takes a walk along the water. Mist is rolling in from the other side, smudging the outlines of the little boats at their moorings. When he comes to a jetty that projects a long way into the lake he walks out on the wooden planks to the end. From here there is no shore any more, no edge to anything he can see. He is adrift in the white mist, with the water slapping softly below, cold air rolling across his face. He leans on the railing and stares into the whiteness and thinks about everything that’s happened.
When Jerome returns this time, he finds a moment to let him know, I will be going on Monday. To London. I can’t stay here for ever. I’m sure your family must be getting tired of me.
No, no. Jerome is vehement in his protest. You can stay.
He shakes his head gently and smiles, I have to go, I can’t keep standing still.
Later Jerome comes back to him again, bringing a friend who lives a few houses away. This friend speaks fluent English and has come along, he says, to translate.
Jerome says you must stay.
No, really. Tell him thank you. But I can’t. Maybe I will come back.
When, Jerome says.
Later. When I’ve gone travelling for a while.
And it’s true, he tells himself, maybe he will come back. There is always another time, next month, next year, when things will be different.
But after these flickers of feeling, that last weekend is much like the others. Jerome is friendly but distant, he makes no special effort to talk or be alone. At one point he says, we talk with Christian, yes, and picks up the phone. But the number just rings and rings. Jerome says, later, and puts it down again, but they never do try later.
On the Sunday evening when Alice drives her brother to the station, he goes along to say goodbye. Jerome is in uniform again, with all his buttons gleaming, his black shoes reflecting the light. He is proud of how he looks, although he pretends that he isn’t. They all go into the bar together to wait. There are two friends of his there, also in uniform, with whom he’ll be travelling, there are introductions and handshakes and murmured pleasantries all round.
You go tomorrow, Jerome says at last.
Yes.
But you come again later.
Maybe.
One of the friends says something and all of them stand up. Sorry. We must to go.
In the end they shake hands again, smiling formally, amongst all the artificial surfaces and military buttons shining like eyes. They have never been more distant, or polite. In the morning his actual departure will be an echo of this one. He has already left, or perhaps he never arrived.
He goes to London, but the same restlessness comes over him there, and he goes on somewhere else. And somewhere else again. Five months later he finds himself in a strange country, at the edge of a strange town, with dusk coming down. He is watching people drifting into a funfair on the other side of an overgrown expanse of ground. Circus music carries towards him faintly over the weeds and in the gathering gloom at the base of a high green volcano he sees the lights of a ferris wheel go round and round and round.
He doesn’t know why, but this scene is like a mirror in which he sees himself. Not his face, or his past, but who he is. He feels a melancholy as soft and colourless as wind, and for the first time since he started travelling he thinks that he would like to stop. Stay in one place, never move again.
Eight months after he passed through he is in London again, on his way back home. He is only here for a week, after which he will fly to Amsterdam and then, five days later, to South Africa.
He phones Jerome from a booth in the street. He doesn’t know exactly why he’s making this call, except that he promised he would, and he’s unsure of whether to go back to visit them again. Before he can even mention the idea Jerome has put it to him, come, come, please. This time, even through the thin vein of the telephone line, he can hear the urgency of the invitation.
I have to think, he says, I have no money.
My family, it’s okay, no money.
Also no time. I have only four days before I go. Maybe, all right, I’ll see. I’ll phone you