by Alan Judd
‘It won’t matter by then. It’s a question of getting myself there. What happens when I see the paper is beyond my control. I may sleep, I may doodle, I may write verse, I may write passionately about town planning in Oslo. I may even answer the question. But I know if I am not drunk I shall be unable to leave the crypt.’ His teeth showed briefly in the gloom. ‘Which is a fine and private place.’
Properly awake now, Robert folded his arms around his knees. ‘Tim and I were thinking of trying to see you the other night.’
‘As well you didn’t. And you went to chapel, did you not? I saw you come out. You know my views. Nevertheless, it was a good thing to do. For you and him, not for me.’ He flicked his white bow tie with one bony finger. ‘This charade – it fools no one. We wear it for our own sakes, it helps us endure. The same with what you are seeking. A different kind of charade. You are in need. Understandably so. We all are. So long as you understand that in your charade the actors are also the spectators. No one else is watching. There isn’t anyone, no eternal eye to see you, no everlasting ear to hear you. Except to ourselves we are without significance. And that is itself a fact without significance, even to us in the end.’
He stood outlined against the faint light of the window and ceremoniously raised his hat. ‘Good day to you.’
‘It’s in the bookcase on the right. He won’t hear you. Never hears anything.’
Chetwynd closed the bedroom door carefully and then appeared to stumble about in the other room. Robert wondered if he was looking for the pistol and bullet after all. When he heard the outer door close he got quickly out of bed and checked that the bullet was still in the pocket of his jeans. It was. He locked the outer door in case Chetwynd returned.
He got back into bed, shaking his head and smiling to himself. Much of what happened to him now seemed increasingly unreal. It was not an unpleasant state. The illusion that life was getting out of control was a comforting one. He had to get up again to close the curtains but then fell into a deep sleep in which he thought he heard, or did hear, someone knocking at the door and calling his name. He had a confused dream of Chetwynd with Hansford’s voice calling and calling. He snuggled deeper into the bed.
It was one of the scouts who found Hansford the following morning. He was unconscious on the path at the back of the Old Building. An ambulance was called and he was taken away before most people were up.
The police came and two officers questioned people on their way into breakfast. Robert found out when he went to the lodge to get his paper. It emerged that he was probably the last person to have seen Hansford. He described to the police his returning to college and Hansford’s ineptitude and state of mind without at first mentioning the escape route proposal. When he did the police took it seriously and he had to show them the route, but as Hansford was found nearer his own window than Robert’s or Tim’s the investigation was inconclusive. The President, in whose lodgings the interviews took place, displayed a gruff perplexity.
Robert shared the general shock and made much the same remarks as most people. He suspected, though, that really he was less affected. During the police questions he found his thoughts were partly on what else he had to do that day. He could not feel sure that there really was any inward echo to the sympathy and concern he expressed. It was possible that he was no different from everyone else in this respect; possible, too, that he was unusual in being troubled by it.
He went to break the news to Tim at 11.30. Tim had just got up and was listening to his record of birdsong, a habit he still maintained despite Robert’s regular scorn. Guilt about not taking Hansford seriously, about the locked door, about not feeling enough led Robert to adopt the self-righteous air of a man who had been up and about and had got to grips with the world. ‘You look bloody awful, even for you.’
‘So would you if you’d had someone fooling around in your room in the night. Knocked half my books off the shelf and pinched my malt.’
‘That was Chetwynd. He came to me and I told him where it was. He’ll pay it back. He needed it to help him get to Schools.’
Tim did not seem to mind. ‘Better get some more before ours start.’
Robert walked to the window and looked down. ‘You don’t know about Hansford, then?’
Tim listened in silence.
‘Maybe he was trying out a different escape route. Maybe he was really escaping. Maybe he was just drunk.’ Robert spoke flatly and unemotionally. ‘They thought he was dead at first. No one knows how long he was there for, nor how bad it is. He could be dead now.’
Tim switched off his record. ‘He couldn’t really have been escaping. I mean, it wasn’t really like that. There was no need.’
‘Maybe he was practising.’
‘At that time of night?’
‘He was a funny bloke.’
‘Not that funny.’
‘He used to get up early to work.’
‘That’s pretty funny, I admit.’
Tim edged the curtains back from his own windows. ‘Broken bones?’
‘Don’t know. I heard this knocking but I sort of dreamed it was Chetwynd come back for more. Except with Hansford’s voice.’
‘More what?’
‘More whisky. I told you.’
Tim nodded abstractedly. ‘And how was Chetwynd?’
‘All wired up and calm as the dead. Talked about God. He’d seen us go into chapel. Should have sent him to you.’
‘God should have been at Nuremberg.’
‘Your second step to conversion.’
Tim switched on the kettle and got out his coffee jug. ‘So what else is new?’
‘Nothing. Gina and I did it on High Table.’
Tim stopped what he was doing for a moment, then continued as if determined not to be impressed. ‘What for?’
‘Felt like it. No, that’s not true. I suppose I was trying to be different or interesting or something.’ He thought of his torn-up application form. ‘Making some sort of point.’
‘What did she make of it?’
‘Not much.’ Robert went to the door. ‘Well, we got away from talking about Hansford easily enough.’
‘Life must go on.’
‘Must it?’
‘Have some coffee then.’
‘Not now.’
‘Drop in later. Start the day again for me. This one’s only twenty minutes old and I don’t like it.’
Orpwood was shaken by what had happened. He talked to everyone he met, repeating himself, his eyes earnest and wide. ‘I didn’t like the bloke or what he stood for but I wouldn’t have wished that on him. If he really thought we were out, you know, to kill him, that just shows the extent of his paranoia. I said that to the fuzz and they got annoyed because they couldn’t spell it. An hour they were on at me and I’ve got to see them again. Trouble is, they think I’m the only one with a motive. But as I said to them, what would a big bloke like him be running away from a little bloke like me for?’
He and Robert were standing near the lodge and the college clock struck the quarter. ‘Bloody fuzz made me late. Then I had to see the President. I was supposed to go to a revision class up in St Anne’s. It’s not worth going all that way now.’
Like many in Oxford, he regarded anywhere more than three hundred yards north or south of the High as impossibly far out.
‘Borrow my bike if you like.’
‘I didn’t know you had one.’
‘It’s in the rack, third from the end.’
Orpwood hurried away. ‘Cheers, Robert. Is it locked?’
‘No.’ He watched Orpwood take it from the place where Hansford had left it.
There were official comings and goings and for a while people were more excited and talkative than usual but the incident made no significant difference to college life. There was some talk of a vendetta, a political killing, a reign of terror, but no one took it seriously and the evening paper reported the event as a student prank gone wrong. Opinion was that Hansford had
been practising his escape route while drunk. There was talk of a coma.
‘Could it be he caught sight of Chetwynd in subfusc at four in the morning?’ asked Tim. ‘Or heard him on the stairs?’
‘Maybe it was his way of getting out of Schools,’ said Robert. No one had suggested suicide. ‘Last year a bloke in Corpus stabbed himself with a bread knife.’
‘Very appropriate.’
‘Do you think you’re callous?’
Tim thought. ‘Not so callous as to feign feeling.’
Hansford recovered consciousness but it was said that it would be some days before it was known whether he would move his legs again. Interest lessened. Personal concerns reasserted their dominance over the public except for those, such as Orpwood, who made the public personal.
Chapter 10
The Changeling was not good enough – never that – but by first night it was as good as Robert could make it. The dress rehearsal had been very bad, a favourable sign because dress rehearsals that went well were supposedly followed by anti-climactic first nights.
The play had already attracted a good deal of attention. In a city where theatre audiences were larger and more informed than most and casts more intelligent and enthusiastic – if sometimes lacking in technique – the unusual and the ambitious were given generous hearing. Michael Mann was to review the production for Isis.
Robert was as eager and frightened as the rest of the cast but the need to appear confident gave him no chance to indulge his feelings. As director he had worked to make himself redundant by first night, but now as a leading player he had to shoulder another burden. The strain showed. He not only looked tired but for days his responses were slower. He seemed distracted, remote, lacking energy; almost uninvolved.
He began to pick up when the cast gathered backstage. The expectancy, the making-up, the costumes, the confusions and the panics all contributed to the excitement and gave the play an existence beyond its constituent parts: ephemeral but for a time more real than anything.
Robert sometimes said he thought drama was important because it expressed truths, that its fascination was its power to illumine the most real by adopting the conventions of the unreal. The excitement, he said, was the froth, not the real thing. But when he went front of house that night to see the audience coming in, then backstage, then on stage to check that the flats were secure, his movements and speech quickened and his energy and aggression returned.
While checking the flats he found one that still wobbled at a touch but since no one was supposed to touch it he decided it would have to do. As he turned he collided in the semi-darkness with a fast-moving silent body. They grabbed each other by the arms. The grip on his bare forearm was warm and urgent and it was then that he realized it was Gina. She wore a long, loose dress that swept the floor and her hair was tied at the back so that it could be let down later. The make-up made her features sharp.
‘It’ll be all right, it’ll be all right,’ he said several times. It felt inadequate but he could think of nothing else. She said nothing. Her eyes were serious and unquestioning. They held each other for some seconds before she passed on without speaking. He remained where he was, physically weak, feeling he had given more of himself to her then than at any other time.
And it was all right, so far as the audience was concerned. They wanted it to succeed and, apart from one or two lapses, faulty emphases and bungled lines, it did. The mistakes were not obvious to anyone unfamiliar with the play, and the madhouse scenes were played with a zest and pace that hid their defects. Gina was irresistible. For those who had once seen her act it was impossible ever to see her off-stage without looking for that same powerful suggestion, the same flashes of passion, anger and vulnerability. It was impossible, too, to say to what extent these qualities inhered in her everyday life; she seemed all potential but in herself was hard to know.
It was clear, too, that Robert was right to have got rid of Malcolm. Both the play and Gina demanded another significant presence, and though Robert had neither the range nor the versatility of a good actor he had a certain strength and solidity. He gave to the part a brooding menace, a sometimes careless but never unreflecting destructiveness. It was a disconcerting performance.
Though unnoticed by the audience, there was one moment in the central scene with Gina when his mind went blank and he was lost. It was when she was kneeling, clutching his wrist, imploring him to take her wealth in her stead. Her hair by then was loose, she was gripping his wrist with one hand and with the other pulled at her necklace as if offering herself to be hanged. He was making a short reply to her plea and had said the line, ‘Can you weep fate from its determin’d purpose?’ when one of the lights caught his eye at an unaccustomed angle, momentarily dazzling him. He hesitated and the next line was gone. He stood with his mouth open.
The faces in the front rows of the audience showed up white and distinct. Gina’s grip on his wrist was warm and hard, like her grip on his arm before the play started. He experienced everything with hopeless, hypnotic clarity – his own breathing, his sweat, the stage lights shining through her hair – but his mind encompassed only the thought of his failure, a monstrous, paralysing growth.
Her grip hardened and she dragged herself closer. He had no idea how long the pause lasted. He bent and took hold of her wrist with his other hand as if to break her grip. Her face was clear and passionate but her eyes as they sought his were understanding. Very slightly, she moved her lips to form the words, ‘So soon.’ The spell broke. ‘So soon may you weep me,’ he said with merciless deliberation and flung her to the floor. There was no time to appreciate his relief and he finished the act without afterwards recalling ending it.
And so it was done, a truth made manifest. Not even the knowledge that it was transient, that the first night would become second, the second third and so on, could detract. The applause at the end was prolonged and sincere.
Afterwards everyone talked, everyone laughed, everyone was friends. No matter how tired they were it would take hours to unwind. Robert walked among them, grinning broadly. He put his hands on their shoulders, clasped their waists, ruffled their hair while they kissed each other in supposed emulation of their professional colleagues.
He did not touch Gina but bowed and said with exaggerated formality, ‘May I walk you home?’
She was dabbing at her make-up. ‘All right.’
His composure left him abruptly. ‘I wasn’t suggesting anything else.’
She smiled. ‘I’ve got an essay to finish, that’s all. I shall want some sleep or it’ll be me that’s finished by tomorrow night.’
They walked towards Jericho in a light warm rain. The air was fresh, the grass and plants could be smelt and the pavements shone under the streetlamps. He was still excited and cheerful.
‘You were very, very good. You held it together. What I always hoped you would do.’
‘It felt slow in the second act.’
‘The pace dropped, I don’t know why. We all seem to affect each other. It picked up, though. But you saved me when I dried. I was lost then, gone completely. If you hadn’t done that I’d have still been there.’
She looked at the pavement. ‘Why did you chose me?’
‘Because you auditioned well.’
‘Badly, as I remember.’
‘Your face fitted.’
‘I don’t think it was even that.’
‘What do you mean?’
She walked on without answering.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked again.
‘It doesn’t really work between you and me,’ she said. ‘It does up to a point because you’re aggressive and dramatic but there’s no development between us. There’s no room for it. You set the terms at the start and that’s how it stays. It’s exciting but it’s not sensitive and flexible. It can’t grow.’
He made himself flippant. ‘You’re talking about on stage?’
‘That’s what I was talking about,’ she said very ca
refully.
He tried hard to get her to be explicit, analysing his part, pulling it to pieces. She would not be drawn, though, and would say only, ‘Forget about yourself. It’s in the way.’
Robert fell silent for a while. Eventually he said, ‘You make me feel inferior to the character I’m playing, as if I’m letting someone down.’ His manner was again flippant but she said nothing and they walked the rest of the way in silence.
At her door he went to follow her in. She stopped. ‘I’ve got an essay, I told you.’
He felt a sudden, immense weariness. ‘You don’t want to?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you don’t?’
She looked at him quizzically. He regretted the High Table incident, despite her compliance. He had an urgent and almost overwhelming desire, not so much for her as for himself to be wanted.
‘I want you,’ he said thickly.
‘You don’t know what you want.’
‘I do.’ He repeated it several times, more desperately as the untruth became more obvious.
She stopped him by taking his hand and smiling. ‘You silly. But not for long, mind. I’m serious about the essay.’
Robert found Tim in his room as usual that night but it was in a state of rare disorder. Books and record covers were on the floor, the curtains were closed, the windows open, the teapot was on the chair, its lid upside down on the table. The music centre blasted Beethoven’s Sixth.
Tim sprawled in his armchair, a whisky bottle in one hand and a bread knife in the other. He held the knife by the blade and used it as a conductor’s baton. He did not at first appear to notice Robert’s arrival but after some seconds held up the whisky and pointed with the knife at the teapot. The pot was still warm. Robert poured tea into one of the dirty cups.
Tim conducted until the record switched itself off. In the silence that followed they could hear the rain on the windowsill. Tim let the knife slip through his fingers until he was holding the point between thumb and forefinger then flicked it up into the air. It rose almost to the ceiling, turned lazily and fell towards his thigh. He watched, unmoving. It half-turned once more, struck his thigh with the handle and bounced against the gas fire.