Every so long under the moontime we chatter all together like monkey village in the branches, run like river in the raintime up and down, shake thin fists at stickwall we build keep out wild animal come tear our bodies, wild men come fire our thatches. Keep us in more. Then soldier boys come with smoke bomb, fireflash, guns chatter like monkey village, go hideaway in jungle all same colour as leaves. Soldier boys go away come walk back. Our young people sharp as knives go walk away to the cities where all talk round, make much of. Come walk back to the village wearing strange clothes colour straw and mud dull after raintime. Talk fast and high like monkey village. Not stay long. Laugh at young girls in purple shiny from the traders, young men in thin cloth like soldier boy, low voice like pig grunt, dancing on the night of no work, tom-tom, tom-tom.
Say: ‘We not belong along of you no more. Belong the city now. There we tall people. You villagers small peoples. We not speak for you. We speak all ourselves,’ swagger in their straw clothes. Not come walk back.
But one full day come the lightime we stand up all together and go walk away too out of the stickwall and not sorry leave our thatches all fall down. Come to the city and man and woman, friends altogether, speak out loud along the tall houses and our young people sharp as knives put hands each on brother’s shoulder, say, ‘This too our people.’
Then we too live free among the tall houses, working our living, dancing the night of no work along the tall city peoples, unafraid, never go back to the stickwall. Like it says in the story of the old-time before the jungle grows up thick and we build the stickwall. Peoples come and go walk away from the village to the city all along the same, short and tall, and no soldier boys come with smoke bomb, fireflash only to monkey village in the branches. Then wide path come and go, all happily ever after, amen, laughing and dancing, one full day come the lightime.
It is quite clear that the people of this region are completely untrustworthy, feckless and apathetic. Their countenances express sullenness and suspicion and are devoid of any of that cheerful acceptance of the lot which nature or their own perversity has invested them with, which is customary among backward peoples. They respond but poorly to any attempt to teach them new skills or more civilised accomplishments and are not amenable to the very necessary forms of discipline which the authorities are forced to use from time to time. On our arrival at a particular village we found the inhabitants had all fled into the jungle and were attempting to hide themselves amongst the foliage where however they were easily discerned by a careful observer. One, a little braver than the rest, was encouraged to come forward and answer our questions and to lead us into the village. He said that the tribe did not engage in hunting but foraged for berries and grew a kind of wild oat from which they brewed a very potent form of native beer. Gradually they were persuaded to come out of hiding and to resume their occupations so that I was able to observe them in their natural habitat and make the following notes and drawings.
The females among them are particularly shy, largely I believe because some of them are enticed away periodically by traders and the more enterprising people from the towns, either to serve as concubines or as workers. They are divided into families but a rapid system of divorce and remarriage pertains among them and very few associations last more than a few years. There is a great deal of promiscuity, and, indeed, morality as we know it hardly seems to exist at this level. Naturally disease is rife amongst them and much of their time is spent in smoking, gossiping or drinking the native beer. They only show real interest and animation when the village gathers for tribal dancing. Then they dress themselves in coarse, bright finery, laughing and chattering like children and will often keep up their merriment all night.
They show little interest in religion, although many of them when questioned professed to believe in a God of sorts, and the missionaries make very little headway amongst them since they are either too indolent or lack perseverance to change their way of life. Hence the practice has arisen of carrying away the more promising children to the city where although they remain villagers at heart they may be persuaded to learn more civilised and rewarding habits.
It is clear that they do not lack innate intelligence but rather suffer from gross character defects which make them unable to follow a more normal way of life. What is not clear however is whether these are inborn or the result of environment.
I can only conclude that the government do right in keeping them segregated since, if such habits were allowed to contaminate the rest of the nation, all industry would be at a standstill and free licence allowed to instincts which, in all of us, are best kept under severe check.
It is particularly interesting to note that their language has no form of the verb to be nor any way of expressing past or future time. The philosophical concept of existence or being is quite beyond their grasp. Everything simply happens in an eternal present.
‘You going to this party then?’
‘No, don’t think so.’ Jill pulls a face. ‘For God’s sake I’m tired. I want to get home sometime,’
‘Alright then. Means I can’t go either; couldn’t get back. It’s alright for you. You’ve got your sex life all on tap. Thought you were supposed to be my friend.’
And I know I’ll give in again although I know too she’s half seas under, jealous, unreasonable, unreasoning, spiteful as a spoilt and thwarted child, and just as she knows too in the recesses of herself behind this aggressive façade and will tell me, half pleading, next time we meet. And I wonder again if this is all I’ve done for any of us, and if it’s worth the pain I cause Rae, and Jill, and myself, this desperate clinging to what is right, what has final meaning, has been and still can be something that glows like a sombre pearl in this world of shades, hidden under thick waves, sand, the mirk of the sea-bed, in the fleshly belly of a bi-valve; a love cleansed by the waters, washed and washed again in salt waves, scoured and polished by the harsh sand, bedded soft in living tissue.
‘They’ve turned the box off.’
‘Right on the dot as ever. Charlie likes to keep a respectable house.’
‘Where is this bloody party? I’m not chasing off to Clerkenwell or the fringes of Essex at this time of night.’
‘Not far, just round the corner. Honest. Ah you’re a good mate and I love you. Say, remember that time we went to the wrong party, all normals in cocktail dresses and dark suits? I’ll never forget that woman’s face when twenty of us marched in and all the girls were boys and all the boys were girls.’
‘Night-night, Vicky.’
‘Night-night, Steve.’
‘Night-night, Judy.’
‘Night-night, Jon.’
‘“Good night sweet ladies,
Sweet ladies, good night.”’
Outside the last wave washes over the pavement. We stand about in groups, unwilling to finish the evening, chatting, seeing Steve tucked into her glossy little biscuit tin on wheels, reassuring Judy. Two policemen stand easy, watching curiously from a safe distance. Further down on the opposite side a young man is sitting in a window-box outside a window full of bright sound and passing silhouettes, a telephone in his hand inviting someone to the party inside.
A tall, fat man in a long camel-hair coat crosses the road towards us, his hair glistening dully in a flat skullcap, his face sallow, heavy blue jowled under the lamp. He stops and stands for a moment staring at us. We look back, wondering if he is lost and wants to ask the way. He walks on and then suddenly turning spits deliberately in our direction with a harsh rasping sound. Then he walks on again. The two policemen have disappeared.
‘Filthy old sod.’
‘Foreigner.’
The blob of spit glistens malevolently like an eye in the gutter. I feel my stomach turn and look away.
‘See you Saturday then Matt.’
‘See you.’ We climb into our own car as Steve takes off with a pigmy roar and a wave.
‘Nasty bit of work.’ I feel her fear begin to settle as she bangs the car
door to.
‘The sort who’d’ve clobbered you if you’d said anything.’ We cruise round an elegantly porticoed square under trees still not brave enough to trust their leaves to the baring winds.
‘This is it.’
‘A hairdresser’s?’
‘That’s right.’
Tiny flaws appeared on the windscreen. ‘God, it’s snowing now. Better not leave it too late or we might not get away at all.’
‘Don’t want to be here in the morning when Lady Tom Noddy comes for her weekly blue.’
Inside we have wandered onto the set of an Antonioni film, hawking aristocratic degeneracy and fashionable despair to an aspiring bourgeoisie. The neon lighting is down to half, greenish glow. Figures huddle grotesquely under space-helmet hair-dryers or try self-consciously to defeat the full-length mirrors that inlay the walls. Someone has half filled a washbasin with scampi and potato salad; drinks are served from the display counter, glasses are in short supply. I work my way steadily through the scampi, swigging from a gassy bottle of light, the drink that inflates but does not inebriate. Jill has latched onto one of the entente cordiale who are always in motion between the clubs of London and Paris. A girl in gold boots, satin trousers and clinging gold sweater like a bareback rider performs a mock ballet in the middle of the floor calling to a young man and a middle-aged butch with lank face and spare figure to come and dance with her. A youthful Oscar Wilde drooping over his umbrella, pale fudge face caramel above a silk cravat, royal blue, inclines to an animated little figure waving its arms in front of him. I’m reminded of late decadent cartoons, Beardsley and Beerbohm.
Carl, are you here? No answer. How soon can we go? Maybe I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. Used to wonder how I’d react to seeing two of the boys dancing together, caught close like those two there, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Looks just as natural as two girls or man and woman. What’s the flash point then? Why don’t I get anything out of dancing with them unless it’s a real camping bitch, or with Jonnie or Rick. It’s not just the conventions we make for ourselves in imitation of the world outside surely? There’s no, what’s the word, frisson. Unless you’re dancing a young man’s dance. Then it’s like the dancing of primitive peoples, initiation, war dance, a chance for the young bull braves to show off their virility. Who is the prettier boy and wears the braver dagger? Throw your head back and stamp, seemingly caught by the rhythm of the dance but in fact by the rhythm of the blood beating in time to the feet. Maidens look at me, lithe and strong in the firelight. Tomorrow perhaps I go out to the place where ghost face will touch me with cold fingers. How I will rock you in your beds. Open your thighs and let me in. I am the strong sun, the hot wind. Melt under my touch. ‘They were allowed to sit in council and boast of the sexual prowess of their wives but not to go on the warpath.’ I am hairless as the apache, except for the legs, of course. All those old photographs of the greatest of the plains warriors and they look like old women decked in holiday finery except for the set, lined faces. Spartans combing their hair before the battle, red-coats in neatly powdered wigs: mistress death we come to woo you. Time to go.
By now she’s had enough. I tap her on the shoulder. ‘I’m off. Coming?’
‘Nothing here to stay for.’ The ‘s’ slurs a little. The road is quieter now. The wind has dried the scattering of snow. My head quite clear. No longer the terrible urge homewards like a compass needle swinging always north.
‘Desire, desire I have too dearly bought.’
and too,
‘I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.’
Only a quiet, persistent longing to be home.
‘Who was that piece of French crumpet, or should I say croissant, you were dancing with?’ But she is asleep, her head fallen against the cold glass.
Amtyas drew the cloak closer about the sleeping boy. It was cold in the mountains and who knew what the next dawn would bring. It was good that he should sleep while the dew fell and the birds stirred drowsily in their eyrie above the pass. ‘We too should be eagles,’ the man thought, ‘But for the most part we are only kin to the vulture and rend each other’s flesh.’ He had brought the boy into the pass of death and now he must watch beside him, perhaps watch him die when the sun rose because the boy’s arm was still weak, the young muscles showing promise yet not knotted in the resilient whipcord that can swing the heavy short sword all day until the evening shadows stride down tall from the mountain and even the enemy must rest.
I brake suddenly, switch off the engine, leave the lights, must leave the lights on, throw open the car door and run back down the road a few yards to the junction we’ve just passed. Already a knot of people is thickening on the corner.
‘Has anyone rung for an ambulance?’ Blank faces give back the answer. I run on again down the hill towards a block of flats where people are appearing on their balconies like boxes at the opera. ‘Have you got a phone?’ I turn my face up to them, shouting, doubting the strength of my voice to make itself heard. ‘Will you ring for the ambulance?’ A man disappears inside. I turn and run back up the hill.
The two boys are lying on the pavement, one propped stupefied against the running board of the car whose nose is butted aggressively against the lamp-post; the other twitching and moaning, drawing his knees up to his chin and shooting them out again.
‘It’s alright, mate. You’ll be alright.’ They tell him impotently, holding onto his hands to try and keep him still.
‘Turn him over.’ They roll him over onto his face. Someone runs up carrying a little tin box with a red cross painted on it, but there is no blood to wipe away, no occasion for bandages and dressings or improvising splints, only the contorted limbs in their leather casing twitching on the dry pavement. His face and hair are hidden by the heavy black armour of the helmet. The bike lies on its side in the gutter; its body broken, ribs bent; the glossy hide scratched and bruised.
I think of Jill waking suddenly in the deserted car, perhaps wandering out onto the road, or the car itself being struck as it waits at the roadside in spite of its warning lights. There is nothing more I can do. I turn back towards the car.
She is still asleep, her head pillowed on the window. I start the engine and pull quietly away.
‘And fire that’s the worst of all; charred like a tree-trunk they are, like the bark of a tree. You’ve never seen that have you?’
Red lights ahead, lining my side of the road, pinpricks, spots of bright blood, eyes of werewolf and vampire, ease into third, nothing in sight the full length ahead, pull across into the other lane. Always digging holes: gas mains, water mains, electric cables; veins of the city under the tarmac skin. Halfway now. What’s that chap up to? He’s shifting it. Have to put his anchors on. The bloody fool, he’s coming straight on. Surely he can see. He’ll go right through us. Pull over into the mud. Just squeeze by. Two wheels down the ditch. Hold her steady. Missed the barrier. We’ll make it.
‘Bloody woman driver!’
Gently does it. Always shakes you up. Like falling off a bike. Get back on straight away and ride or you’ll never get on again. His fault. Thought because it was his right of way. But I was halfway through before he’d even started. What else could I have done? Knew he’d made a mistake so shouted at me. Was his mistake, wasn’t it? ‘He’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.’ But then you can’t win. Only try to stick to the rules. Whose rules? What do you mean? I mean what I say. Tired. Nothing makes sense.
Petrol, must get some petrol. There’s that all-night garage before the roundabout. The modern coaching inn. Don’t see any pretty little chambermaid running out with a stirrup cup, only George the dumb hostler.
‘One of special please.’
‘Thank you, sir. Good night.’
Eyes must be bad or maybe it’s this neon lighting. It’s when they correct themselves, make a joke of it. That old girl in the post office. Close as I am to you. Called me sir all the time. And guv’nor once. T
hat night when we broke down on the bypass. Guv’nor; the accolade. What more do you want? Wake Jill in a minute Hope she can get herself to bed. Tired. Don’t want to drag all the way up those stairs. Not tonight.
‘See you then, mate.’
‘See you.’
‘Cheery, cheery.’
I watch her go up the steps and open the door, turn and grin before I let the brake off, the clutch out for the last lap. I see her climbing the stairs, taking off her boots and slacks and crawling into bed half dressed. She’ll be asleep before I turn the next corner.
And now he too climbs to his love in her darkened room, not knowing whether tigers crouch on the landing or doves preen drowsily in the attic cote.
She had fallen asleep with the little lamp still alight on the table beside the bed to keep away the bogles of childhood. He turned the wick up and saw the feminine array of cigarettes and chocolate laid to hand and a sudden tenderness passed through him which was indistinguishable from pain. He undressed quietly, dropping his shirt and trousers over the chairback, then stood for a moment looking down at this woman whom he neither knew nor understood but who was part of his blood. His thought encircled but failed to grasp her. At the very moment that it reached out to hold her he found she had slipped away and he was left with only a sense of loss and an image of her beckoning him on from the farthest region of his mind.
Should he wake her or creep into bed without disturbing her? She lay there childlike flushed with sleep, the dark hair shadowing her face, relaxed. As if his gaze were a light touch she stirred and opened her eyes, and he sat quickly on the edge of the bed, pulled the clothes back a little from her shoulders and buried his face in the soft flesh of her neck, breathing in the flavour of her skin like a rich flower, his lips moving against her throat. He felt her arms go round him.
‘Missed you.’
‘Missed you.’
‘What time is it?’
‘About three o’clock.’
The Microcosm Page 3