by Bruce Duffy
Hah! cried Lawrence. He spat again, and the ape bounded back, the hair on his spine bristling as Lawrence stared into his hooded eyes, intoning:
Dear, vile monkey … Pretty, pretty monkey …
A screech and a shower of dust and pizzled straw as Lawrence lunged with his umbrella. Whirling around, Lawrence flicked the umbrella up like a pointer, the better to show his fellow Utopian the coiling beast, the venomous red eyes.
Look at him, Bertie. So much like you, that hideous aggressor, that savage kaiser lurking beneath. Hah! Lawrence rang his umbrella along the bars, then thrust it at the fanged jaws. This also is you, Bertie, lusting to jab and strike like a man with a bayonet, saying, This is for ultimate peace. Why don’t you own to your nature? What is the use of you, haranguing the populace with vain talk of nations kissing one another? Give me no more of your lies, moaning about goodness and humanity. You are the enemy of mankind — spiteful and murderous, filled with bestial, repressed desires. Hah, monkey! Wouldn’t you love to sink your teeth into my pretty neck? Hah! Hah!
But then the blood flooded Lawrence’s face, and he began to hack and wheeze. Russell made no effort to help him. Hunched and gasping, Lawrence eyed him with unspeakable loathing, then lurched off, slipping like a shade through the unquiet trees.
That night, during still another blackout, Russell decided that Lawrence was right about him, and as he sat there in his tiny flat, listening to bombs crumple in the distance, he wished that one might fall on him. It was his worst depression since that day on a beach near Ramsgate the spring previous, when, as he stood looking out to sea, with the surf lightly rushing in and not a cloud in the sky, he had heard — or rather felt — thunder, then realized it wasn’t thunder at all but shock waves emanating from the massed siege guns in Artois, nearly a hundred miles away. But Russell survived that night and he survived Lawrence, who a week later sent him a letter apologizing for his outburst, saying that in quarreling with him, he had been quarreling with something deep in himself. They never did swear Blutsbrüderschaft. Instead, their friendship struggled along briefly before ending in a bitterness that lasted all the rest of their lives. Before the final break, however, Lawrence wrote Russell a letter saying that he hoped Russell would have the courage to stop being a savant and an ego and would concentrate instead on being just a creature. Lawrence also said once more that Russell would never reach the unknown until he had sustained a deep and abiding union with a woman. Anything less, he said, was mere sensation seeking — masturbation.
Russell resumed speaking. Later, to Lawrence’s disgust, he even delivered the program of lectures he had outlined. The fashionable and humane thinking public, with Ottoline and Strachey at the vanguard, greeted his ideas with tremendous excitement. But these people, as Russell well knew, were the elect minority. For the rest of England his ideas hardly existed, or did only as very watered-down slogans. And nothing really changed. Not humanity, nor himself, nor even the women who gravitated to him, who seemed alike only in their native unhappiness and eventual dissatisfaction with him.
Later that summer, though, his bad spell broke when he met Lady Constance Malleston, a twenty-year-old actress who went by her stage name, Colette. Russell liked her naturalness and diction. Slender, elegant and well educated, she had waved auburn hair and, that rare thing in England, perfect teeth. Russell had seen her at several meetings before asking an acquaintance to introduce them. Colette told him that she had joined the NCF the year before, shortly after her brother was killed in France.
Of course, my husband’s a C.O., too, she added carelessly. Russell must have shown his disappointment, because she quickly added, Harold’s also in theater, an understudy to Miles Keegan. He’s in Scotland now. We’re both quite independent.
At dinner later, she insisted on paying for her part of the meal, and he, owing to his pinched circumstances, reluctantly agreed. Afterward, they drifted outside. It was a warm, clear, moonless evening, and London was nervously expecting another zeppelin raid, the third in three nights. Nine people had died the night before in fires and explosions. The tabloids were filled with headlines like FLAMING FIANCÉE and HERO HOUND and stories like that of doughty little Arthur, the messenger boy who pulled old Mrs. Birme from her burning house. Dropping as much as four thousand pounds of high explosives and incendiary bombs, and flying at heights that often required their crews to suck pure oxygen from rubber nozzles, the airships were portrayed by the press as infernal Jules Verne machines driven by goggled Teutonic insects clad in black leather. For more than a year, the Germans had been making raids farther and farther inland in preparation for raids on London. It had only been recently, and with deep reluctance, that the kaiser had given his permission to bomb the city, and only with the proviso that they spare historic landmarks and, above all, cousin Georgie’s palace. For a month the Germans had been making successful raids, and now the German navy was in on it, competing with the army zeppelins to see who could tally the most destruction. In London, the mood was ugly and defiant. A primitive defense system had been devised, but the zeppelins were steadily improving their bombing and defensive capabilities and hence their value as a terror weapon. No longer was it a matter of feinting experimental raids by one and two ships. There were nights now when the coastal lookouts spotted flotillas of four or five of the giant airships moving like long, dark clouds across the Channel. As ominous and slow and out of range as the weather, the zeppelins would begin a slow descent at King’s Lynn, every hamlet in their path blacking out as the droning airships swept like a gathering storm toward London.
Russell, meanwhile, was pursuing Colette, but thanks to Lawrence he was being more subtle than usual — tepid, in fact. Yes, Lawrence had rather spoiled his stride with these accusations about being a sexual predator and sensation seeker. Russell was being so mild and tentative that Colette had grown wary herself, sensing that the moralist was having second thoughts, no doubt because she was married.
No telling how long this impasse would have lasted were it not for the bleat of a police whistle, blown by an old warden wobbling down the street on a bicycle that bore the sign KINDLY TAKE COVER. As the street-lights dimmed and went dead, Colette said:
You should come with me. I’m only a few blocks away.
He was only too happy to agree. Emboldened then, he took the liberty of pressing his hand against the small of her perspiring back as he squired her through darkness suddenly filled with voices, blowing whistles, barking dogs and slamming doors and windows. Yet while others rushed by to get to shelter, Colette seemed to feel no urgency whatsoever. She positively dawdled, stopping to play with a maundering cat, then gazing at the stars, remarking, Oh, you can really see them now, can’t you? Quite as if you were out at sea.
Watching her, Russell wondered if his anxiety was in anticipation of impending sex or falling bombs. Here, he said, smoothing her shoulder. We ought to be going, don’t you think?
Oh, she said. She sounded surprised. Of course. I’m just one block over.
Passing through a narrow, vine-choked archway, they entered the courtyard of her building, where people were now veering toward the shelter.
Shouldn’t we go into the shelter? he asked, feeling for her arm. There’s time, she said, feeling back. I’m only on the third floor.
Her palm was damp as she took his hand and led him up the narrow stairs, clogged with sweaty bodies hugging bundles, blurting infants, pets.
Cyril … Cyril, is that you? Russell felt a jittery hand tap his head and shoulder, then quickly retract when he said it wasn’t. Once at Colette’s door, he burned six matches while she jiggled the lock.
I’ve only three more, he said impatiently. Can’t I try?
But Colette didn’t seem to hear, just kept rattling the lock, all the while chattering about her last role as daughter Winnifred in the drawing room farce Father’s Fond Fairest.
It just closed at the Whitehall, she said. Ever hear of it? Well, I’m not surprised — it was dreadful
rubbish, but popular. As usual, I played an ingenue — I’m always playing precious, conniving little ingenues, giggling to the audience and saying, But Pa-pa! Oh, Plleee-ease, Pa-pa. You don’t know what a frightful bore it is, wearing patent shoes and some enormous bow in your hair. I’m dying to age a little.
Well, said Russell glumly, striking another match. I hope you won’t feel you must wear a bow in your hair for me.
Don’t be silly, she protested, stroking his arm. You’re not at all old. My own father is sixty-something.
The latch broke, and they alighted into stuffy darkness. Can you see? she asked. I hate blacking out the windows, so we can’t very well switch on a light. Here. Just a sec —
Before he could object, she handed him a glass of sherry, then gulped hers down, all the while watching him with a faint smile. Bringing his glass to his lips, he found the edge sticky from some previous drinker — perhaps Harold, he thought, as he swallowed it, distastefully warm and sweet. Again he said, I think we ought to go. But Colette kissed him lightly, then slipped a cool hand up the back of his coat as he pulled her toward him. Two sallies before he said again, Colette, I’d love nothing better than to stay but we really must go now.
But she only pressed back, saying, Oh, please, not now. They always pack you in absolutely hours before anything happens. And I hate it, being shut up with so many people, really I do. And the chances are one in two million — they said so in the papers. Besides, they never come over this end.
She gave him no time to object but instead went into the bathroom. Looking around, hearing the familiar running of water, his stomach fluttery now, he wondered if the shoes of absent Husband Harold, the understudy, were in the closet, then dourly figured that this made him the understudy’s understudy — Daddy Dearest. And then Colette reappeared, her white skin faintly stippled in the wafer-thin light. She snipped open his shirt buttons with her fingers, then gently laid him down, saying, You know, you really are a dear, lovely man …
Her sheets were agreeably cool but did not smell quite clean, and he wondered again if it was Harold or some other young admirer he smelled as her mouth opened into his. Colette was wet and eager, but she was spoiled for him. In his mind, he heard Lawrence wrathfully saying that he was only masturbating himself with her, not yet fit for the new world. Yet who was? Two weeks before, according to Ottoline, Lawrence had been about to leave for Florida with a handful of followers when he suddenly decided, for no apparent reason, to postpone the exodus for a month. He’ll never do it now, Ottoline had predicted. Lawrence fears he’ll be as powerless in America as he is here.
And hovering over Colette, peering into the little lights of her eyes, Russell wondered if he himself would ever do it — pierce that hard shell and become, as Lawrence said, a creature. But he couldn’t cede himself to the Eden of this life, couldn’t break free from what he was. In himself now, he saw only a man of sublime but basically fraudulent promise, who, like an onion, would peel away through time, layer after layer, until at last he was reduced to a hard, translucent kernel of nothing, attached to nothing. And sexually he was failing. Damp. Limp. Colette, so hatefully patient, was whispering, There’s no hurry. Lie down. We’ll just hold each other.
But he didn’t wish to hold or be held. Feeling trapped, he just lay there, sweating and inert, when in the distance they heard the first thumps of the anti-aircraft guns. Then the attacking English airplanes monotonously droning, circling, circling, desperately trying to attain the altitude necessary to attack the airships. Forcefully then he said:
Colette, I insist! We really must go downstairs now.
But she only clung to him more tightly. I can’t bear it down there in that cellar, she said. I hate it, worrying that I’ll be buried alive. But you can go — honestly, I won’t blame you.
His male pride wouldn’t permit him to leave. For pride, then, he remained. Remained, he thought, for just the same reason the war continued. He was thinking of Lawrence’s parable of the war, of the poor dumb brutes who dug coal, the boys from the little towns, the donkeymen and dock workers, the bricklayers and glass blowers, and all their masters, too, the bankers, brokers and merchant men. Arm in arm, in endless legions, they marched out into the salient, there to die in the mud, tide upon tide. First one man went, and because he went, his mate went as well. Because one man went, all men went; and because one man died, they all died, as in a chain, ringing the world from end to end. So Russell stayed. Stayed as the whistles blew, then went silent. Stayed even as the first bombs exploded with a rumbling that persisted in the night air with a whorling sound, like the sea rushing in a shell.
Russell couldn’t stand it. He didn’t want to die with this woman or with any woman. After all his complaints of loneliness, after all those nights he’d spent wishing to be curled up with someone, he saw he wanted to die alone — even with her, he’d die alone. Fate had tricked him. He did not love, and because he did not, he would die covered with plaster dust with this stranger from a foreign species, coiled within the bowels of a mother he hardly knew.
And now the city was going up. Above the ivy planter on the far windowsill, reflected in the clouds, they could see the glow of fires burning in the west end of the city. And then a draft sucked the curtains out the other window, whisking them up like two waving sleeves. Colette sat up, saying, Do you hear it? I hear it, don’t you?
It was the throb of engines flogging the air. Don’t go to the window! he ordered, but heedless she ran across the room and peered out, then looked back excitedly. He’s just passing by, quite out of line with us! We’re safe — he can’t hit us from there. Come look.
Russell wrapped the sheet around him like a toga, then crept over and crouched by the sill beside her. Like foghorns came the droning engines. They saw the airship’s pointed black nose, the long expanse as it swept by, gigantic and dark. For several minutes they watched as it tacked eastward toward the river, pursued by the nattering planes. Then, as the airplanes abandoned their pursuit, another battery began firing, bursts flashing like lightning against the zeppelin’s metallic black skin. He was gone, Russell thought. The last zeppelin had slipped through. All-clear whistles were blowing. Voices were in the air. Below, following the beam of a warden’s flashlight, people were emerging from the shelter. Flocking across the courtyard, they were all talking at once, amazed, and perhaps slightly let down, to see that everything was as before.
Russell was peering low over the sill; Colette was stroking his neck. The airship was a mile away now, curving toward the harbor, where a few vain shells were still bursting. And then, suddenly, the airship began to glow, swelling and pulsing with fulminous light before it burst into a boiling sheet of flame that lit the sky. Fiery pieces of fabric whipped up and fell away, followed by two, then three drops of liquid fire — burning crewmen, he realized, as they fell through the darkness. A cry went up. In the streets, and then all across the city, there was a steady, roaring, fist-beating chant, ancient and superstitious, as the exploding airship slid down and down, going dark like a star behind the squat rooftops.
Colette had it right. Taking him decisively by the hand, she said sharply, Come to bed. There’s nothing to be gained in watching this.
Now? he asked, with a sickened look.
Especially now, she insisted.
I don’t know if I can, he replied, and he meant it. But his groin saw through his scruples, and later he peeled another layer of the onion as he rolled off the sheath of lambskin. Yes, he had managed. He had managed just fine.
Uncertainty
ONE DAY early that fall, as it was nearing evening, Moore was pushing his baby, Nicholas, down the lane in a white wicker pram and worrying about zeppelins.
No airship had ever come within twenty-five miles of Cambridge, which was both out of effective range and strategically unimportant. On the other hand, as Moore well knew from the newspapers, zeppelins were notoriously erratic, prey not only to strong winds, which blew them off course, but to clouds a
nd fog, which confused their crews, leading them to mistake Goole for Hull or forcing them to jettison their bombs over obscure villages or farms. Nothing, it seemed, was impossible for the airships. One crippled zeppelin had blown clear to Norway, crashing in a tiny seaside village, which the papers said was practically enveloped by the giant craft.
Lately, Dorothy Moore would find her husband poring through the papers and magazines, reading lurid accounts of the Raiders. The arrival of Nicholas in June only raised Moore’s anxieties. It reached such a pitch that one night Dorothy found Moore on his knees in the cellar hiding candles, medicine and tinned milk in a nook used for garden tools.
What on earth are you doing? she asked, holding her candle aloft as she peered down the darkened stairs. You know perfectly well we’re in no danger here.
Almost no danger, he snapped. If bombs can land in Bedford, they can land in Cambridge. In theory, we are in range of them.
And in range of lightning and meteors and assorted acts of God, she said in disgust. Good heavens, Bill, what sort of assurances must you have?
Up from the darkness, he bellowed, I’m not asking for assurances. I’m merely being prudent. PRUDENT!
Oh, bosh, she sniffed. You’re just being daft!
At first, the war had not especially bothered Moore. Indeed, he found people’s reactions to it intensely curious. Why was it, he wondered, that people who were not themselves fighting, or even associated with anyone in the fighting, felt so badly about it?
Perhaps I am deficient, he confessed to Keynes. I do truly believe that war is horrible, and I would, if I could, put an end to it. But I do not find myself feeling miserable about the war, as Russell so clearly does. Oh, I would, I suppose, if I were on the front, seeing men killed. No, if anything, I find the war quite fascinating, don’t you? Most people do — otherwise, why should wars last so long? People love reading about the war. They love it better than football matches or horse races, and they line up in droves to volunteer, even though they risk getting killed — and killed in rather sizable volumes. Politicians like it, as do factory owners and even workers, who with overtime make better incomes, I’m sure, than you or I do. Papers sell better, and there are books and songs written. I’m not being arch, you understand. I just find it curious. Except for widows and war orphans, and so forth, it seems that nearly everyone gets what he wants.
