Arrows of Desire

by Geoffrey Household

‘And do you bring her an offering?’

  ‘Always. I offer myself. That is what beauty means.’

  ‘And nothing over for a moon goddess?’

  For hour after hour their enchanted bodies clung together until birds came down to drink, undisturbed, in the cold light of dawn. Humphrey murmured, ‘Thea! Thea!’, no words of endearment being as absolute as her name.

  ‘Yes, my darling.’

  ‘Were you awake?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t.’

  ‘I have been wondering about ethnology … well, scientists …’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘When I was a boy I used to poke woodlice with a pin to see how fast they could run.’

  ‘How horrid of you!’

  ‘So I sympathised. Your curiosity, I mean. I don’t want you ever to feel …’

  ‘I think primitive man is just as stupid as civilised. And I am going back to the house.’

  ‘What I am trying to say is …’

  ‘Let me go at once, Humphrey!’

  ‘No, I won’t ever. I love you. I love you so much that I don’t want you to feel any duty to me. That’s all I was trying to say. Come to me out of your world when you can and leave me when you must. I am here always, always for you.’

  ‘Humphrey, stop it!’

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because you said all that before I could.’

  The birds all rose and perched or looked for seeds around the bank of grass at the pool’s edge. They gave an impression of feathered naturalists who had been watching the long and complex mating of the human animal and had now decided that for this dawn it was all over. What had disturbed their observation was the powerful and impatient voice of the Dowager somewhere at the end of the blank avenue, threatening aggression.

  ‘Humphrey! Humphrey! Where the devil is the boy?’

  Only extreme urgency could have brought her out of bed before the sun. Telling Thea to take cover in case his mother started to battle through the bushes, Humphrey reached for his long leather jacket and vanished on a roundabout route to appear behind the Dowager as innocently as a dog with a bad conscience.

  ‘And what are you up to?’ she demanded. ‘Nothing caught fire is there?’

  ‘Just botany, mamma. I enjoy a little quick research before the day’s work begins. Cross-fertilisation and that sort of thing. We have to contribute to science.’

  ‘Do we? Damn it, only last year I sent the High Commissioner your grandfather’s commode. And where are your trousers?’

  ‘A precaution, mamma. The pollen sticks to them.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t you hear me yelling my head off? That Pezulu Pasha has just flown in. Landed at the bottom of the avenue. And what I’ve got to say to him he won’t forget in a hurry.’

  ‘Do you think he ought to know that his Corrector came down here?’

  Humphrey had learned in early youth always to ask his mother’s advice before telling her what to do.

  ‘Eh? What’s that? You’re very often right, Humphrey. Just like your grandfather! Of course he shouldn’t know. What about that girl? She’ll give the whole show away.’

  ‘If I were you, I should let her go on sleeping till breakfast, mamma. She has quite enough of Tito Pezulu at home.’

  ‘Ethnology! Pah! Any nice legends this morning, mum? And put your trousers on at once, Humphrey!’

  She strode off to greet the Chief of Police. Humphrey, stuck with the choice of reaching the house unseen in a dash for trousers or wasting time in returning to the pool, was still wavering when Thea rose unexpectedly from a screen of impenetrable hollies alongside the avenue.

  ‘Here they are,’ she said. ‘My Lord of Middlesex never noticed that he hadn’t put them on, and I thought he might need them.’

  ‘The Lord of Middlesex was busy with other matters, and is desolate to see that one lovely breast has been scratched in his service.’

  ‘Could you manage to kiss it better while doing up that belt?’ she suggested, and added after a short interval: ‘I shouldn’t give the whole thing away.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t. But Tito Pezulu charges in so blindly. Silence won’t stop him, only emptiness. Like a bull which knows I am in the grass, but can’t see me.’

  ‘Will Brown be safe?’

  ‘Yes. He and George make a good team. If one can’t the other can.’

  ‘He’s the only immigrant I ever met who is as British as you.’

  ‘My sweet, there’s no resemblance at all between his Britain and mine.’

  ‘How much is there between my father’s Thea and yours?’

  ‘We can’t both love different human beings.’

  ‘No. That’s it.’

  ‘But all old Brown thinks about are Laws of Nelson and self-government. Nothing essential and very dangerous. What does it matter who makes the kindly rules for welfare units and factories?’

  ‘You’re the only person who could make him see it. A woman dreams her lover-to-be,’ Thea insisted vaguely, ‘and when he really is her lover she knows at once whether her dreams are true.’

  ‘I’ve seen men adored who had no more character than a pint pot full of lies and water.’

  ‘But their women know it.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me, then?’

  ‘That now I am sure. The you which quickens me and all your world would have the same effect on my world.’

  The Dowager’s voice, winging triumphantly through her own grey dawn, reached them before Pezulu’s more obsequious responses. Thea vanished behind the screen of hollies.

  Tito Pezulu was dressed for adventure in high boots and a dark green smock, its pockets stuffed with cartridges.

  ‘How are you, Middlesex? Fun at night and up with the lark! It’s never too early or too late for you. Alcohol and exercise – that’s the life.’

  It was not a reputation of which the Dowager approved.

  ‘He is educating himself, Pasha, all the time. It’s botany now – going around with a little paint brush interfering with laws of nature.’

  Humphrey, however, assumed the male heartiness expected, which was invariably effective in avoiding the personal questions of curious academicians from the Federation.

  ‘Too early for a drink, Pasha, do you think? Beer for breakfast?’

  ‘I can’t stop for breakfast, old boy. You’ll have to forgive me. Just one little enquiry and I’m off.’

  ‘Well, let’s sit down on this tree trunk. Mamma, would you ask Guelph to bring us out a flask of your old sloe gin?’

  The Dowager left them, giving to Pezulu the least ceremonious of the curtsies required by protocol.

  ‘How’s His Excellency’s daughter?’ Pezulu asked.

  ‘Very devoted to her profession.’

  ‘A pity for a little honey like that, isn’t it? We could think of something better for her to do, eh?’

  ‘For us it is so difficult to get over our racial prejudices. And His Excellency?’

  ‘Tired. Very tired. If only he had trusted me to deal with all that scum, they would never have dared to raise their heads. But it’s all over now. You’re going to have this country to yourselves again.’

  ‘We shall be very sorry to lose you and the High Commissioner.’

  ‘Always courteous. Wonderful chaps you are. And what I like is that your faces are all so different. Now, it’s bound to take time to ship all the welfare units back to Africa, and meanwhile we shall have to ask you not to entertain individuals.’

  ‘I quite see that. Stands to reason.’

  ‘Now do tell me – what happened to that Corrector?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry about him, Pasha. I told him not to camp in Brentford marshes. George is over there now, collecting the shreds.’

  ‘Brentford marshes?’

  ‘The Inspector of Missions.’

  ‘My Corrector, I said.’

  ‘Did I give him a permit?’

  Pezulu
explained in patronisingly simple language that it was automatic and could fly and hover. He omitted all details of how it worked, for he was not too sure himself.

  ‘It was following the terrorist, Alfred Brown,’ he went on. ‘Its last reported position was very close to your house. It homed on Brown and my superintendent is certain he saw him on the screen just before the thermocouple melted.’

  ‘It caught fire?’

  ‘It can’t catch fire. Bits of it melted.’

  Melted. Humphrey’s line of attack lay wide open. Tito Pezulu, though fearless on his own ground, was ready to half-believe any good story – invented as a rule by George and allowed to leak over the border – of improbable tigers descended from zoo escapes in the Age of Destruction, or of the blackest witchcraft.

  ‘No flames,’ Humphrey said thoughtfully. ‘Heat transfers … tele-something they call it … Oh, not again! Those old virgins can’t be at it again. Mamma assured me that they had given up sacrifice.’

  ‘Sacrifice? I never knew …’

  ‘We don’t talk about it. No, if I thought that was the explanation, I’d tell you. You’re wasted in the police. Nobody understands us as you do.’

  Pezulu accepted the compliment complacently, saying that years of experience counted, as he was always telling His Excellency who had the grave fault of seeing two sides to every question. One should give an order and have it obeyed.

  ‘I never give any. I know what they want and they know what I want. And it works.’

  ‘Look here, old boy. I don’t want to press you about my Corrector.’

  ‘Oh, that. But it’s too absurd and wicked! Anyway, this Brown could not have survived. The wild cattle and the hungry lynx. And those pits going down into God knows what underground. Even I don’t go there. And then in the Chiltern Hills there are whole colonies of our fierce native adder.’

  Pezulu shivered involuntarily. Adders were unthinkable.

  ‘But the Federation has nature reserves in Africa.’

  ‘By God, we cleared all the snakes out of them! This nothingness full of everything is the most sinister place I have ever …’

  ‘That’s why it isn’t wise to frighten my people with things like Correctors.’

  Pezulu glanced behind him. Nothing was there but the dark hollies fighting each other for space, and in front the first shadows of tall timber wriggling across the avenue.

  ‘I – I love a long chat with you,’ he said. ‘But what are you getting at?’

  ‘Myself, I’m very careful not to offend the Virgins of the Sun.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Perhaps they are called something else in the Federation. When the sun was seen again after the fog of the Age of Destruction, they claimed to have brought it back by sacrifice. And mother to daughter the tradition carries on.’

  ‘What the hell have they got to do with my Corrector?’

  ‘It’s true that they’d be more interested in you. But of course you were all right so long as my mother was with you. That unaccountable heat made me think that … but I don’t see how. The only corpse they would work with died two days ago. Not fresh enough, you see.’

  From the hollies came a faint, eerie, sobbing howl. Pezulu grabbed Humphrey’s arm and stammered a question.

  ‘Ssh! We must keep our heads,’ Humphrey whispered. ‘The sun will be up in a minute.’

  He had a feeling that he had overdone it. That lynxlike wail – where on earth had Thea heard it? – was far too profane for the ancient mysteries of the Virgins of the Sun. He was saved from changing course by Guelph’s footsteps navigating the undergrowth as lightly as if his pads were furred. Pezulu clung still more closely until Guelph appeared carrying a black bottle on a silver tray without any glasses. With a formal bow which suggested a long tradition behind it, he offered the bottle to the visitor who seized it and tipped a long draught down his throat. Pezulu opened his eyes wide and collapsed very gradually as his knees gave way.

  ‘We ought to have warned him, Guelph. And before breakfast too! Well, it won’t do him any harm.’

  ‘The Dowager may have foreseen what would happen when she told me to present the bottle with no glasses. Shall I have him put in the sickroom?’

  ‘Yes, Guelph, and see that he is surrounded by luxury and deference. Call him about midday with beer and a devilled partridge.’

  Guelph bent his back and Humphrey lifted Pezulu, still smiling, into position.

  With Guelph and his burden out of the way, Thea burst out of the hollies.

  ‘That was very impulsive,’ Humphrey said. ‘He might have fired at the bogey.’

  ‘I think it was disgraceful discussing me in that way,’ she retorted.

  ‘Oh, my racial prejudices!’

  ‘Don’t you dare laugh at me! It was not funny. A man of taste should be able to put Pezulu in his place without that.’

  ‘On my way to the outer world?’

  She was silent, but did not withdraw her hand when he kissed it. Then suddenly she asked him desperately:

  ‘Humphrey, would you love me more if I were fair?’

  He held the face of his moon goddess between his hands, saying softly:

  ‘I cannot see what flowers are at my feet

  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs

  But in embalmed darkness …’

  He stretched his hands apart so that her hair poured over his bent head.

  ‘ … guess each sweet

  Wherewith the seasonable mouth endows

  The grass, the thicket.’

  ‘What strange, lovely old English! Is that from the anthology?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Just a torn page from what was once a book. But how did you discover the anthology?’

  ‘The immigrants have it too.’

  ‘Do they? That’s one of so many things I did not know.’

  Chapter VII

  Humphrey stood at the edge of the forest, watching the tiresome neatness of Avebury and the white Residency on its little hill. He was too far away to notice in detail the emptiness of the streets and the closed gates of the factories, but even so there was a perception of stillness as if the town, that exotic and bustling imposition upon his Britain, was asleep. Thea had persuaded him to visit Avebury and to feel for some of those things he did not know – to poke it in fact as he had poked his woodlice to see how fast they could run – but it was no time for poking. He liked Pretorius and had occasionally made a courtesy call on the Residency, talking genially of nothing, asking nothing and going away. He had never interfered with the policy of the Federation or indeed showed much interest. Thea had told him that he would have the same effect on her world as on his own. He did not believe it.

  No, it was not Thea but Alfred Brown who was responsible for his ride to the frontier, this damned Brown who had had the courage to throw himself upon the mercy of the forbidden forest. He had come as a guest to ask for help and patronage which could not be refused to any of his own native Britons. Why then should it be refused to a wretched welfare unit? No answer. So it was dishonourable to stand there hesitating, especially since Guelph had accompanied him and was looking for a lead. Anyway Brown was plainly innocent. A less likely terrorist could not be imagined.

  On the open hillside facing his cover were two groups of immigrants, one lying down on the grass, either exhausted or at peace, another group further away, apparently arguing and gesticulating, among whom he recognised that intolerable crook, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his arrogant purple uniform and frock coat. Nothing could exhibit more pretentiously the sham of their stupid nationalism.

  The three spread out on the grass were near enough for him to hear something of what they were saying. Poor devils, they had been through the massacre on the terrace of the Residency and, at a guess, had stumbled out of hospital into the soft, healing air. One was grey and wasted, either from hunger or haemorrhage. Another stretched out a leg in plaster. The third had a bandage over the lower part of his face,
and his speech, what little they could hear of it, was a muffled growl; he often raised himself on his elbows, looking enviously along the line of the forest and out between a pair of tall stones which framed the rolling down of Avebury.

  ‘The wife and I used to picnic up here,’ Hungry said.

  They nodded approval. Leg remarked that he was thankful to be alive.

  ‘Yes, me too. But it’s queer that one can’t die of sorrow.’

  They thought that over in silence until Bandaged Jaw, remembering latent desires which daily life had frustrated, grumbled passionately and almost distinctly:

  ‘I ought … to have spent more time … looking.’

  ‘You don’t know your luck till you have to leave it,’ Leg said. ‘There’s a bit of hill above Benghazi which will always remind me of this.’

  ‘The grass … is … different.’

  It was the first time that Humphrey and Guelph had seen the results of armed rebellion. They were well used to accepting the normal run of accidents and death inseparable from their ancient freedom, but this resignation of the wounded seemed to call for pity and help.

  ‘Good morning, chaps! Anything we can do for you?’ Humphrey asked as they joined the group.

  ‘Morning! Lovely day after the rain,’ Leg answered.

  ‘Very good for the roots.’

  ‘Mine are dead.’

  The other three, further along the hillside, walked over to inspect the new arrivals.

  ‘Good Lord! It’s a couple of natives!’ Smith exclaimed.

  Green said that there could be a story in it if they had time.

  ‘Ah, Middlesex, you come upon us in a sad moment, a melancholy hour,’ the Chancellor greeted him.

  ‘I’m told it’s the best time of year in the Mediterranean.’

  ‘And in our hearts we shall carry Britain with us. My lambs, for the sake of your children, treasure these last days!’

  ‘And leave it to you to tell ’em lies about why poor bloody Daddy has a wooden leg,’ said Leg, turning away.

  ‘I shall tell them that he gave his all. More he had not.’

  ‘All. Not the half of it!’ Smith declaimed. ‘Is my spirit broken? Is yours? Never! The Federation is going to deport us. They are going to end what they call their generous experiment. Good! But before that we will have given them death in the darkness, death in their houses, death wherever a man walks alone.’