Coming Up for Air

As Bowling walks down Ellesmere Road, he thinks that every home on the street looks the same and that the street is like any other in the outer suburbs. He describes the homes as festering despite their cheerful names and the plants blooming on the identical brick facades. Bowling has a momentary out-of-body experience as he walks down the road and imagines the way outsiders perceive him. He thinks that he looks exactly as you’d expect an insurance salesman to look: fat with fake teeth, wearing the same old, dull suit as everyone else. He imagines that anyone looking at him would immediately be able to guess his income, which is five to ten pounds per week.

Bowling continues his walk down Ellesmere Road and thinks about the lives inside each of the identical houses. He compares the street to a prison, with each of the detached houses a prison cell for the man living inside. In this metaphor, the prisoners are tortured both by their bosses—whom he imagines as devils—and their families, whom he sees as leeches. Bowling considers current conversations about the plight of the working class and speculates that middle-class people like himself are more deserving of pity because they are unable to truly rest.

Bowling looks to homeownership as the reason for his general unease. He considers it a “racket” (6), since most people in his neighborhood, called the Hesperides Estate, don’t actually own their homes: Instead, the homes are owned by the Cheerful Credit Building Society, the banking organization responsible for mortgages in the community. Bowling imagines a hermaphroditic god of building societies, with the head and shoulders of a greedy businessman and the body of a pregnant woman. He speculates that, because of the illusion of homeownership, the people in his community falsely believe they have a stake in national politics and the economy. Bowling believes these delusions make them willing to die for their country.

On the high street, Bowling enters a general store to buy a pack of razors and sees a young shopgirl being berated by her boss, a short man with a mustache. Bowling pretends not to notice, but he knows that they both see him. He imagines that the girl is, like him, desperate to keep her job. As she helps with his purchase, he can tell she resents him.

On board a train to London, Bowling sees a bomber plane flying low overhead as if it were following the train. Observing the other passengers on the train watching the plane, too, he speculates that in a year or two they’ll all run for cover when they see the planes. For the moment, though, he sizes them up. At one end of the carriage, newspaper salesmen talk in strong accents about lowbrow subjects like racing and murder trials. Bowling suspects that they think he’s one of them and resents them for it. At the other end of the carriage, two law clerks discuss their work; Bowling resents them, too, for making him feel inferior.

When one of the newspaper salesman calls him “Tubby,” Bowling begins to think obsessively about his body and the way the world perceives him as a fat man. He resents the fact that strangers feel like they can give him nicknames based on his weight, when they’d never do the same for someone with a harelip. Bowling suggests that, as a result of this kind of cruelty, people who are fat live their lives in a very different way than people who are not. He suggests that people who are fat can’t feel deep emotions or experience tragedy because fat people are inherently comic. Bowling reflects on a book he read recently in which a man weeps at the thought of his lover’s infidelity; he thinks that if Hilda cheated on him, he couldn’t react the same way. He believes it would be obscene for a fat man like himself to behave like that.

Bowling’s self-deprecating thoughts are interspersed with thoughts about London’s vulnerability to bombs and the imminent war. As Bowling watches the suburbs of London pass by, he thinks about articles in the newspaper touting the strength of Britain’s anti-aircraft guns. He thinks these articles may indicate that war is coming and wonders if his home on Ellesmere Road is in the path of the bombers. In a swift change of subject, he thinks that being fat isn’t all bad: He feels comfortable around all sorts of people and feels like he’s always popular. Bowling thinks back to a time in his life when he was thin and asserts his strength as a survivor.

As his train pulls into the city, Bowling marvels at how peaceful London is. He thinks that in the whole of England there probably isn’t a single machine gun being fired from a bedroom window. He wonders if that will be the case in five years, or two, or one.

Bowling drops some papers at his office and goes to a diner to kill time before his dentist appointment. The diner is more expensive than the cheap tea shops he’d normally choose, and its streamlined and shiny chrome aesthetic disturbs Bowling, who believes it reflects an obsession with appearance over quality and comfort. He sees the diner as a kind of propaganda for the slickness and streamlined nature of modern life. Bowling orders a cup of coffee and frankfurters, but is disgusted to find that the frankfurters have the texture of a rotten pear and taste like fish. Abandoning his meal, he leaves the diner, thinking that the horrible food is representative of the horrors of the modern world, where nearly everything is disguised as something it is not.

Bowling feels significantly better after his dentist appointment, the new teeth buoying his self-confidence and his mood. He catches a glimpse of himself in a window and thinks that his body isn’t actually bad. As a result of this new confidence, he decides to spend his secret money on a sex worker. He enters a pub, drinks several pints, and emerges in a contemplative mood. Bowling reflects on the bomber plane he saw earlier in the day and imagines that the impending war will bring about the end of the world. As he walks through London, he imagines the effects of several years of war on the cityscape and the people who live there. He imagines buildings destroyed by bombs, troops marching through the streets, and families suffering extreme famine. Although he is initially judgmental of the Londoners he encounters, Bowling suspects that everyone around him is also worried about the war and imagining the worst.

A newspaper reference to the wedding of King Zog of Albania makes Bowling think of his childhood church experiences, and the biblical story of Og, the king of Bashan. The memory is so strong that Bowling feels physically transported to his childhood church in the small town of Lower Binfield. He smells the church, feels the uncomfortable clothes he was forced to wear as a boy, and vividly imagines two old men who sang in his church choir. The memory of his childhood in Lower Binfield, contrasted with the horrors of the future, makes Bowling wonder if Britain’s best years are gone forever. Although he doesn’t have the answer, he asserts that he belongs to this wonderful past, and that the reader does too.