SAVED, by Simon Gray

From GRANTA 93 Issue, GOD & ME

It happened in Montreal, when I was about seven years old, I'd think—so let's say Montreal 1943, either spring or fall, because I was wearing the appropriate clothes for weather that was neither hot nor cold: short grey trousers, fresh new shirt, short socks and light shoes, shoes I could run and jump in, shoes I could climb trees in, nevertheless proper and respectable shoes. But what was I doing, out and about in Montreal respectably dressed, on my own? Unless it was a Sunday, and I wasn't where I was meant to be, which would have been Sunday school, though I may have been on my way there, or on my way back. It was very unusual to be without my brother Nigel on an official occasion, such as Sunday school. Our grandparents who, with our Aunt Gert, were looking after us for the duration of the war, tended to send us about as a pair, presumably on the understanding, entirely mistaken, that we would look after each other. We are far more protective of each other, now that we are elderly, than we ever were as children. Anyway, I clearly remember being without Nigel and on my own and dressed as I've described above, on a sunny afternoon in Montreal, climbing the highest tree, a fir tree, in our neighbourhood. It was in a small park, more a scrap of common land, with the backyards of houses around it, and a path into it from Vendome Avenue, where we lived—No. 4047, Vendome Avenue. I don't remember any other tree there, only this giant. The intention of climbing it had grown out of my intense love of Batman's sidekick, Robin, the Boy Wonder, who was often perched on a high place, from which he would leap, with the assistance of ropes and small machines, pulleys and so forth, concealed about his person—but where about his person? He was covered from neck to toe by his Boy Wonder costume, it was a sort of body stocking and tight briefs, on his feet ankle-length bootees, and the cape and mask of course, where could he possibly have kept his ropes and pulleys? Unless they sprang out of his belt, which, now I think about it, was rather thick and possibly contained Batman-designed devices—but that's not the point, the point is the image I had of myself as the Boy Wonder, scaling high, and posing there before rising even higher and then descending rapidly on to the back of a gangster, or mobster, or mad genius—then POW! WHAM! So forth.

As I've said, it was a very high tree, at least to me as I was then, and I believe that it would be a high tree to me as I am now, in fact impossibly high if I were to contemplate climbing it. It took me quite a time to get to near the top, and then much longer to get on to the last horizontal branch—there were a few branches that stuck straight up, which offered no purchase—but the last branch was large and firm-looking, with a lot of foliage at the tip that shaped itself into a cup, perfect for sitting in, and swaying in, as I looked down into the empty backyards. I remember the silence from the backyards, and how they made a pattern of rectangles and squares when surveyed from a great height, and I can still feel in today's sixty-nine-year-old body how I swayed there, quivering with pride and fear, and then the cup opened, and dropped me down, and down and down. I fell upright, like a soldier, my arms clamped to my sides, fell through the branches which flicked and scraped at me like fingers, on and on and down and down, I seemed to fall for ever, at great speed, and apart from the rustling and snapping noises from the tree, quite silently. It was like a dream, at the end of which was death, I supposed. The last few branches clutched at me, pushed me from one to the other as if deliberately, and then I was at the bottom of the tree, with a few cuts and scratches, and almost no clothes, just tatters of trousers and shreds of my shirt and patches of socks—and immediately a sense, that I'd never had before in my life, and have never had since, of exaltation.

The earthbound feelings, of relief, shock, bewilderment, followed fairly swiftly and were swiftly followed in turn by mundane and panicky thoughts, that I had to get home in this semi-naked state, had to conceal these rags, because what would Gert say when she saw what I'd done to them? and I'd have to change into proper clothes that were like the ones I'd just lost—I know I did get home without being seen, did manage to change, but I don't remember further than that, though I expect Gert eventually found the rags, and I must have offered an explanation.

There have been other near misses in my life—for instance, in a cinema in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I moved my seat for no reason apart from a sense of uneasiness—a feeling, actually, that I was being watched—seconds before a large lump of concrete fell from the ceiling and landed in the seat I'd just left, and destroyed it. And then when I was teaching English to trainee caterers in Clermont-Ferrand—walking home very late, I stepped off the pavement to pick up something that was glistening in the gutter just as a large black car, a Citroën I expect, rushed noiselessly out of the dark, along the pavement and would certainly have run me over if I'd still been where I'd been a second before, instead of busy in the gutter. A few years later, again late at night, drunk and lost, I laid myself down on a low wall in a field outside Agrigento and fell asleep, and discovered when I woke up that on the other side of the wall was a sheer drop into a quarry—After each of these occasions I saw myself as amazingly lucky, as I would have been counted amazingly unlucky if I'd been killed—'he died in a ridiculous accident—fell off a wall into a quarry while he was asleep, my dear!—crushed by a lump of concrete in a cinema, of all places!—run over on a pavement in Clermont-Ferrand, French drivers!' I was certainly relieved and grateful to have survived, but I didn't feel as I felt when I landed at the foot of the tree, scratched and almost naked and exalted by something alien, mysterious and kindly that was the tree itself, or something within the tree, that was my fate and my God...

Sometimes, when I used to think about it, it would occur to me that perhaps I was saved, being saved, on those other occasions too, that really the same mysterious and kindly force had diverted my eye to the gutter, raised me from my seat in the cinema, kept me steady in my sleep on the wall, it was just that I'd grown up and become too educated to allow God's breath on my skin.

But when I think about it now, at this end of my life, it occurs to me that if indeed I've been saved so often, it might be for an altogether ghastlier and more appropriate end than falling through a tree or off a wall, crushed in a cinema or on a pavement, that really I'm in a novel that somebody is still writing, or at least is still writing as I write this.