Thin-Ice Skater: A Novel by David Storey

Author:David Storey [Storey, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781504015141
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

BOOK TWO

1

I wake to a sense of apprehension, increasing, once awake, to one of terror: something abstract which appears to originate in the senses, themselves oppressed by the appearance of the wall, the paintwork, the moulding round the ceiling (the lampshade, the light itself): by the sounds, too, however distant, of aircraft, traffic, birds: a vessel’s siren on the river – the whole coalescing into a single pang which finally contorts my body: another thing – a seizure which, however much I struggle, refuses to let me go.

Two weeks, by this time, at the crammer: anonymous rooms in Notting Hill, twenty-six desks in one, of which twenty-five are occupied most days, the recalcitrant pupil no one but myself. English. History. Geography. Waking shortly after dawn: an other-than-worldly aberration which, instinct tells me, comes from an imbalance in the brain.

Fiercer than anything previously imagined (something formulates, death or something: the fall to the yard, to the footpath below). I get out of bed to a generalised terror …

All perceived through a veil of tears: the inconsiderable advantage of not being sane (composed, affected). ‘Some place to live, not someone else’s,’ I tell Gerry, he distracted by other things, incessantly on the phone, even here, the few hours he spends away from the office (he spells the sums out loud: ‘Five hundred grand is pissing in the pot. I’m short of fifteen point five million’). Has he been stretched like this before, or are these mountains he’s never climbed? Goes off twice to see Martha, despite the pressure (is he prizing something out of her?) – hiring a car on each occasion (an unusual occurrence) and driving himself.

On a third of these trips I insist he takes me with him, he curiously at ease driving north and east, getting lost, consulting a map, the turreted, battlemented outline of Whelling Hall finally showing (with a cry of triumph) above the trees: the long run up the drive, Martha walking with an attendant on the lawn, having been forewarned of our arrival – showing no sign, however, of recognition.

‘This,’ Gerry says, ‘is something,’ kissing her cheek, stooping – tenderly – to his crazy wife, holding her against him.

She shows no response other than she’s tired (brought out, I assume, against her will).

We go indoors, first to a lounge, where we sit, she something of a wraith: a recent loss of weight (‘Her appetite hasn’t been all it should be,’ her attendant has explained. ‘If you coax something down her, all to the good’). Then to her room where we sit adjacent to her bed, Gerry on one side, I on the other, she reclining on the covers, supported by pillows, uncertain who we are: two of us together: her beatific smile and saintly, sweet-natured incomprehension: the drawn-in cheeks outlining the delicacy of her features: the startled nose, the winsome mouth, the inquisitive brow: the bewilderment, I assume, she is passing on to me.

It is this visit which turns me into something I no longer

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