Eyeless In Gaza (38 page)

The other nodded without speaking, and thought how typical it was of the man to go on talking about sensible remarks – even now!

‘I have a feeling,' Anthony went on slowly, overcoming inward resistances in order to speak, ‘a feeling that I'd like to get it over, get things settled. On another basis,' he brought out as though under torture. ‘The present one . . .' He shook his head. ‘I'm a bit bored with it.' Then, perceiving with a sense of shame the ludicrous inappropriateness and the worse than ludicrous falsity of the under-statement, ‘It won't do,' he added resolutely. ‘It's a basis that can't carry more than the weight of a ghost. And in order to use it, I've turned myself into a ghost.' After a pause, ‘These last few days,' he went on slowly, ‘I've had a queer feeling that I'm not really there, that I haven't been there for years past. Ever since . . . well, I don't exactly know when. Since before the war, I suppose.' He could not bring himself to speak of Brian. ‘Not there,' he repeated.

‘A great many people aren't there,' said Mark. ‘Not as people, at any rate. Only as animals and incarnate functions.'

‘Animals and incarnate functions,' the other repeated. ‘You've said it exactly. But in most cases they have no choice; nonentity is forced on them by circumstance. Whereas I was
free to choose – at any rate, so far as anybody is free to choose. If I wasn't there, it was on purpose.'

‘And do you mean to say that you've only just discovered the fact that you've never been there?'

Anthony shook his head. ‘No, no, I've known it, of course. All the time. But theoretically. In the same way as one knows . . . well, for example, that there are birds that live symbiotically with wasps. A curious and interesting fact, but no more. I didn't let it be more. And then I had my justifications. Work: too much personal life would interfere with my work. And the need for freedom: freedom to think, freedom to indulge my passion for knowing about the world. And freedom for its own sake. I wanted to be free, because it was intolerable not to be free.'

‘I can understand that,' said Mark, ‘provided that there's someone there who can enjoy the freedom. And provided,' he added, ‘that that someone makes himself conscious of being free by overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of freedom. But how can you be free, if there's no “you”?'

‘I've always put it the other way round,' said Anthony. ‘How can you be free – or rather (for one must think of it impersonally) how can there be freedom – so long as the “you” persists? A “you” has got to be consistent and responsible, has got to make choices and commit itself. But if one gets rid of the “you,” one gets rid of responsibility and the need for consistency. One's free as a succession of unconditioned, uncommitted states without past or future, except in so far as one can't voluntarily get rid of one's memories and anticipations.' After a silence, ‘The staggering imbecility of old Socrates!' he went on. ‘Imagining that one had only to know the correct line of conduct in order to follow it. One practically always knows it – and more often than not one doesn't follow it. Or perhaps you're not like that,' he added in another tone, looking at Mark through the mosquito net.
‘One's inclined to attribute one's own defects to everyone else. Weakness, in my case. Not to mention timidity,' he added with a laugh, that uttered itself automatically, so deeply ingrained was the habit of half withdrawing, as soon as it was spoken, anything in the nature of a personal confident, of evoking in the listener's mind a doubt as to the seriousness of his intention in speaking; ‘timidity, and downright cowardice, and indolence in regard to anything that isn't my work.' He laughed again as though it were all absurd, not worth mentioning. ‘One forgets that other people may be difference. Tough-minded, firm of purpose. I dare say you always do what you know is right.'

‘I always do it,' Mark answered. ‘Whether it's right or wrong.' He demonstrated the anatomy of a smile.

Anthony lay back on his pillows, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes half shut. Then, after a long silence, he turned to Staithes and said abruptly: ‘Don't you ever feel that you simply can't be bothered to do what you've decided on? Just now, for example, I found myself wondering all of a sudden why on earth I'd been talking to you like this – why I'd been thinking these things before you came – why I'd been trying to make up my mind to do something. Wondering and feeling that I simply couldn't be bothered. Thinking it would be better just to evade it all and go back to the familiar routine. The quiet life. Even though the quiet life would be fatal. Fatal, mortal, but all the same anything for it.' He shook his head. ‘Probably if you hadn't come to shame me into some sort of resolution, that's what I would have done – escaped from it all and gone back to the quiet life.' He laughed. ‘And perhaps,' he added, ‘I shall do it even now. In spite of you.' He sat up, lifted the mosquito net and stepped out of bed. ‘I'm going to have my bath.'

ANTHONY CAME DOWN
to breakfast to find his father explaining to the two children the etymology of what they were eating. ‘. . . merely another form of “pottage”. You say “porridge” just as you say – or rather' (he twinkled at them) ‘I hope you don't say – “shurrup” for “shut up”.'

The two little girls went on stolidly eating.

‘Ah, Anthony!' Mr Beavis went on. ‘Better late than never. What, no pottage this morning? But you'll have an Aberdeen cutlet, I hope.'

Anthony helped himself to the haddock and sat down in his place.

‘Here's a letter for you,' said Mr Beavis, and handed it over. ‘Don't I recognize Brian's writing?' Anthony nodded. ‘Does he still enjoy his work at Manchester?'

‘I think so,' Anthony answered. ‘Except, of course, that he does too much. He's at the newspaper till one or two in the morning. And then from lunch to dinner he works at his thesis.'

‘Well, it's good to see a young man who has the energy of his ambitions,' said Mr Beavis. ‘Because, of course, he needn't
work so hard. It's not as if his mother hadn't got the wherewithal.'

The wherewithal so exasperated Anthony that, though he found Brian's action absurd, it was with a cutting severity that he answered his father. ‘He won't accept his mother's money,' he said very coldly. ‘It's a matter of principle.'

There was a diversion while the children put away their porridge plates and were helped to Aberdeen cutlets. Anthony took the opportunity to start reading his letter.

‘No news of you for a long time. Here all goes on as usual, or would do, if I were feeling a bit sprightlier. But sleep has been none too good and internal workings not all they might be. Am slowing down, in consequence, on the thesis, as I can't slow down on the paper. All this makes me look forward longingly to our projected fortnight in Langdale. Don't let me down, for heaven's sake. What a bore one's carcase is when it goes in the least wrong! Even when it goes right, for that matter. Such a lot of unmodern inconveniences. I sometimes bitterly resent this physical predestination to scatology and obscenity.

‘Write soon and let me know how you are, what you've been reading, whether you've met anybody of interest. And will you do me a kindness? Joan's in town now, staying with her aunt and working for the Charity Organization people. Her father didn't want her to go, of course – preferred to have her at home, so that he could tyrannize her. There was a long battle, which he finally lost; she has been in town nearly a month now. For which I'm exceedingly thankful – but at the same time, for various reasons, feel a bit worried. If I could get away for the week-ends, I'd come myself; but I can't. And perhaps, in a certain sense, it's all for the best. In my
present mouldy condition I should be rather a skeleton at the feast; and besides, there are certain complications. I can't explain them in a letter; but when you come north in July I'll try. I ought to have asked your advice before this. You're harder in the head than I am. Which is ultimately the reason why I didn't talk to you about the matter – for fear of being thought a fool by you! Such is one's imbecility. But, there, we'll discuss it all later. Meanwhile, will you get in touch with her, take her out to a meal, get her to talk, then write and tell me how you think she's reacting to London, what she feels about life in general, and so forth. It's been a violent transition – from remote country to London, from cramping poverty to a rich house, from subjection to her father's bad-tempered tyranny to independence. A violent transition; and, though I'm glad of it, I'm a bit nervous as to its effects. But you'll see. – Yours,

B.'

Anthony did see that same day. The old shyness, he noticed, as they shook hands in the lobby of the restaurant, was still there – the same embarrassed smile, the same swaying movement of recoil. In face and body she was more of a woman than when he had seen her last, a year before, seemed prettier too – chiefly, no doubt, because she was better dressed.

They passed into the restaurant and sat down. Anthony ordered the food and a bottle of Vouvray, then began to explore the ground.

London – how did she like London?

Adored it.

Even the work?

Not the office part, perhaps. But three times a week she helped at a crèche. ‘I love babies.'

‘Even those horrible little smelly ones?'

Joan was indignant. ‘They're adorable. I love the work with them. Besides, it allows me to enjoy all the rest of London with a clear conscience. I feel I've paid for my theatres and dances.'

Shyness broke up her talk, plunged it, as it were, into alternate light and shade. At one moment she would be speaking with difficulty, hardly opening her lips, her voice low and indistinct, her face averted; the next, her timidity was swept aside by an uprush of strong feeling – delight, or some distress, or irrepressible mirth, and she was looking at him with eyes grown suddenly and surprisingly bold; from almost inaudible, her voice had become clear; the strong white teeth flashed between lips parted in a frank expression of feeling. Then suddenly she was as though appalled by her own daring; she became conscious of him as a possible critic. What was he thinking? Had she made a fool of herself? Her voice faltered, the blood rose to her cheeks, she looked down at her plate; and for the next few minutes he would get nothing but short mumbled answers to his questions, nothing but the most perfunctory of nervous laughs in response to his best efforts to amuse her. The food, however, and the wine did their work, and as the meal advanced, she found herself more at ease with him. They began to talk about Brian.

‘You ought to prevent him from working so hard,' he said.

‘Do you think I don't try?' Then, with something almost like anger in her voice, ‘It's his nature,' she went on. ‘He's so terribly conscientious.'

‘It's your business to make him unconscientious.' He smiled at her, expecting a return in kind. But, instead of that, she frowned; her face took on an expression of resentful misery. ‘It's easy for you to talk,' she muttered. There was a silence, while she sat with downcast eyes, sipping her wine.

They could have married, it occurred to him for the first
time, if Brian had consented to live on his mother. Why on earth, then, seeing how much he was in love with the girl . . .?

With the peach-melba it all came out. ‘It's difficult to talk about,' she said. ‘I've hardly mentioned it to anyone. But with you it's different. You've known Brian such a long time; you're his oldest friend. You'll understand. I feel I can tell you about it.'

Curious, but at the same time a little disquieted, he murmured something vaguely polite.

She failed to notice the signs of his embarrassment; for her, at the moment, Anthony was only the heaven-sent opportunity for at last releasing in speech a flood of distressing feelings too long debarred from expression.

‘It's that conscientiousness of his. If you only knew . . .! Why has he got the idea that there's something wrong about love? The ordinary, happy kind of love, I mean. He thinks it isn't right; he thinks he oughtn't to have those feelings.'

She pushed away her plate, and, leaning forward, her elbows on the table, began to speak in a lower, more intimate tone of the kisses that Brian had given and been ashamed of, and those other kisses that, by way of atonement, he had refused to give.

Anthony listened in astonishment. ‘Certain complications' was what Brian had written in his letter; it was putting it mildly. This was just craziness. Tragic – but also grotesque, absurd. It occurred to him that Mary would find the story particularly ludicrous.

‘He said he wanted to be worthy of me,' she went on. ‘Worthy of love. But all that happened was that it made
me
feel unworthy. Unworthy of everything, in every way. Guilty – feeling I'd done something wrong. And dirty too, if you understand what I mean, as though I'd fallen into the mud. But, Anthony, it isn't wrong, is it?' she questioned. ‘I mean, we'd never done anything that wasn't . . . well, you know:
quite innocent. Why does he say he's unworthy, and make me feel unworthy at the same time? Why does he?' she insisted. There were tears in her eyes.

‘He was always rather like that,' said Anthony. ‘Perhaps his upbringing . . . His mother's a wonderful person,' he added, dropping, as he suddenly realized, while the words were being spoken, into Mrs Foxe's own idiom. ‘But perhaps a bit oppressive, just for that reason.'

Joan nodded emphatically, but did not speak.

‘It may be she's made him aim a bit too high,' he went on. ‘Too high all along the line, if you see what I mean – even when he's not directly following her example. That business of not wanting to take her money, for instance . . .'