Coming Up for Air

Bowling has lunch in the dining room at the George, where he spots an attractive blonde woman, possibly a widow, and thinks about trying to sleep with her. He spends a few hours drinking in the hotel, then walks through town toward the site of his family home/workshop, which he discovers has been turned into a tea shop. He orders a tea, studying the changes, and sees the ghost of the home as it used to be when he was a boy. For some reason, Bowling feels guilty spending time in the teashop, and when the shy waitress won’t respond to his attempts at conversation, he leaves.

Disappointed, Bowling walks toward the church to visit his parents’ graves. He isn’t sure what he should feel and ultimately decides he feels nothing. Inside, the church looks and smells exactly as Bowling remembers it, and he once again remembers the bible story about Og, the king of Bashan, which had inspired the whole trip back on that January day. A vicar approaches to give him a tour, and Bowling realizes that he is the same vicar who was serving when he was a boy and that Bowling himself is the same age that the vicar was when Bowling was a boy. He wonders if young men now think about him as an old monster. He is relieved that the vicar doesn’t recognize him.

Bowling returns to the George and feels suddenly desperate to sleep with the blonde widow. As soon as he tries to speak to her, she glares at him, prompting Bowling to retreat to the hotel’s private bar, which is attached to both the public bar and a bottle shop. He tries to ask the bartender about the changes he’s seen in Lower Binfield, but the conversation turns quickly to the war. He is amused, but not surprised, to learn that Binfield House has been transformed into a mental health institution holding 60 patients.

Bowling wakes up the next morning feeling hungover and miserable. Opening the window, he is annoyed to find that the street is already bustling with businessmen and young students. He soon regrets these thoughts, and feels like a miserable old man. He thinks gloomily that maybe he is a ghost. Compared with him, the people below are alive. After breakfast, Bowling feels better, and decides that if he is a ghost, he should act like one and visit his old haunts. As he leaves the hotel, Bowling is surprised to see a military-style parade of young children marching with one of his old teachers and holding a sign reading “Britons Prepare.” He speculates that this parade is a kind of propaganda designed to diminish resistance to the idea of war.

Bowling spends two days exploring the town, imagining the way things used to be and projecting a map of his childhood onto the present. He notes that several farms and ponds have been paved over and that many of the shops in the center of town have changed ownership, except for Sarazins’, the company that ruined his father’s business. On Sunday, Bowling decides to go fishing; as he approaches the river, he is shocked to find teahouses and tourist and ice cream shops lining the riverbanks. The river itself is crowded with young people on boats with gramophones. Bowling walks along the river, noting the changes in color and quality of the river and wonders if there are even fish left in it. Leaving the river, Bowling impulsively puts a penny in an arcade game that guesses weight. Bowling learns that he’s gained four pounds and assumes that it’s the result of all his drinking.

Bowling drives back to the George, but finds that the bar is closed. He decides to go for a walk, and notices a woman in her 40s whom he feels compelled to follow. He describes the woman as tall, fattish, and dressed in a shabby manner. When the woman stops to talk in a shop doorway, Bowling gets a full view of her face and realizes that it’s his first serious girlfriend, Elsie Wells. He is shocked to discover how the years have changed Elsie. He remembers the soft, beautiful woman she was in her youth, and wonders how she turned into the overweight hag he now believes her to be.

Bowling and Elsie make eye contact, but she makes no sign that she recognizes him. Fascinated by this relic of his past, Bowling follows Elsie through the streets of Lower Binfield to a cramped, dirty tobacco and candy shop that he assumes belongs to Elsie and her husband. He enters the shop under the pretense of buying a pipe and is dismayed when Elsie still does not recognize him. Bowling asks for an amber-tipped pipe and watches critically as she searches for it. Eventually Elsie calls in her husband, who is named George, to help find an appropriate pipe. Bowling wonders how many other men named George Elsie has slept with and leaves without buying a pipe. He returns to the George and has dinner, then goes to a crowded pub and gets drunk with some travelling salesmen. He wakes up the next morning with a horrible headache.

Bowling considers the source of his headache: for three days, he’s been drinking from the moment the bar opens to closing time. He reflects that there isn’t much else to do in Lower Binfield besides drink. Once again, he looks out the window and resents the people on the street below, whom he considers to be his enemies. He spends the morning thinking darkly about the ugliness of present-day Lower Binfield and wondering whether the secret pool at Binfield House has also changed for the worse. He imagines the possibility that, after all these years, no one else has found the pool.

In the late afternoon, Bowling sets out for Binfield House. He is relieved to see that the thick forest of beech trees lining the road still exists and begins to grow excited. He briefly considers lying about a mentally ill wife in order to gain access to the institution at Binfield House, then realizes that he might not need to enter the grounds in order to reach the pool. When he finally reaches the large pond, where he caught his first fish with Joe and the Black Hand, he sees that a new housing development has grown around it. When Bowling asks a resident about the changes, he learns that the development was built as an all-natural alternative to the expanding town below. The resident sheepishly admits that the secret pool Bowling has been dreaming about was drained and is now a garbage dump. Bowling leaves, filled with resentment at these new residents and lamenting the changes in the British countryside.

When he returns to the hotel, Bowling hears an SOS announcement on the emergency radio calling for him to return home to his sick wife, Hilda. Bowling ignores the message, assuming it’s a trick of Hilda’s. He thinks about the times in the past when Hilda has caught him being unfaithful and wonders how she managed to trick the SOS radio controllers.

After breakfast the next morning, Bowling walks through town smoking a cigar. Suddenly, he hears the sound of planes overhead and the whistle of a bomb. Without consciously thinking about it, Bowling throws himself onto the ground. For a moment, he thinks that the war has begun, and the Germans are bombing Lower Binfield. Bowling waits for a second bomb, but nothing happens. When he stands, he sees a herd of pigs running down the street; after a moment, he realizes that it’s actually a parade of children in gas masks running for safety.

Eventually, Bowling and the people of Lower Binfield learn that the bomb was not dropped by the Germans, but by a Royal Air Force plane running a failed training exercise. He follows a crowd towards the site of the bomb, just 50 yards from where his uncle’s workshop used to be. He sees that a grocery shop has been completely obliterated and that the home next door has been blown open, so that it looks like a dollhouse. Inside, he sees a single leg that has been blown off a body, with blood mixing with a broken jar of marmalade. Bowling learns that three people died in the explosion.

That afternoon, Bowling checks out of the George, with only three pounds left in from his secret horde. He leaves Lower Binfield confident that the town he knew as a boy no longer exists and that he’ll never fish again. He considers the bomb as a sign from the Royal Air Force that his old life is gone. On the way home, as he drives past London, Bowling imagines the lives of the millions of people who call the city home. He thinks once again about the ways in which the war will change their lives. He speculates that no one will be able to escape the violence of the war or the misery that will come after the war.

As he approaches the suburbs, Bowling begins to think that Hilda may really be sick. He speculates that his change of heart has to do with a change of scenery: As he enters his neighborhood, he feels more pessimistic than ever, as well as guilty about his trip. He reflects that the future is irrelevant to people like him and Hilda and thinks that the present is the only time that matters. He feels sick at the thought of Hilda lying dead in their home. Bowling acknowledges that the reader might be surprised by his worry for Hilda; He compares her to his own face, explaining that he can’t imagine his life without her.

When Bowling enters the house, Hilda is gone; however, his children quickly assure him that she hasn’t been sick and that she is out with Mrs. Wheeler. Bowling feels relieved until he sees her coming up the path, and realizes that she is not happy to see him. He confronts Hilda about the SOS message on the radio, which he now feels confident was part of her plan to catch him cheating. Hilda claims not to have sent the SOS message and confronts Bowling about his lie about Birmingham. Hilda reveals that she wrote the hotel Bowling claimed to be staying at and received a response saying the hotel had been closed for years. The same day, she received the letter Bowling had asked a friend to post from Birmingham, which confirmed to her that he was lying about where he was.

Despite Bowling’s attempts to explain himself, Hilda is convinced that he has spent the week with another woman. Bowling thinks that Hilda would never understand why he needed to spend the week in Lower Binfield and that her world stops at the edge of their housing estate. As the argument continues, Bowling’s anxieties about the war fade into the background, and as the novel closes, Bowling considers that he has three options: to try to make Hilda understand, to lie and say that he doesn’t remember where he’s been, or to let her believe that he’d been with a woman and take his punishment. The novel ends without explicitly disclosing which option Bowling chooses.