know, or rather would not turn out to know when I saw my way to turning
my attention to it. Life and death were not problems, just points about which a
certain rather limited type of misconception tended to agglutinate. By
definition, or something of the kind, every problem was really a non-problem.
Nodding my head confidentially to myself about the simple force of this
perception, I left the pub and made for where there was a fair case for
believing I had left the Volkswagen.
Finding
it took some time. Indeed, I was still looking for it when it became clear that
I was doing so, not in Baldock, but in the yard of the Green Man, where I saw I
must have recently driven the thing. There was a bright dent at the rear
offside corner that I was nearly sure I had not seen before. This bothered me
to some degree, until I realized that no event that had failed to impede my progress
to this place could have been particularly significant. The next moment I was
in the hall talking to David Palmer, very lucidly and cogently, but with
continuous difficulty in remembering what I had been saying to him ten seconds
earlier. He seemed to think that my anxieties or inquiries or reassurances,
though interesting and valuable in their own right, were of no very immediate
concern. Accompanied for some reason by Fred, he saw me to the foot of the
stairs, where I spent a little while making it plain that I did not need, and
would not brook, the slightest assistance.
I made
it to the landing perfectly well, but only after a great deal of effort,
enough, in fact, to get me on the way to coming round. I had not had one of
these time-lapse things at such an early hour before, nor after so few drinks
immediately beforehand. Well, today was a special day. I was crossing to the
apartment door when the woman I had seen the previous evening, almost at this
very spot, suddenly came past me—from where, I had no idea—and hurried to the
top of the stairs. Without thinking, I called out after her, something quite unmanagerial
like, ‘What are you doing here?’ She took no notice, began to descend, and
when, after a not very competent pursuit, I reached the stairhead, she had
gone.
I got
down the stairs as quickly as I could without falling over, rather slowly, that
is. David was just approaching the couple of steps that lead down to the
dining-room. I spoke his, name, louder than I had meant to, and he turned round
abruptly.
‘Yes,
Mr Allington? Is anything the matter?’
‘Look,
David…’
‘Hallo,
Dad,’ said the voice of my son Nick. ‘We got here earlier than—’
‘Just a
moment, Nick. David, did you see a woman coming down the stairs just now?’
‘No, I
don’t think I—’
‘In a
long dress, with reddish kind of hair? Only, God, ten or fifteen seconds before
I started speaking to you.’
David
considered this for so long that I wanted to scream at him. I had time now to
notice whether we were attracting any attention, but I did not use it.
Eventually David said, ‘I wasn’t conscious of anybody, but I walked straight
across from the bar, and I wasn’t really noticing, I’m
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