The bedroom and bathroom were totally private. Mr Porter never allowed anyone, apart from his cleaning woman, into them. Just occasionally he permitted a visitor to enter the sitting room, as Lilac now did, slipping in quickly and crying “Ooh! It’s lovely, so many beautiful things. Are you a collector?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Why were you so anxious to come up?”
She looked puzzled. “Was I anxious? Just to see, I suppose. Do you really mind so much?”
“Yes,” he replied calmly. “But—as I said, I mind less this afternoon than usual.”
She smiled again. He looked at her carefully. Her eyes were her best feature—widely spaced arctic eyes, grey or blue in colour, with that pale hair and white skin.
She was childish, he thought—confirming the feelings he’d had when he first saw her—or adolescent perhaps, with her calculated but innocent overtures. She had the recklessness of one who did not really understand the implications of her actions. Yet she must be quite old, getting on thirty, perhaps—certainly well past her teens.
“How old are you?” he asked abruptly.
“Twenty-seven. Why?”
He thought, old enough to know better. He was silent. She floated about the room exclaiming at this and that, fingering precious glass, examining paintings. She thought, “He must be very, very rich. What a strange way to live! How does one explain it?”
She looked at him again. He was staring at her with his sombre eyes, his long nose twitching slightly. He said, “Your time is up. You have to go. Why did you come up here?”
“I don’t know. I was curious. I wanted to see where you live.”
“Your intentions might be mistaken one day.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Someone else might think you had other reasons for coming up.”
“What sort of reasons?”
He lost patience. “Don’t be stupid. If you don’t know, you’d better find out. Fast. And now you must go.”
He went to the door and opened it, then stood beyond, at the front door. He held the door and waited for her to pass. She drifted along lingeringly, manoeuvring her way among the piles of newspapers, the overcrowded furnishings, the thousand objects.
When she reached him, still standing sentinel at the door, she bent towards him. She gave him a faint butterfly kiss, her pale lips just brushing his cheek. To his surprise the touch was cold, as if she were chilled or very tired.
And then she was gone.
Mr Porter experienced relief and regret. He realised what she had in common with that other woman who had mocked him so long ago. Apart from the fairness, the blonde hair and pale skin, there was an elusive quality. They were not really there, although, of course, they were physically present. They were like a mirage. When you approached them, they vanished, he observed to himself. The appeal was there and the promise … but beyond the appeal—what?
Next morning, after his session in the lavatory and his prolonged ablutions, Mr Porter went to the telephone and dialed Jerome’s number with steady deliberateness. “I would like to see you,” he told Jerome.
When they met at the Herald and Duck Mr Porter said, through the babble of voices, “I had a visitor yesterday.”
“Oh, yes?” Jerome was polite but mystified.
“Lilac, your Lilac!”
“She visited you?”
“She did. It’s the reason she visited me that made me telephone you.”
“What was the reason?”
“That’s just it, there was no reason,” said Mr Porter solemnly.
“Then why did she come?”
“I can only assume,” Mr Porter spoke in slow serious accents, “that the visit was in the nature of a call for help, as we say in the trade.”
“A call for help? What trade?”
“The psychiatric trade—not,” he added hurriedly, “that I’m a psychiatrist—Heaven forbid. But I’ve visited enough psychiatrists to know something of their jargon. A cry for help, I believe my psychiatrist would call her visit.”
“You see a psychiatrist?”
“Certainly. I could hardly survive without one—although I can hardly survive with one. But that’s not the point. The point is that I believe Lilac needs help.”
“What sort of help? And why?”
“I thought you might be able to tell me. You know her better than I do. I don’t know her at all. Is she in some sort of trouble?”
Jerome pondered. “I really don’t know. She doesn’t seem to want to see me. Of course, she’s not happy with Joshua—but then, I’ve come to the conclusion she wouldn’t be happy with anyone. I thought she loved me, but now I wonder. I ask myself if she’s capable of loving. I may have been an amusement for her—and I suspect there may be other such amusements.” He spoke bitterly.
“Well,” said Mr Porter, “that’s beside the point. I believe she is very troubled. What shall we do about it? Perhaps we should warn her husband?”
“Warn him?”
“That she is seeking help. Perhaps she should be given some help.”
“Yes,” said Jerome, “I don’t quite see what I should tell Joshua, my brother …”
“Think of a way. I shall discuss it with my psychiatrist and see if she has any ideas.”
“Thank you,” said Jerome.
Mr Porter finished his beer and looked as if he were ready to leave.
“Thank you again,” said Jerome. “It’s really good of you to have taken such trouble.” Mr Porter rose. “When you said …” Jerome hesitated. Mr Porter paused. “I suppose you have a very good psychiatrist?”
“As these things go, I would say so.”
He held out a hand to Jerome. They parted at the door, each going his own way deep in his thoughts.
“I took it,” said Mr Porter, “that her visit was not consciously motivated. She wasn’t sure why she sought me out. She recognises that she is safe with me. She was coming for help.”
Dr Katzenheimer waited. Into the silence she dropped “I see” in an encouraging murmur.
“That girl will have a terrible end,” said Mr Porter. “I feel she is doomed.”
“What sort of end?”
“She’ll be murdered I think. She’s a victim—she offers herself to be victimised. She’ll be strangled. Some maniac will pick her up on the street and tie a stocking round her neck.” He shuddered.
Dr Katzenheimer thought, “How frightfully aggressive he really is. Why does he want to do away with her? I suppose she tempts him.” Aloud she asked “Are you not afraid of yourself in this situation?”
They were back on the usual track, with Mr Porter’s anxiety about aggression.
As he had often told her, Mr Porter found destruction in any form abhorrent. He helped flies escape from windows where they were trapped. He removed pieces of glass from the pavements in case people might cut their feet. He picked up nails from the roadway to avoid punctures in tyres. Above all, Dr Katzenheimer endlessly reminded him, he was afraid of his own powers of destruction.
When he went to his country cottage each weekend, he waited anxiously to see or hear if the farm dog Bimbo was still alive. He was afraid that the scraps and bones he had given to Bimbo the week before might have done the animal some harm. Visions of poisoning, impacted bones, intestinal obstruction, haunted him. Once, on the way to the station, he ordered the driver of the car to go all the way back to the cottage as he had had a sudden compelling fear that he might have unknowingly locked Bimbo inside it.
Why should he despise restraints which mankind held in highest regard? asked Dr Katzenheimer. Well, for one thing, it was terribly inconvenient always having to make sure you weren’t treading on living things, rescuing spiders from the bath, wasps from jam pots—the searing distress of seeing lost cats and dogs, foxes and hedgehogs run over by traffic. The waste of energy expended on it, the grief and torment, always hearing the cries of the wounded, feeling the nails in the body of Christ …
“Althou
gh I am a Jew,” he added.
“It is your own aggression,” said Dr Katzenheimer for the hundredth time, “which you fear.”
“Yes. Whatever you say, I can’t modify my feelings. I can’t bear pain in others, particularly the helpless. I understand that you tell me that in my unconscious mind I’m a sadist—and my horror at my destructive drive makes me excessively anxious. Nevertheless, insight doesn’t help me …”
Normally at this stage he would have felt angry with Dr Katzenheimer for trying to flog the theory of his fear of himself, but today he was strangely in tune with the idea. He decided he would tell her of a dream he had had:
He was in an open space—“like a vacant lot I think it was—talking to a man. The man was very tall and muscular, and in the dream I knew he was very strong. I seemed to be even thinner and weaker than usual, and I knew I couldn’t compete with him, but something he said made me furious—I don’t know what it was—and I shouted at him, I don’t remember exactly what I said but it was insulting, very offensive and provocative. I knew that if he wanted to kill me he could easily have done so. For a moment I was terrified. I saw him go red in the face. I thought he’d lost control. Suddenly he seemed to hesitate and get a grip on himself, almost like a physical restraint. Then he replied to me in quite a mild, reasonable, way and—in the dream and also thinking about it afterwards—I knew I was both men.”
“Just so,” said Gertrude, pleased with his interpretation. Mr Porter burst out suddenly, with unaccustomed emotion, “You often tell me, and are again today, that my problems are almost wholly concerned with my unconscious aggression. I understand what you say. No amount of insight helps me. Society, as you always remind me, asks me to control my aggression. I have over-controlled it, to such an extent that even when I need to be aggressive I fail. Aggression exists in everyone, you tell me, but we must not admire it in the more violent forms of its expression. Why not? Consider disease, consider the countryside around my cottage where, to say the least, spiders eat flies, birds eat spiders, Mrs Maw’s cat eats the birds. How do you reconcile all this?”
“We have concepts of morality which Mrs Maw’s cat does not have,” said Dr Katzenheimer with gentle finality. As if her statement, thought Mr Porter, put an end to any further questions on the matter.
“Well, I find it a torment to live with this confusion.”
His hour was up. He rose to go. Wrapping himself in his tidy coat, he slipped away. His large handmade shoes edged a little away from him. His head still bent, he didn’t see the stones of the pavement or the inviting ankles of the office girls. He listened instead to the shriek of an animal as it fell upon the stake in a pit. Jungle noises echoed. The dying implored him. He made his way briskly to the bus stop.
Jerome, with an unhappy knack, telephoned Mr Porter again just as the latter had settled to his morning session in the lavatory. Mr Porter reached angrily for the instrument which stood on the marble table before him. He was about to cut off the call when he faintly distinguished Jerome’s voice calling “Hullo! Hullo!” as he picked up the receiver. It was no use, Mr Porter told himself, he’d have to answer. His concentration was completely broken.
“I hope it’s not inconvenient this time!” said Jerome politely. “I mean, I hope I’m not breaking into your breakfast or anything.” Mr Porter growled. Please, asked Jerome, could he come and see Mr Porter? He had no one else to talk to and although he realised he was imposing, he’d be so immensely grateful if Mr Porter would let him come up sometime, just to talk.
“You can’t come now!” snapped Mr Porter sharply.
No, no! Any time that suited Mr Porter.
“It will have to be next week. Tuesday would suit me. Come at 8.30.”
“Thank you!” cried Jerome.
No sooner had he replaced the receiver than the telephone rang again. Mr Porter sat looking at it in gathering annoyance. He picked up the receiver with the idea of leaving it off his hook, but could hear, faintly, Jerome’s imploring voice squeaking at him “Mr Porter! Mr Porter!”
“Yes,” said Mr Porter icily.
“I suddenly thought—would you agree to have lunch or dinner with me next Tuesday? I’d be so grateful—whichever you prefer—please do …”
Mr Porter hesitated. They were going too far, these Joneses—and yet … it was a long time since he had dined out in London. A little spurt of anticipation and inquisitiveness released him from his rigid habits. “Well …” he said and, yes he would, he thought to himself, suddenly daring, even if he’d had no success in the morning, yes, he would.
“Well,” he said, “on one condition.”
“Of course! Almost any condition! What is it?”
“It’s two conditions. The first, that I may call the whole thing off on short notice. The second, that we go to the restaurant of my choice.” There was a third condition, that he should pay the bill, but this he didn’t mention. He waited sternly. Jerome, smiling a little to himself, gladly agreed.
“Where, then? Tell me where, at what time.”
“L’Étoile,” said Mr Porter. “Eight o’clock, no, eight-thirty.” (That would give him time in case of a hitch—he thought to himself.) “I’ll reserve a table. I’ll wait inside, at the table.”
L’Étoile was one of his former haunts. In the days when he was a man about town, before he had become so irretrievably bogged down with his neurosis, he had visited there often. The headwaiter knew him and his finicky habits. “Please be on time!” he added sharply. “I hate waiting.”
“I’ll be there,” cried Jerome fervently and thankfully. “Eight-thirty, then!” He reminded himself to tell Beatrice that he had a date with a client. Before he put down the receiver, he said urgently, “Mr Porter! Did your psychiatrist have anything to say about Lilac’s cry for help?”
“Nothing very useful,” said Mr Porter. “She seemed to think it was more to do with me—my cry for help, I believe.”
“Oh—well please will you tell me about it when we meet? I do look forward to seeing you!”
On the weekend, Mr Porter went off alone as he usually did to the country. He went by train, although sometimes he felt secure enough to drive a car on the outward journey. But, this time, he was uncertain what his mood might be when he must return. He therefore arranged for Mr Clarke to meet him at the station with his taxi.
Mr Clarke was a tall, good-looking, Yorkshireman whose great virtues were that he drove with extreme care and that he could be silent if one wished it, from one end of the journey to the other. When he did talk, if encouraged, it was usually in a soothing and undemanding manner. Mr Porter generally asked him about his four cats, of which Mr Clarke seemed very fond, and the drive was otherwise completed in silence. Mr Clarke deposited Mr Porter efficiently at his front door, enquired politely when he should fetch him on Sunday, and then disappeared.
Mr Porter’s house in the country was poised on the side of a steep hill with sweeping views of fields stretching up to the sky and down to the valley, where a little river ran. He had only one neighbor, Mrs Maw, who lived in a tiny cottage nearby, but whom he seldom saw. There was also a farm not far away and it was from here that Bimbo, a black and white Border collie, paid visits to Mr Porter, enjoying tins of the most expensive dog food and specially purchased bones. Mr Porter also fed birds with wild bird seed and peanuts, and the occasional roving cat and foxes with “Petmince” from the local butcher. His weekend responsibilities were therefore heavy, but although the animals gave him extra reason for anxiety (dog killing cat? cat killing birds? foxes killing everything that moved?), he enjoyed the escape from the world. He enjoyed the hills, the sunsets and the stars. He walked with Bimbo in the woods. He liked to watch the animals that had been put to graze in the fields beside his house. He spent cosy hours beside a log fire in his sitting room, catching up on his reading or occasionally watching television. Things were under control in the country—at least more than in London, where he felt always under pressure. In the city he w
as always short of time, always agitated. He felt that his cousin Cyril, with whom he worked at the car showroom, criticised and despised him, as, he thought, did his sister Vera, who did the book-keeping for them. The country weekend removed him, at least physically, from the sources of his paranoia. He was, nevertheless, still at the mercy of his anxieties about hurt and damage. On this particular weekend, he had just sat down with a cup of tea in front of the fire, when he became aware that in the peripheral area of his vision something odd was going on. From time to time a small black shadow flicked across, so fast that it was formless, gone almost before he detected it! He rubbed his eyes, wondering if a moth or fly had darted past. After this experience had been repeated a number of times, the shadow, moving a little more slowly, took on the indubitable shape of a mouse, a very small dark grey mouse that shot soundlessly from refuge to refuge. It travelled from the bookcase to the space behind a wooden chest, then into the hollow triangular metal foot of a storage heater.
Mr Porter, a little shocked, sat back to consider the situation. He concluded that the creature must have run into the house inadvertently when one of the doors to the garden was left open. He decided then to leave a door ajar so that it could return to the garden. But the mouse seemed disinclined to move out. Mr Porter felt it needed guidance and help. He fetched a flashlight—the better to seek it out under sofas and in dark corners—and a broom.
As Mr Porter began to chase the mouse from place to place, the poor dazed creature grew frenzied, dashing wildly about, its bright eye gleaming in the beam of the flashlight. The chase continued for a little while and Mr Porter became breathless and exhausted. Finally, after leaping from door to door, he was able to isolate the mouse in the hall and chivvy it to the open front door. The mouse then seemed to rush out on the patio—but, peering out, Mr Porter could see no sign of it: perhaps it had run into the grass in the bushes nearby. He closed the front door with a bang—then, after a moment’s reflection, opened it again to ensure that the mouse was out. To his horror he saw the grey and bloodied body of the crushed little mouse, lying on its back, helplessly. It had been caught on the threshold when he slammed the door. Mr Porter lost his head, picked up the mouse by its tail, and flung it out of the door into the darkness. Then he shut the door more gently and returned to the fire.
Mr. Porter and the Brothers Jones Page 5
