After the Rain

by John Bowen

  “Naturally. It will be a secret we shall share with the god.”

  Yes.

  “You may go now, Mr. Clarke.”

  As I left the temple for the second time, I was not shaking, not sweating, not sick at the stomach. Only my face was flushed, my ears red; I felt a disinclination to talk to any of the others in the cabin. I walked straight past without looking at them, and went out on to the deck to be by myself for a while; I was beginning to wonder what I could say to Sonya, either now or in the future. Now that I thought I was alone, I raised my glance from the ground, and there was Tony, sitting in Hunter’s fishing-seat, and staring thoughtfully at the water. He looked round as I approached. “Been chewing you up, has he?” he said. “It’s a fair carry-on, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s funny—Arthur.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “Well, you know—I mean, all this stuff. Being god and then not being god and all. You never know where you are with him.”

  “Don’t you believe in it then?” I said slowly.

  Tony grinned. I noticed for the first time how light and clear his eyes were. “Don’t know much about it really,” he said. “I mean, I can never tell what you’re all talking about.”

  “But you always do what you’re told. You never…. You’ve never attempted…. I’m only one who’s ever tried——”

  “Well, he is the gaffer, isn’t he?” Tony said. “I mean, you have to do what he tells you. He’s clever, you know. I mean, all the things he thinks of. And it’s not as if he did any harm with being a god and all. If that’s what he likes, good luck to him.”

  “No harm? What about Wesley Otterdale?”

  “You mean, like that Muriel thinks Arthur pushed him over?”

  “Yes.”

  He grinned again. “She can think that if she wants to; she gets a kick out of it, I’d say. But Arthur was inside with us when Wesley went overboard; you know that. It was you let go of him, and he got washed away, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then?”

  I was silent. “Look,” Tony said, “I didn’t say I didn’t believe in it like.”

  “You said——”

  “I said I didn’t know. It’s not my business, see? Religion and that, it’s always been sort of—sort of above me really. Not that I’d do anything wrong. I mean—” For the first time since I had known him, Tony was trying to explain a point of view. It was not easy for him, but he persisted. “Right and wrong,” he said, “they’ve got a lot to do with religion of course. Like murder’s wrong, f’ rinstance, only it would be wrong anyway, whether the Bible said so or not. And grassing on your friends, now, that’s wrong, and the Bible doesn’t say nothing about that at all. But adultery and that. Well, I mean, people do that all the time.”

  “Do they?” I said.

  “Well, you know they do. I mean, you and Sonn—you aren’t married.”

  It was as if he had broken a dam. All my guilt and self-doubt, which had been growing ever since I had fallen in so readily with Arthur’s suggestion, were now added to the jealousy and suspicion that had already gone rotten inside me, and both came flowing out. I took three steps towards Tony, and laid one hand on his arm, thrusting my face close to his. “You should know, shouldn’t you?” I said. “You should bloody well know.”

  “Eh?”

  “You don’t know anything about it, do you, you smug sanctified right-thinking bastard? Arthur and what he does to us, that’s none of your business. You just do what’s right. We can destroy ourselves up here. And as long as you do your bloody exercises every day, and f——away to your heart’s content in the hold——”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No, Sonya and I aren’t married. So it’s all right, isn’t it? And even if we were married, it’d be all right because everyone does it, don’t they? And I … I can’t even kill you because I’m not strong enough. Maybe I ought to do some bloody exercises.”

  I was weeping quite freely now, and the tears ran down my cheeks, and splashed on Tony’s bare shoulders. He stared at me, his mind taking in my meaning slowly, as it always did. “Me and Sonn?” he said. “Down there? What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Did you think I didn’t know what you did down there? Everybody knew. The whole bloody lot of them knew. Muriel. Arthur. I heard them talking about it. Laughing. Just because we weren’t—And you were bigger, so I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t even prove it.”

  “Did Sonn say we——?”

  “She wouldn’t say you didn’t.”

  “You fool!” Tony said. “You don’t know nothing, do you?” He turned his face away from me, and looked out over the water. His voice was constrained. “I can’t, if you want to know,” he said, “I just can’t. I haven’t been able to for I don’t know how long.”

  “You can’t what?” I said. I had stopped weeping. “What do you mean—you can’t?”

  “I just can’t; that’s all. I don’t know why it is. If it was anyone else, it’d be funny. I never used to be like this. The boys used to call me a sex maniac. It wasn’t healthy. That’s one of the reasons I took up body-building, see?—to take my mind off sex, like. And after a bit, it worked. I found I wasn’t … interested no more. I thought it was the exercise done it, and being so tired when I come home from the gym. And then I won all them prizes, and had my picture on the cover of Health and Strength, and all the girls was after me, and then when I did want to, I just couldn’t.”

  I began to feel foolish, and took my hand from Tony’s arm. He kept his face averted from me, but even in the moonlight I could tell that he was blushing.

  “I’ve tried,” he said. “Over and over. They won’t believe it at first. They think I must be queer or something. You know how it is with some of them photographers, always wanting you to strip off and all, but somehow I couldn’t fancy that.”

  He seemed close to tears. I said, “I’m sorry, Tony.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I’ve been … I’m sorry.”

  “Being a father, I expect,” Tony said, “it takes people funny ways. They talk about women getting fancies and all that, but I——”

  “A father.” All the tension went out of my legs, and I began to fall.

  Tony caught me, and lowered me to the deck. “You all right?” he said.

  “I don’t think I can get up.”

  “You sick or something? I’ll get Arthur.”

  “No.” I sat there, looking at him. I felt rather liquid inside, but quite calm. I said, “Tony, will you help us get away?”

  “Leave, you mean? You and Sonn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll die. No food or nothing. What d’you want to leave for?”

  “We have to. Arthur says the god needs a sacrifice. He says that’s why it came out of the sea. He says it wants a life—something new and unblemished. He says that when Sonya’s baby is born, I have to help him sacrifice it to the god.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I would.”

  There was a long silence. “You must be bloody mad,” Tony said, and went indoors.

  He went straight into the temple. He didn’t even knock. When Arthur saw him, he put on the frowning mask quickly. “Hee ha—” he said, and then Tony pulled it off him. “Bloody kids’ stuff,” Tony said.

  Arthur reached behind the pillow of the bunk, and brought out a kitchen knife, sharpened at the point and at both edges; it was his sacrificial knife. With this he stabbed at Tony, cutting his shoulder. Tony put his hand to the wound, which was bleeding. “Christ!” he said. He reached out for Arthur, but Arthur dodged, and went backwards quickly through the door and into the main cabin. “Stop him,” he said. “He is attacking the high priest.”

  Muriel began to move, but Tony said, “The first one that comes near
me will get her face bashed in. This loony wants to kill little kids.”

  Arthur said, “Mr. Clarke had no right to say anything about it. He promised to tell nobody.”

  Tony said, “Well, he told me.”

  Everyone in the cabin remained where he was, and watched Tony and Arthur. Arthur still had the knife, and Tony did not try to look for a weapon, but kept his gaze on Arthur, and came steadily towards him. Arthur backed through the cabin door, and went out on deck. Tony followed him. On the bare deck, the two began to circle around one another.

  As for me, I was still sitting there. All the strength seemed to have left me, and had been replaced by peace of spirit. I was quite content to watch. If Arthur were to kill Tony, I supposed I should have to fight. But I hoped that Tony would kill Arthur.

  It seemed as if they would circle for ever. Whenever Tony lunged at Arthur, then Arthur would cut at him with the knife, and Tony would have to dodge. Arthur, on the other hand, did not dare to pass first at Tony, for fear that Tony would catch his wrist. “You will all be helpless without me,” he said.

  Nobody replied.

  Tony was the heavier, but Arthur was the cleverer. He had manœuvred Tony into a position in which Tony had the closer edge of the raft at his back. Slowly they approached that edge. I said clearly, “You’d better be careful, Tony, or you’ll be over.” For a moment, Tony relaxed his attention to glance behind him, and Arthur seized the opportunity to close.

  He stabbed for the neck, but misjudged, and the blow went lower. In the bright moonlight, Tony’s blood was black, staining his chest. He had caught Arthur’s wrist, and the two struggled together, poised on the edge of the raft. Then they both fell into the water. There was a swirl and a snap, and a single shriek from Arthur, but the attendant sharks gave him no time for last words. Tony made no sound whatever.

  I stood up, and went to Sonya. She said, “Tony! Poor Tony!” put her arms around my neck, and wept freely. I guided her gently indoors, and put her to bed in the temple, spending the night on the floor beside her bunk. The others slept on deck.

  In the morning, Banner woke us. “You can see land ahead,” he said. “I think it’s an island. There are trees and everything.”

  *

  And so we came to land at last, and to a land that was green, luxuriant and fruitful—the Promised Land of the New Society, Arthur would have called it, but we made no such speculations, and simply set about the business of keeping alive. Arthur’s last words, “You will be helpless without me,” were not justified by experience. We had been helpless with him, but without him we had to help ourselves.

  It was as if our time on the raft had been a long process of recession. We had begun as ordinary, grown-up intelligent human beings, and slowly self-doubt, the habit of self-justification, jealousy, possessiveness, all the ordinary human faults had destroyed us. I myself with my tigers and my need to feel intellectually superior; Muriel with her special position, first as Arthur’s spy and then as the woman possessed by the god; Hunter who had run away from any commitment to society before the Flood, and who continued to run away even from our small society on board the raft; Harold and Gertrude, whose ideals were vitiated by doubt and lack of purpose; even Sonya, whose candidness and trust my jealousies destroyed.

  But Tony had not been worried by doubts. His horizons were not large; his ambitions were limited. He performed the simple discipline of his exercises; he gave to other people a wide tolerance and respect; he made no moral judgements outside the simple estimate of right and wrong that he applied to himself. Tony was not a noble savage. On the contrary, he fitted very well into a society, asking no more than that it should give him work to do, respect his privacy, and not require him to do anything that he believed to be wrong. He had the simplicity that we think of as childish, but on the raft it was the rest of us who had become as demanding as children, as parasitic, as spiteful, as uncertain. We had moved back, unknowing, making the long journey into childishness as, also without our knowing, the raft had been borne steadily along by the current towards the island.

  When he went overboard, Tony left us an example, and by taking Arthur with him, he lifted from us an incubus. We have profited from both.

  About the Author

  John Bowen was born in India, sent ‘home’ to England at the age of four and a half, and was reared by aunts. He served in the Indian Army from 1943–47, then went to Oxford to read Modern History. After graduating he spent a year in the USA as a Fulbright Scholar, much of it hitch-hiking. He worked for a while in glossy journalism, then in advertising, before turning freelance when the BBC commissioned a six-part adventure-serial for children’s television. Between 1956 and 1965 he published six novels to excellent reviews and modest sales, then forsook the novel for nineteen years to concentrate on writing television drama (Heil Caesar, Robin Redbreast) and plays for the stage (After the Rain, Little Boxes, The Disorderly Women). He returned to writing novels in 1984 with The McGuffin; there were four more thereafter. Reviewers have likened his prose to that of Proust and P. G. Wodehouse, of E. M. Forster and the young John Buchan: it may be fair to say that he resists compartmentalisation. He has worked as a television producer for both the BBC and ITV, directed plays at Hampstead and Pitlochry and taught at the London Academy of Dramatic Art. He lives in a house on a hill among fields between Banbury and Stratford-on-Avon.

  Copyright

  Faber Finds edition first published in 2008

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  All rights reserved

  © John Bowen, 1958

  The right of John Bowen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–30512–4