The More Things Change

The story so far ...

Not much before this other than a short mysterious dialogue between two characters, Joseph and Lucien cast in roles very similar to that of God and the devil.

On

1

I never used to believe in God. Until I met Him. Then I didn't quite know what to think let alone believe. I supposed He'd be taller, kind of looming with a real sense of presence about Him. Instead I found this silver-haired old guy from Planet Janet feeding swans in the dark from a never-ending bag of brown bread and blathering on about dogs and African phonetics. Was I disappointed? Tell me about it. — Jim Valentine

James Henry Valentine had never been one for finding things in this life, the odd copper or, if he was really lucky, a bit of silver glimmering on the pavement or, more often than not, on the step of a bus where he was too embarrassed to bend down and claim it as his own. He'd never found out why the chicken really crossed the road, how to turn base metals into gold or what Victoria's secret was. Once, in the middle of the pavement, he'd stumbled on a passport photograph of a young woman and had been nearly ploughed into the ground while trying to pick it up by a harassed mother with a buggy before her and an irascible three-year-old anarchist in tow. He still kept the picture tucked away in his wallet even though he had no idea who the person was and didn't actually find her especially attractive. He'd discovered dry rot in his flat and he'd realised recently he couldn't take the stairs two at a time the way he was once able to but he'd never laid his hands upon anything remotely useful, not even a willing girl in the dark or the means to find true happiness though he suspected there might be a correlation between the two. This was more than his simply not been observant — you could blame that on his head always being 'in the clouds' — but this was something more, something congenital, not learned, a special kind of intellectual myopia that came into play whenever he attempted to peek outside himself. When he tried he realised that all he could see was this blur; nothing made any real sense. It took quite some time before it dawned on him that other people looked around themselves and saw everything clearly, on the surface at least. The outside world aside, he'd never found himself either. He had looked. Finding looking without frustrating his adolescence had turned into one huge bout of amateur introspection and teenage angst. He could focus on single aspects of who he might be but there seemed no way to step outside of himself to see where he fitted into this bigger picture people kept raving on about. The problem too was Jim's never being exactly sure what he was supposed to be looking for or anguishing over but everyone else was doing it so why shouldn't he? He was normal after all. All of this was perfectly natural. That's right, just say it often enough and it'll become true as if my magic. Perhaps, he thought, he could find his way simply by going through the motions — self-realisation by osmosis. This quest made its way in fits and starts into adulthood; he was now running out of places to look and wasn't in a rush to eliminate the few remaining hidey-holes yet left to root around in. He was, if the truth be told, actually quite fed up playing: game's a bogie! It would not be the first time in his life he'd bailed out before the end of the match if he thought he was going to lose or if he'd simply lost interest; winning was not a big thing with him, he rarely did anyway not when it came to sports. Despite this he was the kid who always had a football and when he scurried off home so did his ball. What would Dale Carnegie say? It is taken as read that one would realise when one has found oneself. It is also assumed that once one has found oneself one would know what to do with oneself without anyone having to tell you but no one he knew seemed to have anything sensible to say on the subject. Or even something not particularly sensible.
"What if I discover I'm a bad person?" he asked one of his friends.
"Learn how to do bad things."
"How?"
"Take a correspondence course. How the fuck do I know?"
Finding yourself is not the same as discovering Africa or lighting upon some decrepit old artefact. Imagine you have this contraption, an odd assemblage of cogs and pulleys and all kinds of mechanical bits and bobs but it won't go. It looks interesting enough poised there on the mantelpiece but it clearly needs a key to make it do whatever it was designed to do and you haven't got one. Every day you look at it and try and figure out what possibly use it could be to man or beast and every day you draw a blank. You solicit the opinions of your friends and relatives; it becomes quite the conversation piece for a while till everyone — yourself included — loses interest in it. Then one day, not a particularly special day, a Tuesday most likely, by accident you knock over the ugliest vase you ever did see which smashes so perfectly that one might have thought it had been made just for that moment and, as you're cleaning up the pieces, there you find a funny-looking key and you say to yourself, "No". Well, you decide to have a go. What's there to lose? You locate the contraption, which by this time has been relegated to a shoebox at the back of your wardrobe, dust it off, insert the key in the hole, take care not to over wind the thing and, well what do you know, it does that. Who would have thought it could do that?
Maybe he had already found himself — the thought had crossed his mind — and just not been very impressed with what he'd uncovered. That couldn't be me! No way Pedro! No doubt it happens not infrequently. It happened to the Jews. Jesus just wasn't what they were looking for so they just body-swerved him and went right on waiting, waiting for the sake of waiting, waiting as the basis of a whole religion. While waiting around to see if he'd found himself he actually noticed himself getting roped into other significant changes to his life apart from adulthood, employment being one, a place of his own being another. No, these weren't changes — let's set the record straight — they were relocations, decantations, nothing more. If some ne'er-do-well makes off with your chair you find a wall to rest your haunches on or, as a last resort, sit on the ground. He didn't feel especially different. It's simply that people expected him to behave differently, to do and not do different things, like attempt to educate children who didn't especially wish to be educated for instance and not wet his bed anymore. Other than that it was business as usual. If he didn't acknowledge there had been any changes then there hadn't.
A sphere moving through the three dimensional world appears first as a spot, then it grows to a circle of a certain size which, if the light is right, we can see to be a solid mass which then begins to diminish until it becomes a spot again and disappears from the three dimensional world. In that world, the sphere appears to be a circle that changes. We can think of it as the same circle, but it grows and wanes. It is a circle that changes until it becomes nothing and is never seen again. Not true. The sphere does not change. It only appears to change. Likewise, a chess piece moves but does not change. Its relationships change, it becomes more or less of a threat, but, even if it leaves the board altogether, a pawn is always a pawn at the end of the game.
In the same way, a man moving through life may appear as a baby, a teenager, a young person, middle-aged and old - and finally a corpse. It appears to be the person that changes. Yet in reality it's not the individual that changes. People move through life and present themselves in various guises. But they don't have different appearances (just as the sphere does not have various appearances), except when viewed from a different point of view. Jim was the same person he had always been. It was the world that changed about him. That sounded so Norma Desmond.
It's all matter of perspective. Or was he kidding himself?
His curriculum vitae revealed a lot about him if you cared to read between the lines. It said that he's stuck out a degree in English Literature and managed to secure a post as an English teacher where, after many years of continuous employment at the same comprehensive and in the same position, he was still nothing more or less than that, a teacher. It said that his hobbies were reading and writing. It said that references were available on request but it didn't let on from whom. In isolation the fact that he was a teacher says precious little about him though it does set the scene. Once upon a time this would have been a profession that had at least a modicum of respect attached to it. And a not discountable ooh-ah factor: 'Oh, I hear your boy's a teacher! You must be so proud.' It now was, however, the arse end of the millennium and both the education system and, it is sad to say, the aforementioned teacher, were each well passed their sell-by date. Indeed, if the teaching profession had its prime before he was born then he'd wondered where exactly his prime had been. Certainly his chosen career path lacked any discernible peaks or troughs. Yes, he had become a teacher but he was no Mr Chips. He wasn't even a Mr Hedges. Oh no. Nor, to tell you the truth, had he aspired to be. He was simply Mr Valentine, one of three English teachers at one of the city's less distinguished secondary schools. Even the children's nickname for him was unimaginative: 'Shirley' and then he'd had to hang around till 1992 for that to stick. Prior to that he was just called 'Bloody Valentine', to rhyme with 'school dinners.' What might have steered its way into a career under someone else's care had backed itself unceremoniously into just the job he did to pay his way in the world and then stalled. Which was a shame but nothing he let get him down. His father — a bin man since the docks closed — had harboured hopes for more (what father wouldn't?), that the fruit of his loins might aspire to becoming a surgeon perhaps or a barrister, but he settled for Jim being 'a wuss of a teacher' because he was not the dreamer his son was and realised this was about the best the boy was likely to achieve. James Henry Valentine Senior was never one to mince his words: "He can't sing or dance…or box so what else was the boy going to do, write bloody poetry for a living?"
That life in general or anything in particular was or wasn't getting him down was often hard to tell with Jim. He was as deadpan as they come. More so. But this wasn't a characteristic inherited from either of his parents: his mother couldn't disguise her feelings if she tried and it would have been a mistake to confuse his father's look of cold indifference as anything more or less than what it was. You knew when he was angry well enough and when he was happy too though it took a lot to make him happy and Jim lacked the knack. Most of the time the man was simply indifferent.
Like father like son, it's said, the apple not falling far from the tree and all that rot. If you stood man and boy side by side what did you see? Yes, there was an undeniable family resemblance. No one would argue that they weren't from the same stock. Both were of a similar build with a pale, sallow complexion. Neither would stick out in a crowd unless it was a crowd of ebony African princesses and, even there, people would likely be more interested in the women and so they still probably wouldn't get noticed as long as they steered clear of the front row. Physical characteristics aside there were aspects of both men that you could fall on and say, "Ah ha! There!" if you were so inclined. Neither appeared capable of experiencing joy and what little things did give them pleasure they felt the need to internalise that enjoyment — it was certainly not for sharing with the world. And so each would sit in front of their respective television sets, watching with the selfsame look of intense concentration on their faces and never so much as crack a smile, shed a tear of pass comment on the proceedings, belching and breaking wind excepted. Pleasure was an aside, something that came along the way and rather surprised each of them when it did sneak up on them. It was like a pretty hitchhiker that caught their eye but, while they were wrestling with their consciences, the moment slipped from their grasp and there was no turning back; how would that look? Jim could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd seen his father really smile; the actual occasions were so inconsequential that he had forgotten them. His own track record was nothing to write home about either. Why it was such a source of embarrassment neither one of the two of them could have begun to explain if they'd ever thought to question it. But there was more. When Jim looked at his father he also saw his future. His father was old and bitter — "twisted" was one of his mother's expressions for it and it was a reasonable one. "God made a tree so it can bend with the breeze. If it chooses to fight the winds of change the end result won't be very pretty. That's what I always say." That was how his mother put it and it was a fair comment in its own lay-poetic way.
Whereas the father could be goaded to some sort of response the son was a harder nut to crack. His poker face was no mere affectation either. The man seemed incapable of a knee jerk reaction. Many pupils had tried but this was a rock where even the best of them met their match. It was neigh impossible to gauge how far they might have pushed him. Not infrequently they got the mixture wrong and shoved him over the edge. That's the thing about edges, you never quite know about them until you're over them. On these occasions the whole class would suffer what, for Jim, stood in for his wrath on bad days. This generally involved copying out the entire text of Beowulf or something equally tedious; even before the strap was banned he found he didn't have the stomach for corporal punishment or the wrist action. His old man had been quick enough with his hands and his mother too on occasion though she was more of a nag. Mr Valentine was not a teacher girls developed crushes on though one anonymous seventeen-year old male vacillating over his own sexuality did pen him several sorry sonnets in the style of Spenser over the period of a couple of terms.
Jim was forty and had been since he was thirty.
As far as teaching went Jim was something of a one-trick pony, what he knew he knew well enough and, as far as each fresh class was concerned it was all new to them, if not Greek. No one really realised how stale he had become, not even Jim. The kids weren't interested so they assumed the subject was boring because of this. It had been a long time since Jim would have been inclined to try and convince them otherwise. Most of the youngsters who passed through his classes had no great opinion as to whether Jim was a good teacher or not. Opinions worth voicing generally take time to form and none of them could find the time to waste on him. All teachers were boring even the ones with shiny illusions waiting to be shattered. Try as he might he couldn't ever remember being one of those. He never strayed far from what he knew and rarely tried to stretch his classes. His lessons were all meat and two veg. It was the kind of meals he had been brought up on, nothing fancier than crinkle cut chips, and they had done him no harm if they'd done him no good, in fact there was something comforting about knowing that if it was Thursday it would be egg and chips for tea because there usually wasn't much more left in the cupboard by then. His Third Year classes got served up Catcher in the Rye (a long-time favourite of his), The Merchant of Venice and the poetry of Wilfred Owen for their sins; the Fourth Year had Macbeth, Nineteen Eighty-Four and the poetry of Philip Larkin to gnaw on. And so on and so forth. Every year the same. Every year another class. All change. No change. Sisyphus descends to the foot of the hill: Chapter One, 'In the beginning… Once upon a time… It was a dark and stormy night…" And any slight shifts this way or that? Well, no one would ever notice but him and so they didn't count. He might as well have imagined them. Who could say? Who cared to corroborate? One minute you were at war with Eastasia, the next it happens to be Eurasia's shot. What does any of it matter even if one whole person sat up and took notice? And Jim had never exactly felt whole. There were times he felt such a hypocrite. He spoke in class with an air that suggested he was dipping into a great well of knowledge and dispensing only a little insight here and there. The fact was he lacked the confidence to stray far from his notes. Many times he felt like quitting because he found it almost intolerable to stand in front of a classroom dispensing knowledge when he knew so little.
He was safe if he stuck to the book. Stay between the lines, son, that's good. Steady. Steady as she goes. He was asked once, "What happens next?" He recalled the incident with the greatest clarity: it was the last day of term, no work was being done and everyone might as well have been at home. He hated days like that. It was the last day of term and the last class of the day. It had been a long day. A long, hot day. Then all of a sudden the bell went and it was over. Thank you, God! The classroom emptied and he found himself sat at his desk, packing his case, alone apart from Lucia Joyce, a shy girl, never one to stand out in a crowd, nor in a class no matter how much she tried to show she was interested. She had a small scar on her chin and had developed a habit of stroking her chin which made her look thoughtful sometimes and silly the rest of the time.
"Yes, Lucy?" She didn't correct him. People always got her name wrong.
"Mr Valentine…" Stroke, stroke, stroke.
"Yes?"
"I just wanted to say … You know how we did … how we read Nineteen Eighty-Four this year? And I really enjoyed it. I did. It was hard but it was … It made you think."
"Yes." Oh, God, please go home little girl.
"I just wanted to know … I have this question."
"Fire away then."
"What happened next?"
"Next when?"
"After the end of the book, Sir."
"You mean, did Orwell write a sequel?"
"Did he?" Lucia got quite animated at this. She even forgot about her chin for a moment.
"No. He died not that long after completing it."
"Oh. So…" Stroke.
"So, what happened next? 1985 happened next, Lucy. As relentless and predictable as that might be that's what happened next. I don't know what happened in it but I'm pretty sure that's what came next. And 1986 after that. I'm pretty sure that's not the answer you were looking for but there you go. Now, it's far too hot for all this abstract thinking. Go home."
"Yes, Mr Valentine. Thank you."
"You're welcome. See you next year."
"No, no you won't. I'm not coming back for Sixth Year."
"Ah well. Take care then. Bye-bye, Lucy."
"Cheerio, Mr Valentine."
Part of him felt bad for flipping her off but she'd caught him off guard, book shut, with only his thoughts and, for a second, he had glimpsed something. There was something out there, after the last page. And it was calling him.
One could best describe Jim by reference to things he was not: he wasn't tall but then neither was he short, he wasn't particularly good looking nor was he exactly ugly as sin, he wasn't muscular so you'd notice it then again he wasn't a seven-stone weakling either. He wasn't freckled though he had been a red-head in his youth; now he wasn't. He couldn't pass for trendy, at least not in this universe. In a dimension where baggy cords, herringbone jackets with leather arm-patches and Hush Puppies were the essential fashion items he might have been if he'd only managed to wear them with a little finesse. Fortunately Nature had the good taste to ensure that such a universe never evolved to that stage. You couldn't call him vain, but he looked in the mirror twice daily, whether he needed to or not, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He found himself neither pleased nor displeased with what he saw; resigned would be a better word. He was slightly sickly-looking, with a constant look of something akin to surprise on his face, the result of an optical effect caused by the convexity of his glasses. In truth little ever really surprised him.
Actually, it's probably not fair to call Jim a teacher either as if such a generalisation was supposed to say something meaningful about him. He hated it when people asked him what he did and always wanted to answer, "Why? What do you think I do for fuck's sake? I eat. I sleep. I go to the toilet and sometimes just for the fun of it. I laugh. I cry. I tell bad jokes badly. I watch too much television and drink way too much milk which does my catarrh no good whatsoever. I ride upstairs buses — whenever possible — and have a fondness for fountain pens — metallic blue ones where afforded a choice in the matter. I think. I dream. One day I suppose I may die but I haven't yet as far as I'm aware. This isn't hell is it?" He never did. He said he was a teacher. If pushed, he'd own up to being an English teacher. It was what they expected to hear or something of that ilk. He was a teacher in much the same way as he was a man: it was something he ended up because he found it was the course of least resistance and didn't quite know how not to be one. Boys grew up into men, strapping or otherwise, but men nevertheless. That was the law. Society expected him to take up a profession and, if not society (because, in truth, society had bugger all interest in whether Jim worked or scrounged a living), then certainly his parents and a solitary clerical officer in the Unemployment Benefits Office who happened to have Jim as one of her caseload and, as such, had something of a vested interest in his employment prospects. And she only troubled herself over him because it was her job to do so. He only had a name for the length of time it took her to check his signature. Teaching was somewhere you just wound up, like Milton Keynes or Cumbernauld or forty and single. Those who can do, the rest teach. Heard it. Still, things could be marginally worse, he could've ended up a gym teacher. Teaching was not a place people intended to get to. It was as if his life had gone for a wander, wound up there and didn't know how to find its way back in the dark. Now, a writer was what he saw when he looked in the mirror, an undiscovered writer to be fair — mainly due to the fact that he'd had nothing major published, mainly due to the fact that he hadn't actually penned anything of any great consequence and precious little of no consequence — but he wanted to believe he was destined for great things; he could feel "it in his water" as his maternal grandmother would have put it; it seemed to be the only way in which she had been remembered to him, this being one of her two stock phrases along with "have you been today?" Like most old people she seemed disproportionately preoccupied with all things scatological. Sad, that anyone's life could be reduced to a handful of words. A waste. What the heck, Beckett wasn't discovered till he was over forty so there was time albeit a dwindling amount of it. Mind you, the same could be said about Barbara Cartland. Or was it Catherine Cookson?
He believed himself to be a writer in part because of what Einstein wrote about the interchangeableness of energy and matter. Someone said there was potentially a novel inside every man — that wasn't Einstein, it was someone else, one of those nameless, faceless someone elses who went around saying things — but Jim believed this with every fibre of his being. It wasn't enough on its own, the journey. There had to be a goal, a real tangible goal not some abstract thingy meant to infuse your life with meaning. That made him sound like a human tea bag. He wanted the kind of goal you could pick up and flick through the pages of and hurl at people when they disagreed with you. It simply required the right conditions to help it develop and grow, to transform it from energy into something that mattered. Now he sounded like a human tomato plant. There had to be a science to writing too. What was art after all but an offshoot of the sciences? He would have his fifteen minutes of fame and stand or be damned afterwards. Jim was no scientist himself — he had no need crying out to have the equations scribbled out on a blackboard, he didn't care why the sky was blue as long as it didn't fall on him — but he believed what he believed and didn't need it to be proved; it would be once he had penned his magnum opus. Grief! That sounded pretentious! Still, patience was supposed to be a virtue. It was also a game of cards, a girl's name and an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan.
There were certain laws too that Jim believed in. In fact he held them dear: the laws of physics (Guilderstern spins his coin), the laws of probability (Rosencrantz calls, "Heads"), the law of diminishing returns (Guilderstern loses his coin), Sod's law (Guilderstern doesn't know when to stop). In a world in a perpetual state of flux these laws made as much sense if not more than 'thou shalt not cross the road while the red man is flashing' or 'if you fiddle with your belly button your bum'll fall off.' There were fundamental principles that guided his life and kept it just the right side of chaos. Mostly. They came into force when needed and disappeared from view right after. A few, like those outlined above, he could frame into simple 'rules,' the dos and don'ts of life, the rest, however, were so abstract and fleeting they defied classification. They worked. They clockworked away every day. They got him from A to B with the minimum hassle. And that can't be bad.
The more things change the more they stay the same. It was a fundamental karmic principle. It proved Newton's Third Law of Motion and the First Law of Thermodynamics. There were, of course, those who would stand up and challenge this. On one level it didn't make any real sense but it was all down to semantics. The more things change the more we go out of our way to stay the same, to look the future straight in the face even if it is through rose-tinted glasses. It's nothing to do with an extant Destiny. It's all to do with the inevitability of the self, that we get to be who we should be and damn all who get in our path. This may seem to imply a choice on our part but it's not a conscious decision, not something we've thought out and planned. The factors that decide who we are and who we will become are so impossibly complicated that there is no way any man could keep tabs on them. All he could do would be to acknowledge that what was going on was out of his control. No one is in charge of their own lives. Not really. They think they are. It helps to think that. It's all relative. Every prisoner has the freedom to pace his cell but that's no great freedom. That's why we have beliefs, to make the unbearable seem bearable. They're handy things to have, like those moulded plastic handles for carrying shopping bags.
Freedom has its drawbacks and one of those is loneliness; it doesn't say anything about that in the brochures. Freedom is painted as being this exotic local where it would just be impossible to feel alone and isolated but there you would be wrong. The people who sell freedom the hardest are those who understand it the least. They say they're offering freedom cut price but if it is then it's still at a cost, some cost. At home with your parents who go nowhere, know no one and do nothing, sitting with them watching the omnibus edition of Coronation Street, you may feel trapped but at least you're not alone. There are few worse places to be. Home's where you turn up and they have to take you in. Being alone focuses your attention on yourself and there aren't too many people who can take too much of their own company. It turns out to be a talent linked to writers who seem to be among the world's most socially challenged individuals in any case. Most people don't care to be on their own for too long or too often. It's not that they're shallow and bore themselves - let's face it, conversation with oneself must drag a tad if it doesn't drive one insane — it's the awfulness of how small they feel in a world that's suddenly so huge and empty. So they pick up a telephone or a book or turn on the television or the radio that ten minutes before was so contemptuous because they — we — need to know we're not alone. Writers write to someone. They are spurred on by the belief that there's someone out there who, one day, will read what they're writing and it won't have all been in vain. It would be awful if it was, too awful to contemplate. A man alone doesn't have much chance.
He had a book at home, a hard back he'd bought one day he was flush. It put him back nine pounds fifty. He'd swithered over it for a good half-hour in one of the many second-hand book shops he frequented in the West End. It was called simply Literature, a rather scholarly guide to the prose, poetry and drama of the past few hundred years. As such it was a weighty tome. (How come you could never say the word 'tome' without prefacing it with an adjective like 'mighty' or 'weighty'? It probably wasn't even being used correctly but who was there who knew any different or cared that much)? He'd never read it. It sat in his bookcase and he was always intending to get round to it. He'd bought it as a reference aid — it was how he talked himself into it and how he had coped with a predictable case of 'buyer's remorse' after. What he had done once at least was flick through the pages, looked at the pictures of the authors and said, "I'm one of these. This is a select band of people who can all stand up and say, with heads held high, 'I am a writer' and I am one of these." He had even stood in front of the bedroom mirror in the dark with a torch trying to see which was his best side. He would amuse himself wandering from place to place dictating the blurb to his first book to some invisible secretary. He should really get one of those hand-held dictation devices. It bothered him that he didn't have a distinguished enough photo among his paltry collection. His first object to overcome on his way to the Nobel Prize seemed to be his lack of photogenicity.
Most people are captives in and of their lives and Jim was no exception. Some people are locked in by circumstances or by giving others the key — the power and opportunity — to imprison them, whether it be in marriages or jobs or any one of a hundred assorted ruts; they all amount to much the same in the long run. Then there's a different sort of prisoner, the bird in the gilded cage variety. Jim couldn't quite follow how someone with so much could have so little but then he'd never been in the position so he just accepted it to be so. It was something to do with swings and roundabouts. He'd read that the lives of the rich were filled with too much time to look at themselves and each other. It's not good to look at yourself for too long, rich or poor. A perfunctory glance here and there would do the job nicely. Jim was in a third category. In truth it was a lot more popular place than those who were in it realised. Perhaps if there was a convention and they all saw they weren't as unique in their misery as they believed a lot of them would just give up being miserable and get on with their lives. These are the ones who lock the door from the inside. With them freedom is always within their grasp physically, just not intellectually. No man is free who does not believe himself so. That sounded clever. It was too. He should write it down before he forgot it only he couldn't find a pen. Not like him to be caught out without a pen. There's a special circle of hell set aside for writers where they wander around all day long having great ideas but there's no means of recording them. The thing was, Jim understood what he was doing. He wasn't deluding himself in any way. He just wasn't ready and this was his way of not coping.
His art was not going to save him that was for sure. The bare fact was that it would all come to nothing somewhere down the line. There is no greater fear — all others pale by comparison, all these others can be dealt with: by family or friend, physician or priest (it all amounts to much the same in the end) — loneliness, poverty, fear of failure, a loathing for small creeping things — nothing compares to the realisation that one day you will perish, you will stop being — all your efforts and anguishes were for nothing in the grand scheme of things — and those who knew you will perish and those too who knew of you. In time there will be nothing left but scraps of paper and bits of disk space to say you ever existed. And in time — it's the nature of these things — even they will return to the dust. Man was made so. The real sting in the tail is that God let loose a creature capable of perceiving eternity. It made his mortality all the harder to live with. Jim supposed that was quite cruel of him. Perhaps it was just an oversight. But then it was hard to imagine the divine being going, "Oops, sorry, bit of a cock-up on the longevity front. Just talk among yourselves for a while. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible." Only it never was and got forgotten or swept under some celestial carpet. All good things come to an end, and all bad things too one supposes, and. as a matter of course, the indifferent and the inconsequential, things that only ever seemed to exist in order to end one day.
Looking at him, standing by the pond there, one might have been tempted to approach him and ask if he was feeling all right, had he lost his mommy? Thankfully no one did. Actually he was feeling fine apart from a slight case of flatulence due to eating a plateful of questionable cauliflower cheese for lunch in a cheap café he'd made a mental note of never to frequent again. As a child it was the one vegetable he made the fatal error of admitting to his mother that he actually enjoyed eating and his well-meaning mater fed him little else but till it was coming out of his ears; there were days when he would've sold his soul for a turnip or a carrot. He'd made the same mistake with crusty rolls and every time she visited him or he visited her, he would be presented with yet another packet. At one time he'd found himself with an entire freezer crammed to capacity with crusty rolls. It was the simple realisation that this couldn't go on that first brought him to this park. The park was only at the end of Della Street but, for all the years he'd lived in his little flat, he could count on the fingers of both hands the number of times he'd done more than scuttle through the place on his way home. One of the main reasons for that was, quite simply, the park-keeper's habit of locking the gates on all those not out of the grounds by sundown. Mr Stone was an anally retentive control freak with leanings towards obsessive-compulsive behaviour; he was not the kind of man to be invested with even a little power. People like that should not be given the keys to parks for instance. Or brooms. No one but no one walked on the grass in his park and the gates were closed at sunset prompt no matter what the season; he had an almanac that he consulted fastidiously — nay, religiously — generally speaking several times a day. He was the kind of man who would look at his watch periodically even if it was broken to make sure it was still broken. That said, he was also a man who wore a wrist watch and carried a compass in his waistcoat pocket attached to a long chain which made him appear to be wearing two watches. Indeed, occasionally he would haul out his compass to check the time but, strangely enough, on finding only that he was facing North-North-East the time seemed somewhat irrelevant. He had checked something. That was enough. Jim had managed to get himself locked in once and had vowed never again. Famous last words. That episode had cost him a pair of his favourite cords and a good whack of his personal dignity. For all that, when in the right frame of mind he could actually enjoy a meditative stroll around the park or just to sit on one of the benches and plod his way through a few pages of Beckett — his favourite author — particularly later on when the crowds were beginning to wane; it did tend to be a boisterous place during the day. Later on the park devolved. It turned into somewhere he found impossible to think of in anything but the past tense. It was a peculiar sensation but not unpleasant. It reminded him of a Bach fugue though he was glad he'd never actually been asked to say what he meant by that; he couldn't have told you. Jim knew it was the present, there were people he'd seen around at other times, no one was dressed in Victorian get-up or what have you, and yet there was an atmosphere about the place that always made him feel as if he'd stepped back into another world, into another era when there was more time for such things. Today, however, he was feeling less analytical than he had been on previous visits. Today he was just out for some fresh air, to clear his head, to be able to break wind in peace and to rid himself of a dozen white crusty rolls.
Actually he wasn't reading much fiction these days. It distracted him from his own work. He'd turned to the life stories of the men he once held up as heroes instead, if that was the right word; nowadays it felt old-fashioned. You could have heroes back in the Fifties but he was one of the last of the free milk generation. The word 'hero' was as good as defunct, replaced by 'celebrity' and 'superstar' — quantity versus quality. It wasn't so strange that he'd taken as long to get round to reading these books — he'd been content enough just to see his idols — even that wasn't quite right — through their achievements. If anything he'd actively avoided the 'biography' sections in libraries and bookshops. What more could an outsider tell him that the man could not say himself? Quite a bit as it seems. Biography is not simply a recording of events for the sake of posterity in a vain attempt to stop fact and fiction melding the way they have a habit of doing (they're not such strange bed-fellows after all), it's also an assessment, a written judgement, an attestation to the worth or waste of a life. It may read like entertainment and the fault for that lies in this black and white generation's wilting vocabulary finding it necessary to define things too narrowly. Books are there to entertain. Even those written to inform are expected to do so entertainingly; that they also inform is almost coincidental. There are too many shades of grey for comfort, far too many. Words are places to look for meaning, words or behind the couch. That doesn't mean you'll find anything there but it is as good a starting point as any. A text does not contain a meaning. Readers construct meaning by what they take the words to mean and how they process sentences to find meaning. They expect to find significance and so they do. Readers read ideas more than words, and infer, rather than find, meaning. They draw on their knowledge of the language and of conventions of social communication. They also draw on their knowledge of the author ("Would Jim say such a thing?), the occasion ("No one knew that then!"), or the audience ("He'd never admit that publicly.") They infer unstated meanings based on social conventions, shared knowledge, shared experience, or shared values. They make sense of remarks by recognising implications and drawing conclusions. They read into things too and impose their own opinions when they think they can get away with it, where the true meaning escapes them. Words mirror the world and, as such, there is always a certain degree of distortion to be accounted for. If, however, the words no longer exist to express our perceptions it is only human to try and make some sense out of what we're experiencing. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it does it make a sound? And, if there was a toddler there, what would he or she say? Bang? But it doesn't make a word. It makes a sound and the sound of that tree falling is unique to that tree and that tree only. No word, whether it be crash, bang, thud or wallop can contain it or express it. There are some cultures in the world who may not have a handy word for — say, for example — love. Does that mean they cannot love? Or hate. Or whatever? In Lakota (one of the languages spoken by the Sioux), events are looked upon as either having already happened or not happened, real or unreal; there is no concept or tense of time. And if you have no concept of time then you can't be late and you have nothing to wait for. Because the words don't exist to define who we are does that stop us being that person? Novels are such strange affairs, veiled autobiographies written by impossibly myopic men and women, too close for comfort to the subject in question — themselves, their pasts, their fantasies, their guilt and regrets and so much more. There is no way they have a prayer of seeing the bigger picture. At least a biographer worth his salt can look from afar with an air of dispassion even if most works of that ilk turn out to be the strangest of love letters. The same can be said too of novels. Not all writers feed their egos to the wolves. Very few do. It's human to excuse even when pointing three accusing fingers at oneself; that was one of his mother's favourite mottoes. The Bible had it spot on there: no man hates his own flesh, he feeds it and takes care of it. He may go through the motions of hating himself and delude himself into believing that he does but the facts, stripped bare, tell a different tale. Writing is a way — a convoluted way it has to be said — of explaining who we are, of expressing just what it means to us to be a Joe Public or John Doe. Not everyone has the luxury of being instantly defined by their name alone as the likes of Kafka do, or even by their silhouettes like Hitchcock or Mickey Mouse. 'This is me!' the book cries from every page but mostly in ways no one understands, a lone voice in the wilderness, an island - and he was that - in a sea of what he wasn't sure. What he did know was that he was alone.
If he were a character in a book would we care about him? Unlikely. We don't know really enough. It sounds as if he didn't have much of a childhood but who of us did? Not many of us grew up in a Famous Five book. All we see is a man, a teacher as it happens, standing alone on the edge of a pond in an unknown park and in an unnamed city looking as if he's feeling decidedly sorry for himself. What is there to care about? He could be anyone. He could be any one of us. Just what would make us care if he lived or died?
(One must wonder what all of this foreshadows. Things that happen now will happen later. Questions unasked now will remain unanswered later. He has reached this point before and he will make his way back to it later. Every moment is a gauntlet.)
To be fair Jim was not particularly wallowing in self-pity. Not in any direct sense of the word. He was looking for inspiration. He was having a go at 'method writing' — his terms for it — and it wasn't working. He was trying to peer within the soul of a character who hadn't even yet got a name, who was standing on the brink of a plot yet to be contrived. C S Lewis had said that 'plot is character' (at least Anthony Hopkins had done so on his behalf and who was Jim to think that he had not said so some time in his life?) but frankly Jim couldn't see it. All he knew was that he needed to write about a man standing in a park on the verge of something new, something dangerous, something wondrous, something, just something.
A character is a complicated thing, multi-faceted veering from a startling transparency to an impenetrable opacity. There is the man to whom certain specific facts apply, who has been born at a particular time on a certain day, the child of parents whose lineage could also be likewise proven with biblical accuracy. This says a number of things about him, that he would speak the national tongue in the local dialect and adhere to the value system in force at that time in history and so on and so forth. And there will be those who will assert, to a greater or lesser degree, that the place and time of his birth in relation to the rest of the universe would also have a bearing on who he would be. Others would suggest that his being made aware of such a perspective would incline him in that direction anyway. Then we have how a man perceives himself, what he sees in the mirror and — more importantly — the other 'mirrors' he may have held himself up to find disappointment in. He could see himself well enough reflected in his father's eye. What he saw there said a lot. Or what he thought he saw, or believed he saw or expected to see. And didn't see. It's a bit like looking through the open door into an empty room and knowing what's missing. Also there has to be who the man believes himself to be. Why we are not that man may be clear enough. We may not want it badly enough. We may see the goal but not the way. Life may be keeping us down or it might not be our time, at least so the fatalistically inclined would suggest. There is who we want to be, that fantasy figure who stands so far away from us in every way that it is impossible for us ever to find even a modicum of satisfaction in the real world. Then there is the man in the blind spot, that part of us we are physically incapable of viewing no matter how hard we crane our necks or strain with two mirrors. The way in which he reveals himself tends to be more subtle, like in the way we empathise with the ball in a game of football or come away understanding how an empty goalmouth must feel. Some call him our dark side but such distinctions are vulgar and too cut and dried. Nowhere does fuzzy logic apply with greater force than within the human psyche. There is the man that others see but they don't always see the same things. Some of them are short-sighted or look away at the crucial moment. But they only see the 'public' you and how would you see you if you were them? Even your most intimate cohorts still are not privy to your Most Holy. That is where a man stands alone with his maker in a place with no shadows. Behind every character, shadowy or otherwise, there is a purpose, a driving force, an element — whether a part of him or something external he doesn't know — that points him towards his pole star. You can try taking on a life of your own but at the end of the day there's so much you have to fight. One wonders if it's worth it. Why wasn't writing more like gardening? You drop your character in the shit, leave him to his own devices for a few chapters, then, as Bob's your uncle, he blossoms into this fully-fledged, well-rounded individual, one who has risen from his trials, somehow a better person. Yeah, right. In his dreams.
On. You plop your character on the page. You switch him on and abandon him in a world with no off key. On you go, son. Get on with it. And so he does his level best, on and on, always on display, always on hand. As Barnum said, "The show must go on." Life must go on, round and round, in ever decreasing circles. If you're on then your going, heading to, running from, it's all much of a muchness at the end of the day. On. The plot demands it. The readers demand it: Do something. Say something. Think something if that's all you're up to. Yes, have a think and we all know what thinking leads to. Conclusions. Yes, with their promises of closure. But they lie. The book may end but that's never it. You live on waiting for the next foot to fall. No man is an island - perhaps. But his life can be, with no exit, no escape, and no loitering. Move along. But, officer, I've nowhere to go. That's not my problem. You can't stay here. And with that, he points you towards the next sentence, maybe the next paragraph even the next chapter. Now, don't you be showing your face around here anymore. Let's get on with it, shall we? And, at the end of the book where do we go then? Life is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
The thing is, Jim didn't have anything for his character to say because he didn't really have anything to say himself. He'd never had much to say. What little he did have to say when he was twenty he still found worth saying now he was forty — only in fewer words. He'd just had longer to think about what really needed to be said and sometimes, "Life's shite," does say it all without any particular need for embellishment. Say what you have to say and get off the page: that was his credo.
Jim looked around as the park drained of people and found himself wondering about the sheer arbitrariness of it all, of life. He could have been born anyone here, man, woman or child. He could have been swapped at birth. The idea had crossed his mind not infrequently during puberty and adolescence; it would have been a nice scapegoat. A fat, bothered man in an ill-fitting parka wheezed by Jim attached to an equally asthmatic-sounding Kerry Blue straining at the end of a leash that was far too long and threatened to get entangled in all sorts of things before the two made their way home. The dog had a large stick between its teeth, a piece of wood which was really too big for the creature but it struggled with it in any case as if its life depended on it.
"Come on Lucky for Christ's sake!" the man bellowed and yanked the creature's lead. The dog staggered, dropped its load, looked back at him with forsaken eyes, picked the thing up again and did as he was bid. He knew the drill: he'd keep guessing the way home until he got it right and, most likely, when they did get home the man would beat him with his own stick. They had passed this way before and they would do so again. Perhaps that wasn't what the dog thought but they were the thoughts Jim attributed to him. Do dogs know anything of the future? Now there was an image to conjure with. There, but for the grace of God, go I. He felt, for a moment, that he was staring into the jaws of the future and he shuddered; someone had just walked over his grave.
Writers don't have lives. They have ongoing research. Every day is a work in progress. Nothing's sacrosanct. No one's exempt. You can't hand them a note from your mother to leave you alone. It doesn't work like that. Scientists do research, they investigate things, ask pertinent questions, test theories, draw conclusions. The desperate experiment on themselves; they're the artists. Science as an art form, now there's a thing! Art mirrors life as life follows art — at a respectable distance. Could there be such a beast as community loneliness as if one day all the jokes stopped being funny and that was it, fun's over, we're not playing anymore. It would be funny strange, wouldn't it?
Change is necessary. It is supposed to promote growth he thought or thought he'd read but wasn't sure. He wasn't sure if he'd read it, nor was he so sure he believed it. He supposed much would depend upon the context in which the sentence had promoted itself. He believed change to be unavoidable, occasionally desirable, but in the end, despite the consequences, inevitable. So one might as well get used to it. Why was it then that he resisted it so? He acknowledged its existence in his life in much the same manner as he did the existence of bile within his body. So, as it happened, he allowed the processes of change and digestion to go on around him unhindered and considered only when absolutely necessary. Indeed his reaction to change could be comfortably categorised as bilious and there was an appropriateness to that that would have appealed to him had he considered it, which he had not.
There is change though and there is change with meaning. Meaning is a symptom of action. Some things attract meaning like cowpats draw flies. Other things have no intrinsic meaning at all. They don't make sense. Humans don't cope too well with things that just happen or are just there. We don't cope well with abstractions. It's why it helps to get the straight edges done first. Our perceptive qualities try and impress significance on things that were never meant to have any, the shape of clouds, the lines on the hand, or the intestines of some recently slaughtered small rodent or fowl. Men are especially bad at this. It's a gender thing. There is something in the female psyche that doesn't need things to be so literal, that enables women to knit by the seat of their pants as it were. Men need things to have a beginning and an end, a first cause, a purpose in being there and, unforeseen occurrences apart, a satisfying ending lest the journey from A to Z have been in vain. So we imbue things with meanings, we fill them up and hope they don't leak.
Looking at him standing there you would never think he was a writer. He wasn't writing for one thing. A writer by definition is one who writes. The dictionary tells you that and if you can't believe the dictionary then we're all in a sorry state. That would free all sorts of people to go around letting words mean what they just feel like at the time. So one day he say's he loves her and he means it only he only means what he decides love should mean, not what she thinks it should mean, neither of them happening to be what the dictionary says that love should mean. Men compiled dictionaries. Who's to say they got it right every time? What if, the night before they sat down to define "love" they'd all been out on the tiles and didn't spend quite so long ruminating and cogitating over getting it exactly right? "Sod it! That'll do." All of which means a writer must spend longer than you'd imagine deciding what words to actually write because so many different people could take whatever meaning out of what he wrote that he might end up sparking off some revolution or cult or whatever when all he intended to do was tell a story, earn a crust and try and stop his head from aching due to it being too full of words.
Jim didn't even conform to the popular definition of a writer who sat in front of some antique manual job ripping out pages with two words on and tossing them — or not — into the omnipresent wastepaper basket until it is full and the screwed up balls lie where they might. Someone should think up a word for screwed up balls of paper. It's the sort of thing in this life that should have a word to describe it. He'd look it up only he had no idea where to start, perhaps in the thesaurus under 'paper'. He made a mental note to look it up when he got home. There was something else he had to remember: now, what was it? He would have made a written note only he had been remiss and ventured out without his notebook. Tsk tsk. That proved — ipso facto, thank you and good night — that he wasn't a real writer. A real, card carrying, dyed-in-the wool writer would no more be caught sans notebook that a photographer would be seen leaving his house minus his camera or a gigolo without his penis.
And yet what we have here is indeed a real writer. If there was any one definition what didn't actually involve the physical act of writing words on paper then it would have to describe a state of mind, a condition, a way of living one's life and looking at life in general and the lives of people in particular from an observer's point of view (even when writing in the first person). It was perhaps just as well that he didn't look like a writer, that he looked as inconspicuous as he did. Then it was a trait of his art that he should not be observed. Were he to be conspicuous then people would perform, out of embarrassment or for his edification, either way they would cease being natural and that's what he needed. That's what he wanted to capture, what it's like being normal, not being him because he never thought of himself as normal. Were he normal then everyone would be a writer. And they weren't. Nor where they artists of any description. Normal people went to the football or the bingo, they got married and had affairs and they knew about mortgage rates and credit cards. He was surrounded on all sides by a superfluity of normalcy; it was depressing.
At the end of the day, what was additionally depressing was the fact that he was an amateur writer, one of thousands in the country, pottering away in the evenings and at weekends if they hadn't had to bring work home and they could tear themselves away from the television all clinging onto, with varying levels of tenacity, the belief that what they were doing mattered. Life crammed his writing into small pockets of time but he still clung onto the belief that what he had was more than a hobby: train sets and stamp collecting were hobbies, things to occupy time. He had no time for hobbies; he was forty. No, he was only forty which meant there was still time. He could no more stop being a writer than he could refrain from being a man.
He was tired, tired in so many ways and he'd not slept well the previous night either. He'd dreamt that he was asleep but he wasn't alone. He was being watched from the darkness — discussed in the darkness — but he couldn't see in the dream who exactly was watching, and talking about, him. All he could remember was a calm, low voice that said, "He's sleeping. He knows nothing. Let him sleep for now." Creepy.
The pond was shaped like a giant kidney bowl. It was something he noted every time he came to it. He also remembered that the Bible said the kidneys were the seat of the deepest emotions, not the heart. He didn't know how he knew that, where he learned that from or why he remembered it; it was not the sort of thing one could idly slip into casual conversation. He just did. His head was full of stuff like that, junk he'd picked up and never had the good sense to forget in case he needed them some time in a future that never seemed to come. It wasn't exactly stealing but, at the same time, ever time he used one of these gems he always felt that what he had written wasn't truly his alone but then you can't credit the whole human race can you?
Today the swans were all crowded in one corner on the far side away by the putting green. Jim sighed and tried to recall for a second the last time he actually stepped onto a pitch and putt, and why; he couldn't remember. It had been a while to be sure. Knowing his luck, by the time he got round to their position the birds would up and glide over to where he was right now just to be difficult. For a few minutes he stood there limping on two different opinions. Part of him just wanted to dump the rolls in the water and head off home but there were people around who might notice and think him strange. He didn't like to be thought of as strange despite being pretty sure he was.
A small crowd had started to gather nearby. Maybe someone had fainted. It was decided. Reluctantly he lumped to go to where the swans were. Anything to get away from all these people. He stepped up his pace — allegretto ma non troppo. If the birds chose to exercise their prerogative not to be there when he arrived he could then dispose of his rolls with a clean conscience out of sight of everyone but a Mrs Mildred Lambert of 27a Westmoreland Street who, unbeknownst to Jim, was sitting in her front bedroom with a pair of binoculars surveying the park for questionable and (hopefully) reportable activities. Lone males of a certain age were always targets for her hungry little eyes. At that exact moment she was — with some skill — dunking a madeleine cake in her tea with one hand while adjusting the focus of her binoculars with her other. Her husband had dozed off in front of the fire over the Daily Record crossword and was thankfully quite oblivious to the entire proceedings.
As Jim got further round the pond he realised what was attracting the swans so. An old man was seated on one of the benches a little back from the edge. He was reading a book, a rather worn paperback actually, but while he was reading — without looking up — he would reach into an open bread bag besides him and toss a handful of bread into the midst of the birds. He looked like an ancient crow. Jim's stomach gurgled borborygmically something that sounded not unlike, "Uh, oh." It was a simple enough dilemma, to go on or to return from whence he had just come. Part of him dearly wanted to retreat and abandon his rolls in the nearest bin rationalising with himself that he had at least made an effort but, as he was procrastinating the old fellow looked up from his book, as if he had just sensed his indecision, and caught his eye. They smiled at each other as strangers feel obliged to do in situations like this.
"How do?" called the old guy. He sounded like an old crow. Well that was it. He felt like some sort of tractor beam had caught a hold on him and was reeling him in. The man put his book aside and waved stiffly the way old people end up doing, as if he'd not quite rehearsed the wave enough before he decided to carry out the act and hadn't quite got it right. Jim raised his hand and sort of waved back. He could do without this.
There was something about this old fellow. He looked out of place. Jim couldn't put his finger on it. He was got up like an old music hall turn, a Max Wall or an Arthur Askey, a small man with a face that could tell many stories, the kind that, even were it to break into a wide grin, you would still sense the pathos underneath. He was old, yes, easily seventy — possibly eighty with a closely-trimmed white beard, but there seemed to be some inner quality at work here; he had young eyes. A part of Jim still told him to turn on his heels and head for the hills but the tractor beam just kept reeling him in.
Of course he talked to people when he had to. He lived in the sort of city — it prided itself on being 'the friendly city' — where it was nothing unusual to have a total stranger pass the time of day with you. There were placards and banners all over the place welcoming one and all to the place. It felt like propaganda but there appeared to be some truthfulness in it. It wasn't its nation's capital but it pretended to be. He just grinned and bared it, well he just bared it. Jim was not one of life's grinners. You can't get away with not talking to people if they decide they want to talk to you. Not for very long in any case. They won't let you. They just talk at you till you cave in or dream up an excuse not to be there. But you can usually manage to get away with not actually saying anything — or grinning. He hadn't said anything in years, nothing worth saying, there never being anyone to say anything to, anyone he really needed to communicate with. It was the measure of a man, that you could say things to him. Or her. This was not about gender however. It was to do with wavelengths, subtleties, catching the drift, all that sort of stuff. So he had developed the art of talking without saying anything. And it was an art. There were those who, having spent a half-hour or so in his company could leave and have no idea what they'd talked about. The important stuff got written down. Sometimes it was on scraps of paper, beer mats, whatever was lying around usually.
Actually Jim wasn't as misanthropic as you might imagine. He just felt awkward in company. He was sufficiently analytical to realise that much of this was to do with his own physicality. Had he been more comfortable with his body then he might have felt less ill at ease in the presence of other bodies. He preferred his own company, a strange expression, Jim thought, implying that he was, in some way, two people or was it two aspects of himself, one inquisitional and irresistibly curious, the other searching for answers, scraps of useful information to placate the other.
Jim possessed few people he listed as friends when asked, most were associates, work colleagues, people he had no clue about really but they filled the gap in his life where friends should be. His interpersonal skills, strangely enough for a teacher, were frankly his weakest qualities. Those of his pupils who could be bothered enough to think about such things explained this away as professional distance or intellectual aloofness but the truth was he could only feel relaxed with anyone when they were on the same wavelength. And that, as far as his pupils were concerned, was during English lessons. He was their teacher and they were his pupils and that was that. As has already been said, he was a good teacher but limited, "competent" his annual report usually said. On occasion he had been asked to stand in and take the Religious Education class when their regular teacher was ill but he was never at home with it. For one, it meant moving classrooms and he did like the familiar surroundings of his own room. But it was more the subject that was the crux of the problem. It was not a topic he could cover with any great sense of assurance. All children display an uncanny ability to tune in on this and generally the lessons degenerated into arguments about whether Adam had a belly-button or not, or what came first, the chicken or the egg? So passing the time of day with a solitary — and probably lonely — pensioner wasn't going to be the hardest thing in the world. It would be a great deal easier if the man asked him if he thought the works of Chekhov were over-rated or why Waiting for Godot wasn't simply a play where nothing happened in two acts. No, he'd want to talk about the weather most likely, about how the nights were drawing in, an expression he never quite understood. Or his ailments. Old folk delighted in talking about all the things that were going wrong with their bodies. Oh well.
Jim flopped down beside the man and inquired if he minded if he joined in feeding the swans. Not that he imagined the old fellow felt he had some sort of a monopoly on feeding swans but propriety dictated that he ask. At lease he felt that it did. It seemed the thing to do. The old fellow maintained that he didn't mind: "Never any satisfying this lot," he chuckled and nodded at the birds, "Be my guest. Please." Jim opened his bag and began to tear off lumps of roll and toss them in the fray before them. What is it about chuckling? You never heard a young person chuckle. He certainly never chuckled either. "Try and aim a few over there." The man gestured to a small knot of birds that weren't managing to get their fair share. Jim acceded and, for a few minutes, they sat there side by side the universe got on with its business and they got on with theirs. Only things didn't stay like that. They never do, do they? The crowd on the other side of the pond was getting bigger. They had begun to group into a tight knot of bodies and all appeared to be peering at something on the ground. In the distance he could hear a bell — possibly a fire-engine or an ambulance. He was suddenly aware that night was almost upon them.
"Did you know there are thirteen ways of looking at a swan?" the old man suddenly said.
"I'm sorry. I was miles away. What did you say?"
"Oh nothing. You look as though you've got a lot of stuff going on in there?"
"In what way? I don't understand." Jim had quite expected the old guy to start up a conversation but his opening gambit jolted him back to reality. Since the fellow hadn't sparked up right away Jim had hoped he'd got off light for once, besides he had been miles away.
"I mean, if you don't mind me being so bold, you look as if you've got a lot going on in your head." Had he? He supposed he had but he didn't feel presupposed to share his innermost thoughts with a total stranger even if there was a school of thought that suggested they were the very best people to share secrets with.
"No, not really." Coward. "I was just looking at the crowd over there. I expect someone's fainted or something."
The old man wasn't going to be so easily distracted. He looked like the kind of guy who didn't get out much and hence made the most of it when he did. "If you don't mind me saying, you have the look of an educated chap. What are you, some kind of writer?"
"No! No, now you mention it. I'm a school teacher actually. English." Now why had he been so emphatic about not being a writer? He did write. He'd always written. He didn't earn his living by it but it kept him alive. That was the important thing. Why was he so shy about owning up to it? Besides it was personal. What the heck, he could sit there and lie his little head off. After all, the real him was a writer. Who has this old guy to say yeah or nay to him? Still it didn't sit well with him. Maybe being the real him didn't sit too well with him either.
"I used to do a bit of writing back in the old days..." (The old guy was off again but this time he'd snagged Jim's interest; that wasn't supposed to happen) "...mind you, it was a while ago and, when I caught site of you across the pond there I thought to myself, 'Self, if that's not someone at the end of a long and intense relationship then I guess it'll pretty much have to be a bloke with the world's worse case of writer's block." Who was this guy? "You know, I suppose being God's not much different from being a writer. He creates characters and watches how they work together and every now and then he has to butt in and do a bit of editing, fix a name here or there, kill off some minor character to free up the plot a bit." Oh dear, why did he have to go and spoil it all and bring God onto the scene?
"Well, I don't know about all that but I guess I need some serious re-writing if anyone does." Uh oh, now where did that slip out from?
"In what way?"
"I don't know. Just sometimes I wish I had a blank slate and could start again. I guess everyone does from time to time."
"Would you like me to read to you?" The old man shook his paperback at Jim.
"Read?"
"Yes. Some people find it quite comforting to be read to."
"No. No thank you."
"It's damn good book. Damn good. Read it several times. Erstatz something-or-other. Forget the title." He squints at the front cover to remind himself but doesn't think to reveal the actual title of the book. "Always the test of a good book, don't you think, if it improves on subsequent readings? Not many things do. I guess that's why we only live life the once."
"You're quite possibly right."
"So, you don't want me to read to you? Right then."
The old fellow didn't seem to have much to say in response to that. He found his place in his book and started reading and the two of them just got on with their feeding. This didn't exactly feel like the calm before the storm but it was. Oh boy was it.
"You likely will have discovered one time or other that god spelled backwards is dog and visa versa, anagrammatically speaking" the old man continued or was he changing the subject? He might have even been talking to the swans this time. Jim wasn't sure. "It's a realisation that most people come to at some time in their life. There are those of course who look at this and think within this sheer coincidence there lies the meaning of existence or something deep and mystical which it doesn't. Anywise you'd only ever come to that conclusion if English was a language you were au fait with. The English language, for example, uses the letters d-o-g (and their corresponding sounds) to denote a domestic animal. French uses chien; Spanish, perro. Of course, the Zulu people, whose language includes a lot of clicking, believe that the sky god Umvelinqangi descended from heaven and married a large overgrown swamp so what can I say? What indeed?
"Basically what I'm saying is that people take the most perverse route to try and understand someone or something. It's uniquely human to try and read meaning into everything. Even themselves. Especially themselves come to think of it. People are a lot more like characters in a book than they realise. It's like when you take a shine to some girl or other at the dancing, rather than head straight over to her and ask her for her name and 'how's about it?' or at the very least, 'You dancing?' you do this convoluted thing where you get your pal to ask her pal, or a pal of a pal, and so let half the town in on this petty infatuation which, if you'd left it alone, would have gone away within a week or two. Feelings are like spots, you shouldn't pick at them or they get all infected and scabby.
"You know son, people have been trying to understand God for centuries. The trouble is with most of them they want him to be who they imagine him to be not who he really is. They think they can get to know him by reading holy books or talking to self-appointed holy men. And if these don't exactly paint the picture they're looking for then they just up and go elsewhere. Which is all wrong but one can understand it. I can anyway. The real difficulty in getting to know God is that he's not been around for such a long while. Which was remiss of him but he can't be everywhere at once despite what some people would have you believe. If that was the case he would've ended up in some very questionable situations, the sort of places that any self-respecting deity would never wish to be seen. No, he's not omnipresent. That doesn't mean he doesn't know what's going on from one end of the universe to the other — he has his means — but he doesn't feel the need to actually be there. You can understand that I'm sure."
Oh dear. This was not happening. He simply wasn't prepared for a discussion of things supernal. Why couldn't it have been cricket or bowls? He bet the old guy had pockets full of religious tracts too. Jim said he could understand and speeded up the pace at which he was tearing up his rolls. He suddenly felt a rather desperate need to not be there right then. It wasn't that he had no opinion on the subject. He'd had a religious upbringing for what it was worth — a lot had gone on in his parents' house 'in God's name' — but he had never kept up any sort of formal faith going. He didn't exactly not believe nor would he say that he did believe. God wasn't a part of his life and as long as that stayed the case he would concern himself with the more mundane practicalities of things secular. Besides he had twenty-three précis of Romeo and Juliet at home all crying out to be corrected before bed. Or perhaps in bed in place of a cup of tarragon tea, something his mother had put him onto to sort out his indigestion. It didn't work on that but he did find it could help him get to sleep. The last of his rolls lost to the swans he made to make his escape but the old fellow caught his arm gently. It was the first time they had touched. It wasn't unpleasant.
"I take it you don't believe in God then?"
"It's not that I don't believe per se I don't see any evidence. It's not something I've thought about much. I don't know if he's dead or if he's just lost interest in us but I don't have a need for him in my life."
The old guy nodded but it was hard to see if he was in real agreement with Jim or not. "Is it possible - just for argument's sake you understand - that God may have a need for you in his life?"
What a preposterous question. "Look it's been very interesting..."
"Joe."
Jim was caught midstream by the interruption: "I beg your pardon?"
"'Look it's been very interesting, Joe'. That's my name. Joseph's my given name of course but I've been Joe for a long time now. Joe Hoover actually." The old man held out his hand and smiled. Robotically Jim shook it. It would've been rude not to.
"All out!" Mr Stone's familiar cry came faintly on the breeze. It was time to go.
"Look, it's been very interesting ... Joe ... but I don't know you and I really don't have time to get into some epistemological discussion right now."
"I know I know, you've got all those essay things to mark before bed."
Jim was taken aback. "How do you..?"
"Aw nothing. Just a parlour trick to get your attention." He'd got it. Joe dipped into his bag and brought out yet another slice of bread. For some reason Jim then noticed that the bag was still practically full, as full as when he'd arrived. "You know son, when I was looking at you over there I was thinking to myself — as I'm not exactly in the habit of thinking to anyone else - and I said, 'Self...' 'Self,'I said,' (This is after we'd got over the are you or are you not a writer bit you understand.) 'That is one weary looking individual. You would think he has the world on his shoulders to look at him,' and I kind of hoped that you'd come over so maybe we could chew the cud a bit and here you are." All of a sudden, the conversation shifted key. "You know, come to think of it, you look terrible. Are you getting enough sleep?" Not that it was any of his business but Jim assured the strange little man that he was. To be honest he had no idea how much sleep he was getting on a regular basis or whether it was good, bad or indifferent. All he knew was he went to bed when he ended up going to bed and he was generally jarred awake by an alarm he was forever intending to replace but never had done. "Good. Good. You should get plenty of sleep. People don't get enough sleep. And I bet you don't eat right either. You look like the kind of chap who doesn't eat right. Too many microwave meals and not enough roughage. Body needs plenty of fibre to keep the sluices clear. You go daily?" Jim saw that one coming a mile off but the old fellow didn't wait for an answer. It seemed it was only a rhetorical question in any case because he prattled right on with: "People don't go as often as they should. All that muck hanging around inside. It's not healthy. Oh no." He paused for a few seconds and seemed to get a little more involved in his feeding of the swans. But he hadn't finished. It was one killer of a dramatic pause. Suddenly he seemed to remember something else: "Oh and sex of course. I'd bet you've not had your end away in at least two years. That's not good. A grown man like you should have intercourse with something at least twice a week and you can't call all that manual stuff 'sex'. You're really not looking after yourself." What was it with this guy?
"Look", started Jim. It seemed as good a place to start as any other, "What the heck has it got to do with you if I live off coffee and shortbread, take a crap once a month if I can be bothered and am the last virgin left standing in the whole country for crying out loud?"
He was too. It wasn't like him. The old guy had obviously touched several nerves. Somehow he'd forgotten he was in a public park. Thankfully, there was no one still around to notice in any case.
"Hm," Hmmed the old man. "I was right. I usually am. It's a gift. You need a wife".
"You need you head seeing to more like". Jim stood up. It took a lot to get him riled and he was well on the way even if he hadn't been there before and there was no one driving. Before he could get very far in this direction the whole thing seemed to be over.
"All out! All out!"
"Tell you what, you just toddle off now and we'll say no more of it." Jim felt he'd just been dismissed. He stood up but Joe just kept feeding his birds. "Oh, one thing before you go..."
"What now?"
"If you had one wish what would you ask for?" What sort of lunatic question was that for someone to ask you? His mind went blank as mind's have a tendency to do when asked that sort of question with no notice. He didn't know and he told him so. "Oh well. I just thought I'd ask. On you go son."
Half in a dream and half in haste Jim picked himself up and made a bee-line for the main gate. He turned back at one point half-expecting the old man to be watching him but he'd returned to his book and his feeding. The sun was starting to go down and Stone would be doing his rounds any minute half-heartedly chasing out the stragglers. It was a beautiful sunset actually. Had it been so long since he'd stopped and taken one in? Perhaps. Sunsets were old fashioned affairs and yet they persisted in their glory appreciated or not. If he only had one wish what would he ask for? The question buzzed around in his head as he walked. What would he ask for? On the whole he was quite content with his lot in life. Sure he'd like more money in the bank, a car would be nice but he knew that happiness didn't lie in these things. A materialist is one thing he wasn't. What would he wish for? He smiled as he crossed the road and started the climb up to his flat. He knew what he would wish for not that there was a snowball's chance in hell of it coming true. And with that he chuckled. It seemed the thing to do. It wasn't him but it felt right. You can't alter the past. The light was on in his flat. It had long been his habit to leave a lamp on when he went out in the evenings. One couldn't be too careful. That was yet another one of his mother's favourite, never-ending stream of platitudes. He lived on the first floor but that still didn't do much to allay his fear of being burgled. Was burglophobia a real word? He would have to look it up. If it wasn't then it should be. There should be a word for everything. He fumbled for his keys and, as he did so, out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a shadow move in his flat. No. He must have been mistaken. For a second or two he allowed the possibility that there might be someone in his flat to enter his mind but he chased out the notion as soon as it settled. No. He lived alone. He had lived alone forever. There was no one there.
Oh no?