“I can’t stop anything,” Marius said.
The girl was standing close to him as if she wanted to impart something to him without telling him, without looking at him even; trying to impart something serious just by the way she leant and the way she became impersonal so suddenly when she was serious.
“What can you do?” I said.
Marius laughed. “What can I do?” he said to the girl.
“Can’t you make them frightened?” she said.
“I can’t frighten them,” he said.
“No, but I mean, can’t you make them frightened for themselves?”
The old man put his glass down on the counter and stretched towards her. “Come here,” he said: “Come here a minute.” She was nervous. His fingers stretched out to her like the branches of trees. “But they are frightened,” he said: “of themselves;—they are frightened.”
“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t think they are. Not really frightened.”
“Come here,” he said.
“Not frightened for themselves. I said for, not of.” She spoke in a queer flat voice, different from before. Her serious voice, I supposed—her impersonal voice; the voice that she used perhaps when she was making people frightened for themselves. I did not know then what she meant, but I felt it. And I think the old man did too, for he let go of her suddenly and swayed back again and said, “frightened of hell, perhaps,” and she said,
“Yes!”—a grave and unearthly monosyllable like a clap.
There was a moment’s silence, a silence throughout the room, and then there was a scraping of a chair and a laugh and Marius was taking it up and turning and ordering more beer even as the girl looked at me with her queer soft alarming eyes and her mouth half smiling, and then her face became twisted and her eyes went down and she left the smile somewhere in the spaces between us, and it was lost, and I was frightened, as if I myself were a ghost.
We were there for another quarter of an hour, but I do not remember much about it. Marius was joking with the old man most of the time, and the girl joined in with one or two of the others, although I do not think she had her heart in it quite like Marius had. I was thinking about what she had said, and I was frightened, frightened for myself. I wanted to get away on my own to think about it, for I found that I could not speak to them any more. I had wanted to go on with them, to ask them to dinner perhaps, but now I could not approach them. I felt separated from them by enormous distances, the distances by which they had separated me from my past life, the distances in which her smile had got lost. For I felt separate from everybody. I had felt earlier that my old contacts were worthless, and now I knew that as yet I was not capable of having contact with them. As I looked round the pub I became aware of it for the first time as a place—a place of loneliness. The bottles and glasses on the shelves seemed to be symbols of infinity, the infinity of distance between others and myself. The bottles touched, but there was no contact. Only the cold chink of glass, the surface scratch, the brittle breakable aloneness of objects. Even the light was reflected: there was no contact. I could not speak to Marius and the girl because I was hard like glass and was afraid of breaking.
Before they left the old man handed something to Marius, a charm, I think—some seated figure carved in wood. Marius tried to refuse it, but the old man pressed it on him, pressed it into his hand, honouring him. So Marius received it. They had their contact. Then the girl held out her hand to the man and said goodbye. As he took it he looked as if he were crying. Then she shook hands with me, and she was nervous, not looking at me. Marius followed her to the door and he waved at me and then went out. I went to the door to watch them. As they turned the corner the small boy with the army hat jumped out from behind a wall and waved his gun at Marius. They paused, and I think the girl looked back at me, but I could not be sure. Perhaps she was only looking at the boy. It did not matter much anyway because the distance was so great.
2
I did not see either of them again for about a year. I went abroad, writing a book, traveling alone through France and Spain and trying to pretend that loneliness did not matter. Then I got on a boat and traveled further, and by the time I came home I had almost forgotten what it was like to live in company, to have contact with people. On the homeward voyage I shared a cabin with an Australian—a man who had something to do with fruit I think—and he did his best with me.
I liked him, but we had nothing to say to each other. I had really got out of the way of talking to anyone.
At Southampton there were a number of people on the quay to welcome us. The ship edged in sideways through the floating scum, and the people stood on their toes and waved their handkerchiefs. Above them the cranes were like skyscrapers. There was a small child holding a Union Jack and shouting, but they could none of them be heard. It was a slow business. The tugs were pulling in opposite directions, and men with ropes seemed to be fishing in the sea. After a time the people on the quay gave up trying to make themselves heard. It is difficult to keep up the appearances of a welcome for an hour and a half. They sank back quietly into the shelter of the cranes, and soon stopped smiling. It was a windy day, and they had to hold their hats.
I was leaning on the rail of the ship, and I could feel my cabin companion lurking behind me, wanting to talk.
He came up to me. “Well,” he said, “there’s nothing like home.” He was a thin wedge-faced man, with a small moustache.
“No,” I said.
“And you’ve been away a long time. A year’s a long time to be away from home.”
“Yes,” I said.
“But you needn’t worry. I’ve been away longer.”
“No,” I said.
He was rolling a cigarette, smoothing and flicking it with deft fingers and then dabbing at it with his tongue. He had two gold teeth, rather savage, and his close-cropped head was like fur.
“You’ll be going to your people then? Your people’s here?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well no, not exactly.”
He tapped the damp cigarette with his thumbnail, and then lit it. The paper burned fiercely in spite of the wet.
“You know,” he said, “you’re a funny bird.”
“Funny?”
“Yes,” he said. “You know something? I don’t like you English. I don’t like you because you’re so damn cold. And you’re about the coldest person I’ve ever met, but I don’t mind you. And that’s funny.”
“Yes,” I said. The ship was into the quay now, effortlessly, without a sound. There was an attempt at renewed enthusiasm from the welcomers, but it was carried away like paper in the wind.
“Look,” he said. “You come out and do the town with me to-night. You’re coming up to town?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well you’ll come out with me. You’ll be better for it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” I said. “But thank you all the same.”
“You don’t mind my asking you?”
“No,” I said.
We leaned on the rail, side by side. I hated Southampton, and wished that I did not have to leave the boat. From where we stood we could see the factory chimneys, and the white steeples of the churches quite dwarfed, like toys. I wished that I could have said to this man: You come out and do the town with me, and I will introduce you to my friends; but I did not know what my friends were called.
“You got friends in town?” he said.
“One or two,” I said, “but I don’t know what’s become of them now.”
“You’re a funny bird,” he said.
A gangway was pushed into the side of the ship. A line of officials lingered on it like caterpillars.
“You ever get lonely?” he said.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“You got a girl, I mean? Anything like that?”
“Not much,” I said.
“Well I don’t know,” he said. “You’re a funny bird.”
I had often thought of Marius and the
girl during the time that I had been away. I had hoped that one day I might know them again, in order that I might find out about them. For having met them once, I knew only the unreality of that meeting; and it was an unreality that seemed to have spread to every other situation that I approached. And yet I thought that it could only be through them that reality could be regained. For as I had traveled I had built up fantasies around them, and they had haunted me. It seemed at times that my conception of them lived a life of its own with me—a recurring dream that ran its course on unknown levels of my mind but which rose, every now and then, into consciousness through some fissure of emotion. And it was through these fissures that I thought I had to probe. I remember a time when I was among some Roman ruins in the South of France and I had gone to sleep in the sun, and when I woke up the place was empty, quite empty, but I was sure they were there, and I ran down the old white rocks looking for them, the girl and Marius, the dead white rocks in the dusty sun, and of course they were not there, there was nothing there, nothing but centuries, and the heat of the sun that was insistent like a noise.
“I like a bit of company myself,” my companion said.
“Yes,” I said.
Or there was a time during the carnival in Trinidad when the people were out dancing on the savannah, they were dancing in masks and wild dresses, banging the lids of dustbins for drums, hammering; and I was amongst them walking through them and the noise was in discords like something breaking, the surface breaking, like a drill on the road; and through the clamour of the crowd I was looking for Marius and the girl and feeling for them and the noise with the heat was beating against the ground seeming to lift me up and carry me and I was floating; and I did not find them and of course they were not there although several times I felt their presence like this and wondered.
“Don’t you ever let your hair down?” my companion said, grinning.
“It’s long enough already,” I said. He looked at me and began to laugh.
There was some coming and going on the gangways now. The deck was deserted. Below us the passengers were proceeding in jerks along the quay. They could move only a few yards before they dropped some of their luggage. I pointed to them.
“Like a sack race,” I said.
My companion was still laughing. I was surprised. “You know something?” he said. “You’re dry, you’re really dry. I didn’t think you were, but you’re dry.” He was bounding his head up and down and showing his two gold teeth, and from the tone of his voice I think he meant it as a compliment.
In London the crocuses were out in the parks and the spring was early. People were taking off their coats and lying on the grass, but they kept apart from each other, aloof, and their eyes were cautious as if they did not trust the sudden sun. In the streets they hurried past with their gaze on shop windows, on the advertisements, or on their clothes, like people who are intent on avoiding unwelcome friends. In the buses they were neat and inscrutable as if the avoidance had been detected, as if they were nursing some insult with the indifferent face of pretence. They were somehow on their dignity, as if the world had offended them; and this attitude was reflected in the popular headlines of the day. “Demand your rights,” they shouted; “Every decent man and woman deserves the best”; and when the best was not forthcoming—“It is an insult to every Briton in the land.” This was the attitude. The ordinary people had demanded a cult of ordinariness and now were indignant that it had not given them extraordinary things.
Faced with this I almost regretted that I had not stayed with the Australian. He at least had been open, and smiling, and even if I had had nothing to say to him I could sit with him comfortably in silence. Now the silence was oppressive. The Australian belonged to the new world in which ease of manner was still instinctive; in the old world it seemed that instinct had reverted to a desperate necessity to keep up appearances, without requiring either that the appearances should be pleasant or that people should know what they were hiding. I felt that I should have liked for one night to have done the town with the Australian in the new-world, careless way.
One of the first of my old acquaintances whom I met in London was Alice Kerr. I had known her for several years in an intermittent way, and we usually got on well together. She was older than me, divorced and childless, and she was said to be beautiful. I was glad to meet her because I thought that she at least would not be suffering from this strange bewilderment, and I remembered her encouraging ability to greet one after an absence as if one had never been away.
I met her buying cigarettes in Fulham Road. She was delving languidly into her bag and agreeing absentmindedly with the complaints of the tobacconist. When she saw me she said, “They’ve only got these small ones, isn’t it ridiculous?” Her eyes were tired, and her face had the pale transparent quality of wax.
“I’m so glad I’ve met you,” I said.
“I can’t bear these ghastly small ones,” she said.
She paid the tobacconist and took her Woodbines. When we were outside I said, “I should never have had the courage to come and see you on my own.”
“How ridiculous,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you have had the courage?”
“I’ve been away so long. I don’t seem to know anyone now.”
“How ridiculous,” she said. “You’re looking very well.” We walked up the street. She was wearing a huge coat with a stiff collar jutting up the back of her neck, like armour. This was fashionable. “Have you got one of those machines?” she asked.
“What machines?”
“Those sun-tan machines.”
“No,” I said.
“Everyone seems to have a machine,” she said.
Talking to her had always been like playing a game in which only she knew the rules, but now a tiredness gave the impression that even she was playing it more in boredom than for fun.
“I’ve been to the West Indies,” I said.
“How dreadful.”
“I’ve been trying to write a book,” I said.
“People are always writing books,” she said.
“And I wanted to be somewhere on my own.”
“Men always want to be on their own,” she said. “It’s so depressing.”
I followed her up the steps of her house. Formerly, when she had played the game of conversation as a game and nothing else, I had liked to watch her play it, although I could not play it myself. It had then seemed strange and amusing; and there had been none of this quick sliding off the subject in peremptory denial. Now she was like someone who is learning how to skate and is frightened of being spoken to in case she will fall down. The game seemed to have turned into a rather desperate attempt to keep one’s balance.
As she opened the front door she said, “I suppose you must come in, but I do think it’s dreadful of you to say that you hadn’t got the courage to come here on your own. I should be so ashamed.”
Inside the house my inability to play the game became, as always, oppressive. I had hoped, if it was to be at best a matter of keeping one’s balance, that we might give up playing altogether; but we had to have some sort of conversation and I think that this was the only sort of conversation that we knew. It was my fault that it failed. She went to make some tea and we talked through the open door in the kitchen.
“Now tell me what you’ve been doing,” she said.
“I’ve told you, I’ve been . . . ”
“Now don’t start telling me about your book, for heaven’s sake.”
“No. Well I’ve been traveling . . . ”
“Nor your travels. It’s dreadful that no one can talk of anything except their travels. As if places mattered.”
“What does matter?” I said.
“What a stupid question,” she said.
She brought the tea and we drank in silence. I wondered what this thin ice was upon which everybody was skating, this frightened unmanageable surface which forced the people in the streets into a useless pose of dignity, and Alice into
a nervous refusal of any offered contact. As I drank my tea I thought that perhaps she was just bored with me, but then she said: “How nice it is to see you. You’re looking wonderfully well.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“It’s such a relief to see people who are well. Most people are so dreary.” She had lit a cigarette even before she had finished eating, and she was trying to brush crumbs off her skirt.
“People in London seem to be frightened of something,” I said. “What is it?”
“Frightened?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that they seem to expect to be offended by something, and are trying terribly hard to appear at ease.”
“People are so tired of serious things,” she said.
“Then why are they serious?”
“They are not, it is only you who are serious.”
“It is as if they are always looking over their shoulders to see what is following them, and there always is something following them, because they drag it along.”
“Oh all this talk,” she said.
“But why are they frightened?”
“Well why shouldn’t they be frightened? Aren’t there enough things to be frightened of? God knows I don’t blame them.”
“What things?” I said.
“What things? You’ve only got to read the papers, and then you’ll see.”
I did not expect this. She was standing up and brushing her clothes with the hand that held her cigarette, and the ash was spilling on her shoes. I had not thought of Alice as a person who took much notice of the papers.
“Do you mean Russia and the Bomb and that sort of thing?”
“ . . . and the strikes and communists and food and everything, oh good heavens, don’t you use your eyes?”
“But people aren’t really afraid of all that, are they?”
“They’re crazy if they’re not,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Well you’re a baby.”
I changed the conversation. I was thinking how it seemed impossible to talk to anyone now—first the Australian whom I liked but with whom I could not be at ease, then the people in the streets who were unapproachable behind their facades; and now Alice whose words seemed to rattle like skittles knocked down by every statement that I made. So I tried to talk to her of friends and acquaintances and gossip, which was familiar ground between us, but it was she who quickly returned to the conversation as if there were something in it that fascinated her in spite of her apparent distaste, as if the skittles had to be put up again and the game to continue because skittles was the only game that mattered. She had carried the tea things through to the kitchen, and she interrupted me to say: “You don’t understand people at all, or else you would not be surprised that they are worried.”
A Garden of Trees Page 3
