After the Act

by Winston Graham

  ‘That’s very comforting,’ I said.

  He inclined his head. ‘Perhaps. It does not end there. An act such as yours will have its consequences.’

  ‘It could very well have consequences in the nearest police station.’

  ‘No … No true good can come of submitting to a man-made retribution. But your karma is darkened and degraded by this act you have committed. You will suffer for it unless you obliterate the evil you have done by now living a life of right understanding.’

  ‘You mean changing my way of life—making some big personal sacrifice?’

  ‘Not perhaps big, it depends. A great evil can be atoned for in this life by many little goods. It is like a pair of scales: a big weight on one side, many little weights on the other.’

  I drank my tea. It had gone cool and I had over-sweetened it.

  He smiled politely at me. ‘ You are looking at this act in wrong way, permit me to say. You look back on it and cannot forget it. Well, it is good to be sorry—it is necessary to be sorry—but it is unwholesome to dwell on it. Indeed, it is forbidden to the Buddhist. He must never dwell on the past or worry about the future. He must live only in present, for that is all of existence he can ever possess. If you are enraptured with lust and enraged with anger you can only bring about your own ruin and the ruin of others. Until these are extinguished nothing can be achieved.’

  ‘I don’t know how to extinguish them.’

  He gave a little extra smile. ‘It is a great deal you are asking at one meeting. If this is to mean what it should to you, then there should be many such meetings. The teachings of the Perfect One are not easy to grasp at a first hearing. You should read—I will give you books to read.’ He thought I was about to rise and he put up a restraining hand. ‘But good deeds are the same in any language, in any religion, just the same as evil ones. It cannot be impossible for you to find the actions if your thoughts are right.’

  ‘That too I don’t know.’

  ‘More tea?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘The Buddha spoke of the Ten Fetters which bind us to the wheel of existence. These are Self-deception, Scepticism, Attachment to Rule and Ritual Sensual Lust, Ill Will, Craving for Fine Living, Craving for Immortality, Conceit, Restlessness and Ignorance. Consider those, Mr. Scott, and consider by how much you may detach yourself from any of them. By that much you will be moving in path of the Noble Ones.’

  We sat for a while then, not speaking. Since he had not referred to it, I had to broach it now, the ultimate question which had driven me to this meeting.

  ‘The girl—this girl I met in Paris and whom I now love … There has been much talk of lust this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, there has been some talk of lust.’

  I waited and he waited. His eyes glanced casually past me. They were clear and untroubled.

  I said: ‘Are you waiting for me to say that my first act will be to give her up?’

  ‘No, I am not waiting for that.’

  ‘Well, I am waiting for you to advise me.’

  ‘The fact that you want this advice casts doubt into my mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It does not matter. Tell me instead: do you think it would be a good act on your part to give her up?’

  ‘How can I judge?’

  ‘Is she in love with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then do you do good by punishing her?’

  ‘I may do her less good by marrying her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘If this thing comes between us …’

  ‘That is why you asked? That is the only reason you asked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If this act comes between you, then you are continuing to dwell on it, you are giving yourself up to regret, to a constant turning over of the past. The Buddha, just as he forbade sensual lust, also forbade self-mortification.’

  ‘I am afraid of thinking I committed this crime because of her.’

  ‘You commit a sin because of your karma and because of the karma of the person you sin against. If you are telling me complete truth about this young lady, that she knows nothing of what you have done, that her mind and spirit are free of this act, then she is untouched by it, and only you can bring her into it.’

  ‘D’you think, then, that I’m free to marry her?’

  ‘No.’ Dr. Sangham smiled at me and stirred his hands in his sleeves. ‘Not yet. For if you married her at once you would bring her into this sin by your own backward looking.’

  ‘Then …?’

  ‘You must first learn a little of the sublime virtues and of the Way. I have tried to indicate to you what they are. Have patience. Once you are free of this thing, you will be free to marry her. But that will be in a little while.’

  Chapter Eight

  I got home about five. While I was out the summons had been delivered by registered post; Mrs. Snow had taken it in. I was to appear on Wednesday, November eighteenth, at the Magistrate’s Court at Reading. I rang Knight, Dickinson & Clarendon, but Tim was away. I was in time to catch Mr. Golding, who said Mr. Dickinson was expected back next Monday and he would give him the message then.

  I thumbed through the rest of the post. A letter from my father who wrote that the Rev. Jonathan Martin had been asking after me. He seemed concerned, my father wrote, and what had I been telling him? A letter from Harriet’s cousin about Harriet’s personal belongings, thanking me for various things sent her. A thumping cheque from Ralph Diary’s office, made payable to Scott Productions Ltd. A letter from Charisse who wrote:

  Takings continue good, and the cast is well settling down. I think we can safely say till Christmas but I have the hunch that it will not run through until the spring. May I be wrong. A man of the name of T. Dickinson called at my flat on Monday evening and asked me many peculiar questions. He says he is a friend of yours, but I do not think he is such a good friend as he professes. So I was not able to help him in his inquiries. I hear you have another play, a revival, due in London soon. Can you let me have a script of this, as I should like to read it.

  I looked at my watch. I had almost forgotten Rhesus Boy. They would probably be rehearsing late, as time was getting short. I cut a sandwich and poured a stiff drink; then put on a coat and went out, hailed a taxi and drove to the theatre. Another taxi, I noticed, seemed to follow me.

  They were rehearsing. Isabel Chokra was not there so I was saved the necessity of speaking even vaguely of the visit to Dr. Sangham. I sat at the back of the stalls looking across the empty rows of seats to the lighted stage. The smell of dusty cloth, the peculiar staleness of an empty theatre, had been for several years the breath of life. A half-hundred times before I had watched my own plays in rehearsal probably never with such certainty of success as now.

  ‘I never make love to a woman nowadays unless she’s at room temperature.’

  Had I written that? I didn’t remember. But, of course, Slade was comforting his friend.

  ‘I love everything that costs enough. That’s why I never tell the truth: it’s so inexpensive.’

  And … ‘ You have to realise after all that a woman is a human being. She has digestive processes exactly like yours. The sexual differences are superficial.’ Clever, wasn’t I? Or bright anyway. What I didn’t appreciate in those far-off days was the apparent ability of the sub-conscious to anticipate the future.

  ‘Crime, Max, is just as biologically normal as any other behaviour. Murder is like stamp-collecting or bird-watching—just another expression of the personality—but more fun.’

  Was that a cheap joke? Or was it literally true? … Dr. Sangham would not agree. Buddha himself purified the corrupt lives of criminals. A wise man becomes a man without sorrow. You will reap consequences of the ill done unless you obliterate that evil by now living a life of right understanding.

  Strangely similar in their ethics, the two religions. Both of them bitterly opposed to the material ethics of today. What is God, what is evi
l; who shall say what is right and what is wrong? If we say that John Smith is a good man, this is not a statement about the qualities of John Smith but only a statement about the attitude which certain minds maintain towards the behaviour of John Smith.

  I still trailed behind me the trappings of an out-dated ethical code, so could not forget a solitary act of violence. In fifty years more a man like me would be so free of moral values that he would dispose of his wife without disturbance to his conscience. Many a man had done so in the past when not interfered with by one or other of the tiresome religious orders.

  Ralph Diary took the seat beside me.

  ‘I’ve been ringing you this afternoon, Morris.’

  ‘Oh? Sorry. I was out.’

  ‘I had a word with Carl Walbach in Hollywood last evening. I think you’re making a great mistake in turning down this scripting.’

  ‘I may be.’

  Ralph blinked at me and passed a hand over his bald head. ‘Forgetting I’m your agent and remembering only that I’m your friend, may I ask why you want to refuse?’

  ‘Remembering you’re my friend and forgetting I’m your client, I told you over the telephone. That’s surely reason enough.’

  ‘I thought it would have been just the opportunity to get away.’

  ‘To get away from what?’

  ‘Well, surely … the whole miserable business. Everything here is reminiscent. To work in California for three or four months would jolt you out of yourself. I think you’d come back a new man.’

  I stared at the stage, where Mary Arlett as the deceived and ailing wife was making out a passionate plea for fidelity. You could see the cynical anticlimax coming by which all her arguments were to be inverted.

  ‘When is this opening?’ I said.

  ‘A week tomorrow. The eighteenth.’

  ‘Wednesday?’

  ‘Yes, Wednesday.’

  I laughed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s the day I come up on this driving charge.’

  ‘Oh … that. Surely it’s not important. Do you have to appear? … Well, that’ll be in the morning, won’t it? Look, Morris, I’m worried about you. Before we finally turn this offer down, give it some further thought. It’s not the money that’s important, nor even the aesthetic satisfaction—or lack of it. It’s you that’s important; and frankly I’d rather see you go over there and make a mess of the assignment than that you should stay here and become neurotic and moody and—and lost.’

  I patted his arm. ‘All right. I’ll think for another few days.’

  That night I started writing to Alexandra. I began it four times and then gave it up. I lay on the bed for a time and dozed, and then about three in the morning I got up, made coffee, shivered over to an electric fire and dragged the writing paper on to my knee.

  My dearest,

  I don’t know how to begin this letter. I don’t know how to write what I have to write—or if it is even possible to express it on paper.

  I can’t marry you. This is because of something that happened on the night of Harriet’s death, something that occurred between her and me. You were right when you said she has come between us—she has done this more effectively, more damningly than she could ever have done if she had remained alive.

  I don’t want to go into details—I dare not—but the mistake was mine, and nothing now can alter it. Please burn this letter, for it is safer burned.

  It’s better if we don’t meet again. I think you will probably realise why.

  I have got this far in this letter four times before and can get no further. Anything more I say is inadequate and futile. You know how I feel about you, the splendour of some of our meetings. It would be best if you could forget altogether these last eight months, and try to pretend to yourself that they’ve never been; but this isn’t possible for me, and I don’t imagine it can be for you. So let’s preserve them in memory as they are, as something of everlasting value to us both.

  Forgive me if this sounds mealy-mouthed or sanctimonious. Forgive me anyway for any wrong I may have done you.

  God bless you,

  M ORRIS

  On the Friday I went down to the cottage and read through the first act of the new play. It read reasonably well. I took up the second act and wrote steadily all through Saturday. On the Sunday Ralph came over for lunch and I gave him the completed act and a half to read.

  He said: ‘This is good stuff, Morris, but it’s in a different vein. It’s rather odd: you seem to begin in the familiar way and then about halfway through you start fishing in deep waters. It may turn out to be a better play, and, judging this part by absolute standards, I think it will be. But I wouldn’t say it would be as popular.’

  ‘It’s probably a familiar development in the writer,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but usually it takes fifteen or twenty years. The change here is pretty sharp.’

  ‘A lot of things have happened to me recently.’

  ‘Has all this latter part been written since Harriet’s death?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Unknown to us a battle has been going on then, and the cynic in you is losing out.’

  ‘Cynicism is shallow thinking.’

  ‘And what’s to take its place?’

  ‘Pessimism,’ I said, and then laughed. ‘I don’t know, Ralph. Nobody, least of all a writer, can put a name to the stages of his own growth. Maybe it’s better, once he’s a successful writer, never to grow any more at all.’

  Ralph left on the Sunday evening, and on the Monday morning I opened the door to an early knock and found Alexandra on the step.

  Of course I should have known—in my heart I did know—that the sort of ineffectual, vaguely worded letter that I had brought myself to write wasn’t good enough, would never do.

  It was raining and as she came in she stood on the mat and took off her green suede helmet and shook the rain off it before I closed the door. In the first shock I had moved to take her in my arms, and she had moved too. But it perished halfway. Instead, almost formally, I helped her out of her raincoat and hung it over a wheel-back chair that Harriet had picked up at a sale at Liberty’s.

  She didn’t know the way, so I went ahead to the door of the beamed sitting room. She looked round it with cool cloudy eyes, put her fingers through her hair.

  ‘Pretty.’

  ‘Yes …’

  She looked very young standing there, and defiant, lonely, like someone young in a strange town. She walked across and sat on the window seat and stared out over the dripping garden.

  I said: ‘ Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘Coffee at the airport. It’s all I want. And you?’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ I lied.

  An old hollyhock stalk lurched in the wind, and behind it ochreous leaves choked the pathway. No one had tidied the garden since August.

  Alexandra said: ‘ Did you kill her?’

  Every week-end I came here it seemed to rain. A fortnight ago Tim had been here. Then that other time, before my father’s wedding …

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘Ever since it happened I’ve been trying to work that out. But it must have been.’

  ‘You mean … you struck her with something?’

  ‘No … Oh, for Christ’s sake! …’ I swung round, an extra pulse beating in my head. ‘Must we talk about it?’

  ‘Yes, Morris. I’m sorry …’

  I swallowed, my mouth feverish and dry.

  ‘I’m sorry. Of course we must.… No, I didn’t strike her. She was on the balcony, sitting there, perched … arguing. I pushed her.’

  ‘Then surely it was on the impulse of the moment.’

  ‘Of course. It was on the impulse of the moment. So it would have been if I’d taken up a poker and battered her to death.’

  ‘But you didn’t. It isn’t as bad. The act is less.’

  I was startled how quickly she was prepared to help me to justify
or excuse. Her green leather flat-heeled shoes were dark patched with rain. Her body was twisted, the thigh moving in a gracious line to the nylon-covered knee showing below the hem of the fine-wool skirt. Yes, it was what could have been, if I’d chosen to keep quiet.

  ‘Did you have to tell me?’ Her thoughts had gone along with mine.

  ‘I tried not to. I tried every way to avoid it. But it wasn’t on, Alexandra; I couldn’t not tell you. Marrying you not knowing would have … If we meant to each other what I believe we do—did …’

  ‘Did she know you pushed her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does anyone else suspect anything?’

  ‘A friend of hers, a man called Tim Dickinson. But he can prove nothing.’

  ‘And when did you—what made you decide you couldn’t marry me?’

  ‘Ever since it happened I’ve been in hell over just that. Other things as well, of course, but that much more acutely than anything else.’

  ‘Yes … Yes.’

  ‘I said to myself at first, this will pass; it will be all right after all. I said to myself, I can forget it: it’s my problem, no one else’s: it need never come between us. Why should it? She isn’t involved. I persuaded myself to think that for quite a while.’

  Her breast rose and fell once or twice as if she were sighing.

  I said: ‘Then I got on the opposite tack and began to think, supposing I tell her. Supposing I tell her, and ask her … I kept on arguing round that until I felt as if the top of my head would fly off. Last week, at last, I faced up to what I was proposing to do if I … So I wrote you that lame letter. I half expected you’d read between the lines. There weren’t many other ways of reading it, I suppose.’

  For some time there had been a tapping on the ceiling from water coming in from a loose slate. Now for the first time drips began to fall slowly on the other end of the window seat.

  ‘You say you couldn’t do it, Morris. Tell me exactly—in this we really have to spell it out—tell me just what you couldn’t do.’