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One step at a time.

John Farquhar Young

    Gary, a postgraduate student, tall, fair haired and in his early twenties finds himself wide awake in his study-bedroom fretting about his PhD thesis: ‘Palmerston and the American Civil War’. He glances at his smartphone. It is just past 3 a.m. On the wall above his desk the black and white print of the British mid-nineteenth century British prime minister, now ghost-like in the light of the full moon, provides a momentary focus for his irritation. Though pleased with his early progress, his present study of British industry’s links with the Confederacy has, as he describes the problem to friends, “...become bogged down and a bit of a slog.”
    Restless, he wanders around the small room for a few minutes pausing briefly to glance out of his window at a broad expanse of moonlit grass. He imagines the scene beyond the hall of residence: the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the long expanse of the beach, the famous St Andrews West Sands, the Tay Estuary and, to the north, the Angus coast. His looks at his desk littered with assorted notes and printouts.
    He feels prodded to return to the tedious business of analysing the available records of the Clyde shipbuilders, who saw profit in the construction of paddle steamers fast enough to avoid and outrun the Union vessels blockading the Confederate coast. He runs an eye across a few of the many sheets littering his desk but finds it difficult to concentrate. His mind meanders back to a recent conversation with a fellow student, his Portuguese girlfriend, Antonieta, about one of Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Saramago’s short stories – a gruesome tale about a paralysed man, formerly a bully and a tyrant, now encased in a life sustaining machine.
    What, he wonders, is it like to be alive, and to be simultaneously incapable of movement, destined to be trapped, perhaps for decades, in a life preserving coffin? Severely confined like this, where does a person go? Go? He dwells for a moment on the word. For a person in an iron lung the verb ‘going’ can mean little or nothing - at best memories or inner imaginary worlds, a constant drifting towards shifting mental horizons.
    He wonders if being encased in an iron lung is a powerful metaphor for many situations: abusive domestic relationships endured because they are necessary to survival, daily life in oppressive regimes, life in mind confining religious communities; and yes, he begins to wonder, perhaps - just perhaps - PhDs about Palmerston and the American Civil War.
    His thoughts turn again to Antonieta. She has talked of showing him around Lisbon, her hometown. Lately, she has come to represent, a world of exciting possibilities, a modern world – the world out there! - a world beyond Palmerston.
    He knows he could walk away from his studies at any time. He imagines the disappointed look on his thesis supervisor’s face. “What brought this on?” he might say. “You have produced some good material.”
    “My heart’s no longer in it,” he might truthfully answer.
    ‘Heart’ seems to be central to how he thinks about his future. After the PhD what am I going to do? Get a job as an academic? The relentless pressure to produce erudite papers is not an alluring prospect. Another form of entrapment!
    He decides to give bed another chance. Eventually the swirl of thoughts around Palmerston, his PhD problems, Antonieta, and types of entrapment slows, and he floats into a sound sleep.
    Just before 7 a.m. he is roused by Antonieta calling. “I must return to Lisbon today,” she announces, her voice tight with anxiety. “My father has had a heart attack.” He immediately volunteers to drive her to the airport.
    The hour-long journey is passed in a tense, uncomfortable silence punctuated only once by a brief telephone conversation between Antonieta and her mother. “Mother’s in hospital,” she murmurs after ending the call.
    “Let me know how things go,” Gary says quietly at the entrance to the airport security hall. She nods.
    “I hope that ...” He pauses for a moment searching for appropriate words to complete the sentence. She nods again, forces a smile, quickly kisses his cheek, turns away and is gone.
    For several moments he stands observing the lines of people filtering through the security barrier. All going somewhere. Where am I going?
    The sense of annoyance about his absence of focus, sharpens and grows in intensity during his journey northwards.
    Back in his room in the hall of residence he flings his keys onto his desk. Sitting on his bed, he gazes at Palmerston. Wars, accidents, sudden health crises! The fabric of ordinary everyday existence, he knows, can suddenly be ripped apart by sudden, unpredictable and terrible events. As an apprentice historian he has long accepted this, but only at an intellectual level. Now it strikes him that wrestling with the uncertainties of life requires a strong sense of personal purpose, of being on journey towards a horizon. So where, he asks himself yet again, am I going?
    He cannot see too far into the future, but, as he chews on his perplexity, he finds that he has a good sense of the life he wants to live, the person he wants to be, the entrapments he wants to avoid. And so, for the next two years or so the path he will follow is clear. After that, there will time enough to focus on his next objective. Until then: “One step at a time!” he murmurs. “A good motto.”
    Two days later his mobile buzzes. Antonieta.
    “My father is out of danger. He’s coming home in a day or two,” she announces breezily. “They’ve inserted something in an artery next to his heart. Everybody’s optimistic.”
    She gives him the time of her arrival at Edinburgh airport. He smiles as he puts down his phone. One step at a time!

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