Titus Awakes

by Maeve Gilmore

  Sometimes, when the day was fine, they would go out to the vast gardens, lovely and cared for. Huge, rich, generous rhododendrons of many degrees of red led to an apple orchard of old trees.

  The artist could not walk without assistance, but dragged his feet and made no movement with his arms. Whichever arm was not in his wife’s lay rigid, totem-poled to his side. Their progress was slow, but aware. The squirrels that teased their steps, and so endearingly cradled in their tiny human paws the crumbs and nuts that had been scattered to them, were a delight to them both. They would stand still, just looking, until the husband swayed on his feet; then an arm would act as a brake to forestall the inevitable fall backwards.

  Sometimes, when the wife did not come and the weather was fine, Titus would clean and feed and dress the artist and take him out into the gardens himself, linking his arm for protection only. There was no verbal communication, for it had ceased. Only the eyes looked and searched Titus. The eyes saw. They, the only remaining conscious sense, were more alive than any eyes Titus had ever seen, in his childhood, adolescence, young manhood, in and out of every world that he had ever traversed. He felt understood. He was one with this man. Whatever physical humiliations he had to perform were nothing. The truth spoke from the eyes, as he had never before heard, but sometimes when the tragedy seemed too intense the eyes smiled and a little gesture like a clown’s would be conjured up by the deprived hands, and Titus could smile back, and for a few moments there was peace.

  Towards the artist’s wife also Titus felt the same closeness. Never very articulate, he had no need here, either, of verbal communication. They all seemed to be one person. He automatically performed all his duties outside these two. He was efficient, kind and far from lazy, and was respected by his companions, who all the same noted with surprise his affection for the patient in bed 10.

  There was not always much said between the men who carried out their duties in the ward and the pompous officials who by their demeanour showed their importance, but it was with a great sense of shock that Titus was told one morning to get the artist ready to leave. Not that he was cured, but that he should never have been sent there in the first place. He had an illness that did not belong with them, and he was being sent elsewhere. His wife would go with him in an ambulance and that would be that. Titus must see that he was shaved, dressed as cleanly as possible and fed, and oversee his removal from the ward to the car.

  The morning dawned and the wife arrived. Titus fulfilled many duties, then turned to bed 10. He shaved, dressed and cleaned the poor limbs, and made the patient ready for the departure. The man had all the intuition of an animal, which knew that something was about to happen that would affect his life, and a terrible restlessness manifested itself. He tried to move, and the wife sat in a chair by him, trying to calm him, showing him books, which she told Titus were his work. He pushed them aside with an impatience of gesture that for all the sluggishness of movement was a powerful negation of ownership.

  The day wore on, and there was no sign of departure. It was not until late afternoon that a chair, with none of the elegance or grandeur of a sedan chair, was brought by two men into the ward, and the patient from number 10 bed was lifted into it and wrapped like a mummy in red blankets. The little procession made its way out of the ward, gathering the few paltry possessions, and Titus took the wife’s arm and followed with her, down the long, bleak, dimly lit corridors, and out into the grey evening to the waiting ambulance. As the patient was lifted into the back of it he made a final gesture of farewell, and a faint voice whispered, ‘Titus.’

  30

  Happening in a Side Street

  NOT FOR THE first time in his life Titus felt the void that parting opens up so violently, but in this case it was not he who had left. He could feel a little of the sense of loss he had inflicted on so many people. An emptiness when he awoke, and when he went to bed, and all during the day when he was working. An ache he had only once before felt. He had lost something irreplaceable, but no rational explanation came to him as to why he should have such strong feelings for a man who had not spoken, whose outer life was destroyed, but whose eyes and inner life haunted him.

  He knew that he wanted to leave the hospital and let his life drift wherever it took him. He spoke to Peregrine, who only expressed surprise that he had stayed at all. There were no formalities and nothing to await, no farewells, no broken hearts. He left, walking down the long drive, and as he reached the lodge and the large iron gates, which shut in or out this world within a world, the heavy sense of his own secret and unexplained loss became intolerable, and he let his legs lead him, for neither his head nor his heart could do so.

  As he walked along the isolated road, he could just see the tower on the hill to his right, which brooded over the enclosed world he had left. As far as he could see, in every other direction was scrubland. Barren and bleak and unbeloved. Gorse bushes and bracken. He was in tune with this landscape as he walked. He saw no human beings and very little in the way of traffic. He was passed once by an old woman riding an antiquated tricycle. In the front of it was a basket from which appeared the heads of a motley collection of dogs, their bodies covered by an old blanket.

  His feet led him along the road, and he felt neither tired nor active. He refused to think of anything. Ahead of him he began to see the lights of a town. He had money in his pocket with which to find some place to stay, and he continued walking. It must have been a couple of hours, and the light began to go as he neared the outskirts. A few scattered dwellings to begin with, then the dreary uniform dinginess of terraced houses.

  As the daylight faded, so he saw ahead of him the rectangles of yellow-lit windows, and the skyline of the town taking on its untidy silhouette, with here and there the ugly uncompromising blocks, which seemed to bear no relation to the rest of the townscape. Coming closer to human beings, he started to feel an intense hunger, and despite his mental lethargy, he began to increase his speed of walking.

  As on the outskirts of most towns and cities, there seemed little life, on or out of the street. The lights from the windows were gradually extinguished by the drawing of curtains. Towards the end of a line of houses he noticed that one of them had its curtains drawn to display two large candles in the window, and there was a certain amount of activity; people in ones and twos and threes making their way to its front door, which was ajar, and disappearing behind it. Titus heard the murmur of voices and muted footsteps overtaking him. A man and a woman drew level with him, ‘Good evening. A sad evening this – yes, yes. She was a fine woman. A fine woman.’

  Titus found himself on the inside of the pavement and had no choice but to turn towards the partly open front door as the two strangers turned inevitably in the same direction. The man was small and aggressive and the woman, a head taller, held his arm, seemingly more to protect him from his own aggressiveness than herself against the butts of others. Titus now saw that she held a wreath in her other hand, as they pushed open the door and entered the house.

  There was a strong smell of incense and a low murmur, the drone of people at prayer. The hall was narrow and dark, and to the left was a closed door, but passing this, Titus was slowly propelled to a second door at the farther end of the narrow passage. All three entered the room, which retained an atmosphere of a bygone age. It was cluttered with the past. The walls and the tables and the chairs were sepia. There were gas jets and a flounce over the fireplace.

  As the incongruous companions were shown to some upright chairs, an elderly lady took their hands in turn. She was dressed in unrelieved black. Her severe hair was black, and drawn tightly behind her ears into a bun at the nape of her neck. Jet earrings and a high jet collar must have all but choked her. Her eyes were like two beads from the collar, and the only thing which was not black were the red rims of her eyes.

  ‘You would like to see her, of course, before you take tea.’

  People were sitting in rows of chairs facing a sliding door, which sepa
rated the back room from the front, and as it slid slowly open, those in the front row moved forward, and everyone else moved, as in some game for children, so that there was an all change, but done with no laughter, and no sound apart from a sigh and a sob and a sniff of stifled tears from one or other of the women present.

  As some departed, others came in to take their places, and soon Titus found himself in the front row. He was the only person with no offering, but the absorption of sorrow precluded any kind of censure. He had at least come to pay his respects.

  It was now his turn to go behind the door, into the front room. He had no wish to encounter death again. He entered the room he had seen from the outside, lit by two candles. Incense, and the flowers that were laid in banks all around the room, nearly felled Titus by their power, and his hunger pangs turned to nausea and a longing to run away from the raised open coffin he was to look into.

  The tall lady gave a sob, as she leaned over and touched the cheek of the mourned. Titus closed his eyes as he passed, but with the native curiosity of human beings he was unable to prevent himself from opening them as he himself came near.

  He looked, and was filled once more with the unexplained mystery of death. Although he neither knew nor cared about the being that was laid out so carefully in its solid coffin, what lay there surely bore little relation to what it had been. He remembered the deaths of people he had known and loved, known and hated, known and cared little about. But in them all was the common denominator. The enigma. Where were they? They did not all look peaceful. In some it seemed their torments were not all over. They did not look like real people, but they did not look like wax people either. They were not there, in that body left behind, to be disposed of in such a variety of ways, yet the idea of any kind of physical desecration or insult was unthinkable, like deliberately pulling the wings off a butterfly, or destroying a flower for the sake of it. The dead must be handled with care.

  So, in this ordinary little house, the death of one of its former inmates had bestowed on everyone living the magic wand of mystery. As Titus left the room of the dead, he was shown out of the door and pointed to a room at the end of the narrow passage. On a table in the middle were plates of sandwiches and numerous cups. This whole room gleamed with cleanliness, and another lady with black hair and eyes and earrings and dress poured tea into the small delicate cups from a very large silver teapot.

  No one spoke as they stood around the table, passing plates to each other. An occasional murmur of ‘a wonderful woman. We shall not see her like again’ brought hankies out to gather up the tears such words inevitably cause to flow.

  Titus ate and longed to escape from this strange little interlude. As he turned to leave, the elderly second dark lady turned to him and quietly thanked him for coming. An old overfed dog looked at him, with eyes that seemed to gut him. He moved along the passage and to the front door. Two old ladies, and an old man, were on their way out. They turned to Titus as they stood on the pavement and said, ‘You must be the great-nephew. How sad you came too late. She was a fine woman.’

  As they turned and walked away, the old man on the arm of each old lady, Titus had a strong feeling that he would for ever be an onlooker in life and death.

  31

  Under the Masks

  TITUS MIGHT HAVE been numbered amongst the dispossessed by a bureaucratic mind, but this would have greatly underestimated him. He was dispossessed by his own act of will. He possessed nothing except himself. He took no care, but did he ever long for an anchorage? Was there no harbour that he craved? Did he not sometimes think with longing for the cover of a retreat from the anarchic shapelessness of his life? If not material possessions then did he yearn for one love, so that he could belong somewhere? So that he could have a label? So that he could be identified as so-and-so, who was such-and-such, who came from here, and was going there?

  If he had been asked such questions, he would have skidded around them. If he answered them to himself, he would probably have found no answer, as to why he wanted none of those things. But what he wanted in their stead was even more mysterious. He gathered experience, as a child might pick daisies, yet his daisy-chain was destined for no one’s necklace or crown, but did the discarded little flowers wither within him as fresher daisies were picked? No, as time went by, his chain grew, and at appropriate moments he garlanded his chance encounters, and then, leaving them behind him, he could not stop himself from moving on.

  People would say to him, ‘You could write a book,’ and he would answer, ‘Yes, I could.’

  Women whom he met wished to pin him down. He was elusive to them. A gentle imaginative lover who, when they thought he would share their life and love – if not for ever then for a mutually convenient length of time – would disappear as suddenly as he had arrived in their lives.

  No one could exactly describe him. Either physically or mentally. He was not handsome in any accepted way. In company he was withdrawn, and yet he was not in the least shy. He had a certain sardonic wit, a quick response to the quirks of human beings. He laughed readily. He liked women. He was quiet. He was courteous, but upon discussion between themselves, those who knew him well would all reach the conclusion that despite all these things, he was not there.

  He looked strong. In the years of wandering he had supported himself in every kind of physical pursuit which could be imagined, and lived and shared his being mainly with the rough, and the tough, whilst retaining his own persona. He was generous to the needy. He ate and drank robustly. He slept well. There was a normality about him which was a source of wonder to acquaintances. But still, they only saw the shell. What lay inside in heart or head, they never discovered. In whatever company he found himself, he adapted to it, but he was no chameleon, and he remained an outsider. He had seen cruelty, injustice and bigotry. He was not a reformer or a zealot, but whenever he came across these vices, he fought against them.

  He decided to leave the black, dreary town, and make his way seawards. He had a longing to move away. He wanted to be a part of a wild landscape. Perhaps an island. Small but self-contained. To be surrounded, constricted, unable to wander further than each last rock. In his mind he heard the gulls, and it was with a shock that he became aware that he was no longer alone.

  ‘Look, we’ve been following you, friend. You look as though we could use you, friend. You come quietly with us, and we’ll tell you who we are. Come noisily, and you won’t tell anyone anything again. See?’

  ‘Well, it’s rather dark.’

  ‘Look, friend. We don’t like jokes.’

  Titus felt two people on either side of him, and a few more behind. He had no choice but to walk in the direction in which he was being propelled.

  The dingy street was left behind as the incipiently violent group made its way, in the growing dark, to what looked like a lodging house of a large estate. They entered through the front door, and it was obvious that the whole place was derelict, both from the smell of rot and the lack of any kind of human warmth or comfort. They pushed at Titus to follow them.

  ‘We’re going down, friend. We’ve got candles down there. You interested?’

  ‘I’m interested.’

  ‘Look friend, I told you we don’t like jokes.’

  The spokesman was small and his voice had a nasal pitch, as though he was holding his nose. They tripped their way down a small steep flight of stairs, and were enveloped in complete darkness, until the voice of command said, ‘All right friends – light up.’

  Matches were struck, and candles which were ready on boxes and in alcoves were lit. There were about six people illuminated by the candles, but all had their back to Titus, who stood in the middle of a cold earth-floored cellar. They were fumbling with their hands to their faces, until the voice of command ordered them to turn.

  Each face wore a mask, made of what Titus took to be carnivorous animals and birds of prey.

  ‘We’re the ‘‘Destructionists’’, friend. There’s only one word we
like. Destroy. Destroy. Oh, yes. We like another one too. Hate. That’s a good one. Got any ideas?’

  ‘What about ‘‘Revolution’’?’

  ‘Look, friend, I told you no jokes.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s funny.’

  ‘Red, you can deal with him if he goes on being funny. Black, get out the papers. Vulture, go through his things. We don’t believe in possessions, friend. Give anything he’s got to Magpie, and then we’ll get down to business.’

  Vulture frisked him roughly. His mask was pathetically and crudely made. Whatever else this group of people had, they possessed no talent for transforming their ideas into artistic shape.

  ‘Mangod, there’s nothing. He hasn’t got anything, except this bit of change.’

  ‘Of course he has, haven’t you friend? Everyone has, who looks like him. He’s not one of us, are you, friend? Come on, where’ve you hidden them?’

  ‘Hidden what?’

  ‘Your things. Everyone has things. That’s what we’re for. Destroy. Take away. Replace nothing. Until there is nothing. We will control, because we will rule by hate. If you’ve not got things on you, you’ve got them somewhere. Everyone has. You probably have a woman who says she ‘‘loves’’ you. They’re good to get at. They can hate as quickly as they ‘‘love’’. We’ve got recruits everywhere. Come on, tell me where your things are. Pictures – they’re good. Cut them up. Books – they’re good. Burn them. Houses, flowers, animals, easy to destroy in any way that takes our fancy. Come on friend, out with it!’