‘What comes next?’ she said, addressing no one in particular. ‘The love of God?’
‘Oh, does that mean something to you?’ he said with polite interest.
‘No, but it might.’
‘Yes. I suppose one can’t be certain … I mean, that one might not suddenly get the hang of it. Another faculty one has simply not noticed was dormant even. Or like beginning to understand music, or a problem in higher mathematics. But that takes concentration, doesn’t it? Damned hard work, and something to drive you on. A longing … But can you even conceive of becoming convinced one has been let into the secret?—if there is a secret. One would have to go mad; or else one would have to be absolutely simple.’
She said under her breath: ‘Go love without the help of anything on earth.’
‘What’s that?’ He bent his recording ear towards her, and she repeated into it the words, adding: ‘Something Blake wrote. A poet called Blake’; to which he replied with a nod: ‘I’ve heard of him.’ Presently he said: ‘Clarissa’s absolutely simple. She believes in God; she finds no difficulty.’
‘Do you think about her a lot?’
‘A fair amount.’
‘Worry about her?’
‘Oh, I worry about everybody I’m responsible for. Bad habit.’ He reflected. ‘Yes, I do worry about her.’
‘I bet she worries about you too.’
‘Why should she?’
‘Well … that’s the effect you’d be likely to have on an impressionable young girl.’ Her voice was dry. ‘The handsomest man in the world and the sweetest—and then something so kind of sad about him … She would set herself an aim in life: to be your ideal woman. I guess she already has. I guess you have ruined her life.’
‘Shut up! You’re the beastliest woman I’ve ever come across.’
‘Don’t you dream now and then of going down the vale of years, a resigned distinguished figure of a widower, hand in hand with her?’
‘Certainly I do.’ His faint grin, directed at the floor, was appreciative. ‘Oh, the whole works. Already I detest her lovers. They’ll make her unhappy and—the thought upsets me. We won’t go into that if you don’t mind. The imagination boggles. At least mine does, I’m sure yours preserves its equanimity … Quite right. She’ll do better without my guiding hand. Poor little …’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Oh, she’ll be all right, she’s as sound as a—sound apple. Cox’s Orange. She’ll be a hostess in a transglobal airline, tending tired business men on the long hop.
‘You’re nothing if not consistent.’
He cocked an eyebrow.
‘If there’s one type more than another that could give a tired business man cleansing subduing thoughts, it would be those ministering, well-groomed, airborne girls. One hears that they do marry. But I never have believed it. They seem so immaculate and plucky. So at ease with their bright restful personalities.’
She saw the planes of his profile begin to alter in amusement; but next moment they fell once more into their fine-drawn lines and hollows.
‘I wish …’ He stopped. ‘I hope you’ll see her some time.’
‘I might get on better with your son.’
‘Colin …’ he considered. ‘Nice chap. Reliable, intelligent. Madeleine thinks he’s on the dull side, but I think he’ll add up one day to more than she imagines. Hope so. He’s the only male of this generation either side.’
‘Dinah has no children?’
‘No. She married a chap who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. She got caught up in all that anti-fascist class war business—struggle of the worker, all that. I only heard about it, of course. Never set eyes on him.’
‘I’d like to have set eyes on people like him. And her. I’d love to know her, to have known her: people like her.’
‘Would you?’ He turned to look at her, thoughtful, then turned away again to say with an inflexion that caused her an uncontrollable pang: ‘Oh, but she was never like people … However much she may have changed, I can’t believe she’s growing older like everybody else and going about her business. And then her business … Well, you know, darling, I don’t much hold with party politics for any sex, but when it comes to women, my lower nature gets the upper hand. They’re so bloody cocksure and tigerish—not that I know any. I just don’t like their hats. If Dinah now—if Dinah were to call me a fascist hyena or even a bourgeois lackey, I should be irritated. I wouldn’t know how to talk to her. I might say rude things—appalling things about the British Empire and tradition and Christianity and who betrayed who and the barricades and God knows what, I can hear myself. We might come to blows, it wouldn’t be the first time … Or I’d detect that well-known look of disappointed expectation.’
He was talking to himself, she thought, or muttering in his sleep: a monologue broken with an occasional faint sigh, fading out with the brief headshake of one presenting a somewhat regrettable statement of expenditure.
‘I’m a notable disappointer,’ he resumed. ‘Championship standard. People were always expecting—I don’t know what of me. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t secretly convinced I wouldn’t come up to scratch. That was something I never got the hang of: I’d obviously deceived them into believing there was more to me than there was. It was the last impression I wanted to give—or intended to. And yet at the same time I suppose I must have wanted … felt called upon. Well, I suppose I was trying to prove it to my own satisfaction one way or the other. How? By taking action. Doing the best or the worst I was capable of, and seeing if I fell down on it. Committing the ultimate … “He’s ruined his life.” That simple positive statement started ringing in my ears from an early age. Why? God knows. I was born with every advantage, as they all pointed out. I had such good examples set … and in my turn I was to produce my quota. And I honestly did want to have a bash at it, what’s more. I did care about—well, goodness: trying to be good. If I may say so in a whisper, I still do. But I think I must have been born with some congenital defect of vision: anyway, even in the nursery I couldn’t see life steady: there always seemed something coming up to fog the issues. For instance, the persons I was taught to look up to and respect, virtuous persons, often struck me as untruthful and unkind. I won’t mention any names, but I felt absolutely ashamed sometimes of virtuous persons—and sickened by highminded ones. Also I felt a strong distaste for saying my prayers, particularly at my mother’s knee. It shocked me that God, of all people, had to be begged and implored not to lead me into temptation. God knew everything, so he must know I always fell when tempted. It must be that he set temptations in my path for the pleasure of witnessing my falls. He looked forward to punishing me—for my good, because he loved me. It appeared he loved me too much to grant me any mercy, unless I could get Jesus to put in a good word for me: and though I knew poor Jesus meant well, I couldn’t feel much confidence in him as an intermediary, considering the failure he’d had himself—not managing to persuade God to get him out of being crucified … No, but seriously, Georgie, the love of God’s no joke. You mentioned it just now.’
‘I wasn’t joking.’
‘No, I dare say not. It’s no joking matter. Not a fit subject, to my mind, for children’s ears at all. You hope your kitten won’t die and it does: that’s bad enough. You pray for its life and it dies: that’s devilish … Can you see Christ as a pleasant chap to put a pipe on with and thrash things out? A chap who’s interested in insurance schemes and bonuses and benefit performances? Christ never said anything cosy or agreeable, to the best of my recollection—supposing he did say what’s on record—moot point, of course. But supposing he did—and it does seem to bear a personal stamp, it’s hard to imagine it having been invented—either he was raving mad, or he was what he said he was and the whole thing hangs together—the whole thing, mind you: pretty formidable and drastic. As for me, the scales won’t tip, they never have. All or nothing, in the balance: I pref
er it so. Don’t imagine I’m smug about it, though. I hope I’ll die before I start forgetting to feel uncomfortable … Darling, are you listening? I have said all this before—in my cups, in my salad days, you know—but everybody else was always talking more and louder and faster, I never got a fair chance. Now I say to hell with everybody else. I’m sorry to harp on my dead uncle but I cannot help being reminded of him. Most modest of performers, never offered even an elementary parlour trick to justify his existence, suddenly one morning doesn’t give a fig, takes on all comers, no holds barred … He said some pretty raw things, I can tell you. Do you know what I thought at the time? Young as I was, I thought: “The reason my uncle is being so embarrassing is because he knows he’s God.” Is that what you’re thinking about me?’
‘No.’
He bent his ear towards her with the air of one prepared to grant the semblance of a deferential hearing.
‘She doesn’t think so,’ he resumed, addressing the carpet. ‘Not that he cares, one way or the other … When it was broken to me that my uncle had passed on, I remember thinking: “Well, that’s all right, there’s nothing to deplore.” As he saw it, my uncle had overcome every impediment to the full apotheosis. What is there left to live for, once you have become God? But personally I shan’t go so far as that. In fact, one interesting fact comes to light —’ he slightly turned to send the fraction of a quizzical spark in her direction, ‘I’ve made no fresh discoveries about the nature of the universe. What you’re learning now I could have told you twenty-five years ago or more, my poor, dumb, unenlightened girl. In my end is my beginning. Who said that? Another secret I will impart to you—that poet Blake you quoted from just now—I’ve more than heard of him. Dinah used to read aloud to me—she read very nicely, or so I thought … According to Clarissa, What’s-his-name reads aloud divinely too: well let that pass … There was one thing, a love poem I suppose it was, but a very peculiar one. I can’t remember any of it except two lines, and they’ve always stuck in my head.’
‘Say them.’
He repeated, without expression:
‘And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.’
‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘He asks her to agree to give up love. Root up the infernal grove, is how he puts it.’
‘Was that it? I believe you’re right, that was the gist of it. Cryptic sort of thing. Dinah always claimed she understood it and saw absolutely eye to eye with him—with the sentiments expressed. Forgiveness. That was her great theme. We had a pact to forgive one another everything, always, beforehand, if you see what I mean: the idea was hers. So that whatever might go wrong … Well, her theory was, if we stuck to that, nothing ever could go wrong. So after all was over, I … well, it was a morbid notion. We’d parted in a ghoulish sort of way—I fell down dead in her bathroom and was removed to hospital in the nick of time—in more senses than one. What with months of skilled medical attention and unrelaxing domestic vigilance I was granted an opportunity given to few of coming to my senses. All the same, I couldn’t get rid of this obsession … We hadn’t said good-bye, you see. I was taken into custody only a few hours after we’d finally joined forces for the big record-smashing break-out. For quite a while I went on uneasily imagining her standing waiting for me at the prison gates. Then I got a hint from her mother that she’d gone abroad. Gone abroad! … Oh, the waves, suns, mountains, islands, jungles—even jungles!—that used to pass whirling before my eyes in glorious technicolor, while I lay sipping junket and being knitted at and trying to force space to yield up one glimpse, just one, of the real figure in the actual landscape … The landscape was always enormous, exotic, sinister, and the figure was sinister too—like a faint print of an old photograph, never quite plausible or life-like—disguised-looking; and always alone. Ironic really, considering the facts of the situation disclosed at a later date. I don’t resent the deceit practised on me, I couldn’t have faced the facts. As it was, I was enabled to preserve some sort of sickly exalted illusion … that at least I had managed to set her free; at least she wouldn’t taste me tasting of milk and soda or touch flesh with a raw hole hidden in it when she touched me. I tried to tell myself I welcomed the humiliation of being the one on a couch in a decline while she went off big-game shooting. And among other obsessions I went on having this one—about commemorating my loss in some particularly striking way; something no one else in her life would ever think up, whoever she replaced me with, whoever she would torment in the absolutely horrifying, howling black future …’
‘What was your idea?’
‘My idea was a practical one—that is, technical. To have a bracelet designed, and those words engraved inside it, to run round and round in a circle—eternity, you know—and in my own handwriting to underline the message. I actually got as far as hunting through the whole of the Works of Blake to verify them and copying them out on to a piece of paper and putting them in my wallet, to take along to a jeweller as soon as I was allowed out without a keeper. But I never got round to it. The thought of hearing them read back to me by one of those dignitaries behind the counter—that defeated me. I used to break out in a cold sweat imagining the conversation. “Interesting sentiment if I may say so, sir. Quite an original note struck.” “Oh it’s just one of those tags, you know, that stick in your head. Forget who wrote it. Some poet or other.” “So I would have assumed, sir, from the tendency to rhyme. I would have fancied possibly Miss Ella Wheeler Wilcox.” “Oh, really? I expect you’re right. Anyway, I sort of wanted it done for a kind of anniversary.” “Quite so, sir, very appropriate. Something any lady would appreciate were she to take it in—well, more in the playful spirit, as would, of course, be the intention. I would have ventured to suggest a more formal type of lettering—but I appreciate that the inscription in your own personal hand—very individual hand, sir—would add a more intimate note, highly acceptable no doubt.”’ A suppressed chuckle shook his shoulders. ‘So I procrastinated. I sometimes wish I hadn’t. I cut such a graceless figure so much of the time, I’d have liked to manage to let her know somehow that …’
‘What?’
‘That’s just it—what?’ After a pause he said slowly, searching for accuracy:
‘That whatever stretch one cared to give those words—and I don’t see any limit really—she could never be outside their scope. Whatever they do mean, she’s the meaning of them, as far as I’m concerned. Always was. Always will be. That though it all turned out so badly, the meaning didn’t go. It changed almost out of recognition, but it didn’t turn sour, or get cobwebby. I’d like to tell her the real reason she didn’t get a bracelet was that it got clearer and clearer there was no way, no way at all, of putting my—limitless gratitude into any sort of form that wouldn’t mean, for me—a diminishment of my feelings that caused me too much pain, disgust, to contemplate.’
‘You must tell her.’
‘Ah, but where is she?’ He raised his head, his nostrils dilating faintly with an effect of irony; or of sniffing for a trial through space and darkness. Again she was made aware of what he concealed so warily within him: the feline electric animal with quivering senses glimpsed like a dark twin sleeping by the flicker on his hearth; or ranging, lightly leashed, always within recall in the tingling night.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Where is she? Do you know?’
‘Oh, not far off. Somewhere in London. Has been from the beginning, working in some particularly grim form of Civil Defence—I’m not sure what. I’ve never run into her even in the street. Her mother sent me her address—unsolicited—I’m not quite sure why—in case of an accident probably, poor old dear. It would be like her to think all enemies should be reconciled at a time like this. She’s a great believer in families drawing closer. She thinks remorse the worst form of human suffering. I’m certain she’s still convinced she helped save me from a lifetime of it once … Yet, you know, I also suspect sometimes she’s th
e one, still, who goes on being gnawed at. She weighed in to stop a crime, but she feels guilty. Hence these infinitely discreet impartings that have gone on ever since. The hints she drops are always designed to make me feel that Dinah’s very much alive—or so I fancy. And I get the impression she’s saying: “Go on, prove I was right, live too.” I’ve often wished I could take away her remorse at the spectacle of me. I know she loves me. I’d like to leave her a legacy. That would buck her up.’
‘A legacy?’
‘Well actually, to Dinah.’ He shook his head brusquely at the sharp breath she drew. ‘Oh, nothing concrete. Nothing in print to be read out after the funeral. There’s obviously no way to do it, and it’s of extremely little consequence, except perhaps to myself, but I’d like to make my point. But supposing I’m mad? Supposing it’s a case—as I dare say it is—of recording one’s gratitude to the person one has most damaged, most betrayed?—who remembers you, if at all, with scorn and bitterness?’
‘It would not be a case of that.’
‘How do you know? You don’t know what the look on her face was like, the last time I saw her. I’d given her nothing, not a groat. If she’d put her hand out … but that’s like saying if she’d had wings, or I’d had … Sheer stark impossibility, at the time. Keys on the table. I picked them up and pocketed them. She did return my cufflinks: she dropped them in my hand, without touching me even with the tip of one finger. The cuff-links simply vanished—dematerialized, as I’ve noticed things of that type do—small personal objects with any sort of magic attached to them—at a time like that. Queer to think that piece of paper with the poetry on it was in my wallet. “Eternity”, “Forgiveness” … Big words, written with blood, tears, sweat, hidden against my heart. Totally inoperative. Not one vibration coming out of them.’ Smiling secretively, he felt over his breast pocket; then slipped his hand inside his coat, drew out his wallet.
The Echoing Grove Page 29
