The Execution. Hugo Wilcken

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СКАЧАТЬ place solitary men go to get drunk.

      ‘You weren’t at the funeral.’

      ‘No, I wasn’t. I’m sorry.’

      ‘No need to apologise. I’m no fan of graveyard scenes either.’ He laughed bleakly and stared at his pint glass. I wondered momentarily if he’d gone mad but didn’t say anything. His mind seemed to drift off: ‘You know when I was young, six or seven years old, we had a little house in the country and it was on the road to a graveyard … I’ll never forget the sight of those coffins being hauled along. It was like a scene from the Middle Ages …’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Really.’

      There was a long pause while I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. Christian seemed lost in his memories: ‘I remember that house in the country. I remember a forest behind it where I once found a hedgehog. I caught it and stuck it in a box. I didn’t really know what to do with it though so I just left it there, in the box under my bed – for weeks maybe – until Mum started complaining about the smell. So one evening I opened the lid. Inside was this horrible greenish brown slime. Just the slime and the spines. I can still remember the smell.’

      A raucous laugh broke out from a table at the other side of the pub and several of the solitary drinkers standing at the bar glanced up from their drinks.

      ‘Listen Christian. For Christ’s sake. You’ve got to pull yourself together.’

      Christian stared at me wildly: ‘Well I can’t just pull myself together. I can’t just pull myself together. Jesus!’

      I forced myself to continue: ‘Look … you need help, you need to open yourself up to help, a doctor, a counsellor, whatever …’

      He cut me off: ‘You don’t know the half of it. Not the half of it.’ He sat musing and playing with the beer mat. ‘I have no means of escape. I have to confront myself at every moment. My life is a mirror I’m not allowed to look away from. If I was an alcoholic I could drink my way through it. Drink my way to the other end. I forced myself to drink tonight because I knew I was meeting you but normally I can’t do it.’

      I shook my head: ‘This is getting you absolutely nowhere. I’ll get a cab down to Paddington with you. I’ll put you on a train home.’

      He didn’t seem to hear me though: ‘The worst is not what you think. The worst is not even that we loved each other. It was that Susan … Susan and me …’

      ‘Susan was being unfaithful to you.’

      Christian looked up at me, genuinely surprised: ‘How did you know?’

      ‘I didn’t know. I guessed. Is that what you got me up here to tell me?’

      ‘No.’ We drank in silence for a while, then Christian started rambling on about his wife: ‘She met a guy, a younger guy, your age. It was absurd. I didn’t know at first, I didn’t have a clue. Anyway Susan got careless, or maybe she wanted me to find out … I heard her talking on the phone one day when she must have known I was there. Later I looked through her things and found a letter, just lying there, not hidden or anything. I couldn’t believe it. So I confronted her with the letter and she admitted it. I still couldn’t believe it. She said she loved me but that things had got stale. She needed to get this out of her system and all that crap. She didn’t want to leave me, not at that point anyway. I should’ve left her there and then but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength.

      ‘Life went on. The only difference was that I knew everything now, I knew that when she wasn’t home with me she was fucking this other guy. In a way it made it much easier for Susan, everything being out in the open like that. She didn’t have to hide anything any more, she didn’t have to go through the hassle of secret rendezvous. She could even sleep over at this guy’s place now, when before she had to come home every night.

      ‘I should’ve left her as soon as I found out. If I’d left her then, she’d have come banging at my door. She’d have come back to me eventually and I could have made my choice. She wasn’t in love with this other guy. She thought she wanted me but when I didn’t dump her, when she saw what I was willing to put up with, she knew I was weak. Then near the end, I could see I’d lost her. Not because of the other guy, but I’d lost her anyway. She became dismissive of me. She’d grown stronger. I couldn’t contemplate her leaving me though. I couldn’t contemplate her being alive and not being with me …’

      Christian was speaking in a low, robotic voice. I shook my head again: ‘I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want to know these personal things.’ He stopped, looked quizzically up at me, then continued talking. I interrupted: ‘I said I didn’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear it!’ I was almost shouting. I was upset, I don’t know why. Christian just stared at me in amazement and there was an uneasy minute or two of silence.

      Eventually I said: ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’d like to help out but I honestly can’t see what I can do.’

      ‘You do know what you can do.’ His stare was unnervingly direct: ‘You’re scared of me. Why are you scared of me?’

      ‘I’m not scared of you, for Christ’s sake.’ I looked away in irritation. ‘I’ll get a cab with you to the station.’

      ‘There aren’t any more trains tonight. They’re doing work on the line. The last one went at nine.’

      ‘To the coach station then.’

      Christian put his hand to his chin and kind of slumped in his chair. In the intensity of the encounter I’d forgotten how drunk he actually was. Suddenly, whatever menace he might have posed to me seemed to vanish, to disappear so completely that I wondered just what it was that had upset me in the first place.

      Outside, the drizzle had cleared and the wet city glistened in the street light. Christian seemed to have developed a stoop since I’d last seen him, or perhaps it was the drink. He kept up a wandering monologue as we walked down Camden High Street: ‘There’d been a chance maybe … we’d shared a bed but I couldn’t … I hadn’t …’

      I’d changed my mind about the coach station. I remembered a hotel nearby. I’d once spent a night there with a Brazilian woman I’d met in a Soho bar, years ago. In the morning she’d packed her bags and I’d driven her to Heathrow to catch her plane to São Paulo. I could still remember her face and the nakedness of her smile, so different from an Englishwoman’s smile.

      The reception area was grimly functional and deserted, except for an unshaven Indian-looking guy behind the desk, watching football on a tiny black-and-white television. I got out my wallet but Christian waved his hand: ‘Don’t be absurd.’ He went through his pockets and fished out a ten-pound note: ‘What the hell have I done with my Visa?’

      ‘Don’t worry about it.’

      I paid for the room and gave Christian some money for breakfast and to get home with in the morning. Then just as I was about to leave, he seemed to sober up a bit and suddenly came over all apologetic. He said he was really sorry for doing this to me, that he felt humiliated. It’s all right, I said, ring me when you’ve sorted things out a bit.

      ‘Yes, I’ll ring you. I need to talk to you. I’ll send you a cheque.’ Then when I’d already left and was on the footpath he appeared at the hotel window and shouted СКАЧАТЬ