[Revolutions 03] The Newton Letter

by John Banville

  “Given it up?” Charlotte said. With her sorrowing eyes, pale heart-shaped face, those hands, she might have stepped out of a Cranach garden of dark delights.

  “Like Newton,” I said. “He gave up too.”

  “Did he?”

  “It’s not the money that’s the point,” Edward was saying, “it’s not the main thing,” and Mr Prunty, trimming the fat from a piece of ham, pursed his lips, and pretended to be trying not to smile.

  “Yes,” I said, “his work, his astronomy, everything. He was fifty; he went a little mad.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. Michael looked around cautiously and put the jammy blade of his knife into his mouth. “Why was that?”

  “Ferns is a family affair,” Edward said grumpily, “there’s a tradition here.”

  “Because—”

  “Stop that!” Ottilie snapped. Michael slowly removed the knife from his mouth, looking at her.

  “Oh true, true,” said Mr Prunty smoothly, “the Graingers have been in this house a long time.”

  Charlotte, a hand to her naked throat, gave a tiny shudder. O Isaac, make haste to help me!

  “Because he had to have certain absolutes,” I said, look at me, keep looking at me, “certain absolutes of of of, of space, time, motion, to found his theories on. But space, and time, and motion,” beats, soft beats, soft heartbeats, “can only be relative, for us, he knew that, had to admit it, had to let them go, and when they went,” O my darling, “everything else went with them.” Ah!

  A vast dark cloud sailed into the window.

  “Well,” said Prunty, routed finally, “I’ve made my offer, I hope you’ll consider it.” My lap was damp. Charlotte, as if nothing at all had happened, turned to him coolly and said: “Of course, thank you.”

  There was some more chat, the weather, the crops, and then he left. Charlotte saw him out. “Bloody gombeen man,” Edward said, and yawned. Under the table Ottilie’s foot touched mine, retreated, and then came back without its shoe. I suppose she had caught a whiff of rut, and thought the trail led to her. Charlotte returning stopped in the doorway. “Was that lightning?” We turned to the window expectantly. Rain, grey light, a trembling bough. Why do I remember so clearly these little scenes? Because they seemed somehow arranged, as certain street scenes, in quiet suburbs, on dreamy summer evenings, will seem arranged, that postbox, the parked van, one tree in its wire cage, and a red ball rolling innocently into the road down which the lorry is hurtling. A tremendous clap of thunder broke above our heads. “By Christ,” Edward said mildly. He turned to Charlotte. A glass of whiskey had appeared in his hand out of nowhere.

  “Well?” he said. “What do you think?” She shook her head. “You’ll have to sell, you know,” he said, “sooner or later.”

  There was a silence, and once again I had that sense of them all turning away from me toward some black awful eminence that only they could see.

  “We,” Charlotte said, so softly I hardly heard it; “we, you mean.”

  I listened to them fighting all evening long, doors slamming, the radio switched full on and as suddenly silenced, and Edward shouting between pauses in which I pictured Charlotte in tears, her face a rain-washed flower lifted imploringly to his. More than once I started to go up to the house, with some wild idea of calling him out, and then subsided helplessly, fists like caricatures clenched before me. The rain stopped, and late sunlight briefly filled the garden, and through the drenched evening an incongruous blackbird began to sing. I felt vaguely ill. A knot of nerves seethed in my stomach. At last I heard the front door bang, and the car bumped down the drive and sped towards town. I drank a glass of brandy and put myself to bed. I was still awake when there came a knock at the door. I leapt up. But it was only Ottilie. She smiled in mock timidity. “Am I allowed to come in?” I said nothing, and poured her a brandy. She watched me, still smiling, and biting her lip. “Listen I’m sorry,” she said, “about the other day. It was a stupid—”

  “Forget it. I’m sorry I hit you. There. Cheers.” I sat on the sofa, pressing the glass to my still heaving stomach. I nodded in the direction of the house. “Fireworks.”

  “He’s drunk,” she said. She was wandering about aimlessly, looking at things, her hands thrust in her pockets. “I had to get out. She’s just sitting there, doped to the gills, doing the martyr as usual. It’s hard to have sympathy all the time . . .” She looked at me: “You know?”

  The light was fading fast. She switched on a lamp, but the bulb blew out immediately, fizzing. “Jesus,” she said wearily. She sat down at the table and thrust a hand into her hair.

  “What’s going on,” I said, “are they going to sell the place?”

  “They’ll have to, I suppose. They’re not too happy with old Prunty. He’ll get it, though, he’s rotten with money.”

  “What will you do, then?”

  “I don’t know.” She chuckled, and said, in what she called her gin-and-fog voice: “Why don’t you make me an offer?—Oh don’t look so frightened, I’m joking.” She rose and wandered into the bedroom. I could hear the soft slitherings as she undressed. I went and stood in the doorway. She was already in bed, sitting up and staring before her in the lamplight, her hands clasped on the blanket, like an effigy. She turned her face to me. “Well?” Why was it that when she took off her clothes, her face always looked more naked than the rest of her?

  “He’s not much of a salesman,” I said.

  “Edward? He was different, before.”

  “Before what?”

  She continued to gaze at me. I suppose I looked a little strange, eyes slitted, jaw stuck out; suspicion, anger, jealousy—jealousy!—itches I could not get at to scratch. She said: “Why are you so interested, all of a sudden?”

  “I wondered what you thought of him. You never mention him.”

  “What do you want me to say? He’s sad, now.”

  I got into bed beside her. That blackbird was still singing, in the dark, pouring out its heedless heart. “I’ll be leaving,” I said. She was quite still. I cleared my throat. “I said, I’ll be leaving.”

  She nodded. “When?”

  “Soon. Tomorrow, the weekend, I don’t know.” I was thinking of Charlotte. Leaving: it was unreal.

  “That’s that, then.” Her face was a tear-stained blur. I took her in my arms. She was hot and damp, as if every pore were a tiny tear-duct. “I want to tell you,” she said, after a time, “when you hit me that day and walked out, I lay in their bed for ages making love to myself and crying. I kept thinking you’d come back, say you were sorry, get a cold cloth for my face. Stupid.”

  I said: “Who is Michael’s father?”

  She showed no surprise. She even laughed: was that all I could say? “A fellow that used to work here,” she said.

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What became of him?”

  “He went away. So did the girl. And Charlotte adopted the child. She couldn’t have any, herself.”

  No. No.

  “You’re lying.”

  But she wasn’t really listening, her ear was turned to the steady trickle of misery that had started up inside her. She laid her forehead against my cheek. “You know,” she said, “sometimes I think you don’t exist at all, that you’re just a voice, a name—no, not even that, just the voice, going on. Oh god. Oh no,” furious with herself, yet powerless to stop the great wet sobs that began to shake her, “Oh no,” and wailing she came apart completely in my arms, grinding her face against mine, her shoulders heaving. I was aghast, I was—no, simply say, I was surprised, that’s worst of all. Behind her, darkness stood at the window, silent, gently inquisitive. She drew herself away from me, her face averted. “I’m sorry,” she said, gasping, “I’m sorry, but I’ve never given myself like this to anyone before, and it’s hard,” and the sobs shook her, “it’s hard.”

  “There there,” I said, like a fool, helplessly, “there there.” I f
elt like one who has carelessly let something drop, who realises too late, with the pieces smashed all around him, how precious a thing it was, after all. A flash of lightning lit the window, and the rain started up again with a soft whoosh. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. The tears still flowed, as if there would be no end, but she was no longer aware of them. “I suppose you’re sick and tired of me,” she said, and lay down, and turned on her side, and was suddenly asleep, leaving me alone to nurse my shock and my cold heart.

  WE MUST assume that Edward did go that night into town, and not to the village, as was later to be suggested. The evidence against the latter possibility is twofold. First, there was the direction in which I had heard him drive away. Had he been headed for the village, the sound of the car would have faded quickly as it dropped below the brow of the hill; instead of which, it was audible for a considerable time, a fact consistent with the motor travelling westward, along the main road, the slope of which is much less pronounced than that of the hill road, leading to the village. Second, there is the quite considerable amount of drink which, it would later be obvious, he had consumed. At that stage the publicans of the village, both in the hotel, and in the public houses with which the place is generously endowed, knew better than to serve him the endless double whiskeys which he would demand.

  However, his going to town—to coin a phrase—will not account for the considerable lapse of time between closing time (11:30 p.m., summer hours) and his return to Ferns at approximately 2:30 a.m. As to what occurred in those “lost” hours, we can only speculate. Did he meet a friend (did he have any friends?) to whose house they might have repaired? The town does not boast a bawdy-house,* therefore that possibility can be eliminated. The quayfront then, the parked car, its lights aglow, the radio humming forlornly to itself, and from within the darkened windscreen the stark suicidal stare? Could he have sat there, alone, for some three hours? Perhaps he slept. One would wish him that blessing.

  I can’t go on. I’m not a historian anymore.

  The first thing I noticed when I woke was that Ottilie was gone. The bed was warm, the pillow still damp from her tears. Then I heard the car, labouring up the drive in first gear. I must have dropped back to sleep for a moment, the voices raised in the distance seemed part of a dream. Then I opened my eyes and lay listening in the darkness, my heart pounding. The silence had the quality of disaster: it was less a silence than an aftermath. I went to the window. Lights were coming on in the house, one after another, as if someone were running dementedly from switch to switch. I pulled on trousers and a sweater. The night was pitch-black and still, smelling of laurel and sodden earth. The grass tickled my bare ankles. The car was slewed across the drive, like a damaged animal, its engine running. The front door of the house stood open. There was no one to be seen.

  I found Edward in the drawing-room. He was sitting unconscious on the floor with his back against the couch, his head lolling on a cushion, his hands resting palm upward at his sides. A mandala of blood-streaked vomit was splashed on the carpet between his splayed legs. The crotch of his trousers was stained where he had soiled himself. I stood and gaped at him, disgust and triumph jostling in me for position. Triumph, oh yes. Suddenly, through opposing doors, Charlotte and Ottilie swept in, like mechanical figures in a clock tower. They saw me and stopped. “I heard voices,” I said. Charlotte blinked. She wore an old plaid dressing-gown. Her feet were bare. Less Cranach now than El Greco. We were quite still, all three, and then everyone began to speak at once.

  “I couldn’t get through,” Ottilie said.

  Charlotte put a hand to her forehead. “What?”

  “There was no reply.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll have to—”

  “Did you ring the right—”

  “What?”

  In the hall a hand appeared on the stairs, a small bare foot, an eye.

  “I’ll have to go into town,” Ottilie said. “Christ.” She looked at me. Her face was still raw from weeping. I turned away. I turned away. “Get back to bed, you!” she cried, and the figure on the stairs vanished. She went out, slamming the door, and in a moment we heard the car depart. Gravel from the spinning tyres sprayed the window. That wall, see, down there. Charlotte sighed. “She’s gone for . . .” She thought a moment, frowning; “. . . for the doctor.” She walked about the room as in a dream, picking up things, holding them for a moment, as if to verify something, and then putting them down again. Edward belched, or perhaps it was a groan. She paused, and stood motionless, listening; she did not look at him. Then she went to the switch by the door and carefully, as if it were an immensely complicated and necessary operation, turned off the main lights. A lamp on a low table by the couch was still burning. She crossed the room and sat down on a high-backed chair, facing the window. It all had the look of a ritual she had performed many times before. Something, the lamplight perhaps, the curious toylike look of things, the helpless gestures meticulously performed, stirred an ancient memory in me of another room, where, a small boy, I had played with two girl cousins while above our heads adult footsteps came and went, pacing out the ceremony of someone’s dying.

  “Is it raining, I wonder,” Charlotte murmured. I think she had forgotten I was there. I went forward softly and stood behind her. In the black window her face was reflected. I looked down at the pale defenceless parting of her hair; in the opening of her dressing-gown I could see the gentle slope of a breast. How can I describe to you that moment, in lamplight, at dead of night, the smell of vomit mingled with the milky perfume of her hair, and that gross thing sitting there, grotesque and comic, like a murdered pavement artist, and no world around us anymore, only the vast darkness, stretching away. Everything was possible, everything was allowed, as in a mad dream. I could feel her warmth against my thighs. I looked at her reflection in the glass; my face must be there too, for her.

  “Mrs Lawless,” I said, “this can’t go on, you can’t be expected to put up with this.” My voice was thick, a kind of fat whine. Tell her something, tell her a fact, a fragment from the big world, a coloured stone, a bit of clouded green glass. Young men of the Ipo tribe in the Amazon basin pledge themselves with the nail parings of their ancestors. Oh god. The first little flames of panic were nibbling at me. “Listen,” I said, “listen I’ll give you my address, my phone number, so that if ever you want . . . if ever you need . . .” I put my hands on her shoulders, and a hot shock zipped along my nerves, as if it were not cloth, flesh and bone I were holding, but the terminals of her very being, and “Charlotte,” I whispered, “Oh Charlotte!” and there was a lump thick as a heart in my throat, and tears in my eyes, and the Ipo drums began to beat, and all over the rain forest lurid birds with yellow beaks and little bright black eyes were screeching.

  She stirred, and turned up her face to me, blinking. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”

  We heard the car returning. So much for the wall of death. The doctor was an ill-tempered old man, still in his pyjamas, with a raincoat thrown over his shoulders. He glared at me, as if the whole affair were my fault. “Where is he? What? Why in the name of Christ didn’t you put him to bed?” Gruff, good with children, old women would dote on him. He knelt down, grunting, and felt Edward’s pulse. “Where was he drinking?”

  Charlotte began distractedly to cry.

  “In the village, probably,” Ottilie said. She stood, with her hands behind her, leaning back against the door, her swollen eyes shut. Michael was sitting on the stairs, watching through the banisters. Had he been there to hear me pledge my troth to poor unheeding Charlotte?

  The doctor and I, with Ottilie’s help, lifted Edward and hauled him up the stairs. He opened his eyes briefly and said something. The smell, the slack feel of him, was horrible.

  “Let him sleep,” the doctor said, “there’s nothing to be done.” He turned to Charlotte, watching from the doorway. “And you, Mrs Lawless, are you all right? Have you your
pills?” She continued to look at Edward’s head sunk in the pillows. She nodded slowly, like a child. “Try and sleep now.” The doctor glanced, inexplicably sheepish, at Ottilie and me—good god, was he in love with Charlotte too? “He’ll be all right now. I’ll come back in the morning.”

  Ottilie and I went with him to the door. The night came in, smelling of wet and the distant sea. “Can I drive you back?” I said.

  Ottilie pushed past me out on the step. “I’ll do it.”

  “He should be kept an eye on,” the doctor said, throwing me a parting scowl. “He’ll go down fast, after this.”

  The gaseous light of dawn was filtering into the garden when she came back. I went outside to meet her. I had stood at the window watching for her, listening breathlessly for a sound from upstairs, afraid to leave, but fearful that she would return and find me indoors, trap me, make me drink tea and talk about the meaning of life. Even at that late stage I was still misjudging her. She came up the steps, hugging herself against the cold, and stopped, not looking at me, swinging the car key. I asked a question about the doctor, for something to say.

  “Old fraud,” she said, distantly, frowning.

  “Oh?”

  We were wary as two strangers trapped by a downpour in a shop doorway. A seagull swaggered across the lawn, leaving green arrow-prints in the grey wet of the grass.

  “Feeding her that stuff.”

  She waited; my go.

  “What stuff?” I felt like a straight-man.

  “Valium, seconal, I don’t know, some dope like that. Six months she’s been on it. She’s like a zombie—didn’t you notice?” with a tiny flick of contempt.

  “I wondered,” I said, “yes.”

  Wonder is the word all right.

  A blood-red glow was swelling among the trees. I felt—I don’t know. I was cold, and there was a taste of ashes in my mouth. Something had ended, with a vast soft crash.