The Wilderness (31 page)

“And what is your dream building, Mr. Jameson?” he asked.

“We got this building up within twelve weeks and a small budget,” he replied. “I'm more interested in reality than dreams.”

“Of course you're not in the dream business, we all understand your constraints—but if you
were,
hypothetically?”

“My dream building is one that exists, as opposed to one that doesn't.”

The journalist nodded. That conversation, too, was printed. He felt himself become an accidental working-class hero, a five-minute burst of undeserved fame. The day after completion he took Helen there to see the prison, and they walked thickly through snow around what had once been the landscaped grounds of the manor house. Helen became quiet when she saw it. The concrete looked ashen against the shrill white flakes—ashen and dead.

“Jake, it's awful,” she whispered.

“It's utilitarian. You can see the way we've created these annexes with the idea of allowing people to congregate—”

“But it's awful, and what you said in the paper about godlessness was awful.”

“I didn't mean it, I just said it. You know that.”

“Why say what you don't mean?”

“Why not respect me, my job?”

She sighed. “I do, I do respect you.” She handed him the baby and fastened the button of her coat collar. “Those towers you built in London, they were terrific. I mean, so impressive and new. But this—” Her gloved hands struggled to push her hair behind her ears, and she sighed again. “Maybe I just don't understand it. That's all it is, it's me. Yes, it's me.”

They walked around to the other side of the grounds where the view of the manor house was still unspoilt. They stood for a long time gazing up at the windows of the house. Despite how he had come across in his interview, he did believe in beauty, and he did believe that his building would do these men a service, otherwise he would not have built it. When he
saw the grey-white flow of concrete he saw protection for them as much as he saw imprisonment. It was his own take on godliness, and he wanted to explain this to Helen but thought it would not be enough for her somehow. He took his coat off and wrapped Henry inside it against the cold, kissed his cheek.

“One day we should go back to America again,” he said. “California, where it isn't cold.”

“California, where all the dreamers go, where there is fruit and gold and grapes and sunshine!”

He looked hard at her. “Well don't you have any dreams?”

“Jake, we live by my dreams!” she said with an incredulous smile.

“No, I mean aspirations. Your dreams are more like instruction manuals—I mean
aspirations
.”

“Something I want to do or create?”

“Yes.”

“I create all the time, I created Henry—”

“We.”

“We created Henry. And let me tell you something.” She pulled her woollen hat down over her ears. “I think creatively. If you even
think
loving thoughts about God, that love becomes instantly real in the world. Each thought is an act of creation, a—little birth.”

He shook his head and let Buddy Holly rotate around his thoughts. An act of creation? Creation of what? He didn't understand what she meant when she said these things, and he was tired of feeling stupid for it. He was tired of feeling that their inability to have another child lay in his misunderstanding of some religious equation that was just too abstract for his simple mind.

Later that night they went to their Conception Event with a weary anger. Helen was angry because the baby would not cry anymore and she never knew what he needed or when. The crying, she said, made the milk rush up her body ready for feeding, but now without that cue she often had to make the child wait; she felt angry with herself and the uselessness of her body, which refused to conceive. His anger was at her, or at her ridiculous arcane God that he did not understand, or at the piece of land that he could not get his hands on, or at her dreams that had predicted Alice but never delivered her.

They tried night after night, week after week. The winter became intolerable except for the glorious smell of burning ash wood in the grate. Damp began creeping up the walls of the prison annexes and the builders were called back to assess; they blamed it on the architects who pushed the project through too quickly and with too tight a budget. The architects pointed out that they had been given both time limit and budget and were just doing their job; they blamed it on the council, the council blamed it on the government and Harold Macmillan, who was shrouded from the accusation by greater political distractions and rafts of snow.

“Meanwhile,” Helen said, “the prisoners shiver.”

“Yes,” he replied, removing her nightdress, wondering why she couldn't for once come to bed naked and let him warm her, “but don't think about it. Think about what is far away. The stars, the monkeys in space. Concentrate on what is far away.”

Outside the snow continued to fall. As they made tired love Helen tightened and asked,
What if one of the prisoners dies from the cold, I feel like something aw ful will happen.
He ignored
the untimely question, they were supposed to be thinking about
life;
he had the sensation that the snowflakes were blossom, and that the blossom was eating away at substance. And Mrs. Crest was buried under a mound of muffling snow, calling out with a silent snow-filled mouth. And then that the money under the bed was torn into flakes; he imagined handing it over to get his house and being laughed at, and that the man laughing at him looked like Rook, with the same crooked attitude.

Eventually he thought of the unparalleled form of Alice, and he forced his attention back to his wife.

“Do you know why you're here today, Jake?”

“Why?”

“Yes. Why do you have to come here?”

“Because I get headaches.”

She purses her lips and nods. “Yes—but do you know why you're getting headaches?”

“Because I have brain damage.”

“In a sense, yes. You have Alzheimer's. And the tablets we give you for that are giving you headaches.”

He squeezes his hands together. “I know that.”

Nodding, she pushes an orange file away from her as if it has displeased her somehow.

“So I'm going to go through the usual with you, and then we'll discuss what to do about your tablets, okay?”

“That will be fine.”

“So, tell me, Jake, what day is it?”

He has practised this, but hesitates now under the pressure. “Thursday, or thereabouts.”

“And what year are we in?”

“That's,” he nods repeatedly. He has practised this too. “That's—quite difficult.”

“Roughly?”

“I think—I would guess—I don't know.”

“And could you say what the time is?”

He brings his palms together and exhales, closes his eyes. “Well, it's certainly recent times.” He opens his eyes again and looks appreciatively at her fox hair, the way it bronzes today in the light. “Ask somebody else, they'll know.”

She puts her hands in her lap.

“I'm going to name three objects and I want you to repeat them after me. I want you to listen carefully, Jake, because in a few minutes I'm going to ask you again. Okay?”

“Right.”

“House, shoelace, picture.”

“So, then—” He squeezes the skin between his nose, rubs beneath his eye. Thinks. Thinks with all the pointlessness of a tiger thrashing about a cage. “Piston. No, not piston. House. No, no I'm afraid it's gone.”

She writes something. The way she writes with unconcerned purpose makes him think he is doing not so badly, perhaps.

“Now Jake, tell me what this saying means:
people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones”'

“It means,” he stands and begins pacing the room as he analyses the words. “It means that—”

“Jake, sit down again.”

She holds the arm of his empty chair—empty as if it had never been occupied, nor could be occupied again. How will he sit there, if it is empty? It is a blind, mole-ish trust that brings him scuffling back to the seat. The fox woman smiles and gives him a moment to get comfortable.

“People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Tell me what that saying means, Jake.”

“It means, I would imagine, that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones because the stone will hit the glass and not the person they were aiming for. It might even break it. It depends on the size of the stone.” He finds himself tapping fast on his leg. “Glass can be rich.”

“Expensive.”

“Expensive.”

She pulls back the orange file, opens it, and takes some paper from it which she passes to him.

“Read the words on this page and then do as it says.”

He sees the words
CLOSE YOUR EYES.
He reads them over and over, untangling and understanding them, looks up at her with a smile to indicate to her that he has understood, then hands her the paper. “Thank you,” he says. “I've done as you asked.”

She makes a mark on her sheet and thanks him in return.

“So now can you tell me the three objects I asked you to remember?”

He considers this carefully. “Piston, stones—the other thing.”

“Can you remember the other thing?”

“No, not at the moment.”

“That's fine.” She writes; he knows what she is doing—writing
scores. Rating him. “Now,” she says, “please repeat after me: No ifs, ands, or buts.”

He sniffs. “No ifs or buts.”

“Okay, can you tell me, Jake, are you left-or right-handed?”

“I'm left-handed,” he says promptly, confidently.

She goes back to her writing. “Good. Good,” she murmurs. When she finishes she crosses her legs and rests her arms on the desk.

“I'm thinking of taking you off the medication. How do you feel about that?”

He is surprised. “Am I improved?”

“No—not exactly. You are fine, but the tablets can only help with so much and after that there's no real need for them.”

“But I only started on them a week or so ago.”

“Not quite. You've been on them for two years.”

He sits in a long silence, conscious of his posture appearing too dejected for her, or too dry, or too shambled.

“What do the tablets do?” he asks suddenly.

She runs her hand across her upper lip and frowns. “It's complex.”

He tips his head to one side and watches her touch her fingertips to her head.

“The tablets make your brain cells work better—but eventually, Jake, there are not enough cells left, no matter how well you make them work.”

“Why aren't there enough cells?”

“Because Alzheimer's kills them. This means there aren't as many, which means there aren't enough messages going back and forth.”

He nods. She talks slowly, as if picking each word from a tall tree.

“The tablets can't stop the cells dying. There is nothing we can do to stop that—but—but they make the cells that remain work harder. The problem is, the disease overtakes the tablets after a while, and then, no matter how hard the cells work, there just aren't enough of them anymore for the tablets to make a difference.”

He circles his hand impatiently. “Tell me in the real terms.”

“Those are the real terms.”

“No, in real things. Didn't we used to talk in proper language, in mother tongues?”

His stare is that of the bully, and he knows it. The stare he used to give Helen when he wanted his way.

But his stare is returned coldly. She closes the folder and puts the lid on the pen to declare an end. “I have explained,” she says.

“Again.”

He slams his hand down on the desk and, without flinching, she finds his eyes perfectly and speaks into them.

“Very well. In your brain there is a chemical called acetyl-choline, which acts as a lubricant, if you like, that allows messages to be communicated between neurons.”

He nods. He likes the way her eyes fix on him.

“Increasing the amount of acetylcholine in the brain increases the ability for neurons to communicate. Acetylcholine is broken down by an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase. The medication you've been taking restricts that enzyme. But it only does so temporarily; after a certain point—a point I suspect you have reached—the drug loses its ability to stabilize the enzyme production.”

“How interesting and extraordinary,” he says. “It's—it's like entropy. Houses can't build themselves, that's the thing. That's the thing we're facing. Can't build themselves.” He finds he is firing the words rapidly, and that they are met with a frown. He stops. “And?”

“That's it.”

He brings his hand once more on the table. She blocks him with another of her tough looks, clears her throat, and continues. “As the levels of acetylcholine decline—”

His eyes are locked with the fox-haired woman's as her big words come out stubborn and steady; he has the sensation of going down a slide, and at the same time watching himself go down that slide. Some part of him is just the cool observer, and when the sad little thrill has finished he will collect himself and wander off for coffee. The woman, meanwhile, is still talking and he has missed something she said. He brings his hands up to his chin.

“Meanwhile the neurofibrillary tangles and the plaques worsen, and the medication can do nothing whatsoever for these. What you have is neuron loss, neurotransmitter loss, the destruction of synapses—no drug can recover what the brain erases.”

“I understand,” he says, containing her wide, hard look.

Gracious, important words between two adults. Not a single one of them remains to his memory, nor ever even found its target, but he and his fox-haired friend have engaged in the game, both knowing it is a game. They played. There is something about that, the playing, the meaningless movement of a knight here and a rook there.

“Before you go today, I'll speak to Eleanor about what we've discussed—the tablets and so on. We can ease you off them gradually.”

He nods. Though standing, and tugging at his jumper for buttons in the mistaken idea that he is wearing a coat, he does not let her escape his stare.

“Why do I have brain damage?”

“It's a disease, we don't exactly know why some people get it and others don't.”