The Man Who Was Left Behind Page 13

  This is the end of the line, I thought. I remembered Butterworth and thought how little he knew of what was in store for him, for both of them if things worked out. They hadn’t come to the stage of having children, worrying about money, schools, false friends, being thirty with nothing to show for it except the feeling that you would soon be forty. And then you’re forty and still nothing to show for it. But that hadn’t happened to me either yet, not quite. Would it happen to them? Eleven years falling into the machinery and being caught in it with all the wheels going around and tearing you to pieces, and then one day instead of being rescued, the factory suddenly closes down. There you still are, caught in a monster machine, but all motion has gone out of it.

  In the morning she knocked at the door. “Are you there?” she called.

  No, I’m somewhere else.

  She knocked again.

  I answered, “Yes.” The sound went clanging through my head, the voice totally different. She opened the door.

  “It’s still all dark in here,” she said. Then she noticed that I was lying on top of the bed with my clothes still on. She came closer.

  “What’s happened? What’s that thing on your face?”

  “You broke my nose,” I said.

  “I what?”

  “Last night. You pushed me away and sort of lashed at me with your arm. I fell right into that stone thing. The edge of the shelf there, under the window.”

  “What?” she said again. I had been mumbling because it hurt less. She came to the bed and I repeated the story.

  “Oh,” she said. “Do you want to come down to breakfast?”

  “No, I’ll stay here.”

  “I can get room service to bring it up.”

  “I don’t want anything. You go on down.”

  “All right,” she said. “Did the hotel doctor do that?”

  “No, the hospital.”

  “What hospital?”

  “I don’t know. The city hospital.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Two-thirty in the morning or something.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “What for?” I said. I might have asked, “Would you have answered the door?” but that was her tactic, she always won at that one. My eyes were not seeing very well. From her voice I could tell, though, that she was upset and a bit at a loss with the situation.

  “Well,” she said. “I’ll see you later, then.”

  Later she came up. She hadn’t taken very long over breakfast. I heard her go through her own room from outside, and after a few minutes she came in to mine and opened one of the shutters. The light made me feel worse, but I was too tired to complain. Then she opened the rest, and opened one of the windows.

  “They were worried about you at the desk,” she said.

  “Which one was there?”

  “King Umberto’s uncle. You know.”

  “I guess the night staff must have told him.”

  “I didn’t see our honeymooners. Maybe they’ve checked out.”

  “Maybe they’re having breakfast in bed.” I hoped so.

  “I doubt it,” she said. “Not with his problems.”

  “He’ll be okay.”

  “If he finds the right man, maybe. At least he could have thought about it before getting married to a normal girl.”

  “Have a heart, Jeanie.”

  “Oh I do, I do. For her, though. Not for him.”

  “For both of them. Poor kids. After all, you and I were lucky that way.”

  “Really?” she said softly. “We were lucky, were we?”

  “Hell, yes. The first time, I had somebody who knew what was going on. And so did you. Imagine what it would be like if neither one of you knew what the hell was supposed to happen.”

  “I think it would be nice that way.”

  “Jesus, it would be a nightmare. It would be hell on wheels.”

  “I don’t think so at all.”

  “Of course you do.”

  All at once I wished I had been more of a help to Butterworth. Remembering our talk now, it seemed one of the saddest things I had known. I thought about them both caged up in their room together, each one expecting so much from the other and knowing that a lot was expected in return. They wouldn’t know exactly what you were supposed to feel, or whether what was happening meant it was going all right or all wrong. Then they’d get embarrassed and blame themselves, and blame the other person. And the next time it’s worse. How long would it go on like that? Would they see a doctor? If it had been two years ago, I might have helped him. Something had changed during our talk, and I knew that he had been relieved, so I’d helped at least that much, but he needed a lot more than what I’d given. Maybe if my reactions hadn’t been in the way, I could have straightened him out. And maybe not. Probably not. When people break down that way it really takes someone else’s lifetime to change it. The thing is so simple that only someone’s patience or understanding or personality handed over as though forever, is enough. If he had lied to her, then of course they could have broken up and found other people. But he hadn’t lied, at least I didn’t think so. It was just ignorance with both of them, and they were both stuck with it.

  “I think it would be wonderful like that—both discovering each other for the first time. If you really loved each other it would just come naturally.”

  “Just sort of spontaneous combustion?”

  “You know what I mean. You don’t have to be so sneery about it.”

  “And he said he was brought up strictly, too. Maybe one of those hellfire churches lurking in the background. Telling him he’d go blind if he touched himself, and all that. Stay out once after midnight, and they take your name out of the family Bible.”

  “Oh, that’s his trouble—strict, pious upbringing?”

  “And being nervous. And a touch of the John Ruskins.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’d never seen a girl naked before. Didn’t know about pubic hair. It was sort of a surprise.”

  “What?” she said, and suddenly began to laugh. I hadn’t heard her laugh for months.

  “You can’t mean it.”

  “Well, how would he know? He isn’t the kind to go flipping through medical dictionaries, and I don’t suppose it was in his school curriculum. No sisters or cousins, I guess, or if he’s got any they’re as buttoned up as he is.”

  “But he would have seen pictures.”

  “Haven’t you noticed? It’s always covered up in the pictures.”

  “No, paintings and statues.”

  “Go on.”

  “You’re right. I never thought about it. Only the men. I wonder why.”

  “Because it’s so sinful and exciting.”

  “Maybe because——”

  “Like you in your nightgown,” I said.

  She stopped talking. It almost seemed as though she had stopped breathing. I wished I hadn’t said anything. Her self-consciousness and my head; the whole room was full of pain.

  “I’ll be all right here if you want to go down to the beach or something,” I said.

  “Yes, I might do that. I’m sorry about your nose, Don. How do you feel?”

  “Like the man in the iron mask.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to ask them to send you up some breakfast?”

  “Well, some coffee, maybe.”

  “All right.”

  She went through the bathroom and into her own room. I closed my eyes, and heard her soon afterwards locking her door out in the hall and tiptoeing past mine on her way to the stairs.

  About half an hour later a boy came up with a tray for me. I fumbled in my pockets for change and then couldn’t decide which was the right coin. I shrugged and held out my hands for him to choose one. He took one only, and I thought that out of politeness he hadn’t taken much. I made him choose a second coin.

  It was terrible to sit up. It was almost as bad lying down. It even hurt to swallow. I went in
to the bathroom and took two of the doctor’s pills. When I got back into my room I thought I heard my wife opening her door. Then the bathroom door opened and three doors slammed, one after the other. From the neck up I died and died and died.

  It was the maid, come to clean out the rooms. She gave a little gasp when she saw me, and I moved to the table and chair and explained in what sounded like French, not to mind me.

  She remade the bed, quickly dusted the top of the dresser and the front of the drawers, ran a cloth over the wardrobe mirror, and went back into the bathroom to do a more thorough job in there.

  The pills started to work. I began to float. I finished the coffee and lay down on the bed and looked through the window at the sky.

  I slept. When I woke up, I heard someone walking quietly down the hallway as if trying not to make too much noise. Then I heard the key at my wife’s door. I sat up, and realised that I felt better.

  Then the bathroom door on the far side closed like a gunshot. I heard her in the bathroom, swearing, and shutting a window. Then she came through into my room, closing the door gently behind her.

  “How do you feel?” she said. She had some postcards and a book in her hand. She was looking worried.

  “All right.”

  “Your eyes look terrible.”

  “I know. It must have been the impact when I hit. It forced the blood up. Did you go down to the beach?”

  “For a while. I walked around the town a bit. Do you really feel all right?”

  “Yes. I took some pills. They made me feel wonderful for about an hour. It’s probably something pretty strong.” I thought it might be morphine. I had never been given morphine before. I’d thought it had gone out with the First World War. But from the effect it had, my money was on morphine if that was what it was. I wondered what would happen if I took the whole bottle full. Perhaps I’d float straight out the window. Out and away, like that white schooner coming in to the harbour.

  She looked at her watch.

  “Do you want to come down for lunch?”

  “All right,” I said, and got up. “The light hurts my eyes. I think I’ll wear my sunglasses.” I got out the glasses and tried them on, standing in front of the mirror. They wouldn’t sit straight because of the mask.

  “Do you have any adhesive tape in that emergency kit?” I asked. “And for Christ’s sake watch out for the door.”

  She came back with the tape and I managed to stick the glasses on.

  “Now I look like Claude Rains in that movie,” I said. “Maybe underneath I’ve disappeared.”

  “Oh please, Don,” she said. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know. How could I know?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Let me get my postcards. I need some stamps.”

  There were three other tables occupied in the dining-room. I shook my head as the waiter started to lead on to the table we usually had, and explained that we didn’t want to sit in the light. He gave us a table nearer the door and about twelve feet away from an old gentleman with a large pepper-and-salt moustache, who looked as though he’d been left over from the British Raj. We had flowers on the table again. Every day there were fresh ones and every table, even the empty ones, had them. It really was a marvellous hotel.

  “Wine?” I said.

  “I will if you will.”

  “I’d like to, and I need it, but I think my head would come right off if I did.”

  “Then I won’t.”

  “How about something beforehand?”

  “All right.”

  I ordered for us, and looked around the place. The room was as pretty and open as a ballroom. At the far end the windows were all French windows that opened out on to a terrace. There was a double curtain like a theatre curtain for that whole side of the room. At noon they drew both sides nearly together. Some of the other curtains too had been drawn against the sun, but where it came in, it fell on the white tablecloths and silver, and made the bright water in the flower vases sparkle and flash.

  “Are those for the kids?” I said, touching the postcards.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I add a note?”

  “You can send them some others. I’ll show you which pictures I’ve got, so we won’t duplicate any.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “Don’t you think it would be getting their hopes up? Bobby knows. I practically told him.”

  “You didn’t actually tell him the word divorce, did you?”

  “No, I said something about how you’d be working away for a while, like last year, and we wouldn’t see so much of you. But he has friends at school whose parents are divorced. He knows, I’m sure of it.”

  She started to touch the flowers in the vase. She loved flowers. She probably even knew the name, though all I could see was that they were pinkish and like sweet peas.

  “It isn’t complete custody,” she said.

  “I know. Weekends and vacations. It would break my heart. It would be better never to see them again at all. If I thought I had the strength, that’s what I’d do.”

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  She looked up and away from me, towards the door. The waiter came up with our food and she remained looking off, like a giraffe scenting the air, in the way that meant she was trying not to cry.

  There are so many different attitudes, like different lives, in a face and in a body. So many lines and forms, so many strengths and weaknesses. The expression of health, of nervousness, even the expression of truth, are things you can look at. How long it takes to know them all. And you never do, not completely. A body or face is never the same even in a single day. And the mind, that’s even more difficult.

  “If only you hadn’t looked at the photographs,” I said. “That’s what did it.”

  “Talk about pubic hair,” she snapped.

  Quickly I put a finger to my mouth and said, “Shh.”

  She went red and looked over her shoulder. The British Raj saw her and also went red. He hadn’t heard, but now he was suddenly aware of us.

  “Oh, my God,” she mumbled, and started to stab her fork at her food.

  I began to eat, too. When I swallowed, it hurt in my ears.

  “If we gave it a try——”

  “How much would you try?”

  “As much as I always have.”

  “You mean, it would be the same as it was before.”

  “And it would have been all right if it hadn’t been for all our wonderful friends.”

  “At least they told me the truth.”

  “And how they enjoyed telling you the truth, and then telling you that I was the one who was hurting you.”

  She put down her fork.

  “But you’d resent it if I did it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course. But it wouldn’t be the same.”

  “It’s never the same for a woman—are you going to give me that?”

  “What I meant was that if you did, you’re such a stickler for propriety, you’d marry him. You’d drop me like a hot potato.”

  “Would it be better to have somebody on the sly every afternoon for years?”

  She started to eat again.

  “You probably wouldn’t even have minded,” she said, biting vigorously.

  “Of course I would have. You’re my wife.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean you’re my wife. Look, I’ve been in a lot of different places—waiting at bus stops, in airports, been out to parties. I’ve eaten meals in restaurants and had drinks at bars, been to people’s houses, been in people’s rooms. But if somebody asks me where I live, I don’t say in a bus stop or on the eight-ten or in a bar, or in a strange room. That isn’t where I live. Don’t you understand? You’re my wife. Christ, I’m tired.”

  “So am I,” she said, spacing the words.

  “Do you want coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  I looked for the waiter.

  “He’
s in back of you by the doorway,” she said. “About five of them have been standing there for the past few minutes.”

  I turned around and saw the group of waiters standing there trying not to appear too curious about something that was going on in the lobby. I looked, too. Just before our waiter broke away and came towards us, I saw uniforms come in through the lobby and go in the direction of the stairs with a man I’d never seen before, who might have been the manager.

  “It’s the cops,” I said.

  When we reached the lobby, they had gone.

  “I think I’ll take a stroll around for a couple of minutes,” I said.

  “I’ll go on up.”

  “See you later,” I said, and watched her go up the stairway. Then I went to the desk. The clerk we called King Umberto was there. I asked him for stamps, which he produced from a drawer under the desk. Then I said, “The police are here?” and his English vanished. I had a bad feeling about it. I said, “Would you tell me the room number of a Mr. Butterworth?”

  “Butterworth?” He looked behind him at the board full of keys and said, “I am sorry, monsieur Butterworth is not in his room. He has taken the key.”

  “What’s the number?”

  He had to look at the board again. For a Greek, he wasn’t a very good liar. For a hotel clerk, he was an even worse one.

  “Four-one-eight,” he said, still looking imperturbable. “Monsieur is a friend of monsieur Butterworth?”

  “My wife and I met them last night.”

  He counted up the stamps and told me the amount. I put them in my wallet.

  “I believe,” he said, “an English monsieur has lost his passport. The maid looks, but he asks the police to look.”

  “I see,” I said.

  I walked outside into the sunlight, and kept to the shady side of the street. There was very little shade except directly under the trees, because of the time of day. I walked all around the side of the hotel, crossed the street, and moved over to the back entrance where the police car was parked. I waited, wishing that I could smoke, or even sit down. Fifteen minutes later they came out with Butterworth.

  “Rocky,” I said, and he turned his head. He didn’t know me with all the bandages. I went up to him. “It’s Don,” I said. “Coleman.”