A Garden of Trees (11 page)

“The irony of it,” Marius said.

“Oh Marius,” Peter said, “what a dreadful joke!”

The sea and Annabelle. Somebody laughed. “I saw Alice the other day,” I said to Marius.

“Oh did you? I wondered which one of us she would continue with.”

“Who is Alice?” Peter said.

“One of your enemies . . . ”

“I have no enemies,” Peter said. “Perhaps she is in love with you, Marius.”

“Oh always love . . . ” Annabelle began.

“I have only those whom I understand and those whom I don't understand. Is Alice old?”

“Not very. She is someone who tries to keep one jump ahead of you like an electric hare.” Marius gave a short description of Alice.

“That is what I don't understand. Isn't it extraordinary how they behave?”

“This silly ‘they',” Annabelle said.

“But it means something. ‘They' are the one-jump-ahead people—the gay, the superficial, the successful. I envy them. They deal exclusively with ambition and seduction.”

“Alice is an oddity,” Marius said.

“I envy them. I understand no one except ourselves. Everyone else I have met belongs to ‘they.' They think about power, bed, clothes, and servants. Why? One might as well collect matchboxes. They are the army of the great irreligious.”

“Are you religious?” Annabelle said.

“I think about it. I wish I didn't. I tell you I like these electric hares. Life must be very pleasant for them. But they must be distinguished. It is not good pretending that someone who is obsessed with power and bed and clothes and servants is the same as someone who isn't. Do you know, they often fly a hundred miles for a game of cards and a thousand for a horse-race?”

“Would you like that?” Annabelle said.

“I should like to enjoy it. I am afraid it would depress me terribly. But I should like to study them, perhaps to get one jump ahead of them. What do they think about in the aeroplane? I should like to ask them that.”

“It is too much of a battle,” Marius said. “A whole-time job.”

“That's why they do it. They have no other whole-time job. I have never had a job in my life, but I should never have time to play cards.”

“Big battles,” Annabelle said, “and war.”

“Nobody has a whole-time job anymore. Only a few have a whole-time life. The rest have to kill time. Have you ever thought what a good phrase that is—killing time?”

“A frightening one,” Annabelle said.

“Yes. But I should like to meet this Alice. Why not ask her round?”

“She wants to meet you,” I said.

“She does? Perhaps we have a glamour for them too. We will have a battle. Is this the first jump?”

“And who's the greyhound?” Annabelle said.

“I told you she was in love with Marius.”

“Perhaps she is in love with you,” Marius said.

“With me? How spectacular!”

“No.”

“Oh, well then, how spectacular for you,” Peter said to me.

“I feel quite fond of this Alice,” Annabelle said.

“Why, are you too?”

“No . . . ”

“Well that's a pity.”

“Well yes, but I mean . . . ” Annabelle was suddenly blushing.

“Of course,” Peter said.

The people at the next table were watching us. There was a heavy blond woman with an enormous hat who sat very still so that it would not fall off, and two neat, reserved men with careful clothes who nevertheless looked shoddy. Every now and then they would raise a cigarette-stained finger to their faces to smooth some feature—a moustache, a lip, or an eyebrow—and then they would go on looking at us out of their musty, impassive eyes.

“Alice has much in common with the communists,” Marius said. “Do you remember what we were saying? They have the same obsessions. Opposites often resemble each other. If you want to pick sides you will not find many people on your own.”

“All the more space to jump,” Peter said.

“You will not even find the religious. Catholics and communists and social-conventionalists will all join hands to fight an individual. They all have a ready-made version of truth, and with this in common they can respect each other. The one thing they never respect is a person who has no truth, who is searching for it. This is the devil that is anathema to all of them.”

“You said that Alice was expecting something from our meeting,” I said.

“Yes, but on her terms, you see, and when it was not on her terms I suppose that she would have rather that we had not met at all. Alice at heart is such an idealist.”

“And now?” I said.

“Perhaps she wants it even on our terms, but I don't think we've got any.”

“No terms?” Peter said.

“The trouble is,” I said, “that if one has no terms then this one-jump-ahead business is so bewildering one cannot even pretend to be a greyhound.”

“I've got plenty of terms,” Peter said.

“But do you want to be a greyhound?” Annabelle said.

“I am a greyhound,” Peter said.

“No,” I said. “But one has to be something. And Alice makes it difficult for one to be anything.”

“You might be one of those men who walk behind the greyhounds with a shovel,” Peter said.

“That's the game,” Marius said. “That is how she is able to be something herself.”

“They wear bowler hats,” Peter said.

The people at the next table were listening to us. The woman had a hand up to the corner of her open mouth and was scratching it with a long scarlet finger-nail, and the two men had their elbows on the table, their hands clasped, discreetly.

“You see,” Marius said, “the greyhound never does catch the hare. If it did, the whole purpose of the game would be destroyed. And the hare would be destroyed too. So no one ever does catch Alice up.”

“No one ever loves her?”

“But love means something different to someone like Alice. It's a part of the race.”

“Like a French novel,” Peter said. “The hero chases the heroine for the first half of the book, and then they find they have changed places and she is chasing him. And so on till they drop.”

“What happens when they pass each other?” Annabelle said.

“The usual,” Peter said.

“But I mean, that's all right.”

“No, because the one who's being chased is so dazed at being passed that she doesn't get back into her stride again until she's doing the chasing.”

“But then . . . ”

“Then the boot's on the other foot; or rather, the bowler hat is on the head of the man with the shovel. He's behind you see.”

“What happens if the man with the bowler hat catches the hare?” Marius said.

“He's electrocuted,” Peter said.

“Who is this man with the hat?” Annabelle said.

“Well, he has to go behind you see with a shovel in order to . . . ”

“I know, but what is he to Alice?”

“As a matter of fact, she says there always is someone behind her,” I said.

“There you are then.”

“Where?”

“In the dung-cart,” Peter said.

I could see the people at the next table becoming annoyed with us. The two men were leaning towards each other nodding their heads and making derogatory noises in their throats, and the woman was looking rather forlorn like a lost baby.

“The point is,” Marius said, “that if the races ever stopped then several thousand people would have nothing to do in the evenings. So they go on, and time is killed, and a few other things are killed in the process.”

“The heart is killed,” Peter said.

“Yes, but you see, the heart of the hare would be killed anyway, so the hare dare not stop. That is what is frightening.”

“What has happened to the heart of the hare that it should ever have started running?” Annabelle said.

“But Annabelle,” Peter said, “you cannot expect the hare not to run when the dogs are after it.”

“Then it is you who are the dogs,” Annabelle said, “and it is you who have taken away the heart of the hare.”

“Is it?” Peter said. “Is it I who have asked it to be a hare?”

“It is no good blaming anyone except yourself,” Annabelle said.

“You said once that we can never know about ourselves,” I said.

“No, but yourself is the only person that you can blame.”

Peter looked sad. “I cannot blame myself for the pride and seduction and prostitution of others,” he said.

“Perhaps not, but you cannot blame the others either.”

“I don't,” he said. “You know I don't.”

“You are such a terrifying moralist,” Marius said.

We stood up, preparing to go. The people at the next table looked down at our feet. Annabelle wore no stockings, Peter had a hole in the leg of his trousers, and Marius wore enormous brown shoes that were curiously flat like kippers. The men looked pleased. As we went down in the lift Peter said, “Why not ask Alice round to-morrow?” and Marius said, “Alice has had a rather heartbreaking life, you know.” Peter said, “Why?” and Marius said, “Well, you must wait till you see her,” and Annabelle and I stood with our arms close in to our sides, not touching. In the street Peter said, “Shall we expect you to-morrow?” and I said, “Yes,” and as I walked away she did not look at me and it was as if there was some string between us that was breaking.

6

Alice had got herself well dressed up. Tall, thin, with a coat like a cape hanging in folds, her smooth drooping face very pale above it, in the taxi she talked incessantly in her lilting emphatic way. “How exciting,” she said. “I never go out, you see. Are you anxious then? Why are you so silent? I promise I won't disgrace you in any way.”

We were going round for drinks. The taxi rattled like a cocktail shaker. Drinks were the meeting-ground for social England. Tea in the villages and gin in the cities. Hands would have nothing to do without a cup or glass to fiddle with, mouths would lose their power without a liquid to drown the silences. A façade had to be erected: for Alice and the people with Alice meetings would be unbearable without a barrier. For Peter and Annabelle on their own it would not be necessary, but even they could not deal with social England without a façade.

In the room at Grosvenor Square the drinks were there, ready, on a silver tray by the window. Alice sat opposite them, talking, her face soft and pallid in the reflected light. Only her eyes were hard—brittle and metallic like the fragile flash of glass. She was making an impression, putting her act over, getting power. Our entrance had been a success. She did it so cleverly, there was such artistry behind it, she had already turned the ground into a battlefield. I was sad that the battle had begun so quickly, almost automatically, as Peter had predicted. I wondered why Alice had wanted to come. She fought efficiently, with the power that she knew, the power of her bright steely eyes like the polished sights of a machine-gun. Gentleness had gone, and quietness had gone: she hated silences. Silences to her were uncanny. So she carried her eyes all gleaming and bright and she quite steadily shot people down with them. Her voice was only an accompaniment, like the noise of bullets. It was her eyes that fired, hitting, and her words were the echo.

“So you have come to live in England?” she was saying: “And your father is still abroad? I should have thought that it was better, surely, to be abroad nowadays than in England.”

“I agree,” Peter said.

“Then why don't you go? It would be easy for you, wouldn't it?”

“It's Marius's fault,” Peter said. “He wants to stay.”

“But good heavens, you don't have to do what Marius wants, do you?”

“Oh yes, I think we do.”

“Why? How dreadful to be dependent on Marius!”

“Yes it's terribly sinister isn't it?” Peter said.

Alice turned away. I wondered if it was possible that Peter might defeat her, if defeat was what he wanted. He was nervous, being under fire, and after all it is difficult not to fight back against machine-guns. But I did not particularly want him to win.

“Of course,” she said, “you are terribly lucky to be living here. It really is delightful. I should not mind London so much myself if I could live in a place like this.”

“Do you mind London?” Peter said.

“Doesn't everyone? No servants, no fun, no food . . . ”

“Surely there is plenty of food?”

“Of course, to you, who can eat in a restaurant, who can get anything . . . ”

“What I meant was to you,” Peter said.

“To me? Of course to me. I didn't think you'd understand.”

“I try,” Peter said.

Annabelle was in the background, Marius had not yet come in, and Peter was doing his fighting with a cautious indignation that was still quite pleasant, but which I was afraid at any moment might turn to alarm. Alice rattled on with unceasing attack.

“You know,” she was saying, “really anything can happen to you anywhere nowadays, the other day I was in a taxi, it is too dreadful, and we stopped at a stoplight, and a man got in beside me, just got in, a perfect stranger, just sitting there beside me without even saying a word.”

“Yes?” Peter said. “Yes?”

“He really might have done anything, he might have cut my throat; it is terrible to think that one is at the mercy of people like that, that they are quite on top of you, everywhere.”

“And what did he do?” Peter said.

“I told you, he came and sat in my taxi.”

“He did?”

“Yes. And then people get drunk the whole time, and they come round knocking at your door, or ring you up, and you have to spend hours with them, literally hours, trying to get them away, and you have no peace any more, that is the terrible thing, you have no peace.”

“But the man in the taxi . . . ”