Alice feels herself go cold.
“You mean, commit suicide?”
“Get out of jail free.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. He told me many times that he was only able to bear the indignities of life because he had his exit route all prepared.”
Die again. Then you’ll be free.
“How?”
“He has pills. He’s collected them over the years. He’s shown me.”
“In an old tobacco tin?”
“Yes.”
Alice’s heart is now pounding. Fragments of the last few days come bursting to the surface of her mind, bearing frightening new meanings.
When we become bored, we begin to die.
I’m not going anywhere.
I wanted to see if I could make someone happy.
“I saw his pills,” she says to Silva. “They’re on the table in his cabin.”
“Did it look like he’d taken some?”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, he wasn’t there.”
“He’d have gone off into the woods. There’s a spot he loves there, he told me. The top of some hill, with a big view.”
Alice shudders.
“Do you really think he’d do it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“How can we stop him?”
“Stop him?” says Silva sharply. “Why? I have no right to stop him. Nor do you. Life is not a duty.”
“Isn’t it?” says Alice, feeling stupid.
“If he’s made the decision, there’ll be letters in the mail. He promised me. I’ll get a letter.”
But will I? thinks Alice.
Silva rises.
“There’s nothing to be done,” he says. “We each have our own lives to live.” His eyes fall on Peggy’s note on the table. “Nick is not the beast. He’s an honest man. There are few enough left. If he really has played his last card, I shall miss him.”
So he goes. Alice is left in turmoil. Her first instinct is to get back into the car and drive back to the cabin. But what if she’s too late? Does she want to be the one to find him? That’s Peggy’s right, surely. Or Peggy’s duty.
Life is not a duty.
Is that true? Does Nick owe it to her, or to anyone, to go on living?
She searches for a phone number for Peggy but finds nothing. And even if she were to find it, what would she say? It may all be a fuss over nothing.
Except it is exactly that: a fuss over nothing. Kill yourself and you put yourself on the side of the nothing. She feels the anger rising. Of course Nick has a duty to live. We all have a duty to live. We’re something, not nothing. He’s physically fit and healthy; he’s part of the human race. He’s not in jail. Death is not freedom, it’s annihilation.
She wants to tell him so, to his face. Call him a coward. Call him a deserter. And if he still insists on his right to surrender this most precious gift, then . . . then . . .
He can write me a fucking letter too.
Suddenly she knows she’s going to go back. The morning’s long over. Her return journey will be in darkness, which she hates. But it can’t be helped.
She plays the radio as she drives, searching through gospel preachers and country music until she finds a station that plays oldies. She fills the car with the sounds of the Andrews Sisters and the Beatles, as she retraces the road to Vermont.
We’re in a chain, Nick. We all help each other. We pass it on. If you give up, it makes it harder for the rest of us.
Now that she knows the route, it seems to pass faster. She’s on the road that climbs between trees long before she expects it. Then she’s rounding a bend and there it is, the cabin with the smoking chimney. The red Dodge truck.
He can’t still be wandering the woods. It’ll be dark soon. He must be in the cabin. Alive or dead?
It seems ridiculous to ask so melodramatic a question, but she saw the pills with her own eyes. His Get Out of Jail Free card. If he has the pills out, he must be thinking of taking them. Maybe he has taken them. What does she do then?
She tries to think clearly. Have a plan. Be prepared.
Drive to the nearest town, find someone to report to, the police presumably. There’ll be an investigation. It could mean she misses her flight home.
Getting out of the car, she feels scared. Not of Nick’s suicide, but of the dead body. She’s never seen anyone dead before.
She goes first to the cabin window, and looks in. And there he is, sitting at the table, large as life. He looks up and sees her. He frowns. He’s up, and the cabin door opens.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
At once the terrors melt away, and she feels foolish.
He’s wearing a padded jacket and hiking boots. A line of stubble darkens his jaw. His voice is hard, angry.
She says, “I wanted to see you.”
Her own voice is timid, appeasing, like a child.
“You’ve seen me. Now leave me alone.”
He goes back into the cabin, slamming the door hard behind him.
Now she’s angry again. After her fears for his life, after her long drive, she deserves better. She bangs on the cabin door. She opens the door and marches in. He’s bending over the wood-burning stove, taking logs from the stack by the chimney to feed the dull burn within. He straightens up and turns to her, his face flushed.
“Now what?”
“I’ve had a long drive,” she says. “The least you could do is offer me some coffee.”
“Coffee?” He seems surprised by the proposition. “Then you’ll go?”
“Yes.”
She sits herself down at the table. The old tobacco tin is still there, beside his book. He moves about the cabin, knocking into chairs. His body is saying, I want to barge you out of my way. I want to tread on you. He goes to the sink and runs water from the tap into an iron kettle. It sounds like pissing.
He makes the coffee with a filter cone and a jug. It strikes her that this is not the backwoods style. Somewhere he must have a stash of paper filters.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. You. Living here like Davy Crockett. Reading Cervantes.”
“There’s no milk,” he says. “You want milk, you get back in the car and drive to Topsham.”
“Black is good.”
He brings the mugs of coffee over to the table. Lights the lamp with a cigarette lighter he pulls out of one pocket. She drinks the hot, bitter liquid and is strengthened. She thinks, I won’t be bullied. Let him be the first to speak.
He drinks his coffee in silence. Then—
“I suppose Peggy told you.”
“Yes.”
“She should have known better.”
“She told me not to come.”
“So why did you come?”
“Unfinished business.”
With each moment that passes she’s losing her initial embarrassment. She can see it now, in the way he won’t look at her, in the restlessness of his hands. He’s not angry, he’s frightened.
“Nothing ever gets finished,” he says.
“Do you have some kind of lavatory here?”
“Outside.”
She goes out into the twilight. There’s a small privy behind the cabin, with a wooden seat over a bucket. Beside the seat is an orange tub full of sawdust. No toilet paper.
“I can’t use that,” she says, returning. “There’s no paper.”
“It’s in a box. To stop the mice shredding it.”
“I thought maybe you used the sawdust.”
“No. The sawdust goes into the bucket when you’re done. When the bucket’s full, you put it outside for a few months, and it turns into manure. There’s only me here. It takes a while to fill up.”
“So now I know.”
She sits down at the table facing him. They look at each other properly for the first time, and neither of them speaks. She picks up the tobacco tin.
“Your Get Out of Jail Free card.”
“Who told
you that?”
“Your friend with the mustache.”
He takes the tin from her and opens the lid. It’s full of pills.
“See? Untouched.”
“But you have the tin out.”
“I like to keep it where I can see it.”
“Might you use it?”
“I might. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Am I that insignificant in your life?”
“Yes,” he says.
“I don’t believe you.”
He gives a shrug that says, Believe what you want.
“You wanted to see if you could make someone happy,” she says. “And you did make someone happy. And that someone was me.”
“And now I have to pay for it.”
“Am I asking you for anything?”
“How do I know? You’re here. I didn’t invite you. You must want something.”
“Well, for a start, I want you not to kill yourself.”
“Why? What use am I to you?”
“You made me happy.”
“And now it’s over.”
“Don’t you get it, Nick? We’re all in this thing. We have to support each other. Why can’t you leave me with a sweet memory of a lovely man who made me feel great about myself, even if only for a week?”
“I’m to go on living so you can have a warm feeling?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, at least you’re not telling me it’s for my own good.”
“No, it’s all entirely selfish. I’ve only thought of myself from start to finish.”
He has the grace to smile at this.
“What we had was just a bit of fun, Nick.” She’s lying but it’s necessary. “I’m really only here because we never said good-bye. Not properly.”
“You’re here to say good-bye?”
“You know how it is. Every story has to have a happy ending.”
“What would a happy ending look like?”
“I’m not sure. But there has to be a kiss.”
He smiles at that too. And as he smiles she sees again the frightened child that lives within him. What is it that’s made him so afraid?
“When you go home,” he says, “what will you tell Laura?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, not really. It’s just that I’m not all that proud of what I’ve become. I used to be better.”
“How long ago is it?” she says.
“Thirty years. More.”
“Long time.”
“Long time.”
“I’ll tell Laura,” says Alice, “that we had some good times together.”
Then they’re both silent. What’s he doing, hiding in the woods? This lovely man with so much to give.
“Your friend with the mustache told me you have a favorite spot in the woods,” she says. “A hilltop with a view.”
“That’s right.”
“How about you show it to me, before it gets too dark.”
“It’s a bit of a climb.”
“How long?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe.”
“Let’s do it. Then I’ll go.”
She wants to get him outside, into the twilight. Then they can talk without seeing each other’s face.
“You promise you’ll go?” he says.
“Are you scared I’ll move in with you?”
“It has happened.”
“Not with your plumbing.”
So he puts on an oilcloth trapper hat, and Alice buttons up her coat, and they set off. There’s a trail running through the trees behind the cabin, up the flank of the hill. They walk in single file, Nick in front, and for a while they don’t talk. It’s very dark in the trees.
“So what’s the idea, living out here?” says Alice at last. “Apart from killing yourself, that is.”
“Out here,” he says, “I have no phone, no Internet, no newspapers. I don’t even have a mirror in the cabin. I’ve stripped out all the distractions I can. I bring food with me, enough for a month. Then I settle in and talk to no one. Then after a few days, a week maybe, I start to feel like I’m standing on solid ground again. I’ve got away from the unreality.”
They’re pounding steadily up the trail as he speaks. Alice listens. She wants him to do the talking.
“You’re writing this love story. We all want to hear about love. But love isn’t the big thing we make of it. It’s just another part of the unreality. It’s a mug’s game. We can’t win. We think there’s someone out there who can make us happy, someone who’ll make us complete, but that’s not how it works. We think not getting what we want is the problem, but it’s the wanting that’s the problem. We want the whole world to feed us. Everything has to be fodder for the great open mouth. And this self we’re feeding, it’s insatiable. We can’t satisfy it. There’s no end to its hunger. We end up as slaves, chained to our hunger, doomed to service its bottomless need forever. There’s only one way out of that. You have to break the chain. You have to cut the self loose, let it go. That’s when real life begins.”
So there it is: the Gospel according to Nick.
“You know what I feel most of the time?” he says. “I feel disgust. I feel sick with unreality. I feel sick with self. So I come out here.”
He comes to a stop, breathing heavily. The hill has become steep. Alice says nothing, but she does understand. She thinks she does.
I, just myself, and because it is I. Was Mabel sick with self?
Now the trail opens out, the trees fall away, and they’re on the summit. From here a great view reaches in all directions. Dun farmland and tinted forest beneath a dusk sky. They stand getting back their breath, breathing in the distance.
“What is it about views?” says Alice.
“It’s a big world. A good view makes us feel small.”
“Why should we want to feel small?”
“Because we are.”
She gazes out over the land towards the faint light on the western horizon.
“Your friend thought this is where you’d come to die.”
“Could be.”
“How would you do it?”
“It’s not complicated. You take the pills. You go to sleep.”
“But how exactly? Would you bring a flask of water? Would you sit down?”
“I suppose so.”
“Where?”
Nick looks round. He points to the one pine that stands on the hilltop.
“Back against the tree. Looking west.”
“Go on, then. Sit down.”
He gets what she’s doing now. Shoots her a wry look from under the flap of his stupid trapper’s hat.
“Where have I heard this line before?”
“Come on. Sit down. Back against the tree.”
He shakes his head, but he does as he’s told.
“Now open the tin. Get out your flask. Put the pills in your mouth, two at a time.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“Lot of pills to get through. You have to make sure they do the job. Swallow them down.”
He makes some token hand movements, miming taking pills, to show willing.
“Now wait for the drug to take effect. Will it hurt?”
“Shouldn’t do.”
“So now you’re getting sleepy. This is it, Nick. Sun’s gone down, night’s coming. All your troubles will soon be over. You’re really cutting the self loose now. You’ll be free soon. Free forever.”
He gazes up at her, amused, full of admiration.
“You Dickinsons.”
“Shut your eyes.”
He does as he’s told.
She claps her hands. The sound startles birds from the trees. His eyes open.
“That’s it,” she says. “Game over. Life goes on.”
“What do we do now?”
“We go back down the hill.”
He rises to his feet, shaking his head.
“You Dickinsons,” he says again.
He leads t
he way back into the darkness of the trees. Back down the track. Below she can see the glow of lamplight from the cabin window. Soon they’ll get to the cabin, and her car. Soon she’ll be driving south, and it’ll be over.
I can’t come all this way and not say it.
“After you left,” she says, “I went a little bit crazy. We’d had a good time, and suddenly you were gone, and I couldn’t take it. For at least twelve hours I convinced myself I couldn’t live without you. Stupid, isn’t it?”
“We did have a good time,” he says.
“But I’m not in love with you,” she says. “It’s not love.”
“Of course it’s love,” he says.
There’s the cabin before them now, smoke climbing from its chimney. There’s the car.
She says, “I want you to promise me something.”
“What’s that?”
“If you ever take those pills for real, I want a letter.”
“I wouldn’t know where to send it.”
“I’ll text you my address.”
She’s by the car now. Time to go. Don’t string it out.
“So I did make you happy?” he says, wanting to be convinced.
“Yes, Nick.”
“There has to be a kiss.”
He takes her in his arms and they kiss. His stubble scratches her cheek.
“Bye,” he says. “Again.”
“Bye, Nick.”
All the way back, driving from Vermont into Massachusetts, into the night, she doesn’t think of him at all. She doesn’t think anything.
22
The road out of Lewes passes under the brow of Mount Caburn, over Glynde Reach, over the railway line from Eastbourne, down to the Edenfield roundabout. Driving herself to Jack’s home in her mother’s car, Alice slips back in time and she’s a child again, on her way down this same road to school. She feels again the scratch of her school kilt on her bare thigh, and the dread in the pit of her stomach. She hears her mother cursing the slow-moving traffic under her breath. She herself wants the journey never to end.
Those pitiful partings.
“In you go, darling. Just one more kiss, then.”
The feel of her mother’s arms round her. The terror of the embrace coming to an end. The chill of being on her own.
Dear God, was it really so bad? A small country prep school run by kindly teachers. And yet printed deep in her physical memory is this sensation of stark fear.