A Longer Journey

Lonely

I was released late that summer, and given home leave. Sue Mossman, nurse as well as housekeeper now to my ageing aunt, was first to greet me. She fell upon my neck in tears, and I laughed at her as wholeheartedly as I could.

Aunt Emily seemed glad to see me, in her pale and dankly undemonstrative way—and at first I felt vaguely guilty. Why? I had written to her infrequently, to be sure—but then the censorship itself was enough of a disincentive to excuse me. I had not thought about her very often during my time away—but then I had been in new surroundings, and busy enough physically and mentally to excuse some forgetfulness. I didn't expect anything from her in the way of affection or companionability.

That was it, of course: I was guilty because I no longer needed her attention. I no longer felt concerned about her opinion of me, or wished to find in her the caring and admiring relative I had once looked for. And to stop needing someone, I realised suddenly, is to diminish them, even if they hadn't wanted you to begin with.

I watched Aunt Emily, sitting in her fireside chair with two blankets over her knees, frowning pensively at a laundry list or something that Sue had submitted to her. I had grown very little taller since eighteen, but it felt as though I had shrunk her. They say that good deeds atone for bad, if you feel guilty. I sat with her longer than I wished, that afternoon and frequently thereafter; I always asked how she had slept, how her back felt, whether her cold was better; I listened attentively when she spoke; I tried to think with gratitude of all that she had done for me.

But no, it's not true: good deeds do not paper over any cracks, and I was going to inherit her house and her money when she died, whether we liked one another or not. I decided I would give her entire estate to charity when she died. “Charity” is a funny word, especially in relation to money; “guilt” would be so much more appropriate.

I could do without other people's money, I assured myself. I had four years' pay, banked, and good references from my wartime work. I believe my next paid employment was as an electrician's assistant, then something in the way of repair work for hoovers and washing machines, then television installations.

I lost the job with TVs after a manager found out that some customers imagined my strange appearance had something to do with the mysterious box I was installing in their homes. A rumour started, to the effect that watching the huge single eye of the TV screen would gradually make people's eyes grow larger, and the mental effects of viewing would make their heads change shape until they looked like me. This rumour proceeded as far as a local newspaper before it got overturned, but by then the damage had been done and business had been adversely affected by customers' suspicions.

I remember one of these. A businessman had ordered a television set installed, but only his wife and mother-in-law were there when I arrived. The mother-in-law was quite sure that anything scientific would eventually explode like the atomic bomb; that if it didn't explode, it would “radiate strange rays” and make her grandchildren go stone blind; that if this didn't happen, it would slowly and insidiously draw them in, control their minds and reduce their intellectual capacity. Her daughter assured her the television set would rarely be used except as a family status symbol to be exhibited to guests, but one young child, aged about four, followed me around to stare at me and my magic picture box.

“What big eyes you have,” she said, straight out of the fairy-tale. I could not resist smiling at her in a way that showed more teeth than was entirely necessary.

“What big teeth you have,” she said obligingly, and she and her toddling brother looked at one another, grabbed hands and started to scream and run. “It's a wolf, it's a big bad wolf, and he's going to blow our house down,” I heard howled around the place. An older sibling, in the next room, reassured them audibly that their father would come and kill me with an axe until all my blood and bones came out on the floor.

“Children! Dear me, Mr Johnson, I feel quite ashamed,” their mother began. “They are very young—”

“I hate to mention it,” her mother interrupted, clearly glad of the chance to mention it; “but are you quite sure that dealing with these televisual boxes has had no ill effects upon you personally, Mr Johnson? A little—um—straining on the eyes and ears, perhaps?”

I stood up. “Hard to say, madam!” I told her with a sort of glib heartiness designed not to reassure. “Personally I think my eyes and ears changed when an alien from outer space kidnapped me and tried some medical experiments on me as a child! On the other hand, scientific inventions are always so mysterious! Perhaps you should just try the television out on your children and see what happens!”

They had the TV disconnected and removed the very next day, and their children presumably grew up on mixed fairy tales instead of Tom and Jerry.

I told this story to Mr Thomas next time we met, and he decided I was lonely.

“No, no,” I said. “Not at all. That was meant to be an amusing anecdote, not a tragedy. Please don't feel sorry for me because a silly old woman doesn't like my looks.”

He thought I should spend more time with other young people in their twenties, but I couldn't agree. I attended various social events in the neighbourhood, including a debating club and, sporadically, when canvassed for it, an amateur dramatics group that got disbanded and re-instituted every time any stage-struck member didn't get a part they wanted. I had also kept up acquaintance with several of my wartime colleagues. If I spent long hours walking alone it was because I enjoyed walking and liked to have my own pace and distance. He hinted at girls, which I felt was hypocritical of him, as someone who had never himself married.

There was a girl in the dramatics club who had been noticing me for months, and had recently taken an undesirable role just to play opposite me in an upcoming Christmas play, but her name was Emily. You could not have an aunt and a girl friend of the same name unless you liked the name, and I didn't.

When I next saw Josie Mossman, who now worked in a photographer's shop, I asked her to go and see a film with me. I didn't think Josie was pretty, but she evidently did, and I couldn't always tell. On the evening itself, she did look rather attractive: she had put on heavy make-up and looked almost mysterious—mask-like, big-eyed and mildly unreal. At the end of the film, when the actors kissed, Josie pulled a pout at me and I kissed her. We both laughed, and then she told me she was recently engaged.

“Why did you come out with me then?” I asked, curious as to what her personal rules were.

She laughed again. “Just for friends,” she said, and I realised I felt relieved.

“But you kissed,” I argued.

“Well, you paid for the film,” she reasoned, and I reflected that, not having a definite code of courtship myself, I had no right to criticise hers.

Mr Thomas and Mr Smith both asked me how my love life was going. I told them, somewhat heatedly, that not everyone is the marrying type, that a fair proportion of people in the world never married and that some people just never happen to meet the right person.

Mr Smith remarked that some women preferred female company to male.

Mr Thomas added that one occasionally hears that the same could be true of some men.

Mr Smith explained that someone should not feel alone in the world if their personal tendencies fell outside the average.

I didn't know whether Mr Smith and Mr Thomas knew that I knew that they were not brothers, so of course I couldn't be sure whether they were aware that I couldn't tell whether they realised how much I had guessed, but it was clear to all of us that the subject had its pitfalls, around which the best path was a judicious and disarming honesty.

“Well, of course I know about that,” I said casually, leaving the pronoun open to interpretation. “But I'm quite sure that's not me. I think some people are just destined to be loners. Maybe it is good for some people to be alone.” At this point there would be relatively few cells in my body that had not been recreated; if I had not been “normal” as a tiny child, I was now miles away. I had never seen a girl I recognised as Adam recognised Eve. Incidentally, I had twice found myself pausing outside the window of a curiosity shop, in which was displayed “a rare antiquated French boudoir doll”—and if I had any idea in my mind of female beauty, that chalk-faced, tiny-mouthed, weird-eyed face was the nearest I had ever seen. But it was a doll. And it had the word “boudoir” attached. Words matter, whether you like it or not. I was quite certain that a man does not interest himself in collecting boudoir dolls.

“Now that the war is over—has been over for some few years,” Mr Smith was saying, “what would be your chosen path through life? Ideally, you know. Where would this solitary road of yours lead? You have both talent and means, and should do something of significance in the world.”

I stared blankly in the direction of the window as we sat. I felt the same mixture of certainty and confusion that I could remember from when I had sat on the stairs to gaze at the coloured glass around the front door more than seventeen years ago. This window was open, since the fire had been smoking.

“What are your dreams, Thulie?” Mr Thomas inquired with a smile that was quizzical only on the surface; serious underneath.

The word “dreams” was at least as unsettling as he had intended. I had discovered and devoured the fiction of Verne and Wells, finishing books only to re-read them until they disappointed me by falling short of my first sensations. Fiction is far more prophetic than forecasting, and in my dreams I had ridden in a projectile through the vacuum of space, had discovered life on Mars and beyond, long before I had read in the newspapers of the rocketry rivalry between the USSR and America, the hopes of flying into space that had so far been granted only to bacteria and fruit flies.

“I am extremely interested in the idea of manned space exploration,” I admitted.

“That would be hard to get into, your being neither Russian nor American,” Mr Smith observed.

I want a spaceship, I told the open window childishly but quite silently. Aloud I said, “I also feel strongly drawn towards the new computing machines. Maybe I should take up a career in computing.”

My next job was in Manchester, as an entry-level sort of programming assistant and general dogsbody. I travelled home to Aunt Emily as often as I felt able, given that I often had to work on weekends. For her own peace of mind I didn't tell her I was working on Sundays, and I think she supposed instead that I was courting. I hoped she wouldn't broach that depressing topic either. Let us strictly adhere to the weather and your health, Aunt Emily: so much more conducive to repose of mind for all concerned.