Being Henry Applebee. Celia Reynolds

sugar cage high above the station concourse. He felt the girl take the tissues from his hand. There was a moment’s hesitation, and she began to wipe the trails of blood from his chin.

      Henry kept his head held high and inched his foot discreetly along the ground, searching for his suitcase. He found its flat, armoured surface with his heel and gave an inner sigh of relief. It was still there. Everything was fine. His plan was all on track!

      In the expectant space before him, Henry sensed the Pollock seeping into the concrete, morphing like a kaleidoscope and creating wondrous new forms, until the blood slowed into droplets, and finally into nothing at all, so that all that remained were shiny swirls of milk-white and scarlet and caramel-brown; a promising – if unexpected – explosion of light and dark on a once empty floor.

Part One

       1

      The Notebook

      KENTISH TOWN, LONDON, DECEMBER 5: JOURNEY EVE

       Henry

       My name is Henry Arthur Applebee. I’m eighty-five and counting, with an arthritic knee, a healthy head of hair and all my faculties, though not all my own teeth. I’ve had a pretty good life, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any regrets. Anyone who gets to my age and says they have no regrets is either deluded, or senile, or both. When all’s said and done, the facts remain as follows:

       I may be old, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still have any dreams.

       Who’s to say there’s an expiry date on achieving your goals?

       Is it ever too late to right a wrong?

       Now that Devlin’s gone, I’ve learned that establishing a focused and precise daily mantra can be a very effective way of ensuring your marbles are still intact. ‘Stay engaged in life!’ – that’s what they say when you retire. Then, as time hurtles by and everyone you know starts dropping around you like flies, it’s: ‘Keep your mind active. Cultivate a hobby. Join a community group!’

       But for me, it all comes down to my notebook. The Revealer of Secrets. The Holder of Truths. The place where those I’ve loved reach out – right from between these very pages – and, grinning, take me by the hand and say, ‘Come in! Don’t be shy. You want us to show you something marvellous?’

       It began, somewhat prosaically, with Adam Donnelly, a young man from Wyedean who called in to see me at the start of July. Banjo and I had been managing just fine on our own up until then. But visitors have an annoying knack of stirring things up; of reminding you there’s a whole sprawling world beyond the confines of the one you’ve learned to inhabit by yourself.

       ‘We’d like you to write an article for the Wyedean quarterly magazine,’ Adam D. said. ‘It’s for a retrospective we’re running on former members of the teaching faculty, and as our most senior contributor, we’ll be featuring you in our cover story. You’ll be the poster boy for excellence! For a life well and truly lived.’

       A small weight snowballed inside me. ‘Will anyone still be interested?’ I asked. This was not false modesty; on the contrary, I was positively taken aback. The corners of Adam D.’s mouth veered upwards. ‘You’re one of Wyedean’s most esteemed former language teachers, Mr Applebee. The board thinks a self-penned profile will be illuminating not just for the current staff and pupils, but also for your peers.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I see. Are any of them still alive?’

      I hadn’t heard from Wyedean in a long while and the request puzzled me. ‘What kind of illuminations are you looking for?’ I asked. ‘Anything uplifting,’ he replied. ‘Anecdotes, observations, greatest achievements. That kind of thing. It’s a tough world our pupils are facing. Hugely competitive. Our aim is to buoy them up with as much support and inspiration as we can.’ Adam Doolally drummed his fingers on the arm of my wing-back chair and smiled encouragingly once again.

       Doubtful as to my ability to either illuminate or inspire, I nodded. Signed on the dotted line, as they say. It was only after he’d gone that the full magnitude of the task hit me: academic career aside, I couldn’t think of a single event in my life which might reasonably qualify as a ‘greatest achievement’. Nothing worthy of the inspiration-hungry readers of the Wyedean quarterly magazine, at any rate.

      How in the name of all that’s holy does a senior citizen, occasional UFO spotter and Francophile reduce eight-and-a-half decades (and counting) of life to a fifteen-hundred-word article? It felt remarkably as though I were being called to account. ‘Impress us!’ Wyedean seemed to be saying. ‘Tell us what you know. What you’ve learned. Show us who you are.’

       Bells of panic filled my chest. (Never a good sign at my age.) What Wyedean wanted was insights, the Happy Ever After. But what about the areas of my life where I’d failed so spectacularly? What on earth was I supposed to say about those?

      I decided to narrow my focus and stick to the long, seamlessly interchangeable years spent teaching hormonally fuelled adolescents to conjugate French verbs. It was quite staggering, when I came to think about it. Entire decades had slipped by. Decades filled with page after page of Verlaine, Gide, Maupassant, Baudelaire. It was extraordinary, the degree to which I’d buried myself in those pages. Revelled in their majesty. Wallowed – privately – in their pain.

       To Wyedean, I was still Mr Applebee: devoted (and, it would seem, fondly remembered!) former Head of French; but to me I was just Henry, the gauche, skinny teenager running around the streets of Chalk Farm with Devlin, yet to put on the uniform, yet to meet the girl.

      When the article was finished, I dropped it, shamefaced, into the post box and tried desperately not to think of it as a lie. An evasion, maybe, but then how could they know it was the things I didn’t put in – the personal things, the things buried at the bottom of a dusty suitcase – which had defined me?

       Changi… Sunburn so bad the skin peeled away from my chest in sheets. Everyone told me to keep quiet about that. It was a punishable offence. The officers would scrub the blisters with salt water if they got wind of it. I grew up so fast, I barely recognised myself when I arrived back home.

       And then, when I did so, I climbed a staircase and there she was. The very last thing I was ever expecting to happen to me, Fra–

      Henry’s hand jerked abruptly from the page. A noise (a grunt? A cough? A chuckle?) filtered through the wall from the spare room.

      ‘Devlin?’ he whispered. ‘Devlin, is that you?’

      Henry cocked his good ear to one side, but all he could make out was the steady ticktock ticktock of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. He held his breath, the curvature of his spine straightening by degrees until finally, he felt it: his brother’s voice, brushing like dew against his skin.

       Evening, Henry. How’re things?

      Henry wiggled his finger in his ear. Devlin. Where does one begin to capture the essence of a man whose character had been so large, so utterly irrepressible that even in death his exuberance couldn’t be contained?

      Don’t keep me guessing, Devlin continued. How’s tricks? What’s going on?

      Henry