by Paul Ableman
“Something’s going on,” he confides. “I read about it.”
This turns out to be quite true, unlike the lying prediction of the assistant, for, when we are all gathered later that day in Miss Casket’s surprising apartment, a good deal of consternation is displayed. Her friends are in a class by themselves. All of them are alert and fully informed as to what is going on. Some of them stride about as if they wanted to burst out and taste the thinness. Miss Casket comes up to me at once and leads me to a cushion.
“Before you hear it from anyone else,” she begins, “I thought I’d better tell you.”
She tells me that her father has disappeared.
“And also,” she goes on, “that a group is being formed. This is the nucleus. You’ve found yourself in the nucleus.”
I do not feel entirely happy about the group in which I find myself. Only one member of it attracts my attention from the outset, a young man who confides:
“I can’t help wanting that Casket woman. I despise myself for wanting her, nearly as much as I despise her, damn her, but I do want her. Imagine, wanting her at times like these.”
He says some more about the times. Large areas of the room are given over to information. Large bundles of this informative matter are transported up to the roof whither we all proceed. A study ring is formed and various points of view are soon being expressed. My companion remarks:
“I can’t take part in this activity. The name Grore, Groor or Goorry, one name really in several forms, corresponding to budding tips, may be familiar to you. I bear it. Terrible weight, but it does ballast one. Therefore, I can’t rock with these others, loading themselves with nubs of information. And then I’m pickled with desire—every time I look at that Casket. Look at her now.”
I look in the direction he indicates and do indeed see Miss Casket. She is dressed in such a way that her body is very strongly emphasized. As she, crouched amidst the group on a soft mat or blanket, leans efficiently this way or that, to oversee notes or discharge a view, her body seems to retain its own idiom and to go on speaking of desire while its mistress talks of affairs.
“I’d like to touch her now,” snarls Gore. “Not after some beastly compromise or understanding. But listen to Cup-Rinse and Piner.”
Cup-Rinse has been discoursing on effects and how these can be brought into the picture.
“Charts—” he is saying. “We must regard these as charts or programs, not actualities, and go our own way.”
“Charts—” supports Piner, “we must erect a stage. What did they suggest? We must pick our way and avoid—”
“Never—”
“Never. Here, here. I—”
“It’s only on very infrequent occasions,” explains Gore, “that they gather on this roof. They like to meet on this roof if they meet at all, and I participate because I know them all and, as I remarked, am so ballasted I can hardly wobble. It’s not very often we get up here anymore. Usually we criss-cross in the streets below or other streets, further away. The Casket is a new recruit, but I’ve lost interest in her.”
He smiles in an ironic manner.
“I’ve noticed a lot of others,” he explains, “there are two down there, softly entombed.”
He points down towards the face of a large slab but I realize that his powers of vision are superior to mine. Then I do see the two he means and I realize that the words “softly entombed” were meant to be voluptuously evocative and not descriptive, for, in the tiny cell, into which we peer, like optically augmented eyes into the world of sentient specks, striped sophistications have been fashioned into lusts. These are the two he meant and they seem very cheerful.
“Then there were others—one turned that corner—they took my mind off Casket. But the hell of it is, now I’m involved with Casket. Between moves that they’re dispiritedly plotting, if you’ll notice, she darts glances at me. Some sort of understanding, originating on an occasion when a whiff of a certain major project was in the room, but only as a seasoning, as it were, not as the entree—anyway, on that occasion, this understanding originated and I’ll have to deal with that. None of it, none of this sort of thing is quite—do you read poetry?”
“Well, I haven’t read much,” I admit, trying to recollect the striking lines the conductor once recited for me.
“No, why should you,” Gore, on a note of savage complicity, sympathizes. “I hate the stuff, but do I? That’s the snag. Perhaps my attitude is ambivalent. There’s the snag. Perhaps I’m a poet, or a sort of counter-poet. Perhaps I love the stuff. If I walk near certain plasticities, huge, tremendous things, rearing towards moon-face, silent things, whispering a controlled instability, whispering an obscure aspiration, sometimes I have quite a battle with poetry. All those Gores, I reflect, reflecting on the illustrious dead of my own branch, have come to this Gore, this Gore fleeing down a girder from the drum-beats of poetry roaring in the void. And then I say ‘what poetry? What poetry do you flee, Gore?’ for you see I have this whimsical, you might think decadent, manner of detaching my persona from something and harping at it. ‘What poetry do you flee, Gore?’ Her face? A lovelier face. What words? Hank, bone—and in the end I can only look and hope and wait once more for desire to assure me of motive.” On the final words, until which his declamation has been with a fervor far more intense than that normally employed for casual conversation at a meeting of this sort, Gore’s expression quickly contracts again into one of mere social irony. Then he concludes, on this note of irony: “The unskilled hand, the unofficial eye—meet Gore.”
I express my appreciation and earnest desire to meet him again. We find that we have a social link in a certain Brangwill who is an official relative of his and my adviser. I look rather unenthusiastically at the remnants of the meeting which has sadly degenerated. Two or three of the sturdier young men have bared their breasts and are thrusting them towards the meek autumn sun. Two or three are still talking about outstanding points and Miss Carpet is now flirting with one or two men, but clearly still keenly interested in Gore’s reactions. They promise each other future encounters, but nothing definite is scheduled.
“Anything may happen,” remarks one, and it is clear that these words express the general attitude.
I take my leave of Gore, courtesies first being exchanged, and make my way back to my egg. On this journey, the variety and density of the city are borne in upon me. Along its channels, across its plates, up its dungeons and widths, the craft of man is in dynamic pursuit. Far away the old clouds are calling themselves new clouds and advertising their vapor. Far away the African giraffe peers with idiot gentility towards the English squirrel. Nearer, little bursts are taking place and people are breathing and fabricating everywhere. It is with relief that I reach the damped plain of terraces. And it is with relief that I greet Susan.
“You’ve returned to our little pot,” she responds, rather crossly.
“I had to go for my appointment,” I protest. “You sent me off yourself.”
She does not find an answer to this at once and goes on ladling soup into a dish.
“I don’t know where you’ve been,” she then resumes, not very convincingly. “We do our best for you.”
“I know that, Susan,” I affirm, rather troubled by the implied reproach.
“Anyway,” she goes on, a little more gently, “I’ve laid out some shadow—”
She breaks off, listens and then quickly hustles me out of the kitchen, saying:
“There. That’s Arthur. You’d better get up to bed quickly. We don’t want him to find out.”
I allow her to propel me towards the stairs and, when she has ceased urging me physically, I continue on up them by myself, but I am nevertheless puzzled by her manner. Surely, it was by Arthur, or in collaboration with Arthur, that these therapeutic sessions were initiated? I am rather too tired, however, to brood long about it, and, later, I merely lie and watch the night and try not to listen to Arthur and Susan wrangling below. As the night dies,
at its last thrust, when the special bells tinkle throughout the system, Maria strays strangely into my room. She stands wanly by the bed-post, talking of a patient and termless martyrdom. Then, having asked rhetorically what I derive from the moon: “I can’t stay,” she informs me, “in this arcade. You live in the shadow of the world-spider.”
And she walks out through the deepening purple shadow of the world-spider in which I lie for many speculations. Soon, Silas and the laughing sisters rise in the furthest heavens and disport themselves rudely and rurally. Every so often Silas jumps up from his starry hay-stack and strides a little way towards an orator who is declaiming nearby, oblivious of the rustic sport. Silas stands with one foot a little advanced, fists clenched and a frown of hostile incomprehension on his face and watches the orator. Then Lola raises herself, calls, and Silas hurries eagerly back to the sisters. For ages this pastoral comedy has been proceeding in the furthest heavens, and who shall number the earthly lovers that have finally, in orchards and palm groves, on beaches and lawns and in cozy bedrooms, lain quietly on their backs and pointed to Silas and the sisters playing their eternal parts?
The stars fade, pulled back on strings by the impresario, and grey wash is splashed on the sky. The city quivers like a rising camel and transmits its subjects furiously through channels. But in our suburban bower all is yet calm.
“I will keep this calm,” I promise myself strenuously. “This morning, I will climb in sequence.”
And so I lie calmly, watching the light being thinned as great casks of transparency are emptied into the outer air. Soon, Arthur comes in.
“Poor old chap,” he commiserates when I have confided that I hardly slept a wink. “You mustn’t pay any attention to Susan, you know. I understand she–er–gave you a false impression.”
“I thought it was a false impression,” I echo gladly. “I couldn’t remember it very clearly, but I was sure you were privy to the affair.”
“Yes, of course,” confirms Arthur briefly. “As a matter of fact it was my idea—at least—I certainly enthused over it. Now then, old son, how are these therapeutic sessions going? Are they going well?”
“Not too badly, Arthur,” I admit. “The Commissioner is a very sound adviser, and I’ve had my social circle immeasurably extended.”
“Met all sorts of people, eh?” he chuckles. “Well, I’m glad you’re moving about a bit. Now then, I thought this morning we might review things a bit, see how we stood, where we stand and so forth. Have a chat. Straighten things out. Might we not?”
Arthur’s words gladden me in spite of the fact that I sense that he is not being candid, that he has one or possibly dozens of ulterior motives for his suggestion. In spite of this perception, then, I sit up gladly, but, as I do so, I lose the sense that my gladness is in any way connected with Arthur and feel an elusive assurance that it stems from the absence or temporary eclipse of certain knowledge. But almost at once I see that my gladness is at least compounded with genuine exhilaration at the lovely morning, showering our bricks with bounty once more. And then a further constituent reveals itself as appreciative memory of my new-found friends, including the voluptuous Miss Carpet and the estimable and potent Gore.
“What are you getting at, Arthur?” I inquire gaily, but he frowns, unable to tolerate the piercing of his petty hypocrisy. A moment later, however, he surprises me, as I find he is always capable of doing, by smiling a little guiltily and admitting:
“There’s no deceiving you, old son. I should have known that. All right, let’s be candid.”
Arthur now reviews the situation as he had originally intended to do. Downstairs, Maria and Susan can be heard quarreling as they prepare his breakfast and boil my egg. Occasionally they can also be heard kicking at a loose bit of carpet as they hush each other to listen for his descent. Doubtless they realize that there is something distinctive about the morning, both from the unusual length of time that Arthur is taking and also from some domestic tribulation, possibly connected with a spout. So poignant is the impression they make on this particular morning that Arthur occasionally responds to it even while weaving the events of the last few periods into a narrative. This narrative is not very clear and every time Arthur responds to the sounds of voices or motion from below, and his reponse may be either an impatient gesture or comment or an unconscious modification or lapse of memory, it becomes still less so.
“Listen to them,” he remarks at one point, for a moment totally diverted from his narrative. “Listen to those special sounds. They’re working with liquids this morning.”
“That’s true, Arthur,” I agree, but I ask him to resume the narrative so that I can examine it for discrepancies.
“Well, it goes on about recent and relatively recent events,” he continues. “You know most of it, the sort of things. We’ve tried different things and now we’re trying this. I admit, I wasn’t always as patient and tolerant as I might have been, but there are things to be said in my defense. Still, I haven’t set out to defend myself. As a matter of fact, I came in to ask you about the Commissioner.”
“The Commissioner?” I ask, not understanding at first why he should be interested in this personage.
“Yes, I thought he might be able to help me.”
Arthur explains in what way the Commissioner might be able to help him and, later that morning, when I keep my appointment with the Commissioner, I raise the matter.
“You feel that you owe him something?” asks the Commissioner, his mild, intelligent face set in an expression of attentive gravity.
“I didn’t say that,” I rejoin quickly. “Perhaps you could think of me as cable or conduit, utterly neutral, incapable of assigning values to what I transmit.”
“I’m afraid we don’t work like that,” declines the Commissioner.
“Well perhaps you could work like that for once,” a voice, loud in unexpected support of my petition, unexpectedly intervenes, “or change your ways.”
“My rebel nephew,” murmurs the Commissioner, turning towards the lofty doors, guarded by men, through which Gore has just impetuously entered. “Are you concerned in this matter, nephew?” he asks Gore.
Before we have a chance to examine and discuss the matter in any real detail, however, a woman brings in the newly prescribed milk which is designed to reduce fatigue in those working under the immense pressure of events.
“I’ve only brought one glass,” she specifies.
The Commissioner looks with composed inquiry from Gore to myself.
“I don’t think,” he begins, “my fiery nephew—”
“Wants any milk?” Gore rudely interrupts. “Well, you’re both right and wrong, Uncle. Right in thinking he doesn’t want any milk and wrong in thinking he doesn’t want any milk.”
At this Gore turns and moves glumly to the window from which he watches various vessels and bulks lumbering in the vicinity. He turns back long enough to dismiss the milk with a restless or contemptuous gesture but the Commissioner, possibly rather too benign, or merely timid and experienced to fight Gore with his own weapons, is making undignified signals meant to instruct the woman to get more milk. Suddenly, however, a more resolute expression comes over his face and he says clearly and authoritatively:
“I think this milk is very silly. Coffee would be better. Get us some black coffee and instruct anyone you see to bring some dossiers.”
The woman grumbles resentfully, and it is plain that, possibly owing to long association with the department, a good deal of latitude is allowed her, but she replaces the Commissioner’s glass on her wooden tray and goes out.
Gore now turns ferociously on his uncle.
“Stop wasting our time,” he snarls. “You’ve always done your best to waste the time of myself and of this colleague and to madden me. You’re responsible for having tried to madden me during the recent war.”
I am interested to see how this eminent public servant will counter this direct assault, particularly in view of all the circu
mstances that make the incident such an exemplary test case. I can not help admiring, and noticing with approval, the way in which the Commissioner counters the sheer expanse of his chamber by dominating it from a nodal point. Thus, with one foot carelessly raised, the knee bent and the boot resting on some knobs, he sways backwards and forwards carving invisible theorems with the sweep of his spectacles.
“That’s very true,” he says, nodding sagely, and at first I feel disappointed, thinking that he is merely trying to disarm Gore by a measure of superficial agreement, but than I see that, while partially correct, this interpretation, in fact, fails to do justice to his strategy and tact. “That’s very true and yet I don’t as yet feel inclined to offer you my desk. Do you take my point?”
“Uncle,” begins Gore, apparently contrite, “I really must beg—”
Wait, wait—” cries the official, “you mentioned a recent war? Did that incommode you?”
At this Gore nods thoughtfully, thinking of the various flues of combat he had to measure. He thinks also of demolition squads, the troops’ parrot and the other stimulating and invigorating experiences. He smiles rather wistfully.
“I once got chalk on my uniform,” he muses. “It was during an operation in a chalky climate. Below us were the ruins of a town, or possibly an unscathed town—” but at this, he pauses and appears to be thinking hard. “As a matter of fact, I think it was just a low pit full of old tins and flies. It was one of those summer days when the sky is a thin, transparent white and, in chalky districts, a dry perfume is drawn out of the scrub. For several days a great deal had been happening, but now it was a little quieter with only the distant roar of assault, strange flashes and whipping sounds. I had become separated in some way from some soldiers and forced to take shelter on a sort of chalk bank or declivity and there, huddled close to the side, I waited extectantly for rabbit-pie. When I got back to the sack, I was rebuked for having acquired a power of lurid depiction but it was put to good use later by the authorities. Almost at once the war ended and everyone kept saying ‘We are nearly certain the war has ended.’ As a matter of fact, I think they were all dazed from the horror and deprivation of the last few years for they showed a lust for some things and a desperate resolution and all the soldiers and—”
