After the Rain

by John Bowen

  “It is the mark of the rational man,” Arthur said, “that he is prepared to change his mind. The man who never changes his mind is the man who has ceased thinking. I despise such a man.” At once I felt myself to be the man who never changed his mind and was despised by Arthur. Banner coughed and moved uneasily in his seat. The rest were silent. Arthur said, “An attitude to life and to the problems of human society can be no more than a hypothesis. As more facts are discovered, the hypothesis is modified. Perhaps it is discarded altogether in favour of another hypothesis. I hope everyone here will agree with me.”

  The silence continued. Finally I said, “Yes, Arthur.”

  Arthur said, “I have been thinking about the value of myth. We are, after all, in a mythological situation. Our descendants will remember us, not simply as the haphazard survivors of a great catastrophe, but as the founders, the chosen, the people who came out of the sea to beget a new race. Indeed, why should they not do so, for that is what we are?”

  “Yes, Arthur.”

  “For their own self-respect as a people, they must remember us as greater than we are. From our loins they will all spring.” (How impossible it was to think of Arthur as having loins!) “We should not wonder then that they may build a little on the facts, that future playwrights and people of the theatre, for instance, should identify their craft with Miss Harrison’s interest in it, that men of muscle should remember Mr. Ryle, that cooks should light a candle to Mr. Clarke. They may remember me as the leader of you all, as the source of all power, all benefits. They may do that. We know, of course, that we are not gods and goddesses, but human beings—although beings specially marked out by Natural Selection for survival—but it may be for the benefit of our descendants that they should believe so.”

  None of the gods and goddesses at the table had the grace to blush. I said, “I’d rather be the god of copy-writing than of cookery, Arthur, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Arthur said, “Now let me approach our situation from another angle. As I see it, the parlour magic with which we have so far experimented cannot be expected to work, because we do not ourselves believe in it. We do not even behave as if we did so. It is, as it were, out of context. We have tried to take over one part of the pattern of life that pertains to a primitive people, while discarding the rest. But if there should be any supernatural forces at all, they do not exist permissively, but pervade the fabric, dictate indeed the circumstances of our everyday life.”

  We were all of us listening with close attention; Hunter, Tony, Muriel and Sonya because, in their own varying degrees, they were not sure what Arthur was talking about; Gertrude and Banner because they were following the course of his argument; myself because I was trying to anticipate it. Arthur wiped his spectacles. “So then,” he said, “we have two situations, very different in kind, both of which, however, lead us to the same way of behaving. On the one hand we have a duty to our descendants to behave in a manner appropriate to the myth in which we are participants. On the other, if we are to solve our immediate difficulties and succeed in raising a wind by supernatural means, we must live in such a way that, if I may allow myself a play on words, the supernatural can come naturally.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “What makes a god?” Arthur said. “Any thinking person will tell you that men make their own gods. They do so by worship. Whatever you worship is God, whether it be a tree, or the sun, or two sticks, or a ring of stones, or a bull, or a lamb, or a river; it does not matter. Simple men worship the things themselves. Complicated men worship the ideas that the things express, or the spirit that infuses the things, but in terms of behaviour it makes very little difference. The behaviour—the ritual, if you prefer—is what matters, because, while interpretations change, the ritual endures. Is that not so, Mr. Banner?”

  “Very largely, Arthur.”

  “Very largely?”

  “Entirely.”

  “Good. It is a problem, then, of behaviour. First, if we wish to raise a wind by magic, we must behave as if we believed in magic, and after a while perhaps we shall believe. Secondly, if we wish our descendants to maintain those high principles with which we ourselves are inspired, we must behave as if those principles had a more than human inspiration.” Arthur looked steadily round the table, his gaze reaching into the shadows cast by the candle flame, and fixing each of us in turn. “You had better begin by worshipping me,” he said. “Some of you may feel at first that I am unworthy of the honour. You must conquer that feeling. It will in any case die with you, while what is recorded of your behaviour will live on as revealed religion. Are there any questions?”

  There were no questions.

  “Very well,” Arthur said, “Mr. Banner, will you give thanks?”

  Banner looked up timidly, and Arthur gave him an encouraging nod. “For what we have just received,” Banner said, “may Arthur make us truly thankful.”

  “That’s right,” Arthur said, “and so I do.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Two Currents

  Tony said he could see fog on the horizon. Fog or smoke.

  I said, “A forest fire perhaps?”

  “Well, you know. It could be a ship burning or something. I mean, we burned——”

  “What did we burn, Mr. Ryle?” Arthur had come out of the cabin to join us.

  Tony was embarrassed. “I don’t want to quarrel with anyone,” he said, “I mean, you knew what you were doing, I don’t deny.”

  “Then do not be led into the sort of remarks in which you might be tempted to deny it. It is unlike you. I fear you have been thinking too much lately. We are all grateful to you for that, of course, but if you allow it to become a habit, it may upset you. Why not tell us exactly what you have seen, if you can put it into words, and leave us to speculate about how it came there?”

  I said, “I’ll take a look. It’s probably only heat haze.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop getting at Tony all the time,” Sonya said, “I’m sick of hearing you.”

  “Miss Banks?”

  “I’m sorry, Arthur. I don’t mean you. You’ve got a right to pick on us if you want to. But I’m tired of the way——”

  Tony said, “That’s all right, Sonn.”

  My throat was dry, and I felt humiliatingly close to tears. I said, “Why don’t you—You’re ready enough to pick on me.” Dislike and envy of Tony combined with a conviction of being treated unfairly to make a pale feeling of unease in my bladder. I moved away, and stared out to sea.

  “Bloody childish,” Sonya said.

  “What do you see, Mr. Clarke?”

  I could see fog. The sun was shining in my eyes, so that it was difficult to get a clear view, but it seemed to me that the distant horizon had lost its curve, and a straight grey wall cut the rim of the world. “It’s a long way away,” I said, “I don’t know if it’ll get any closer.”

  But it did get closer. Slowly the grey wall spread and spread. It gained height and width and the impression of depth. All of us were gathered on deck, staring in the one direction as the long hours passed and the fog wall grew in size. “I do not understand what impels it,” Arthur said. “If there were a wind, surely we should feel some motion of it in our sails. And the fog moves so slowly.”

  Banner said, “I suppose … I suppose we may not be moving towards it? Drift…. sea-drift…. The edge of the world was said to be a place of fogs.”

  I saw Muriel turn the whites of her eyes towards him like a frightened animal. Arthur said, “The world is round.”

  “Yes.”

  Gertrude said, “It is like…. It is a little like Outward Bound. When one makes the crossing between this world and the next….”

  Sonya said, “I saw a picture once about the Niagara Falls. They were all steamy. Marilyn Monroe was in it.”

  “How could we be moving? We have been becalmed. We still are.”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “It’s not another tidal wave at any rate; we ca
n be thankful for that. It’s only fog. It won’t do us any harm.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  Muriel said, “I wish we’d never come. I wish we’d stayed at home. Once we…. We don’t know how thick it is, or anything.”

  Banner said, “After the sun—mist”.

  “Well, it’ll make a change anyway,” Tony said.

  Slowly, slowly we drew nearer. The horizon had long since disappeared. We had thought at first that we could see above the wall—that is, that we could see a top to the fog, above which there was clear sky—but now the fog reached up, infecting the sky with its own greyness.

  A tiny wave chopped sideways at the raft. “This is ridiculous,” Arthur said. “There is no wind to inspire rough water.”

  “Look! What’s happened to the sea?”

  Stretching towards us over the surface of the water, extending for perhaps a mile from the bank of fog, there was a brown discolouration. “It’s poisonous,” Gertrude whispered. “It poisons the water.”

  “Nonsense,” Arthur said, “it is only weed.”

  “We’ve never seen weed before.”

  “We see it now.”

  We drew closer. The weed did not he on the water as an unbroken layer; this was not the Sargasso Sea of the boys’ adventure stories. Nor was it motionless. It was splashed and scattered about as if it had been thrown there, and it seemed to drift steadily, as we were now unmistakeably drifting, towards the wall of fog, there to be caught in some sort of eddy, repelled, and thrown out again. “It seems,” Arthur said, “that we are in a current.” All this time we had been drifting with an enormous body of water, and, having nothing to measure our progress by, had imagined ourselves to be in the same place. We had been motionless, sure enough, but the water in which we lay had a motion of its own.

  The grey wall did not immediately envelop us when we entered it; instead, the experience was as ordinary as walking into low cloud among mountains. First there was the clear air, then an area that was part mist, and then all mist, each stage passing easily into the next. We had fallen silent, and drew a little closer to one another. Suddenly Banner sneezed. “Gesundheit,” I said mechanically. “Thank you,” said Banner. The mist was chilly and damp. “Are we adequately clad for this climate, I wonder,” Arthur said. “Surely we had more clothing when we came aboard?”

  “Your oilskins, Arthur?”

  “No. Blankets.”

  The women scurried into the cabin for blankets. “We look like a lot of Red Indians, I must say,” Sonya said, after we had wrapped them around our shoulders.

  Now we were in the midst of the fog, and could not see even to the other edge of the raft. Behind us there was a sudden flopping sound as something hit the deck. Gertrude sat next to me, and I could feel her jump. Arthur said, “Go and see what it is,” and Hunter padded off in the direction of the sound. When he returned, he was carrying a fish. “Jumped right out of the water,” he said. “Silly little bastard must have lost his way in the fog.”

  “What’s that noise?” Gertrude said. “What’s that noise?” Caught in a swell, the raft rocked violently beneath us, and from somewhere ahead we could hear an angry slap-slap of waves.

  “Well, it’s not a reef or anything,” Hunter said.

  “I wish it were.”

  Arthur said, “Mrs. Otterdale. Miss Harrison! Let go my hands!”

  “I’m frightened.”

  “I must retain my freedom of action.”

  The raft now rocked continuously. Almost without noticing it, we had moved forward along the deck to stare into the fog ahead of us, and now were grouped along the edge. We could see that the water was rough with waves that chopped and slapped at one another like disturbed bath water, though on a rather larger scale. Foam broke on the crests of these waves, shining through the weed that lay everywhere about the surface. Another fish leapt from the water, and landed on the deck between us. It was followed into the air by a long grey body with grasping tentacles; this, baulked of its prey, dropped back again into the sea. Gertrude screamed. “Snakes!” she cried. “Snakes!” and clutched at Arthur.

  “It’s only a squid,” Hunter said.

  Arthur said, “Go inside, ladies.”

  “I can’t,” Muriel said. “If I can’t see, I don’t know what I won’t imagine.”

  “Can’t go in,” Gertrude said, “don’t make us go in.” She moaned again, as new life disturbed the water.

  We were carried onwards, rocked and buffeted by this miniature storm. We had been too long becalmed. I said, “I’m beginning to feel ill. I’m sorry.” Sonya said, “Oh God!” and moved away, and Arthur said, “Lean over the edge if you want to be sick, Mr. Clarke.”

  Now the long overture was over. We had become involved in something bigger than CinemaScope, Cinerama, or Todd-AO. The mists moved apart like a gauze curtain, and in the diffused light of the sun, the sea exploded into life. The whole natural cycle of hunt and be hunted was taking place before us at once. Tiny fish, which had come to feed on the weed and whatever organisms lived in it, were themselves pursued by larger fish, which were pursued by the squid, which were pursued by larger fish yet. They filled not only the surface of the water, but the air above the surface, and we saw, I will swear, fish that ate and were eaten in the space of a single leap. Thump, thump went the fishes on the deck of the raft. Little squid, the size of a hand, flew through the air like gulls. Porpoise and marlin broke water and submerged, their bodies gleaming like Baby Austins. And the fish screamed; I do not know the cause—whether trapped air was expelled from envelopes in their bodies or whether fish do indeed communicate in this way—but to us it seemed that they screamed, a thin shrill sound like boiling lobsters in a pot, mixed with a deeper grunting sound and with the foaming and slap of the waves.

  To this noise the women added. There are those to whom a bat in the hair, a mouse running up the leg, are the end of terror. Could such a one imagine herself wearing a squid like a stole, its tentacles draped for a moment across her back and shoulders, its discharge of black ink discolouring her skin? It did not help Gertrude that Hunter shouted at her, “They’re harmless. It’s all right; they’re quite harmless.” She screamed, and kept on screaming. “Arthur!” she cried again and again, “Arthur! Save me, Arthur! You promised,” until Muriel, whose jealousy overmastered her own fear, pulled off the squid, and struck at her, shouting, “He’s mine. You’re not to. You keep off him.”

  Sonya had backed against the cabin wall, and stood there stiffly, holding her hands over her belly to protect it; the child (if it were mine) would now be almost six months old. I felt sick, but felt also that I should be with her. I stumbled towards her, and the lurching of the raft flung me against the wall by her side. “Can’t you leave me alone without bashing into me?” she shouted above the noise. “You know I only want to be left alone.” I looked for Tony. He was with Hunter, filling buckets and pots with the fish that fell on the deck.

  Muriel and Gertrude were on their knees now by Arthur, tugging at his blanket. I returned to the edge of the raft to be sick. One of the silly waves broke over my legs. It was ice cold, and, with the surprise, I almost slipped, and would have fallen overboard. “It’s cold,” I shouted, “it’s cold.” Nobody took any notice. I made my way to Arthur, and bellowed at him, “The water’s gone cold. It used to be warm, and now it’s icy.” “Mr. Clarke, Mr. Banner,” Arthur said. “Get rid of these women.”

  Banner took Gertrude by the arm. “Come on,” he said. “Come on,” and pulled. But Gertrude shook him off, and Muriel scratched my cheek when I tried to grasp her. “You’re God,” she shouted to Arthur. “You’re God. You told us. Make it stop.” I said, “Don’t be silly. He didn’t mean us to take him seriously,” but Muriel cried, “God! God! Make it stop,” and soon Gertrude joined in.

  “Let go your hands then,” Arthur said. “Take your hands from my robe.”

  The two women stopped clutching at the blanket, although they remained kneeling, re
sting their hams on the backs of their legs. Arthur indicated to Banner that we should kneel also, and we did. He seemed to think that this was enough. Holding the ends of the blanket in his hands, he spread his arms like wings, stood for a while with his wings spread, and then folded them forwards. “By virtue of the powers vested in me as God,” he said, “I command you to stop.” Nothing happened. Arthur spread his wings to the side again, and flapped them commandingly. “Waters!” he said. “Stop this nonsense. I command it.” At once the fog closed in on us again. Whether it absorbed the sound, or whether the sound itself had ceased I do not know, but certainly we could no longer hear the fish screaming. “Go forth, and feel the water, Mr. Clarke,” Arthur said, “and tell me also what you see there.” I leaned over the edge of the raft while Banner held my legs. There was still plenty of weed, but the fish no longer enlivened it. The little waves were less violent; I had to wait before one came along that was high enough to wet my hand. “It’s warm again,” I said. “We’re back to normal.” “God be praised,” Banner said, hauling me back. I nudged him sharply. “God Arthur be praised, that is,” he said. Arthur allowed his blanket wings to fall again from his shoulders like a robe. “We shall go in now,” he said. “There is nothing more to do here.”

  By next morning there was no sign of the place where the currents had met, and we were becalmed in bright sunlight as before. But among the fish that swam in around and beneath the raft, we saw for the first time the broad jaws and triangular fins of sharks and the little striped pilot fish that led them in their search for food.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Climax

  “Harold?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you want a game?”

  “Can’t. I’ve got to take the god his lunch.”

  “I’ll wait then.”

  “All right.”

  We had drawn out a draughts board and a halma board with charcoal on the deck of the raft. Gertrude and Banner spent much time in playing. They used Glub Cushions for men, and kept a running score in blurred charcoal marks, over which they argued frequently.