In the Time of Greenbloom (55 page)

Their silence was emphasised by the gurgle of the flask as Greenbloom refilled the cap.

“Sartre of course would not agree with me.” He drank briefly. “You must meet him. For him the imagination, not the style, is the man; hence he elevates despair as a Priest elevates the Host, but with this difference, that
he
sacrifices a negation to a negation and prefers to be unobserved while he does so. For Jean-Paul as
I
understand him, boredom is the equivalent of what the mystics call ecstasy: the apprehension of a vacant Truth by a vacant imagination. Do you follow me?”

“Not really.”

“No, I thought not; but it is unimportant.
Everything
is unimportant—even your despair.” He held out the full cap of brandy, “Drink this before we are interrupted by further observers.”

“Thank you.”

John took the silver cap and drained it. He sat down a few feet away from Greenbloom who waved at the pool, the encircling balustrades, the dark olive coloured enclosure of
shrubs and the silvery bulk of the Admiral's boathouse at the far end.

“A madman constructed this,” he said. “What did he imagine his intention was?”

“The Admiral,” said John tangentially, “Lady Geraldine calls him her
Red
Admiral, has been working on this place ever since he retired. She didn't really tell you about it at all. You ought to see it by daylight, dozens of statues and urns, bits of carved stone, pottery from the Holy Land, chimney stacks and cannons mounted in concrete with flowers and bushes growing out of them, ships' bells, flagstaffs, coloured figureheads from Nelson's navy, even a live torpedo behind the boathouse—at least
he
says it's alive: he uses it as a threat and—”

“And I suppose,” interrupted Greenbloom, “he keeps his Barge in the boathouse?”

“Yes. No one but John Hughes is allowed near it.”

“Who is John Hughes?”

“Well actually he's the gardener, but he was in the Navy with the Admiral at some time or another and the Admiral always refers to him as his Cox'n. As far as I understand it, an Admiral always has a Coxswain in the Navy who's in charge of his Barge and I believe that when the Admiral ‘puts out' as he calls it, John Hughes is always made to act the part. He has to run up the flags and use the punt pole and so on—” John laughed unconvincingly.

“A moment if you please!” Greenbloom cut him short irritably. “I would give very much to see the spectacle of the Admiral and his Cox'n putting out in the Barge. It would be of considerable interest to my friends in Paris. Do you think it might be arranged if we were to speak to Lady Geraldine?”

This time John's laughter was spontaneous. “Good Lord no!” he said. “She'd be frightfully upset by the mere suggestion. The Admiral never allows anybody to see him when he brings out the Barge, he's even been known to threaten people with revolvers if he suspected that they were trying to watch him. As a matter of fact I believe he very seldom
goes out in it nowadays. He spends most of his time adding disused equipment to the lakeside; stuff he buys from Admiralty sales and so on.”

Greenbloom looked round gloomily, peering intently through long narrowed eyes at the yellowing clutter of objects standing on the banks beneath the leafy horizon of the Shrubbery.

“Interesting!” he said at length. “A private madness almost as publicly expressed as Trafalgar Square.”

With a sudden change of voice and manner he looked round at John sharply.

“Why did your sister Mary refer three times to your impending suicide during dinner at Plas David?”

“Did she? I—didn't notice.”

“Have another drink and cease lying to me!” He waved angrily at the flask. “Fill it yourself.”

“When I'm with you,” said John, reaching for the flask, “I always seem to drink. Do you remember Ireland?”

“I remember the
flight to Chantilly
very well,” said Greenbloom distinctly. “It was foolish of you to leave us like that without seeing anything of the
pays
or the people.”

John coughed and replaced the flask.

“What happened to Rachel?” he asked. “I've often wondered. Where is she now?”

“She is in Heidelburg. Her name is now Grossblutte—Frau Rachel Grossblutte—it serves her right,” said Greenbloom simply. “She married a professor of philosophy at the University there—”

The duration of his pause was indeterminate and feeling that his frown was a consequence of his own subterfuge in having changed the subject, John was loath to interrupt him afresh.

“Shortly,” went on Greenbloom, “both she and her husband will be refugees.”

“Refugees?”

“Grossblutte is an unintelligent thinker, but I do not believe that even he is sufficiently muddle-headed to visualise any future for himself in the new National-Socialist Germany.”

“Oh you mean this Hitler man?”

“I mean the little Austrian who until he makes the mistake of dining on the Pope and wining on the Jews is likely to make Europe very noisy and tiring for some time to come—” He broke off and then in the same tone of voice but with another full glance at John, said:

“
What method had you in mind
?”

“Drowning,” said John, “the Point. Beautiful! very strong and clean. You would go under fighting, with clouds and waves and sun surrounding your head—or stars. I might do it at night, I hadn't thought of that.”

“No audience then,” said Greenbloom heavily. “No observer. Yes, that is good. You sound as though you may be serious.” With one of his new judicious pauses he looked over at the low moon. “We will go together. Delightful!”

“You mean—you want to watch me?”

Greenbloom's laugh disturbed something sleeping in the hedge; there was a clatter of branches and wings and a drowsing bird rose into the moonlight and flew silently away between two of the flag-poles.

“Watch you? Certainly not, I will help you. It will be a case of ‘
encourager les autres
'. At the last moment as you take up your position on the—wet rocks, you may find that you shrink from the ultimate committal. Believe me, small things at such times can wield a disproportionate influence on one's powers of action; a cold wind, for instance, a moment of emotion, even the renaissance of some false sentiment. I will be there to see that this does not happen to
you
. Quite simply, at the
moment critique
, when you have made your final dispositions of course and not before, I will
push
you. Greenbloom will precipitate the void into the Void, and then return home silently the way he has come, taking one more secret with him.”

He seemed entirely serious and for a moment John was quite nonplussed. He reached out for the flask again but Greenbloom removed it to his other side with solemn emphasis.

“No,” he said, “not for
you
at a moment like this. You must think clearly if you are to appreciate the beauty of what I have offered to do for you.”

“But I don't think—” John sought for the words, “somehow that doesn't seem—”

“Of course not.” Greenbloom's smile was slow and coldly studied; it spread over his waxen face like a face-pack in the hands of a masseur. “One must become accustomed to these things. Tomorrow, when I have submitted to your Mother's blackmail about her Church, we will discuss our final arrangements together: but before that there are a few questions I should like to ask you. Your death has become important to me—I feel involved in it—a sense almost of responsibility.”

“But it's got nothing to do with you, I mean you only asked me about it and eventually I told you. At first I didn't want to tell you, I didn't want to tell
anyone
seriously but you were so insistent that you gave me no choice.”

“Enough! You are still prevaricating. Let us drink to it, I think there is enough Cognac left and after their betrayal of me to this
galère
of schoolgirls and materialists I have no intention of saving any for the others.” He filled the cap again. “I will drink first and you second. If I may quote, we will ‘seal this bargain to engrossing death'.”

“No,” said John. “I won't drink! You don't understand. You see I was waiting for the exam results first.”

“Nonsense, that is another prevarication. It is precisely because you envisaged such things that you took the very wise step of confiding in me. Believe me I shall not fail you, John.
Drink
!” He stood up with the full cap in his hand but John remained seated.

“What questions did you want to ask me?”

“Oh, they were quite unimportant. They will do tomorrow
after
we have discussed the more urgent arrangements for your suicide. Sunday by the way is an appropriate night, very appropriate, and you may count on me. Now drink! I will give you the toast.”

John remained obstinately seated. The rapidity with which
Greenbloom had dissipated the secrecy of his intention and assumed the initiative was even more discomforting than his matter-of-fact acquiescence and his impatience to conclude something which was really no concern of his at all.

“I won't drink,” he said. “At least not until you've asked me the questions.”

“Very well!” Greenbloom sighed. “I can see that I am going to have difficulties with you tomorrow night. It is not going to be so satisfactory as I had imagined. One might almost say that the quality of your despair is unworthy of us both. If you must know, I was interested only in minor details of the earlier tragedy.”

“You mean the Murder?”

“Yes, yes, the murder. I think it is only fitting that someone should be in possession of all the facts, and as the single surviving repository of your secret I feel that in order for the circle, the vacant circle, to be completed—as complete as these stone circles of the Red Admiral's as you call him—that person should be myself. After all I have known you for some years now and I feel that I have not been without influence upon your thinking.”

“Oh, all right. What do you want to know?”

“A few things. What for instance has happened to the girl's mother?”

“She's in Canada.”

“Married?”

“Yes.”

“To whom?”

“To Mr Harkess.” John breathed out impatiently. “If you really want to know, they married about twelve months later.
She
always sends me a Christmas card.”

Greenbloom nodded. “Interesting,” he said, “in a sense almost Hamletesque—Shakespearean. Now that
would
have been a play! I mean for the Mother to have married the
Prince's
murderer.”

“But he
wasn't
her murderer. Mr Harkess had nothing—”

“In the narrower sense, no; in the broader sense, yes.
Remotely we are all involved; he, this Mr Harkess, was very closely involved.” A yawn escaped him. “Forgive me! it is not that I am uninterested in the circumstances, the precedents of your approaching death; I can understand that to you it must seem of unique importance but tonight I am a little tired. Tomorrow night it will be different. I have no doubt that then I shall be feeling more alert. Now what was I saying? Ah yes! This man Harkess—that was his name was it not?”

“Yes.”

“It was inevitable that she should have married him; a woman would never be able to forgive a man for a thing like that.”

“But I keep on telling you. He had nothing to do with it.”

“Nothing?”

“No, nothing, except that he was in love with—with Victoria's mother.”

Greenbloom spoke very slowly. In the light of the moon, which as it rose above the surface mists of the Island grew whiter and whiter, his eyelids drew down on their pale sclera leaving only the two irises, wet and black, to gaze out upon John through their nearly occluded margins.

“And the night that your Victoria was strangled,” he was precise, “where were
they
?”

“At the Races—no, in bed—they were in bed.” John swallowed. “You read it didn't you? It was all in the papers.”

“
All
?”

Greenbloom smiled and John stood up. “No, not all. Not that bit. I never told anyone that bit. I thought it was important then but now I know it isn't. They wanted me to keep it secret, it was important to
them
.”

“
Very
” said Greenbloom. “Lyricism! The lyricism of the dispossessed!”

“I don't know what you mean, I don't want to know what you mean,” said John, “I'm tired of meanings.”

Still Greenbloom stood there smiling arrogantly with cold
sagacity; his forehead white and unmarked in the untarnished light.

“There
are
no meanings. No meanings that we can apprehend. Ludwig Wittgenstein was right when he said that.”

“Oh
Wittgenstein
! If you think that you understand it all why do you ask
me
? Why do you keep following me? Why go on about it?
I
never think about it; it was—
something
, that's all.” John's voice fell away as he tried to explain. “It was—
sensible
; in a way I'm glad it happened. I know now
why I am
. Nothing else irremediable, nothing that makes sense has ever happened to me since and never can. That's what's the matter with me. I can see through everything all the time. I think I'm waiting for something like it—something as important I mean—to happen again. It should never have happened
once
to anyone; it should go on happening always: losing things to find them, love being killed while it was alive so that you could have it. I wouldn't love her now if she were here, not like I
do
love her now that she's gone. As it is, I do love her
because
she's dead and that's where I live—it's where I lived and now I can't stop it—”