Waterland (20 page)

She doesn’t explain. She says, ‘Wait – you see.’ Her eyes are blue and smoky. She doesn’t say, ‘This is only a joke.’ He doesn’t know how to play this crazy game she is playing. In his confusion he starts to affect once more a pedagogic pose, to adopt the position of a certain practical-minded headmaster and teacher of physics. To everything a positive answer. The park-keeper’s bell. He repeats: ‘I think you should see the doctor. I want you to go to the doctor.’ He believes: there is a condition called schizophrenia. He believes: it was because people were ignorant of such things that they once believed in— He believes: this is Mary; this is a bench; this is a dog. The last thing he wants to believe is that he’s in fairy-land.

17
About the Lock-keeper

A
ND by the Leem lived a lock-keeper. Who was my father. Who was a phlegmatic yet sentimental man. Who told me, when I was even younger than you, that there was no one walking the world who hadn’t
once sucked … And that the stars … Who was wounded at the third battle of Ypres. And had a brother killed in the same battle. Who when asked about his memories of the War, would invariably reply that he remembered nothing. Yet who when he was not asked would sometimes recount bizarre anecdotes of those immemorial trenches and mud-scapes, as if speaking of things remote and fantastical in which his involvement was purely speculative. How, for example, the Flanders eels, countless numbers of which had for ever made their abode in those watery and low-lying regions, undeterred by the cataclysmic conflict that was devastating their haunts, found their way into flooded saps and even into shell craters, where there was no shortage of well-ripened food …

Who trapped eels himself in his native Fens. Who showed me as a boy all the various ways of cooking eels-poached in vinegar and water; in a white sauce; in a green sauce; in pies; in a stew with onion and celery; jellied, with horseradish; chopped, skewered and roasted on an open fire – and so I became just as partial as he to their subtle and versatile flesh. And so did my brother. But my mother, Fenwoman though she was and far from squeamish, could not abide them. She would scream if she saw a not-quite-dead eel begin to slither on the kitchen table …

Who when he returned from the Great War in 1918, not only wounded in the knee but profoundly dazed in the mind, was shunted for four years from this hospital to that. But was despatched in due course to Kessling Hall, until recently country mansion of the Atkinson family, but now converted as a convalescent home for war invalids. Who spent many weeks in the spring and summer of 1922, sitting on the tree-girt and secluded lawns of that curative establishment among several other bescarred, becrutched and bepatched-up victims, all of whom in that scene of apparent tranquillity (and four years after the guns had stopped) were desperately attempting to find their peacetime bearings.

Who fell in love with one of the nurses. Who came home from the war, a wounded soldier, and married the nurse who nursed him back to health. A story-book romance. Who, delivered from the holocaust, could scarcely believe that this enchanted chapter of events was happening to him. Whose love was returned – with surprising readiness. Who married, in August 1922, this woman whom for several weeks his numbed brain had registered only as ‘nurse, brunette’ and who even after his return to lucidity – and notwithstanding their growing mutual affection – was reluctant to disclose her name. Who discovered only after a while that this white-aproned, war-volunteer, now regular nurse, who was familiar in more ways than one with Kessling Hall, was the daughter of a well-known – indeed notorious – and come-down-in-the-world brewer.

Who through the mediation of this woman (her father’s residual influence with the then still extant Leem Drainage and Navigation Board) acquired the post of keeper of the New Atkinson Lock and Sluice. Who learnt, so it seemed to the boy who used to go with him to trap eels, to find both solace and mysterious, never quite suppressed vexation in this situation: fixed home, flowing river, flat land; beautiful wife. Who became the father of two sons (born 1923 and 1927), the first of whom turned out to be a semi-moron who loved his motor-cycle.

And then this former nurse, this beautiful woman who was my mother, this unlooked-for gift from a dreamworld between war and familiar life, this brewer’s daughter who – setting aside her practical virtues – was blessed with beauty of mind as well as body, with imagination, with hidden depths, with the art (drawn in part from her husband but perhaps derived too from her great-aunts Dora and Louisa who were avid readers of far-fetched tales in verse and prose) of telling stories, died suddenly.

My father, on the Leem tow-path, seen in profile against the Fenland sky. A series of rounded, time-worn
outlines. Straight nose which goes blunt; chin which perhaps once had a point; neck tending towards the creased and convexly rippled (do you recognize your teacher? Do you see, Price, how we revert to type?). But the eyes (in full-face as he about-turns), shifting, harassed, on the look-out, belying that impression of bumpy stolidity. And that incessant pacing …

For many years I wondered what made my father pace up and down like a tethered dog; why even at night he could be seen, a mere half-form, mooching by the lock-pen. For many years I wondered – until the body of a boy (your age, Price) whom I had played a part in murdering, floated against the sluice.

18
In Loco Parentis

I
T’S TRUE, children, your commendable headmaster, Lewis Scott, is a secret tippler. In the bottom drawer of that green filing cabinet to the right of his office window, behind a stack of virgin report sheets: one – no, two – bottles of J & B.

He pours into pale blue institutional teacups. Pushes one across the desk to me.

A diligent, a persevering man. And good with kids too … As each one of his own brood made its entrance into the world, that questioning glance, half curious, half condescending, amidst celebratory staff-room effusions, to his senior-junior colleague (and respected sparring partner): And why not you, Tom? Why have you never?

(It’s Mary. You see—)

With fatherhood, authority; with fatherhood, patronage. Even over his older-by-five-years Head of History. Ah yes, granted, Tom, twenty years in the classroom and you learn a bit about children – but when you’ve some of your own …

With fatherhood, a growing tendency to be ubiquitously fatherly, even to his grown-up assistant staff.

Pushes the cup of whisky towards me like a genial pater allowing his son (who’s in for a dressing-down) the adult privilege of stiff liquor. Eyes me archly, a trifle regretfully, as if indeed I am a troublesome child, one of his difficult pupils. Now this behaviour of yours – it can’t go on.

And who knows? These preposterous lessons. The – regrettably early – signs of a mind in relapse. Second childhood …

Children, beware the paternal instinct (yes, Price, I understand your distrust) whenever it appears in your officially approved and professionally trained mentors. In what direction is it working, whose welfare is it serving? This desire to protect and provide, this desire to point the way; this desire to hold sway amongst children, where life is always beginning, where the world is still to come …

‘So you see, Tom’ (with palms held candidly open), ‘I have no choice.’

‘Of course not. I understand fully. What you are saying is that even if certain – circumstances – had not arisen, you would still now be demanding my retirement. Not your decision. Policy.’

He looks at me as if I’ve ungraciously refused a handsome offer.

‘Or put it slightly differently. These circumstances – which I won’t discuss, since it’s plain you don’t want them discussed – provide a very convenient opportunity for carrying out, unresisted, a long-harboured intention.’

‘Now that’s not true. And be careful what you say. I’ve already said there’s no question of a vendetta.’

‘Perhaps not, but, whatever the reasons, I’m not going to be bamboozled by – circumstances – into leaving quietly, picking up my pension, and not protesting against the relegation of my subject in the curriculum.’

‘One might argue that you’ve already waived your responsibilities to the curriculum by turning your lessons into these – story-telling sessions.’

‘The subject’s still history.’

‘I see. Whatever that means. Have some more Scotch. I thought the standard line was that the past actually had something to teach us. By learning from—’

‘If that were so, history would be the record of inexorable progress, wouldn’t it? The future would be an ever more glowing prospect.’

(Price would love that: ‘glowing’.)

He straightens in his chair. Looks at me through blackrimmed glasses. As if he’d dare to say, Well, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

But he doesn’t say it. He’s not giving one of his cheery morning-assembly addresses now. He swallows whisky.

‘Lew, do you know what my students dream about?’

‘For God’s sake, Tom. You mean it’s not just stories? It’s dreams too?’

‘Seriously. Do you know what my – what our, your – students dream about?’

‘I hardly think—’

‘It came up, a while ago, in my ‘A’ level group. Nine out of sixteen said they’ve dreamt of a nuclear war. In several cases a recurring nightmare. They dream about the end of the world.’

‘Is this—?’

‘It came up – we had this count of dreams – because one of the group, Price—’

‘I know Price. Wears that stuff, doesn’t he? He’s been told—’

‘He’s an intelligent kid.’

‘All the more reason—’

‘Price suddenly announced in the middle of a class that history was a fairy-tale – you see, perhaps he’s on your side. And then he said – which led us on to his and then the rest of the class’s nightmares: “The only important thing about history is that history has reached the stage where it might be coming to an end.” ’

‘Well, isn’t that an argument for—?’

‘And I began quite seriously to think, Lew: what does education do, what does it have to offer, when deprived of its necessary partner, the future, and faced instead with – no future at all?’

His eyes narrow. His face makes that expression teachers make when a student offers downright insolence, throws everything back where it came from. (I know it too, Lew. I do it too. Feel the same muscles clench. Pace up and down and fume, just like a schoolmaster. With Price, for example.)

He gets up, cup in hand. Moves to the window. Darkness falling; looming tower-blocks. How we stick to our posts, how we cling to the curriculum.

He turns, stern, recriminative.

‘Perhaps this only proves one thing, Tom. Have you ever stopped to think that it’s the study of your precious subject that inspires such – gloom? Yes, you may be right, we don’t learn from the past. What’s more, what we pick up from dwelling on it is a defeatist, jaundiced outlook …’

(So it’s all right, children. No need to be afraid. Lewis is here. Don’t be gloomy. To all these morbid dreams, a simple answer: the nuclear fallout shelter.)

He runs a palm across his forehead, which is waxy and furrowed.

‘I’ve always said it—’ (He’s never said it. But he’s thought it. He’s saying it now. And now we know.) ‘History breeds pessimism.’

‘Or realism. Or realism. If history shows that the scale of human calamity increases. If the evidence of history corroborates what my students sense by intuition—’

He sits again. Pours more Scotch.

‘So what are you saying – that you have these dreams too?’

No, Lew, I don’t dream about the end of the world. Perhaps because, unlike my students, I’m not a child (fifty-three this year). I don’t expect, demand a future. And there are ways and ways, a thousand million ways, in which the world comes to an end …

Shall I tell you my dream? It’s how it’s supposed to happen: telling your dreams. They’re trying it on Mary, right now. In that place which modernity forbids we call an asylum. First you tell your dreams. First you speak all your innermost fears. Then all the rest follows – the whole story. Even back to when you were a little—

We could try it, Lewis. See if it works. The night before us. This bottle to help. You could say, So why did it happen, Tom? And I could say, These ulcers, Lew? This whisky-drinking? This ossified optimism?

My dream’s different. Less spectacular. But I dream it over and over again. The setting’s a suburban supermarket on a winter’s evening. Dusk falling. You see, I have to tell it like a story. It’s a Friday night, a busy night. Long queues at the checkouts; cash registers bleeping. All the Mums with families to feed have got their weekend supplies. All the couples with cars to load are eager to be home. They’ve got all the good things that supermarkets provide. They’ve got their canned soups and frozen meat, their breakfast cereals and scrubbed vegetables in polythene bags; they’ve got their cat food, dog food, washing powder, paper tissues, cling film and aluminium foil. But there’s something someone hasn’t got. Because amid the jostling trolleys, baskets and commotion a woman
suddenly begins to wail. She screams and screams and won’t stop …

‘Lewis, tell me something. Our business is children. Do you believe in children?’

19
About my Grandfather

C
OULD he be blamed, my grandfather, Ernest Richard Atkinson, for being a renegade, a rebel? Could he be blamed for showing but scant interest in his future prospect as head of the Atkinson Brewery and the Atkinson Water Transport Company? Could he be blamed – having been sent by his father, Arthur Atkinson MP, to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to receive the finest education any Atkinson had so far received – for squandering the time in undergraduate whims, for flirting with ideas (European socialism, Fabianism, the writings of Marx) directly aimed at his father’s Tory principles; for spending large parts of his vacations in nefarious sojourns in London, where he was called upon by the police to explain his presence at a rally of the unemployed (he was there ‘out of curiosity’) and whence he brought back to Kessling Hall in the year 1895 the woman, Rachel Williams, daughter of an ill-paid journalist, to whom, he brazenly declared (omitting to mention other ladies with whom he had toyed), he had already engaged himself?