Three Brothers (6 page)

Yet his fears were unwarranted. He received high grades in his examinations and at once, through the agency of his school, he applied to both Oxford and Cambridge.

He had visited Cambridge in a day of gentle sunlight and shadow, iridescent in the watery atmosphere of the neighbourhood. He had gone up in the train with his schoolfriend, Palmer, who had also applied. His memory, ever afterwards, was of undergraduates sitting and laughing by the side of water, of empty courtyards, of great establishments of enduring stone, all unimaginable and unattainable. “It is very civilised,” Palmer said as they travelled back. “I can see us there.” Daniel, who thought nothing of Palmer’s chances, merely nodded. As he returned to London he felt mournful, as if he were leaving all his hopes behind.

“What college did you like most?” Palmer asked him.

“I don’t know—I don’t want to think about it. Not yet.”

“I liked Clare. I liked the little bridge and the gardens.”

“There’s more to life than gardens.”

Philip Hanway insisted on driving him to Cambridge, on the day before the beginning of the university term. This horrified Daniel, who had a vision of arriving at his new college in his father’s lorry. He tried to persuade him that he was perfectly happy to travel by train, alone; but, no, his father insisted that he would hire a car for the day. He wanted to make sure that Daniel was “settled in.”

“Do you think,” he asked Daniel as they drove together along the A11, “do you think that you will ever write?”

“Write?”

“Novels. Plays.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Curious.”

There was something happening on the right-hand side of the road. Daniel thought he could see people running—running at the speed of the Morris Minor in which he and his father were driving—running figures even then overtaking them. And then they vanished into the distance. It had been a trick of the light reflected in the window.

“And now,” he said to himself, “my life begins.”

Are you hungry?

S
AM
H
ANWAY
had not prospered at school. He had made no friends. He did not antagonise anyone; he simply preferred his own company. He was absorbed in some private world, of rage and affection, which did not encircle other people. He did not excel in his studies; he was wayward and inconsistent. He would approach a subject with interest and great excitement for a week or two, and then would lose concentration.

Outside school he wandered around the estate, picking up a stone or examining a brick; he would study them with wonder and concentration, absorbing them within his being, before discarding them. He was a large boy, with a round face and powerful limbs; he had grey eyes and wore spectacles. When he took off his spectacles, his face seemed to flinch; he had the slightly blank look of someone running through mist.

“When I leave here,” he told one of his teachers, “I want to go to a circus school. I want to learn how to do tricks with animals. Zebras, most likely.” This was not considered to be very practical and, as soon as he reached school-leaving age, he enrolled at the labour exchange.

Sam found work in the local supermarket. Here he was employed to stack goods upon the shelves, and to pack the
shopping bags of customers. He had to look tidy, and to act smartly. With uncharacteristic energy, on the first day, he rose early and washed himself in the bathroom sink; he put on a shirt and tie, and took from his wardrobe the cheap grey suit that his father had purchased for him. It did not fit him well, and under a leaden sky he hastened to the supermarket on this first morning.

He took off the jacket and put on a striped apron and white hat. The changing room was beside the ventilation system for the dairy counter. It smelled faintly of cheese or curdled milk, a disquieting and even depressing smell. “Sam? Is that your name?” He nodded. He was being addressed by a young woman with pale prominent eyes; her flaxen hair was tied back, and Sam tried not to notice the pimples on her face. She looked vulnerable, as if a layer of skin had been stripped from her. “I’ve got to get you started,” she said. He felt uncomfortable in the presence of females, and had not mastered the art of talking to them. “There’s nothing to it, really.” She put out her hand, as if it belonged to someone else, and placed it limply in his. “This is cheese. This is milk. This is butter.” He could see what they were. “You don’t have much to say for yourself, do you? Well. Keep smiling. It won’t be as bad as all that.”

He learned how to unpack the goods, and arrange them on the shelves. He sized and sorted the various bottles, tins, packets and boxes; he carried in the fruit and vegetables; he replaced the cheese, the milk and the butter. The girl with the flaxen hair sometimes watched him. “Worse things happen at sea,” she said.

His ordeal started when he was asked to stand by the till and pack the bags of the customers. Each face became a terror. He was being judged. When he was slow, or clumsy, he blushed. He realised that people were cruel because they were unhappy. He thought he saw lines of suffering humanity,
shuffling towards him with their wire baskets or trolleys. He detested the children looking up at him with blank incurious eyes. If somebody complained, he insisted on explaining himself. He would look at them quietly and attentively before answering them in a low voice. He outlined in detail the proper way of filling a shopping bag, with bulky dry goods at the bottom and perishable goods at the top. So the days passed, one like another. It was as if he were living in a cave. If nothing mattered, then he could exist like this.

He did not eat in the canteen. He disliked the smell of beef and custard and tomato sauce. He bought a chocolate bar, instead, and sat in a bus shelter on the high street. So he remained apart from the rest of the staff. They were not malicious, but they were not particularly friendly. They would grow impatient with his long explanations. They greeted him hurriedly, and walked on. He knew all these things; but he never took offence.

One Saturday morning he was standing by the till, as usual, packing the bags. He glanced down the waiting line of customers. There was a middle-aged woman standing at the end of the queue. He looked at her a second time. She was wearing a blue cardigan and white blouse. He knew that face. It was her. It was his mother. She became aware of him in the instant that he recognised her. They gazed at each other. In his consternation he bowed over the counter and, when he looked up again, she was gone.

“What’s the matter with you?” A man, harsh and impatient, was standing in front of him. “You don’t know how to do this, do you?” Without any thought, Sam lashed out at him. The woman on the till moaned, with a sort of pleasure, when the man fell to the floor. There was general uproar and Sam was hauled away by the manager before being dismissed from the staff. It happened within an hour. And in that hour Sam’s life changed.

He vowed that he would never work again. He had no plan of action, no goal, but the very act of working seemed to him to be a form of death. He could live off the food in the house, purchased by his father; his father had a habit of leaving his wallet on the mantelpiece, when he returned from his long hours of driving, and Sam took small sums. He did not tell anyone that he had been fired. He left the house at the same time each morning, and returned at the same time each evening. He wore the same grey suit. He wandered.

One late afternoon he was walking along one of the paths in the local park, not far from the café where Harry and Hilda and Daniel had drunk tea beneath the trees. There was a young man sitting, slumped, upon a wooden bench. His clothes were old and soiled; he looked weary, his face hollowed by exhaustion or want. He was sighing, or groaning, it was hard to say which; he was trembling, slightly, as if he were trying to ward off pain. His eyes were closed, and there was spittle at the corners of his mouth. Sam sat down quietly beside him. He stared straight ahead, frowning slightly, and from time to time he would glance at this fellow on the bench. The young man opened his eyes and stared at him. Sam said nothing, and looked ahead once more. He could have sat there indefinitely. He had no reason to move on. One place was as good as another. But a sudden thought struck him. “Are you hungry?” he asked him. The young man did not reply. “Hang on,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” After a few minutes he returned with two packets of crisps and a bottle of Tizer. The young man took them without a word. From that day forward, at the same time, Sam always brought two packets of crisps and a bottle of Tizer to the bench where the young man was waiting for him.

Now that he had lost his job, Sam also seemed to become part of a floating world. There was, for example, the matter of the stone post. It stood at the corner of Lowin Street and the
high street. Its function was obscure, and Sam had no idea of its age. It was a weather-beaten piece of old stone that may have been on that spot since the building of Camden Town; it may even have stood there in an earlier period. Who could tell? Now, from across the street, Sam had the time to observe it. A young boy came up to it, placed his hands upon it, and began to beat it like a drum; he seemed to derive enormous pleasure from this. Someone called him, and he ran off. Sam continued to stand and watch. He noticed a curious fact or coincidence—most of those who passed the post put out a hand and touched it. It was an unwitting, and perhaps even an unconscious, gesture. Yet the stone post was being endlessly patted and felt.

As he continued watching the stone, it seemed to become aware of his presence. Sam was astonished when the stone rose several feet into the air; as it hovered there several ribs and pillars of stone, several arches and mouldings, began to exfoliate from it, creating an intricate shrine or shelter of stone. He thought he could hear the sound of hammering, of banging, of the labour of construction. Then it began to fade into the air. The stone post, once more a solitary presence, hovered above the ground before descending and resuming its original position. All this may have been the work of a moment. Or it may have taken many centuries.

If he had shouted aloud, he would have drawn attention to himself. He wanted to find somewhere in seclusion, somewhere he might sit and think. There was such a place. The church of Our Lady of Sorrows, the church where Harry had thwarted the arsonist, was only a few hundred yards away from this corner of the high street. Sam had passed it many times.

He bowed his head as he went into the porch, struck suddenly by the coolness of the air. The church itself was empty.
He walked down the aisle, and then hesitated. Above the altar was a cross on which hung the figure of the suffering Jesus—this was not what he had come for. But then he saw the lady, smiling, with her right hand raised in greeting or in blessing. She was dressed in blue and white. Sam crossed the aisle and walked over to the Lady Chapel.

He sat down on the narrow wooden pew and bowed his head. Then, after a long silence, he began to speak to her. “Do you mind if I talk to you? I have no friends, you see. I have no one to tell. I could have gone home, and forgotten all about it, but that would have been wrong. That would mean nothing had happened. But everything has happened.” He spoke in a slow, soft voice. “But now I have been chosen. I have been chosen to experience—well, you can call it a miracle if you like. I think it was a miracle. What do you think?” He looked up at her, wondering, enquiring, reflecting. She regarded him with pity, and put her finger to her lips.

He sat in silence once more. He felt secure here, as safe as if he were in his own room at home—no, safer, because he was under the protection of the lady. He was suffused with warmth, although he could not tell whether it came from within or without. Who was that standing a short distance away? An old nun had come up to the altar with lilies in her hands; she crossed herself before the statue, and then changed the flowers in the silver vases to either side of it. She had noticed Sam but she seemed to pay him no attention. She crossed herself again, and left the chapel as quietly as she had entered it.

After she had gone Sam looked up again at the lady. “She has offered you something,” he said. “I have nothing to give you. Do you need anything from me?” She did not reply. “Probably not. But I promise you this. When I see a person in trouble, I will try to help.” He thought of the young vagrant
on the park bench. “That will be helping you, I hope.” He stayed there a little longer, until with a sigh he got up from the pew and left the church.

He came back to the chapel on the following morning. He sat in the same place, and gazed impassively at the statue of the lady. He noticed now that she had blue eyes, and that three tears ran down her right cheek. Perhaps she had wept last night. He wondered what had caused this. Did she know already of the young man? “Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”

He came each day, and soon realised that three or four different nuns in turn changed the flowers and the altar cloth. He knew them all by sight, but they had not broken their silence. Then one of them surprised him. It was the oldest of them, the one he had seen on his first visit to the chapel. She was about to withdraw, having completed her ministrations, when she turned and walked over to him. It seemed to be a sudden decision.

“Are you troubled, son?”

“No. I’m happy. I think I’m happy.”

“You pray to Our Lady?”

“I speak to her.”

“Do you?”

“On the first day she put her finger to her lips.”

She made the sign of the cross, and walked away.

The nuns began to pay more attention to Sam. They smiled at him as they dusted the altar and polished the rails; they would walk down the aisle and nod as they passed him. One of them left a missal in his accustomed seat and then, a week later, he found a rosary there. He did not know what to do with it. He put it in the pocket of his trousers, and would sometimes slide his fingers through the hard wooden beads.