“Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken mother,” said Linda. “She’s not well. Her legs swell every night. She doesn’t feel happy here.”
“To tell you the truth,” said Ralph, “I don’t feel very happy myself. If only there was something to read. The days are so long. And there’s an odd sort of barrier here, I can sense it. It’s not simply the language. They don’t want to have anything to do with us.”
Tito, competent and aloof, sitting at his desk writing, reminded Ralph of his own cool and aloof and remote stepfather, who would retire behind a book or newspaper shutting Ralph out by a frozen silence, especially if he had committed some misdemeanour.
“Tomorrow we’re going on a cruise. Remember?” said Linda.
“I haven’t forgotten. Have you got the tickets?”
“In my bag.”
“Perhaps you should check that they’re there.”
“That’s the fourth time you’ve asked me to do that. I don’t need to.”
Ralph was angry with himself. He was always saying to her, Make sure that the passports are in the case, that our travellers’ cheques haven’t been stolen. He had never felt so nervous before. What was wrong with him? Had he been overworking? True, there had been that article that he had had to write very quickly before he could set out on his holiday. And then there were these sudden nervous sweats when he poured with perspiration for no apparent reason. And then of course he had come to a stop with his novel.
“I’m coming to depend on you more and more, and I despise myself for it,” he said to Linda.
“Nonsense, you’re not dependent on me at all.”
“Ever since we married. It’s as if I’d given my life into your own hands for safe keeping while I got on with my writing.”
“Rubbish.”
“But it’s true. I was always like that. If there was someone near at hand who would take responsibility I would let them have it. And you have enough to do with your mother.”
“It doesn’t bother me. But you should speak more to people. To the Grahams, for example.”
“But I don’t know what to say to them.”
“If you were interested in them you would find something to say. The fact is, you’re not interested. I think Graham is frightened of you.”
“Of me? Why?”
“Well, he thinks of you as being very cosmopolitan. That’s why he has to over-compensate by being very efficient. He is terrified of making a mistake and he can’t relax. He thinks you are secretly laughing at him.”
“I’m not laughing at him.”
“You have to remember that he is very young.”
“I’m not laughing at anybody.”
“Speak to him then. Talk to him.”
But though Ralph quite liked Graham he didn’t want to speak to him or to anyone else he met. Which was why Linda would say to him, “I can’t understand a novelist who doesn’t like people. There’s something wrong with that.”
And for that matter Ralph agreed with her. There must be something wrong with him if he didn’t like people. But still Graham was so naive. He went out every morning with his womenfolk as if he was on safari with his shorts and his camera. He looked so fresh and almost adolescent. And he had everything so organized. And it seemed he was really enjoying Yugoslavia. Sometimes he and his wife would tell Linda and Ralph, “Mother gets her tea in bed every morning when we’re at home.” And the old lady would smile and follow her son-in-law wherever he went. She was self-possessed and as far as Ralph could see had no illnesses or diseases.
And Graham would say, “We’re thinking of taking one of the local buses today. I’ve got a local timetable here.” Or, “I found out that the courier is from Sligo. She married a Yugoslavian but she’s divorced now.”
He knew everything and Ralph knew nothing, and Linda would sometimes say to him, “Why didn’t you find out about the local buses?”
“I’m not interested.”
“And why do you think yourself too good for the Grahams? He works a computer, you know.”
“I know. I don’t feel myself too good for him. It’s just that he’s so damned apple-cheeked and optimistic.”
But in fact all he wanted to do was to avoid Graham and find a book and read it. In spite of that he had to listen to the conversation of the people at the tables. But though he waited in the foyer for more tourists to come off the bus at night they wouldn’t give him their magazines or newspapers: they kept them for themselves as if they had known in advance of the sparsity of reading material. They were mean and avaricious. He was reduced to reading the notices on the notice boards which told of the excursions that were planned.
One evening in the coolness when all three of them were strolling along the promenade Ralph had the most frightening sensation. He felt as if the landscape around him was falling apart, that it was spinning on its axis. He put his hand on his head and stood still for a long time, while the sea beyond him surged and swayed, the yachts turned keels over sails in the water. A man wearing a tartan cap was landing from one of the pleasure boats, and dancing on the pier while the rest of the passengers cheered and shouted. But Ralph sensed that the world was racing away from him at tremendous speed, that he was being left behind, that the people who were lying roasting themselves on the rocks were ghosts from another country, that he himself was entirely alone and lost, that pages of books were swirling on a cold breeze which had suddenly sprung up, that he couldn’t keep his balance.
“Are you all right?” said Linda.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” He didn’t want to tell her that he wasn’t all right, he wanted to be always self-sufficient and remote. Too much talk leaked his virtue away.
But above all he saw again the old cruel heads of the Romans staring from among the roses as if passing judgement. They would never have bothered about his mother-in-law with her swollen legs and varicose veins. They would never have listened to her banal stories, her death would not have troubled them. They would have been concerned with power, with the spear, with the javelin, with the march of the legions.
The day they went on the fish picnic was one of their better, more enjoyable, days, as it was also their first excursion. The boat called at various small piers on the way, to pick up men and women from the hotels which lay along the waterfront. There were a large number of Germans, Swedes, and a group of Scots wearing tartan tammies, though none wore a kilt. After a while the Scots, led by a tall egotistic man who, Linda later discovered, was from Glasgow, began to sing Scottish songs while a humble Yugoslav musician with an accordion, weaving in and out among the passengers, tried to play the tunes, Loch Lomond among them. The voyage itself was relaxing and once they passed some nudists who were strolling among the rocks: one man in particular caused huge gusts of hilarity and a concerted rush to cameras because he was sitting like a gnome fishing off a cliff wearing nothing but a pair of bright yellow wellingtons.
“I’ve seen bare bums before,” said Linda’s mother, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”
On board the boat was a Frenchwoman who wore a beret and a short skirt, and who at first sat beside a vacantly smiling peaceful man who, Ralph presumed, was her husband. Suddenly she got to her feet and began to dance furiously by herself on the deck, waving her arms, flicking her fingers, hitching up her skirt, making funny faces and thrusting out her false teeth. Her energy was quite ferocious as, watched by her long-suffering husband and encouraged by the Scots, she pushed out her bottom in an improvised version of the can-can till she was joined by the leader of the Scots contingent who was determined that she should not outdo the natives of a country which was, after all, famous for its music and song. Always there is one of them, an exhibitionist, thought Ralph, who instantly created the story of the French husband and wife, the former sitting on a bench, a bag on his lap which his wife had left with him and looking around him with a fixed smile on his face as if trying to give the impression that he was proud of his wife, and that she did not at a
ll embarrass him.
Linda was sitting restlessly beside him and then before Ralph could say anything to her she too had sprung to her feet and was dancing a duet with the Frenchwoman, thrusting out her false teeth like a vampire, hitching up her skirt, and staring down at her feet while dancing the reel on the deck of the Yugoslav ship, the Germans and Swedes watching intently but making no attempt to join in themselves.
Ralph was furious and turned away from the obsequious Yugoslav accordionist who was bending towards him, a large happy smile on his face, while he tried desperately to follow the tunes which the Scots were now singing in concert. God damn you, thought Ralph, why must you thrust yourself into the centre of things, why must you be so dramatic, so theatrical? And he began to grow jealous of the Scot from Glasgow who, large and tall, was conducting the Scots in renderings of ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘O Flower of Scotland’. Linda had by this time completely forgotten about himself and her mother who sat side by side on the bench, the mother gazing tolerantly at her daughter, Ralph inwardly seething.
The Frenchwoman and Linda were vying with each other as to which of the two would invent the most outrageous games. The Frenchwoman took a comb from her hair and began to play on it. Immediately Linda played a biro like a flute. The Frenchwoman draped a scarf around her face through which her large false teeth protruded. Linda removed her shoes and played them like castanets banging them against each other and dancing in her stocking soles. Ralph was angered by their spontaneous creativity, the marvellous inventiveness of the props which they had discovered in the most ordinary of objects.
And all the time he watched the Frenchwoman’s husband, who also wore a beret, and who sat patiently with the bag in his lap, as if he were the wife and she the husband. Did he spent his days like this on cruises watching his wife entertaining the passengers, becoming an instant star in the transient world of tourism. Ralph sympathized with the Frenchman and wished that he were able to talk to him. There was a glitter from the two women like the glitter of water along the reaches between islands.
‘O flower of Scotland’ (sang the Scots)
‘when shall we see your likes again
who fought and died for
your own bit hill and glen.’
The Frenchwoman exchanged her beret for a tartan tammy, and marched up and down the deck playing imaginary bagpipes. To be like that, for grace to descend on one, for the deck suddenly to become the theatre of the moment, the bare wooden boards, for it to flower with meaning! Suddenly the Frenchwoman sighed and entirely exhausted sat down to be followed later by Linda. She looked sideways at Ralph as she sat down but he was determined not to speak, prim, pompous, silent.
“I wasn’t going to let that Frenchwoman get away with anything,” she said at last as if in self-justification.
“Why did it have to be you?” said Ralph angrily.
“You’re always so,” she searched for a word, “— academic.”
“I know how to conduct myself.”
“You can’t bear to see people enjoying themselves.”
“Why does it always have to be you?”
Linda who was now furious maintained a prickly silence. So they sat side by side in their chairs while the boat cut its way through the water, both equally bad-tempered. If only I had something to read, thought Ralph, but there was nothing to do but stare at the green land stretching down to the shore, and at the empty sea. The tourists with their blank demanding eyes bothered him. There was such a lack of pattern to everything around him. He could not assimilate this unknown unstoried land.
Linda and her mother talked about the clothes the women wore, and ignored him. He felt panicky as if he was incapable of creating a plot which would incorporate these people, this land. It intruded itself on him in a raw undifferentiated unstylish lumpish mass. The only image he had found was that of the angling tourist in his bright yellow wellingtons. He had been like a strange foreign bird with a yellow beak, pecking in alien waters.
After a while the boat landed at a pier and the whole party left it and entered the grounds of a restaurant. There, fish was being fried in the open air, while the tourists sat round on wooden benches. Ralph and Linda ate their platefuls of fried fish, which was delicious, in a hostile silence.
“Listen,” said Linda fiercely. “You’re an élitist, that’s what’s wrong with you. You never act spontaneously. You’re always afraid of making a fool of yourself.” That was how she felt about him. His face and head were like those of the Romans who had glared out of the stone among the roses, cruel, remorseless, eyes in stony sockets immune to pain. He glanced at his mother-in-law’s labyrinth of varicose veins, rivers which gathered in blue knots, failed aqueducts. And even as he did so she said that she wished to go to the toilet and Linda took her by the arm. The body, how weak, how contingent it was; we carried it about with us with its smell of mortality. Only the soul was unchanging, triumphant. He put the bones beside him on the plate. He looked out towards the sea in search of seagulls but there were none to be seen. He had hardly seen any since coming to Yugoslavia.
In the quiet of the evening, as the ship made its way back, he was still angry. He and his mother and Linda drank Yugoslav brandy and slowly became tiddly. The Scots sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’, people formed a ring on the deck, the humble accordionist played as best he could, his soft sweaty face smiling continually. Paper hats were given out and Linda wore hers at a swaggering angle. In a strange way Ralph felt as if he was going home, as the sun slanted across the water which was pure and simple and beyond the boundaries and margins and legends of particular nations.
Ralph suddenly conceded that he had been jealous.
“Who of?” said Linda amazedly. “Surely not of that man from Glasgow.”
So they made up, in the tranquillity of the moving seascape. It was one of those moments which in the nature of things can’t last, harmonious, satiated. Clouds burned in the west. For that moment Scandinavians, Germans, Scots, were together in the mournful inaccurately played music, and as they climbed on to the pier when they had reached their destination it was as if each was leaving a friend behind. In their rakish pirate caps they emerged on to the grey quay.
They walked into the hotel and to a late dinner. The Grahams were still at their table. Ralph found that he could speak to them quite easily through his haze of brandy. He was not aware that he and Linda were laughing very loudly as they told the story of their day.
“So it’s mishmash again,” they said, looking down at their plates, and they laughed loudly. Graham told them of a man who, while they had been away, had been found trying to smash his morning roll with a hammer; he had been sitting like a workman on the stair.
This image produced more immoderate laughter. Everything suddenly became dramatic, enjoyable, larger than life. Even the waiter smiled at them and spoke in broken English. “Scotland,” he said and smiled radiantly. If only, thought Ralph suddenly, we could speak to each other, each of us, beyond language, seeing through souls and bodies as if they were bones of fish.
The Grahams told of another man who had broken his false teeth on one of the morning rolls, and who had gone off in search of a dentist, past workmen driving the yellow dinosaur beaks of excavators. Everywhere apparently there was building and rebuilding. Yugoslavia was creating a world for tourists to live in and hiding behind it. Where were its songs, its own myths? The man who had broken his false teeth waited for hours outside an office and had finally left in disgust.
Suddenly a German woman, stern and thin, leaned over towards their table and said, “Too loud, too loud. Louden laughter.” Linda said, “Guten morgen, Sourpussen,” and smiled at her brilliantly, as if she were paying her a compliment. The Grahams smiled. Graham took out his wallet and recited his itinerary for the following day.
Suddenly Ralph felt deflated again. The bloody German woman. It occurred to him for the first time that he had taken too much to drink, that in the glow of the brandy he was behaving like a hoodlum
, that he was the image of the Scotsman who had sung and danced on the boat.
He heard an English voice saying, “They haven’t made the landing yet. They’re sitting ducks. What are they waiting for?”
The Hermes was out in the water, distant, aloof, an apparently impregnable castle towards which enemy missiles were heading, vulnerable just the same. In that harsh sweating weather the ships heaved far from home. Even the water underneath was unsafe. The missiles like fish searched and homed, sped through the sea. No, not even the Hermes was safe.
“We’re going to Venice tomorrow,” said Graham.
“Oh. I’m sure you’ll like that.”
“We leave at eight in the morning.” His wife and mother smiled. They had it all prepared.
Ralph heard one Scotswoman saying to another one, “That’s white they should dae. Have hydrofoils on the Clyde. Fancy that, eh?” And she bared her teeth and laughed. “Only the weather’s no sae guid.”
The tall waiter in his white jacket stopped at their table. “Glasgow,” he said, and put his fingers to his lips, “Mm.” He blew a kiss as if in a melodramatic opera.
“That was the best day yet,” said Linda, sighing and removing her pirate hat as they took the lift to their floor.
Later, Linda washed some of their clothes and hung them out on the balcony to dry. They padded in bare feet about their room. Down below they could see people sitting at tables drinking slowly and calmly in the gathering darkness.
“Forgive me?” said Linda.
“Of course.”
Ralph did not feel at all disoriented in the glow of the brandy. Objects seemed to be in their correct places. Nevertheless he took a sleeping pill as usual, washing it down with water lest it burn his throat.
One of the things that bothered Ralph was that his bone tiredness, which he had now felt for a long time, months, perhaps years, was not melting away in the hot sun. On the contrary it seemed to grow heavier and heavier and though he slept on the bed in the afternoons and had another long sleep at night it remained. There were flashes too of something worse than tiredness, a feeling of the essential meagreness of reality, of its superficial nature, as if it were composed of sun beating on rock, and the human soul itself were a tourist. Books no longer protected him from the barrenness of a world without myth, without story, which belonged to a language that he didn’t understand.
In the Middle of the Wood Page 9
