The Fall of Man

Part I chapter 15

Chapter 15

On Friday morning, we eat the last of the eggs. All that now remains in the fridge is a glass bottle containing most of a pint of milk. I pour the contents into two glasses and set them down on the table, alongside the phone handset. I then stoop down to reconnect the phone; the jack slides back into the wall-mounted socket with an audible click. Noah clears the dirty breakfast dishes away while I dial the telephone number for our gas and electricity provider. I wait on hold while Noah rinses the dishes stood on his stool at the sink, then dries them and puts them away in the cupboards beneath. Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells chime all the while in my ear. After he has finished the pots, Noah sits on the chair alongside mine, pulls the laptop across the table top in front of us, and flips it open. The phone handset crackles.

“Hello, you’re through to General Electric customer services. This is Dawn speaking. How may I help you today?”

“Hi, Dawn. I’d like to settle and close my gas and electricity accounts, please.”

“Certainly, sir. Can I confirm your details, please?”  I give her my account number, my name, postcode and address. Then I give her the meter readings taken this morning. Then I give her the date we intend to leave the house, along with the details of the estate agent who is handling its sale. Then I give her my secure passwords; Joanna’s maiden name and the location of the church where we were married. Having imparted all this information to a stranger, I feel a little vulnerable.

“Thankyou, sir. I’ll close those accounts for you and you will be sent a summary sheet and request for payment if any monies are outstanding. Can I please have your new address?”

“We don’t have one.”

“Sir? Where will you be living after you leave your current residence?”

“Like I said, we’re going to Canada.”

“Where will you be living when you come back?”

“We aren’t coming back.”

“Well can you give me a forwarding address where we can contact you in Canada?”

“We don’t know where we’ll be staying.”

“Sir?...        I’m sorry, sir. We need a new address to process your instruction.”

“But I don’t have one.”

“I’m afraid we won’t be able to carry out your request then. Please call back when you have a replacement address you can provide us with.”

“What?”

It hits home; the tragic predictability of human behaviour, our consistently conservative ambitions, and the rigid inflexibility of the system within which we operate all combine to drive us like cattle along the same crowded paths. Attempting to do anything out of the ordinary - anything that is not 9-5, suburban, televised – is like battering a square peg through a circular hole. And it is precisely this behavioural pattern, this entire chain of events that everyone is expected to follow, hoop after hoop after hoop, that is so fundamentally and irrevocably unsustainable.

I hang up.

Later that morning, Noah and I sit side by side on a flimsy wooden bench in the park, overlooking the rose beds where Joanna’s ashes were scattered. Noah’s sandaled feet swing briskly through the air that is trapped between the timber slats of the bench and the gravelled path below, counting the passing seconds like an impatient metronome. It troubles me that the silent boy hasn’t been surprised by recent events. He may be playing along with my grand plan, but his lack of concern is worrying. He is a spectator, watching our lives play back on a TV show, waiting patiently for the end-of-season finale. He isn’t really here.

A twinge of guilt accompanies the realisation that this is the first time we have returned to the park since the funeral. After we buried her, my reaction to Joanna’s suicide was to cocoon us both away from the outside world, to cosset Noah with isolation, to pretend that nothing had happened. More recently however, I have been struggling to find a way for the boy to say goodbye to this part of his life, and to his mother, in order that we can make a fresh start. And so we sit quietly on our bench, overlooking her favourite rose bushes.

At this time of year, the plants are little more than stumps. The first buds are just blossoming along last year’s cut stems, which had been thoroughly pruned back just inches from the recently turned ground. There is still a faint smell of manure in the air. Noah’s small yellow canvas holdall is slumped open beneath his swinging feet, and holds the remains of a picnic lunch. I clutch a Thermos lid full of steaming tomato soup between my hands. Heat from the plastic cup leaves my palms comfortably numb.

“I thought we should say goodbye properly, before we go on our trip.”

Noah nods, his eyes fixed on the broken ground surrounding each stump. The worn green Hulk is clutched in his hands once again. His fingers turn and twist the figure’s loose limbs with the practiced familiarity of a Rubik’s Cube master. I wish I knew how to reach him, to penetrate the layers of padding that I helped to create. Then I spot something move on the other side of the skeletal hedgerow, and nudge his shoulder.

“Look.”

A small dog – a Jack Russell, I think – is ferreting around the gnarled base of one of the roses. After some furious sniffing, it cocks a leg and waters the ornery little knuckle.  I take a deep breath.

“OK. Here goes.” I carefully set the empty cup down beside my booted feet and address the roses.

“Hi, Jo. It’s Arnold and Noah here.

We miss you.

We miss you a lot.

We’ve had a rough time since you left, but we’re doing better now; a little at least.  We hope you’re ok, wherever you are.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. You were very sick for such a long time, and so brave about the whole thing – but I just acted like I was too busy to help. I think now that it felt easier at the time not to get involved. These last few months, I’ve realised that I really wasn’t there for either of you, as a father or a husband. And I’m so sorry.

God, I wish you were here right now. Things are starting to get crazy. I’ve thought about it a lot and I don’t think it’s going to be possible for us to make it here in Britain. Too many people will be fighting over far too little. Soon, it will be difficult to travel at all. So we’re leaving while we still can. I hope you understand.

Noah has done a lot of research into our trip; he’s a whiz on the computer. He’s been a really good boy – you’d be very proud. We’re pretty sure we know what we’re doing now. We fly tomorrow. To Canada. We’ll stay a few days at Trisha’s place, and then we’re on our own. We’re ready for the cold, and we think that we stand a better chance of making it out there.

We really miss you, Jo. We will always be thinking of you, wherever we are.”

I can feel Noah’s eyes boring into the side of my head. I look away from him, across the park and into the burning white orb that hangs in the sky. With a finger and thumb, I pinch the tears out of my eyes and swallow the lump in my throat. When I look back, Noah is squatting at the crisply cut edge of the grass, digging with his hands in the loamy dirt. He scoops a cupful of the rich brown earth around the base of the roses into his Thermos lid and pats it down. I help him to settle the small cup safely at the bottom of his knapsack, and then wipe his wet face with my sleeve. As I rub a smear of dirt from his damp cheek, I feel his small arms wrap briefly around my body. A moment later, we pack up his belongings in silence and head homewards across the slick, wet grass.

When I return from the bank that afternoon, I have withdrawn and exchanged all twenty thousand pounds in cash. Three quarters of it is now in Canadian dollars. Four thousand in American dollars. The rest in pounds. I trot upstairs to the dressing room and pull out Noah’s yellow canvas satchel from under the bed. I’m conscious that he is watching me from the door. Even wrapped up in the separate waterproof bags, it looks pretty unimpressive – nothing like the generous, bulging suitcase of banknotes that would feature in a Hollywood blockbuster. Still, it should last us a while – a head start is all that we need. I hope. I close the flap, fasten the buckles and slide it back under the bed. Tomorrow, we leave.