Read Online Chapman's Odyssey by Paul Bailey - Free Book Online

there nothing else to expect but lasting nothingness? It would become the primary question of his life and he first asked it of himself in June 1950 and was asking it again now as he opened his eyes in the hospital ward.
    — We’re taking you for your endoscopy, Harry.
    And now he was returned to the dull surroundings he had known for – how long was it? – two or three or, perhaps, more days. An eternity ago, he had heard the expert, Mr Russell, a stocky figure with cropped blond hair like some German general, inform his assistants that Mr Chapman needed to be anaesthetised. The patient was old and would probably resist having the instrument forced down his throat. He had to be treated gently.
    That much Harry Chapman remembered, before succumbing to sleep.
    — Harry? Can you hear me?
    — Is that you, Dad?
    — As sure as God made little apples.
    — Your voice is very faint.
    — I was never a loudmouth. Was I?
    — No.
    — I hadn’t much to say to anyone after what I’d seen in the trenches.
    — Tell me what you saw.
    — I can’t, my son.
    — It’s ancient history.
    — Then let it be.
    — You won two medals, Dad. For bravery, was it?
    — It wasn’t for sitting on my arse.
    — You were in France for three years.
    — Who told you?
    — The Ministry of Defence. I wrote to them. In 1992.
    — Why did you do that?
    — Because you’re a mystery.
    — I was just an ordinary man, going about his ordinary life. There’s no mystery where Frank Alfred Chapman’s concerned. I was Private Number 36319. That’s how important I was.
    Harry Chapman had memorised the number his father was allotted after being enlisted into the Army Service Corps Regular Army on 8 December 1915. Why had he done so?
    — Yes, why, Harry?
    — To bring you closer, I suppose.
    — What rubbish you come out with. Closer? I’ve been dead nigh on sixty years.
    Harry begged 36319 Chapman not to be unkind to him, especially now they were reunited. They were walking on grass and surrounded by trees and bushes and the sun was warming them.
    — Dad, I have to tell you something.
    — You’ve left it late in the day.
    He followed Frank’s cliché with another:
    — Better late than never.
    — Well, son, what is it?
    — Dad, I’m gay.
    — I’m pleased to hear it. I’m glad you’re still happy at the age you are. Seventy, isn’t it?
    Ah, yes. ‘Gay’ in the 1940s, when last they talked, had not taken on its current, widely used meaning. And besides, Harry had not known he was different in the November of 1948 when Frank ran out of breath for ever.
    — Let me explain, Dad, he began, but his explanation was not forthcoming, because here was his bright-eyed Virgil removing the tubes from him and saying:
    — Harry, we are going to give you some real food. It’s not cordon bleu, so don’t get excited.
    — Not curry, I hope. I don’t want a burning bum tomorrow.
    — It will be light, I promise.
    The meal could not have been lighter – a simple, undressed salad, with a few flecks of tuna. He ate it wolfishly. He ate it as an eremite would eat locusts.
    — Was that good, Harry? asked Marybeth Myslawchuk.
    — Good enough.
    No Dijon mustard, no sherry vinegar, no virgin olive oil – but good enough for a starving man in a London hospital. Lettuce, tomato, cucumber and a couple of radishes. Heaven on earth, almost.
    — Superb, in the circumstances.
    He drank tea, as he liked it, of the weak kind described by his mother as ‘gnat’s piss’.
    — It’s as fine as champagne when you have a thirst.
    — I wouldn’t know, Harry. I’m a coffee fiend, me.
    — What did Mr Russell find?
    — You’ll hear in the morning.
    — Promise?
    — Yes, Harry dear, we promise.
    ‘Dear’? Where did that term of affection spring from?
    — Marybeth, my dear, I have every faith in you.
    — You’d better have, honey, she assured him, exaggerating her transatlantic accent. — And we all expect a poem when we come on duty. Get your brain