(1954) The Comforters

by Muriel Spark

  The other patients bored and irritated her. She longed to be able to suffer her physical discomforts in peace. When she experienced pain, what made it intolerable was the abrasive presence of the seven other women in the beds, their chatter and complaints, and the crowing and clucking of the administering nurses.

  ‘The irritant that comes between us and our suffering is the hardest thing of all to suffer. If only we could have our sufferings clean,’ Caroline said to the Baron.

  A visiting priest on one occasion advised her to ‘offer up’ her sufferings for the relief of some holy soul in Purgatory.

  ‘I do so,’ Caroline declared, ‘with the result that my pain is intensified, not at all alleviated. However, I continue to do so.’

  ‘Come, come,’ said the priest, youthful, blue-eyed behind his glasses, fresh from his seminary.

  ‘That is a fact, as far as my experience goes,’ said Caroline.

  He looked a trifle scared, and never stopped for long at Caroline’s bedside after that.

  On those Saturday afternoons the Baron had seemed to bring to Caroline her more proper environment, and for the six weeks of her confinement in the country hospital she insulated herself by the phrase ‘he is an old friend’ against the certainty that the Baron would, without the slightest sense of betrayal, repeat and embellish her sayings and speculations for the benefit of his Charing Cross Road acquaintance. Much was the psycho-analysing of Caroline that went on in those weeks at the back of the Baron’s bookshop, while she lay criticizing the book in the eight-bed ward. Which was an orthopaedic ward, rather untidy as hospital wards go, owing to the plaster casts which were lying here and there, the cages humping over the beds and the trolley at the window end on which was kept the plaster-of-Paris equipment, also a huge pair of plaster-cutting scissors like gardening shears, all of which were covered lumpily with a white sheet; and into which ward there came, at certain times, physiotherapists to exercise, exhort, and manipulate their patients.

  The Baron, it is true, while he discussed ‘the book’ with her, had no thought for the Monday next when he should say to this one and that, ‘Caroline is embroiled in a psychic allegory which she is trying to piece together while she lies with her leg in that dreary, dreary ward. I told you of her experience with the voices and the typewriter. Now she has developed the idea that these voices represent the thoughts of a disembodied novelist, if you follow, who is writing a book on his typewrite-r. Caroline is apparently a character in this book and so, my dears, am I.—’

  ‘Charming notion. She doesn’t believe it literally though?’

  ‘Quite literally. In all other respects her reason is unimpaired.’

  ‘Caroline, of all people!’

  ‘Oh it’s absol-utely the sort of thing that happens to the logical mind. I am so fond of Caroline. I think it all very harmless. At first I thought she was on the verge of a serious disorder. But since the accident she has settled down with the fantasy, and I see no reason why she shouldn’t cultivate it if it makes her happy. We are all a little mad in one or other particular.’ ‘‘Aren’t we just, Willi!’

  Laurence was out of hospital some weeks before Caroline.

  ‘I can’t think what possesses you,’ he said, when at last he was able to see her, ‘to confide in the Baron. You asked me to keep your wild ideas a secret and naturally I’ve been denying all the rumours. It’s embarrassing for me.’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘They vary. Roughly, it goes that you’ve dropped Catholicism and taken up a new religion.’

  ‘What new religion?’

  ‘Science Fiction.’

  She laughed then winced, for the least tremble hurt her leg.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Laurence who had promised not to make her laugh.

  ‘I never expected the Baron to keep his peace on any subject,’ she said. ‘I rather like talking to him, it amuses me. I’ve been lonely here, sick as well.’

  She could see that Laurence was more niggled by the Baron’s attentiveness than by her actual conversations with him.

  To return to that afternoon in the New Year when Caroline unwittingly hurt the Baron by comparing him to an African witch-doctor.

  After tea, which she made in two pots: green for the Baron and plain Ceylon for herself, the Baron attempted to compensate for his anger. He told her a story in strictest confidence which, however, she repeated to Laurence before the day was out.

  ‘Once, on Eleanor’s behalf — shortly after her divorce from her daemonical Hogarth, and in connexion with a financial settlement, I went to call on him at his house in Ladle Sands. I had not informed him previously of my intention to call, believing that if I did so he would refuse to see me. I hoped to catch him by chance — Many were such services, I assure you, Caroline, that I performed for Eleanor. Well, I called at the house. It is fairly large with some elegance of frontage, Queen Anne; set well back from the road and concealed by a semi-circle of plane trees within a high hedge that had not been trimmed for months. The garden was greatly neglected. The house was empty. Peering through the letter-box I could see a number of circular letters lying on the hall table. From this I assumed that the Hogarths had been absent for some weeks, having arranged for their personal letters to be forwarded. I went round to the back of the house. I was curious. At that time, you must understand, I was greatly in love with Eleanor, and the house where she had lived with Hogarth inter-ested me in the sense that it gave me a physical contact with a period of Eleanor’s past which I knew only from what she had chosen to tell me.’

  ‘The back premises were even more untidy than the front. The kitchen garden gone to seed and stalk, and an important thing that I am going to tell you is this. At the door of an outhouse lay a pile of junk. Empty boxes, rusty broken gardening tools, old shoes. And amongst these a large number of broken plaster statuettes — religious objects of the more common kind that are sold by the thousand in the repositories attached to the Christian shrines. These were hacked about in a curious way. The heads were severed from many of them, and in some cases the whole statue had been reduced to fragments. There were far too many of these plaster pieces to be accounted for by accidental breakage. Even at that time — I knew nothing of Hogarth’s occult activities then — I assumed that there had been a wholesale orgy of deliberate iconoclasm. In cases where the body was intact, only the head or limbs being severed, I noticed how cleanly the cleavage occurred, as if cut by an instrument, certainly not smashed by a fall, not that.’

  ‘Then I must tell you, Caroline, what happened while I was engaged in examining these extraordinary bits of clay. The back premises were skirted by a strip of woodland. This was about thirty yards from the outhouse where I was standing. The sound of a dog growling caused me to turn and observe this direction, and soon I saw the dog emerge from the wood towards me. It was a black spaniel, very well cared for. I picked up a stick in case it should attack me. It approached with its horrid growling. However, it did not make straight for me. As soon as it got within five yards it started to walk round me in a circle. It encircled me three times, Caroline. Then it bounded towards the heap of broken statues and sat, simply sat, in front of the heap as though defying me to touch them.’

  ‘Of course I went away, walking casually in case the dog should leap. But what I am trying to tell you, Caroline, is that the black dog was Mervyn Hogarth.’

  ‘What did you say?’ said Caroline.

  ‘I did not realize at the time,’ said the Baron, stirring his green tea, ‘I merely thought it an uncommonly behaved dog. Of course I am speaking to you confidentially, it is not the sort of thing one can tell one’s acquaintances, however intimate. But I feel you have an understanding of such things, especially as you yourself are supernormal, clairaudient and —’

  ‘What was that you said,’ Caroline said, ‘just now, about the dog?’

  ‘The dog was Mervyn Hogarth. Magically transformed, of course. It is not unknown —’

  ‘You’re mad, Will
i,’ said Caroline amiably.

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Baron, ‘I am not.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean mad, you know,’ Caroline said. ‘Just a little crazy, just a little crazy. I think of course it’s a lovely tale, it has the makings of a shaggy dog.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to be incredu-lous of all people.’

  ‘Well, Willi, I ask you!—’

  He was serious. What,’ he said, ‘do you make of the broken saints?’

  ‘Maybe they had a house-full and then got fed up with them and chucked them out. Maybe they break up the statues for pleasure. After all, most of those plaster saints are atrocious artistically, one can well understand the urge.

  ‘For pleasure,’ the Baron repeated. ‘And how do you account for the dog?’

  ‘Dogs are. One doesn’t have to account for dogs. It must have been the Hogarths’ dog —’

  ‘It wasn’t the Hogarths’ dog. I inquired. They possess no dog.’

  ‘It must have been a neighbour’s dog. Or a stray, looking for something to eat.’

  ‘What do you say to its having encircled me three times?’

  ‘My dear Willi, I’m speechless.’

  ‘True,—’ said the Baron, ‘you have no answer to that. Not that I have formed my opinion that Hogarth is a black magician solely from the experience which I have just described to you. I haven’t told you yet about the carrier-pigeons, and many subsequent phenomena. Are you free to dine with me tonight? If you are I can tell you the whole story, and then, my Caroline, you will no longer say Willi’s mad.’

  ‘We’re all a little mad, Willi. That’s what makes us so nice, dear. No, I’m not free tonight, I’m sorry to say. It would have been pleasant really …’

  He planted a friendly kiss on her cheek when he said good-bye. As soon as Caroline heard him descending in the shaky lift she went into her bathroom and taking out a bottle of Dettol poured rather a lot into a beaker of warm water. She saturated a piece of cotton wool with this strong solution; she dabbed that area on her face where the Baron had deposited his kiss.

  ‘The Baron is crackers.’

  It gave Laurence pleasure to hear Caroline say these words, for he had been lately put out by the renewed friendship between Caroline and the Baron.

  ‘The Baron,’ she declared, ‘is clean gone. He came to tea this afternoon. He related the most bats tale I’ve ever heard.’

  So she told Laurence the Baron’s story. At first it amused him. Then suddenly his mild mirth changed to a real delight. ‘Good for the Baron!’ he said. ‘He’s actually stumbled on a clue, a very important one, I feel.’

  ‘Clue to what?’ she said.

  ‘My grandmother.’

  ‘What has the black dog to do with your grandmother?’

  ‘The clue is in the broken statues. Why didn’t I think of it before?’

  ‘Your grandmother wouldn’t break anything whatsoever. What’s the matter with you, dear man?’

  ‘No, but Hogarth would.’

  ‘You’re as bad as the Baron,—’ she said, ‘with your obsession about Hogarth.’

  Since their motor accident Laurence had been reticent with Caroline. She saw that, because he was partly afraid, he could not keep away from her, but it was not at all to her taste to nourish the new kind of power by which she attracted him. Laurence’s fear depressed her. For that reason she stopped altogether discussing with him the private mystique of her life. Only when she was taken off-guard in conversation did she reveal her mind to Laurence, as when he innocently inquired, ‘How is your book going?’ meaning her work on the structure of the modern novel.

  ‘I think it is nearing the end,’ she answered.

  He was surprised, for only a few days since she had announced that the work was slow in progress.

  Another thing had surprised him.

  They had planned a holiday together abroad, to take place in the last two weeks in March.

  At first Caroline had objected that this was too early in the year. Laurence, however, was fixed on this date, he had already applied for leave before consulting Caroline. She thought it rather high behaviour, too, when he announced that they would go to Lausanne.

  ‘Lausanne in March! No fear.’

  ‘Do trust me,’ he said. ‘Have I been your good friend?’

  ‘Yes, yes, but Lausanne in March.’

  ‘Then believe that I have my reasons. Do, please.’

  She suspected that his choice of time and place was connected with his intense curiosity about his grandmother’s doings. Ernest and Helena had come to believe that the danger was over. Any illicit enterprise the old woman had been engaged in was squashed by Ernest’s interference and bluff. They hardly cared to think there had been any cause for anxiety. But Laurence, who had made several week-end trips to the cottage during the past winter, seemed convinced that his grandmother’s adventures were still in hearty progress. Arriving unexpectedly one recent week-day evening Laurence had found her little ‘gang’ assembled as before, the cards in play as before, Louisa unconcerned as always. From her own lips he learned that the Hogarths had twice been abroad since January.

  For his failure to pull off a dramatic swift solution of his grandmother’s mystery Laurence blamed the car accident. He bitterly blamed the accident. At the same time he felt stimulated by his discovery that Ernest and Helena had between them succeeded only in putting the gang on its guard. It still remained for him to search out the old woman’s craftiness. That was what he mostly desired, and not content merely to put an end to her activities, Laurence wanted to know them.

  Throughout the winter his brief trips to the cottage tantalized him. He snooped round Ladylees and Ladle Sands with blank results; he had a mounting certainty that the gang was lying low. Ernest had bungled the quest. Most of all Laurence felt up against his grandmother’s frankness. She was never secretive in her talk or manner, but decidedly she refrained from disclosing her secret. All he had gained was the information that the Hogarths planned a trip to Lausanne in the last two weeks of March.

  ‘The Hogarths go abroad a great deal, Grandmother.’

  ‘They do like travelling, my, don’t they!’

  He got no more out of Louisa. He applied for a fortnight’s leave to start on 15 March.

  Helena had been so far emancipated by her son that she saw nothing offensive in suggesting to him, ‘Why not take Caroline with you? She needs a holiday and, poor girl, she can’t afford one. I’ll pay her expenses.’

  It was then Laurence was faced with Caroline’s objection, ‘Lausanne in March! Why Lausanne? It will be so bleak.’

  But when he said, ‘Haven’t I been your good friend? Do please agree with me this once,’ she agreed.

  That was in the middle of February. Two weeks later she disagreed.

  ‘I’ve been to the Priory to see Father Jerome,’ she began.

  ‘Jolly good!’ said Laurence. She had observed lately with some amusement that Laurence displayed himself keen to promote all her contacts with religion, the more as he himself continued to profess his merry scepticism. One recent Sunday when she had decided to miss church because of a sore throat, he had shown much concern, in the suggestion of a warm scarf, the providing of a gargle, and transport to and from the church in his new car, to see that she did not evade the obligation. ‘Jolly good!’ said Laurence, when he heard that she had visited the old monk whom he had known since his boyhood.

  ‘He says,’ Caroline announced, ‘that I ought not to go to Lausanne with you.’

  ‘But he knows me! Surely he knows we can be trusted together, that it’s simply a companionable holiday. My goodness, it’s done continually by the deadliest proper couples. My goodness, I always thought he was a reasonable broad-minded priest.’

  ‘He said that in view of our past relationship, we ought not to appear in circumstances which might give rise to scandal.’

  ‘But there’s no question of sin. Even I know that. I was indoctrinated in the Catho
lic racket, don’t forget.’

  ‘No question of sin, but he said it would disedify,’ Caroline said.

  ‘We needn’t tell anyone we’re going together. And we’re hardly likely to be seen by anyone at all in Lausanne in March.’

  ‘A furtive trip would be worse than an open one. More disedifying still. I can’t go. Awfully sorry.’

  Her withdrawal upset Laurence more than she expected. He had not told her that, as she had guessed, his determination to visit Lausanne in March was in some way connected with his passion to play the sleuth on his grandmother. She had not reckoned with his need for her participation, and the more he argued with her the more she conceived herself well out of the affair. It reminded her too much of the pattern of events preceding the car-smash.

  Laurence did not press her very far. He accepted her decision with that strange fear he now had of approaching close enough to Caroline to precipitate a row. It was on this occasion that, suppressing his disappointedness, he asked her amicably, ‘How is your book going?’ and she, her mind brooding elsewhere, answered, ‘I think it is nearing the end.’

  ‘Really? You were saying only the other day that you still had a lot to write.’

  Swiftly she realized her mistake, and so did Laurence. He looked rather helpless, as if enmeshed. She hated to think of herself as a spiritual tyrant, she longed to free him from those complex familiars of her thoughts which were to him so foreign.

  ‘Naturally, I look forward to the end of the book,’ she said, ‘in a manner of speaking to get some peace.’

  ‘I meant,’ said Laurence with a burst of irritation, ‘of course, the book that you are writing, not the “book” in which you think you are participating.’

  ‘I know,’ she said meekly, ‘that is what you meant.’ And to lift the heavy feeling between them she gave him her pretty, civilized smile and said, ‘Do you remember that passage in Proust where he discusses the ambiguous use of the word “book”, and he says —?’