After a silence, Daniel said, ‘I remember you telling me once that mad or disturbed people whose troubles disappear under the right chemotherapy, that some of them get to feel so well or at least so all right that they reckon they can manage without, and are back to square one in no time. Could anything like that happen to Ruth?’
‘Ah. Well, since she’s not in hospital there’s nothing to stop her cutting her dosage down or even out. But if she does she’ll soon start feeling rotten enough to go back on it off her own bat. Whereas …’
‘Whereas if she doesn’t feel rotten we could be starting to win.’
‘We’ve won the first battle already, but yes. My turn to buy a drink. Another zero for you, or something more substantial?’
‘I … Could I have a glass of water?’
‘Water coming up.’
When Eric was back in his seat, Daniel said to him, ‘Just to sum up, or put it another way: those domains of thought and action traditionally annexed to free will are being more and more encroached upon by the development of drugs and other novelties, and at present no end to this progression is foreseen. Sorry to sound so cut-and-dried, but it’s the way I’m beginning to think these days. Have I left anything out?’
‘But,’ said Eric.
‘I hadn’t forgotten about but,’ said Daniel.
‘It’s just that my Church is more easy-going than yours,’ said Leo.
Daniel shook his head. ‘That can’t be true as things are today. Years ago it probably was.’
‘Even now I doubt very much if your boys and girls would have scraped a helpless, hopeless drunk off the street and not only brought him back all the way but encouraged him, and I mean encouraged, not just put no obstacle in his way but positively begged him to take holy orders.’
‘Well, that’s an excellent description of what our lot did for me only a short time ago.’
‘Oh, great. So here we are with another piece of our lives that’s been pretty much the same for us both.’
‘Part of us that’s the same.’
‘Pretty much the same.’
‘Exactly the same.’
‘Because we’re exactly the same.’
‘Exactly the same.’
Daniel felt comforted by the complete identity of himself with his twin and their complete accord in the matter. As before they sat in the kitchen, at the table. He turned his head away and looked out of the open garden door. Outside it was very bright and very still, with nearer objects in deep shade, paving stones and a stone tablet, evergreen plants and small shrubs in stone urns and earthenware pots, coils of dark-green hosepipe that had left dark puddles and patches of damp. The sight seemed to Daniel to reflect the tranquillity of his life. At the same time it occurred to him that he had not noticed the stone tablet before. He fancied it bore an inscription, but it was too far off for him to be certain of that, let alone to read whatever might have been there. He was about to get up and go and look when he heard a small sound from the far side of the table and turned back towards it.
A replica of himself was facing him. Ears, eyebrows, hair and its length and arrangement, shape of face, ears, everything was as Daniel was used to seeing it in the mirror, although he strongly suspected that that summary could not be true in fact.
‘Who are you?’ he asked curiously.
‘It’s hard to find a single word for who I am,’ replied what he recognized as his own voice. ‘Or what I am. Nevertheless, if you and Leo are twins, you and he and I could be triplets. Quite conceivable, if you’ll pardon the impropriety, vicar. As our brother recently explained to you, monozygotic twins come from a single fertilized ovum that has split into two. When one of those moieties splits again, we’re presented with identical triplets and, as you may have read in various newspapers, there’s no theoretical limit to the number of times that can happen, or be induced to happen. Are you with me so far, Daniel?’
‘Yes.’ Daniel might have added that what was being said to him was also to be heard, with total synchronicity, inside his head, but thought it advisable to keep quiet about that.
‘Whatever their number,’ resumed the being across the table, ‘all the resulting persons or animals or vegetal entities are identical. The artificial process, known as cloning, has long been a botanical commonplace and one day, perhaps quite soon, may be practically as well as theoretically applicable to human beings. Compared with non-uniform organisms, clones offer an untold, unexplored range of advantages and possibilities. Some of these are of course social, even political, indicating a community as simple as an anthill or a beehive. But you and I, brother, aren’t interested in that, in what may or may not actually happen in the future; our concern is philosophical and so timeless. When the uniqueness of the individual is found to be limited and finite, instead of universal and infinite, it ceases to be a usable concept. It follows that any ideas of free choice that may be nourished by a human unit, formerly known as an individual, are illusory and false. Your path to God, Daniel, was already there waiting for you. You had no alternative.’
The last few sentences had been audible only inside Daniel’s head, and when he looked up he was alone in the kitchen. Aware of nothing more than his need to do so, he got up and at his natural brisk pace walked out of the house by the garden door. He made for where he had seen the stone tablet, but could not find it. At the moment when he saw it was not there to be found, darkness closed about him. He stood still for a short time, then, for greater safety as he thought, dropped into a crouching position. What was under his hands and feet now was not stone but bare earth. The darkness that surrounded him was intense but not absolute; there was enough light from somewhere to show him that he was encircled by a flat, featureless plain that reached to the horizon in every direction. He felt that his spirit was leaving him.
Still in darkness, he became aware that he was breathing unusually: slowly in, sharply out, pause, then again. At the same time he found he was lying on something smoother and softer than earth.
‘Are you awake?’ said Ruth’s voice quietly.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m awake now.’ In the time it took Daniel to utter these words his mind had altered what he had actually and inexpressibly dreamt into the dialogue or dialogues at his kitchen table and what had seemed to follow, and then in turn he had forgotten all that and was left with nothing but a strong, heavy feeling of loss and sorrow. ‘I must have been dreaming,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘I was awake. Are you all right?’
‘Oh yes. Oh yes, I’m all right now.’
But he must have said it wrong, because she at once switched on her bedside light, came over and knelt down by him and took his hands. ‘Was it a very horrible dream?’
‘It was rather.’
‘But it’s all over now, darling. Let’s go down to the kitchen and have a cup of tea.’
‘Not there, not for me,’ said Daniel in a rush.
Ruth glanced at him for a moment. ‘All right, you stay here and relax. Don’t you dare go to sleep again.’
‘I won’t, I promise I won’t.’
‘I’ll be very quick,’ she said after another pause.
Alone in his workroom a minute later, Daniel knelt down by his desk and started to pray. He thanked God for preserving him from whatever had seemed to threaten him as he slept and for taking from him all memory of it. Then he stopped, stopped the silent recital of words which was his habitual form of prayer in private. Always before, God had been listening to his prayers, or he, Daniel, had believed unquestioningly that that was so, which no doubt came to the same thing. Now, he found he could not believe that his words were going anywhere. But he went on silently forming them in his mind, this time ones that asked for help.
None had arrived by the time he heard Ruth approaching with the tea-tray. He went and sat on his desk-chair, then got up again and helped her set out the tea-things on the corner of the de
sk he kept clear for such arrangements. She pulled up her chair and sent him a look of great friendliness.
‘You haven’t been yourself since that night you and Leo sat up talking, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he agreed.
‘And this dream you had is more of the same.’
‘It feels like that. In effect, yes.’
After a moment, she said, ‘You’ll have to tell me sooner or later, you know. And no, you’re not keeping me up.’
‘It’s painful,’ said Daniel.
‘Yes. But I’m here.’
‘Can I have some more tea?’ When this was done, he went on, ‘That night, Leo and I went over our lives in detail, starting as far back as we could remember, childhood friends, childhood ailments, schooldays, school friends, girls, university, first job, all that. Until we were in our middle twenties or so it was, well, let’s call it reassuringly boring. Quite a number of resemblances, such as both of us having a close friend at college called Paul, both of us liking The Tempest best of Shakespeare’s plays and thinking Horatio had more in him than Hamlet, but nothing on the scale of those twin brothers he told us about who had both independently had a seat built round a tree in their garden, nothing where anybody who heard of it wouldn’t think it was a bit of a coincidence and that was about that, nothing spooky. In fact, as we went on I started to feel I was going to get away with it, I started to feel safe. Meaning, as you saw from the very beginning, I was afraid of Leo, not as a person but because of what he was, what he is. And I was dead right to be afraid of him, or at least to wish more than anything that he had never existed.
‘I dare say I felt a twinge or two of a rather different sort when we got on to you, that’s to say when I got on to you and he got on to his Ruth. But the first part of it was all right, in fact it was, well, pleasant to go over our early times and sort of relaxing to find they were rather like theirs, which you’d have expected with two very similar men in pretty similar circumstances and countries. I thought there might be trouble of one sort or another when, I forget which one of us it was, but something was said that could have led to us letting on about, you know, personal things, private things. I closed up straight away, which was probably me being English again, but then he did the same thing, so perhaps Americans have their own scale of things to keep quiet about that isn’t so different from ours. Or perhaps that’s just how Leo is. After all, we are twins.’
So far Daniel had spoken in an equable, controlled way that was still not natural to him and included pauses in odd places. By now he was sitting hand in hand with Ruth, who had listened without any sign of wanting to speak. Soon he went on as before.
‘I’d better come to the crunch, my love. When you start talking about boozing, serious boozing, you find there isn’t a lot to say. For reasons you don’t understand and can’t be bothered with, it suddenly dawns on you that you’ve got to be drunk and you set about getting there by the nearest available means. You don’t enjoy getting there or anything else about it, that’s not the idea at all. So there you are, drunk, and that’s that. The rest is a matter of falling over, throwing up, stealing, fighting, waking up on a train you don’t remember thinking about catching, let alone getting on to, being locked in a police cell and, if you’re not so lucky, an epileptic fit or two to see you back to square one. Plus some other people’s chatter about tension and insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. All serious drunks are the same, except over details that can be mildly interesting, such as brainy places to hide a bottle.
‘Some people seem to get out of it on their own. I’d never have managed it like that. Then one morning I woke up lying on my bed fully dressed, doing pretty well for that time of day, in fact. But I had nothing to drink and no money, so I realized I was going to have to go out and walk some distance to the off-licence to pick up two four-packs of large cans of Aalborg Original Brew and charge them to the brother of a mate of mine. Then I suddenly thought to myself I didn’t want to do anything like that ever again, and if I could get some support or some sign from somewhere that there was the slightest chance that I wouldn’t, then I’d really try not to, and I couldn’t understand it then and even after all this time I still don’t completely, but I managed to get down on my knees and pray. I’m still not sure what made me. I’ve never told you or anyone else this before, and there’s not a lot of it I could tell anyone, but after half an hour I knew I had a personal understanding with JC that said that as long as I went on really trying he’d see me right. And he did. I can’t say much more than that, except perhaps, if I can get it across, it was a special, one-off agreement between him and me, run up for the occasion, absolutely not any kind of standard contract. I think that probably gets it as far as it goes.
‘So you can imagine how I felt when Leo told me about the arrangement he’d had with JC and it was exactly the same as mine, so exactly the same that I could tell what he was going to say next and I could have said the ends of his sentences with him, word for word. So my special understanding hadn’t been special after all, I’d just been hearing about another of the same and if there was one then why not half a dozen or a million others? A standard contract, you see, maybe different in inessentials but the same in essentials; anyone with the correct set of genes will do to accept it, so I wasn’t special after all either. But I wanted to think I was special, not because I was Daniel Davidson but because I was me, I was unique, I was an individual. But I’d just found out I wasn’t an – I’ve said it already. So what was I?
‘But Leo was delighted. It was what he’d been hoping for from the beginning, what he’d meant when he said he hadn’t come all this way just to compare notes with me. For Leo, it was a kind of final proof of God’s greatness, that in the universe he made there could be two or more things that were unique and identical at the same time. But God as I see him could never be as great as that, because he’s bound by the laws of reason.’
Daniel looked into Ruth’s face and saw in it hope, trust and fear, and lowered his gaze. He went on at the same even pace.
‘There was an old Church saying that God would never let a Christian soul escape from him. It might wander to the ends of creation, but he would bring it back to him with a mere twitch on the thread. Whoever came up with that was probably thinking of something like a fishing-line, but to me God’s thread has turned out to be the sort that controls the movements of a puppet. But whatever happens I’ll always be grateful to him, because he sent me you.’
Ruth was crying. ‘I wish I could believe,’ she said.
‘So do I, my love. Now what do you say to both of us going down to the kitchen and making some fresh tea?’
‘I say yes.’
‘Thank you for not saying anything while I was maundering on.’
‘Daniel, you and I know it wasn’t maundering.’
‘Sorry.’
‘At any rate, now I know why Leo went off in such a rush.’
‘He had a lot to get back for. And his trip had served its purpose.’
Some weeks later, Daniel was saying to Greg Macdonald, ‘You mean you do want another piece from me, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Well, yes, of course, I’d like to see anything you write, Daniel.’
‘Ah, but excuse me, excuse me, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it? You might like to see something I’d written, perhaps you would, and then again perhaps you wouldn’t, but I was talking about me writing something for the paper. How about that, eh?’
‘Okay, fine, fine with me, but what subject were you thinking of?’
‘Listen, I’m a great believer in never doing a single stroke of work, however small, until either I’ve been paid for it or unless I’ve been promised payment, and thinking of a subject is work, right? As soon as you commission me, I’ll make a start on thinking of a subject, as soon as you commission me.’
‘All right then, Daniel. A piece of the usual leng
th at the usual rates. Good.’
‘What about an advance?’
After almost no hesitation Macdonald brought out his wallet, and after only a little more hesitation took from it a twenty-pound note. Daniel soon put down the glass he had been holding and had also been glancing at from time to time with great seriousness. This done, he set about ceremoniously stowing away his advance in his own wallet, but halfway through this operation the note slipped from his fingers and sideslipped to the floor. First holding up a hand to forestall any intervention from Macdonald, he retrieved the note successfully enough but not at all speedily. The performance drew laughter from near by, only a little but sufficient to cause Daniel to go and remonstrate with a group at the bar that included the urchin-like assistant editor and the stately astrologer. They were soon joined by the landlord of the Sussex, and then almost at once Daniel strolled back to where Macdonald stood, glancing condescendingly from side to side as he came.
‘This place has gone down a lot,’ he said.
Whatever hope Macdonald might have had of a word or two of thanks for somebody’s generosity with money could clearly be abandoned. He said with a bright smile, ‘Any first thoughts on a subject?’
Daniel, whose expression had grown abstracted in the past few seconds, frowned a little. ‘M’m?’ he asked with some impatience.
‘You know, for your piece. Any ideas?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ said Daniel, still with impatience rather than anger, ‘what are you burbling about? All this … If you’ve got anything to say why don’t you say it out in the open, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I was just wondering if there was anything special you felt like writing about for the paper.’
Complete Stories Page 48