PART FOUR
18
Twenty years ago, when Charles King was in his early thirties, he would leave his desk in the Department of Theoretical Physics and go home every lunchtime to spend an hour playing the piano. It was a time which was very precious to him, this hour alone at the keyboard. It was the one time during the day when he could escape from the need to think. Sitting himself down with a score in front of him, he would launch his hands into motion.
It was Monday – two days after that walk in the country, when Robert had made him begin to feel suspicious of Jenny. He had said nothing to her about it; she had taken the train back to Cambridge the previous evening – again, she had offered to stay until this morning; again, he had said it was best for her to go and get a good night’s sleep before work. And as soon as she had left, he went to his bedroom, and opened the bottom of the chest of drawers, and began rummaging through those papers and old letters. Hard to tell if anyone had looked in here – how would he know the difference? But then he found what he was looking for; deep beneath piles of torn envelopes – two copies of Flood. He drew them out; found himself immersed in his own former words.
A river begins from countless tiny streams. Eventually, it becomes an unstoppable flood. Obstacles put in its path can only avert its course; they cannot stop the great natural force which drives it to its goal.
The force for change – for freedom and justice; these are unstoppable forces of nature. A great dam is built; for decades the flow is held back, but day by day the reservoir of discontent grows steadily deeper. And now the water is beginning to seep over the battlements. What will happen next? Will the dam withstand the constant trickle of fluid over its poorly built walls, or will it give way, and collapse?
Walking back to the car, no-one said much. They drove on for lunch, and the village where they stopped was one of those places which seems to have gone unchanged for centuries – though of course, this was all a fiction. The place had been completely rebuilt after the war. That night, King found himself unable to let Jenny out of his sight for a moment. She knew something was wrong, but couldn’t get him to talk about it.
At the piano, his hands move mechanically as his eyes follow the notes.
If change is nothing more than a law of nature, what then is the responsibility of the individual? Should we all wait calmly for the inevitable to happen? Surely not. But the desire for freedom lies within us all – even those who oppress us. We are all slaves of the landscape of tyranny which we have created for ourselves. How was it that this landscape came into being? What is its geology?
They had lunch in a make-believe village reconstructed after the war. A monument on the village green commemorated fallen heroes. To be a hero means to die on the right side, at the right moment.
They sat at one of the tables outside the pub; Duncan drinking orange juice through a straw. Charles wondered if the tension he detected between Jenny and the others was only a manifestation of his own suspicion. Perhaps it was really he who was tense.
In the landscape of tyranny, we can imagine mountains of oppression, summits of persecution. Each individual longs only to flow down to the peace and tranquillity of the valley, and the force which pulls him is the will to survive. To scale one of those peaks of injustice – to speak out and resist, and suffer the consequences – there are few who are brave enough to do this.
But Charles felt sure that Jenny had no hint of the conversation which he had had with Robert. She was fussing now over little Duncan, while Anne looked on in silence.
At the piano, King’s hands move mechanically as his eyes follow the marks of the score. Last night, he could hardly wait for Jenny to leave, so that he could search through his papers. And then he had found himself immersed in his own former words.
A thousand tiny streams trickle down mountain sides, and year by year the solid rock is slowly carved away. What once seemed mighty soon begins to look fragile and insubstantial. What once seemed immutable, is seen to be transitory and ephemeral. Power exists only where fear exists, and the river of human will, which is gathering force day by day around us – this flood of hope, will surely sweep away all the fear which may try to block its path.
In the drawer, there were two copies of Flood – two of the photocopies he had made in secret, like a naughty schoolboy. He had never thought to regard it all as much more than a prank. Difficult to tell whether anyone had been through this drawer – so long since he himself had opened it. The pamphlets had been right at the bottom, beneath a pile of other things. Hardly likely that Jenny would have been able to take them out, show them to the police, and bury them in here again without King noticing. Though there could have been a third copy.
Each one nothing more than a few sheets stapled together – a couple of articles, and the poems which Robert signed ‘Ganymede’. King tore both copies in half, then quarters. Now it was difficult to tear through the wad; he took the individual pieces and ripped them further. Went to the bathroom and flushed it all down the toilet. As he did this, he had a sudden vision of the drains being cleared in search … Absurd idea! But when the flushing water ceased its tumbling, most of the shreds of paper were still floating in the toilet bowl. He waited until the cistern fell silent, tried again. But again this failed to carry them away. So now he reached into the water and pulled the pieces of paper out, a handful at a time. Later, when they were dry, he would burn them in an ash-tray.
Hands moving mechanically over the keyboard. A theme and variations. He hardly hears them.
They had all sat outside the pub in a make-believe village. It was in a village like this that a hundred civilians stood in terror under the guard of a young machine gunner. And then he received the order to end them all.
Duncan spilled his glass of orange juice; sticky liquid spread across the table. Anne mopped it up with a handkerchief. Afterwards, they went back to the car for the drive home. Anne produced her camera, but it was Jenny who offered to take the photograph; the three adults, and little Duncan, standing in front of the white Morris Common-wealth. Those serious expressions. Jenny laughed as she aimed the camera – Charles and Robert forced a smile while between them Anne scowled.
When the torn scraps of paper were sufficiently dry, Charles put them in an ash-tray, a few at a time, and lit them with a match. Soon there was nothing left but cinders and smoke. He had to open a window. He felt now, that he had done all he could – he would have to wait and see what happened next. It was absurd to think that Jenny could betray him – he couldn’t see what reason she might have for doing such a thing. To improve her chances of getting a better flat, perhaps. But she didn’t seem the type – no more curious than women usually are. Charles looked again through the piles of notes and letters in the bottom drawer; lifting out slabs of paper and envelopes in an attempt to find some answer. Though what he wanted to discover was precisely the thing which he could not possibly hope to find – the proof of her innocence.
Those old letters – letters from friends and colleagues, letters from relatives. Neat letters, or ones scribbled in haste; letters which had lost their meaning, which had lain unread perhaps for years. Letters which formed tangled interlocking mats, like geological strata. The gradual unearthing of the past – and the search for some answer, some meaning. Letters from lost friends. Letters gone cold. A card which Anne once sent. Missing your body. All of this, he would also destroy. Why save any of it?
Their serious faces. Jenny stood with the sun behind her; they all squinted in the sunlight, as she took the picture. Duncan wanted to know if they would see that rabbit again, while they were driving home.
The movement of his fingers. How many times has he played this music? He hardly listens to it.
The drive back to Charles’s place to drop him off with Jenny. Robert reluctant to come in for coffee, but in the end they’re persuaded, for a while. After they go, Charles and Jenny left alone with the tension between them. Jenny asks him if he once had an affair w
ith Anne. Feminine intuition, she calls it. Then Charles felt relieved by the thought that her suspicious behaviour was only because of her fears about Anne. His relief seemed to wipe out all the doubts which Robert had managed to raise in his mind. He told her not to be silly; Anne wasn’t his type. When they went to bed, their sex was like an act of apology. For the rest of that day, and then during Sunday, nothing more was said about the matter.
Old papers, and all those letters – who would have thought there could be so many? All those old messages – and the forming of a pattern, like an archaeological excavation; time retreating with increasing depth.
Their sex was like a ritual of atonement. How could he have let Robert stir up such worries? Moving on top of her, a sudden memory of Anne. Trying not to think; to act like a machine without thought or will.
Hardly a wrong note today. Only when he thinks about his hands do they sometimes begin to falter on the keys of the piano.
A machine without thought or will; impelled, after Jenny left next day, to go and search that bottom drawer. To satisfy himself. A whole night and day spent waiting to open it, to sift through it. He had never let her out of his sight. As a precaution.
The drawer heavy and stiff, as if it had not been pulled open in a long time. The papers at the top pushing up and preventing the drawer from sliding. Packing them down with one hand, to remove the obstacle. Far enough now to reach everything inside. Hands buried in torn papers. And from somewhere near the bottom, two copies of Flood. Then King found himself immersed in his former words.
That river which will sweep away the endless tyranny of lies, and the acceptance of lies, and the power which can exist only because of the weakness of others.
And after everything was burned he went back to the drawer – searching more carefully now, in case he should have forgotten anything. Why save any of this, when its only function could be to make problems in the future? Why not burn all of it? Those forgotten, torn-edged letters, curled and silent. (Neat letters, elegant and aloof. Letters of blue ink, set down rapidly. Letters which suggest a sort of urgency, a sort of compulsion. Letters which hold implication, which invite examination. Letters which seem to promise the answer to some question and then begin to suggest the darkening of a thought, the casting of an idea like a shadow. Letters which seem to push towards the light, but then send their roots deeper. Letters which begin to enfold and seem at first warm but then a little cooler, which seem to be there and yet dissolve into something else, and the bridge between the seen and the unseen, between the known and the unknown and the connections, growing like the healing of a wound, like the clotting of blood or the callousing of worn skin. Letters matted into layers, into strata; layers which seem meaningless and yet have the weight of another’s guilt, and which bring neither a warning nor a threat but only the confirmation of something previously suspected, and gradually the forming of a pattern, a hierarchy, and the sense that each layer, each letter of blue ink is not an answer complete in itself but only an indication, a hint, a point where things meet, a point of confluence, of ramification, and each letter, curled and silent, bears witness to a crime and the idea of a crime, and an act of intrusion.)
Lifting out the past, in all its torn and forgotten pieces. And then he saw it – lying in its bed of paper; across the heap of envelopes, newly unearthed. A hair; a long strand of brown hair. Jenny’s. And King felt sick with dread.
He picked it up, held the hair between his fingers; studied it closely. It couldn’t be anyone’s, but hers. And it had been lying deep within the pile of papers.
This still proved nothing, except that Jenny might have opened this drawer. Or the hair could have been on King’s clothes, or blown into the drawer while he was rummaging in it. The strand of hair proved nothing.
Yet it was here. It was lying hidden in a heap of envelopes. He tried to imagine this hair on the head of every woman who had ever slept in this room. But it could only be Jenny’s.
The drawer pulled out, tipped over; everything spread on the floor. Frantic searching – for what? For what might already have been removed?
All of it, in the metal waste paper bin; he could burn it a handful at a time. What is the past, except the possibility of accusation? But even the first handful – so much smoke. He opened the window again, but it was scarcely sufficient. To go outside, though, might look suspicious. A room smelling of smoke now, and a bin full of charred paper – larger pieces still bearing the possibility of some degree of decipherment. Ground finer. Difficult to destroy everything. He went through what was left – all those old letters, notes, bills, cards. Nothing that could do any harm now if a stranger found it. He put it all in a bag and took it outside to the dustbin. When he went back, the room still smelled of smoke, and he felt foolish and resentful.
But he could not forget the hair. It was not what he had found that he feared, but what he had not found.
Next day, he woke early. Once in his office, he was quite unable to work. He spent the morning hoping for news from Robert that might make everything alright. Or even from Jenny. Again and again, he tried to reassure himself of the triviality of his wrong-doing; he was fearful only of this uncertainty, this silence and expectation.
When lunchtime came, he felt only slightly calmer. He went home as usual and sat down at the piano.
19
Later that afternoon, King returned to his office. Joanna called out to him as he passed her room. Someone had been looking for him. Charles asked who it was – she didn’t know; he wouldn’t give a name. Only said he’d return later.
King found it impossible to do any work. He tried reading a paper, but he only scanned the equations without following anything of what was going on. Then the phone rang, and Joanna put Jenny through to him. Jenny said it had been a lovely weekend. Her voice sounded as if she were thinking of something else.
‘And you know what, Charles? I’ve still got your spare key – I forgot to leave it yesterday. You don’t need it do you?’
Charles felt again that fearful sensation of vulnerability.
‘No. It’s alright. I’ll come down to London at the weekend. I can get it from you then.’
Jenny hesitated in answering.
‘You’re sure you want to come? I could always post it to you.’
‘Why shouldn’t I want to come?’
‘Look, Charles, I don’t understand what’s going on. But maybe we both need to stop a while and think things over.’
Now it was Charles who paused.
‘Perhaps you’re right. I’ll talk to you later in the week.’
It was as if there were some barrier between them. Eventually he would have no choice but to confront her, and find out the truth. Reason enough in itself, perhaps, for going to London to see her. But he still needed time.
Impossible to work. Symbols swam without meaning before his eyes. He went to Joanna’s office.
‘What was he like – this man who was looking for me?’
‘Seemed a bit nervous. Wouldn’t tell me anything.’
‘How old?’
‘Early thirties. Appallingly dressed!’ Joanna laughed, and carried on arranging the papers on her desk.
‘How was he dressed?’
‘Looked like two halves of different suits. And dreadful shoes.’
‘Sounds like you got a good look at him.’
‘Women notice these things, Charles. I don’t think he was anything to get too excited about. Looked to me like a physicist. I expect he’ll be back.’
To Joanna, it was little more than a source of amusement. Charles resented her lack of concern about the stranger.
‘We can’t have just anyone wandering around the place, Joanna. That’s how things go missing.’
Impossible to work. Sitting at his desk, he tried to begin a calculation. Still the thought of that hair was in his mind; that strand of Jenny’s hair amongst his papers. He picked up the phone and dialled Robert’s work number. There was no reply. No bette
r when he tried Robert’s home.
He went upstairs to the tea-room. Perhaps a newspaper would provide some distraction. Going in, he noticed a man sitting in a corner of the room. Dark, greasy hair – and matching Joanna’s unfavourable description. Sitting alone, apparently in deep thought. If he saw King, he had ignored him.
King took a newspaper from the rack and chose a good seat from which to observe the stranger. It was conceivable that he was a physicist, come to discuss something or other. Too conspicuous and odd, surely, to be with the police. His battered briefcase didn’t look very official. And they must have better things to do than sit in tea-rooms all day.
King noisily turned a few pages while watching discreetly. No use avoiding it – if this was the one who had come to King’s office then he would try again sooner or later. Better to get it over with. King got to his feet, walked up to him and introduced himself.
‘Ah, Dr. King – I’m most honoured to meet you.’ A bony hand was extended. ‘My name is Edward Warren.’
King gave a sigh. So it was only that madman who had sent him his ‘Vision of the Universe’.
Music, in a Foreign Language Page 13