I Hear Voices
Page 17
“And it is not the same man,” affirms Radcliffe, although cloaking the element of genuinely felt truth in the words in a facetious manner, “that returns to you as left. Anyway—” he goes on more soberly, “that’s the end, isn’t it? My contract’s been fulfilled—I’m a free man and I shall be going.”
I thank Radcliffe for his faithful service and it is not without a genuine feeling of regret that I see him depart. I lie back and close my eyes. I do not think about the message Radcliffe brought me: in fact, in a sense, I reject it and see it diminishing swiftly, fading back into a mere point. Instead, I open my mind, although not yet my eyes, to the grey morning that is rising outside my window. Then I do open my eyes. My head is on the pillow and I see only the dark room containing a few dark objects and grey, pale slits between the curtains. I lie quietly for a while, intensely grateful for the warm enclosure of the blankets, the warm tube of body-warmed air in which I lie. I do not think of Radcliffe’s message. Radcliffe? As I say the name, I can not help frowning and then smiling. I close my eyes and feel the warmth of the bed lulling me, musically, hushing me to sleep again. But I resist its persuasion. Instead, I get out of bed intending to draw the curtains and then go back to the warmth and watch the day arrive. Having got out of bed, however, something immobilizes me. I stand still, one foot advanced, trying to still the trembling of my cooled limbs and less listening than wondering if the sign that I seem to be expecting will be audible. The cold of the floor begins to eat into my bare feet and then a curious problem manifests instelf. As I contemplate this problem, the contemplation of it seems to become one of its attributes and I seem to brood for a long time. The problem is to know how I will ever be able to tell, if I move, whether I shouldn’t have waited a little longer. I allow the problem to hang suspended for a while and then another aspect of it presents itself, how to maintain it in its present form and yet go on considering it. As these new facets present themselves it seems to become increasingly imperative that I move and so break the spell, but, to a degree that seems exactly to balance this impulsion, the prohibition against moving until I have resolved the matter also grows more powerful. It is with a faint shock, therefore, of both daring and disbelief, that I do step forward a moment later and walk to the window. Then, when I draw the curtains, a tide of joy, that I fight to attach to something in the prospect before me, or in the thoughts or experiences I have recently had, rises within me. I look out, biting the slippery, inner lip, and struggling to contain the joy, the reverence, the wonder that now seem to invade me with choking force. There is nothing, nothing really, I try to tell myself, or rather the blown whisper of these words just grazes my consciousness before being swept away on the gale. There is nothing, not even a star. The street, the row of houses darkening away down the street, a few curtained windows raying orange light as early risers begin to awake, a few young trees and a few vehicles but all, except the lighted windows, hueless in the neutral dawn beneath a sky that is low, cool and moist. As the brief possession begins to ebb, a knowledge that I must ask myself quickly, before, dissolving like blown smoke, it is gone and I see only the street and the grey sky again, what it was, what it contained, how much had to be fused into one huge impression to create that glimpse of the possibility of love. But, other than finding my lips framing the word “beyond” as my eyes try to penetrate beyond the boundaries of the street, racing from dim steeple to distant gleam and “beyond,” I seem to lose it even as I grasp it, though not as if it were too tenuous to hold but rather as if our relative velocities differed so greatly that, in the very instant that my mind closed around it, it flashed beyond the range of thought.
And then I find that I am merely standing at the bleak pane watching the dawn of another suburban day and, no more than a few seconds later, as I still stir faintly to some after-sting of the experience, a new interest solicits my attention and rapidly becomes a formidable candidate. Between two dark boundaries of curtain, a narrow channel of light has just afforded a glimpse of Mrs. Groggins in her nightgown. I attach my glance to the tantalizing aperture but it suddenly expands rapidly as the curtains are drawn revealing both that Mrs. Groggins is not, in fact, clad in a nightgown but fully dressed and also that she is not Mrs. Groggins at all but someone who makes me think of celery. After having drawn the curtains, the nameless woman retreats, and then slides out of my area of vision. Almost immediately, the light in the room goes out leaving a dark eye. Footsteps sound, and, on the other side of the street, a man and a small parcel pass rhythmically down towards the railings. The patience of a draught is rewarded as my shoulders shrink suddenly from its persistent assault. My whole body now, having been apprised of its vulnerability, trembles with cold and I pad rapidly across the room and climb into bed.
There I lie on my side, as I had intended to do earlier, in order to watch the new, grey day arrive. But before very long I hear voices.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
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© Paul Ableman, 1958
Preface © Margaret Drabble, 2006, 2014
The right of Paul Ableman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
The preface by Margaret Drabble is reproduced with kind permission of the Independent, where it first appeared.
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ISBN 978–0–571–31415–7