With no more said, Sylvia finished her spaghetti, got up and left. I looked at Roy.
‘She’s young,’ he said.
‘Roy, forget all this side of it. It’s not really important. You can behave like a selfish idiot for the rest of your life and it won’t really matter. What Roy Vandervane does as husband and father and screwer and the rest of it concerns Roy Vandervane and a small circle and will be all over and done with in fifty years. What Roy Vandervane does as musician concerns music, and that’ll go on much longer. For God’s sake drop this Elevations 9 rubbish and concentrate on Gus. That’s your job. What you’re meant to do.’
‘So music’s more important than sex. For Christ’s sake, Duggers . . .’
‘I think it may well be. I think I’d rather be a monk in a world with music than a full-time stallion in a world without it. I like sex too and I haven’t gone into the whole thing enough to be sure about the monk and stallion business, but that’s not the point. The point is that music’s more important than Roy Vandervane’s sex life.’
‘Ole lad, with the best will in the world I can’t see what’s so cosmically disastrous about this little Elevations 9 caper. You talk as if—’
‘What’s happened to the other eight elevations?’
‘Oh, they’re not real. I mean there aren’t any. There’s a Beatles track – well, that wouldn’t interest you. Then it’s a sort of pun. You know, elevation, and nine inches.’
‘I take it you’ll be explaining that to the audience on the night. Or demonstrating it, perhaps.’
‘Of course. But I still don’t see why it’s so—’
‘You’re bringing – you, a well-known figure with a lot of prestige and rightly so, are helping to bring that very important stuff, music, into disrepute. It’s having a hard enough time as it is, what with Cage and Boulez and the rest of them. You’re coming at it from the rear. I’d say there’s quite a good chance that the time and the mood are right for what you’re doing to catch on in a way that the idea of music with jazz sauce never has after dozens of tries. And if your rubbish does catch on, you’ll have harmed music.’
‘Oh, priceless jewel of melody! It’s just a stunt, a romp. I do wish you could see things from that angle once in a way.’
‘A romp that’ll harm music. All right, perhaps I am being a bit hysterical about it catching on. But you’ll certainly be helping to make music look like just another fun thing and now thing, like these clothes they all wear and theatre in the nude and flower power and environmental art and First War stuff. And that’s a disgraceful thing to do. On your part above all. Because you know better. You can say what you like about uncritical admiration, you’ll get plenty of that out of it, I’m sure, but all your colleagues and all your real friends will despise you. Including me. Especially me.’
Grimly, Roy poured himself more wine and looked at me; I shook my head. Then he looked at me again, with a twisted smile I had not seen before but recognized without trouble. He was taking a second dose of his medicine, being helped to feel bad about what he had unalterably made up his mind to do.
‘I think I will have some wine after all,’ I said.
He poured it with renewed grimness.
‘Has she just gone off?’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘She never just goes off. Not without letting you know in full that that’s what she’s doing. Here she is now.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Sylvia, arriving.
‘Sit down and have some coffee,’ said Roy.
‘Let’s go.’ She sent him a grimace that spelt bed in an unattractive script.
He got up. I said this one was mine and pulled out my wallet, but he said it would be put on his account and I could do the next one. On our way out, Sylvia jogged the elbow of a man in a chair next to the aisle, spilling his coffee on to an open packet of cigarettes on the table, and Roy apologized to him. A light rain was falling as we walked up into Knightsbridge, Sylvia setting a brisk pace. The traffic was heavy.
‘We’ll never get a taxi in this,’ said Sylvia.
‘I’ll be off and find a bus,’ I said.
‘There’s one,’ she said, pointing.
She meant not a bus, but a free taxi, and sure enough one could be intermittently seen approaching slowly on our side of the road. Roy waved to it. So, at the same moment, did a small brown man, perhaps an Indian, standing nearer to it than ourselves. Just then the traffic accelerated, and the taxi, ignoring the Indian (who gazed after it in astonishment), swept forward and stopped beside us. The driver was a young black man with long side-whiskers. Roy said to him,
‘Why didn’t you stop for that chap back there?’
‘I don’t know, guv,’ the man said in cockney. ‘Perhaps I liked the look of you better.’
‘But he was coloured.’
‘Well, you were here first, weren’t you? I mean it’s your island, mate.’
‘Turn round and go back and pick him up.’
‘Look, I can’t turn here, mate. Do you want me or don’t you?’
‘Get in, you stupid bugger,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’m in a hurry if you’re not.’
‘I refuse—’
As if we had been carefully rehearsing half the morning, Sylvia kicked Roy in the shins, I grabbed him, arms and all, round the middle, she opened the taxi door, I bundled him up and in, she followed and the taxi shot away.
‘So long,’ she called out of the window, waving. ‘Thanks a lot. See you.’
Five: Absolute Rock
Roy’s car made a quick recovery from its bout of indisposition, as I found the next morning when I telephoned and spoke to Gilbert, who told me, with mild but unconcealed satisfaction, that its owner had taken it to London and that therefore I would have to walk from the Underground station. Asked if there were taxis, he told me in the same vein that there was a taxi office at the top of the station approach, but that in his experience it was always shut. His experience proved a true guide. I set out on foot through the town, expecting a cloudburst at any moment, but the heavens, though no less grey than before, kept their moisture to themselves. The people in the streets looked quite normal, even the younger ones. I found this disproportionately reassuring, and found further, on self-scrutiny, that my subconscious had been harbouring a panic-ridden fantasy in which the whole place had, since my last visit, become a sort of Roytown, with pavements and roadway full of youth smoking pot, twanging guitars, rejecting out-moded ways of thought and calling ‘Christian gentleman, man!’ to one another. But if any of this was happening, it was hidden from sight.
I turned off at a garage and car show-room full of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, made my way along the side of a gloomy green with patches of standing water, and traversed an area where almshouses round the church gave place to establishments that had their names done in reflectors at headlight height and metal statuary on top of their gateposts. This was more like Roytown in fact. When I approached the Vandervane residence I thought I saw Gilbert standing at an upper window, but there was nobody there on a second glance. In the courtyard, as before, I heard from the kitchen the Furry Barrel’s barks and growls; in the hall she appeared, recognized me and submitted to flattery, snorting a good deal in a well-born way. Kitty came out from somewhere and embraced me. After we had moved to the drawing-room she said, quite temperately by her standards,
‘It was sweet of you to come, Douglas dear.’
‘Oh, it’s good to get out for a bit. How are you?’
She gave me a brave, jerky smile that irritated me and made me feel sorry for her. ‘Oh . . . you know,’ she said with an affectation of affected lightness. ‘One carries on. One has no alternative. Would you like a beer or something?’
‘No thanks. You have something.’
‘I’ve got something.’
She had and no mistake: a tall tumblerful of what was no doubt her favourite fearful gin and water, somehow giving the impression of not being the first of its line. Her clothes and general appearance, like t
he state of the room, indicated slovenliness, but a slovenliness done with tremendous artistic restraint: her dressing-gown, or dressing-gown dress, was old, moderately torn, and clean; her make-up, though ill applied, had at least been applied that day; used crockery, brimming ashtrays, vases of decaying flowers and naked gramophone records lay about, yet the clock, a vulnerable one with its glass dome, showed the right time and the carpet seemed free of gross or recent stains. She and the place had gone to rack and a piece or so, no further for the moment.
Kitty had followed my glance. ‘The cleaning ladies have stopped coming and I can’t seem to get any other ones. I seem to have used up all the ones round here. Gilbert’s marvellous, but he can’t do everything.’
‘He and Penny are still here, then?’ I asked experimentally.
‘Oh yes. Here at this very minute. They’re always here. I thought you knew that.’
‘How’s Ashley?’
‘He’s at school.’
‘Really. How’s he getting on there?’
‘Getting on?’ She seemed puzzled.
‘Sorry, I just . . .’
‘He goes there most days now. Much better than he used to be. We’ve got a new system. Every day he goes, he gets a surprise when he comes home.’
‘What sort of surprise?’
‘Something nice, of course. Something it’s fun for him to play with.’
‘You mean like a trench mortar or a flame-thrower or a—’
‘There are no militaristic toys in this house, Douglas.’
‘Sorry, I should have known. Whose idea was the surprise thing?’
‘His.’
I gave an understanding grunt instead of any of the several sorts of yell that suggested themselves to me. Apart from a faint show of indignation over the militaristic toys, she had stuck to her cinematic war-widow style, behaving with such wonderful control that nobody except everybody would have dreamt for a single moment, etc. I told myself we were going to have to start some time.
‘What’s the latest?’
She went light again. ‘Oh, haven’t you heard? I thought everybody knew. My husband is leaving me. He’s decided to run away with a younger woman.’
‘Mightn’t it just be the Bayreuth stage? You know, a halfway kind of—’
‘No, it’s gone beyond that. It’s a luxury he’s learnt to do without.’
‘He’ll be back. He won’t be able to stand her for long. Nobody could.’
‘Then he’ll move on. Find someone with the same . . . attractions. He won’t be back. It’s not his way, my dear Douglas. Oh, don’t think I’m bitter. I’ve moved beyond all that long ago. He’s human, God knows, like the rest of us. And it’s human to choose any sort of path into the future rather than face the long road back to what you’ve left behind. Do you mind if we go out of doors? I’m beginning to find the atmosphere of the place oppresses me.’
I was beginning to find the same thing in a smaller way, and myself lifted the sash of the central window, under which we ducked in turn. The day had lightened a little. As Kitty and I strolled on to the lawn, the Furry Barrel approached at a fast gallop from the corner by the ruins of the greenhouse, an old sandal in her jaws. This she dropped nearby and savaged briefly to the accompaniment of falsetto growls and snarls; after that, barking now, she went off at top speed towards a bank of rhododendrons, alerted by some creature or movement of foliage. I noticed that parts of the lawn were bald.
‘It’s the stuff off the cedars,’ said Kitty. ‘Needles or whatever they call them. Anyway, they kill the grass. Nothing you can do about it.’
‘Do you manage to get anybody in to garden?’
‘Not really. Christopher does a bit of mowing because he likes going on the motor-mower. And Roy got a gang of students in a couple of times, but they pulled up a lot of real plants as well as weeds. Still, it doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s the next owner’s headache.’
‘God, you’re not selling the place already, are you? Supposing—’
‘I’ve got to get out. Oh, because too much has happened here. Too many words said that can’t be taken back or forgotten. Too many tears. No, it’s my own decision. He’d let me stay for ever if I wanted to. As I say, he’s human.’
I thought that last bit showed a sense of continuity of an altogether higher dramatic order than the general level of style being attained, and nodded soberly. Just then, a small group of people came out from behind a shaggy box hedge and moved off towards the lower lawn. I recognized Christopher Vandervane and Ruth Ericson. Of the other two, both young men unknown to me, one carried a camera and some kindred device slung over his shoulder. Kitty and I halted near an enormous display of roses and thistles very impartially mingled, like a cover illustration for a book on Anglo-Scotch relations.
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ I nodded over at Christopher.
‘I don’t know. Same with Penny. One thing’s certain: neither of them’ll take a word of advice from anybody.’
‘Or be told to do anything by anybody.’
‘You can’t tell them; it’s just not on.’ She laboriously fitted each hand into the opposite cuff of her dressing-gown, looked up at me, waited, and said, ‘There’s nothing left for me any more, Douglas, my dear. Nothing at all, anywhere.’
‘You’ve got Ashley.’
‘I can’t do anything with Ashley. It’s bad enough with Roy there. I shall have to try and find someone to live in and deal with him. That’ll give me something to occupy my mind all right. But no more than that. I haven’t a lover and I don’t think I want one, after everything. There’s nothing I know how to do, like playing music or writing or acting or even being a secretary or typing. All I had was Roy and Roy’s world. And now . . . that’s all gone. I’m nothing. Nothing.’
‘You mustn’t talk like that.’
Perhaps my words came out in a rhythm I had not consciously intended. At any rate, her gaze, which had been appropriately wide and unfocused, suddenly sharpened. ‘That’s what Roy says. Do you believe me at all, Douglas? When I try and tell you how I feel?’
‘Of course I do,’ I said as stoutly as I could, with no idea whether or how much I meant it.
‘Perhaps you do. Roy’s the same. I think you both do in a way, but it’s sort of how I say it you don’t really believe. Or you don’t like it, the way I say it. It’s too much like how I say things when I’m only tired and cross or late for something. I know I do go on an awful lot. I ought to have always said just I feel bloody fed up and bugger it and what a bastard, and then I’d have been all right now with this when it came along, and you’d both have believed me. But it’s too late for that. You see, Douglas, you can’t ever allow for how bad things can really get until they do.’
‘I understand,’ I said, and kissed her cheek.
‘Thank you.’ She clung to me for a moment. ‘You are good. You’re so good.’
‘I’m not good at all. I’ve done nothing to help you. I haven’t been able to find out anything that’s made any difference, and as for trying to stop him, or even slow him down, well, I have tried a bit, I suppose, but even—’
‘There’s nothing to be done. It’s all over. Surely you feel that.’
‘I don’t know what I feel.’
‘But I’ll just have to accept it. Whatever sort of experience that may turn out to be. Anyway, it’s something I’ll be facing alone, I know that much. There’s no other way. You’ve managed to make me feel it’s possible, even for someone like me. You’ve reassured me that I exist.’
Perhaps (I thought without much rancour, but with disappointment) I would have done more good, on balance, by trying to erode her faith in her own existence. At the same time I felt ashamed of my connivings with Roy. ‘I wish there were something practical I could do,’ I said.
Immediately her expression changed again. ‘Actually there is a tiny favour you could do me if you would.’
‘A tiny what?’
‘It won’t take you two minu
tes. Just a little telephone call. To the flat where this girl is supposed to live, to make sure I’ve got the right place. Just to see if she’s there. Only take you a second, Douglas. You did say you understood.’
She gazed at me with the first faint glimmerings of reproach, not so faint that they obscured the nearness of a vast army of reproach all ready to be swung into action. I realized that there were some people who could use painful insight into themselves as merely one more lever on others, along with abuse, threats, hysteria and God knew what else. Kitty and I turned simultaneously towards the house.
‘How did you get hold of the number?’ I asked, picking at random from the glutton’s plateful of questions in front of me.
‘I got Gilbert to get it out of Roy. In case there were emergencies was what he told him, I think.’
‘What sort of emergencies?’
‘I left all that to him.’
‘Why can’t he make this telephone call?’
‘He wouldn’t do it. That would be meddling.’
‘Wasn’t getting hold of the number meddling?’
‘No, I had a right to know it. Him ringing it up would be him meddling.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Oh, anything, it doesn’t matter. Just so I know she lives there. You know her voice, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s another reason why Gilbert wouldn’t do, you see.’
‘Supposing she isn’t there? I mean she could live there and still not be there at the moment, couldn’t she?’
‘Then you try later.’
‘Supposing she is there?’
‘Then I’ll know she’s there. That she lives there. Then I can do things like writing her a letter and telling her what I think of her.’
‘So you know her name. So why can’t you just ring up and ask her if it’s her? And you can’t write a letter to a telephone number. And she wouldn’t read it, anyway.’
‘Oh yes she would. That just shows how little you know about women. She’d read it until she knew it damn near by heart and then she’d throw it away and pretend she’d never heard of it. Or even keep it hidden somewhere. And she’d probably ring off straight away if she heard a woman’s voice at this end, so I’d never be sure.’
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