Arthur came to see Natalie on the day the contents of the house were sold around her. She sat in the children’s empty playroom. Porters had taken the contents away, and set them up in lots downstairs, under ‘Toys – assorted’. Natalie did not mind seeing them go. She hated Ben’s Zoids and Action Men and robots and computer games: they were soulless and nasty. They were training her son in murder. She hated Alice’s Care Bears and Cindy Dolls and Little Ponies. They were training her daughter in silliness and sentimentality. They could all go. Natalie could have stopped them, and said to the porters, ‘No, are you mad? Toys are personal! Not part of the sale.’ But what would she have done with them then? She had two big suitcases already filled to the point of not closing. She could take with her, wherever she was going, what she could carry and no more, one suitcase in each hand, like a refugee. Who knew when she would ever again have a shelf for a toaster or a board for an iron, let alone a cupboard for toys! Let it all go, and she would take the money, and start again! She wanted nothing of the past, anyway. The past was all full up with Harry Harris, whom she hated.
Arthur said:
‘Natalie, I feel bad about this. But Jane and I were so crowded above the shop, and there was no way you and the kids could stay here, what with the rates and so forth. They are high, aren’t they! And whose idea was the underfloor heating? Very uneconomical, and splits the wood if you have good furniture. God knows what I’m going to do about that! But it’s taken the problem off your hands, hasn’t it, Nat? And at least you know the house has gone to a good and friendly owner for a quick, cash sale.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Natalie.
‘You’ll be moving out tonight, I’m told?’
‘That’s right,’ said Natalie. ‘Don’t worry about me, Arthur. The children are down at the playing fields. I’ll pick them up after the sale, and be out of your life, not to mention your house!’
‘But not out of my heart, Natalie. You know that. Ever. Where are you going? Friends? Family?’
‘Never you mind, Arthur, I’ll be all right.’ Natalie had her pride, as we know. Not by a flicker would she show that she minded: that Arthur had upset her; Arthur, whose body she had known, had been so familiar with. He with the substantial, friendly girth, with its warm, pleasant smell, and all the pleasure that came with it, and whose mind she had not known at all.
‘Anyway, good to know Angus will look after you,’ said Arthur, placatingly. ‘Since you’ll have nothing more to do with me. You’ll get quite a bit from the sale, I imagine. Enough to get you settled.’
Arthur had not been attending the auction, Natalie could only suppose, though Jane was down there buying an ironing board for 25p, a box of cutlery for 50p, and a set of chairs for five pounds, or Arthur would have understood very well that Angus was not looking after Natalie. On the contrary. The sale had gone largely unadvertised, and the buyers who turned up were mostly friends and colleagues of Arthur and Angus, or customers of Avon Farmers, on the trail of a bargain, and finding many. The new freezer went for fifteen pounds, Angus seeming unable to hear a call of twenty pounds, coming from a man who just happened to be passing, had seen the crowd, and stopped, and now couldn’t believe his luck. It must be something about the acoustics, he supposed, which made the auctioneer keep missing his bid.
‘Do you like gardening?’ Natalie asked Arthur, as she picked up her suitcases and prepared to leave.
‘No. But Jane does.’
‘Good,’ said Natalie, leaving Dunbarton for the last time. ‘This place could be made really nice. You never know what you’ve got till it’s gone!’
She was right. I sit here writing in my cubicle, with the peephole in the door left over from the old manual days, so the nurse could look in to make sure the patient wasn’t swinging from a hook in the wall. She can do that now by looking at a screen, for we are all electronically surveyed, but the peephole remains, in affectionate memory of the past. There’s a central locking system so the duty nurse can lock my door from a distance any time there’s trouble anywhere, or she thinks there might be. Clunk-click! I too think of what I failed to appreciate. I have always wondered how it is that one guard can handle so many prisoners; why there are not more army mutinies, more prison breakouts, why the massacred stand idly by and let themselves be massacred? It’s not just guns and gas and superior muscle power that does it. A critical mixture of coercion and persuasion is no doubt required: and superior knowledge and technology on the part of the warders comes in handy, but it is the fixed notion of guilt on the part of the prisoners that really does it. They have done wrong: therefore they deserve to be badly treated. They are badly treated: therefore they have done wrong. And the unfortunate construe their misfortune as their own fault, and so consent to their incarceration. I sit here on the bed, writing, submitting to electronic surveillance, because somehow I think it’s what I deserve, and because look, it’s better than loneliness. Anything is. Those who are watched are not alone!
Natalie was walking down to the playing fields with her suitcases when Angus drove up in his Quattro. He had created an unscheduled interval in order to pursue her and speak to her. She should have been flattered.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ve been childish and vindictive. Jean always says so. She must be right. I shouldn’t throw my weight around like this. I can’t stand rejection, that’s what it is, and you were really rough on me the other night. Still, what we got today should see you right. Deposit on a home. Unless you’re off to join Harry? I assume you are. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ Natalie said. ‘It’s not.’ (Natalie always spoke the truth – I sometimes think for lack of the wit to do otherwise – and so was always believed.) ‘And what’s more you won’t even reach four thousand today, Angus, and I owe nine thousand in debts. There’s still a minus balance.’
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Natalie, I’m sorry.’ He was, too.
Unlike me, Angus had no trouble feeling remorse. But too late, of course. The thing about remorse is that it’s a perfectly safe emotion. It always is too late.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘To friends?’
Natalie thought a little.
‘The thing about friends,’ observed Natalie, ‘is that I suppose I could say Jean and you were our friends, and Arthur and Jane. So on the whole I’d rather stay with enemies.’
‘You’re something else,’ he said, in admiration, as she walked past and on, and into the playing fields where the Quattro couldn’t follow, or not without damage to its paintwork. He went back to the auction, and let the prices ran in Natalie’s favour. He would earn her love, somehow, now he had worn out his malice.