A Word Child (11 page)

No one knew of our meetings except Crystal. This was another complication, perhaps another bond. I should explain that I had known Clifford, who was exactly my age, very slightly at Oxford. He knew a good deal about the Oxford débâcle. He had told nobody at the office. (I successfully mystified my colleagues about my past.) This fact indeed first suggested that he felt some sort of interest in me. When I first joined the department I had discerned him with dismay and waited fearfully for rumours. There were none. Clifford had said nothing. Then one day he invited me for a drink. It shows how little I understood him that I went to this assignation half fearing that I was to be faced with some sort of blackmail. As it was, it was a little while before my slow mind perceived what it was that he was, so delicately, after, and by then he had already found out the answer to his question. But that, it turned out, was just the beginning of our strange friendship which by now probably meant more to me than it did to him. He was without doubt the most intelligent person that I knew well, and was in this respect a considerable blessing. He animated what was left of my intellectual life. The thing about Crystal was quite unexpected.

Clifford Larr had evidently noticed me at Oxford more than I had noticed him. This was not only because of the disaster which ended my life there (and in many ways ended my life) but because he was, as he told me later, a connoisseur of oddities, and I was an oddity. Perhaps I was discussed more than I realized. He knew that I had a sister to whom I was devoted. Clifford also had a sister. She was very unlike Crystal. She was a distinguished mathematician and died of cancer in her twenties. After it had become clear between Clifford and me that we were to see each other regularly (the Mondays arrangement was the only part of my mode of life which I managed to impose on him) he expressed a desire to meet Crystal, and I brought her along once or twice to his flat. He also visited her occasionally at her place with me. Crystal fell in love with him. I was very upset and totally amazed. I should not have been. Who after all did poor Crystal ever meet? She might as well have been Miranda on the island for all she really saw of men. Clifford was a glittering object, good-looking, clever, charming when he wanted to be so, and surrounded with the sort of melancholy and the sort of mystery which make women feel for men pity, then quickly love. Moreover he behaved to Crystal in a wonderful way, with a gentleness and a tact which I never otherwise saw in him. He even looked different, his face was different, when he was with her. And when he was with her he also enacted, or perhaps this was instinctive, a sort of respectful affection for me which helped to win her heart. He treated her, not quite as an equal, that would have been impossible, but more nearly so than did any other of my friends except Arthur of course). He
explained
things to her. The Impiatts patronized Crystal. They were kind to her but they never saw her quite as an individual person. She did not interest them. She did interest Clifford. Under his interest she flowered, and she loved him.

Of course Crystal never told me in so many words that she had fallen in love, but it was sufficiently evident and she knew that it was. It was also evident that this was a hopeless love. Clifford was totally homosexual and in any case could have no deep relationship with an uneducated person. Crystal had clearly inspired some sort of warmth in him, perhaps simply pity. It may even have been that he liked the
idea
of Crystal. It amused him to inform me that I was fixated on my sister. (A harmless rival?) And he took a curious and lively pleasure in the fact that she was a virgin. ‘And is she really a virgin?' he would say to me with satisfaction, wanting to have this information repeated again and again, like a child who wants the repetition of a story. ‘It's so nice to think of
anybody
being a virgin in these days.' When it became clear what had happened, Clifford did what I suppose was the only thing he could do, and doubtless also the right thing, he withdrew completely. ‘He won't come again, will he,' Crystal said to me in the monotonous tone which she used for grief. ‘No,' I said. He did not, nor did she ever go again to his flat which had seemed to her like a magic palace. Silence fell again, falling like snow upon this so unlikely moment of communication. She never spoke of him. He rarely spoke of her, though he sometimes asked me, formally and without curiosity, now she was. At the severance of relations between them I felt profound relief.

When my friendship, if that was what it was, with Clifford Larr began, I imagined it would, even if not very dramatic, be a moderately dynamic business with a beginning, a middle and an end. Basically I suppose I had no confidence in my ability not to bore a man as cultivated as Larr. He was an
âme damnée.
Of course I was one myself. Only I was a coarse stupid accidental semi-conscious
âme damnée
and he was a refined and highly self-wrought one. I could not believe that, given I manifestly did not share his preferences, he would go on wanting to see me. He did, however, and that without seeming to want things to develop beyond a certain point which he fixed. (And we reached this point relatively early.) There was no dynamism, yet at the same time there was no stability. Knowing Clifford was a pleasure, but it was also a pain. He saw to that. I naturally felt envious and inferior, and Clifford knew exactly how to make me feel more so. Clifford was rich. His father had been a successful barrister, later a judge. Clifford had grown up in a wealthy bookish home. He was educated and cultured in a way in which I would never be, and probably could never have been even if I had stayed at Oxford. Clifford's flat was like a museum, a temple, a House of Mysteries. At night it was, though full of lamps, curiously dark. When Clifford was depressed, which was often, he went out and bought an
objet d'art.
The place was crammed with tiny fancy bookcases and little rugs and Chinese vases and bronzes and things. He had a collection of Italian drawings, a collection of Indian miniatures (I liked these) representing princesses in palaces, in gardens, on boats, conversing with animals, awaiting lovers. It was an education to visit him, or would have been if I had been willing to be taught anything. He soon gave up trying to make me listen to music or to let him teach me to play chess. However, I knew more languages than he did and I never let him forget it.

Clifford went on wanting to see me, but he made me pay. He was often out of spirits and talked regularly about committing suicide. When he was in black moods he needled me mercilessly. At first I gratified him by becoming frantic. One day in a rage I broke a valuable bowl of red Bohemian glass. He was amazingly upset and practically cried over the thing. (Possessiveness is fed, I suppose, by multitude of possessions.) His anger came later. After that I became more restrained, though there were still occasional rows when I had to rush blindly away out of a sheer inability to answer him back. His malice was universal and, when not directed at me, amusing. He enjoyed inciting people to be complacent so that he could despise them. (The Impiatts were especially easy game in this respect.) I felt privileged when he was contemptuous of the world but exempted me. Perhaps that was my form of complacency. He was, as I have said, dry and thin and tall. He had slightly waving pallid hair, the kind that goes grey without anyone noticing. He had narrow close blue eyes and a straight pointed nose and a thin mouth which usually looked sarcastic, but which, when he was listening to music or looking at a picture or looking at Crystal or (very occasionally) looking at me, became relaxed and pouting and conveyed a look of serene sweetness to his whole face. He dressed in soft expensive velvety corduroys and soft expensive vividly coloured shirts.

We were sitting at dinner eating some sort of veal stew and a salad covered with oily dressing. (I had given up asking him not to put oil on my salad.)

‘So why couldn't it take place?' I said. (Crystal's marriage to Arthur.) ‘Because of me, I suppose.'

‘Why do you imagine you are the centre of everything?'

‘I don't. I just imagine I am the centre of this.'

‘He is such a nothing. Credit her with some taste.'

‘You underestimate Arthur. He has many good points.'

‘Mention one.'

‘He is good-natured.'

‘He is weak. Come, come, my dear, it is too late to start building Arthur up for my benefit.'

‘Marriage may transform him.'

‘Transformation belongs to passionate pursuit, Apollo seizing Daphne. There is none of that here.'

‘I don't see why you should assume so.'

‘Arthur deified by love?'

‘Anyone can be.'

‘You must admit you have never hitherto had a good word to say for him.'

‘You mock him. You mock everybody. I just went along. I shouldn't have. I respect Arthur.'

‘Nothing is more important than that everybody mocks everybody.'

‘I don't think Arthur does.'

‘Then that's because he's too timid. He lacks the energy to perceive the absurd.'

‘She wants a baby.'

Clifford said nothing to this, but fastidiously registered the enormity of the remark. He removed the plates. He brought in the cheese soufflé. I had been trained to sit still.

‘I suppose if Crystal marries her dull swain you will marry yours?'

‘No.' Clifford was hateful on the subject of Tommy. I now refused to be drawn. Marriage with Tommy would mean the end of Mondays. ‘That's another thing.'

‘Everything is what it is and not another thing.'

‘So you have observed before.'

‘Why not a double wedding!'

‘There won't be any weddings.'

‘So you agree with me about Crystal and Arthur?'

‘Yes. It won't happen.'

‘Why did you bring it up then? Just to annoy me?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘You said I was going to bore you, you said — '

‘Oh how tedious you are,' said Clifford. ‘You are nothing but a lout who has been taught a few tricks. You are the sort of lower class product who never grows out of his grammar school. Always the little prize boy who was top in the exam. Always envious, always anxious. You exist by excelling, by knowing just that little more than the others and understanding nothing. You haven't even got a sense of humour. When there are no more exams and you can't excel you cease to exist.'

‘Shall I go home and relieve you of my non-existence?'

‘Do as you please. If only you knew chess we could concentrate on that and not talk. But of course you will only do what you can win at.'

‘Of course!'

‘You conceal your inferiority from yourself, though not from anyone else, by cramming your head with foreign words which you can't pronounce and will never use — '

‘You wish you knew Russian, you said so — '

‘This conversation is worthy of the nursery. Go home if you want to. I must make my will tonight.' This was a routine remark, a sort of familiar turning post in our exchanges.

‘Don't forget to leave me the Indian miniatures.'

‘You only like pictures that tell stories. You only like music with tunes. What did you say the Czech word for music was?'

‘Hutba.'

‘Hutba. That's what you like. I must make my will, or else my piggish cousin will inherit.
Non amo, ergo non ero.
Is life a thorn? Then count it not a whit, man is well done with it. Soon as he's born he should all means essay to put the plague away. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. Even Wittgenstein did not think that we would ever reach the moon. So am I a happy fly, if I live or if I die, only dying is very much to be preferred.'

‘Good. Just let me know when you're going so that I can find someone else for Mondays.'

‘The Messiah will change only one thing in the world. If I remove myself the world will be saved. Hey presto. Yes, I must make a will. So Crystal is going to make a present of her virginity to that little worm. But it won't happen. You won't let it happen, will you?'

‘I won't let it happen. Give me some more wine will you? Must you hog the bottle?'

He poured the wine. ‘Your hand, please.' This too was routine. At a certain moment during the evening he held my hand across the table. Nothing else. Sometimes this firm clasp comforted me. Sometimes it annoyed me. It annoyed me tonight. I gave him my hand.

‘So,' said Clifford, in a different tone, his lips beginning to take on the pouting look, ‘they moved your desk out of the window, and you let them.'

‘Yes.'

‘Poor little prize boy. Has anything else … odd … happened to you lately … darling?'

I looked into the narrow clever blue eyes, a light but cold blue, like Scandinavian seas in the sunshine. I saw behind the fair pale head an Indian girl in a diaphanous sari standing on a terrace and watching a flight of birds. Some instinct had warned me earlier not to mention Biscuit. I decided again for concealment. What a strangely apt question, however. ‘No. Nothing.'

‘And you have not … heard anything?'

‘Heard anything? What should I hear? About what?'

Clifford's fingers closed very hard upon my hand. ‘You haven't heard — ?'

‘No. What? You're frightening me. What am I supposed to have heard?' I pulled my hand away.

He pushed his chair back. ‘Oh, nothing — nothing. I'm feeling rotten. I can't sleep. The pills don't work any more. I'm just saving them up now. It's no good imagining gardens and garden gates, that used to help. Now I lie for hours just staring at the ceiling. Human life is a scene of horror. I hope you enjoyed the cheese soufflé. Nothing could be more important than that Mozart died a pauper, except that Shakespeare stopped writing. A scene of horror. You'd better go home.'

‘But what were you saying?'

‘Nothing. What you can't say you can't say and you can't whistle it either, as my old philosophy tutor used to observe. Bugger off, will you.'