In the Time of Greenbloom

by Gabriel Fielding

  “But where are you going?” implored Michael. “Horab, tell me where you are going?”

  “If you will only get down from the running-board he will tell you; I know he will, because tonight he is fond of me and I am very very fond of him because he is so exciting when he’s like this, aren’t you Horab?”

  Greenbloom did not even nod, the engine of the Bentley began to boom softly as the great body slid forward. In a few yards Michael jumped off and began to run along the pavement beside them.

  “I’m off! Now tell me where?”

  “Tell him!” said Greenbloom to Rachel.

  “But I do not know.”

  “Tell him!” repeated Greenbloom as the car gathered speed. Rachel leaned out of the window and kissed her hand to Michael. “He says we are going to Paris.”

  With beautiful timing the car sprang forward and a few minutes later they drew up outside the entrance of the Mitre Hotel.

  Despite the hot coffee and the ham sandwiches they had eaten in the deserted lounge John found the morning air chilling and uncongenial as he waited with Rachel while two rumpled mechanics wheeled the Moth out of the hangar. Across Port Meadow the mist of the rising dew lay almost level with the backs of the cows grazing and coughing in the middle distance. The poplars and willows lining the banks of the Cherwell far away to the West were invisible, but already the sun was picking out the crests and trees of the Whiteham Hills.

  Rachel in her mink coat looked pale and somehow wizened in the clean slant of the light. He watched her slyly as she stood there beside him alternately glancing over towards Greenbloom and then at the little mirror which lived in the flap of her handbag. Overnight, her face had lost its distinctness: neither the eyelids, the lips, nor the curved and minute nose had the lovely precision he had noticed the previous evening; there was a blurring of edges, a loss of boundary, as though each separate feature had missed its place and character and mingled with its neighbours in the night. It must worry her, he thought, or she would not have been looking so distracted or found it necessary to make so many little dabbing movements with her lipstick eye pencil and powder-puff.

  The fact that she should be so self-concerned at a time like this irritated him. He was sure that there was nothing she could do about it. She would just have to wait until the day grew older, till it got later; and then presumably if they were all still alive and in Paris her face would come right again.

  She looked up suddenly and catching his frown smiled at him.

  “You like watching me, John?”

  “Yes.” He was awkward. “At least I wasn’t really watching you; I was thinking.”

  “And what were you thinking about? Was it sso distasteful?”

  “I was wondering about Greenbloom—”

  “You funny boy! Why do you always call him Greenbloom?”

  “I don’t know; it’s just how I think of him, I suppose.”

  “And what were you wondering?”

  “Oh—dozens of things.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Well how he manages to keep an aeroplane at Oxford and get people out of bed at this hour to service it for him; and how on earth he’s ever going to find the way to Paris; and what we are all supposed to do when we get there; and what Mick and the School and my parents will say when they hear about it.”

  “Goodnesss! What a lot of questions!”

  “Yes, I know.” He smiled. “It’s not that I’m really worried, of course; it’s only that this morning is the first chance I’ve had of thinking about things. I wish you could answer some of them for me.”

  “Oh but I can’t I’m afraid—not all of them. Perhaps we had better start with Horab; he is very rich, you know?”

  “Yes, I guessed he must be—he leaves money lying about in his rooms.” He paused and looked round him swiftly at the great beauty of the morning. “As a matter of fact—a few days ago—I stole some of it.” He corrected himself. “No, it was only yesterday—that’s odd, it seems much longer ago. Do you think you could give it back to him before we start?”

  He found and held out the notes to her. Over their crumpled edges she looked up at him, her face bright with sudden laughter.

  “Oh John! You wicked perss-son!” Her amusement overcame her; the tiny blue-eyed face creased until its tears coursed down over her cheeks.

  “Please stop it!” he said angrily.

  “But—I—can’t! To take Horab’s money when you have only jusst met him—and then—to give it back to him.” She dabbed at her face with a powder-puff. “Oh he’ll never get over it!”

  “I don’t see that it’s funny.”

  “Oh but it is! Sso funny—I’ll tell you John, you must promise me you’ll give it back to him in front of me. I want to watch his face.”

  He ground his heel on a fat worm-cast. “No, you give it to him.”

  “Me? Never! I never give Horab money.” She was very serious again. “Horab gives me? Rachel, money; and he’s lucky that I will take it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well!” She drew in a deep breath and putting away her cosmetics looked up at the sky and then at the hangar and lastly over in the direction of the quiet cows as though she were appealing for their support.

  “Oh I know you’re pretty and young,” he said sulkily. “But I think you’re jolly lucky to have a person like Greenbloom running you about all over the place in Bentleys and aeroplanes.”

  “So that’s what you think is it, John?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder why.” The word emerged from the shaping of her lips as softly as a kiss.

  “Well because anybody’s lucky to be loved by someone—”

  “By someone who is rich?”

  “Yes, or by anyone for that matter. Anyone alive, I mean.”

  Her eyes, so interested, suddenly ceased to look into his face; their gaze shifted to his feet.

  “Oh I see,” she said softly. “I see! Horab was telling me.”

  He said nothing.

  “Poor John Blaydon! We will talk about something else—about the University Flying Club and how Horab paid the mechanics—” she laughed brightly. “He says he bribed them but I say he paid them; we often argue about it; he says no payments are ever made, only bribes. But never mind, it cost him five pounds each, you know, five whole pounds for each man.”

  “Did it?”

  “Yes.” She was watching him. “And then we shall talk about Paris and what we shall see when we get there, shall we?”

  “If you like—I don’t really mind though if love interests you more.”

  “Oh but it does Johnny, it does. Love and money! money and love! I hardly ever think about anything else; and if there were a goddess of both I’d say my prayers to her every night.”

  “Would you?”

  “But of course! There should be a golden Venus, an Aphrodite all of gold, for Rachel to pray to and light little candles for.”

  “Oh,” he said; and then, “Rachel?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think he will say when I do tell him?”

  “About the money, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “He will say ‘was sich in der Sprache spiegelt, kann sie nicht darstellen’.”

  She watched him closely.

  “Is that German?”

  “Yes, it is from Wittgenstein. He always quotes from Wittgenstein when he is cross.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means ‘That which mirrors itself in language, language cannot represent’. In other words that he is so angry he will not know what to say. He says it to me very often.”

  “I wish I knew who Wittgenstein was,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. Horab will tell you. I have some of his book in my case. The very end of it.”

  “The end of it? I thought he hadn’t started it yet.”

  “Oh but he has. He has started at the end. He says that is the only way to deal with Wittgenstein.”
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br />   “How very odd.”

  “Not really,” she said. “You were talking about love just now and you said it was lucky to love somebody who was alive, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Horab would not agree. He says that we love most when it is too late, when it has ended. So you see that in a way everything begins at the end.”

  He was silent; he wished they were on their way. Over by the hangar the little plane was nearly ready. He watched the men empty the last can of petrol into the funnel protruding from the petrol tank and saw Greenbloom’s head appear out of the cabin window just above the star painted on the white fuselage. Something touched his left hand as it hung by his side and he looked down to see Rachel caressing it gently: tiny stroking movements as though she were playing a stringed instrument.

  He withdrew his hand. “What is it?”

  “Only that I wish I could make you see that it is not at all so lucky to be loved as it is to love.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. It is far luckier to love somebody whether they are alive or dead; and if you love somebody like that, John, you are richer than Horab and happier than Rachel.”

  He was trying to read the letters above the yellow star, but his shortsight made it difficult. He screwed up his eyes and slowly they became apparent:

  SCAPEGOAT

  “Do you see?” she asked again.

  “No,” he said flatly. “I don’t. I’d rather be loved by someone alive.”

  “One day you will be Johnny; you will!” She walked away from him over towards the plane. One of the men was handing her tiny suitcase up to Greenbloom and seeing it she turned and laughed at John.

  “Sso fortunate that whenever Horab takes me anywhere I should always have my case ready. I keep one packed now in case I have one of his telephone-calls.” He caught up with her.

  “Once,” she went on, “the first time, I was unprepared and he took me to Le Touquet. Well, I had to buy everything out of my allowance, every single little thing, and there were scarcely any francs left over and yet Horab would not give me any more. He was getting mean you know; oh sso mean! Really, you wouldn’t believe how close he can be when he chooses—a regular old Shylock! I call him Mosselltoff when he’s like that, I tell him he’s an old Shemite, the meanest of the twelve Tribes, and he gets sso angry.”

  “Does it do any good?”

  “No, that doesn’t.”

  “Well what does?”

  “Ahh, that’s a s-secret.” She prolonged the word so that it sounded like a tiny snake hissing. “Rachel’s s-secret; every Rachel that ever was born.”

  They walked on together increasing their pace a little as they saw that Greenbloom was gesticulating at them through the window of the small cabin.

  “I don’t see how on earth we’re all going to get in,” said John uneasily. “Is it meant to hold three?”

  “Indeed it is! Father, Mother and one child. I am the child. I weight only forty kilos and you are nearly as thin as Horab though you are very tall for your age.”

  “And does he know the way? Can he navigate or whatever it’s called?”

  “I don’t expect so; but it doesn’t really matter. Horab always finds his way in the end, and there are plenty of little airfields in France and as long as he’s satisfied with the weather report he won’t change his mind even if it should mean that he’ll have to come down somewhere a little short of Paris and go on by taxi.”

  “Is he a good pilot?”

  John was beginning to feel very nervous. Although they had nearly reached the De Havilland Moth it still looked dreadfully insubstantial; the very fact that it was constructed of paint and glass doors and windscreens, had rubber tyres and aluminium struts, made it only more difficult to accept.

  He had never seen an aeroplane closely before and on the ground; its resemblance to a motor-car would have been reassuring had he not known that it was supposed to fulfil a quite different function: the seemingly impossible act of rising into the air and carrying with it not only its own engine but also their three heavy bodies higher than the lightest of clouds. The factualness of it as it stood before him immediately terrified him. Until this moment the whole sequence of events had seemed quite unreal; a dream delightful and strange in whose gentle current he had drifted utterly away from the awful world of Beowulf’s, ‘The Moors’, and his own self-preoccupation; but now, at this moment, when his dream was found to contain the unrelated solidity of an aeroplane which was to fly him into a reality of air and cloud more tenuous than any dream he found himself numbed by reluctance.

  Reveries and facts did not mix; aeroplanes should never be seen on the ground. To force people to accept them out of their element like this was to confront them with the ultimate dilemma; and he felt that rather than step into the Moth he would be dumbly prepared to forgo the whole of his enchanted escape and go back to Michael and to the School; but it was too late; Greenbloom, he realised, would never allow him to turn back now; he was a jealous god, a prophet who would not be denied, and therefore somehow he would have to make himself believe in the aeroplane and say nothing to either of them of the cold dismay which froze him as he followed Rachel’s example and clambered in under the wing to take his seat beside her in the back of the cabin.

  Rachel leaned forward:

  “Poor John is terrified Horab! He wants to know if you are a good pilot.”

  Greenbloom who was now wearing a white helmet like a woman’s bathing-cap gave a signal to one of the men and pulled dexterously at some levers on the dashboard.

  “Of course I am. Why should I not be?”

  “Well you’re not an awfully good driver, are you?” said John.

  “Certainly not! No accomplished pilot is ever a good driver. It is a difference of conception, ‘Die Frage nach der Existenz eines formalen begriffes ist unsinnig. Denn kein Satz kann eine solche Frage beantworten.’” He frowned angrily.

  “Oh I see,” said John.

  Rachel gave a little titter of laughter. “Of course you don’t see, you charlatan! Shall I translate it for you?”

  “Yes please.”

  “It means, ‘The question about the existence of a formal concept is senseless. For no proposition can answer such a question!’ It is from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Horab always quotes it when he is stuck for an answer.”

  “I suppose it’s from this Wittgenstein man?”

  “You are quite right.”

  “Where did you hear about him?”

  “In Vienna, they are very excited about him there and I try to keep up with him because if I did not Horab would be cross.”

  “Wittgenstein is essential,” said Greenbloom. “Even Bertrand Russell has discovered that, although he is not an intelligent man.” He turned round. “You had better fasten your belts. Rachel! Show him how to fasten his belt. What is the time?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “We are a little late; but it is nobody’s fault. The ground mist was in any case a little too thick for the start I’d scheduled. Even so, we should be at Les Deux Magots in good time for a Mandarin.”

  He raised his hand and the man at the propeller started to twitch it viciously. The engine sneezed out some pale-blue smoke Greenbloom depressed another switch and at the fourth swing they were enclosed in a flux of sound. The metal glass and fabric of the tiny machine thundered over them like a wave as they sat there in a wind that was filled with the rude smell of exhaust gas and benzole. Everything came to life: the seats shook, the glass vibrated, and outside John’s window appeared the wind-torn head of the other mechanic. He signalled to John to open the door and then bellowed out through his hand into his ear. He looked alarmed and urgent, and thinking that the plane was on fire or about to explode, John had a desperate impulse to leap straight out on to the newly remote and glorious grass. It was quite impossible to hear what the man was saying.

  “What?” he shouted. “I can’t hear. Say it again.”

&nbs
p; “The cëows Sir—” The man made two horns out of his hands and holding them on either side of his head wobbled it slowly from side to side. “Tell ’em. Tell Mr Greenbloom, to watch ëout for the cëows on his take-off!”

  “Oh the cows.” He was relieved; now that they were safely in the aeroplane no cow could ever harm them. It was Greenbloom country again and the bad moment was over. A wild thick excitement was filling him from his toes to his ears; and though someone had told him now that this was to be his last morning alive he would have made no further effort ever to get out of the Moth.

  This was the moment for which he had been born. This was the bright beginning which was to end the whole of the insane past: to fly with Rachel and Greenbloom to Paris in the early morning.

  There was no need to pass on the message; Greenbloom had seen and understood the gesture. He signalled curtly to the man, put the engine through its paces, waggled a bent aluminium rod between his knees, and signalled once again. The chocks were pulled away and they began to taxi out into the thinning mist; red sunlight gushed into the cabin as they turned in strange graceful figures over the rippling grass; Greenbloom glanced at the windsock floating free in the morning wind, tested the controls again, and then pulled the throttle in the dashboard out to its farthest limit.

  The Moth leapt as though it had been given an unexpected and potent injection and then began to rush forward towards the rosy streaming face of the sun which hung full ahead of them. In a moment the horizon became visible as the tail lifted and the windscreen tilted lower to reveal the spires and tree-tops of Oxford; the vibrations diminished hesitated and then ceased, as the grass, the whole flat expanse, withdrew its claim upon them. The last edge of their shadow flew back behind them and they were sustained higher and higher above the pale mist which floated over the meadow from which they had risen.

  Looking out above and below John saw flocks of birds flying to their feeding grounds, the buildings of the hangar performing a slow horizontal cartwheel, and the golden stones and dewy lawns of Oxford turning smaller and smaller into neatness and order as they rose ever higher into the smokeless air. He looked desperately for Beowulf’s, for one last convincing glimpse of the School; but he could not see it; the whole city seemed to be hiding its particulars from the clarity of his vantage point and he could recognise no single point or feature as, far beneath them, the streets churches and squares receded into the swell of the shadowed landscape.