by Neil M. Gunn
“I don’t know. It would doubtless be a displacement, or transference is it?”
“When she was very ill?”
“Yes.”
“You mean her unconscious used the figure of Kronos—to cover up someone else—even from herself?”
“Possibly. Who can say?”
“She was as bad as that?”
Aunt Phemie put a potato on the plate and the plate on a small round tray.
“Tell me,” he asked. “What did happen to her?”
She lifted the tray, then paused to look at him. “Should you see her now—or should we have a talk first?”
“I think you’re right,” he agreed. “It might be better.”
He turned to the fire and she went out.
Later, when Mrs. Fraser was up with Nan, Aunt Phemie said, “We can talk now. She took some of the soup but wouldn’t look at the chicken. However, she can still drink milk, thank goodness. She thinks I’m seeing the grieve. I try to interest her in what goes on about the farm. I saw her struggle to be interested, to come back from—from where she is. It’s getting a bit dark in here.”
“It’s all right. Have a cigarette?”
“No thank you. By the way, when we do go up to bed you could come in your stockings behind me. Your door is open. You can manage to see to yourself?”
“I have slept in some queer places in my time.”
“You were in the Air Force?” She sat down.
“Yes,” he answered, taking the chair which she indicated.
“Nan told me. You had a nasty crash——”
“Grounded, long before the war ended, so here I am.” He smiled. “They gave me an office job. It was good cover for more interesting work. That’s when I really got to know Nan.”
“You know her very well?”
“Naturally, or I shouldn’t be here.”
“Of course. I was merely thinking of knowing what she is really like. Far as I can gather, she seemed to move in a pretty fast set, and in my experience—it may not be much, but still… you don’t get really to know people in such a milieu, not as a rule.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No. Why, do you?”
“I do. I should say it’s the acid test.”
Aunt Phemie was silent for a few moments. “Acid test of what?” she asked.
“Of sticking power; character, if you like.”
“I don’t see it like that. I may be wrong but it seems to me that every set has its own rules—of behaviour and so on—its own beliefs. To be of the set you must conform. If you don’t behave as the set do, you get broken.”
“But if the set doesn’t suit you, you should clear out. You would clear out, as a matter of fact. You don’t hang on anywhere unless you’re getting some kick out of it.”
“It all depends on the kick, I suppose. Will you give me a cigarette, please?”
When she had it lit, she smiled slightly, taking the cigarette from her mouth with a certain elegance as if it were in a holder. “This brings back some of my remote past; late nights and endless argument. I am not without some small experience. Tell me about your set.”
“There’s nothing really to tell. And it wasn’t a set in that sense. You must understand that. Most of us worked very hard, late into the night often. I fancy Nan has exaggerated all this. In fact, I know she has. She got delusions about it—afterwards.”
“After what?”
“After she broke down. She saw people in the most exaggerated way. She magnified things, gave huge mythical meanings to—to quite simple acts. It was distressing—and very difficult to counter. But we understood it.”
“We? You mean—all of you?”
“Yes, naturally. You may forget that London was blitzed, that bombs fell, that I myself dropped bombs, that human bodies were mangled or blown to bits as the natural order of things. That’s the world we lived in. A mental breakdown of one degree or another was not unknown.”
“I stand corrected,” said Aunt Phemie, trying to tap ash away with an awkward forefinger. “All the same I should like to know more, if you don’t mind. She mentioned, for example, someone named Freddie.”
“Freddie is all right. He’s satirical, with a merciless eye for foibles, but he’s witty. Nan liked him at first. It was only towards the end that she felt there was something disintegrating in him, that beneath his wit there was a real desire to tear people to bits.”
“And there wasn’t?”
“Well, we all want to tear something to bits. At least I hope so. And Freddie could work.”
“What did he work at?”
“I was thinking of the work he did after his daily job. He limps from hip trouble so was always a civilian.”
“She mentioned Julie.”
“An emotional creature—purely. That sort of female is always a damned nuisance.”
“In what way exactly?”
“She distracts fellows from their work, embroils them, uses up their energy. She makes scenes. You go to her rescue—as if she were of any account! And the devil of it is that in these circumstances she is the outlet for the instincts, the full libidinous charge, the irrational lure to a fellow to let rip. We’re all going to die soon so what the hell? That sort of deadly stuff.” It was the first time she had seen him moved in any way, not that he gesticulated or even raised his voice much, but his tone did gather a certain merciless precision.
“I rather gather that Nan felt for Julie.”
“Before her breakdown, we had some words about it. I just couldn’t understand Nan then over that, for Nan has brains. And she was always so sensible, so balanced, and—really—gay. Possibly there was too much drink going. Occasional outings, all-night affairs, with illicit petrol and what not. The thing somehow got worked up. Fellows were always coming on leave, chaps I knew often. Their next trip after leave might be their last. All very normal enough, taking everything into account; but I admit it did get a bit hot in the end—and particularly after the war ended.”
“Did these fellows also have your—uh—revolutionary beliefs?”
“Mostly, even if only as sympathisers—at least they were not active then. So it worked in them the other way round. I mean it was a case of—this rotten old bourgeois order needs liquidating, so let’s liquidate and be merry.”
“Eat, drink and be merry——”
“By no means,” he interrupted. “To-morrow we were going to live—and build; what was left of us, that is; but first we had to destroy. That was clear. You have to raze the old building before you build the new.”
“And that extended to beliefs, behaviour, everything?”
“Yes, in so far as they were an expression of the bourgeois order; which, inevitably, meant almost altogether.”
“Revolution?”
“Precisely.”
“There is no other way, no gradual evolution that could avoid destruction, death, horror?”
“Your mind there, if you don’t mind my saying so, is confused. We do have gradual change, in the sense, say, that a thing gradually increases in size or in temperature or in productive capacity. By blowing up a toy balloon you make it larger; but a point comes where it bursts. In everything there is that point of revolutionary change. It’s not a case of whether we like it or not. It’s in the nature of things. In the wintertime you will, if there’s frost about, run the water off your car. Why? Because you know that though water can get colder and colder and still remain fluid water, a point comes where it has a revolutionary change into solid ice and bursts your cylinder block.”
“But I do recognise that and so run the water off.”
“Exactly. In that respect you are a determinist. The point is, do you recognise it in the economic relations which determine our social life? Are you prepared for the revolutionary change there?”
“How do I know that that kind of change is necessary?”
“War, destruction, the concentration camps—if these result from the existing order of t
hings in our society, go on increasing like your toy balloon, should it not be evident that their cause is within the order itself, our bourgeois order? Where else can it be?”
“So you think a bloody revolution is inevitable?”
“Revolution is inevitable. Bloody is as may be.”
She glanced at him. His face was pale in the gathering dusk, and emotionless. It was as if in the last words, grown indifferent before her hopeless lack of knowledge, he had turned a tap off. He lit another cigarette, remembered her, and offered his carton. She took one.
“Nan also mentioned a man—for some reason she would never use his name—Know-all, she called him.”
He glanced at her, a searching glance. “Yes, he was the leprosy man,” he said.
She waited. “You sound as if you were referring to the milkman.”
A satiric breath came through his nostrils, a wry humour to his face. “No, he wasn’t the milkman, as it happened. He was one who reckoned he had got rid of all the illusions at last, all the bourgeois repressions. He fatally attracted Nan. I mean she couldn’t stand him. But by that time her emotions were getting the better of her.”
“You mean she was beginning to go to bits.”
“Exactly,” he said, as if refreshed by such cool frankness. “Emotions work up to an awful mess. That’s the trouble. You have to use emotion, of course. But once let it get out of hand—bloody awful,” he concluded succinctly.
“Tell me what happened?”
“It would need a psychoanalyst,” he suggested dryly, “and long sessions on a couch. However.” He took a chestful of smoke and let it out in a slow hissing fullness. “The thing went on. Things have a habit of doing that—until they burst. One thing reacting on another, a dialectical process. But will folk see it? Not they! Even Fanwicke—or Know-all, if you like—although he is the ablest intellectually of the lot of us, could drive our definition of freedom to a satisfaction of his individual ends that he would not—or could not—perceive was in practice essentially bourgeois or anti-social. It may be—I have long suspected it—that the aggressive instincts are in him particularly powerful. He talked of liquidating institutions and politicians with a relish, that, in our off hours with drink about, was certainly infectious. He has a driving intellectual force, a certainty, a belief in himself that inspires young spirits. Quite an extraordinary thing. He makes you realise how revolutions happen.”
“The need of satisfying his individual ends touched Nan?”
“It would touch anyone. Nan is a very good-looking girl with at times an extraordinarily vivid life in her, as you know. The trouble was Nan couldn’t leave him alone. She always countered him. And in argument of course he flattened her. I give you no idea of a certain flair he has, a sheer brilliance.”
“You imply that deep in her mind she was really attracted by him?”
“Frankly, I could not be sure. She said she hated him, hated the destructiveness in him, and so on. But when I saw that she was deliberately influencing me against him—well, I had to stop her. The emotional mess again, the personal. The awful insidious business that——Anyhow, we quarrelled.”
After a short pause, Aunt Phemie said, “I suppose relations all round were pretty free?”
“Sex relations, you mean? Reasonably free, yes. That kept a lot of frustrations out of the way and let us get on with our work—and our lives.”
“And after your quarrel?”
“We remained friends, but of course I only saw her at intervals. Remember we were all working at our jobs—some of us quite hard. If you really have some notion of a smart set in your mind, forget it. There are loathsome enough things without it.”
“I think I understand. Long and even dreary spells—with outbreaks.”
“That’s about it, not forgetting the long spell of death and destruction. Things come in cycles. There came, as I said, a pretty hot time. The strain of the war was over. I—let out a bit myself. Nan let go. A bit of a smash-up once or twice, with some of the lads in trouble. Then I decided to call a halt; was jeered at, especially by Nan. Julie got a decent young lad into real trouble; he was damned lucky merely to be reduced to the ranks. And so on. With Fanwicke making now a dead set at Nan.”
“And she wasn’t responding quite right?”
“That looked like her game. And she was tough. She seemed set for anything and Fanwicke her high aim. There are beasts, aren’t there—spiders or something—where the female in due course gobbles up the male? After a few drinks, the things Nan could say to Fanwicke left little to the destructive imagination. Fanwicke smiled. He reckoned he knew the symptoms of concealed love. But I need not grow lurid. Julie came gibbering for me one night. It appears there was a taxi crammed with them, pretty late. Did I mention night clubs? Anyway, Fanwicke, it seems, tried to fumble about Nan’s person in the packed taxi and—her arms being pinned—she bit him badly in the neck. A hellish commotion ensued. They had to hold Nan by main force; then got her into Julie’s place and doped her. Fanwicke wore sticking plaster for some time.”
Aunt Phemie sat quite still. His recital of events had a conversational calm that was completely objective. His reference to spiders had been an incidental touch of macabre wit.
“Not a very pretty story,” commented Aunt Phemie, subduing an involuntary skin shiver. She got hold of the poker and stirred up the fire. “Did she suffer much—after?”
“She would let no one touch her—except Julie. She had this leprosy fear; a horror of hands coming near her. I supposed it had something to do with Fanwicke’s attack.”
“You helped?”
“By keeping my distance, yes. I was with her quite a lot of course. It was a difficult time for a bit. She began to find her own solution by going back to early days—to put it mildly.”
“Put what mildly?”
“Her hallucinated craving. However, at long last it brought her here. We were friendly again by that time.”
Aunt Phemie turned from the fire. “It’s getting quite dark. Would you like the lamp lit?”
“As you like. Actually I have never cared much for sitting in the dark.”
“So it would seem,” agreed Aunt Phemie, going towards the lamp.
He smiled. “You have a nice cool voice.”
“You appreciate the absence of emotion?”
“Very much,” he assured her.
5
Aunt Phemie lit the old Famos lamp and as she gave the mantle time to kindle was aware of a certain unreality about her standing body. She realised that his reference to a nice cool voice was not so much a compliment to her as a relief for himself, yet it used the channel of compliment. He just wouldn’t be bothered being insincere over a small thing like that. She felt herself acting in a play whose words she had not mastered. Going to the door, she opened it quietly and listened. That, too, was part of an act.
“Mrs. Fraser is very good,” she said, coming back to the fire, looking along the mantelpiece, sitting down; “comfortable—and comforting.”
He nodded. “I know the type.”
“Why do you use the word ‘type’? She’s a human being. Would you like some more coffee?” “I would. It’s good coffee.”
“The right bite?”
“Not quite up to the old coffee stall in the early hours. You contrive a civilised smoothness—though doubtless the bite is concealed.”
“You sound as if you had an early experience of London night life.”
“I had. My views were not exactly welcomed at home, even as a college youngster. Not that having views, political or religious—or both—would really have mattered.”
“No?” She stuck the aluminium coffee pot into the fire.
“No. The English are curiously sound in one respect—that’s why they have lasted so long. They realise that action is the acid test of thought. Pure Marxism.”
“And where do you get your Ranald from?”
“Some barbarian addition to the pure stock. A Highland grandmother it wa
s. The family is rather inclined to blame her for having upset the genes. I take after her apparently.”
“Do you? In brains?”
He smiled, switching his eyes onto her. “Brains is hardly considered a breeding point in the best circles. I’m afraid it was more a matter of looks—though doubtless, come to think of it, the looks would also cover my unfortunate aberration.”
She regarded the face critically. “But you don’t look particularly Highland, do you? I should say you were Greek.”
Their eyes met for a moment. “Kronos, you think?”
Aunt Phemie felt exactly as though she had been invisibly stabbed. It was as if some truth, which her mind did not even entertain, which was still formless, had yet stabbed her. She caught the coffee pot handle; it was hot, if not quite hot enough to make her draw her hand away, as she did, swiftly, looking at it for the sting. He offered his handkerchief, but she persisted in finding the old singed cloth grip; then she poured him some coffee and also helped herself.
“I am taking all your cigarettes,” she apologised; “I must get some.”
“You were going to tell me what happened to Nan,” he said, as they blew the first smoke through the silence.
“Yes.” She was having difficulty with specks of tobacco sticking to her lips, got up, and taking down a jar from a top shelf surprised herself by finding a long cigarette holder among some pheasant’s tail feathers. Now she looked more at ease; even her appearance was subtly changed. “Yes,” she resumed, with an objective manner. “There has been some trouble. It is involved, as you will understand, not really because the man matters in any way personally but because of her condition. You appreciate that, of course.”
He waited.
“I don’t know much about the neuroses, not anyhow in a technical way. Nan to me isn’t really or fixedly neurotic. She has certain illusions or delusions, symptoms, and is in a very dangerous condition, but she knows it and is fighting against it. So long as she keeps the strength, the balance, to fight, she’ll come absolutely right, for she has a sound—foundation. When you call this foundation a sort of regression to an infantile security, I don’t mind. I think the words are almost meaningless. In fact they may be, in a certain way, terribly wrong. No, ‘wrong’ is the wrong word. I mean terribly blind. But perhaps that doesn’t sound very coherent.”
