Now he couldn’t walk fast enough. Down Regent Street he flew (his coat-tails buffeted by his speed), his mind blocks ahead of him, pulling him along as a leashed dog leads his master, urges him on. He imagined Robbie opening the door of his house in Fitzroy Square, perhaps still in his nightclothes, his hair tousled (for that was Robbie; and after all he was on holiday). Robbie, opening the door (there was Great Portland Street); Robbie standing in the doorway ... and then what? He would be surprised, yes, but would he be glad? Would he be happy to see him? Or would he be cross (as he was so often lately) and would they quarrel?
Mr. Dalloway’s heart beat strong now (strong as the clock’s strokes) as he approached Clipstone; that would soon turn into Maple, and then, before long, he would be there. In Fitzroy Square. At Robbie’s house. Standing before his door. He would look at himself in the glass (for he was no longer young). He would adjust his collar perhaps; his bowler. He would knock and Robbie would open the door. And then—what? (Fitzroy. Now he was actually there.)
He crossed the square. He arrived at Robbie’s house and looked at himself in the glass. (A piano was being played behind the walls of one of the houses. It was Brahms—a lullaby; it calmed him: he told himself that all would be right.) He adjusted his collar with his free hand; positioned his bowler and straightened his tie. Then he knocked. Then he rang. But there was no response. No one answered. No one was there to answer; Robbie was not at home (or rather, so Mr. Dalloway imagined, Robbie was just above, standing at the window in the alcove, looking down on him; decidedly not answering; punishing him).
A clock (Big Ben? Saint Margaret’s? There were so many across London) sounded the noon hour (one, two, three: the golden rings floated), the bells seemingly hung, suspended in the thick London air; it would rain soon. Oh, it is cruel, Richard Dalloway thought—life, time: cruel. How he shrunk now, withered; how the world came crashing down on him—cymbals, drums (the sounds of an orchestra collapsing in a dissonant heap), that relentless beating (seven, eight, nine). It marched on—time. It marched on, rolled over the bystander, and left what remained—a wedding ring, the gold stoppings of teeth—left what remained behind in ashes and dust. He might just as well impale himself on the gate post then and there!
So his world quivered; so he quaked. And then, as if struggling through the deepest of mud, Mr. Dalloway turned away from Robbie’s house and began walking, walking slowly down Fitzroy (it was horrible, this walking; how he struggled), unable to bring himself to look back, to look up at the window in the alcove, where he was sure Robbie was standing.
Now he dragged himself, pulled himself along; putting one foot in front of another, he proceeded. But his feet were leaden; he would never be able to make it as far as he had to go at this rate; would never be able to make it home. He would have to catch the tube; would have to abandon this summer day (this historically significant, personally important, June day)—the fresh air, the open (though murky) sky, the green, the flowers, the boys on bicycles and brothers on the bench; London itself; he would have to abandon all that and submerge himself into the dark, the subterranean, the underground, rat-infested wind tunnels beneath the city. And for what?
There was Tottenham Court Road. Not far now, he told himself He must take deep breaths and try to relax, as Blitzer-not-Bradshaw advised. (But Blitzer, he thought now, knew nothing of Robbie.) So Richard Dalloway rode himself; so he advanced. So much effort for so little, he thought now, crossing Gower onto Montague. The law of averages was against him. Gravity was against him. Everything and everyone, was against him.
As it began to rain lightly, Mr. Dalloway, mindlessly carrying his parcel of books and struggling to open his umbrella, noticed a dishevelled man standing outside the tube station, one arm extended and the palm of his hand opened up to the sky. Wearing striped pants, a once-white, now yellowed shirt, and a vest of unrecognisable hue (it was so dirty), with a sprig of violets tucked into a buttonhole and several bunches in a shallow cardboard box at his feet, this man, this poor clown of a man, sang. He was selling violets, Richard surmised, though instead of calling out “Violets, violets,” as they usually did—he was singing, singing the same phrase over and over. What was it? (He listened closely; he tried to make it out.)
A violet in the youth of primy nature
Familiar words, and yet he couldn’t quite place them. He reached into his trouser pocket and sorted through the coins in his hand; he found sixpence and five. He would give it to the poor chap; keep the violets (the flowers were being delivered). For he felt for him. He had always warned Clarissa against giving to the poor—not because he didn’t want to help them—he did—but because of his belief that giving did them no good, no good whatsoever. “They must learn to help themselves,” he had told her. “And that we can help them with—laws and whatnot.” But this was different. For he felt as though he could be this man—turned out; no home; alone. Such thoughts had occurred to him during the past year when life as he had known it had felt so very, so terribly threatened; fragile. Now he approached the poor fellow; gave him his sixpence and five.
A violet in the youth of primy nature
the man continued to sing, over and over, as if it were a chant, all the while insisting that Mr. Dalloway take a bunch of violets (as he tipped an invisible hat).
Richard Dalloway hurried into the tube station. But now the sprig of violets he had seen in the man’s buttonhole shone in his eye, burned there, causing his memory of the poor fellow’s mouth to appear violet, too, to appear blue—as if icy death had already grasped ahold of him. Then came the long descent—down, down, Richard Dalloway went; down into the infinite, the dark, the cold and windy tunnel.
At least he did not have far to go, he reasoned—now seated in a car and observing his own reflection amidst the others in the glass opposite; now speeding through the darkness. The thick glass windows, it seemed, were warping and flattening and meshing his face into the faces of the others (and theirs into his): it was horrible; it was awful—to lose one’s self, one’s individuality; to be swallowed up like that, to be nameless, faceless, anonymous. He thought of that poor Kilman woman, Elizabeth’s history tutor who, so Clarissa told him, had died last year, and who might, possibly, Clarissa said, have willed her own death, or at least surrendered her life: she’d had pneumonia for weeks and hadn’t sought help (not even medication), which Clarissa said she herself would have freely given. For though Miss Kilman’s smug, pounding self righteousness was offensive and anathema to her, Clarissa told him, she had not wished her dead.
But he could not wait to get home. Home, where he was King. Home, where he would—what? Dash upstairs to his room and throw himself on his bed? (For he would be alone.) Hopefully, he would sleep, for that would be restorative. Sleep. Rest. Blitzer had prescribed it. (Ah, Westminster.)
Out of the tube station and into the rain, heading home, mindlessly carrying his parcel of books, the bunch of violets (upside down), and with his umbrella hung over one wrist, Mr. Dalloway might as well have been treading in his sleep, for he noticed almost nothing of his environs. His mind was set, closed, locked—as he retraced the steps he had taken—how many times? thousands, probably. Towards home he trudged; towards home—his castle—he made his way, this distinguished, fatigued somnambulist.
There it was, the house—his house (or rather his and Clarissa’s home); there the front door. He opened it and immediately heard noises from below—Mrs. Walker whistling, as she did, day in, day out, for Clarissa said she was Irish; the telephone ringing; clinks of silver and china; pings of glass; then a breakage, followed by swearing. All for the party, he supposed. And what did he care if something was broken? For his only wish now (and he wished it with all of his being) was that none of them should hear him and come up the stairs to greet him—particularly Lucy, for he liked her best. (There was Grizzle, turning circles around his legs; expecting Elizabeth.) He deposited his umbrella, slipped off his shoes (which Grizzle sniffed), and then, standing in the hall
in his socks, hung his coat and hat on the rack (avoiding his reflection in the looking-glass), and, as quietly as possible, began climbing the stairs.
The ascent was endless (Big Ben struck the half-hour). Climb, climb, climb (one foot in front of the other; lift, step; lift, step...). Must! Must! Must! That’s what life is, he thought now, an endless series of “Musts!”—of urging oneself on, to do this; to do that; of forcing oneself to continue, to go on. And for what? For what did it all matter? This book, that law, the party—it all came crashing to nothingness in the end. To death. (He paused on the second floor landing: one flight more. The books and the violets were still in his hands.) He was old, he told himself—vanquished (the stairs creaked); he was old and tired and facing death (for he would die soon, he knew it).
He opened the door to his room, deposited the books on the dresser, removed his suit-coat (laying it over a chair), took off his hat (placing it on the dresser), and threw himself onto the bed (the spray of violets falling to the floor; he had forgotten them). Wide enough for two, it was the bed he and Clarissa had once shared; but not now; not for many years. Now they slept separately, she in her own room just beneath him on the second floor, and he in his. And sometimes at night, before falling asleep—when the house was dark, when the house was quiet—they could hear each other. (“Was Dick signalling to me?” Clarissa Dalloway sometimes asked herself at those times. “Does Clarissa want me?” he would wonder.)
How many selves we have, he mused now, unloosening his tie, staring at the blank white ceiling and feeling the profound absence he had felt in that bed—a sense of a person, of someone missing—since the first day Clarissa had left it. There was that self who slept alone, separate from Clarissa, and who sometimes heard her beneath him at night; and that was but one, a fraction of the many selves contained inside of him, of Richard Dalloway. Even the different names by which people called him: Clarissa had always called him Dick, or sometimes Richard; Elizabeth called him Father, of course. And then there were those to whom he was simply Mr. Dalloway (or Mr. Richard Dalloway); his parents had used Richie (and his sisters still did); and Robbie, finally, Robbie and Robbie alone called him Rich. And probably each of those personas held at least ten different personalities within them so that, my God—one had forty selves!
The very thought of it exhausted him. He closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing. He heard the rain falling on the roof, in the trees, across (or so he imagined) all of London. He felt his breathing slow and saw grey matter; his palms relaxed, opened to the heavens.
And then there came a visitation, a felt spectral presence which he could not say was here, in that chair, or there, standing in that corner, but which instead seemed to pervade the very room, to be part of the walls, the ceiling and the floor and, indeed, a part of each and everything contained in the room, including himself Something was hovering.
But Mr. Dalloway was not frightened, for he knew, he recognised his guest immediately; he had received him before. It was his beloved brother Duncan (or the ghost of Duncan). The first time it had happened was in the year following Duncan’s death. Richard was fourteen and, though traumatised by the loss, he had been forced—by his father, and rather against his will—to continue his schooling. During the course of that year, Duncan had visited him several times.
For it is as the air, invulnerable
young Richard had recited to himself frequently (and the phrase came to him again now) during that year, for they were reading Shakespeare’s later plays (and his heart was tender), and this, from Hamlet, came to him, seemed to fit the situation and to make it less frightening, less painful, to him. Now Duncan is invulnerable, he had thought.
After that, however, after his fourteenth year, he had neither seen nor heard from Duncan again; nor, he felt, had he ever really mourned Duncan properly (for his father hadn’t allowed it). Not, that is, until this past year when—under so much strain, so terribly, utterly vulnerable and completely broken down—he had finally been able to mourn the loss of his beloved brother. And it was then, some forty years later, in the soft crevices of vulnerability and grief that the visits had resumed.
And these visits meant everything to him. Or almost everything: for they were somehow the very essence of Duncan and of himself—as the best perfumes distill the scent of flowers—the essence of him and Duncan communing. At such times he was able to continue a closeness with Duncan which he had had with no one in his life. Only with Clarissa had he come even close; Clarissa and, perhaps, Robbie.
So he spoke with Duncan; so they conversed. But not in words. Instead, they communed in a language without words; a language not known to living creatures, one which seemed to squeeze all of their thoughts, all that they felt, all of their memories and everything they wanted to demonstrate—physically—into some pure, all-encompassing and expressive means of airy communication. It was so full, so fulfilling, so... delightful.
And during these encounters Richard Dalloway always reminisced with his late brother. For he and Duncan had known each other well, intimately, better than anyone else, for thirteen very important years (the most important years, scientists now said). They had even looked alike—so much so that people said they could have been identical twins; and their father, or “the dullard,” as Duncan had taken to calling him in adolescence, sometimes could not tell them apart. But also, and more importantly, they were always in league together (they discussed everything—talking in their bedroom late at night), co-conspirators against their father mostly (“the tyrant” was another of his nicknames), but also—at that time—against all of the women in the house, too—their mother and four older sisters. (Later, of course, after Duncan’s death, Richard’s sisters—Jane, Gwen, Vanessa, and Edith—took him into the fold; and he on his part, allowed it; indeed he needed it, welcomed it. Clarissa, in fact, used to say that his sisters had spoiled him, to which he replied: “Not spoiled; appreciated.”)
Ah, but when Duncan was flesh.... They had shared a room from as early on as Richard could remember (as did his sisters—Jane with Gwen; Vanessa with Edith). In fact, one of his earliest memories was of Duncan and him in bed together, after everyone had gone to their rooms and the house was dark—for their father would have never allowed it, though it was completely innocent on their part. He couldn’t have been more than four or five, and Duncan a year younger. During the night, Duncan had awakened and slipped out of his own bed and into Richard’s; and there they had snuggled—it must have been winter, for he could remember being cold before Duncan had climbed into bed with him. He could remember being cold before, then warm after: it was his first, felt experience of the warmth cast off by the human body, and it was wonderful. Duncan’s smooth skin pressed against his; the texture of Duncan’s hair (silky); the cottony feel of Duncan’s very breath on his skin (and the regular, rhythmic sound of his breathing); even the wispy batting of Duncan’s eyelashes; the twitchings of his nose, the movements of his lips, during sleep!
Not that it was a regular occurrence, their sleeping together: it had happened—what?—three or four times all told? Four at the most (discounting the later experiences, during adolescence—which were nothing, really, or nothing all adolescent boys didn’t go through, so he had heard, experimenting on one another’s bodies, and thus—so it was said—discovering their own). But their room was their haven—away from their father; away from the women; away from their classmates; their ghastly cousin Philip; everyone.
His fondest memories, always it seemed, were of himself and Duncan out of doors at Fellstree. One memory which ran, like the cinema, continuously in his mind, was of Duncan and him running out back and down the hill to a little stream that wound its way perpendicular to the house. It was always autumn; always blowy; clouds rushed across a slate sky so that now there were shadows, now sunlight; and the leaves of the trees, indeed the entire horizon was aflame, was golden, was red, orange, and brown, with only a dash of green remaining. Down the hill he and Duncan ran, the wind b
lowing through their hair; blowing them this way and that; down they raced on these riotous days to the water’s edge. There they found old strips of wood or sizable pieces of bark from a nearby tree, then reached into their pockets for the small candles they had lifted from the servants’ quarters, attached them with hot wax to the wood or bark, and set the boats asail and chased them downstream as they floated, propelled by the wind and the flame. Sometimes their shoes would get wet, sometimes more. But inevitably, before they had had enough, time would run out—Jessie would call them in for hot cocoa as the sky was darkening, and back up the hill they would go, grudgingly, Duncan’s ruddy cheeks aglow in the afternoon light.
(But here Richard Dalloway was startled by something—what was it? He struggled up, out.... It was regular; it was rhythmic; what was it? His own heart? No, there it was: it was Big Ben striking the hour. What time was it? He couldn’t be sure; he might have missed a count. He closed his eyes again; his body relaxed, settled and sank into the mattress; he drifted off.)
STARTLED FROM HIS REVERIE by the emphatic strokes of some nearby clock (for it seemed there was always a clock checking off time somewhere in London), Robert Davies sat up straight and shook his head from side to side as if clearing his mind. His body ached from his having sat in the British Museum for—how long was it now? Well over an hour? He shifted; he stretched; he put his head in his hands and tried to collect his thoughts. Closing his eyes (the muted sounds surrounding him seeming to increase in volume), he puzzled, he thought. He took out his notebook, his pen. And then, with the mere suggestion of writing things down, he had it! (For he now knew what he would do: merely sending a letter had not been bold enough—“Dear Mrs. Dalloway....” And he had tried to telephone just a while ago; but a woman had answered; a servant; and he had hung up.) Now he knew: he would go to Richard then and there (Mrs. Dalloway be damned). He knew the address; he would go there. It was that simple— for he needed to see him, to be with him. It was his holiday and he deserved it—to see Richard. He had to.
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