by Angus Wilson
He had been lucky perhaps that his love, and the object of his love, had declared, so openly and once for all, that loneliness was the condition of man, a loneliness to be endured and fulfilled in the constant disguise of human contact. It was so simple a truth, but so many lives – Meg’s for instance – seemed shaped to hide it. If the whole discipline of his days, then, was designed to accept this reality, he could at least congratulate himself on his luck rather than on his superior wisdom and so preserve his self-effacement. He smiled with anticipatory pleasure when he thought of the amusement he would give to Gordon in telling him the smug conclusion of all this self-inquiry.
This at least was also a consolation of their way of living. His thoughts could still be communicated to Gordon even though they involved his reactions to Gordon’s death. Gordon could speak of his own death, and did so bravely, casually, and no more than was practically required. Gordon could and did urge certain courses of action upon them all – David would be foolish if he did not do this, if David were wise he would see to it that Else did that – after he had died. Gordon had certainly no wish to suggest that future should not still follow present in its daily, monthly, and annual trivialities. In the past he had participated, led, in the ‘business of daily life’, now he hardly did so any more; soon pain and then death would withdraw him altogether. But it was nevertheless the triumph of their life together that they could still communicate, from their distant stations of belief and ordered despair, without a single lapse of the truth they both so respected. Indeed they were closer if anything than at any time before. They had each, always, held the other’s personality as so separate a thing, so inviolable, so supremely more than any communication could hope even to glimpse – he in his conviction of man’s utter loneliness, Gordon in his conviction of man’s relation to God. Now, when they were in fact to go their own ways, the separation perhaps seemed less important, the communication more valid. And their love, as he had always told himself it would be, was the less impaired by death because, as a Christian, Gordon could permit it only so limited an expression. And accepting this, he himself had changed his way of life to fit Gordon’s.
There had, of course, been failures and disappointments in their meeting of this climax; but, distrusting perfection, he felt that it should be so. With his own strong sense of insufficiency, it was difficult for him to judge how often he had unconsciously failed Gordon. Too often, certainly, for once would be too often; but also, no doubt, very often. Yet it was his nature to exaggerate his own failings, and to do so at this time would perhaps make him over self-conscious, upset the rhythm of communication that at present so happily flowed between them. Yet, too, it was easy to face one’s failings, and, in accepting, leave them free to grow. What was certain was that on a few but important occasions he had thought Gordon to have fallen below what he had hoped for. Each time he had been disgusted with himself for making such a judgement of a man already in pain and looking beyond it to inevitable agonies and death. But at last it had seemed to him that to deny the judgements would be to lower his regard for his friend.
He had wished then, more than at any time he could remember, that he were able to say, I observe, I don’t judge. But this sentimentalism, that passed as a wide and deep love of humanity, as the gentle wisdom taught by the years, was surely the negation of real respect for men. It would never do, least of all where respect and love were involved. Where you respected and loved, you esteemed, you judged. If these self-styled adult ‘observers’ simply meant that judgement should not impair one’s love, they spoke in platitudes; if the love was deep enough, no judgement would impair it. But if they really meant ‘observe’ of someone that one loved, then they could not mean real love – you don’t love microbes. Or perhaps their love meant no more than Pavlov’s love for his dogs. Better really that they should limit it to that; that word ‘observe’ had a sinister ring for any greater love. In any case, he had long felt that the patronage, the godlikeness implied in this sort of compassion from above was far more displeasing than the action of judging. So he had judged Gordon on these few occasions and found him wanting, even as a dying man – not by a standard that anyone else would have passed, but by Gordon’s own magnificent standards. And he had loved him, of course, no less; nor (stupid modern sentimentality) the more. He had railed against the disgusting physical nature of man that should impose such tests upon Gordon’s fineness; had railed as everyone presumably did when those they loved died (his mother was the only other and he hoped that she had known no time to show courage or panic before the V2 from nowhere annihilated her) and he had seen the folly of railing. More usefully he had used these judgements to step warily himself, so that circumstances should defeat Gordon as seldom as possible.
The first occasion had been so simple, or was it? – in one sense, failure itself? in another, no failure at all, certainly not one that he could judge. He had received the surgeon’s verdict soon after the operation. Shortly after he and Else had got back from Brighton that evening, Terence Loder, their doctor, had come round to Andredaswood.
‘It’s too far gone,’ Loder had told him, ‘the liver’s affected as well as the gut. You’ll say, I’m sure, that the photos ought to have shown this without subjecting him to the strain of this operation. They don’t always, I’m afraid. But the verdict’s very final now …’ It was clear that he had a competent line of patter to carry his audience through the immediate shock.
When, apparently, Loder had judged him to be ‘composed’, he had said, ‘It’s a wretched business. He’s a fine man. We’ll spare him all the pain we can, I promise you.’
He had answered, as he realized, angrily, ‘I hope that you can spare him most of it.’
Terence Loder hadn’t answered, but after a pause, he had said, ‘One thing I should like to know, Parker. Does he have any idea?’
‘He has thought for a long time that he may die, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I see. He’s a deeply religious man, isn’t he? That often helps them. All the same I think we should stick to my usual rule in these things. Let time break it to the patient. We have only to say that we can’t tell at this stage. It’s kinder, you know. The knowledge of certain death is a terrible thing to live with. One wants to spare anyone from it as long as possible. If he’s as aware as you say, he’ll probably guess what the non-committal verdict means.’
Looking back, he realized that this illogical statement of Terence Loder’s had come nearer to making him lose his temper than anything that had happened in that ghastly week. He had managed, however, to say icily, ‘Does a non-committal verdict, in fact, never mean that you don’t know?’
And Terence Loder, surprised as well as ruffled, had said, ‘No. Of course not. I was just considering every eventuality …’ The voice had trailed away.
David had said then very formally, ‘It would be quite out of the question, doctor, to keep the truth from Gordon. Apart from other considerations, he is as you say a deeply religious man.’
‘He’s not a Roman Catholic, is he?’
He had found considerable assuagement of his unfair anger in explaining to Terence Loder the nature of the Christian preparation for death, a need not confined to Roman Catholics.
Terence Loder had attempted some self-defence. ‘I think it’s exceptional with Church of England people, but still what you say alters the case. Do you wish me to tell him? I’m used to it after all. Or would you prefer to do it yourself?’ David had said that he would prefer to do it. They had agreed to a non-committal statement until Gordon was back at Andredaswood and recovered from the immediate effects of the operation.
He remembered the evening he had chosen for the telling as clearly as he could the details of so many nightmares. But had he chosen it any more than those?
Gordon could eat little and his skin was already stretched on his bones in the way that had now given to his eyes the timid-seeming stare of a lemur. He had taken egg-white whipped with brandy and much po
wdered with caster sugar, which pleased his sweet taste. The first hard frost had come and they sat in the drawing room before a blazing, pine-scented log fire. They had played the records of Salome and Gordon had more than usually delighted in the irony of the music transcending an absurd ‘decadent’ theme. He had made his usual comment on the pleasure of not seeing Welitsch in the flesh. Little owls screeched and barn owls hooted. They had agreed how pleasant it was that Else had gone to a meeting in Haywards Heath on Nuclear Disarmament. She invariably shuddered at the owl’s ill omen; whereas they had long ago agreed that the sound of owls on a cold night reminded them, with delicious, selfish pleasure, that some Words-worthian figure – solitary traveller, leech gatherer, or idiot boy – was miserably lost abroad, while they sat in comfort at home.
Then Gordon, feeling perhaps that comfort was for him an illusory sensation, or perhaps feeling comfortable enough to consider a future – it was just this vital matter of Gordon’s mood that he could never now know – spoke suddenly of their next book. ‘We ought to get on with “Africa”, you know. The gardeners of England can’t remain suspended among the flora of the New World and of the Antipodes for ever. Besides if we ever get to Asia we might have enough money to see some of the damned things in their lovely natural settings.’
They always spoke of their very successful series of books in this slightly forced facetious vein; it had never quite ceased to worry them both a little that their joint hobby should have proved lucrative, and, indeed, esteemed – Garden Flowers from the New World had been given leading reviews by the senior critics of the two major Sunday newspapers. There were many phrases from these reviews that they used as happy catch-phrases in their daily life – ‘how pleasant for a change to find wide reading so little paraded’ (That’s you, David); ‘Flower plates have become all too depressingly familiar on the walls of our country hotels. How clever, then, to have found more than fifty that are at once unfamiliar, exact, and decorative’ (That’s you, Gordon); but their favourite was ‘Alas, I cannot follow the authors in their enthusiasm for the showy cineraria’. As Gordon often said, ‘All together not too bad for a book put together on an entirely haphazard arrangement of continents by authors who have never visited them and who owe their material to a lot of ill-written naturalists’ and travellers’ tales.’
In fact, of course, they had both done a great deal of hard work on them, and, no doubt, Gordon was right when he had said, ‘This, David, is the price you pay to your conscience for not going on with that vital work about Richardson’s influence on all those French bores.’ The decision to work on ‘Australia’, the first of the flower books, had been the final curtain to his academic career.
But, faced on that evening with the direct question, he had hesitated, and Gordon had suddenly said, ‘Or shan’t I be alive to see the end of “Africa”?’
The casual tone, at the time, had genuinely seemed to him to come from a man, sure in faith, who had accepted imminent death. He had answered directly.
That Gordon, for perhaps two minutes, had not been able to control a physical shaking, that his body had refused to help him in disguising his panic terror had been only a sadness for him to see; few men, hearing their death warrant, were not afraid in that moment, and, besides, what was this ‘absolute faith’ he was expecting of Gordon? Was his own doubt so ‘absolute’? These were childish terms.
When the shaking was under control, Gordon had burst out angrily. ‘Why the hell did Loder leave this to you to tell me?’ He had defined the remark quickly, it was true. ‘Loder had no right to leave such an unpleasant job to you.’ Nevertheless he had known that Gordon was conscious of having shown terror and that he would rather have shown it before anyone else. Respect of privacy had been the keynote of their relationship, but he had never supposed that, for Gordon, this had involved no call upon ultimate compassion. He had tried always to understand and sympathize with Gordon’s religious beliefs; could it be that Gordon yet thought he would pounce upon a moment’s failure in faith with triumphant glee or mockery? Or was it that Gordon supposed his respect to be so shakily founded as to be lessened by that second of doubt and fear? Whatever the cause it could never now be discussed or explored. The most he could hope to do was to bury it in silence. Nevertheless there was a rent in the close-knit fabric of their understanding.
The incident of the animals was discussed, but discussion had only made him realize that, however unjustly, he had been disappointed in Gordon. David liked the animals so little, had so accustomed himself to ignoring them, that it was only on his second visit to Gordon’s room that day that he had noticed their absence. The dogs and cats might unusually have been out on the prowl, but Rosie, the cockatoo, never left the room except in the hottest days of summer. ‘Where’s Rosie?’ he had asked.
‘Bobbie Telfer’s taken her with the others,’ Gordon had answered in an over-casual voice.
He had not understood. ‘Is there some animal pest about?’
‘No. And I doubt if there was that parrots and cats would be threatened by the same one. You do say the most stupid things whenever you speak about animals, David. You’re always the same when you’re not interested in something. You simply speak before you’ve thought.’ He had sensed the tension in Gordon’s voice and had not answered. But Gordon could not leave it alone. ‘I hope you’re not going to fuss about the animals,’ he had said.
‘Good heavens! I only wondered what had happened to them.’
‘I’ve got Bobbie to gas them.’
‘Gas Oliver!’ If he had a liking for any of them it had been for the old cat.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, David, don’t be sentimental. I made pets of them all and they became attached to me. We have a duty to be humane to the brute creation. They’ve become habituated to my treatment, they’d be miserable with any other regime.’
‘But they enjoy life so.’
‘Enjoy life! Really, David. Their appetites were satisfied and their habits were not disturbed. But they don’t have souls.’ He had paused and then said, ‘Or do you think I should have left them to you as a sacred trust?’
‘No. I suppose not. But Climbers adored Rosie, she’d have done anything for her.’
‘Anything except feed her sensibly. The bird would have suffered from constant bellyache. And Else would have taken the dogs for a ten-mile walk one week and forgotten to let them out of the house the next. No, my pets die with me.’
There was some arrogance in Gordon’s tone that had provoked David perhaps, for he had said, ‘Well, it’s just as well you haven’t got a troop of slaves.’
And Gordon had said scornfully, ‘It takes a humanist to lower men to the brute level out of sentimentality about animals.’
And so it had been on the Thursday evening of the first Bartók Quartet. There had been a lot of discussion about doing the work at all. Mary Gardner, with her jolly, loud business background, was in most local social affairs inclined to say ‘the more the merrier’; she was fully aware that she owed her own general acceptance to a breaking down of barriers. But where music was concerned she made a defiant insistence on standards. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think Miss Bode’s good enough. We’ve made a concession, I think, in doing Mozart and Haydn in practice with her. But while we’re looking round for a new permanent second fiddle she’ll do. This is quite different. It’s silly attempting the Bartók with her. She just isn’t good enough.’
Utterly uncultivated in any other way, Mrs Gardner had put all her values into music. She knew that she was a very good amateur cellist.
Reggie Green, on the other hand, the ‘cultured Group Captain’ as Gordon called him, was nothing if not all-round – local brains trusts, art exhibitions, play readings, all were grist to his mill – but he was not so very good a viola player and he knew that. Snobbish and exclusive in local social affairs, he thought Mrs Gardner made too much of herself.
‘Oh, come,’ he said, ‘nothing venture, you know. It’s not as
if we were professional.’
And himself, who usually was dead against the amateur emphasis – what Gordon and he called, ‘making music can be so jolly’ – nevertheless came down on the Group Captain’s side. ‘I really think we ought to give it a trial, Mary,’ he had said.
He knew how much Else set store by being involved, and how badly she needed some indirect sympathy – she would find any overt demonstration impossible to take – during these days of Gordon’s illness; how much Gordon would be helped by a less strained Else. It was two against one; and as first violinist and organizer his view carried great weight. Mary Gardner had given way. And really, now that they had practised a good deal, if Else was not adequate, she was less inadequate than might have been expected. The Group Captain Was enthusiastic.
‘Bravo, Miss Bode,’ he said, ‘I really think we make a pretty good showing, don’t you? And by the way, what a splendid work it is.’
On that Thursday there had been their first limited audience of friends and neighbours. He had been particularly pleased to see that Eileen Rattray, who at first had come solely as a protest against the jazz activities that took Tim so often from home, was now not only a regular attendant, but had struck up a friendship with Climbers. Poor Climbers who gawped at the music she comprehended not at all, but who would have hated to be left out! If Eileen Rattray got on well with Climbers that might help the Tim-Climbers situation to improve. ‘Without Gordon, he really would not be able to cope with a quarrelling staff. And there in the centre of the audience, like some Banquo’s ghost, sat Gordon, the stick on which he now relied for supporting his enfeebled body laid on the floor by his side.