A Word Child (25 page)

‘I think we have said enough.'

‘But you
will
see Gunnar?'

‘Yes, I expect so. But I've got to think how — '

‘You must help us. You must
now,
after I've talked so much, after I've said things to you which I've never said to anyone. Only you can help us. And now I see, only we can help you. I mean, Gunnar can. Why should you be unhappy? As things are you're losing both ways, you're being miserable and you're solving nothing, you're doing nothing about it. Don't you want to change your life?'

‘I'm not sure. It could change for the worse. I can see that Gunnar might feel better after he'd talked to me. I doubt if I'd feel better after I'd talked to Gunnar. Gunnar can't “forgive” me, I doubt if God could, what's done is done. I don't mean anything very dramatic by that. There just isn't any psychological or spiritual machinery for removing my trouble. Gunnar feeling a bit better won't help me, it won't even, if you see what I mean, cheer me up. And seeing him will just bring it closer, drive it deeper. Death is my only solution. And I don't mean suicide. Do you understand?'

‘Oh — I understand — but no — you mustn't think like that, you mustn't
think
like that — '

‘You are very kind. Yes, I daresay I will talk with Gunnar, or at least try to. My own arrangements don't matter much one way or the other. I don't actually think they could become worse. Anyway, it doesn't matter, it isn't for me to try to get anything out of this. And now I'm sorry I must leave you, I have to go to the office. Thank you for talking to me.'

‘You must never never let him know — '

‘Of course not.'

We stood up. Behind her upon his wet pedestal of beasts and fairies, polished and sanctified by the hands of children, towered beyond their reach the sinister boy, listening.

‘Who was the woman you were with in the office?' Lady Kitty asked.

‘My fiancée. Now I must go. I'm sorry. I'm glad to have met you and I'm — very grateful. I'll go quickly this way across the park. I'll say good-bye to you here.'

The presumption that we would not meet again hung between us, but we could neither of us comment on it.

I intended to say good-bye. Instead I quickly said, ‘May I write to you about all this?'

‘Yes. I'll send Biscuit.'

‘Thank you.'

I turned abruptly away and walked fast and then ran across the wet grass in the direction of Kensington High Street.

Dearest Hilary, my usual letter, but oh how different now that we are to be married. There was always such pain in writing to you before, I felt always as if I were being sulky and importunate. My love for you, which was so pure and clean in me, became something muddy and nasty when I tried to give it to you. I could not
give
it, and that was so terrible, like a curse in a fairy tale. I felt so often that my love just irritated you. When you really love somebody you can't help feeling that you do them good by loving them. And yet I know that things between us were twisted, so that my love could not succour you. Now all is changed. We have looked into each other's eyes and known each other. I felt on Wednesday that pure undoubtable communication at last. It was so different, wasn't it, from the first days when you wanted me? We never looked so then. You hid from me, you hid from yourself. Now you have found me and found yourself too. I knew on Wednesday that all was well and that what had been twisted was untwisted at last. I'm almost glad you didn't come on Friday because Saturday was so perfect, such a sort of seal on it all. I felt so happy beside the Round Pond. I've never
seen
things so vividly in my life, those dogs, those boats, all existing because of you, the world existing because of you. You make me to see and to be. Oh Hilary, I will behave so well, you'll see. I won't dispute about anything ever! You shall decide when we get married — only let it be soon — perhaps on the day when Crystal marries Arthur? I am so happy too in her happiness — we shall be such a joyful quartet! I will (bold me!) ring the office on Wednesday morning and ask you to see me on Wednesday evening! And you will be kind to me — you will be kind to me, won't you — now and when I am your wife. I am only your little harmless Tommy. You must love me and look after me for I am so completely yours. God bless you and keep you. My love to you, oh my dear. Now and forever your

Thomas.

Tommy, my dear, I got your sweet letter this evening. I had to leave early and so missed it in the morning. Tommy, don't ring tomorrow. I'll deliver this by hand tonight. Tommy, I cannot marry you. You can't really have believed I would. Your letter sounds like someone whistling in the dark. Oh God, I'm sorry. What happened on Wednesday wasn't true. Neither was what happened on Saturday. I was living a lie then. I can't explain. Nothing is your fault. What is true is what I was saying earlier, what I've been saying for months, that it's just no good between us. As you so cleverly said, your love just becomes something different when it gets to me, and something which I just don't want. I exploit your sweet kindness by seeing you at all. Of course you want to be exploited, but that isn't the point. It's all bad for
me.
I cannot tell you how I despise myself for letting you console me. Tommy, it mustn't be any more. I feel some sort of crisis in my life is approaching and I have to face it alone. You cannot really help me. You're just like endless cups of tea. I've got to be alone now. Tommy, I can never marry you. I must tell you the truth. I'm a sort of separated cursed man. And you are not the person who can save me. You can only prevent me from being saved by preventing me from being ever really serious. That is why our marriage, if it were ever conceivable at all, would be the end of me. I should die in my soul and I should hate you for it. Please believe what I say and forgive me. Don't try to see me, it would just make us both more miserable. Just please don't come near me any more. Accept a clean decent break and make yourself some other better life elsewhere. I hope you'll be happy, and you'll have a far far better chance away from me. By the way, Crystal has broken with Arthur. Only that is not the reason for this. Oh forgive me — and for Christ's sake keep away.

H.     

I wrote this missive on Tuesday evening and walked to Tommy's place and dropped it through the letter box. I had already cancelled my appointment with Arthur. I gave him no reasons. He assumed, I saw it in his sad eyes, that this was the consequence of the break with Crystal. But he asked no questions. He did not ask about next Tuesday. He asked nothing. Poor Arthur. I spent the later part of the evening wandering about London, dropping into various bars. I walked as far as St Paul's and back. I came home late and went to bed. I slept well.

As I walked about in the cold yellow night I hardly thought about Tommy at all. I wrote the letter to her in a frenzy of fierce certainty after reading her letter. During the day, as I sat in the office looking at Big Ben and doing, in fact, some work, Tommy simply ceased to exist for me, she fell to pieces. How flimsy Tommy's hold upon me was had been proved by half an hour of Lady Kitty. Tommy just had to go. There was nothing crude or vulgar about this. It was not that I wanted to cashier Tommy so as to be able to think about Lady Kitty. I thought it quite possible that I would not see Lady Kitty again. (Though it was important to me that I had her permission to write her a letter.) It was just that Lady Kitty's message belonged to the deep business of my life with which poor Tommy had simply nothing to do. I now had a task, I was like a knight with a quest. I neeeded my chastity now, I needed my aloneness; and it seemed to me with a quickening amazement that I had
kept
myself for just this time. I could not confide what I had to do to anybody, and fortunately there was nobody who had any claim to know it, nobody who had any claim upon my spirit and my hours. Crystal I would perhaps tell later. No one else mattered. The half-lie of my relation with Tommy must certainly go. As I had told her, my earlier desire to end it was my true desire. And now, thank God, Lady Kitty had given me the motive power necessary to move into the truth, into my own truth, my own place, my centre from which I would be able to act.

But what exactly was I going to do and what would be, for me, the consequences? Of course, in spite of my defensive replies to Lady Kitty, there could be no doubt that I must do what she asked. What would it be like? Suppose it were simply awful? Suppose it just ended in some terrible display of Gunnar's hatred and anger? My position was indeed not as bad as it might be, I still had much to lose. I had never seen Gunnar unmasked, never
seen
his horror of me, the horror from which he could not escape and which made him brood upon revenge. What sort of Gorgon might I now, by meddling, unveil, which should appal me and drive me at last into madness? Only I had to meddle. There was no indecision in me at all. And as I thought about what I must do I wavered between this fear and a crazy tormenting hope that all might yet be well. Of course the past could not be undone. But, yet, there could be deep change. How deep that change could be I felt in myself more and more as the day went on, as if Lady Kitty had shaken me and broken something inside and I was now seeing the pieces make a new pattern and offer a new way. Lady Kitty had spoken of cure, and of Gunnar's cure, not mine, though in her grace she had glanced at mine too. She had been practical, not high-minded. It was for me to supply the rest: to give, to her practical shake-up, its spiritual sense. Why should Christ's blood stream vainly in the firmament? I could climb out of the pit in which I had elected to live and in which I had also incarcerated Crystal. I could climb up and see the light again.

What a stupid coagulated mass of indistinguishable guilt and misery I had become. How perfectly futile all my sufferings had been. If only I could separate out that awful mixture of sin and pain, if I could only even for a short time, even for a moment, suffer purely without the burden of resentment and self-degradation to which I had deliberately condemned myself, there might be a place for a miracle. And I reflected too, as I walked and walked about London, on the absolute doneness of what was done. I saw Anne's face as I had seen it that evening in the car, not glorified, not the face of what had once seemed our heroism, but muddled, guilty, frightened. If I had not killed her she would have stayed with Gunnar. Did I kill her for that reason or was it all just chaos and accident, and did it matter that I could probably never answer that question?

WEDNESDAY

O
N WEDNESDAY morning I woke up exhausted and frightened. The exhilarated energy had gone. What had I got to be so animated about? A feeling of, in both senses, determination remained however. I had, it occurred to me, at last, got a job to do. Since the catastrophe I had declared myself jobless. I recalled with dull pain my brutal and as it had then seemed inspired letter to Tommy. Why on earth had I described her to Lady Kitty as my fiancée, out of some sort of instinct of self-destructive pique? Had I actually now got rid of little grey-eyed long-legged Tommy, excised her from my life after all? I had decreed for myself a sort of loneliness, but whereas the loneliness might be long, the task for which it was essential might prove very short. Gould a fresh era which began thus with my violence to Tommy be in any sense a hallowed time? Did the idea of
truth
really cover me where Tommy was concerned? Was Tommy indeed a lie which I had to abjure, an encumbrance which in my new dedication I was bound to shed? It did not, in the morning darkness as I rose, seem so clear.

What was clear was that I
needed
to write that letter to Lady Kitty. Thank heavens I had had the quick wit to ask her if I might write to her. That at least, amidst all the dread, presented itself as a humane and consoling operation. I did not try myself with ideas of seeing her again. But I did so much want, and felt I somehow deserved, the
relief
of writing to her and explaining myself to her before I decided what my plan of campaign should be in regard to Gunnar. There was a kind of strange holy safety, as if I were in ‘retreat', in the existence of the
interval,
the interval between my receipt of Lady Kitty's instructions and the unpredictable battle scene between me and Gunnar. The shake which I had received, the depth to which I had been as it were cracked, gave me for the present work enough. I felt I needed to brood, even to rest for a while, upon what had already happened before I ran rashly on into whatever was to come. I wanted very much now to meditate and to wait, and meanwhile take my time over the invention and writing of the permitted letter.

The tube train was even more crowded than usual that morning. I had done the walk to Gloucester Road passing the now forever numinous place where I had met Lady Kitty, and had at first rejected her. The dawn, which had been a pale glowing primrose yellow behind the bare trees of the park, was already clouding over by the time I reached the station. Jammed body to body, we yawned and swayed, breathing into each other's expressionless faces, like forms packaged up for hell. I kept, as always, a sharp lookout for people with colds. I breathed nervously, consciously, feeling the elasticated in and out of the warm intrusive bodies of my fellow passengers. Reggie Farbottom often lauded the pleasure of being crushed against a bosomy typist. This could not please me. Female forms and faces were, in this stuffy insipid proximity, if anything more terrible. The tired heavily made up faces of girls, thrust up against mine, smelling of cheap cosmetics and expressing the vacancy of youth without its joy, seemed simply to declare the poverty of the human race, its miserable limitations, its absolute inability to grasp the real. Or were these spiritless surfaces simply the mirrors of my own mediocrity? I thought about Tommy sitting in her dressing gown over her cup of coffee. No glove puppets this morning. No joyful quartets.

The day was bleak, with a damp cold which nuzzled its way into one's clothing, up one's sleeves, down one's neck. The warmth of the office, as I came in through the doors, was welcome. No power cuts today, thank heaven, the strike appeared to be over. However the lift was out of order, not an unusual state of affairs. I began to mount the staircase. I had already decided that the best way to alleviate the teasing anxiety which I now felt was to spend the morning drafting the permitted letter to Lady Kitty. There was so much, at our extraordinary meeting beside the sinister boy, that had been assumed, hinted at, left unsaid. Had she really
understood
me? Until I had explained myself to her, exposed myself utterly to her, I was incapable of further action. And what a comfort there was in this. Beyond, there was nothing but fear and hazard.

As I reached the top of the first flight of stairs I nearly collided with Gunnar who was about to come down. I apprehended in a moment how he shied from me as he recognized me, how he shrank from me, went round me. Our eyes met with a sudden wildness. It was like a violent clash of arms. He went on down the stairs.

The idea of ‘the interval' was annihilated. I stood in shock, in perfect indecision. Then came a rush of power too harsh to be called hope and yet not uncoloured by it, more like a sort of frightful urgent terror. I gripped the bannister, turned myself round and said, ‘Gunnar.'

I said it not loudly, softly yet clearly, like someone calling to a ghost or speaking idly and yet eloquently to the dead.

We were alone on the stairs, I at the top, he more than halfway down. The momentum of his ‘shy' from me had quickened his pace and I expected him in a moment to be gone. But he hesitated, stopped and slowly turned. We looked at each other.

Gunnar was frowning in a manner which might only have been expressive of irritation. Then he began to come back slowly up the stairs. I waited tensely as he approached me. I flattened myself against the wall. He passed me by without a glance and went back along the corridor towards his room. I felt a second of anguish until I realized quite clearly that he intended me to follow him.

He went into his room leaving the door open. Very soft-footed, as if trailing an animal, I moved after him down the corridor and slipped into the room closing the door behind me.

The rooms at this level had double-glazed windows and the traffic of Whitehall was muted into a hum scarcely more audible than silence itself. A little rain tapping on the glass with a faint insistence was louder, closer. The big square handsome room was dark except for a green-shaded lamp upon the desk, throwing a very white light upon some papers. Gunnar sat down and waited. His
waiting
was as perceptible to me as the tapping rain, the immense desk, his own form hunched in the chair. And it was frightful. I came towards the desk and stood before him. I wanted him to see my face clearly but the only way to achieve this would have been either to sit or to kneel, or else to move the lamp. I said again, ‘Gunnar.'

The name was different this time, uttered no longer idly into emptiness, but with an urgency of present need and also with a sort of amazement, as if one were to meet a friend unexpectedly in a far-off place. Uttered still as a call which did not dare to be a summons.

Gunnar made a very slight movement which I interpreted as an order to sit down. I pulled a chair close to the other side of the desk and sat. I did now actually move the lamp so that it gave more light to both our faces. I caught a sudden glimpse of Gunnar, his face half illuminated, frowning, glaring.

At that moment someone knocked on the door and almost at once entered the room. Turning my dazzled eyes out of the lamplight I recognized, by his general outline in the half dark, the form of Clifford Larr.

I got up. Clifford was standing frozen, his hand still on the door handle. Gunnar had not moved. Inside a split second I reflected. Then I did what seemed the only possible thing. I made for the door, passing Clifford, who stepped aside, and went out again into the corridor closing the door behind me.

The lofty brightly lit corridor was empty. It seemed like a long hall seen in a dream and I a tiny menaced figure moving. I reached the stairs, hesitated, then began slowly to go down, holding hard to the bannister, my feet slowly taking the treads. I reached the hall, crossed it and went out through the doors into the street.

A light fine rain was now falling, the rain which had been tap-tapping discreetly upon Gunnar's window through those immensely long seconds during which I had been in his room and something had happened.
What
exactly had happened I was still unsure, but as I walked along I was already beginning to read it off the world, to see it, in the guise of passing cars and buses. I crossed through the Horse Guards and began to walk over the wide empty rain-pattered parade ground to the park. I reached the war memorial. Mons. Retreat from Mons. Landrecies. Marne 1914. Aisne 1914. Ypres 1914. Langemarck 1914. Givenchy 1914. I went on into St James's Park and along the right-hand side of the lake as far as the bridge. I walked onto the bridge and paused in its centre. The farther towers of Whitehall were invisible in the murky rain, but beyond the iron-grey expanse of pitted water I could see the Foreign Office with its line of lights. I took off my cap and let the rain gently hit my face, tap my brow and eyelids. I looked down onto the nearer surface of the lake, which brightened near to the bridge into a metallic green, and saw there black and white tufted ducks, bobbing bright-eyed upon the choppy wavelets, diving suddenly and popping up again, sleekly beautiful, perfect, new-minted by ingenious nature, enjoying the rain, enjoying their being. I watched the ducks, seeing them with a clarity which seemed like a new mode of vision, as if a cataract had been peeled off my eyes. I breathed slowly and deeply and looked at the ducks.

‘Hello, I thought I'd find you here.'

Clifford Larr was beside me. I felt intense annoyance at his arrival.

‘The porter said you had left the office in a sort of trance.'

I said nothing.

‘I must confess I'm consumed by curiosity. Gome on now, come out of your trance. Explain to me the meaning of that perfectly fascinating scene which I interrupted just now.'

‘Did — Gunnar — say anything to you?'

‘Of course not. He started talking shop at once as cool as you please. I should like to have felt his pulse though. Let me feel yours.'

I shook Clifford's hand off my arm and began to walk back off the bridge. He walked beside me, laughing his nervous irritating laugh.

‘Was that the reconciliation scene?' Clifford was smiling, but he had come out without his umbrella and evidently regretted this and objected to his fine trilby hat getting wet. He took the hat off, gave it for a moment all his attention, ceased smiling, shook it, settled it back on his head and smiled again. I was bareheaded, my cap in my hand, my hair plastered damply to my face and neck.

‘No.' It had not been the reconciliation scene. It had been mysterious, ambiguous, for hope or fear I knew not what. But it had been somehow a tremendous communication, a moment when lightning had split rocks, earthquakes had riven cliffs, mountains had been cleft in two. None of this could I explain to Clifford. I made a gesture implying that he should leave me alone, and sat down on a sopping wet seat near the edge of the water. The rain-washed park seemed empty except for our two figures. Some glittering mallards approached and regarded us with their jewel eyes.

Clifford mopped the seat a little with his handkerchief, then sat down beside me. ‘What was it then? You must tell me. Something's happened, it must have happened. I shall die of curiosity.'

‘Between Gunnar and me,' I said. ‘Nothing has happened. I am just doing what she told me to do.'

‘
She?
'

‘Lady Kitty.'

‘Good — God — ' Clifford, staring at me, emitted several little whistles. ‘So you talk to
her
?'

‘I saw her once,' I said, ‘at her request. She asked me to see Gunnar, that's all.'

‘That's all! Why? To — well, to calm the nerves of all concerned I suppose. But will it, can it? Why, anything might happen. What boldness, hers I mean. What, when you come to think of it, bloody cheek!'

‘I wanted to see him anyway,' I said, ‘only I wouldn't have dared to do so without her. He doesn't know she's asked me.' I detested Clifford's tone and his language. I wished he would go away and leave me alone with my great thoughts. I also uncomfortably knew that I ought not to have mentioned Lady Kitty. Only I wanted to break his mockery, to meet his persiflage with a blank truthful simplicity.

‘What a trickster!'

‘Have you met her?'

‘Yes,' said Clifford, ‘I have met her twice, at cocktail parties.'

‘What did you think of her?'

‘I thought she was a saucy minx. I don't mean anything to do with impropriety. I'm sure she is a perfect picture of propriety in the strict sense. After all, she would have the wit to play safe. But she is one of those numerous women who can't stop flickering their eyelashes at anything in trousers, a compulsive flirt. She flirted with the prime minister. I suppose she flirted with you.'

‘No.' How could I convey the sober serious merciful sweetness of her demeanour to me? I had no intention of trying.

‘Well, I see she has purchased your loyalty at any rate. So, obedient to her commands, you went to see our friend Gunnar. And what happened?'

‘Nothing. I had just come in. You arrived too soon.'

‘Dear me, I'm so sorry — Did I wreck the touching scene? What did he say?'

‘I've told you, nothing.'

‘You will be reconciled,' said Clifford. ‘I can see it all. It will be very affecting and very edifying. He will forgive you. You will weep on each other's shoulders and become loving friends forever after. You will dine at Cheyne Walk every Wednesday and have lunch with Gunnar at his club every Friday. They will exhibit you to their friends as the penitent monster — because the whole story will have got around by then of course — Lady Kitty will see to that.'

‘Go away, please,' I said.

‘You will have a wonderful friendship with Gunnar, he will glow with magnanimity and you will have your little pleasure of being forgiven and you will smile the smile of abasement and you will both enjoy yourselves like mad. What a bond and what a bondage! He will buy you, in fact Lady Kitty has already bought you for him. She was probably surprised to find how cheap you were. Well, are you furious with me?'