Oscar wheeled Dr Paulsen across the car park. The Orchard was alive with midday shadows and he could see a glimmer of footprints in the dewy grass beyond the tea pavilion. Pale autumn sunlight slanted down through the apple trees and the birds were trilling in the hedges. Women sat alone under half-bare branches, sipping tea from dainty cups. Couples shared ploughman’s lunches across green patio tables. Young men lazed in deck chairs with their headphones on. ‘Just park me under that big one over there,’ Paulsen said, pointing to an apple tree that was taller and wider than the others. ‘We’re a little early. Here—’ The old man reached under the blanket on his lap, pulling out a twenty-pound note, ‘get me a scone with all the trimmings and an Assam, and whatever you want for yourself. Bring the tray over, then make yourself scarce. Understand?’
‘Where should I go?’
‘I don’t care. Just keep out of earshot. I don’t like airing my linen in public.’
Oscar bought the tea and scones from the pavilion and delivered them. Then he found a free table in a patch of grass that was warm with sunshine. He sat in a deck chair, quietly drinking an Earl Grey, staring at the resilient green of the trees. It was the first time he’d ever been to The Orchard, though he’d heard so much about it from the old man. According to Paulsen, the greats of English literature had walked in the tall grass here—Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke; J. B. Priestley and E. M. Forster; John Betjeman and A. A. Milne. Oscar had always wanted to see it for himself, but he’d been too afraid of their shadows to visit alone. Now he was experiencing it for what it was—trees and grass, sky and mud, weeds and flowers—something beautiful and unruined. He wanted to come back here with Iris and lie with her under the same tree that Ted Hughes had once lain beneath with Sylvia Plath, dreaming up poems for each other. (Lately, he’d been trying to write something of his own. The title had come easily, and he’d sketched out a decent first line—You are the first thing about the morning that I recognise—but so far he hadn’t been able to think of anything good enough to follow it.)
He looked over at Dr Paulsen. The old man was sitting with his hands folded on the tabletop and every so often he would tilt his head, as if he’d caught sight of Herbert Crest approaching from some hidden aspect of the tea pavilion. Then he’d turn away again, feigning a new appetite for his uneaten scone.
Around half-past the hour, Oscar saw someone approach the old man’s table. For a long moment, Paulsen barely regarded the person in the baseball cap who was standing before him, but then the two men exchanged words—a few short sentences that sounded to Oscar like the distant rumble of a boat engine—and Dr Paulsen looked up, beaming. He opened out his arms and embraced the man, who stooped down, slapping two palms against his back. The man removed his cap, revealing a scalp as smooth and shiny as a cricket ball, and sat down at Paulsen’s table, gazing at him. It was Herbert Crest. He looked different from his picture on the book jacket. Now he was skinny and ghostly and frail. From a distance, it seemed like the daylight was coming through his body, the way a torchbeam shines through dust.
The two men talked for a long time. Their conversation was broken only by frequent peals of Crest’s laughter, and Paulsen’s enthusiastic cackling. Oscar wondered what they were discussing, trying to imagine what these two fragile old things had once meant to each other. Neither man had seen the other in twenty years, but it seemed as if they were continuing a conversation they’d only started at breakfast. Their bodies had an easy, uncomplicated language.
Soon enough, Oscar found they were both looking back at him. Paulsen motioned with his hand—one glacial movement, inviting him over. The two men kept their eyes on him as he approached. ‘Herb wanted to meet you,’ Paulsen said.
‘He’s been singing your praises all afternoon,’ said Herbert Crest, getting up slowly. His voice was thin and rusty, and he spoke with the rolling, curling vowels of a Kennedy. There was a bony fragility to his handshake. ‘Anyone who can impress Bram Paulsen is somebody I need to meet.’
‘It’s a pleasure,’ Oscar said.
‘To meet me, or to look after this old guy?’
‘Both.’
Crest grinned. Now that he was closer, Oscar could see the scar on the top of his bald head—a long, straight, fleshy seam.
‘Oscar’s quite a fan of yours,’ Paulsen said. ‘Could hardly shut up about your book in the car.’
‘Which one?’
‘The Girl With the God Complex.’
‘Ah. You liked it, huh?’
‘Very much.’
Crest lowered himself into the deck chair. ‘I always thought it was my best. Sold worse than any of them, though. Funny how that works.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Not that book sales have ever bothered me.’
Oscar took a seat beside him. ‘I loved the way you wrote about that girl. It was like you really felt something for her.’
‘Kind of you to say.’
‘I wondered what became of her.’
‘The girl?’ Crest wet his lips with a slither of his tongue. ‘Y’know, she almost got better there for a while.’ He darted his eyes towards the sky. ‘She died, though, couple years after the book came out. Angela. That was her real name.’
‘Oh.’
Crest rubbed at the dry stubble on his cheek. ‘Cut her wrists up pretty bad, so they told me. I guess she couldn’t stand living with us mortals any longer.’ He tried to laugh, but it sounded weak and insincere.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Oscar said.
‘Not as sorry as I was, believe me. But, hey, what can you do? What can any of us do? Death is part of life and all that crap.’ Crest gave Dr Paulsen a warm smile. ‘Y’know, I tried to get the publisher to reissue that book, but they wouldn’t touch it. So I told them where to go. Ha. I guess that’s why the big boys won’t publish me any more—I’m too much of a hot head. Bram can testify to that.’
Paulsen blinked.
‘It’s too late to change me.’
‘Are you still writing?’ Oscar asked.
‘I’m working on a book right now, as it happens. It’s kind of why I’m here.’ Crest went quiet. ‘Listen, would you mind getting me some water? I’m dry as a sandbox and I’ve got a long ride home.’
‘Yes, some water would be nice,’ Paulsen said. He gave Oscar a heavy look. It was an expression he recognised, one that said: Take the hint.
Oscar bought a bottle of Perrier from the tea pavilion. A couple of women were holding a conference about what kind of cake was best, coffee or carrot, and whose turn it was to pay. They side-stepped along with their tray, slowing the line. When he arrived back at the table, Herbert Crest was gone.
‘He had to rush off,’ Paulsen said. ‘A call came through.’
‘Oh. Damn.’
‘You don’t have to pretend you’re sad about it.’
‘No, I’m—there was something else I wanted to ask him, that’s all.’
‘Just be glad you got to meet him. I wasn’t planning on introducing you two, but he spotted you right away. The first thing he said when he sat down was: “I know that’s your nurse over there, Bram, you can’t fool me. I’ve got mine waiting in the car!” He always could see right through me, the bastard. God, I love him.’
Oscar wheeled the old man back through the trees, across the pebbles of the car park. The sunlight was fading but there was a pleasant smell in the air of some distant bonfire. He heaved Paulsen into the passenger seat of the minibus, then folded up the wheelchair and put it in the boot. As he started the engine, the old man thanked him. ‘You made it very easy for me today, Oscar. I won’t forget it. That boy Deeraj wouldn’t have left me alone for a second with his fussing and hovering. But not you. You’re a good lad. I almost felt alive again today.’
The old man barely said another word on the drive back to Cambridge. He just gazed out of the passenger side, at the rolling smudge of the hard shoulder, the steel girders, the combed rows of farmland. It was early evening and the sky had grown purple. The tyres droned on the carriageway tarmac.
As they neared the edge of the city, Oscar couldn’t hold from speaking any longer. He knew that Dr Paulsen had no wife, no children, no remaining family. Not a single person had ever come to visit him at Cedarbrook the whole time he had known him. Herbert Crest, he realised, was the only person the old man had left in the world. ‘Tell me to butt out if you want, but I’ve got to ask—’
Paulsen removed his hat, but didn’t speak.
‘What happened between the two of you?’
The old man hardly moved. His eyes surveyed the road. ‘I was completely and utterly in love with that boy. And he was in love with me.’ He stared dead ahead, not even blinking. ‘After what I did to him, it’s incredible he still wants to talk to me.’
It was strange that he still referred to Crest as a boy, as if a younger version of him still existed somewhere.
‘What happened?’
‘It doesn’t matter what happened. It was stupid and childish, and I’m not proud of it. I made a fool of myself. It was all very ugly. But there’s no point dwelling on ancient history. I’ve made my peace with it now.’
‘I’ve never seen you as happy as you looked today.’
‘Ah, you’ve a good heart, son, you know that? It’s funny, in some ways, you remind me of him—of how he used to be.’ Paulsen looked at him warmly. ‘I can’t tell you how good it felt to see Herb again, face to face. I still love him, not in the same way. I think we’ve become very different people, him and me—but, oh, that boy was the greatest love of my life. He meant everything to me. Still does.’ Paulsen gave a quiet sigh through his nose. He rolled the brim of his panama around in his fingers as if preparing a pizza dough. ‘He looked so ill, didn’t he? Did you see his eyes? They used to be so bright and clear. They were practically dead already.’
‘Is he sick?’
‘Very.’ He tapped at his temple. ‘Brain tumour.’
‘Oh no, I’m so sorry.’
‘Hardly your fault. If anyone’s to blame it’s the pathetic excuse for a god we have up there. I’m nearly twenty years older than Herb—I’ve known him since he was eighteen. You’d think I’d be the one to go first, wouldn’t you? But no. Sod the rightful order of things. If there’s any kind of god up there, he’s one cruel, miserable old bugger.’
The news that Herbert Crest was dying did not come as a surprise to Oscar. He’d suspected it the moment he saw him arriving at The Orchard, seen it in the ghostly pallor of his lips, the grey circles around his eyes, the sound of his breathing, as if each inhalation brought a wave of pain. But it unsettled him to have these suspicions confirmed. By the time the old man finished telling him about Crest’s illness—the surgeries, the chemo, the joy that came with the short remissions and the despair that came with the relapses—he felt utterly deflated.
‘I’ll never complain about anything ever again,’ the old man said. ‘Not when I think of Herb struggling like that. I know he’s not the only one out there with a tumour, but seeing what it’s done to him, well, it just brings it all home to me. I’m a lucky man. I’ve never thought of myself as lucky before. I’m just so glad I got to see him again.’ The doctors had given Crest no more than two years to live, and that time had almost passed. He was visiting every person that he’d ever loved, Paulsen said, so that he could tell them how important they were to him—and, most of all, to say goodbye. ‘I was third on his list. That’s good enough for me. Even if it all ends up in this book of his, I don’t care.’
‘He’s writing about it? About dying?’
‘Sort of,’ Paulsen said. ‘Sounded to me like it’s more about wanting to survive. What was the title he had? Oh, damn, it’s gone clean out of my mind.’
‘He looked too sick to be writing anything. It’s a wonder they even let him on a plane.’
‘He lives in London now.’
‘Oh.’
‘Been here the last few years. Strange to think of him being here all that time, on the same shores. I always thought he was an ocean away.’
They stopped at traffic lights on Barton Road. A parade of cyclists wheeled over the pedestrian crossing, their coat-tails billowing behind them. Oscar could hardly hear the engine, and he wondered if he had stalled it, but when he pressed the accelerator it gave out a tinny rev.
‘I can’t remember the title he had for the life of me. Oh, my stupid old brain.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes it does. Once the short-term memory goes, that’s it, I’m done for.’ Paulsen thought hard; his face was one big crease of concentration. ‘I can remember the publisher. Spector and Tillman. But the title. Damn, what was it?’
The lights blinked green and Oscar moved the minibus forwards. Turning onto Queen’s Road, he could see the outline of Cedarbrook in the distance, and as they drew towards it the shape swelled upwards and outwards. It was lit from the ground with floodlights, and the angles of the beams against the bricks reminded him of the Bellwether house. He steered through the open gates, driving around the side of the building, parking in the back yard, amid a fleet of other buses. It felt like he was a cruise-ship captain coming home to dock.
A lamp was on at the nurses’ station, and one of new auxiliaries was sitting there filing her nails. She brought out the day book and Oscar signed his name beside ‘Paulsen, Abraham’. He put the old man in the stairlift and walked him, step by step, back to his room. He took off Paulsen’s jacket and shoes and pulled the blanket over him as he lay down and closed his eyes. ‘Sleep well,’ he said. Hanging the old man’s jacket over the armchair, he felt something in the outer pocket—a crackle of paper behind the lining, crisp under his fingers. He checked that Paulsen was asleep before taking it out.
It was the letter from Herbert Crest. There was a shakiness to the handwriting he hadn’t noticed before. The ink was blotted with rainspots. On the back of the envelope, there was a printed gold label with his name and address: ‘Dr Herbert Crest, 41 Cartwright Gardens, Bloomsbury, London WC1 2BQ’. Oscar pushed it back into the old man’s jacket, drew the curtains, and left.
Downstairs, the auxiliary was still filing her nails. He went around the desk and sat down beside her. The computer screen was blinking with a spam ad for online poker. She peered over his shoulder as he brought up the web browser and typed ‘herbert crest spector tillman’ into the search engine.
There was a direct link to Herbert Crest on the Spector & Tillman site. When the page uploaded, a small black-and-white photo appeared in the top right corner of the screen. Crest was gaunt-faced but still had a dusting of thin white hair and the sharp tendons of his neck were hidden behind a turtleneck sweater. He was leaning the weight of his head on his chin and clutching a pair of frameless spectacles in his fingers. Underneath, there was a block of text:
New and Forthcoming Non-Fiction Titles
DELUSIONS OF HOPE (Fall 2003)
by Herbert M. Crest
Dr. Herbert Crest is the critically acclaimed A.P.F. Gold Medal Award-winning author of The Fraudulent Mind, Solitude and the Self-Image, and Distant Relations. Continuing the tradition of these artfully constructed psychological case studies in his latest book, Dr. Crest finds a new focal point for his investigations—himself. Delusions of Hope details the author’s private battle with a malignant brain tumor. With courses of radiation and chemotherapy at an end, and surgical options exhausted, Dr. Crest struggles to find an alternative remedy for his illness. The book follows his path from reiki therapists to acupuncturists to Sudanese witch doctors to spiritual healers, as Dr. Crest tries to determine the psychological foundations of hope and what it means to place one’s trust in things beyond the cold, hard logic of science. In so doing, he seeks to find an answer to the question: What is survival really worth?