Concrete Island (15 page)

Proctor waited expectantly as Maitland lifted the lid. The trunk had been a cornucopia of extraordinary bounty for Proctor – a pair of heavy rubber overshoes, a set of imitation jade cufflinks Maitland had bought in Paris after mislaying his own, an old copy of
Life
magazine – each of these Proctor had taken off with him as if carrying away a priceless and mysterious treasure. Watching him, Maitland was convinced that Proctor had never been given anything in his life, and that his power over the tramp depended as much on the act of giving as on the evening bottles of wine. Perhaps one day they would dispense with the present itself and retain the act alone, devise an artificial currency of gesture and attitude.

Maitland stared into the trunk. Little remained apart from the car's tool-kit, a gift he was reluctant to make. The tools might still prove useful in an escape.

‘It looks as if there's nothing left, Proctor. A wheel brace won't be much use to you.'

Proctor gestured thickly, his face a planet of creases, Like a hungry child unable to accept the reality of a bare cupboard, he was working himself up to a climax of expectation. His face moved through a conflict of expressions – greed, patience, need. Hopping from one foot to the other, he jostled against Maitland, and nudged him in a not altogether friendly way.

Disturbed by this display, an ironic revenge on his own kindness towards the tramp – how much more docile Proctor became with a stick beating his neck – Maitland reached into the cardboard wine carton. Two bottles of the white Burgundy remained. He had intended to keep them both for himself, using Jane to buy the cheap Spanish claret for the tramp.

‘All right, Proctor. You can have one of these. But don't drink it till this evening.'

He handed the bottle to the tramp, who seized it tightly, arms shaking with excitement. For a moment he seemed to be unaware of Maitland and the crashed car.

Maitland watched him quietly, fingering the crutch.

‘You need me to ration it for you, Proctor – don't forget that. I've changed the whole economy of your life. Wine with your meals, you dress for dinner – you're all too eager to be exploited…'

*   *   *

As he rode back to the air-raid shelter, Maitland looked up at the high causeway of the overpass. After the days of rain the concrete had soon dried out, and the white flank crossed the sky like the wall of some immense aerial palace. Below the span were the approach roads to the Westway interchange, a labyrinth of ascent ramps and feeder lanes. Maitland felt himself alone on an alien planet abandoned by its inhabitants, a race of motorway builders who had long since vanished but had bequeathed to him this concrete wilderness.

‘Free to go now…' he murmured to himself. ‘Free to go…'

Resting in the sun, he sat against the wall of the air-raid shelter, the yellow shawl wrapped around him. Proctor squatted on the ground a few feet away, preparing to open his bottle of Burgundy. First, he went through a brief but careful ritual, which he performed with all the meat cans and biscuit packs that Maitland gave him. He scraped the label from the bottle with his knife and tore the fading paper into shreds. After giving the tramp the three-year-old copy of
Life
which he had found in the trunk of the Jaguar, hoping that the large photographs might turn Proctor's mind to the world beyond the island, Maitland had seen the magazine transformed into a pile of minutely ground confetti.

‘You don't like words, do you, Proctor? You're even forgetting how to speak.'

The same was true of Proctor's sight. He was not going blind, Maitland was convinced, but simply preferred to rely on his scarred fingers and his sense of touch within the secure realm of the island's undergrowth.

Maitland turned towards the caisson of the feeder road, with its white concrete surface on which he had written his confused messages.

He snapped his fingers, charged with the sudden conviction that he would soon escape. Lifting the crutch like a schoolmaster, he pointed it at Proctor.

‘Proctor, I'm going to teach you to read and write.'

20 The naming of the island

A
S
he sat on the damp ground beside the caisson, Maitland watched Proctor working away like a happy child at the concrete surface. Within half an hour the reluctant pupil had become an eager apprentice. Already the wavering letters of his first alphabet had become strong and well-formed. Using both hands, he struck at the concrete slope, slashing his A's and X's side by side.

‘Good, Proctor, you've learned quickly,' Maitland congratulated him. He felt a surge of pride in the tramp's achievement, the same pleasure he had found in teaching his son to play chess. ‘It's a great invention – why don't we all write with both hands at once?'

Proctor gazed delightedly at his work. Maitland handed him two more of the cosmetic crayons he had taken from Jane Sheppard's room. Proctor held Maitland's arm, as if to reassure him of his seriousness as a pupil. To begin with, when Maitland had chalked up the first few letters of the alphabet, the tramp had refused even to look at them, cringing away as if they threatened some terrifying curse. After ten minutes of persuasion he had overcome his fear, and the lower surface of the caisson was covered with streaky letters.

Maitland pulled himself alongside Proctor. ‘It doesn't take long, does it – all these years you've wasted … Now, let me show you how to write a few words. What do you want me to start with – circus, acrobat?'

Proctor's lips moved noiselessly. Shyly, he stuttered, ‘P … P … Proct-or…'

‘Your own name? Of course, I didn't think. It's a unique moment.' Maitland patted him on the back. ‘Now watch. I want you to copy these in letters three feet high.'

He took the crayon from Proctor and wrote:

MAITLAND   HELP

‘P … P … Proctor…' he repeated, moving his fingers along the letters. ‘That's your name. Now copy it in really large letters. Remember, it's the first time you've written your name.'

Eyes watering with pride, the tramp stared at the letters Maitland had chalked up, as if trying to engrave them for ever on his fading mind. He began to scrawl the letters across the concrete with both hands. Each word he started in its centre, moving outwards to left and right.

‘Again, Proctor!' Maitland shouted above the roar of a truck climbing the feeder road. In his excitement the tramp was garbling the letters together into an indecipherable mass. ‘Start again!'

Carried away by his own enthusiasm, Proctor ignored him. He scribbled away at the concrete, mixing up the fragments of Maitland's name, happily chalking the letters in streamers down to the ground, as if determined to cover every square inch of the island's surface with what he assumed to be his name.

Satisfied at last, he tottered away from the wall and sat down beside Maitland, beaming up at his handiwork.

‘God Almighty…' Maitland leaned his head wearily against the crutch. The ruse had failed, partly because he had not taken into account Proctor's blubbery gratitude.

‘Very good, Proctor – I'll teach you some more words.' When the tramp finally settled down Maitland leaned forward, whispering with deliberate archness, ‘New words, Proctor – like “fuck” and “shit”. You'd like to be able to write those. Wouldn't you?'

As Proctor tittered nervously Maitland wrote carefully:

HELP   CRASH   POLICE

He watched while Proctor reluctantly transcribed the words. He worked with only one hand, using the other to cover the letters he had written, as if frightened that he might be caught. He soon broke off, and rubbed away the message with the back of his hand, spitting on the coloured concrete.

‘Proctor!' Maitland tried to stop him. ‘No one will see you!'

Proctor threw the crayons on to the ground. He glanced with continuing pride at the straggling fragments of Maitland's name, and sat down in the grass. Maitland realized that Proctor had been only briefly amused by writing the obscene words on the wall, and was refusing to take part any further in what he considered to be a childish exhibition.

21 Delirium

E
XHAUSTED
now, his will fading, Maitland clung to Proctor's shoulders as they moved back and forth across the island. Bent beast and pale rider, they wandered through the seething grass. At intervals Maitland recovered and sat up, clutching the metal crutch. Trying to keep himself awake, he berated and beat Proctor at the slightest stumble or hesitation. The tramp laboured on, as if this pointless travel around the island was all that he could think of in his efforts to revive the injured man. At times he deliberately exposed the now inflamed scar on his neck, offering it to Maitland in the hope that abusing it would revive him.

On their third transit of the island, when they once again had reached the breaker's yard, Proctor lowered him to the ground. Maitland subsided weakly in the grass. The tramp lifted him in his powerful hands and placed him against the rear fender of the Jaguar. He shook Maitland's shoulders, trying to find the focus of his concentration.

Maitland turned his head away from the traffic. Refracted through the afternoon heat, the motorways seemed to veer and loom, reverberating to the noise of the tyres and engines. He watched Proctor wandering around the breaker's yard, taking the rat-traps from his belt and setting them among the wrecked cars. In the dusty roof of the overturned taxi Proctor traced with his finger the garbled fragments of Maitland's name.

When he saw Maitland looking at him he began to practise his gymnastics, hoping that a successful handstand or forward roll would restore Maitland's alertness. Maitland waited patiently as Proctor stumbled about, nervously wiping his nose each time he picked himself up. The warm air moved across the island, soothing both the grass and his own skin, as if these were elements of the same body. He remembered his attempt to shuck off portions of his own flesh, leaving those wounds at the places where they had been inflicted. His injured thigh and hip, his mouth and right temple, had all now healed, as if this magical therapy had somehow worked and he had successfully left these wounded members at their designated points.

In the same way, he was at last beginning to shed sections of his mind, shucking off those memories of pain, hunger and humiliation – of the embankment where he had stood screaming like a child for his wife, of the rear seat of the Jaguar, where he had inundated himself with self-pity … All these he would bequeath to the island.

Reviving at this prospect, he signalled to Proctor that he would mount his back. As they crossed the island, passing the churchyard again, Maitland saw that Proctor had been chalking fragments of his name on the ruined walls and headstones, on the rusting sheets of galvanized iron by the basement print-shop. These cryptic anagrams, Proctor's serene message to himself, surrounded them everywhere.

Maitland scanned the perimeter of the island, hoping for any sign of the young woman. Her secret route to and from the island was his principal hope of escape. He waited for her to appear. Hungry, but unable to eat, he sat on the embankment by the wire-mesh fence as Proctor scavenged through the wire, selecting his morsels of ravaged food from the week-old dump. Maitland realized that he had forgotten what day it was – Wednesday, or perhaps Friday.

Proctor pressed the mess-tin towards him, offering a slice of wet bread covered with pieces of pork gristle. He was plainly worried by Maitland's barely coherent schemes to escape from the island.

Maitland thumped the ground with the crutch, waving the food away. From his wallet he removed a pound note and the stub of blue mascara pencil he had taken from Jane Sheppard's cosmetic table.

‘We can buy food, Proctor – then we won't have to depend on
her
 … For a pound we can –' He broke off with a thin shout, laughing to himself. ‘God, you prefer these slops!'

He scribbled a brief rescue message in the margin of the note. He folded it and passed it to Proctor. ‘We can have real food now, Proctor.'

Proctor took the note and pressed it gently into Maitland's hand.

*   *   *

Maitland lay back against the embankment, listening to the murmur of the afternoon traffic. Already the sun was beginning to fall in the western sky. The light flashed off the windshields of the first cars leaving the city in the rush-hour.

A cooler wind moved below the overpass, stirring at the tags of refuse. Maitland opened his wallet and took out the bundle of pound notes. As Proctor stared at the money like a mesmerized animal Maitland placed the thirty banknotes in a series of rows, like a card-sharp laying out his last hand. He weighed each one down with a pebble.

‘Wait, Proctor…' Maitland lifted one of the pebbles at random. The wind caught the note and whisked it away, carrying it across the island. Climbing into the air, the note swirled over the passing traffic, dived down and vanished under the wheels.

‘Fly away, Peter…'

He lifted another pebble.

‘Fly away, Paul…'

Proctor scuttled forward, trying to catch the second note, but it whirled away on the air. He clambered around Maitland like a nervous dog, trying to see what was wrong.

‘Mr Maitland … please … no more flying money.'

‘Flying money? Yes!' Maitland pointed to the tunnel of the overpass. ‘There's more up there, Proctor, much more.' Aware that Proctor's attention was fixed on the rows of banknotes fluttering in the afternoon air, Maitland gathered them up. ‘I was delivering a wages satchel. How much do you think was in it? Twenty thousand pounds! It's somewhere up there, Proctor. Did you see it in the tunnel when you straightened the barricade?' Maitland paused as the blunted templates of Proctor's mind locked into place. ‘Listen, Proctor, you can have half. Ten thousand pounds. You'll be able to
buy
this island…'