My choked scream woke me. I struggled to my feet and ran toward the pines, slithering down avalanches of sand, not looking back toward the beach. I had to reach the woods; they were too close to The Old Horns; Eve might be on the edge. I plunged into the forest, falling down slopes sharp with pine-needles, toward the pool I’d seen glinting. At the far end of an avenue I saw its dull reflexion. On my right, toward The Old Horns, the needles had decayed; great slabs of fungus crawled up the trees. I came panting to the pool. The avenue was blocked by a rotted tree; a precarious path formed a rim about the water and led up to a rise beyond. “Eve!” I called; my cry was muffled by the fungus. Something in the pool caught my eye. I peered through the needles surrounded by scum. Deep in the water was something I had taken to be the floor of the pool. But it couldn’t be: it was a huge face drawn in curling mud, gigantic wet pits for eyes, a grinning mouth whose lips crumbled and smoked in the water. I felt its power; it was The Old Horns, creeping from its temple of mud on the beach, sleeping wakefully in the pool, oozing into the trees through their roots. I flinched back from the water, and in the reflexion I saw a dark balloon bob into sight over my shoulder. My head plunged underwater. The face swirled and poured into my mouth and nostrils. Agony ate through my brain, burning it like acid, swelling my cheeks until I grinned.
I was clutching at the hollow near the beach. Sand pierced beneath my nails like needles. My face was in the sand, suffocating. I don’t know why, but as I swept the grains from my cheeks I thought of those honey-coloured eggs one finds on old wood. I leapt up. The sun bulged red on the horizon; against it dunes charred like cardboard. My thoughts retreated from the nightmare. I didn’t go to look at the beach. I glanced uneasily around the hollow, and heard a cry of joy from the direction of the pines. Eventually I found them; they’d discovered a last bottle.
Eve handed me a paper cup and I gulped down the wine. “Where did you go that we couldn’t find you?” she asked.
“Never thought we’d see you playing hide and seek!” Thora told me.
“Has anyone seen George?” Ken called.
“I couldn’t find him either,” pouted Eve.
“Mummy, the big balloon went into the pond!”
“I told you to stay away from there,” Thora said, slapping her.
Ken kicked sand and ran up a dune. “George!” he shouted
above the child’s cries. Everyone was standing sated in the blue evening, finishing the wine, eager for the country club: suddenly we all were shouting “George!” from dunes, “George!” into the woods, “George!” toward the beach, “George!” from the edge of The Old Horns until I shivered and hurried back.
“He said he was going home to watch tv,” said Thora.
“That’s right, he did,” remembered Ken, relieved. “Onward to the minibus, then.”
We piled in and drove through the stone gateposts, down the rutted road. The pines followed us, swaying in the wind.
The waiters at the country club frowned as we entered, treading sand like holy footprints on the carpet. Ken invoked his membership. The lights were muted, the music more so. The waiters set places at the table, and we congregated at the bar.
“There must be a legend of pagan orgies at The Old Horns,” I said to the barman. Everyone looked at me.
“Wouldn’t know about that, sir,” he said. “The kids round here dare each other to go up there at night. Don’t know what they get up to once they’re there.”
We sat down. “I won’t be a minute,” Eve called, talking at the bar to a man playing with his old school tie. The wine waiter placed lists before the ladies. Never thought they’d see me playing hide and seek, indeed; I knew they liked my introversion as little as they liked George. “You can’t be going?” Thora protested: she seemed genuine. “I thought I said,” I told them. “I want to watch Julie Christie on tv.”
It took me an hour to walk back to The Old Horns. Sometimes I dawdled, gnawed by fear; sometimes I drove myself onward, determined to prove myself wrong. Ahead of me cars lit up naves of branches. Once I heard a cry among the omnipresent pines, perhaps an owl; once a star was hidden by a branch. I watched for it, but it never reappeared.
I plodded up the road toward The Old Horns. For a moment the moon ornamented the gatepost like a globe; glistening green rays ran down the stone like luminous paint.
I wasn’t impressed by the poetry. Through the posts I turned into the forest; the moon was caught by reaching twigs and dragged down.
The scent of pine sharpened the cold air. The first shadow fell across my path; my feet ventured into darkness and snapped needles, shattering the silence. The pines supported the dark sky, but night welled richly in my wake. Glancing between the too-quiet trunks, I made my way down the avenue toward the pool.
Among the trees a pale globe grinned as it moved with me. I glanced up, my heart pounding — but it was the moon, tangled in the branches like a spider’s cocoon. As I looked away, I caught a movement beneath the moon.
Nothing could have moved. There was little wind: too little to trouble what seemed to be a decayed trunk, fat and brown in the shadows. I had to know. I thrust between the trees, grasping cold fungus and shuddering, and reached what I’d seen. There was nothing: merely a space between the trunks. “George!” I called.
Branches snapped ahead of me. Far down the dim perspective of trees a figure was prancing toward the pool. It’s George, I thought, trying to forget: he was drunk and now he’s awakened, he’s ashamed. I plunged in pursuit. Low branches ripped my face; I put up my hands to protect myself and found them smeared with blobs of clay or mud. At every step a branch tried to tear my face. Ahead the figure leapt like a doll jerked by a cripple; it was further away than before. I couldn’t see its head in the shadows. It seemed to be singing thickly — or was it screaming? I couldn’t tell; the voice was choked. Suddenly a moonbeam found the head. It was in proportion, but it glistened; it was coated with mud. Suppressing my thoughts, I ran faster, beating off the branches, my hands wet with mud scraped from something.
Just as I was close the figure pranced free of the forest. It had reached the pool. The moon-white water darkened for a moment, then shone unobstructed. I came out into the clearing. Swarms of black flies scintillated above the pool. I peered about. The path was deserted; nothing moved except the glittering flies, unless there was a figure creeping through the trees on the edge of the path. I began to pick my way around the pool toward the rise beyond. Terror took me. I couldn’t balance above the water. I threw myself back, unable to complete the circuit either way, and looked down into the pool.
The moon was there, floating on the scum like a stone from beneath which something might crawl. It dazzled whatever lay beneath. A bubble of mud rose to the surface and burst.
Even when I heard movement I couldn’t look away. I didn’t need to. Inverted in the pool, a figure burst forth from the trees at the far edge of the path. I heard something collide dully with a heavy branch. The figure, silent now, danced jerkily up the rise like a chicken in its death-spasm. At the top it met the moon. It stood struggling still to dance; it threw up the arms of its open-necked shirt in a final gesture of joy. Its inversion gave me a chance not to believe what I saw; the moon balanced on the space between the shoulders. Then it fell back into the pool. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, only needles whirled in the water. Already the flies were gathering.
I backed away from the pool. A trunk thrust against my shoulders. All at once I turned and smashed my way out of the forest, accepting the blows of branches, trying to abort the embryo of guilt. I fell out between two pines, and the moon sailed up, equivocally free at last.
Poetry had won.
THE LOST
It was in Rudesheim that I had my first important insight into Bill’s character. The previous night, outside Koblenz, we had caught a bus in an unsuccessful attempt to find the town centre and when our three marks fare ran out had been abandoned in the country, by a filling station railed
off by leaping brilliant rain. I’d been sure there had been hefty figures following us as we walked into the stinging darkness — but Bill had seen a bus heading back to our hotel: he hadn’t wanted a fight. So we’d joined the rest of our coach party that morning. Chair-lifts were strung down a hillside of vineyards to Rudesheim; I stood up until Bill protested, although I had already seen that there could be no danger at all unless you fell on one of the vine-poles. Our courier led us down into Rudesheim, through the contorted cobbled streets of aproned women selling souvenirs, between tables full of tankards and huge packed laughing Germans, and into an inn. Here Bill revealed himself.
They hadn’t reserved a table for our party; they scattered us among a group of tables, leaving a seat free at mine and Bill’s. They gave us a menu in Gothic script and a leaflet of drinking songs. Our courier was trying to persuade us to sing along with a tenor shouting out the words to a trap drum and organ, but Bill said: “We’ve been organized away from everything I wanted to see. This is my first tour and my last.”
“Sorry, Bill,” I said.
“I didn’t mean it was your fault. I wanted to come.”
I supposed he had, although I suspected Dilys had persuaded him. I hadn’t seen either of them for ten years; they had moved so much around London that I hadn’t been able to track them down. In fact, I hadn’t seen them since soon after my parents died. But at last I’d found them in the telephone directory, hiding in Hampstead. I’m sure they were pleased to see me, and when I mentioned that there was an extra seat on the tour I was taking Dilys had said: “Why don’t you go, Bill? You need a holiday.” She would be teaching; I’d gathered that early in the evening. Later I’d heard her whisper: “Go on, Bill. He obviously wants you to, and you haven’t seen him in years. You’ll have a lot to talk about.”
Well, we did; I talked about changes in the Civil Service and how difficult it was to gain promotion if I’d wanted to, he told me about advertising. But just when I was ready to explain how the other people in the office had conspired to weigh me down with the dullest work, an American GI heard our English and took the other seat at our table.
I don’t recall much of what he said; I was annoyed by the interruption and was surveying the inn, the clocks like intricate pastry, the little drinkers carved in niches on the walls, a group on the other side of the raftered room rising obsessively to their feet and raising tankards. But after we’d all had a few glasses of wine the American — who was a GI from the base outside Frankfurt — said: “Nights in Saigon we used to go in the rooftop restaurant and watch the tracers. It was like the Fourth of July.”
I could sympathize with him; I feel outside most things that aren’t happening to me, an observer, rather as I imagine a writer must feel. I sometimes wish I were a writer; it must be overwhelming to build up characters who will do what you want them to do, instead of having to wait for the right moment with people. As I say, I could sympathize, but Bill cracked the stem of his glass on the table and spluttered: “I suppose you also view every Vietnamese you get in your sights as some sort of television show!”
“Goddamn it, did you ever go to Vietnam? Huh?” the GI shouted. “Well, you wanna go out there before you tell us what we should do! How’d you like it if we told you how to run your country? Huh?”
“Somebody ought to,” Bill said conversationally. “London’s a madhouse.”
“Jesus! You wanna sell out your own country! You want the Germans to run your country, right?”
“All I’m saying,” Bill told him, “is that my experience of London tells me that anything can fester there unnoticed. There are too many niches and hidey-holes.”
“Listen, let’s get rid of all this crap! What do you want, you wanna take the Germans back with you when you go?”
“Not at all. I was persuaded to come on this trip,” Bill said. He glanced at me. “I didn’t mean by you, Don,” he apologized. “Dilys insisted that I take a holiday. I wanted to come. It’s just that I wish she were here.”
He’d successfully shaken off the GI. Perhaps he had meant me; I didn’t know, I didn’t mind — if he were against me so much the better. We finished the meal in silence and made our way back to the coach. At three o’clock the sun was high and men were vomiting beside the Rhine.
As we boarded the coach Bill said: “I’ve been thinking. What you bought at Nurnberg — ”
I clenched my face and nodded at the courier’s back.
When we’d sat down he continued: “I was only going to say that you could hide it in the bottom of my case. I don’t think the Customs would find it there.”
“If it comes to that,” I amended. “I may leave it somewhere.”
The coach ploughed forward into the sunlight toward Frankfurt. People began to pack their jackets onto the luggage-rack. Far back down the bus a cup and saucer clinked; for an uneasy second I was on a lawn. Our courier switched on her microphone and concealing most of her German accent, demanded: “Now, how long is the length of the Rhine? Who can tell me that?”
“She’s a nice kid,” Bill muttered, “but I wish she wouldn’t do that.”
She was pleasant enough but I was worried that she never removed her headscarf; it was like the raised visor of an orange suit of armour. When she spoke to us away from the coach her voice seemed tinny, as if she had a microphone wired into her throat, a grille in place of teeth. I watched her often and her movements seemed jerky, isolated; they lacked flow, like a robot’s. In so many people I knew I could sense nothing; their movements were robotic too — all you had to do was to wait for the right movement and you could direct them. Not at all like Dilys. “How’s Dilys?” I asked Bill.
“As I’ve said, she’s fine.”
“Happy?”
“Of course. What do you mean?”
I’d been half-joking; I regretted having asked, “It’s just that I haven’t seen either of you for so long. I’m interested,” I said.
I’d known Bill at school in Chelsea and for some years afterward. I was living with my parents off the King’s Road; the night the car crashed and the police were waiting awkwardly when I came home from the pub I didn’t know what to do except phone Bill. He visited me most nights for a month or so; the last few times he brought Dilys, and all at once there was perfume and cooking and a great deal more laughter in the house. One night he was working and she came alone. I took her out to dinner but afterwards, back at the house, I suffered a night of misunderstandings. Three months later she was engaged to Bill; six months later they were married. I couldn’t believe Bill’s ease with her. After that they rarely visited me, at least not after I came out of hospital.
The courier’s voice nibbled at castles on stroked and ruffled hillsides as we coasted by beneath them. We cruised past women in bright bunched peasant dresses like painted sheaves of corn, hitch-hikers with bulging canvas rucksacks and their socks rolled over their trousers or their knees red beneath shining leather shorts, hot bright cottages with their roofs striving ever upward, typically Germanic. I can’t describe architecture, but everyone’s been to see The Sound of Music, even if they only go for a cuddle on the back row. I say a cuddle, but you know what I mean. Behind me I could hear fragments of conversation like thumbed radio wavebands. “All you have to do is hit them on the nose. Roll up a newspaper and tap them on the nose. They don’t like being tapped on the nose.”
Bill was asleep with his mouth hanging open. I almost photographed him. Instead I watched the scenery, although now we’d reached miles of featureless green, where I couldn’t think. When I say I feel outside most things I don’t mean I don’t take notice. I just wait for things to fit together.
When we reached Frankfurt night was falling. I wasn’t sure that I saw a great bottle of beer floating above the city.
I had; it was a huge balloon. Moments later, as the lights began to blaze in our wake along a main street as if we’d touched them off, I saw a totem-pole striding toward me down a side street. It was a child stacke
d on his father’s shoulders. The bus stalled at a traffic light, and a woman in a doorway swung a key and smiled at me; next to her shoulder hung a 3-D nude photograph on a postcard stand, like a window in the air, like a thought which she was trying to force on me. From a pram at the kerb I heard an incessant wailing like the cry of a siren. I imagined no face above the humped blanket, just a gaping metal mouth with lockjaw. I mustn’t have had enough sleep; things weren’t fitting together.
I was glad when we drew up before the hotel and Bill awoke. The hotel was high and modern. Behind dark wooden counters like polished packing-cases, waiters in dinner-suits passed out keys and called in porters. They had my name and address wrong again — my writing had deteriorated since my parents died — but I didn’t correct them. We made our way behind a porter, hurrying to the lift to keep his balance with our cases. We must have paid most of our money for this hotel; I even saw a foyer bookshop where I caught sight of Fanny Hill and several de Sades. As we waited for the lift a man in shorts leaned over a girl on a circular seat and said: “How long have you been here? You could have come upstairs if you were at a loose end.”
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