Point Counter Point (49 page)

‘J. Bidlake, Esq. Stomach after barium meal. New growth at pylorus, small but v. clear. Photographed….’ He looked up at his calendar for the date, recorded it and put the photograph away in his file for future reference.

The old manservant announced the visitor and retired, closing the door of the studio behind him.

‘Well, John,’ said Lady Edward, advancing across the room. ‘How are you? I heard you’d been seedy. Nothing serious, I hope.’

John Bidlake did not even get up to receive her. From the depth of the armchair in which he had spent the day meditating in terror the themes of disease and death, he held out a hand.

‘But, my poor John!’ exclaimed Lady Edward sitting down beside him. ‘You look very low and wretched. What is it?’

John Bidlake shook his head. ‘God knows,’ he said. He had guessed, of course, from Sir Herbert’s vaguely professional words about ‘slight obstructions in the neighbourhood of the pylorus,’ he
knew
what was the matter. Hadn’t his son Maurice died of the same thing five years ago, in California? He knew; but he would not speak his knowledge. Uttered, the worst was more frightful, more irrevocable. Besides, one should never formulate one’s knowledge of coming evil; for then fate would have, so to speak, a model on which to shape events. There was always a kind of impossible chance that, if one didn’t put one’s foreboding of evil into words, the evil wouldn’t happen. The mysteries of John Bidlake’s personal religion were quite as obscure and paradoxical as any of those in the ‘theolatrous’ orthodoxies which he liked to deride.

‘But haven’t you seen a doctor?’ Lady Edward’s tone was accusatory; she knew her friend’s strange prejudice against doctors.

‘Of course I have,’ he answered irritably, knowing that she knew. ‘Do you take me for a fool? But they’re all charlatans. I went to one with a knighthood. But do you suppose he knew anything more than the others? He just told me in quack jargon what I’d told him in plain words; that I’d got something wrong with my innards. Stupid rogue!’ His hatred of Sir Herbert and all doctors had momentarily revived him.

‘But he must have told you something,’ Lady Edward insisted.

The words brought him back to the thought of that’slight obstruction in the neighbourhood of the pylorus,’ of disease and pain and the creeping approach of death. He relapsed into his old misery and terror. ‘Nothing of significance,’ he muttered, averting his face.

‘Then perhaps it’s nothing really serious,’ Lady Edward comfortingly suggested.

‘No, no!’ To the old man her lighthearted hopefulness seemed an outrage. He would not put himself into the power of fate by formulating the horrible truth. But at the same time he wanted to be treated as though the truth had been formulated. Treated with a grave commiseration. ‘It’s bad. It’s very bad,’ he insisted.

He was thinking of death; death in the form of a new life growing and growing in his belly, like an embryo in a womb. The one thing fresh and active in his old body, the one thing exuberantly and increasingly alive was death.

All round, on the walls of the studio, hung fragmentary records of John Bidlake’s life. Two little landscapes painted in the Pincian Gardens in the days when Rome had only just ceased to be the Pope’s—a view of belfries and cupolas seen through a gap in the ilex trees, a pair of statues silhouetted against the sky. Next to them a satyr’s face, snubby and bearded—the portrait of Verlaine. A London street scene, full of hansoms and top hats and lifted skirts. Three sketches of the plump, bright-coloured Mary Betterton of thirty years ago. And Jenny, loveliest of models, lying naked on a long chair, with a window behind her, white clouds beyond, a bowl of roses on the window-sill and a great blue Persian cat stretched like a couchant lion, on Jenny’s white belly, dozing, its paws between her round and shallow breasts.

Lady Edward brightly changed the subject. ‘Lucy’s just flown off to Paris again,’ she began.

QUAI VOLTAIRE.

The air was rough, I forgot the
Quies
for my ears and was in a Hell of Noise for 2 1/2 hours. Feeling very tired and consequently, sweet Walter, rather sentimental and
sola sola
. Why aren’t you here to console me for the unbearable sadness of this lovely evening outside my window? The Louvre, the river, the green glass sky, the sunlight and those velvet shadows—they make me feel like bursting into tears. And not the scenery only. My arms in the sleeves of my dressing-gown, my hand writing, even my bare toes, now that I’ve dropped my slippers—terible, terrible. And as for my face in the glass, and my shoulders, and the orange roses and the Chinese goldfish to match, and the Dufy curtains and all the rest—yes,
all
, because everything’s equally beautiful and extraordinary, even the things that are dull and ugly—they’re too much to be borne. Too much. I can’t stand it and what’s more, I won’t. Interval of 5 minutes. That’s why I’ve telephoned to Rene Tallemant to come and have a cocktail and take me out somewhere amusing, malgre my headache. I simply won’t let myself be bullied by the universe. Do you know Rene? Rather a divine little man. But I wish it were you, all the same. Must go and put on a few clothes. A toi. LUCY.

QUAI VOLTAIRE.

Your letter was tiresome. Such yammering. And it isn’t flattering to be called a poison in the blood. It’s the equivalent of being called a stomach-ache. If you can’t write more sensibly, don’t write at all. Quant a moi, je m’amuse. Pas follement. But sufficiently, sufficiently. Theatres; mostly bad; but I like them; I’m still childish enough to feel involved in the imbecile plots. And buying clothes; such ravishments! I simply adored myself in Lanvin’s looking-glasses. Looking at pictures, on the other hand, is an overrated sport. Not dancing, though. There’d be some point, if life were always like dancing with a professional. But it ain’t. And if it were, I dare say one would long to walk. In the evenings a little pub-crawling in Mont Parnasse through hordes of Americans, Poles, Esthonians, Rumanians, Finns, Letts, Lapps, Wends, etcetera, and all of them (God help us!) artists. Shall we found a league for the suppression of art? Paris makes me long to. Also I wish one met a few more heterosexuals for a change. I don’t really like ni les tapettes ni les gousses. And since Proust and Gide made them fashionable one sees nothing else in this tiresome town. All my English respectability breaks out! Yours, L.

QUAI VOLTAIRE.

This time your letter was much better. (My only poem, and an accident at that. Rather good, all the same.) If only everybody would realize that being miserable or jolly about love is chiefly a matter of fashion. Being poetically miserable is an old fashion, and besides, the rhymes don’t justify it in English. Cuoredolore-amore; you can’t escape it in Italian. Nor in German; herz must feel schmerz and liebe is inevitably full of triebe. But in English, no. There’s no pain connected with English loves; only gloves and turtle doves. And the only things that, by the laws of poetry, can go straight to Englishmen’s hearts are tarts and amorous arts. And I assure you, a man’s much better occupied when he’s thinking about those subjects than when he’s telling himself how wretched he is, how jealous, how cruelly wronged and all the nonsensical rest of it. I wish that idiot Rene would understand this. But unfortunately cceur rhymes with douleur, and he’s French. He’s becoming almost as much of a bore as you were, my poor Walter. But I hope you’re now a reformed character. I like you. L.

QUAI VOLTAIRE.

Suffering from a cold and intense boredom, only momentarily relieved by your letter. Paris is really terribly dreary. I have a good mind to fly away somewhere else, only I don’t know where. Eileen came to see me to-day. She wants to leave Tim, because he will insist on her lying naked in bed while he sets fire to newspapers over her and lets the hot ashes fall on her body. Poor Tim! It seems unkind to deprive him of his simple pleasures. But Eileen’s so nervous of being grilled. She was furious with me for laughing and not being more sympathetic. I took it all as a joke. Which it is. A very mild one, however. For really, like the Queen, we are not amused. How I hate you for not being here to entertain me! One can forgive anything except absence. Unpardonably absent Walter, goodbye. I have an envie for you to-night, for your hands and your mouth. And you? Do you remember? L.

QUAI VOLTARAIRE.

So Philip Quarles is going to settle in the country and be a mixture of Mrs. Gaskell and Knud Hamsun. Well, well…. But it’s good that somebody should have illusions. At any rate he can’t be more bored in his village than I am here. What straits one’s reduced to! Last night I went with Tim and Eileen, who seems to be reconciled to the firework displays, to one of those places where you pay a hundred francs for the privilege of looking on at orgies (in masks—the one amusing feature) and if you want to, participating in them. Dim religious lights, little cubicles, divans, a great deal of what the French call
amour
promiscuously going on. Odd and grotesque, but terribly dreary and all so very
medical
. A sort of cross between very stupid clowns and an operating theatre. Tim and Eileen wanted me to stay. I told them I’d rather pay-a visit to the Morgue, and left them there. I hope they amused themselves. But what a
bore
, what a hopeless unmitigated
bore
! I always thought Heliogabalus was such a very sophisticated young person. But now I’ve seen what amused him, I realize that he must have had a mind like a baby’s, really infantile. I have the misfortune to be rather grown up about some things. I’ve a notion of going to Madrid next week. It’ll be terrifically hot, of course. gut I love the heat. I blossom in ovens. (Rather a significant intimation of my particular immortality, perhaps?) Why don’t you come with me? Seriously, I mean. You could surely get away. Murder Burlap and come and be a tripper
a la
Maurice Barre’s.
Du sang, de la volupte et de la mort
. I feel rather bloodthirsty at the moment. Spain would suit me. Meanwhile, I’ll make enquiries about the bull-fighting season. The ring makes you sick; even my bloodthirstiness won’t run to disembowelled cab-horses. But the spectators are marvellous. Twenty thousand simultaneous sadistic
frissons
. Really remarkable. You simply must come. my sweet Walter. Say yes. I insist. LUCY.

QUAI VOLTAIRE.

It was too sweet of you, Walter darling, to do the impossible to come to Spain. I wish, for once, you hadn’t taken my momentary
envie
quite so seriously. Madrid’s off-for the present, at any rate. If it should come on again, I’ll let you know at once. Meanwhile. Paris. Hastily. L.

From Philip Quarles’s Notebook

Found Rampion gloomy and exasperated, I don’t know what about, and consequently pessimistic—lyrically and violently so. ‘I give the present dispensation ten years,’ he said, after cataloguing the horrors of the modern world. ‘After that the most appalling and sanguinary bust up that’s ever been.’ And he prophesied class wars, wars between the continents, the final catastrophic crumbling of our already dreadfully unsteady society. ‘Not a pleasant look-out for our children,’ I said. ‘We’ve at least had our thirty years or so. They’ll only grow up to see the Last Judgment.’ ‘We oughtn’t to have brought them into the world,’ he answered. I mentioned those Melanesians that Rivers wrote about, who simply refused to breed any more after the white people had robbed them of their religion and their traditional civilization. ‘The same thing’s been happening in the West,’ I said, ‘but more slowly. No sudden race suicide, but gradual diminution of births. Gradual, because with us the poison of modem civilization has infected men so slowly. The thing has been going on for a long time; but we’re only just beginning to realize that we’re being poisoned. That’s why we’ve only just begun to stop begetting children. The Melanesians had their souls suddenly murdered, so they couldn’t help realizing what was being done to them. That’s why they decided, almost from one day to another, that they wouldn’t bother to keep the race alive any longer.’ ‘The poison isn’t slow any more. It works faster and faster.’ ‘Like arsenic—the effects are cumulative. After a certain moment you begin to gallop towards death.’ ‘Breeding would have slowed down much more completely if people had realized. Well, well; our brats will have to look out for themselves now they’re here.’ ‘And meanwhile,’ I said, ‘one’s got to go on behaving as if our world were going on for ever—teaching them good manners and Latin grammar and all the rest. What do you do about yours?’ ‘If I could have my way, I wouldn’t teach them anything. Just turn them loose in the country, on a farm, and tell them to amuse themselves. And if they couldn’t amuse themselves, I’d give them rat poison.’ ‘Rather Utopian as an educational programme, isn’t it?’ ‘I know. They’ve got to be scholars and gentlemen, damn them! Twenty years ago, I’d have objected to the gentility. I’d have brought them up as peasants. But the working classes are just as bad as the others nowadays. Just rather bad imitations of the bourgeoisie, a little worse than the original in some ways. So it’s as gentlemen my boys are being brought up after all.
And
scholars. What an imbecility!’ He complained to me that both his children have a passion for machinery—motor cars, trains, aeroplanes, radios. ‘It’s an infection, like smallpox. The love of death’s in the air. They breathe it and get infected. I try to persuade them to like something else. But they won’t have it. Machinery’s the only thing for them. They’re infected with the love of death. It’s as though the young were absolutely determined to bring the world to an end—mechanize it first into madness, then into sheer murder. Well, let them if they want to, the stupid little devils! But it’s humiliating, it’s horribly humiliating that human beings should have made such a devilish mess of things. Life could have been so beautiful, if they’d cared to make it so. Yes, and it
was
beautiful once, I believe. Now it’sjust an insanity; it’s just death violently galvanized, twitching about and making a hellish hullabaloo to persuade itself that it isn’t really death, but the most exuberant sort of life. Think of New York, for example; think of Berlin! God! Well, let them go to hell if they want to. I don’t care.’ But the trouble is that he does care.