The Alarming Palsy of James Orr Read online

  And there was something else. James had not told Sarah about the incident with the condom. He had not planned it that way, but when she had come in that afternoon she was in a good mood. Sammy had toddled up and down the living room in his new shoes, laughing, and it had not seemed like the right moment. Then, in the evening, after the kids were in bed, he had almost told her but then, guiltily, decided not to. There was something unsavoury about it all that he did not want to repeat or re-live. He was also, he supposed, ashamed of the way he had dealt with it, making Laura cry and then throwing the condom into the woods. Sarah would, rightly, think him ridiculous. And as each day went by without his mentioning it, it seemed harder to bring up. He expected that Laura would tell Sarah about it soon enough, and that he would have to deal with it then, but apparently she did not. He tried once to talk to Laura about it himself.

  “You know that thing you found out on the grass?” he said one evening when he found himself alone with her in the kitchen.

  She looked thoughtful and then, after a few seconds, said, “Daddy, you know when one of your teeth falls out at school? They give you a little bag to put it in so you can take it home.”

  “Yes, but darling . . .” he said to her, but trailed off when he saw that she was not listening. He had not tried again after that. She had not raised it with him either, to ask what it was she had found on the verge and carried up the steps, or why he had reacted the way he had. This seemed strange but you could never predict the things that would preoccupy or make an impression on children. Still, it all hung over him, the inadvertent deceit and the seeming inevitability that it would come out at some point and reflect badly on him.

  2

  “The installation of CCTV cameras at key points around the estate,” said William, “offers a number of benefits. The first is obvious. Our night-time visitors can be monitored, cars identified, and the details passed to the police to follow up. In addition, it would discourage other undesirables: fly-tippers, non-residents who use the estate as a car park for visiting the woods and anyone else who has no good reason to be here.”

  The committee was meeting at Kit’s house for the first time. The place was identical in dimensions and layout to James’s own house but immaculately presented and with sure signs of childlessness—a long glass coffee table, white carpets, various delicate-looking ornaments and pictures displayed on low shelves. Kit had just finished the redecoration of the living room, James overheard him say to another committee member, and it smelt strongly of paint and newly unwrapped furniture. It was also the first meeting since James’s palsy had appeared and so far it had been something of a struggle. “Apologies for my face,” he had said as soon he called the meeting to order, “a temporary problem,” and then moved briskly on. Bu the was not used to talking so much, and the effort of it—and of trying to make his words come out clearly—was tiring.

  The CCTV cameras had not even been on the agenda. The meeting was supposed to have been focused on arrangements for the New Glades summer party in June, a relatively straightforward dividing-up of jobs among the committee members. This was an event James himself enjoyed and which he had come to see as the embodiment of the best qualities—communal, social—of the estate. However, William had given his neighbourhood watch report, which included four more instances of The Anti-Social Behaviour, one couple discovered in flagrante in the middle of the day, and they had been sidetracked.

  Perhaps it was to do with not having been at work, where he ran meetings all the time and thrived on it, or in the outside world much at all for the last month, but to be the centre of attention here was a little unnerving and James did not feel his usual confidence. Despite his early effort to neutralise any awkwardness, he was conscious of the state of his face and what the other members of the committee might be making of it. There was another thing, a mistake that seemed obvious to him now. In the past he had arrived at these meetings straight from work, in his suit and no doubt with the air of the office still about him. This evening he had not bothered to change out of the clothes he wore to walk in the woods, an old jumper and jeans that he now noticed were flecked with mud. Over the last couple of weeks he had given up shaving, too. The slackness of the skin on the left-hand side of his face, and the lack of sensation there, made it awkward—he had cut himself several times—and anyway, it hardly seemed necessary at the moment. Now, as well as the eye patch, he had a scraggy, faintly gingerish beard, which did at least conceal some of his disfigured face. These were the small things that could drain power from you and he sensed a diminishing in his authority over the committee, a resistance to his attempts to control and steer the meeting. Already the discussion about the cameras had gained too much momentum.

  “This . . . proposal,” said James, trying hard to conceal his exasperation, “has been considered, and then rejected, on a number of occasions by earlier incarnations of this committee on logistical, financial and, you might say, philosophical grounds. It is not something I would propose to revisit here.” He was very aware of the sound of his own voice, strained and feeble, pompous and pedantic, almost comically so.

  “But I am unclear,” said Vanessa, patting down the folds of the tie-dye dress she was wearing, “what you propose to do instead? The police say they will send more patrols but we know this won’t happen or won’t make any difference. And we know from past experience that the problem will only get worse as the weather warms up. The sap is rising, I’m afraid. There will only be more of this . . . dogging.”

  “Ah, no, this is not dogging,” said James, glad to be able to make a point of fact. “Dogging is when people gather to watch other people having sex in cars, or other public places for that matter. As far as I know,” he said, attempting a smile, “that is not happening here.”

  He had hoped that this might yield some laughter from around the room and get the meeting on his side, but apparently it did not. Vanessa was looking sourly at him.

  “Anyway,” he went on hurriedly, “we don’t need to dwell on terminology. I think we can all agree that it is undesirable. But with respect to the cameras, I think we have to ask ourselves what sort of place it is that we want to live in.”

  The four instances recorded by William in his report did not include Laura finding the condom on the verge by the woods. It was a little different, James told himself. Neither he nor—God forbid—Laura had witnessed anyone having sex in a car and he had no way of being sure where it had come from. On the one hand it seemed almost too trivial to mention, and, on the other, too unsavoury. In the same way that he had been reluctant to share it with Sarah, he did not want to tell this unpleasant story of which his daughter was the protagonist and victim. Not to mention that he was ashamed at the way he had dealt with it. Anyway, he could hardly tell the committee when he had not told his wife. More than likely someone would then mention it to her. On top of all this, given the apparently febrile mood of the meeting, the last thing he wanted to do was provide a story that would further vindicate their desire for action.

  “Personally, I want to live in a place where I won’t find people shagging on my doorstep,” said Kit.

  Kit had been moving around the room discreetly, getting the rest of the committee drinks and passing round trays of fussy-looking snacks that he had prepared himself, but was now sitting cross-legged on the floor—barefoot, James noticed. “With all due respect to our chair,” he went on, using James’s title unnecessarily and, James thought, with a note of condescension, “the fact that these cameras have been mooted before doesn’t seem to me an argument for not considering them now. Quite the opposite, in fact. It shows that this is a problem that won’t go away and needs fixing. This is private land and it is our prerogative to choose who comes onto it.”

  “That is all very well,” said James, “but even if we were to agree it among ourselves, we would encounter the usual obstacles and bureaucracy . . .”

  “In fact,” Kit inter
rupted, “I have spoken to the trust and they are very receptive to residents’ concerns about security. They have suggested we submit a proposal to them and they will consider it favourably as well as whether they can subsidise the cost.”

  James was startled. One of the committee’s principal functions was to represent the views of all residents to the trust in the person of the chair. However, he sensed that this was not the moment at which to make a point about formal procedures. Kit was still sitting on the floor, ostentatiously it seemed to James, as there were several free chairs. It was as if, by sitting at James’s feet, he was expressing some kind of deference to his position, but the effect, as Kit surely knew, was the opposite.

  “Well, that’s as may be,” James said, gathering himself, “but I would return to my earlier point. These things are symbolic. Do we really want our every move recorded on camera—our children, too?” Here he made sure to sweep his eyes—his eye—around the whole group. “To send the message to visitors that they are essentially unwelcome here? And where would it stop? Should we have a fence, or even a wall, patrolled by dogs or armed guards?”

  “Now you are being hysterical,” said Kit.

  “I am being hysterical? Me?”

  No one spoke, and as he looked around at the rest of the committee he felt a quiver in the atmosphere of the room. They were looking at him more carefully now, a palpable change in the quality of their attention, and James was relieved that he was finally getting his point across.

  He was about to go on when William said, “James, you are crying.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You seem to be crying.”

  At that moment, James looked down and watched a large tear splash heavily onto the notes in front of him. He saw that the ink was smeared from ones that had already fallen. He put his hand to his face, the left-hand side, and his beard was quite damp. He touched the other side and it was dry.

  William handed him a tissue. James lifted up his eye patch and the pool of tears that had collected underneath it streamed down his face.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I know what this is. I’m fine, it’s just my—my eye.” He dabbed the tissue on his eye and then held it there. “Okay. What else, then? What are we doing about music for the party this year?”

  James tried to go on but the tears kept coming. The tissue was already soaked through.

  “Or the booze. Who wants to take care of that?”

  No one spoke. James looked around the room. Several of the committee members looked away, others fidgeted with their pens or phones. He saw that they were embarrassed.

  “James,” said Vanessa, “perhaps we should adjourn for this evening.”

  James looked around the room again.

  “Yes, okay,” he said. “Perhaps that is sensible.”

  He collected up his notes and put them in his bag. It seemed to take forever and still no one spoke. Then he pushed back his chair, and went out.

  3

  The next morning, James went to see the doctor again.

  It was not really because of what had happened at the meeting. By the time he had got home, a few doors down, the tears had stopped. He had not even mentioned it to Sarah. She was in bed when he got back and he had only seen her briefly in the morning before she rushed out with the children. Anyway, he knew what it was. He had read that this could happen to people with Bell’s. Sometimes when the facial nerves regrew they made the wrong connections, causing tears to well up spontaneously. It even had a name, Crocodile Tears Syndrome. In fact, as soon as he had woken up he had sent an email to the committee, self-deprecatory in tone, apologising for “making a scene,” and suggesting that Kit and any other interested parties put together a formal proposal for the cameras that could be considered at the next meeting.

  But certainly his face was no better than it had been at the beginning and the doctor had told him to come back if he needed to. Perhaps there was something else that could be done. Moreover, without another doctor’s note, he was due back at work the following week. He tried to picture himself at his desk or in a meeting, and then the possibility of a scene like the one at the committee meeting but among his professional colleagues instead, or, even worse, trying to manage one of the delicate interactions with the staff at the law firm, the Q & As where he stood alone in front of a sceptical and belligerent audience. It was hard to see, at this point, how he would be ready for any of that.

  It was Dr. Moffat again. James gave her a summary of the last few weeks. He said that as far as he could tell there had been no real change in his condition and that he still had no movement or sensation in the left-hand side of his face. He outlined the difficulties he was having eating, drinking and talking, and described his daily routine—the walks in the woods, the naps—emphasising how conscientious he had been about taking the steroids and doing the exercises the consultant had given him. He finished by telling her what had happened with his eye the night before. While he was speaking she typed on the computer, punching the keys hard and fast with her two forefingers. Then she put on latex gloves and he took off the patch and lay on the examination table while she shined a light in his eyes and asked him to try and move his face in particular ways.

  “Hmmm . . .” she said, “hmmm . . .”

  She looked, somehow, even bonier and greyer than the last time he had seen her.

  “What do you think?” said James.

  “Well,” she said, peeling off the gloves and dropping them in the bin. “We do get cases that are, how shall I say, more . . . tenacious than others. Yours would seem to be one of them. But we are still early days as far as these things go. Let’s keep an eye on it—as it were.” She smiled at him to acknowledge the pun.

  She sat down and looked back at the computer screen.

  “This crying. It just happened out of the blue you say?”

  “It wasn’t crying. There were tears but I wasn’t crying. It’s called Crocodile Tears Syndrome.”

  “And how are you feeling in yourself? Any irritability? Problems concentrating?”

  “No more than you would expect, I think.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Moffat. “What about mood swings, James?”

  He was still lying on the examination table and she had her back to him while she continued to look at the computer.

  “Look,” he said. “Is there anything else I can do? Are there any other medications?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, there are. What I would like to do, based on what you have told me, is to prescribe something that will help you in a more general way.” She started to type again.

  “I’m not sure . . .” began James.

  “It’s an anti-depressant medication but you really don’t need to think of it that way. We prescribe them quite broadly these days.” She spun round in the chair and looked at him. There were very dark rings, like bruises, around her eyes. “Living with any illness that has become . . .” She paused, and seemed to change her mind about what to say. “. . . that has gone on longer than we would like—well, that can be very challenging. It would just be a low dose. Even that can be very effective. You’d be amazed at what a little lift can do.”

  “No thanks,” said James.

  “Alternatively, we have a very good person here at the surgery who it might be helpful for you to talk to, to discuss how you’re feeling. There’s a bit of a waiting list but I can refer you.”

  “No, I don’t think that would help either.”

  “Fine, fine. It’s your choice, of course. The option is always there if you change your mind.”

  She looked a little deflated but then her face lit up again.

  “Look, I’m not an expert on the condition, but it seems to me that if you were crying—I mean, if there were tears coming out of your eye—then, as you say, the nerves must to some degree have regenerated, if not in quite the right
way. Change, in my experience, is usually a good thing. Hold on to that thought, James! Did I tell you I had a boyfriend once who . . .”

  “You did,” said James abruptly.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now hang on while I just write you this note for your work. I agree that it would be premature to go back at this point. Let’s give you another month and then see where we are.”

  James continued to lie on the examination table, staring at the ceiling, and listened to the sound of her punching away at the keyboard for what seemed like a very long time.

  Outside the surgery the sun was shining fiercely. James had taken a taxi to the appointment but in fact it was not too far to walk home, and the quickest way back was to cut through the woods. He went in through the gate on the north-eastern corner and began to walk up the wide lane that rose gently through the trees and then dropped down towards the station. He had been in there the day before, but overnight, it seemed, the woods had come into a new and florid lushness. The undergrowth, the grasses and nettles and bushes, had thickened, greened and leapt in height, spilling over onto the path. Vines as thick as his arm twisted, jungle-like, around the larger trees. This was some sort of cognitive illusion, James thought. These changes had been happening continuously, subtly, for weeks, even months. The vines had not grown overnight. It was happening now, too, but his senses, his brain, were not capable of registering them this way and instead he experienced it as abrupt, all at once. It was this way with the children, too. He saw them every day and yet one morning, out of the blue, he would see that they had grown an inch or that their face had taken on a new shape or expression. Change happened without you noticing it, and then you noticed it.