He held out his hand and John shook it automatically. From the tail of his eye he saw that the girl, tall, paler than the statues surrounding the pool, was approaching them quickly.
“Tomorrow,” went on Greenbloom, “we must discuss this again. But now I really must go. I do not like schoolgirls, I detest Irish school-girls and I abominate in particular the sort of girl who faints on railways trains.”
“Did she? How do you know?”
“Some unpleasant people from Birmingham mentioned it over the—cucumber sandwiches,” he made the words sound like blasphemies.
“Oh, the Merryweathers.”
John laughed; surprisingly he heard the sound fall out of him into the strange circle of the lake and its concentric balustrades.
“Yes,” said Greenbloom wearily. “The Merryweathers. Forgive me, there is not a moment to be lost.”
He turned and with great dexterity bobbed across the flagstones to the Southern entrance just as the girl reached the top flight of the steps beneath which they had been standing.
John looked up at her. Her white dress hung limply from the thin shoulders, her hair, parted like his own on the left, bobbed and short, curled smokily about her ears and round her young forehead as she stood there listlessly, one hand on the balustrade, watching Greenbloom, following him with shadowed eyes as he hurried away beside his silent reflection in the lake.
John spoke.
“Hello!”
She turned. “Hello!”
Her smile was very quick; quite artless. He noticed that at the right-hand corner of her mouth just beside the cheek she had one mole, a tiny spidery naevus clinging just outside the cheekline.
“Who was that? The man you were talking to?”
“Greenbloom.”
“What a strange name.”
“No stranger than Uprichard,” he said.
She started. “Who told you my name?”
“One of the girls in the house—an Irish one who plays the piano.”
“Oh, Brigid! Was she looking for me?”
“I don’t think so. She was just waiting.”
The girl sat down on the balustrade and he walked quickly up the steps.
“Do you smoke?”
“Only for fun.”
He held out his packet of Woodbines.
“I’m afraid they’re only small ones,” he said. “I’m economising.”
She took one and he lighted it for her; she held it badly and seeing his face in the extra light of the match she laughed; a breathy sound with very little voice in it.
“We’re not allowed to really; but its part of the holidays to have one or two.”
“Yes.”
They said nothing for a moment and he noticed that she shivered.
“Are you cold?”
“Bit.”
“A bit?”
“Yes.”
He took off his coat and before she could move draped it round her shoulders as she sat there a little hunched, concentrating on her cigarette.
“Thank you.” She looked up suddenly and he saw the display of her wide-apart childish teeth between lips that were magenta-coloured in the moonlight.
“What were you talking about just now to that man?”
“To Greenbloom?”
“Yes.”
“Oh—” he hesitated; from somewhere small clouds were collecting, slowly thickening, gleaming like the insides of mussel-shells against the dark blue of the night sky.
“It sounded awfully odd,” she went on filling in his pause. He sensed that she was not attempting to justify herself in face of what might have been an intrusion but that she really was interested. “He’s got a very queer voice hasn’t he? Like—”
“Rusty,” he said, “like old iron.”
“Yes. I could hear him but I couldn’t hear you. It sounded most strange—like a one-way telephone conversation.”
“Where were you then?”
“Behind the boathouse. There’s a seat thing there.”
“That’s not a seat! It’s a torpedo!”
“Is that what it is?” She laughed. “I thought it might be. Anyway it makes a jolly good seat—like a rocking horse.”
He was astonished by her lack of surprise. Women never seemed to have any respect for machines.
“Did you really sit on it?” he asked.
“Of course I did—” she sounded a little bored. “But you haven’t told me what you were talking about to that writer person.”
“Just things,” he said, “or rather a thing, something that happened once.”
“Oh—” She sucked at her cigarette inexpertly. “Is he a writer?”
“Not exactly. He’s a publisher.”
“Are you going to be a writer?”
“Yes.” His affirmation surprised him; it was out before he could stop it and with sudden self-confidence he expanded it. “At least I’m going to be a doctor really but I think I’ll probably go in for psychology and write books too.”
“Which one are you then?”
“How do you mean, ‘Which one am I?’”
“Well, Lady Geraldine told us that there were four of you coming tonight. Someone who writes, and then two brothers—she didn’t say what they did—and a Frenchman as well.”
“Greenbloom isn’t French. He lives in Paris nowadays but he’s Jewish.”
“He sounded like a Frenchman.”
“Oh yes, that’s just because he’s very suggestible. He’s always changing. When I first met him in Oxford four years ago he was the most English of people with an absolutely flawless accent—very Mayfair. But since he went to live in Paris he’s become awfully French in every way.”
“How sweet! I think I rather like suggestible people.” She fluttered away from it and he wondered if perhaps she were insincere.
“Which one are you? One of the brothers?”
“Which would you like me to be?”
She looked surprised, caught his smile and suddenly laughed again; long enough this time for him to be sure that she laughed almost entirely with her breath, using her voice hardly at all.
“I don’t know! I hadn’t thought.” Her expression changed. “As a matter of fact I wasn’t particularly interested—that’s why I came out here, at least it’s partly why.”
“Partly? Ah, I remember. You fainted on the train today didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t faint—I felt ill.” She got up suddenly. “Something happened. It was a silly thing I suppose but it was horrible. It upset me dreadfully. Do you mind if we walk round the lake?”
“No. I’d like to.”
He fell into step beside her. She took long steps like his own and with unanalysed pleasure he noticed that they were the same height.
“What happened?” he prompted.
“It was the sort of thing you read about. A man on a train. You know!”
“Yes?”
“He got into my carriage—I didn’t arrive till today, the others got here yesterday. I had to go to my doctor in London about—something. This man got in at Chester.” She stood still as though arrested by the vividness of the memory. “After the first few stations—I was reading magazines and things—I began to feel uncomfortable. At first I didn’t know why and then I found that he was looking at me all the time, watching me: everything I did, my hands, my feet, my legs.” She coughed over her cigarette. “Silly really, but he seemed to be almost touching me with his eyes.”
“Horrible!” he said, “how horrible!”
She looked up at him quickly, her eyebrows, slender as charcoal, drawn together in surprise at his vehemence.
“It was horrible,” she said. “I tried to explain to Brigid when I got back but she thought I’d added to it. I’m moody you see and sometimes I get worked up and—frighten myself. But this time I wasn’t. I didn’t imagine or add anything to it. It was quite real. He started trying to get into conversation with me.”
“What did he say?”
She moved on and he followed her and caught up with her.
“He asked me if I was feeling all right. I suppose I looked a bit pale because I hate trains and in any case I always feel ill when I’ve been to a doctor—”
She shivered again and he glanced at her. His coat hung heavily from her shoulders and above it the centres of her white cheeks were smudged with shadow.
“Let’s sit in the boathouse,” he said. “It will be warm in there. It’s got a thatched roof and that’s always warm.”
With the easy acquiscence she had shown from the moment of their meeting, she followed him in through the door at the back and took her place beside him on a swing seat with a canopy which was stored by a side wall. It was thickly piled with old punt cushions. They sat down in opposite corners.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing! I froze. Do you know what I mean? I felt all my muscles go stiff. For a moment I couldn’t even turn a page of the magazine I was supposed to be reading. I think I was praying for the train to stop, wondering if I dared to pull the communication cord, and trying to look as though I hadn’t heard anything.”
“Go on.”
“He laughed then and said that he was a doctor and that I must forgive him for interfering but that I didn’t look well. I still said nothing and after a moment he laughed again and said, ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’”
She threw away her cigarette and it fell with a splutter into the water beside the long shape of the Admiral’s punt.
“That was the awful part,” she went on, “the fact that I didn’t answer him or look at him or show in any way that I knew he was there didn’t seem to matter to him in the least. It was as though he were talking to himself, inventing something as he went along, making it up and using me in it just because I was there and happened to be alone with him. I began to feel as though I’d got into his life or his head. That he had more control over me than I had over myself.” She drew breath, “I suppose you think it’s stupid don’t you?”
“No,” he said, “not stupid.”
“Or neurotic! I’m rather interested in psychology, it’s all the rage at the Abbey just now, Have you read Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life?”
“What did he say after you’d said that you didn’t believe him?”
“That’s what I was coming to. He said it again, ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ and when I wouldn’t reply, he went on ‘You’re quite right, I’m not a doctor but nobody can say I’m not trying, can they? How else is a man to get to know the sort of girl a man wants to get to know if she won’t admit she wants him to get to know her?’ He went on like that for quite a long time, about me reminding him of someone he’d once known and—lost. The awful thing was that after a time I began to get interested. I knew it couldn’t be long before we stopped at a station as there was a map of the coast with all the stations marked, on the opposite side of the carriage, and it was a slow train. I was sure I would be safe then; but as he went on talking, watching me all the time with his head back against the cushions, I found myself hoping that the train wouldn’t stop before he’d come to the end of whatever it was he was trying to say, the story he was making up. I felt that everything depended on him reaching the end of it, that he might go mad if he didn’t and that in some way it would be my fault. I don’t think he meant me any harm just then; or if he did, he hadn’t quite decided about it, he was just using me to help him in trying to solve something very—secret or private, what the psychology magazines call a fantasy.”
John sat very still and by pressing her feet against the floor she began to rock the seat gently backwards and forwards, ruminatively; re-creating the motion of the railway carriage, swinging the two of them evenly to and fro in the half-darkness of the boathouse. John forced his back against the cushions and stopped it, drawing them to a standstill rudely.
“What did he look like?” he asked.
“Oh, rather good looking at first sight. Brown-skinned and blue-eyed, short hair, very curly. I found I didn’t like to look at him not only because he was what he was, but because he had rude eyes as though he despised everyone. That’s what spoilt him I think and he was just common, not in his voice except very occasionally, but in the way he moved his mouth and refused to be quiet. Some people always have to be very much there. He was like that, he wanted to be noticed.”
“Did he smoke?”
“No, he ate sweets, peppermints I think they were.”
John sat very still on his corner of the stationary seat.
“Did he whistle?”
“Not out loud but he had a way of putting his lips together as though he were whistling to himself. He did it in between sentences—” she paused. “Why are you so interested?”
“Er—” he tried to look less tense. “I can’t tell you now. It’s just that it may have had something to do with what we were talking about before you came out.”
“Who? You and that Greenbloom person?”
“Yes.”
With a little effort at concentration, she frowned. “Something to do with what you were talking about?”
“I said it may have had something to do with it. I’m not sure, that’s the trouble—I never am.”
“How funny! I wonder whatever it could have been!”
“Perhaps one day I’ll be able to tell you. I don’t know though for certain. The thing I’m interested in doesn’t seem immediately important any longer; it did once but it doesn’t now. I’m getting tired of it. You can’t go on for ever trying to solve things, can you? They get left behind.”
“Yes, I suppose they do.”
She started to swing the seat again and this time he didn’t stop her.
“Will you just tell me one more thing?” he asked, “and then we won’t talk about it any more.”
“Yes, if I can, but it’s not easy. It was strange, I find it hard to think of somehow.”
“What was the story he told you?”
“It was about this girl he’d known. He kept on about her, round and round in a circle, no not a circle, that was the odd thing. He’d get so far with it and then stop and start again. ‘She was very like you,’ he would say, ‘like you liking me and you were just what she might have been if she had been old enough to be like you. And fancy, if I’d met her today as I’ve met you, then it would all have started again and she would have been a match for me at your age just as you are a match for me at my age, sitting there not wanting to know me, not much, and pretending, like she would have pretended—’ “She broke off, “That was something like it. Can you understand how horrible it was and yet how it made you want to go on listening? Each time he took it a bit further but never to the end.”
“Never to the end?”
“No, the train stopped at Penmaenmawr and before I could get up he opened the door. He leaned right forward over me and said, ‘this is where I get out, this is journey’s end but it doesn’t end in lover’s meeting, does it?’ I said, ‘I wish you would go’, and he said ‘I know you do, but thank you for listening just the same.’”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Yes he said ‘Tell them all if they want to know; tell them all but don’t tell me,’ and he laughed.”
“Was he mad?”
“Yes, I’m sure he was. He seemed to be several different people all putting on an act. He didn’t behave like one person; he didn’t seem to know who he was. After the train left the station I began to feel terrible. The fright he had given me began to come back and I began to loathe myself for having listened to him and for not having helped him. Yet at the same time I was quite sure that if I had given in to him in any way, if I’d spoken a single word or let him see that I was frightened and interested he might have—it made me sick; after he had gone I really was sick—out of the window.”
She was silent and they continued to swing backwards and forwards in the half-darkness. The fact that she kept so still, that she had ceased to do her share towards kee
ping up the rocking motion of the seat, made him sense her discomfort loudly but he refused to make any comment. Instead he returned to the thoughts which her story had set on their dark procession through his mind.
It could have been the same man of course; but what did it matter? Quite soon, in fifty or sixty years, everyone would be dead, everyone of his own generation; and what had once been a crime would survive only as a curiosity. The reality of it was dead already, buried in his own heart deeper than Victoria; and Greenbloom had been right when he had said that everything was unimportant unless it made you suffer.
That seemed to be Greenbloom’s new message, to welcome suffering and keep it greedily to yourself so that you would know you were alive, to let no one distract you from it by telling him about it: to drink, as some men drank, alone; to celebrate, love, hate, suffer and die as you were born, alone. He remembered some lines from a poem about Jack and Jill which he had once memorised:
“Her lady-smock all stained with his blood
She’ll dry away the cold tears and the mud,
She’ll staunch his trickling scalp with vinegar
And tell no soul her sorrows—”
It was not a comforting doctrine but at least it was much more sensible than Mother’s and Father’s which seemed only to have provided them with blunt weapons. No one could ever effectively love or hate anyone else no matter how much they knew, no matter how great their love or their hatred might be, simply because everyone was fundamentally alone, what Aldous Huxley had called ‘a solitude’.
If his solitude, his own desert, had been planted with the solitary evergreen of Victoria’s death then according to Greenbloom he should have been grateful, not to any person, not to any god, not even to Victoria herself but to the sensibility which allowed him to be aware of it as it stood there for ever vivid and vital in the vast and silent landscape of his mind.
In the Time of Greenbloom Page 43
