The Picturegoers

by David Lodge

  ‘It was good when they were on the bridge in the rain, and bicycles kept criss-crossing behind them.’

  ‘Yes, that was good,’ he replied in answer to this, and she glowed with pleasure at having said the right thing. She always felt rather uneasy when he became absorbed in anything like this. Pretending to be deeply interested was rather a strain. When she was first going out with Mark—and it wasn’t so long ago, she was really moved by films, even bad films. But now nothing seemed to matter except Mark. There was nothing of interest to her in the present conversation except as a means of promoting their intimacy and retaining his arm around her waist.

  Now they left the main road for the quieter, dimmer back streets. They turned into the bottom of High Hill, and began to ascend it, leaning forward against the incline, and against the rain that drove down upon the umbrella. Clare began to feel a foolish kind of affection for the umbrella that was doing them both such sterling service.

  At the top of the hill they paused. It was always a slight, pleasant shock to realize how high you were. It was impossible to walk across the top and ignore the great panorama of London, even if its lights were obscured by the rain, even if the downpour was steadily soaking you. By common consent they sat down on the wet seat of ‘Traveller’s Rest’, huddled under the umbrella, and stared out across the city.

  ‘We always seem to end up here, somehow or other,’ said Mark.

  ‘Yes. D’you remember the first time?’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ She was disappointed. That evening, its precious intimacies, belonged to her most treasured memories.

  ‘You remember. I think it was the first time you really spoke to me. Told me your real feeling about … oh, about life and writing and things.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I talked a lot of nonsense, I remember.’

  ‘Well, I’ll never forget it anyway.’

  ‘You’ve got a fearsomely retentive memory, haven’t you, darling?’

  Darling. It always kindled a glow of security and peace when he called her that, however casually. It had marked a crucial phase in their love—it had in fact signalled his recognition that they were in love. That was how he had greeted her at Euston on her return from Ireland after the New Year. ‘Hallo, darling, good to see you.’ Now she listened eagerly for the word, and felt a twinge of disappointment whenever she heard ‘dear’ or ‘Clare’ instead, fearing that he had fallen out of love since the last ‘darling’.

  ‘Well, perhaps it wasn’t all nonsense. But I get a different feeling now when I look out over London. Not completely different perhaps. It’s still the sense of multiplicity that’s oppressive. But not in the same way.’

  ‘What way, then, darling?’

  ‘Well … religion, I suppose. The enormous indifference. The millions and millions of people in London and beyond who don’t know about God, and don’t want to know. Or who know about a different God to mine. It’s like looking at those maps that colour in the World’s Religions. It’s demoralizing to see what a small area the Universal Church commands. You begin to wonder whether you’re right after all.’

  ‘But, Mark, that’s all beside the point. The Church would still be the True Church, even if there was only one Catholic in the world.’ The answer came out pat, like a bar of chocolate from an automatic machine, stale and predictable. It wasn’t easy to lose the mental habits of the convent. Sometimes she hankered after the luxury of doubt; often she envied Mark the bouyancy of his newfound faith.

  ‘I acknowledge that intellectually, of course,’ he replied, ‘but statistics are horribly insidious. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t seriously disturb me.’

  ‘And this multiplicity business?’

  ‘Well that’s interesting really. I don’t get the same feeling of despair and helplessness any more …’

  Now he was scarcely talking to her, but more to himself, analysing and defining as always. A woman with a dog stared at them curiously as she passed. Indeed, they must have looked pretty mad, sitting on the sodden bench in the pouring rain. Mark talked on.

  ‘I think it was because I had nothing, no idea or concept which would contain the appalling multiplicity. But now I see that, quite simply, God contains the multiplicity. You see, what troubled me most I think, was the apparently vast, shapeless extent of it. It’s reassuring to get things into some kind of cosmic perspective, to realize that the total of man’s activity is no more than a faint line on the infinite creativity of God’s hand.’

  Guiltily, Clare became conscious of a feeling of boredom. Six months ago it had been her dearest wish that one day he would discuss the great truths of their shared religion with her. By some miracle this had happened. But she felt none of the joy she had anticipated. To be honest, she almost regretted his conversion. This was no credit to her own piety—but what was the use of pretending that she had any piety left? She felt towards her religion as she imagined some women felt towards their dreary, loveless marriages: something trying, but inescapable; cluttered with apparently futile chores, yet from which there was no question of escaping. Would her own marriage be like that? No, it was too hellish a prospect even to consider. Marriage had now come to occupy the same central position in her mind as religion had formerly: on it all her hopes were based. She looked back on the transformation in herself with a kind of helpless resignation. She couldn’t help thinking that it was Mark himself who was largely responsible for the change. But it hadn’t brought him any closer to her. Like a see-saw, her drop had sent him soaring into religiosity. Once they must have been dead level, but not for long. It was Student Cross that had really swept him out of her reach.

  Even now it seemed incredible that Mark—cynical, idle, sophisticated Mark, had actually joined that file of Catholic students who, during Holy Week, carried a heavy wooden Cross through the public streets and along the open road between London and Our Lady’s shrine at Walsingham. He had not completed the pilgrimage. After three days he had limped home, crippled by blisters. To her he had seemed a hero: all she wanted was to kneel at his feet, kiss them and bandage them. But he had blocked all her attempts to anoint him with love and sympathy. He wouldn’t talk about the pilgrimage, except to say that he was disappointed at having had to abandon it. He seemed far from exalted. Rather, it was as if he was having an affair with another girl, and had quarrelled with her. Absurdly, she felt jealous of Student Cross as of some unknown quantity, some hidden source of fascination, whose attraction she could neither understand nor compete with. Oh, Lord! Now he was talking about eternity.

  ‘ … eternal life doesn’t put earthly life in the shade simply because it’s longer. That’s the point where we go wrong—I mean in the way we think about eternity. Tell me, Clare, how did you give an idea of eternity to your kids at the convent?’

  ‘Oh, I used the old illustration: a ball of steel as large as the world, a fly alighting on it once every million years. When the ball of steel is rubbed away by the friction, eternity will not even have begun.’

  ‘Precisely. You build up a frightening picture of an immensely long, empty passage of time, only to cancel it out with your last breath, leaving your audience thoroughly confused, but clinging to the idea that eternity is “like” a great length of tune.’

  ‘Well, what else can you do?’

  ‘Say simply and honestly that eternity is as much like an instant as like a million years, because it’s equally unlike either. It’s not like a length of time, it’s just different. Eternity should be visualized as a blessed state of being without past or future. Instead the word always has an unpleasant connotation when used colloquially—“I waited an eternity for a bus”.’

  ‘I’d like to see you explain all that to a first form,’ said Clare, exasperated.

  ‘Well they take far more difficult things without turning a hair: transubstantiation for instance.’

  She sighed.

  ‘Darling, my bottom’s getting awfully cold and damp. Could we go
?’

  ‘All right,’ he replied flatly, unresponsive to her invitation to some facetious joking about bottoms, which might have jolted him out of his philosophical mood. Clare felt chastened and annoyed. What was the matter with him? They plodded through the rain in an unhappy silence. He offered her his arm, instead of putting it round her waist. Then he said suddenly:

  ‘Clare, you never told me why you left the convent.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t particularly want to think about it.’

  ‘No, I mean, why did you leave the convent. What made you decide that you didn’t have a vocation?’

  Clare hesitated. Of course she had thought of it. It was with her always, like some unforgettable sight or sound, like the cry of a drowning man, always echoing in the back of the mind. But she had never discussed it with anyone, and the idea of doing so now, with Mark, made her tremble. But perhaps, by telling him of it she might break through the shell of quiet self-sufficiency and recollection that had kept her at bay since his return from Student Cross. Still she hesitated, wanting him to appreciate the gravity of such a revelation and the trust it revealed in her if she chose to make it.

  ‘Why do you want to know? Some more fodder for your stories I suppose,’ she grumbled.

  ‘You know I haven’t written anything for months, darling. No, I’m interested to know, that’s all.’

  Darling again. So everything was all right. Perhaps she could seal their reconciliation by divulging her secret. Love was like childhood friendship. The development of the relationship depended on shared secrets, on entrusting the other person with more and more important parts of yourself. She had found it so with Mark. He had been, particularly in the early days, insatiable in probing after facts about her private, secret life, her thoughts and feelings in childhood and adolescence. At first she had been shy and reluctant—until she discovered the power over him this could give her—that she could always command his interest and attention by resurrecting some memory long buried by forgetfulness and, sometimes, shame. She came to know instinctively the kind of candid, vivid anecdote that found favour with him, the sort of thing that made him chuckle with delight, and sometimes scribble it down in a note-book. But now she was beginning to regret her prodigal outpourings: he had almost sucked her dry, and she was afraid, afraid that when there was no more mystery about her, he would cast her aside like an empty container.

  She thrust this thought away, despising her own lack of confidence. She looked at him. He was walking outside the shelter of the umbrella now, braced against the driving wind and rain, his head thrown back, and lips slightly parted. His hair was a damp, matted tangle. His raincoat was turned up at the collar, but not to protect him against the rain, for he always wore it that way. He had a boyish, slightly abstracted look, that was his most endearing expression. He glanced at her, and must have recognized the feelings that were laid out frankly on her own face, for he slipped his arm round her and kissed her. She clung to him, and they stopped in the middle of the pavement, with the rain falling all round, its liquid percussion in drains, in gutters, on trees, on the umbrella, the only sounds. Then the noise of a car grinding up the other side of the hill broke in upon the blessed peace of their embrace, and separated them.

  ‘What’s the matter, Clare?’ Mark asked gently, noticing her tears.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied, leaning heavily against him as they moved on.

  ‘If I’ve done anything …’

  ‘No, honestly, darling, I’m not upset. It just does things to me when we kiss. I don’t think you realize.’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t,’ he said quietly.

  After a little while Clare said:

  ‘I didn’t leave the convent of my own accord. I was asked to leave.’

  It seemed to shake him more than she had anticipated.

  ‘I—I’m sorry, Clare,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I shouldn’t have been so inquisitive. If you’d rather not tell me—’

  ‘No, I want you to know, Mark. I’d have told you one day. There mustn’t be any secrets between us, must there?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  She drew breath to begin.

  ‘Well—’

  She exhaled suddenly with a strained laugh.

  ‘Well, after making such a song and dance about it, there’s very little to tell. I’ve never really understood it. In fact, at the time, I thought I was a real martyr. One of the girls at the convent was called Hilda Syms …’

  She paused, surprised by the wave of pain and nostalgia that passed through her at the mention of the name, leaving her weak and trembling; as if the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, sufferings of years could be experienced again in a single spasm of sickening intensity: the cold cubicle, the rustle of habits and the squeaking of boots as the nuns filed into the chapel, the stink of stew in the refectory; her first lesson, the children shaking their up-stretched hands, eager to please the new sister; Hilda, dew-fresh in her white blouse and neatly-pressed gym-slip, shy and ardent in the back row; Hilda and herself together in the copse, in the chapel, in the cloisters, praying, talking, joking, sharing secrets, confidences …

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Mark.

  ‘Well, as you know, when I was a novice I used to do quite a lot of teaching, because the nuns were short-handed, and it was useful practice. One of the girls I taught was this girl Hilda Syms, and she got a crush on me. Well, there’s nothing unusual in that. You know what girls’ schools are like.’

  ‘No—but go on,’ said Mark, smiling.

  ‘Well, they’re like that, believe me. Lots of girls had crushes on me—it was inevitable. I was young, you see, and—’

  ‘Beautiful,’ interposed Mark.

  Clare smiled.

  ‘Well, the other nuns were rather grim and ancient. Anyway, most of these girls grew out of these crushes—soon the great problem was to keep them away from the Grammar School boys at the other end of the road. But Hilda was different. Hilda didn’t grow out of it.’

  She paused again, struggling for words to convey the innocence and intimacy of that friendship, words that had to be like a spider’s web, strong yet delicate, if she was to communicate to Mark’s coarse masculine intelligence some inkling of what that friendship had meant to her and Hilda.

  ‘Hilda wasn’t interested in the Grammar School boys?’ he prompted.

  ‘No, she wasn’t. But you mustn’t misunderstand. Look, you know that queer book you lent me, about a girls’ college in France?’

  ‘I remember it.’

  ‘Well, there was nothing like that between— Our relationship was quite different.’

  ‘What was your relationship exactly?’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult to explain to a boy. You’ll probably laugh, but, well, we thought we could help each other to be good—in a spiritual way I mean. When I realized that Hilda’s was more than a normal crush, I should have stopped it I suppose. But I hadn’t the heart. It would have been like stamping on a little bird you watch learning to fly. And besides, I liked Hilda. I suppose that was where I went wrong—I was selfish. The other sisters were very severe; I liked Hilda’s admiration. She was gay and trusting. I thought I could help her spiritually, perhaps show her that she had a vocation too. You see, she was a convert. Her parents had sent her to the convent, and she begged them to let her become a Catholic after she’d been there only a year. They agreed, but they weren’t very keen, and she didn’t get much encouragement in her religious life at home. I thought that she deserved a little special attention.

  ‘Then gradually it began to get out of control. I kissed her once when she came out of the chapel on a First Friday. She had just received Holy Communion, of course, and her face was radiant and pure—I can’t explain why I did it, but I couldn’t help kissing her. After that she came to expect a kiss whenever we met or parted—if we were alone, of course. However, I think we must have been observed, for I sensed an undercurrent of resentme
nt among the other girls, and Hilda was persecuted by some of them. This threw her more passionately on to me for solace and support, but I was losing patience—I didn’t know how to cope. We had quarrels, reconciliations—it was a love affair really. These storms usually blew over quickly, but they got more frequent. Then one day—’

  She faltered at the memory of that day. A blistering July day, her thick woollen underwear sodden with perspiration under the hot black habit, a throbbing headache, Hilda more insistent than ever; a scene in the playground, only a few words exchanged because other girls were watching, but a few words that shrieked under the stress of the emotion that they bore; an impatient phrase, more cutting than she had intended; Hilda turning away with a passionate sob, running, running …

  ‘There was a scene. Hilda got hysterical and tried to kill herself with aspirins. She wasn’t in any real danger, but it was very serious of course. It all came out. I was asked to leave. No recriminations, no sermons. But there was no appeal. I was simply told that I had no vocation. I left.’

  She noticed for the first time that they had stopped, and looking round, discovered that they were outside the house.

  ‘Goodness! I didn’t realize that we were home.’

  The rain was still streaming down, swept into folds by occasional gusts of wind. Wearily they climbed the steps to the porch. Mark collapsed the umbrella.

  ‘We’re both sopping wet. We’d better go straight in,’ said Mark.

  ‘Can we wait just a minute?’

  She felt limp and exhausted, but there might be someone in the kitchen, and she couldn’t face anyone else at the moment. More than anything in the world she longed for Mark to take her into his arms and comfort her like a baby. As though humouring her, he put out his arms and held her loosely round the waist smiling at her in a sympathetic way, as one does to an invalid.

  ‘Well, now you know my awful secret,’ she said. ‘I didn’t leap over the wall. I was shown to the door.’