Freedom Island (11 page)

              ‘I want you to go after them,’ Mary said intensely to him, one grim Monday morning.
              ‘I will contact the appropriate authorities.’
            
 
‘No. I want you to go.’
              ‘Me?’ Odd replied, startled.
              ‘Of course, you know them. You can win their confidence. They are smart, they can out-run the police. But you can get close: have them arrested and brought back.’
              ‘You want me to deceive them?’
              ‘Exactly.’

On Mary’s advice, Odd headed straight for the gypsy village, where he was greeted with a stony silence. Here, his grey trousers, grey woollen jacket, Bedlam tie and shiny black shoes won him no respect; rather, he resembled an adult dressed as a schoolboy.
              ‘I am Frank’s friend,’ he tried to convince them: he recited trifling details only the closest of friends would know. But as the gypsies themselves were unaware of these facts, they did nothing to further his cause.
              Like a comedy detective Odd wandered on into the village proper, less than a mile away, asking foolish questions of the locals and waving out-of-date photos under their noses. But none had noticed them. After three fruitless days, having become a local laughing stock, Odd returned to Bedlam, never once having considered running away himself.
              Odd had always held a deep commitment to the system; to the Union. If it had confined him, he reasoned, he must have done something to necessitate it. The authorities, he was quite certain, would not invest in the incarceration of a person for nothing. Accepting his guilt, he would serve his time—however long that may be—and try to be as useful as possible in the meantime. Of course, before Bedlam, he had been too ambitious—overly intense, that was it: too pushy, career-focussed: not supportive enough of his peers. From now on, he was determined to be a better soldier.

❊

A new Rehab identity. A small village swallowed by the calm of the sea, the smell of it grasping at the edges of the place—and then on through the streets wafting here and there the processed version, frying seafood, delicious rather than repulsive, stirring the stomach.
              Outside, my new home basked in the almost year-round sun, making the dampness inside, the darkness and the cockroaches, all the more extraordinary. The apartment was a somewhat poky affair, saved only by a lack of full-scale furniture. The hallway was in a style from years before; at the end of it a door with a frosted window. It led into the kitchen. Propped up against the kitchen wall was a small two-legged blue-and-white-flecked vinyl-topped table with a white tubular metal frame faded to cream, barely large enough for one full-sized human—as if to confirm that this was indeed an apartment for just one person, likely to remain alone. The appliances varied between thirty and fifty years old, the walls were lined with peeling wallpaper edged by chipped tiles, and the floor itself was covered with Lino, its pattern in places worn to smooth white or further. The rotting backdoor, which led onto a small yard shared with the neighbours, sported two locks and two bolts, as though placed there by a fearful old lady.
              The only other room, apart from the tiny bathroom, was a small bedroom housing a small double bed, a narrow wardrobe whose doors wouldn’t close when something were hung inside, and a small bedside cabinet. Walking alongside the bed required me to walk sideways and once in bed my feet would stick out over the end, even though I’m not particularly tall. Fortunately, after work, I was without fail so tired, my back aching, my feet throbbing, that even this was to become a miniature paradise. And, with the aid of my medication, my mind was better.
              I delighted, or unwound, in the protection of an alien language: where people couldn’t analyse my every word, every move; where I was freed to hate their characteristics without hating myself; free to think alone, away from the daily passing conversations, those invasions through my ear and into my brain—the self-important, the cynical, the petty gossip about so and so’s boyfriend and this and that party or the price of vegetables, medical conditions and popular politics or that so and so didn’t fucking do this or didn’t fucking do that—now reduced to a near poetic sound dancing back and forth up and down, all meaning silenced. These people couldn’t see through me, into my privacy. I could feel how I wanted to feel rather than how they made me. In no time at all in this liberating social castration England itself had become faint and painless, like an elaborate story I’d once been told, and I was sure there would never be cause to go back.
              Through the thin walls I would hear the neighbours: to one side, an old man marooned at the TV, on the other a woman and her husband: the woman, as those who never leave the world of their career tend to, spoke with sharp, assertive statements to which her husband would whimper his approval.
              On Christmas Eve, out of pity, they invited me to join them. She regaled me—at length, over their traditional turkey, with memories of the painting of male nudes in art school. Her favourite was black because, she said wistfully, of the various green, yellow, gold and blue metallic reflections of light from his skin. By the end of the meal, they both seemed to be in agreement to adopt me. Thereafter, since they could hear me closing my front door or fumbling with my keys, it became even more taxing avoiding them than avoiding the police had been in the past. In actual fact, they could quite possibly have been snoops.
              But I became happy. I was nothing, a nobody, far from having a purpose, far from friends, with nothing material to my name, and at last—now that I had nothing to lose—fear left me. Finally, I could be myself. It dawned on me as clear as day how simply wonderful life is, every moment, every voice, the wind and the rain, and that that is all that there is, and how terribly saddened I would be when the time came for it all to leave me.
              I came to understand how happiness lies in the small things—watering a flower, putting on a nice shirt and taking a walk, the guilt free idleness of waiting for a train—because these are the things we can enjoy without the fear of losing them. I came to accept that life is intrinsically dull; everyone goes to school and parties, works and marries, has kids, crumbles and dies—but the joy is in the small things. In them lies God’s perfection. And that was when my heart opened, without expectations or preconceptions; fields of sunflowers stretching as far as the eye could see. Birds sang and the wind was warm. Simply open. And in walked Noelia González, as if she had always belonged there.
              I met her while buying a sandwich. Or rather, that was the first time I saw her. She was smoky, dusky. And as I had come to learn with people I somehow liked, but hadn’t met, I had the unshakeable sensation I would see her again, get a second chance in a playful act of leniency by God. I seem unable to believe that special moments can really be gone forever.
              And I did see her a second time, the same day, and spoke to her. In her face I saw something I knew that made me calm and deeply happy, as though she had just appeared through a secret door. Perhaps there were shadows of other women I had coveted or some divine communication that this was meant to be, a sense of some common destiny that here she was again, for hers were not the eyes of a stranger but of a friend, a murmur from a forgotten dream;
certainly somewhere beneath all that life had printed on us we were connected, and this we both knew immediately, that first time, and it would never need to be said.
              I knew I could sit in silence with this woman, her hand in mine, until the end of time and never experience boredom for one moment. And while she slept, or pretended to, my finger would calmly caress her temples, then the side of her face across those fluffy little hairs, up and down and around and around breathing rhythmically as though I were casting a spell, and it was as good for me as it was for her. And while she washed, I watched quietly as she would apply a whole series of soaps and conditioners and creams one by one in a magical, hypnotic ritual. I could feel her pain in my wrists and up the insides of my arms as we can our mother’s: when she hurt, I hurt—perhaps more so—and most of all I felt my own emotions, intensely.
              Her eyes were dark as night and her lips a passion straight from the earth: they would steal your soul. All that was so normal for her, was captivating: She pinned her hair back in the conservative yet elegant way popular amongst Spanish ladies of her age or older, regardless of class. In fact, my inability to understand her social status, as I would a Brit’s, added to her mystery and appeal, making the whole thing easier.
              At the weekend we would lie in bed together for hours, till three in the afternoon, exchanging a few words, ideas, making love and sleeping, then waking a little happier, the need to eat passing by unnoticed. Indeed, on any day, all the noise and responsibilities and chaos would fade with tranquility, until every day felt as free and gentle as a Sunday; the world became soft, the sun kind, the air fortifying.
              Great moments, later perhaps to be deleted and discarded as if they had never mattered at all, but as I walked in the park I no longer saw the litter: I saw the green grass in between. When I slept, I had the recurring dream that I could fly, or rather float, levitate across a room and down a flight of stairs. So pleased was I with his new achievement that I demonstrated it, in my dreams, to various faces of the past who to my dismay were never particularly interested; they couldn’t understand.
              And whereas routine had once terrorised me, it now became a harbour of happiness. Every day Noelia would rise before me, buy fresh bread and prepare my medications and breakfast before leaving for work. On the rare occasions when we parted with a bad feeling in the air, I mourned her all day as though she were gone forever. And every evening she would be waiting for me, preparing dinner, then sit quietly while I would read or watch television, and then we would make love before she made our goodnight drink. Weekends were filled by calm nothingness, perhaps a walk, perhaps not.
I awoke with a jolt: Saturday. Alone. The growling of a vacuum cleaner next door, like a familiar voice calling me back to the place I belonged, had filled my slumber. I’d woken expecting to hear the sound of my mother tinkering away in the kitchen downstairs.
              Sleep, dreams had shifted my mind, and life having become so much simpler of late, I was suddenly all the more aware of a sense of loss in my soul that I had never quite shaken off; resilient, it would seem, to three whole years of labour and two whole years of love.
              I just wished things were more as they had been: friends, movie stars, pop stars; that those who had gone would be back; that the cars in the streets were the old ones my father and I would talk about, the ones now consigned to old movies. The times when familiar eyes, personalities, faces, names, went around for the first time, not pinned to strangers, incidental characters as if I’d been dumped into some parallel universe. And then of course there were all those girls who had once laughed with me, reduced to feint memories, now locked away in some other life.
              I put on the washing machine, empty, and sat down to listen. Now I thought of my father, and I wanted to see him. I remembered now that in my dream my father had died. My sorrow for not seeing him for all this time, for not even speaking: the guilt I felt for my absence, for being a continual disappointment, haunted me all that day and on toward the evening. I walked around the village, four or five times, but I just couldn’t shake it. My father was so different to me.
              He could fix fences, solder things, strip an engine, chop wood, ride a horse, hang wallpaper, make a fire, pack the car properly and always keep the fuel above the half-way mark, box friends under lampposts as a young man, be proud, win the love of a great woman and do salsa, be a great father, paint pictures, live in the moment, eat bread with pig fat without caring, climb ladders, drive tractors with bad turning circles, be happy with what he had, and face age with humour.
              My father was a better man than I.
              And then I recalled my father’s den, a room that no-one was supposed to enter, crammed with eternally pending projects and by the door an old photo of Uncle Bill, who died years back and about whom all that anyone ever had to say was that he never married, and had a dog. Suddenly, that was all missing.
              After three good years in the present, a dream about a vacuum cleaner had gone and shaken it all up again. My parents’ farmhouse as it once was came back to me, jammed with all kinds of furniture salvaged from their own parents’ houses, even the carpet, recycled to this room and that, too good to throw away—maybe it would be needed one day—books all over, dust in my lungs and my nostrils, the smell of cabbage, old radios, board games not played in thirty years and furniture that had long since ceased to be functional: drawers that wouldn’t open, jammed full or without handles; cupboard doors barricaded behind this or that, fading pictures in frames of my brother as a baby and myself disturbingly younger, toy cars on the mantelpiece ‘worth something one day’, cacti on the windowsill because they just wouldn’t die, geraniums, and Grandma’s aspidistra that was over a hundred years old because she had cleaned the leaves with milk. Of course, it was all this stuff that had made it home. Now estranged, alienated and rehabilitated, I had left all remnants of that behind. It was gone.
              Courtesy of a sympathetic psychiatrist, I had gained a promotion in my social work: to pushing the disabled in their wheelchairs; I enjoyed that—they made me feel stronger, happier; luckier. I had also made a fish pond for a local school. I liked to imagine I had buried all that crazy refuse of my past life, the dreams and memories, right there under the lilies
. . 
. And as the washing machine finished, I waited, silently, for Noelia to finish work.
              The phone rang.
              ‘Hallo Ollie! how are you? This is the Interior Minister of the Union, Gustav Haussmann!’
              I was stunned—struck dumb; disbelieving. But then again I heard
his
voice, the unmistakeable German intonation of the man himself, coming over the line:
              ‘I hope you are enjoying your new home. My men will come for you at eight tomorrow! Be there,’ and Haussmann hung up. I became frantic, pacing around my apartment to the surreal accompaniment of jazz coming through the wall from the apartment next-door.
              Haussmann’s men arrived at eight, sharp: the Union-blue limousine slouched past the tranquil old ladies and happy stray dogs, past the glaring whitewashed cottages with their rotting shutters and the identikit apartment blocks. As I climbed in, I knew everyone was watching even if I couldn’t see them; they were there wondering who it was that was so important in their midst. They would remember me as that foreigner whom they knew nothing about, who entered their shops sparing his words, who shared a smile with them in the street but little else. The old ladies would have developed their own theories already, but now I was not just some probationary criminal, I was someone of importance, of fine connections. Probably, I had been there to spy on them, they would whisper.
              There was no possibility of me ever being able to live in this place again as a normal man—this place I had grown to love, to feel at ease in. The docks that stank of fish, the bay with its boats of varying sizes scattered like insects, the working class café I’d frequented every Wednesday morning where I always saw the same weather-worn faces, and even though I had barely ever exchanged a word with any of them, they were my friends. And now that would be gone, and Noelia too: I was sure she could never recover from the truth.