“Mithras has got nothing at all to do with it. The man found an inscription on a well and deciphered it wrongly and jumped to conclusions; he’s right about the main part but wrong about everything else, and the snag from his point of view is that he’s relying on the wrong part to prove him right about the rest. What it actually read is not DEO INVICTO but DEO IGNOTO. He’d jump for joy if he knew it, of course, because it shows that the well wasn’t dedicated to Mithras at all but to his unknown God – quite openly, and for anyone to come along and read. Except that they can’t, because the stone with the letters IGNO on it is missing.”
“How do you know what it is, then?”
“There’s another well like it in Syria. He’d love to know that, as well. I might tell him about it one day.”
“But I don’t understand – what is it? What does it do?”
“It’s a well, of sorts.”
“That’s not all it is, though, surely – he wouldn’t get excited about an ordinary well. And it wouldn’t matter to you, either… now he told me what he thinks about it, and I’d like to know what you think too. I haven’t even seen the place: I don’t know where it is, and I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. But it’s central, somehow, and – I’d just like to know.”
“I daresay he realises it’s right next to a lake?”
“He hasn’t mentioned it – I suppose he does.”
“He can hardly fail to; it’s only about twenty yards away. But whether he’s asked himself why they should dig a well when there’s water to be had by dipping a pail in the lake, I don’t know. And I wonder if he’s tried lowering a bucket into it? I don’t know that either. But I hope I make the point that it’s not a well and was never intended to be one? Nor is the one in Syria, for that matter. That’s only about ten feet deep, and bone dry. I dare say this one’s got water in it: it could hardly be dry, with the lake that close. But you want to know what it is.
“I was talking about values. Now: if the adjective from ‘value’ is ‘moral’ –” Matthew nodded – “then Canon Cole’s well is the only thing in the world that’s morally neutral. That’s to say that it was made in such a way that it seems to have – no value. In fact the value is there, but it changes, it responds to the value of whoever looks at it. There was a superstition that if you asked it a question, it would give you the true answer. It was only a way of saying that you could see the truth of it, or the truth of your own situation, in the well, like a mirror. And I expect the reason why it got forgotten was that it was too uncomfortable. There you are, that’s what I know about it.”
“But it’s – I was going to say that it’s incredible, but I suppose everything’s incredible. Do you know how it was made like that?”
“Different shapes have different properties. A pointed arch can support a different kind of stress from the kind that a round arch can. A printed circuit in a transistor radio only functions if it’s that particular shape and no other. And this well, because of its form, because it’s built just that shape and not any other, has the effect I told you about. There are other factors, of course; there’s the question of where to put it. I can only guess at that; but the magnetic field of the earth varies slightly from place to place, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that had something to do with it. All that matters is that it works. And, yes, as the Canon’s guessed, I want it.”
“What for? Christ, every time I think I’m coming to the centre of it, the whole thing shifts, and the centre moves away. Now the centre is: what the hell do you want it for? Because I thought you weren’t doing anything! And that you repudiated the world: but if the well’s not part of the world, what is it?”
Alan stared along the canal, and said nothing for a moment or two. And when he spoke, his voice had changed: the irony was in it again.
“The party I belong to wants to use it as a symbol for a campaign. So I’m going to get it for them.”
“The fascist one?”
“The British People’s Party.”
“And what’s their campaign?”
“I expect you’ll hear about it before long. I’1l show you some of their books, if you like.”
He moved away and Matthew followed him. They crossed the bridge, and wandered through a part of the city that Matthew didn’t know at all. This was the shabbier part, the poorer part, behind the railway station. The view of the rest of the city and of the cathedral was unfamiliar, and he recognised none of the streets they went through. They were walking slowly, not hurrying, not going anywhere in particular that Matthew could see, and something of their pace and mood seemed to affect their surroundings, or perhaps it was the atmosphere of the place that affected their mood: it was hard to say, and Matthew was only conscious of the city and the afternoon as an extension of himself, and not as separated, disconnected things outside him.
It was strange. It was not a new sensation, but it was one which he rarely felt; and it was one of the “two or three important things” he’d described to Canon Cole that evening. It was the feeling that he’d been there before. It was nothing as concrete as recognising a particular building, and nor was it like remembering it from a dream; it was an atmosphere, as wide and all-embracing and intangible as the air itself, and as sweet and clear. Put into words, it would have been “peace – harmony – wholeness.” Part of it was due to the season, and to the feeling of freshness in the air, the feeling which is peculiarly English and yet which seems to be long to somewhere further south, somewhere brighter and more colourful; and part of it was due, perhaps, to the time of day, that pause between the working-time of the afternoon and the enjoying-time of the evening. Matthew was vividly conscious of being poised, as they walked along, between stages: between the seasons, between times of day, between city and country (because this part of the town was decaying and being rebuilt, and there were wide-open spaces in between little terraces of workmen’s cottages, some of them covered in cinders and used as car-parks, some of them filled with rubble, some of them covered in grass and the bright yellow clumps of ragwort; and once, they came to a broad, grassy place, almost a meadow, near the gas works, and Matthew dimly remembered having seen a fair there, a long time ago; and always, there were the moors, not seen so much as sensed just beyond the edge of the city), and between ideas, between systems of thought, between systems of living, between lives. And, strangest of all, perhaps, there was nothing just then which was not beautiful. Shabby buildings with decaying woodwork and broken windows, in abundance: but the golden sun shone on them, and turned the peeling paint and the shattered glass into rich things, carefully wrought, infinitely and lovingly wrought to just that pitch of beauty that was near perfection. Green paint was the colour of luxuriant grass in water meadows, and dust lay over it like evening mist. Glass was not glass but diamond, and when it was broken it sparkled the better; and there was just that air of wildness and carelessness over it all that the romantic landscape gardeners imitated from nature, a prodigality, a generosity of growth and change.
They wandered for over an hour in the same part of the city, saying nothing. What Alan could be thinking, Matthew had no idea; but he guessed that his brother was not immune to the beauty of the evening, because there seemed such a quiet harmony between them that they must, he thought, have been sharing the same thoughts and feelings in some degree.
Alan went into an off-licence, and bought a bottle of rum. And then, a little afterwards, when the shops were shutting and people were beginning to make their way home after work, he said “Let’s go to my place. I’ve got a visitor coming this evening.”
It was such an inconsequential remark that Matthew could think of nothing to say in reply.
“Will I be in the way?” he asked after a few moments, when they seemed to be making in that direction anyway. Alan shook his head.
They turned down a side-street that led off the road along the edge of the canal. There was a single building along one side of the street, a block two or three stories high of old houses. This was Fortune Buildings, and Alan opened the door of number 8 and led the way inside. There was a shabby, dark, narrow hall, with a staircase at the end of it. Alan picked a letter up from the table that stood against the wall and put it in his pocket unopened, and led the way up stairs.
His room was at the top. From the moment Matthew stepped inside it, he was conscious of a distant, numbed familiarity; he could not place it, but some obscure recognition stirred inside him. It was probably that he’d seen so many similar rooms at Oxford, his own or his friends’ digs. It was a large room, sparsely furnished, with a wash-basin in the corner. There was a single bed under one window, a wardrobe, a table and two chairs. On a chest of drawers stood a row of about a dozen books. They were the only things in the room that seemed to belong to Alan; he didn’t seem to have any luggage, as there was nowhere to put a suitcase except on top of the wardrobe or under the bed, and both those places were empty. The walls were bare, but in one corner Matthew saw two or three pictures standing on the floor, turned to face the wall.
Alan took two glasses from above the basin, and sat down at the table and opened the bottle of rum. He poured some out carefully in each of the glasses, and handed one to Matthew.
“Thanks,” said Matthew, and sipped it; it was fiery and sweet.
He went across to look at the books. Hadn’t Liz said something about Alan’s books? That they were mostly about economics? She was right, by the looks of it. There was a copy of Gobineau, and a copy of Max Stirner, with black jackets, and two paperbacked editions of Nietzsche. The rest were textbooks of economics, which he did not recognise.
“I’ve got some work to do before he comes,” said Alan. “Have a look at these.”
He handed Matthew some magazines. Matthew took them across to the bed and sat back against the wall. He put his glass of rum on the floor at his side and opened the first magazine; FIGHT, it was called. It had a crude drawing of a fist clutching a lightning bolt on the cover; it was typewritten, and consisted simply of a number of sheets stapled together.
He flicked through it, but could not read it. The style was clotted with imbecile hatred. He picked up an American one, which was illustrated with photographs of quite arbitrary acts of violence and bloodshed, and caricatures of Jews. There was a near-sexual glee in it; after a time his stomach had had enough.
He put it down, and looked across at Alan. His brother was writing calmly in an exercise book. Did he really go along with this foul rubbish? It was impossible. Glancing quickly through the rest of the magazines, he put them back on the chest of drawers and took out the Nietzsche, and went back to the bed; but he sat for a long time without reading it, staring out of the window and thinking about violence. He felt negated, as if his mind had cut out without warning. The euphoric mood of the afternoon had gone for good.
He felt weak, and automatically set his jaw with contempt. He opened the Nietzsche and began to read, concentrating hard.
Alan got up after a while and turned the light on. He refilled Matthew’s glass and sat down again without a word. He took no notice at all of Matthew; he moved very carefully, slowly and deliberately. He was drinking steadily as he wrote.
Some time later his visitor came. Matthew was deep in Zarathustra, and stood up briefly to shake hands before going back to it. The visitor was a middle-aged man, thin and intense; he was carrying a briefcase, and wore an RAF tie. Matthew recognised his name: Collingwood; he’d seen it somewhere in the first magazine.
He and Alan sat down by the table and talked quietly. Matthew could hear what they were saying, but hadn’t the energy to listen. He yawned; the rum was making him sleepy. He lay back on the bed, and felt his eyes closing. In a few minutes he was asleep.
While he slept he had a dream. It was one of those visions of immemorial sweetness that for days afterwards irradiate and seem to justify everything else. It concerned Alan and a little girl, and he was playing with her, laughing; that was all. But it was numinous; it was like the presence of an angel.
He awoke suddenly some time later. Alan was shouting at Collingwood. Matthew sat up, surprised. Alan was trembling with rage; his face was terrifying. He seized the bottle of rum and flung it to the floor at Collingwood’s feet, where it smashed, sending shivers of glass flying in all directions. Collingwood backed away, frightened out of his wits. Alan raged at him like a madman. Matthew gathered that Collingwood had defied his orders on some matter, and was incapable of arguing the point.
All at once Matthew felt a great bolt of anger strike him brutally over the heart, and he cowered against the wall in fear. It emanated from Alan, and was directed at Collingwood. It was entirely mental, but it shook the man like a rat; he slipped in the spilt liquor and crashed to the floor, and then, shaking violently, he scrambled on all fours to the corner of the room, trying to hide. Matthew was appalled.
Then Alan laughed, and a flood of relief swept over Matthew. Collingwood, dazed, looked around him and tried to collect his wits.
“Understand now?” Alan said to him.
“What? Oh, yes, by all means,” said Collingwood. He got shakily to his feet, picked up his briefcase, and said “Yes, of course. Naturally you’re right about it… I shall see to it first thing in the morning. Not to worry. I must go…”
And he nodded, and said goodnight to them both, and went out hastily.
Matthew passed his hand over his head.
“What was that? Magic?”
“If you like,” said Alan. He sounded indifferent.
“But why? What was it for?”
“I was tired.” And in fact for the first time that day he did sound as if the exhaustion was winning. He sat down again and drank what was left in his glass. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yes, very – do you want to go out and eat? I’ll buy you a meal.”
“I’ve got some food here. Bread and cheese all right?”
“Yes, fine.”
Alan went out of the room and came back with a sliced loaf and some butter and cheese. He cut some cheese and put it between two slices of bread without bothering to butter it, and stood at the window eating it. Matthew ate hungrily, and then wrapped the loaf up again.