My Last Duchess

by Iain Crichton Smith

  His eyes gazed into the distance and Mark felt frightened and excited at the same time. He imagined a No Man’s Land with these people moving about in it like wolves, green-eyed, hating, competent with knives and claws. What would Mrs. Carmichael make of them, bringing her gifts? It was all right to go and clean out a hermit’s house but out there was the real lightning …

  “Look, let’s get out of here, it’s too crowded,” said Hunter.

  They left the pub and started walking. All around them the city was being dismantled. Huge office blocks towered above them: in the rigging of buildings workmen clung like sailors singing their pop songs. Mark imagined the ancient closes with their blue gas lighting, the women in their long skirts. Now however there were the miniskirted beauties of the sixties, with their thighs freezing. Cinemas showed not Charlie Chaplin but sexy Scandinavian films where young boys and girls camped by acreages of water and stripped moonily outside ghostly tents. No story, just mood.

  “You were saying about rules,” Mark said. They passed a tall thin man wearing kid gloves and Hunter looked after him briefly as if he were some strange antique being emerged out of history.

  “Yes,” he answered, “there is only one reason why they won’t attack a person who has been in an opposing gang. Do you know what that reason is?”

  “No,” said Mark.

  “Well, they won’t attack him if he’s married. To them he has become a drop out once he marries.”

  “How do people become like that?” said Mark. “I mean without affection.”

  “Become like that? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Housing schemes. Broken families. You know it’s a funny thing, when I go to these stupid ‘Matters of Opinion’ that people have they always ask you, ‘Do you believe in the death penalty?’ The thing is that the death penalty is only used against people who harm others physically but think of all those people who harm others mentally, and twist their minds and make them grow up warped. Surely the death penalty should be applied to them as well.”

  “The point is,” Hunter continued, switching to a theme which obviously interested him, “how to find words for people who have no words, for whom language doesn’t even begin to exist, people who don’t have any emotions at all.”

  Yes, thought Mark, Wilkinson was like that. He had no sensitivity, no real emotions. Long ago anything that was intellectual and fine in him had disintegrated in the struggle for petty power. Must the world always be like that? He watched a frail old woman quivering like a compass needle at a zebra crossing in a series of small panics.

  Mark felt intense admiration for this young writer who had gone into the inferno with no weapons but his concern and courage. Three youths in leather jackets swaggered towards them, their green scarves cleaner than the rest of their clothes. They were singing. All the pedestrians carefully turned their faces away from them and looked blankly into the grey day.

  “What did you actually do?” he asked.

  “Oh, we organised dances and we stopped fights. They can’t argue rationally of course. An argument is an extension of the personality. If you lose an argument then that is a diminution of your personality. At least that is the way their minds work.”

  Part of Mark yearned at that moment to be with Lorna, part longed to be in the blue light where these figures moved in what was the ultimate truth, that which went beyond argument, beyond discussion, beyond literature.

  “I don’t suppose I could go along with you some time,” he said.

  “You mean as a tourist?” said Hunter ironically.

  “No not really. Just to understand, that’s all.” To be quenched, that was it.

  “So you suffer from the ennui of words then,” said Hunter smiling bitterly. “You teach in some college or other, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, all right then. We’ll fix a date. Drop me a note. Here’s the address.”

  That over, Mark said, “What do you think about Frith’s work? Do you read him much? I’m working on a thesis about him.”

  “Frith? He was pretty good ages ago, I believe, but I never read him now. He was a bit of an ivory tower man, wasn’t he?”

  “Ivory tower? Surely not. What about that first book and the one called Night without Stars? I’m beginning to think that he’s the greatest writer we’ve produced.”

  “So they say,” said Hunter, carelessly letting his eyes follow the smart tight bottom of a miniskirted girl.

  “But don’t you think so?”

  “To be frank with you I haven’t read enough of his work to pass a judgment. Did he become a Christian or something?”

  “Christian? Of course not. Listen, I know of no-one who writes as he does. Some of his paragraphs move me to tears. He’s got a section in particular where the husband is just leaving after he and his wife have agreed to a divorce. It’s marvellous. I only wish I could remember the words. But it turns on his touching his hall table just as he’s leaving. And he’s suddenly thinking that he’s leaving his prints there as he’s done so often before. I thought it was terrific. You talk about tenderness. Well, he’s certainly got that. What about that story about the artist? ‘He touched the flesh which became marble in his hands.’ There’s something like that in Seferis,” said Mark, watching a red bus lurching past, the stone lions mouthing soundlessly from the square, the twin yellow swords poised above.

  “Sorry,” said Hunter, ‘I prefer football myself. I don’t mean that in any derogatory sense. I think it’s healthier, that’s all. Did you see those characters with the leather jackets? They’ll go to Ibrox and they’ll yell their heads off. What art could create that feeling in them? And what art is more beautiful, more passionate, more unpredictable, than football? There are whole novels contained in one game of football, heroism, cowardice, the lot. That’s the only thing the delinquents I was talking about are interested in. That’s the only thing that’ll wake them up. Come on, let’s go and get something to eat. I’ll tell you something. The highest form of excellence we’ve created in the last decade is Celtic Football Club. And I mean it.”

  5

  Continually his dissatisfaction with the college grew. All the freshness had gone from his lectures and he found himself losing his sense of humour. He was making irritating errors of a minor nature. Notices came round which he never read or which he ticked off with self-destructive casualness. Often he found himself standing at the window looking out, saying nothing at all. For after all what was there to say? What terrified him more than anything was that he was beginning to lose faith in literature itself. He knew that if that happened there would be nothing at all left. Words began to lose their power, texts to merge into each other. He contrasted the schoolgirls in front of him with the delinquents of whom he had been told by Hunter. They lived as he did in a favoured climate. What right had he to be teaching at all, unless words could be used as weapons? How would they help him at the very ultimate? If someone close to one died—the breathing becoming short and quick, the eyes becoming panic-stricken—would he be able to sit beside him into the watches of the night holding up a copy of Dante in order to give meaning to that death?

  Notes would come round from Wilkinson which he never read. He felt as if he himself was already a posthumous being, luminous with decay. Sometimes he thought of Lorna with her hermit and of Mrs. Carmichael with her simple belief in a goodness which had never really been tested. Would Barth himself, encased in his armour of theology, walk through those midnight streets where the lights were blue and the knives flashed and figures without affection swarmed in their terrible packs?

  Once after he had been to see Wilkinson about books the latter called him back and said, fiddling with a large green paperweight on his desk:

  “Is there anything wrong?”

  “Wrong? What should be wrong?”

  “You don’t seem to be so happy these days. You used to brim over with ideas.”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong.”

  “I’m not c
omplaining you understand but I feel there is something wrong. You’re all right at home are you?”

  “Of course,” he said coldly. “Interfering bugger,” he muttered under his breath.

  “The thing is I’d come to depend on you. You were always so full of ideas. As you know, I’m not an ideas man myself. I’m just an administrator and I know you despise administrators.” The dim shrewd eyes gazed into his own.

  “I’m writing a book,” he said at last. “I’m taking your advice. And I’m keeping rather late nights over it.”

  “You’re writing a book, eh? That’s good, that’s good. What’s it called? I’m very pleased to hear that.”

  “I haven’t given it a title yet. It’s a thesis.”

  “Oh I’m very glad to hear that, very glad indeed. But don’t waste the midnight oil. We are only human, you know, and there is so much to do here, so much. Sometimes, indeed often, I feel that we’re not doing enough. One feels a terrible responsibility, whether one is doing the right thing, and whether one is doing enough.”

  “I’m having difficulty with the book, that’s all.”

  “Well if that’s all.” Wilkinson looked at him doubtfully and then continued. “What do you think of my latest suggestions for putting forward our plans?”

  “They seem reasonable enough,” said Mark.

  “You agree then that we should get some backing from the parents?” said Wilkinson looking at him sharply.

  “Why not? It’s as good a way as any.”

  “That’s precisely why I’m worried about you,” said Wilkinson getting to his feet and approaching him. I didn’t suggest that at all. I would never dream of approaching them. You haven’t read my notes at all, have you?”

  “I haven’t been feeling too well.”

  “In that case …” Wilkinson looked at him thoughtfully as he muttered something and left. There was something odd going on, Wilkinson thought, though he couldn’t think what it was: perhaps Mark should never have got married in the first place. However, surely at his age he must know what he was doing. That wife of his of course was a bit young and a bit arty. Then he began to think about the Head of the Science Department who was definitely going to kick up a fuss about the allocation of space in the new building. He wondered if perhaps it would be possible to outmanoeuvre him by an alliance with the Music man, who was nice and idealistic and unpractical, whereas the Science man was very dynamic and abrasive and new to the job. And of course Science nowadays was far more prestigious than the Arts. Naturally if he went to Holmes he would just say with that beatific expression of his, “My hands are tied,” and you always went away feeling sorry for him.

  Wilkinson felt a bit inferior to Mark who seemed to read far more than he did. All he had time for was the Times Literary Supplement whose reviews he read with great care. Mark seemed actually to read the books but then he didn’t have to do any administration. He felt sorry for Mark and genuinely concerned for him. He decided that he must ask him and his wife to dinner soon.

  Meanwhile Mark was back at his class, thinking about ‘that cut price Machiavellian, Wilkinson’. He wasn’t above setting traps, was he? He stared dully at the girls, fixed in his swamp of apathy and feeling that he had got the infection from them. What use would they ever make of what he told them? The day of the specialist was over, or at least that’s what it said in the Encounter article he had read recently. Homer lay forever dead in his grave and all the Graeco-Roman civilisation with him. The Roman and Greek skies were turning cloudy and invaded by random blanknesses. It was the hour of the mediocre and the superficial striking all over the world. The intricate, the enigmatic and the civilised were finished.

  When his particular hour was over he went to the nearest pub and asked for a whisky, sitting there on a black leather covered seat watching some local youths playing darts and eating large proletarian pies in the interval. He couldn’t understand what was happening to him. It was as if he were surrounded by a continual fog. There was no-one he could talk to and he realised that by withdrawing from the neighbouring society such as it was, he was becoming very lonely indeed, a loneliness which his marriage hadn’t cured. If he were only a revolutionary … But in the sunny day with the deckchairs strewn along the front such a thought was merely ludicrous. All that had happened was that his marriage had brought him new responsibilities. Lorna was not the kind of person he had taken her for. There she was going about with Mrs. Carmichael, stabilising herself, fitting herself into this world. She had insisted on becoming a woman.

  A squat man with a glass of stout came and sat down beside him. “A foine day, sor,” he said and Mark agreed. The Irishman was one of those wanderers who worked on the local hydro-electric scheme earning fifty pounds a week and about another fifty in danger money. He lived with his workmates in dormitories and most of the money he earned was spent on mindless marathon gambling sessions.

  “Is there much violence?” Mark wondered on his second whisky.

  “Violence sor? There’s fighting sor, if that’s what you’re meaning. A fellow was killed there the other day.”

  “Oh, how did that happen?”

  “Well, sor, it was like this. This fellow—Murphy his name was and he came from Donegal—was saying that a hurley pitch was longer than a football pitch. And the other fellow—Patton his name is—argued with him. Well, so the argument went on and on and then Patton took out a knife and did him.”

  “I see. Just for that.”

  “Yes, sor. Course people will argue about anything.”

  “Do you get a lot of killing then?” said Mark.

  “Not killing, sor, so much as fighting. It’s surprising the amount of that you get. Mind you, most of the fellows are friendly enough except when they get a bit of drink in them.”

  “Do you get home to Ireland yourself much?”

  “Sometimes sor I go over at Christmas but most of the fellows aren’t married, see. They go about from place to place. So they’ve got nothing to go home for. I’m a married man meself and I would like a job back in the ould country but there’s no help for it. We get people from all over at the camp. There’s a fellow from Yugoslavia. He can’t go back home for the Commies.”

  “Do you like the work then?”

  “You’ve got to, sor, haven’t you? There’s nothing else for it. You’ve got to put up with it. Mind you, I would like a job inside, meself. I’m getting on now. But I wasn’t clever enough.”

  A youth came and put a coin in the purple juke box which stood at the far end of the room. The song blasted through the pub, sobbing, wailing, the contortions of what seemed a genuine passion. Mark liked Bob Dylan and the ballads but he couldn’t make up his mind about pop though he had seen on the sleeves of records words of songs which appeared authentically poetic. Similarly he liked Westerns on TV or in the cinema but would never read one.

  The Irishman left him to go and talk to some of his friends who had just come in. Mark bought another whisky and sat in the corner looking round him. He didn’t want to go back and continue work on his book as he felt that he wasn’t getting anywhere with it. He just wanted to sit there and drink, something he had not done during broad daylight before. There were a number of visitors in the room and finally he found himself talking to an insurance inspector who had come to the town on business and who surprisingly enough was interested in literature. He sat there till tea time drinking whisky after whisky and arrived home rather fuzzy. Lorna didn’t say anything but looked at him with a rather grim expression on her face. He spent the next hours typing and throwing away what he had typed. Nothing that he wrote seemed at all real. Nothing that he thought seemed real either. When Lorna came in to tell him about the tea she found him lying on the bed half asleep, his jacket off but his shoes still on.

  6

  One day, in pursuit of Lorna’s painting, she drove him and herself down to a small village which was about twenty miles from the town where they stayed. When they arrived they parked the car besi
de the only hotel which stood by the through road and walked down to the shore past a small shop where Mark bought a copy of Le Carre’s The Spy who Came in from the Cold. Mark had of course been there before and pointed out to her the roses climbing up the sides of the houses. The village was one of the most beautiful in Scotland and represented to him all that was protected and old world and nice. It made one think of long afternoons in the sun and honey for tea with its weight of flowers set against a background of trees.

  It looked almost like an English village though there were no thatched houses.

  They sat down at the water, watching the small boats careering over the loch in which the shadows of the mountains massed at the edges, while in the centre there was a white glitter. On the far side Mark could see deer walking. Half naked boys walked about, slapping their wet feet on the brittle wood of the pier. There were a number of city boys in tight trousers hanging about.

  Lorna set up her easel and began to paint. Mark wandered off to find the little church which wasn’t far from the shore. He didn’t go inside but studied the names on the gravestones in the churchyard, many of which went back centuries. The hot sun beat down on his head and neck, and bees hummed around. A little girl and boy played hide and seek among the graves. Beside the church-yard a stream flowed, and he could see the small stones in the transparent water.

  If one wanted peace, then this was where one could find it, in this place with its combination of water and trees and roses. The Le Carre which he had begun to read with its intricate doublecrossing and manoeuvring seemed very far away. All around him there was a hum of water and bees. Shadows of leaves moved across the white pages of the book and eventually he fell asleep because of the bright light and the pervasive sounds. He woke up with a start as if he had been having a terrible nightmare but he couldn’t remember what it was. He looked around him in a startled way but the girl and the boy had gone and he was alone among the shadows. Through the interestices of the leaves he could see the glitter of the water. He felt cold and frightened as if some shadow had passed over him, but he could remember nothing of his dream, if dream there had been. The gravestones still leaned towards each other as if they were old men in conversation, the stream still tinkled over the stones, the bees still hummed, and once or twice a wasp planed past his face. He got up, his mouth dry, feeling suddenly that the day had turned cloudy though in fact it was still as bright as ever. He went quickly back to where Lorna was.