Chapman's Odyssey (15 page)

This young man in uniform would father Harry Chapman twenty years into the future. For now, though, he was somewhere in France, his son supposed.

— You suppose correctly. I’m in the land of parlee-vous. But my pal here has shifted off to heaven already.

— Your pal? Is he dead?

— As much as he’ll ever be. The Hun’s bullet got him while he was smiling. That’s why he looks like he’s grinning at the moon. I’m sitting alongside him till someone carts him off and buries him. I think he’ll be here with me watching it for the whole night.

— What’s his name?

— George. I tell you, boy, if I had pen and paper to hand I’d write letters home to everyone saying how happy I am to be alive. God help me, it takes a pal dying next to you to remind you what a precious thing your life is.

— What day is it, Dad?

— Twenty-third of December, 1917. Christmas will soon be upon us. What a laugh. What a bloody farce.

Then Harry Chapman, ninety years on, saw George’s broken-toothed grin, and Frank’s living hand clutching George’s lifeless one, and then there was nothing but whiteness before his eyes, and then he was conscious of a bespectacled woman assuring him that he was making wonderful progress.

— You’re a man and a half, my love.

— Good morning, Sunshine. How was your night?

How was his night? Well, he seemed to recall that the thirty-one-year-old Frank Chapman had appeared to him, a dead private named George at his side. He was unable to mention this to the inquisitive doctor as he was still unable to speak. Why did Mr Russell ask Sunshine how his night had been, knowing as he did that Sunshine could not reply?

— We’ll be dismantling some of your scaffolding later today. The catheter will be the first to go.

The catheter? What catheter? He was unaware that he was cathetered, if such a verb existed.

— You’ll be your old self again soon, Sunshine.

‘Sunshine’: Harry Chapman approved of his new name. No matter that Mr Russell probably addressed all his patients – men and women – in this determinedly cheerful fashion. For the moment, for a day or so, he was Sunshine.

That afternoon, if afternoon it was, he heard a man saying:

— I had a left leg twenty-four hours ago. Now there’s nothing there.

— I know, a woman’s voice responded.

— You don’t know. You don’t know at all. You’re standing on two feet, aren’t you?

— Yes, darling.

— What bloody future have I got? Playing Long John Silver at children’s parties. That’s about the limit of my ambitions.

— Don’t be silly.

Harry Chapman had read
Treasure Island
again during the summer and had been surprised to rediscover that John Silver was a decorous individual, capable of the most disarming courtesy. He had forgotten that the duplicitous sea-cook had a black wife, who kept a tight rein on his ill-gotten money.

— Eunice, go to a pet shop and buy a parrot for me. We’ll call him ‘Captain Flint’ and teach him to squawk ‘Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight.’

— Oh, you darling idiot, Johnny.

— I can’t think of a better alternative right now. Can you?

Eunice – whatever the colour of her skin – did not reply to Johnny’s question.

— You can’t, Eunice. You just fucking can’t.

— There’s no need for that kind of language.

— Why the fuck not?

— Oh, Johnny, you’re not sounding like you.

— It’s not every day I lose a leg.

— I know.

— Stop saying you know.

Harry Chapman, so near and yet so far from one-legged Johnny and hapless Eunice, wanted to know about the life they had led together before yesterday.

— You’ll leave me now, won’t you? You have a wonderful excuse at last.

— That’s unkind, Johnny.

— But true.

— No, it isn’t. It isn’t true at all.

That unlikely marriage-guidance counsellor Harry Chapman wished he could be tubeless and upright, free from his invalid’s bed. He had an absurd need to advise the pair behind the screen on how best to accommodate themselves to Johnny’s misfortune. As needs go, this one was so absurd as to be beyond absurdity, he realised. Yet it was there – in his heart; in his mind.

— How is my brave boy today? Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I hope, my love.

— Oh yes, Jeanette, I’m on top of the jolly old world, as you can see with those bifocals of yours.

He was anxious to hear what Johnny was saying to Eunice, but the nurse’s twitterings would not grant him that favour.

— Mr Russell will be along very soon, my love. When he gives us the go-ahead, we’ll take that nasty, nasty catheter away and pull some of those tubes out.

Forget the catheter, forget the tubes – they were secondary concerns to the man who was being denied the latest developments in the continuing tragedy of Johnny and Eunice.

The removal of Sunshine’s catheter inspired Nurse Dunckley to new heights, or depths, of skittishness.

— Nothing much the matter with Harry’s Mr Willy, is there? He’ll be his usual self in a little while, my love. You’re a lucky Harry, you are. Only last week – or was it the week before? You lose all sense of time in here – only last week we had a nice young man in this very same bed who had to have a nasty, nasty catheter too, but in his case it was there for days on end. When we took it out, young Michael’s Mr Willy had swelled up to the size of a vegetable marrow. The poor lad didn’t know where to look, I swear, my love. Oh, it was that bloated. But your Mr Willy’s the same chap he was on Thursday, I’m happy to report. He’ll be a bit leaky for a while, but nothing to worry you unduly.

— How is Johnny? he asked when the gift of speech was restored to him.

— He’s not one of my patients, Sunshine. But he’s as well as can be expected.

‘As well as can be expected’ wasn’t well enough, Harry Chapman learned from an overheard conversation between another doctor and another nurse in what he supposed was the late evening. A sudden, swift, wholly unexpected heart attack had dispatched the angry man whose leg had been amputated. It was a terrible shame, given that the rest of his body, waist up, had been functioning normally.

The saddened Harry Chapman was diminished by loss again, as he had been on Tuesday – was it Tuesday? – with the news that Iris Gibson, his sensible, cheerful comforter, had not survived the night. Iris had spoken to him, sensibly, from across the ward, but Jonathan Cooper had been out of his line of vision, as had the suffering Eunice, who was unable to give her husband or lover the immediate solace he craved. He wanted, now, to mourn them – the woman so determined to persuade the anonymous patient opposite her that she was only moderately unwell; the man grimly fantasising about his future as an entertainer at children’s parties, impersonating Long John Silver with the parrot he’d trained to squawk ‘Pieces of eight’. Harry Chapman could imagine the boys and girls, faces stained with chocolate, mouths bursting with cake and jelly, pretending to be terrified of the one-legged pirate with the talking bird on his shoulder. But their happy terror was not to be.

Harry Chapman hadn’t heeded the ship-boy’s warning on that October Saturday in 1982.

— Harry, I have fears for you.

The danger looming on his horizon was standing yards away, buying razor blades and shaving foam when Jack alerted him. Harry Chapman had recognised the heavily built man after only a moment’s hesitation. He was in the presence of the middle-aged Ralph Edmunds, whom he had last confronted when the bully and the bullied were both sixteen. The gruff voice, deeper now, was almost the same as he remembered it, and the thick lips, and the ears that seemed to be pinned close to the head.

— Take care, Jack advised. — Take the greatest care.

Harry Chapman paid for the toothpaste and shampoo he had selected at an adjacent till. His eyes met those of the man he knew to be Ralph Edmunds.

— Do I know you? Do you know me?

— Yes. I was at school with you.

— You’re Harry, aren’t you?

— I am. And you’re Ralph.

— That’s me. Well, it’s a small world.

— Yes, it is.

Jack, alert at his post, told Mister Harry to end the conversation and walk off, free, into the busy street.

— I saw your face in the paper once. I showed it to my mates at work and said you was in my class.

— Are you on your way somewhere, Ralph? Have you time for a drink?

— Always got time for a drink, Harry. If someone else’s paying.

There was a pub nearby called the Tudor Rose. Its oak-beamed saloon bar reeked of stale beer and cigarettes and a lethal disinfectant, recently sprayed. The men’s lavatory had been renamed Ye Knightes, the women’s Ye Damsels, in the interests of historical authenticity.

— What will you have?

— Seeing as how you’re paying, I’ll have a whisky.

— Large?

— Why not?

They seated themselves at a corner table and clinked glasses.

— Cheers, Ralph.

— Bottoms up, Harry.

Ralph smirked, and said:

— Talk about a small world. Who’d have thought I’d bump into you? You’re not as skinny as you used to be. Good living, eh?

— Good enough.

— Still at the writing lark?

— Yes. I’ve been teaching, too. I’m not long back from America. I was in Minnesota for a couple of years. And you? What’s your job?

— I’m a gas fitter. Dirty work sometimes.

When Ralph excused himself and disappeared behind the door marked Ye Knightes, Jack whispered to Harry:

— Go now. Go while the going is good.

— I’ll be careful, Jack.

Then Ralph returned, and Harry invited him to tell his story. Was he married, for instance?

— Was. ‘Was’ being the word. I got shot of the bitch. Do you smoke, Harry?

— No.

— Mind if I do?

— Not at all.

— We had a little girl. She must be twenty now.

— You don’t see her?

— Only if I go to Spain. That’s where her mother took her when we split up. She’s been taught to hate me. Her mother’s seen to that.

— Have you found another woman?

— Not looking, Harry. If I need a fuck, I buy a tart. When I’ve got some spare dosh to blow.

Ralph winked at Harry, and remarked again what a small world it was.

— You’re not a woman man yourself, Harry. Is that true?

— It is.

— I guessed as much at school. Do you have a regular mate?

Harry Chapman, startling himself with his honesty, replied that he lived with a man who was far gone in gin and only stayed with him out of pity. He took his pleasures, such as they were, whenever and wherever he could find them.

— Sounds as if we’re both lonely. I mean, you write books and I’m a gas fitter, but when push comes to shove, we’re lonely bastards, aren’t we, Skinny Boy? Remember me calling you Skinny Boy?

— Yes, Ralph.

Harry paid for a second round of drinks, despite Jack’s cautioning speech as he did so.

— Very civil of you, Harry. Very civil indeed.

— My pleasure.

They talked, then, of schooldays, of Harry’s performances as Emma Woodhouse and King Henry, of teachers and fellow pupils.

— Are you happy, Ralph?

— A bit.

It was decided – Harry Chapman recalled as he lay awake in the middle of the night with only the machines of healing for company – that the writer should treat the gas fitter to dinner. In the Italian restaurant, Harry persuaded Ralph to share a bottle of Chianti Classico.

— Wine’s a drink for ponces, Harry. But, as it’s you, I’ll try a drop.

They consumed two bottles and had a grappa each at the end of the meal.

It was almost midnight when they left. As they made their unsteady way towards Marble Arch, Harry explained that, drunk as they were, Christopher would be drunker.

— My last train’s gone, Skinny Boy. A taxi from here will cost the bloody earth.

What madness, what alcohol-induced madness, possessed Harry Chapman next? Bully and Bullied had stopped outside a drab hotel.

— Shall we try here? Harry Chapman heard himself ask the swaying Ralph Edmunds.

This was one of those establishments where no questions were asked and no means of identification demanded. Cash was all that was necessary to procure a double room on the third floor.

The yawning receptionist handed him the key and said that a Continental breakfast would be available between the hours of seven and nine thirty. He recited this information as if by rote, and then increased the volume on his transistor. It was tuned to a foreign station: Harry heard, through static, the sounds of a language – Slavic, perhaps – that he didn’t recognise.