The Philosopher's Pupil (54 page)

‘About Rufus — '

‘It isn't Rufus, it isn't Alan or Alex or Fiona or Tom - not those old theories - not really - it's something aboriginal.'

‘I'm talking about you, not George.'

‘Oh, I know you've got a theory there too. All right. Rufus's death was my fault, it happened in a second, due to my carelessness and stupidity - and then I couldn't get in touch with George, he wasn't at the Museum, I had to wait until he came home to tell him, I sometimes think I died during that wait and everything since has been a dream of life. Of course I feel the loss of Rufus every second, that death is the air I breathe, I relive that accident … But that it has got mixed up with … George and … that's extra …'

‘Yes.'

‘It was impossible to talk about it afterwards, we didn't talk about it to each other or to anyone else. George never asked for the details and I never told them, except for saying it was my fault and saying, oh - very vaguely - what happened. He never
said
anything. I've never looked, even glanced, into the depths of how George felt, how he blamed me in his heart — '

‘Perhaps less than you imagine.'

‘How he accused me, what a
process
he set up - these words don't fit - it's ineffable. And then later on people began to say it was his fault, they even hinted it was deliberate, they believed terrible things - and I didn't say a word. And now if I shouted “I did it” they would still think it was him. How can I leave him after that?'

‘Because he took the blame.'

‘No, no, those words are too feeble, I tell you it's ineffable, it's absolute, it's like being damned together, tied together and thrown into the flames.'

‘Isn't this what must be undone?'

‘Theories, theories, you keep looking for a key, even this isn't fundamental. Yes, he “took the blame”. It has made him worse.'

‘I think it has made you worse.'

‘You think I should forgive myself.'

‘And him in the same movement. Guilt and resentment often get mixed up together. You deeply resent - whatever it was he did - to protect himself - from that terrible thing. You said the other day that he “lapped it up like a cat lapping cream”. I remember that curious phrase.'

‘Did I say that? Of course that doesn't describe it. His heart was utterly smashed - Rufus was - well, you know - for both of us — '

‘Yes.'

‘What I meant was that
at once
George began to make it all into something else, something awful, against me - oh, to protect himself, as you just said. But to mix up that awful pain with vile spite and malice and absolute misrepresentation and lies - that sort of deep
determination
to change what really is into a horrible machine to hurt somebody else - that's the activity of the devil - it corrupts everything, everything.'

‘But you see it both ways round.'

‘Exactly. It
was
my fault and I kept silent about it - I kept silent first because it was too terrible to speak of, and later because - because it wasn't anybody else's business and I couldn't — '

‘You couldn't stoop to counter the vile things people were casually saying about George — '

‘Yes. It would simply have made them talk more, they would have said I was shielding him, they would have
loved
it
.
But because of - the thing itself - and the silence - I am to blame. So in a way George is right and can tell himself so. But the way he has made it into a weapon against me - sort of silently, malevolently - is so awful - it's a caricature of any real condemnation, it's the
opposite,
it's the exact opposite of the response which love and pity would have made.'

‘So objectively you are guilty and George is right, only as he
works
it he's absolutely wrong.'

‘Yes. And what you call seeing it both ways round is part of the torment. It's warfare, it's hell, hell is this sort of warfare.'

‘You spoke of George's “determination”, but what about yours? You see him as acting silently and malevolently. This is the picture which
you
have worked upon. No doubt George moves instinctively, as we all do, to save himself. So he
makes
something of the matter. But so do you. He can't afford love and pity. But it seems you can't either.'

Stella was silent for a moment, reflecting. ‘If I believed that such springs could flow - but all my strength goes into not being destroyed. I don't want to become a machine of misery and hate. I want to stay rational. Just trying to think clearly about George is the best I can do by way of love and pity and such. You don't think he's likely to kill himself?'

‘No.'

‘Suicide has always seemed to me so abstract. No one could wholeheartedly do it.'

‘We are abstract beings and rarely wholehearted.'

‘I know you respect suicide because of Masada.'

‘Oh don't speak of that. Suicides are often acts of revenge, or proofs of omnipotence.'

‘That sounds like George. But no, I don't see him as a suicide either. A lynch mob might kill him one day. Yet inner violence is a power, like magic, people fear it.'

‘He'd be protected, hedged!'

‘Yes. Like a king.'

‘Like a king, which he has to be since you're a queen. You once said you felt like a princess who had married a commoner. “It tells in the end”, you said.'

‘Did I? The things I say, and you remember them all!'

‘Don't be too busy with those pictures. It is good to declare a blankness now and then. We are not anything very much, not even machines. You imagine that your thoughts are rays of power. Simple actions may be a better way to just views.'

‘Simple actions — '

‘Undertaken in a light shed from outside, some ordinary faith or hope, nothing clever.'

‘You are preaching humility again! Like going home. If I could see that as a duty - but I can't. I can't walk into the dark. I've got to have a picture, I've got to have a plan. You still don't think Diane Sedleigh is important?'

‘A toy, a
divertissement.
You aren't worried about
her?
'

‘Yes. But I understand what I feel about her, it's plain and wholesome compared with the rest. I used to think he might kill her. I believe he was with her when Rufus died. You don't think George is simply mad?'

‘No.'

‘Or epileptic?'

‘No.'

‘Electric shocks, all that?'

‘No.'

‘But you think it's dangerous, this waiting, this letting time pass? I've become obsessed with “letting time pass”, I can't arrest it, I can't use it. I used to classify it all as “an unhappy marriage”, but it isn't, it's vast. Of course his having no job makes it worse, he can sit and have fantasies. He imagines awful things. He used to tell me, centuries ago.'

‘Were you together in
that?
'

‘You mean, was I fascinated? Yes, before I started to — '

‘Fear him.'

‘Hate him, or whatever it is.'

‘And you are still fascinated.'

‘It's closer than fascination. I am George. Suppose I went back, would I be safe?'

‘He is fully occupied with John Robert Rozanov.'

‘So he mightn't notice me? I hope it's a harmless occupation. Does that mean I can wait or that I needn't wait?'

‘You don't think George ever realized how friendly you were with Rozanov when you were a student?'

‘I wasn't friendly with him. He just thought I was good at philosophy. And I — '

‘And you —?'

‘Well, you know John Robert, or you did.'

‘You think you aren't part of the Rozanov problem?'

‘I hope not. When I saw how besotted George was, I gave Rozanov up.'

‘And you gave up philosophy, in case George realized you could do it and he couldn't!'

‘Don't! That was ages ago, before we were married. I was studying George even then.'

‘I recall your saying once that George interested you more than anything in the world.'

‘Anyway I don't want to be involved with George while he's involved with John Robert, that would be one Chinese box too many. There is something, if I could only
work it out,
while I'm waiting. You can't explain George by the old theories. You might just as well say he's possessed by a devil. It's more something to pity, like an illness, or an urge, like sex, like a nervous obsessive guilty angry
craving.
He knows now he'll never
do
anything with his life. He's a pathetic figure really. If George was in a novel he would be a comic character.'

‘We would all be comic characters if we were in novels. I wish you had gone on studying, philosophy or economics, not George.'

‘Yes. It's part of that dream.'

‘Of happiness?'

‘I dream I'm back at the university. And don't say “why not”, don't say “you're still young”, don't say — '

‘All right. Nothing ever came of those plays George was writing?'

‘Of course not. Didn't he show you one?'

‘Yes. I'm sorry I lost George. I hate to lose anybody.'

‘If you could have kept him - but it's impossible. If you had kept George he would have begun to detest you as he detests Rozanov. I think he tore up all the plays. He tore up my novel anyway.'

‘I didn't know you'd written a novel.'

‘I might have let you see it. You're lucky.'

‘I hope you'll write another?'

‘It's not being able to
do
anything, to
impress
anybody - I know you see George as a sort of “hero of our time”.'

‘The powerless man who becomes apathetic and then nasty.'

‘George as a nasty man. That sounds quite soothing. You know George lives in a sort of odd time scheme, as if he were a criminal who had already been punished and set free, although his crimes still lie ahead. He has already paid, and this sanctions his resentment.'

‘The justified sinner going on sinning. You said George felt like a Nazi war criminal at the end of a long sentence, purged by suffering, yet unrepentant!'

‘Yes. He was fascinated by those people. He read a lot of books about them. He'll never achieve anything now, like studying or writing or anything, but he might achieve some awful
act.
I'm sure he dreams about it - all his little outrages — '

‘Like trying to kill you?'

‘Well - he tried in a sense - but — '

‘He pushed the car.'

‘Yes. I can still see so clearly his hands pressed on the back window, all pale like - like some animal's — '

‘And he kicked you after he'd got you out.'

‘I think I resent that more. I did provoke him. I taunted him about Rozanov. If he ever did kill me it would be accidental.'

‘Never mind. Go on. All his little outrages, or “pranks” as his admirers call them — '

‘Are like - imagery, symbols - like a rehearsal for something he'll do one day that will satisfy him at last - and then he'll stop - he'll be satisfied, or perhaps he'll be disgusted, he'll have destroyed something in himself, he'll be exhausted, weak and pale like a grub in an apple, and the craving will go away.'

‘What stage in this process are we at now?'

‘That's what I want to
work out.
The Rozanov thing is an interruption. It's serious, but in a way that could be
divertissement
too. It's fortuitous and can pass. Rozanov will go back to America and George will recover. Then we'll know.'

‘Whether the
thing
he's waiting for - the act that will cure him - has already happened?'

‘
Yes.
I thought the Roman glass was it.'

‘Yes?'

‘Then I thought that murdering me was it.'

‘Except that you're still alive.'

‘Yes, but it could be good enough.'

‘And if it isn't?'

‘He might feel he had to finish me off so as to finish
it
off. He might see it as a fiasco, as a loss of face, as something that went wrong.'

‘Is
that
why you wait?'

‘No, it isn't, that doesn't make any difference, if I go back to George I take the risk. I just don't want to go back in a muddle, in an undignified scramble, without a clear head and a policy.'

‘A policy —!'

‘And now I've delayed so long I may as well wait until Rozanov has gone back to America.'

‘And if George were cured, “exhausted” as you said, if he were weak and pale like a grub in an apple, docile, would he still
interest
you? Don't you rather
like
the waiting?'

‘Sometimes I feel as if George were a fish I'd hooked … on a long long line … and I let him run … and run … and run … What a terrible image.'

‘What's that strange music?'

‘There's a fair on the Common.'

The distant sound of fair music, distilled and sweetened in the warm evening air, faintly and intermittently drifted in the garden at Belmont. Nearer at hand a blackbird, lyrical as a nightingale, was rapturously singing. The ginkgo had on its summer plumage. Its plump drooping branches were like the rounded limbs of a great animal. The garden smelt of privet flowers. In fact the whole of Ennistone smelt sourly-sweet of privet where that valuable shrub was a popular feature.

‘Pearl, I feel frightened.'

‘What of, my darling?'

‘Let's close the shutters.'

‘It's too early.'

‘I wrote to Margot.'

‘That's a good girl.'

‘What a nice paperweight my stone hand makes, look.'

Hattie had placed the limestone hand which she had found in the wild garden on top of her neat pile of letters. She had written to her Aunt Margot, to her school friend Verity Smaldon, and to Christine with whose family she had stayed in France.

‘Did you reply to that impertinent journalist?'

‘Yes, I did that yesterday. Fancy that newspaper knowing that I exist!' The editor of the
Ennistone Gazette
had written to Hattie asking for an interview.

‘I hope you said no firmly.'

‘Of course.'

Hattie had had a nasty dream last night which still lingered in her head. In an empty twilit shop she had seen on an upper shelf a small semi-transparent red thing which she took to be a big horrible insect. Then the thing began to flutter and she saw it was a very small very beautiful owl. The little owl began to fly about just above her head causing her a piercing mixture of pleasure and distress. She reached up her hands to try to catch the owl, but was afraid of hurting it. A voice said, ‘Let it out of the window,' but Hattie knew that this sort of owl always lived in rooms, and would die outside. Then she looked at another shelf and saw with horror a cat sitting there about to spring upon the owl.

‘You're so restless today.'

‘I can't breathe for the smell of flowers. Father Bernard said he might come.'

‘He won't now.'

‘He might, he's always late. You don't like him, Pearlie.'

‘I feel he's false somehow.'

‘That's unfair.'

‘OK, it's unfair.'

‘Don't be cross with me.'

‘Do stop saying that, I'm not cross!'

‘Please don't sew. What are you sewing?'

‘Your nightdress.'

‘You did enjoy being in London?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘I wish you liked picture galleries.'

‘I do like picture galleries.'

‘You pretend to.'

‘Hattie — '

‘I'm sorry, I'm awful. It's such an odd light, the sun's shining yet it's as if it were dark. I feel so peculiar. I hope I'm not wasting my time.'

‘If you read those big books you can't waste your time.' By the ‘big books' Pearl meant the major European classics which Father Bernard had indicated with a flourish of his hand that Hattie ‘might as well get on with' pending John Robert's views on her studies. She was now reading
Tod in Venedig.

‘Pearl, my dear, now that Hattie is safely at the university I can at last reveal how deeply I care for you. You have been a great support and a great comfort and I have come to believe that I cannot do without you. May I dare to hope that you care for me a little?' These words, uttered by John Robert, were part of a fantasy which Pearl was having as she talked to Hattie.
In the end
(this obscure conception had become important to Pearl of late) John Robert would
turn to her,
perhaps as a
last resort.

These visions, which unfurled themselves automatically, co-existed with Pearl's uneasy notion, which had lately grown stronger, that John Robert had a more intense interest in his granddaughter than he affected to have. Of course Pearl said nothing of this to Hattie.

Alex had a recurring dream in which she looked out of the window of Belmont in the early dawn and found the garden, which had become immense, with a lake and a view of distant trees, full of strange people moving about purposively. A sense of impotent outrage and fear and anguish came in the dream.

Now listening to the blackbird and gazing out from the drawing-room where she had not yet turned on the lamps, she felt a stab of this fear as she saw a motionless figure standing on the lawn. She recognized it almost at once as Ruby, but it remained sinister. What was Ruby doing, what was she thinking, standing out there alone? Earlier in the day Alex had seen the vixen lying warily, elegantly, upon the grass while four cubs played round her and climbed over her back. The sight had pleased her, but also caused her some obscure pain, as if she identified with the vixen and felt a fear which was always there in the vixen's heart.

‘I can't pray,' said Diane.

‘Of course you can, silly,' said Father Bernard looking at his watch.

Diane had come to evensong for once, but on that evening Ruby had not come. Father Bernard had asked Diane into the Clergy House afterwards and held her hand and given her a small glass of brandy, and after that it somehow happened that they went on drinking brandy together.

‘You can try to pray. If you say you can't pray you must know what trying to pray is. And trying to pray is praying.'

‘That's like saying if you can't speak Chinese you must know what trying to speak Chinese is.'

‘The cases are different. God knows our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.'

‘That depends on believing in God, but I don't. If only he'd give up drinking.'

‘Anything counts now as believing in God, feeling depressed does, feeling violent does, committing suicide does — '

‘Then he believes in God.'

‘Just kneel and drop the burden.'

‘That sounds like a pop song. Does he believe in God?'

‘I don't know. But you do. Wake up. Invent something. Perform a new action. Go and visit Miss Dunbury.'

‘How is she, poor old thing.'

‘Ill. Lonely.'

‘She wouldn't want to see me, she disapproves of me. I wish you'd see George.'

‘Devil take George. The sooner he commits some decent crime and gets put away the better.'

‘How
can
you say that!'

‘I think you should cut and run.'

‘Oh, you upset me so.'

‘Get out of this dump. Get a train; any train, going anywhere.'

‘Have you seen Stella?'

‘No.'

‘He can't have killed her. Where's she gone?'

‘To Tokyo, go to Tokyo, go anywhere, do anything.'

‘I bought a new scarf.'

‘A new scarf can be a vehicle of grace.'

‘I'm drunk.'

‘So am I.'

‘I heard someone say you don't believe in God.'

‘There is God beyond God, and beyond that God there is God. It doesn't matter what you call it, it doesn't matter what you do, just relax.'

‘I think George would do anything Professor Rozanov said.'

‘I've got to go to the Slipper House, I'm terribly late.'

‘You can't go now.'

‘I can and will.'

‘Are you going to see that girl, Professor Rozanov's niece?'

‘Grand-daughter.'

‘Funny little girl, little prissy white-faced thing. Couldn't you ask Professor Rozanov to be nice to George?'

‘No. Come on. I'm off.'

‘I'll walk with you as far as Forum Way.'

It was nearly closing time at the Green Man. As I think I said earlier, centuries of non-conformism has left Ennistone rather short of pubs. There is the Albert Tavern in Victoria Park and a new pub called the Porpoise in Leafy Ridge. There is a rather posh establishment, the Running Dog, which is also a restaurant, in Biggins, near the Crescent, and a pub called the Silent Woman (with a sign portraying a headless female) in the High Street near Bowcocks. In Druidsdale there is the Rat Man, and in Westwold the Three Blind Mice. There are also a few tiny shabby houses of less note in the St Olaf's area, and the ill-reputed Ferret in the ‘wasteland' beyond the canal. The Little Wild Rose on the Enn beyond the Tweed Mill hardly counts as being in Ennistone, but makes a pleasant walk in summer. However, Ennistone is not a town for an easy drink, and a surprisingly large number of Ennistonians have never entered a pub in their lives. The resistance to serving alcohol at the Institute remains firm, though this may change in time with the altering
mores
of the younger generation. This younger generation in the form of the classless
jeunesse dorée,
who had ‘taken over' the Indoor Pool at the Baths, had lately ‘moved in' in a similar manner upon the Green Man, to the annoyance of Burkestown regulars like Mrs Belton.

Tonight the cast of
The Triumph of Aphrodite,
many of them still wearing their costumes, were gathered there, after a rehearsal in the Ennistone Hall. The over-excited cast and their camp-followers had made a noisy procession from the Hall to the pub, and were now standing in a large chattering group spread along the counter. (The pub had lately been redecorated, abolishing the old distinctions between public bar, saloon and snug.) Tom and Anthea were there, and Hector Gaines and Nesta and Valerie and Olivia, with their pet Mike Seanu, and Olivia's brother Simon who was to sing the counter-tenor part, and Cora Clun, daughter of ‘Anne Lapwing', and Cora's young brother Derek, star of St Olaf's choir, who had the charming role of Aphrodite's page, and Maisie Chalmers and Jean Burdett, tuneful sister of the St Paul's organist and of Miss Dunbury's truthful doctor, and Jeremy and Andrew and Peter Blackett and Bobbie Benning and other young persons who have perhaps not yet been mentioned such as Jenny Hirsch and Mark Lauder who were both animals, and young Mrs Miriam Fox (divorced) who worked in Anne Lapwing's Boutique and was helping Cora with the costumes. Derek and Peter were both under age but plausibly tall. The masque was in that stage of penultimate disarray when (in any production) it becomes clear to the director that it will never be fit to be seen. The cast, however, remained carefree, filled with absolute irrational faith in Hector (who was now a popular figure, his vain love for Anthea being common knowledge) and in Tom, who had some vague reassuring authority as co-author. Scarlett-Taylor, after making some valuable historical pronouncements which it was too late to do anything about, had distanced himself from the operation; he was in Ennistone that weekend, but not in the pub, having declared himself for a quiet evening of work at Travancore Avenue.

Tom and Anthea were together, with Peter Blackett who was in love with Nesta and half in love with Tom. Beside them Valerie and Nesta, both worrying about their college exams, were discussing Keynes. Valerie (Aphrodite) was still wearing the long white robe which was her under-dress. Hector came up.

‘The situation is hopeless.'

‘No, Hector, it went very well.'

Andrew Blackett said to Jeremy, ‘Is she still there?'

‘Yes. Not a word to Peter.'

‘Of course not.'

Andrew was wondering whether he should drive straight to Maryville that night and offer his life, his love, his honour and his name to Stella, whose dark beauty he had loved in total secrecy for many years. They would have to emigrate, of course. He pictured himself living with Stella in Australia, and for a second his head swam and he felt quite faint with joy.

Heads of stags and dogs and great crested birds appeared here and there among the drinkers. A shaggy bear came lumbering up to Tom, and revealed Bobbie Benning.

‘Isn't that thing terribly hot?'

‘Yes, and I've got a bloody cold. It's no joke having a cold inside a bear's head, I can tell you. Is Scarlett-Taylor here?'

‘No, he's working.'

Bobbie Benning, still tormented by his inability to teach engineering, and unable to bring himself to confide in Tom or Hector, had elected Emma, obviously a serious scholar, as his confidant but had not yet had a chance to unburden himself.

Hector had been upset earlier in the evening by a difference of opinion with Jonathan Treece whom Hector had, unwisely he now saw, asked to help with the music. Treece had gone back to Oxford in a huff. However, this now seemed a minor matter. Hector was beginning to feel that he would go mad, consigned to his lonely lodgings at 10 p.m. and leaving Tom and Anthea together. ‘Let's buy some drink and go on boozing somewhere else. Come to my place.'

‘Or let's go up to the Common,' said Bobbie. ‘The fair will still be on, won't it?'

‘Some people were dancing round the stones at the Ennistone Ring.'

‘Some people dancing! Who are they?'

‘I don't know, someone said all dressed in white.'

‘Druids obviously!'

‘Let's go up to the Common.'

‘Everyone bring a bottle!'

Tom, laughing, trying on Bobbie's bearhead, was also in torment. He had not yet written to Rozanov, though he had tried several times to compose a letter. How could he tell
that
man that he was not attracted to
that
girl? Of course there were hundreds of ways of putting it: we've talked, and though we like each other awfully … we both think we're too young … She doesn't feel I'm quite right … we're just not interested enough … But the awful thing was that Tom
was
interested, only not in the right way. He thought almost with rage, that bloody autocrat has tied me to her, I don't want to be but now it's so hard to undo, I've changed. He's made me
think
about her so much. I can't just write a letter and
forget it all.
It's inside me, growing like a nasty poisonous plant. It's degrading to be afflicted like this. She probably hates me. And she frightens me, she seems like an evil maid, a sort of magic doll, bringing ill fortune, a curse, blighting my happiness and my freedom. He's
tied
me, and it's so damnably unfair. But if I get furious with
him
and write him some awful letter, if I write him
any
letter, because any letter is bound to be wrong, I shall go mad with remorse. I
care
about him, I
care
what he's thinking, that's what it's come to!