Judith

by Nicholas Mosley

  I helped Eleanor out of the back of the van. It was a bright spring afternoon. I thought – Now be careful, on the edge of this strange landscape.

  Eleanor said ‘We’d better just go, now we’re here, and have a look at those flint-mines.’

  I thought – You become accustomed to this style? After a time, and if the ground is right, a mutation becomes conventional?

  We were, yes, looking for the child.

  I walked up the slope with Eleanor. I had my arm around her: we walked without much difficulty. I suppose I was to some extent taken over by Eleanor. She had a way of making even ordinary things seem extraordinary. So, I suppose, she made extraordinary things seem ordinary.

  You don’t know Eleanor all that well, do you? (You, not you.)

  I had once gone to see Eleanor in order to talk about you Jason, and Bert: this was when she was still working professionally. She had that room in Hampstead with her bits and pieces on the walls – her horses from China: her smiling figures from Etruscan tombs. I said I was in a muddle between you and Bert; I did not know what to do. I sat in a high-backed chair (there was her couch, empty, like a tomb) and she watched me with those all-things-bright-and-beautiful eyes. After a time, what I was saying seemed to have nothing to do with anything: I was saying what I was expected to say: but who was it who was expecting me? certainly not Eleanor. I mean – Of course Eleanor was expecting me to say these things, but this was because she knew that it was I who felt this was expected of me: and so on. So after a time I stopped. There had been that sensation (we are surely becoming accustomed to this!) of all the lights coming on in a theatre. I said ‘I don’t know why I’m saying all this.’ She said ‘Don’t you?’ I said ‘No.’ She said ‘You want me to know what an exciting time you’re having.’ I said ‘Why do I want you to know what an exciting time I’m having?’ She said ‘You were the lucky one, weren’t you, who was expected to have an exciting time in your family?’

  With my mother and father, I suppose, at the place where those people had had the bottoms of their skulls bashed out – bashing each other’s skulls out –

  I had then thought – I will never be like this! I will never let my children feel so superior!

  I had said to Eleanor – But that’s terrible! Eleanor had said – Why is it terrible? I had said – That I have come here to show off to you! She had said – But I don’t think it’s terrible. Then – Though perhaps you won’t always want to have that sort of exciting time.

  With all the lights coming on, is it one’s family who get up and leave the theatre?

  It was just after this, I think, that Eleanor had said, as all of you at some time or other seem to say, that thing about what people are frightened of is not having too little but having too much.

  Eleanor and I were moving up the slope towards the flint-mines. We were (I had to remind myself) looking for the child. Well, what have I told you about these flint-mines? they are quite well known: they are where some of the earliest traces of humans in Britain have been found. The best flints are ten or twelve metres below the surface; pits were dug with tunnels giving off at the bottom; the flints were lifted to the surface by ropes and baskets. With the discovery of metal, flints had been needed less and so the mines had been abandoned and had fallen in. They had been excavated some four thousand years later and one of them had been opened for tourists; there was a hut above it with a ladder going down.

  Eleanor and I were struggling up the slope. I did not know why I had not left her by the van. I did not know why, or why not, anything. Eleanor said ‘He liked coming here.’ I said ‘Yes, I guess he would like coming here.’ We came to the hut above the mine which was sometimes open to the public. It did not seem to be open now; perhaps because it was too early in the year. But the door was off its hinges.

  I thought – What does it mean, it doesn’t mean anything, these doors being off their hinges? Then – the people in the van were coming here?

  I sat Eleanor down with her back against the wall of the hut. She smiled, and looked up at the sun. I said ‘Will you be all right?’ She said ‘Yes, I’ll be all right.’ I said ‘I’d better go down.’ She said ‘Yes, you’d better go down.’ Then – ‘I’m sorry.’

  I said ‘I expect there’ll be nothing there.’

  She said ‘Yes, indeed, there may be nothing there.’

  I did not want to go in through the door that was off its hinges. I suppose I was frightened. I tried to remember – What happens when you are frightened?

  I said ‘I wonder why they didn’t speak?’

  Eleanor said ‘Then we can go on to the cottage.’

  I thought – You mean, this is almost literally a journey through the maze?

  This rolling green tract of land set around with fir plantations was not within the battle-area: it was on the edge: it was also quite close to what they referred to as the cottage.

  I thought – This is some sort of initiation?

  – You are blindfolded, go into holes in the ground, and there are people in masks like shadows on the walls – and all that rubbish?

  – But even then, is it not true that you are looking for a child?

  I said to Eleanor again ‘Will you be all right?’

  Eleanor said ‘Of course I’ll be all right!’

  When I pulled at the door of the hut it came away in my hands. I thought – Why shouldn’t I be frightened? those figures on clouds watching –

  – This is a state of grace?

  Within the hut it was dark. There was a counter where sometimes they sold tickets and postcards: there was a railing around the hole in the ground with the ladder going down. There used to be torches, I remembered, kept under the counter: I did not think that there would be torches now. Perhaps then I would not have to go down. I felt underneath the counter and there was a torch: I thought – If this is a ritual, it is some going down into the Pit? The torch was one of those box-like things with a handle; when it swung it made shadows on the wall; they came leaping out like tigers. I thought – Some sort of homage to those people in the cave? you sometimes have to go back, do you, in order to be out? It was conceivable, of course, that the child might have come this way. I began to climb down the ladder. The hole was about two metres wide. You remember when we came here that Sunday afternoon: you climbed down the ladder first, and when I got almost to the bottom you said – Wrap your legs around me and we’ll go over the rim of the world. I said – God, you are boring! Why is it that when women are pleased, they often say to men – God, you are boring! I was climbing down the ladder with the torch making shadows on the wall. This was to do with sex? back to the womb? The child might have looked in here, fallen, on his way to the cottage: but you never truly know why you are doing things, do you? or how can you trust? and so what would be grace? There has to be just one thing after the other. At the bottom of the pit there was the level where primitive men had dug flints: and used them to bash one another’s skulls in, probably; and eaten each other’s brains. There was some burned wood and ashes as if people had been making a fire here: I thought – You mean, these people were amongst the first to make fire? Then – For God’s sake, there have been people down here recently with a fire! Then – It would be a good place to shelter, wouldn’t it, if there were a bomb going off? So, this is not ridiculous. There were five or six tunnels going off horizontally from the bottom of the pit: they were six or seven metres long and a metre high. I thought – I suppose I have to crawl along each, one by one; it is no good my going on asking why. I got down on my hands and knees and started crawling; I thought – Or I am that sperm looking for life in a Fallopian tube: hullo, hullo, my little one. Down one of the tunnels, at the end, there were bits of old straw, and a suitcase. I mean there was a suitcase, closed, upright, at the end of one of the tunnels. It was like that enigmatic rectangular object in one of those space films. I thought – Well, what are you trying to tell me: or what am I trying to learn? Perhaps nothing. Or am I learning about not
hing? I thought I should go quickly down the one or two other tunnels and then up and out again: I did this: then I had to go back to check that the suitcase was real. Well, you don’t quite believe things, do you? or it is difficult to tear yourself away from certain mysteries? It was an old-fashioned leather suitcase with a handle on top: all packed up and ready to go. I thought – At least it is not wrapped in plastic. It is simply a dead-end of the maze. When I was climbing up the ladder again I felt I should go back even once more to make sure: but of what? that such things are ridiculous? I wanted to say – But will you learn, then, my little one! I went on up the ladder. I found Eleanor at the top still with her eyes closed facing the sun. I thought – Well, that was quite brave? Then – How brave are children to hang on!

  I said to Eleanor ‘There’s a suitcase.’

  Eleanor said ‘A suitcase.’

  I said ‘Closed, with a handle, at the end of one of the tunnels.’

  Eleanor smiled like fireworks again; like Roman candles. I said ‘What do you think it is?’

  Eleanor said ‘I don’t know. I don’t think it’s anything.’

  I said ‘Do you think they left it here? Do you think they were coming to fetch it?’

  Eleanor said ‘Perhaps it belongs to the caretaker of the flint-mines. Perhaps it’s where he keeps his clothes.’

  A Land-Rover had appeared on the track by the wood along which we had previously come in the van. It had stopped. There was the broken-down van just ahead of it in the wood.

  Eleanor said ‘You go on. I’ll tell them. I’ll stay here.’

  I wanted to say to Eleanor – What I wanted to talk to you about was me and Bert! about whether or not I should marry him!

  Eleanor said ‘There’s a church with a broken spire. We used to go there on the horse.’

  I said ‘A church with a broken spire?’

  She said ‘Yes.’

  I said ‘I’ll go to the cottage first.’

  Then – ‘I do love Bert, you know.’

  I began to walk across the landscape with the mounds and pits in it like old shell-craters. I thought I should have said again to Eleanor – You will be all right? But I wanted to get away before anyone saw me from the Land-Rover. I began to run. I thought – This is a strange life; but this is a strange old planet. I did not think that the Land-Rover would be able to come after me, because there were fences and woods between myself and the cottage: even if the Land-Rover went by the road, I could get there first.

  I thought – What I am looking for is not only the child: it is also what would be the child’s way of looking at things.

  Then – It is not as if I were mad; it is as if I were looking down on myself moving freely among people who are likely to be mad.

  I was out of sight of the Land-Rover. The child, certainly, might be at the cottage. You had been staying there last summer, had you not? Did Lilia say you had been there at Christmas?

  When had my child been conceived?

  I should explain about this cottage: to you; to you.

  The cottage had once belonged to Lilia and the Professor: then all of us took to staying there on and off. Perhaps it was somewhere where we went when we felt ourselves caught up by matters of love and hate and birth and death.

  I thought – Is it death people run away from? But I have been down into that tomb!

  I came to one of the fir plantations. There was a fence. Then there were those strange whisperings overhead. I thought – This is the path where you, Jason, and I once walked. Is it the plantation in your story where you walked with Lilia and the child?

  What made you write it like that? It was to be some nucleus, for a cell?

  Soon I would come to the wild rhododendrons. They were unusual, you said, in this part of the country.

  On Easter Saturday, when one does not die, does one go to visit shadows of the past? is this the Harrowing of Hell?

  There are things about the past, of course, that I have not told you. Shall I tell you now? (To tell the truth, there has to be more than one letter, or description, or meaning, do you not think?)

  – Oh happy fault, or whatever it was, that got us out of paradise, that Easter Saturday, and round to the back way!

  When I came to this cottage with you, Jason, you met me at the railway station (where was Lilia? was it then that I got the impression that she did not mind? that she liked doing, as it were, her own thing?). I had always seen the cottage as something out of Giselle or La Traviata: there was wistaria and honeysuckle over the porch: if one could not imagine oneself innocent here – well, why build such a stage-set? Not just for sex: there is the movement of souls, is there not, in fairy tales. One falls in love, I suppose, as one might fall into a pool like Narcissus: but after this there is a vision beyond the walls of caves. You follow Plato’s dark horse: you sprout wings: you are on the road to the gods again. I was going along the path through the rhododendrons: would the wistaria be in flower at this time of year? There, indeed, was the cottage in its clearing: it was more lonely than I remembered it: what do places exist as when you are not there? I remembered where the key was kept: you had said – If people want to break in they do not need a key: and I had thought – Do you break in, or do you have a key, when you have been right round the world? – and so on. The key was in its slot in one of the beams in the roof of the porch. There was the large brass knocker on the front door. I had thought – Knock, and it shall be opened: you are not burglars, if you are in love?

  There was the chest with the telephone in the narrow hall; the door to the kitchen from which I had listened while you rang up Lilia. You had put on that terrible voice. What are the connections people think they know about between good and evil?

  In the kitchen there was the scrubbed oak table where I had sat while you had cooked: you had said – Of course it’s sensible to have more than one person: it gives security. I had said – Who wants security? You had said – So long as we both keep moving.

  I had said – All men want to imagine women are like Judith! then they can think their heads are being chopped off, and so need have no conscience.

  You had said – Only people who don’t feel don’t have to have pretences.

  And so on. Why do people quarrel, do you know?

  On the other side of the hallway was the sitting-room with the huge open fireplace. I had sat on the rug in front of the fire. You had drunk a lot of wine: why do you think men drink wine: so that they can get out of going to bed with women like Judith? I had said – But you and I don’t have pretences: do we not feel?

  I suppose I might have said – Please will you drive me to the railway station.

  When we made love on that rug (it is not always easy to crawl back into that cave: that salt-lick is often the end of tears) it was as if there were some tending, yes, of whatever it is to feel and not to feel: to be both helpless and in control. How can you manage this: are these the fantasies or the realities of childhood?

  It was the next afternoon, I suppose, that we walked through the rhododendrons to the flint-mines. You said – The part of us that looks down has to be kind to that terrible part that needs mothers – or children – and so on.

  I said – Well, anyway, I love you.

  When now I went into the sitting-room I found the curtains closed and the light indeed ghostly: there was that rug in front of the fire. What can I say now: there is that kindly part that looks down? In front of the fire – do you not call it the innocence of childhood?

  You knew, did you not, about me and Bert? Why else should you have talked about our both going from one person to another? But you do not know, do you, that we had come here, Bert and I, not so long before you and I went back to India – to that rug in front of the fire? This is what I should tell you?

  There is always some going down into the pit in making love: some Easter Saturday.

  Such shadows pile in! it is like those people in the telephone-box. There are your dreams, your images of other people, you
r images of yourself. It is because of the embellishments, I suppose, that there is such glamour in love. But then what you find is some sort of unexplained suitcase there; some dead-end; some bomb; some package of babies’ clothes.

  Bert once made a film about this; do you remember?

  There were to be two or more frames within the screen in which quite separate events were to be seen occurring: separate in place, that is: perhaps in time: the point was – in effect, what is separate and what is not? One frame kept nudging into the other. There was some crusader, was there not, who was away at war: he was in combat with an enemy: his sword was raised; he would either kill or be killed. In the other frame his wife, left at home, was about to take a lover. Something bulged out from one frame to the other: the lover’s foot, perhaps, knocked against the elbow of the crusader so that it was he, unbalanced, who was killed. Or the crusader’s hand, struggling for a hold, pushed against the wife so that for an instant she turned away on the bed: she had some memory, perhaps, of her husband: how sad she became! perhaps she pushed away, even, her lover on the bed. This was, was meant to be, like life: why does one do things, do you know? One is nudged by shadows; which one cannot talk about, because one does not know.

  And it was like this, it seemed, in front of the fire. There was that rug: there were the things that you know and do not know: Bert’s foot, perhaps kicking at us to make you go: well, why does one move this way rather than that? Why is one happy or sad? And then there was the Professor – why should I be telling you this now? because he might be dying? because he might be pleased at some nudge in honour of his life? I mean, I had come with the Professor once long ago to this cottage – the bodies piling up as if into that telephone-box – all those hands, feet, noses, pushing at one another; myself and you and Bert and the Professor: all going about our business of – what? getting out of the tin can? getting into and out of that box? helping each other up and out, might one even say, with an arm, a leg, a shoulder? There is always something wounding in love: if you are not wounded (that girl by the estuary) why should you want to get out (as you do)?