Chapter 81
The Death of John Lennon
When the train next stopped, Wilbur was in a hotel in Manhattan.
The Waldorf Astoria, according to the embroidered dressing gown. Skyscrapers shone impressively outside the window, like a galaxy made solely of squares and rectangles.
Wilbur was sitting on the end of the bed and looked quite different now to his honeymoon self.
The last traces of boyish youth and hippyish optimism had waned.
He had shorter hair. No sideburns. His face looked a little doughy around the jowls.
His eyes were tired from jetlag and he had a typed-out speech on his knee that he was trying to learn for the next day for an audience filled with members of the American publishing industry.
The Ghost and his slumbering honeymoon self were there too, watching him.
‘Look at me. How old am I here?’
‘Thirty-five.’
‘I’m in New York. In the fanciest hotel I have ever seen. Wow.’
‘Oh no,’ sighed the Ghost. ‘I know what this is. I don’t want to watch this.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just … Oh God.’
Wilbur had turned on the television and was watching it quite fixedly. CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, as the opening titles declared in bold, curled, early-eighties type.
Cronkite – grey hair, dark suit, sombre face – sat in front of a giant picture of John Lennon in his otherwise beige studio.
‘Good evening,’ he said, in the heaviest tones. ‘The death of a man who sang and played the guitar overshadows the news from Poland, Iran and Washington this evening. The former Beatle John Lennon, who was forty, was shot and killed last night outside his luxury apartment in New York …’
The Dreamer stared at the screen, mouth agape. ‘Blimey. Lennon. That’s bloody dreadful. And in New York too.’
‘I don’t think that’s why we’re here.’
The Ghost pointed at the phone. It began to ring in long, low bleats. They watched their other self walk over in reluctant strides to get it.
‘Hello?’
A pause. The hotel operator told him he was putting through an international call. And then it was her, Maggie, on the end of the line. Even the Dreamer could hear the heavy breath.
‘Maggie? Maggie, what’s wrong? It must be the middle of the night back home. Why are you crying? Is this about the news? They’ve caught the gunman … There’s no danger …’
‘No! This is not about the news …’ Maggie was so loud and distraught her voice could be heard faintly, in the room.
‘What’s happened?’
Her voice was indistinct now. Even to the Wilbur who had the phone right next to his ear.
‘Maggie, darling, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you … did you say blood? You’re bleeding? I don’t understand what you’re saying …’
As Maggie spoke Wilbur sat on the bed. Put the weight of his head on his hand. ‘Oh no, oh, Maggie …’
The Dreamer stared anxiously at the scene. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know what to do, Wilbur … I think we’ve lost it …’
The Ghost was hardly paying attention. He was feeling the vertigo of that moment, the precise point one future closed down and another one began.
‘What’s happening?’ repeated the Dreamer, his worry raw and real.
‘Maggie lost the baby,’ the Ghost said. The Dreamer’s mouth fell open in shock.
‘Where was I when she needed me?’ said the Ghost.
‘Are you saying it was my fault? Jesus. Was it my fault?’
‘No. I’m saying that she has just spent the last hour on her own cleaning blood off her skin and the new bathroom floor, and I’m here four thousand miles away, preparing a speech I didn’t need to give in a hotel room with a plush carpet and embroidered dressing gowns …’
‘But I wouldn’t have known. How could I have known?’
The Ghost shook his head, as if he was missing the point.
‘It was just a pointless business trip. I didn’t even need to go.
I don’t know. If this was isolated it would be silly to beat myself up, but I found it easier to head away than be home.
We didn’t have any Budd Books in America.
Yes, I thought I might be able to expand there eventually, but that wasn’t why I went.
I went because I was flattered to be asked.
The North American Book Business Convention 1980.
All expenses paid. Maggie never told me she didn’t want me to go – she would never have done that – but she hadn’t had an evening with me for weeks.
Maybe months. She wasn’t against me being in New York, if that was all it had been.
It was just yet another thing. An utterly pointless thing.
And I knew it. She wanted me with her. It was like she knew …
But I had a choice, I had a choice, and, look, here I am making the wrong one … ’
Meanwhile, Wilbur was trying to reason with Maggie and was only making things worse.
‘Look, Maggie, yes, I know. I know. I remember what we said about the elephant mural …’ He began to cry.
‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I wish I was there with you …
’ A long, considered pause. Then: ‘I can’t fly back till Thursday …
I’ve committed … The speech is tomorrow …
I can’t not be there … I wish I could hug you too … I love you …’
The two unseen watchers looked on in silence. One staring at his future, the other at his past.
Love was the thing that hurt, and business was the opposite. It was an addiction. He had lost sight of Maggie. She was there, but at the periphery. Life was more bearable that way.
The Ghost sighed. ‘I was a fool. I realise it now. You may well be one too …’
‘I don’t want to be.’
‘Good,’ said the Ghost. ‘I suppose that’s a start …
At the time, you weren’t being honest with her.
You didn’t know if you wanted children. Not really.
You were scared. So you were unable to say the right thing.
No matter what words you used, they couldn’t ever sound right because you didn’t feel the loss that she was feeling. ’
‘But that’s not true,’ said the Dreamer, scratching his sideburns.
‘It is by 1980.’
‘I want kids.’
‘Now you do. Asleep on that bed in your honeymoon in Venice. But things change. You change. And the amount you are away, and the amount you are home late, it becomes increasingly improbable anyway …’ The Ghost thought about this.
‘Maybe, Dreamer, you are right. Maybe I still did want kids, deep down. But I was also terrified of being a dad. I mean, I’d had no template.
And all I’d seen was Mam struggling with money and then me and Dougie fighting and then Dougie getting into trouble and dying.
I mean, it wasn’t the best advert for bringing children into the world.
And as I said, I just didn’t want more people to care about. ’
The Ghost paced the room for a little while, trying to work out his own past. ‘And I’m glad in a way it never happened.
’ He stopped and stared out of the window, at the yellow cabs shunting along Park Avenue.
‘I mean, in my life. The life I lived. The person I became. I don’t think I’d have been much more there than Dad was.
And at least he had the excuse of being dead. ’
Meanwhile, the Wilbur of 1980 was saying goodbye. ‘Yes, I love you too.’
And he walked over to a cabinet beside the TV and picked up a decanter to pour himself a whisky.
He looked at the book beside his bed. One he had bought at the airport.
One he never read. And then went and switched the channel to a quiz show, The Price Is Right.
He sat on the edge of the bed and tried to concentrate on the screen as though there was nothing else in the world except three contestants guessing the price of a refrigerator and some reclining chairs.
He swigged back the whisky.
‘I think I got quite drunk that night,’ said the Ghost. ‘If I remember correctly, I was hungover for my speech. I had a presentation involving slides and a projector and I got it all wrong. I remember eating a hot dog in Central Park and watching a dad with his kid and I was nearly crying, as though that deep true me who felt like Maggie was still there … I don’t know.
But I just tried to get on with things. So when I eventually flew back I never told Maggie any of these feelings.
And that distance stayed, even when we had dinner together.
The kitchen table became its own Atlantic Ocean. ’
The Dreamer saw the golden windows of the Midnight Train in the distance, rising through the sky. A ribbon of shadow and light, heading towards them, defying physics as only dead things can.
‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘it’s time to go.’
And he placed a hand on the Ghost’s shoulder, as though he was the elder and the Ghost in that moment was the one with the most to learn.