On the return journey from Liverpool, he took out his book, but the words swam, dissolved, blackened like a swarm. He felt as if he were floating, looking down on himself there in the train carriage trying to read. But at the same time he was in his own body, sitting down with the book in his hands, the words fidgeting on the page.
After a few minutes he closed his eyes, pushed his head back into the headrest and saw at once the documents that would lead him to his birth mother. Forms he would have to sign: Christopher Harris. Funny, he’d always been so particular about his name, and here he was on the brink of claiming another. Christopher please, not Chris. How pernickety that seemed to him now, watching the northern towns shuffle by: Huyton, Eccles, Rochdale, Halifax. Christopher please, not Chris, thank you. As if the shortening of his name diminished him in some important way. Had that all been down to the rope, to that feeling? Yes, he thought now, it probably had. A self always so precarious it could stand no further alteration. Perhaps if he had been less of a stickler, he would have found himself picked for lunchtime football games instead of consigned to the bench, summoned only when they were short-handed or needed someone in goal. And later, perhaps he would have known better what to say to the girls at youth club instead of standing at the edge of the room, mouthing the words to the hits, flat R White’s cream soda warming in his sweating hands. He had kept too tight a hold on himself – he saw that now. Perhaps that was normal, under the circumstances. Perhaps it had been the only way to prevent himself from unravelling.
And so a new name would soon be his, if all went well. If he could choose from all the names he’d ever heard, he would not know which he would prefer, only that he no longer wanted Jack, as he once had. Jack belonged to his brother, to the Harris bloodline, not to him. He, Christopher, or whatever his real name was, had his own line now, flowing from a past he had yet to discover all the way to this moment, to this train carriage, to this young chap called Whathisname. The line ran through his present and on to the man he was to become. All would become clear. His history would tell him who he was, who he could be. His history would give him his future.
‘Who am I?’ he asked the vacant railway carriage. ‘What is my name?’
A change of air. He opened his eyes. The carriage door had opened and opposite him a woman with white hair was arranging her small case on the overhead rack. As she sat down, she stared at him through grey haloed eyes.
‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’ she asked.
‘No. Sorry.’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said, without taking her eyes from his. ‘I thought I heard you say something as I came in just now.’
‘Nothing.’ Christopher looked out of the window and saw trees, pines, all bent the same way. ‘It was probably the wind,’ he said with a polite smile.
He closed his eyes once more and returned, this time in silence, to his imaginings.
Hello. Yes, hello. I’m David. I’m Thomas. I’m Matthew. I’m John. I’m Matthew Mark Luke and John, next-door neighbour carry on… A rose by any other name. A name, a name, what’s in a name? I am your son. My name is Harry, JimBob, William… He could almost see her, his mother. She was tall, like him. Yes, tall. And she had black hair, like his, a lock that fell over her eye when she was reading or cooking or whatever it was she liked to do. He could not see her face but could feel its kindness on his skin like sunlight. Hello… Doris, Daphne, Julie, Jean, I’m… I’m Peter I’m Michael I’m Zachary, your son. You can shorten it, customise it, call me what the heck you like. I am your son. I am your son. I am your son.
.
Chapter Five
Christopher arrived at the halls a little after six to find Adam lying on his bed in his Y-fronts, reading Tyke, the Leeds rag magazine. On the front was a cartoon. Of what, Christopher could not make out, apart from a speech bubble: Only 20p!
‘Chris, man,’ Adam said, jumping up as Christopher walked in. ‘Dark horse, where’ve you been all day?’
‘Christopher please. I prefer Christopher.’ Did he? Was that true any more? Force of habit had made him say it, nothing more. ‘I’ve been… out.’
‘Out, eh? Why aye, man. What’s her name?’ Adam laughed.
Christopher envied it, this laugh that seemed to live permanently on his room-mate’s rather pink, generous lips.
‘Oh, nothing that exciting, I’m afraid.’ Christopher sat on the bed, crossed his legs and recrossed them, before giving up and standing once again. He thrust his hands in his pockets, wondered what he could find to ask his room-mate about.
‘Lectures go all right?’ was what came to him, after a moment.
‘Skived the five o’clock,’ said Adam. ‘You bloody art students don’t know you’re born. We’re slaves compared to you.’ He lengthened the word slaves, rolled his head like a wolf howling at the moon when he said it.
‘I’m not exactly an art…’ The words fell away. An entire day off campus and he had missed but one lecture, it was true.
‘Valuable drinking time is being missed, Chris, man. Christopher, sorry. Speaking of which, you don’t fancy a pint, do you, by any chance? It is almost Friday.’
‘It is Friday.’
‘That’s what I said. Friday. Holy crap, is it? Jesus, where did the week go? Come on, you didn’t come out last weekend, and I’m not letting you get away with it this time. The books can have a night off, eh, what do you say?’
Adam’s face was set in an expectant expression Christopher thought might be mischief. Going for a pint would be a normal thing to do, he thought. It was what men who knew who they were did, men who were not sticklers for the minor alteration of names, men who even had nicknames like Jonesy or Budgie or Bones. Now was no time to admit he had never seen the inside of a pub. Now was the time to come off the substitutes’ bench and claim his place in the team.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘As it’s Friday.’
‘Great.’ Adam looked him up and down. ‘I’ll lend you some decent jeans.’
* * *
Adam was already striding ahead. His hair pushed thick against his coat collar, orange as the vitamin C tablets Christopher’s mother had made him chew on winter mornings when he was a child. Shoulders high, head down, hands deep in his donkey-jacket pockets, he hugged himself against the cold. Christopher had not worn Adam’s trousers – they were too short and too small, a fact obvious just from holding them against himself. Adam had volunteered to ask around but, mortified, Christopher had said no.