Such reflections were constantly at work in Thomas’s exercise of power, where at times, in his concentration upon an individual patient, he felt that he was making risky guesses. How he
dared
to do what he did, he did not know. Sometimes he wondered whether his reluctance to generalise were not a result simply of laziness. Yet when he was working well he felt sure of his methods, and not only sure that they were right for him. Only in particular situations there came particular certainties. We practise dying through a continual destruction of our self-images, inspired not by the self-hatred which seems to be within, but by the truth that seems to be without; such suffering is normal, it goes on all the time, it must go on. Here, at the extreme points of Thoinas’s departure from more conventional ideas of health, he had continually, and with increasing doubts, to put himself in question. Thomas, who was crammed with secrets, guarded this one most carefully. He sometimes wondered whether he were not engaged in the wrong occupation. It did appear to him that he helped people. Yet how could this be, when he required of his patients more than he required of himself? Would it not be better if he could teach something of his methods to some others, and then retire to practise dying? Here most obviously he saw the empty scheme of an impossible religious solution. As for teaching his younger colleagues, how could he do so, since he so jealously concealed what he did, and could only do it on that condition? There seemed to be something wrong somewhere.
Without, until recently, even hinting this to anyone Thomas had been slowly divesting himself of his powers, trying to ‘finish’ his patients, meticulously of course, and release them or find them another ‘place’. He felt that he required an interval, which might prove to be a long one. He wanted to think, perhaps to write, to leave London, to live in the country, to be more alone, and if these things seemed like luxuries he did not care. He felt he was beginning to need his patients, and this was dangerous. He needed Mr Blinnet, had by now come too close to him; without excluding the theory, for Thomas was more sceptical than Ursula imagined, that this clever and interesting man was at least partly engaged in teasing his psychiatrist. It was time to make a change.
And now there were those two boys in a state of crisis. Perhaps this too was some sort of signal. Thomas loved his wife and son blindly and exceedingly, his ‘coldness’, his critical ‘knocking’ attitude to Midge, remarked upon by Ursula, was an instinctive attempt to avert the envy of the gods. He was proud of her and continually felt how lucky he was to possess her. Whereas he ‘read’ himself in Meredith, she remained opaque, radiant like a work of art, full of strange rays. He loved her, he admired her, and in an odd way he pitied her, and this intense pity was stored in the centre of his love. He never forgot his father’s remark, but he translated it into another language. The two boys were a bonus, brought to him by his wife as part of her dowry, two extra sons. Thomas, always an exile and an only child, lacked family. He missed his parents, he thought of them every day. He loved Stuart and Edward, but secretly, and with a more detached emotion which included curiosity, whereas about his wife and son he felt none, they were absolutes. With ‘the boys’ he had felt a pleasure as at watching animals at play, and now his fear for them felt like a fear felt for loved animals. They were both, in different ways, in pledge to death. Was he to redeem them? For both had become, at once, his patients. Thomas was certainly not going to let Stuart escape without giving up a secret or two. He almost looked forward to seeing him in trouble. In this, over which he almost smiled, Thomas experienced in himself the shadow of the old conflict between holiness and magic, so alike, so utterly different. It was as if Stuart had become for him a talisman, a symbol of death, an object of awe and envy, yet also provocative of painful anxiety: Stuart, with his curious blankness, so unattractive to some, to Harry, for instance, maddening. Edward had lost all value, Stuart was gorged with it. It was as if Stuart had become an albino, Thomas saw him as something immensely solid but without colour. Would it develop, would it last? Edward’s problems were simpler, but also graver. Edward was about to destroy the world, to banish it by flight, as Thomas had predicted, fleeing out of the mess of here to the purity of elsewhere, taking flight as his image of death. But with what a terrible destination. Edward was running away to the most dangerous place of all, and Thomas was not stopping him. Was he not indeed sending this beloved child straight into the underworld?
‘I think you’re not worrying enough about Edward,’ said Midge.
‘What’s the use of my worrying?’ said Harry. ‘I could upset myself by imagining it all, but why should I? It won’t help me to help him, quite the reverse. You’re all crowding round him and saying “Oh, how terrible”. He needs to be made to feel it
isn’t
terrible, it’s ordinary, like what happens to all of us. He needs casualness, not all this portentous caring. He needs to get over it, to cover it with a healing skin of indifference, to
forget
it. And if I forget it for him, that helps him on. Anyway Thomas has got him now, he’ll be in love with Thomas, he probably is already. Thomas will make him feel guilty instead of saying it wasn’t his fault. God, how I loathe that idea.’
‘Thomas is so sort of romantic about death, he wants people to confront things even if it kills them.’
‘Thomas is a
voyeur,
he lives off the miseries of others. But it’ll all slide off Edward. He’s got what we haven’t got which will make him recover.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Youth.’
Midge considered this idea for a moment. It came to her with a hint of the gratuitous barbed bitterness which she now increasingly perceived in her lover. She sighed. ‘Haven’t we got it? Well, I suppose not.’
‘Don’t cry about it.’
‘I’m not crying. I just want to feel we have endless time.’
‘We have endless time, my queen, my Cleopatra. He lives eternally who lives in the present.’
‘I wish that was true.’
‘We live in a golden time, not in mean ordinary time.’
‘Yes, but we are surrounded by ordinary time.’ That was true enough. Their great deception, which had lasted now for nearly two years, was like a vast mathematical calculation, a jigsaw puzzle of days and hours and minutes, of patterns which varied and patterns which remained the same. It was as if they were astrologers or physicists. Now, for instance, Meredith was safe at school, Thomas was safe at the clinic, where Midge had telephoned him to make sure, Midge and Harry were safe in the spare bedroom of the house in Fulham, our bedroom as Harry called it.
‘We live in an impossible way,’ said Midge, ‘but at least that proves one can!’
‘Impossible situations can continue, but that doesn’t mean they should!’
‘Don’t needle me. I wish we didn’t have to be here.’
‘So do I.’
‘It’s not that I think Thomas might find out — ’
‘I suppose you’d know if he found out.’
‘Of course.’
They looked at each other. Neither was sure. Thomas was capable of anything. Perhaps ‘Midge was too. Lying was so infectious. Sometimes Harry wondered whether Thomas hadn’t known all the time, informed by Midge right at the start, forgiven, licensed, at the start. Perhaps they had discussed it. But Harry did not really think this. He said, ’I’m sorry. My place is hopeless now with those two wretched boys at home. They may be there forever. I’m going to get us that little flat.’
‘No — ’
‘You think it’s a “step”. Well, it is a step. But consider how many steps we’ve already taken.’
‘It would be so expensive. And the idea of a love nest — ’
‘Well, this is a love nest! We may as well have a comfortable one! Besides I want to cook for you. This isn’t just unsafe. It’s appallingly bad form.’
‘Oh — bad form — !’
‘When we’re criminals anyway, in blood so steeped — Have some whisky.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Of course, you don’t want Thomas to smell it on your Judas kisses!’
‘Don’t. I wish, oh I wish, I wish — ’
‘That everything was different. But it isn’t. You mustn’t wish, you must
will.
I wish you’d waited for me, and not married Thomas. God, why didn’t you wait!’
‘I wish you’d
noticed
me when Chloe died.’
‘All right, all right!’
Harry, dressed but open-shirted, bare-chested, was moving restlessly about the room holding a glass of whisky, now standing near the window looking at the rain falling on roofs and chimney pots. Midge, sitting on the bed watching him, was wearing a huge-sleeved robe of red and purple silk which Harry had had made for her and which she wore for him after love-making and only then, and which he now brought with him to their trysts and took away again afterwards.
‘We weren’t ready for each other then,’ said Midge. ‘Still it could have happened. I never got on with Chloe, she never invited me or wanted to see me, I didn’t live in London. But we did literally see each other. Of course I looked like nothing at all. I had to make myself. You were made by your father, your childhood, your school, your education, your money — I had to invent myself out of nothing. Perhaps that’s why I’m so tired now.’
‘It’s true,’ said Harry, ‘you were invisible. The little sister who lived down in Kent. And when Chloe died I was crazy. Poor Chloe, she must have been one of the last people to die of TB — she looked — so beautiful, so frail with big sad eyes — ’
‘While I’m so healthy and fat.’
‘Don’t be envious!’
‘Jealous. She was your wife.’
‘Well, what’s stopping you being my wife?’
‘When she died I was busy inventing myself’
‘And the height of your ambition was to be a fashion model!’
‘Don’t sneer. You don’t know what a long way I had to go. Chloe and Dad always told me I had no talents. But when I was a model everyone in England had heard of me. No one ever heard of Chloe.’
‘Oh stop it, Midge — ’
‘I was a clerk in an office — ’
‘And then you donned beauty like a robe. Who was the first person who told you you were beautiful?’
‘Jesse Baltram.’
‘But you never met him!’ said Harry. ‘You said Chloe took you to Seegard once, and left you in the car!’
‘Well — I did meet him — ’ said Midge. ‘I never told you this. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn’t tell about them or they’ll lose their power.’
‘Tell, tell!’
‘Chloe left me in the car like a dog. I was still at school. She was Jesse’s model, she always said she was his pupil, that business was just starting up I suppose. She said she wouldn’t be long, but she was ages, and at last I went into the house. It’s a very strange house.’
‘And you met Jesse?’
‘Then Chloe said I could stay for lunch. Nobody
talked
to me at all. I sat at a long table. There were some girls and young men who I thought were art students, and some children, I didn’t even identify Mrs Baltram, everyone was rather good-looking and dressed in sort of smocks and robes and things.’
‘And Jesse?’
‘He sat at the head of the table. He had a great narrow nose and a pointed chin and a lot of straight dark hair like a crest. Everyone was talking loudly and ignoring me and I felt very frightened and miserable. Then suddenly Jesse pointed at me with his knife and called out, “Who is that girl?” And there was a silence.’
‘Yes — and then?’
‘Well, someone said I was Chloe’s sister, and Jesse went on looking at me for a moment. He didn’t smile. Then he went on with his lunch and everyone started chattering again. Then after lunch we went away.’
‘But didn’t you see him again, didn’t you talk to him?’
‘No. That was all.’
‘But you said he said you were beautiful.’
‘He didn’t say it,’ said Midge, ‘but I
knew
that he
thought
it. He could really
see
me.’
‘This, makes me jealous,’ said Harry. ‘That look of Jesse’s was probably your sexual awakening. That’s why you think it’s a talisman.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I’m sure you weren’t beautiful then. He might have thought you looked like Chloe. That’s why he noticed you.’
‘You like to think I didn’t exist until
you
noticed me!’
‘Of course. God, I’ve had enough trouble with that man in my thoughts!’
‘I’d like to see him again. I’d like to see Seegard again.’
‘I see little chance of either of us being invited, I’m glad to say,’ said Harry. ‘I’m never going near that place, and I forbid you to.’
Midge smiled. She liked it when Harry asserted authority over her.
‘He’s old now,’ said Harry. ‘He got married late. He had hundreds of girls before, and probably after.’
‘He’s not all that old, he’s still working, I read in a magazine.’
‘He’s old. Well, he saw more than I did. He only stared at you because of Chloe.’