Consolation

by James Wilson

  ‘Are you sure you can spare the time? It looks as if you’re rather busy.’

  ‘Oh, I was just trying to finish his book before he gets here, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I should probably leave you to it, then, shouldn’t I?’

  She wavered for a second, then said:

  ‘No, no, that’s all right.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  She nodded. I sat down opposite her. She studied me for a moment with an odd expression I had never seen before: eyelids half-lowered, head slightly to one side, as if she feared her gaze might give away too much, and she was all ready to avert it.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh … quite well, thank you.’

  ‘Authors all doing as they’re told?’

  She gave a laugh that sounded more like a cough. ‘With one exception.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, you’re not going to tell me, I hope, that Mr. G. K. Chesterton made an improper suggestion to you?’

  She smiled – but awkwardly, compressing her lips and twisting them, so they looked like a squirl of unrolled pastry. And, indeed, even to my ear, the avuncular playfulness of my tone rang false. It might be appropriate to a conversation between an author and a young journalist who admired his work; but that, as she had acknowledged in her letter, no longer adequately described our relationship – though what it had become instead, and what the rules were for it, I could not have said.

  ‘And how about you?’ she said. ‘Did you find out who they were?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The parents of that poor woman? Mary Wilson?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, no, not her parents. But I think I’ve traced her mother.’

  ‘Really?’

  I nodded. ‘The day after we … we last met, I had a stroke of luck. I was given a prayer-book with a name in it. And that name took me to a village in Leicestershire. And from there back to London, and to a grand house in Hyde Park Gardens.’

  ‘Gracious! How very Lady Audley’s Secret. Am I allowed to know what it is? The name, I mean?’

  ‘No one you’ll have heard of, I’m sure.’

  ‘Still …’

  I had the powerful sense that I should be betraying someone if I told her. But when I tried to work out who, exactly, I couldn’t: neither Mary nor her mother even knew what I was doing, and the only person who did, C. T. Studd, had not told me anything in absolute confidence.

  ‘Studd,’ I said.

  ‘A Miss Studd?’

  ‘Once upon a time. Now Mrs. Cooper.’

  ‘But you’ve no idea who the father was?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘So what makes you think she’s the mother?’

  I told her everything I had been able to piece together from my visit to Hallaton and my conversation with Studd. When I had finished, she nodded and said:

  ‘And is she still alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know where she lives?’

  ‘Better than that. I’ve seen the house.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’ve seen her. Twenty-four hours ago I was standing closer to her than I am to you now.’

  ‘Oh, my.’ She pressed her hands together, in a gesture that reminded me so vividly of Elspeth readying herself for the dénouement of an Alcuin Hare adventure that my heart skitted. ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘She refused to speak to you?’

  ‘I didn’t give her the chance. I walked away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it was a tricky situation. We were in Crystal Palace park – which, if you’ve been there, you’ll know isn’t really the ideal spot for an intimate tête-à-tête.’

  ‘No, I can imagine. But –’

  ‘I’m like a big-game hunter, you see. I’ve got just one shot; and if I miss with that, my prey will be off, and I’ll never see her again. So I’ve got to make sure the conditions are right before I finally pull the trigger.’

  Plausible – but I knew even as I said it that I was putting a rational gloss on an entirely irrational act. The uncomfortable fact was that I had intended to speak to Emily Cooper, and then balked at the last second – and there was nothing to say that, when it came to it, I would not do so again.

  Miss Dangerfield did not reply at once, but frowned intently at me, as if she knew I had been lying, and was trying to burrow out the truth. Finally she said:

  ‘But how can you be sure the conditions will ever be right?’

  ‘I must just bide my time until they are.’

  She gave a slight shake of the head.

  ‘You don’t think that’s reasonable, in the circumstances?’

  She sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. I just …’ She hesitated a moment, then snapped her mouth shut, guillotining the end of the sentence.

  ‘No, go on, please.’

  She shook her head again. After a moment she folded her hands across her stomach and hunched forward, clutching herself.

  ‘Are you cold?’ I said.

  She glanced towards the window. ‘A little.’

  ‘Shall we have coffee, to warm you up?’

  She nodded. I summoned the waiter hovering inside the door. As he was leaving, I said:

  ‘You just what?’

  ‘I’m not sure I ought to say … I …You did get my letter, didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So what’s the answer?’

  It took me a second to remember. ‘Oh, Corley or Mr. Roper, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Corley, please.’

  ‘Thank you. But your just saying it doesn’t make it right. What would be proper … In the … you know …?’

  For a moment, the invisible curtain separating her consciousness from mine seemed to dissolve, and we saw the same memory in each other’s eyes. I felt myself starting to blush, and looked away.

  ‘I’m blowed if I know, to be honest,’ I said.

  She gave a rueful grimace. ‘Only if I knew a Mr. Joshua So-and-so in America, and it was proper for me to call him Joshua, I could say things to him I couldn’t while he was still Mr. So-and-so.’

  ‘Well, I should certainly prefer it if you felt able to say those things to me.’

  She nodded again. ‘Then what you just told me – about Mrs. Cooper – makes me very uneasy.’

  ‘Really? I don’t see why it should.’

  ‘Because I think you’re deceiving yourself. You’ve been looking for this woman for weeks. Against all the odds, you’ve succeeded in finding her. But then, when a perfect opportunity presents itself to speak to her, you lose your nerve, and decide it isn’t quite perfect enough, and you’d better leave it for another time. And I can imagine you doing the same thing over and over again for the rest of your life, if you’re not careful – steeling yourself to say something, and then at the last minute finding some excuse not to.’

  I wanted to protest, but the heat in my face betrayed me.

  ‘You’re frightened to bring things to a head,’ she went on. ‘Because if she spurns your good offices and refuses to be reconciled to her daughter – and the chances are, after all this time, that she will – then there’s nothing more you can do. That will be the end of the matter.’ She paused for a moment, then leaned towards me and said quietly: ‘And I suspect what you’re really afraid of is waking up the next morning and remembering what has happened. And all of a sudden thinking: I have nothing to live for.’

  I tried to say Oh, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that, but a pain like cramp had closed my throat. What saved me was the arrival of the waiter with our coffee. As he was setting out the cups, I forced myself to look again into the mirror Miss Dangerfield had unexpectedly held up to me – and came to the startling conclusion that she understood my feelings better than I did.

  ‘And the idea of that saddens me,’ she said, when the fellow had left again. ‘Because I had hoped that perhaps by now �
�You would have seen … You would have realized … That there are other things.’

  I recovered my voice enough to say: ‘You’re very perspicacious.’

  She smiled quickly. ‘Not really. I’ve been thinking a lot about you, that’s all.’ She hesitated, as if she were about to elaborate – then appeared to think better of it, and picked up the book from her lap. ‘This has helped, in an odd way,’ she said, tapping the spine against her palm, like a lecturer emphasizing some important point.

  ‘What is it?’ I said, craning to see the title.

  ‘It’s called The Serpent and the Dove.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, sorry, never heard of it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have done. It’s a first novel, and the fellow who wrote it’s completely unknown. Except to my editor, that is, who read a story and a couple of poems he did, and thought it was the voice of the future, or some such.’

  ‘And you agree with him, I take it?’

  She raised her eyebrows, then opened the book and began riffling through it. ‘Well, I don’t know that I care for it, particularly, but it’s … interesting. I certainly never read anything quite like it before. It’s about a man and a woman – just ordinary people, a clerk and a pupil teacher – who are … deluded, I guess you could say, into denying their own destinies. One by the fear of being ostracised. And the other by grief for … for someone he loved very much.’

  She glanced up at me, to make sure that I hadn’t missed the significance of what she had said. I nodded. She went on with her search. After a couple of seconds she stopped and said:

  ‘Ah, here we are.’ She folded the page open, and began to read: ‘“If we accept what our conscious minds tell us is good, then we are no better than poor pale second-hand images of human beings. We have to have the courage to grasp what we intuitively desire, and know intuitively that life demands of us – to seize it, and grapple with it until our broken fingers bleed, and our blood mingles with it, and with the earth. Only then shall we be truly good – for only then shall we truly express the great elemental force that called us into existence and pounds through our veins.”’

  She half-closed the book and raised her head again. Something went through me that started as a laugh and ended as a sob. I choked it back, and pulled my face into a smile.

  ‘Well,’ I said, spreading my hands in front of me. ‘I’m afraid I don’t measure up awfully well, do I? Fingers all perfectly hale and hearty, and not a drop of blood to be seen. The great elemental force can’t be terribly pleased with me, can he – or she – or it?’

  She didn’t laugh, but continued to look at me unflinchingly. ‘Can you honestly say you don’t feel a pang of recognition when you hear that?’

  ‘Well, I … No …’

  ‘I know I do. I’ve tried to grasp things, all right – and then shrunk back, because I was frightened of what people would think of me. Particularly since I came over here.’

  My mouth was dry. I reached for my cup, but my hand was trembling so much that I ended up slopping coffee into the saucer.

  ‘I realize that’s not quite your predicament, of course,’ she said gently, leaning forward to blot the spillage up. ‘You’re not worried about anyone else’s opinion of you, only your opinion of yourself. You feel responsible for your daughter’s death. So you have to punish yourself for it, by renouncing your vocation.’ She paused, refolding her napkin to find a dry spot. ‘And’, she muttered, barely audibly, as she set to work again, ‘any prospect of happiness you might have.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ I said, struggling to keep myself afloat. ‘Everyone makes far too much of happiness, in my view. It’s all the fault of your Mr. Jefferson, I’m afraid, telling people they had a right to pursue it. Do that, and it’ll run away from you. Leave it be, and if you’re lucky it just might hop up and take you by surprise.’

  She raised her head again. ‘But isn’t that what you’re doing? Pursuing it, I mean? For Mary Wilson? Surely the only reason you’ve been looking for her mother is in hope of making her happy – or happier, at any rate?’

  ‘I …Well … Yes … But it’s different, isn’t it, when you’re doing it for someone else?’

  She shook her head. So quietly I could barely hear her, she said: ‘You want to make Mary Wilson happy only because you know she can’t make you happy in return. She’s already married. And even if she weren’t, from your description of her, she isn’t capable of loving you. She isn’t capable of loving anyone, poor woman. So there’s absolutely no danger that she might try to rescue you from the tower in which you’ve imprisoned yourself. The most you can hope for is a kind of cold, monkish satisfaction if you succeed.’

  I shook my head, biting my lip to try to stop the tears flooding my eyes.

  ‘But, as I said,’ she went on, ‘it’s almost certain that you won’t succeed. And you’ll take that as proof of your own guiltiness, and a pretext to give yourself an even harsher sentence. That’s what really frightens me.’

  I lowered my head, to hide my face. Seeing the effect she had had on me, she said nothing more; but after a few seconds I felt her lay her hand on mine.

  ‘Please,’ I muttered, shrinking back into myself, and clenching my fists. ‘This really won’t do.’

  ‘No one’s looking at us.’

  ‘But your chap’s going to be arriving in a minute, isn’t he? Can’t have him finding us like this.’ I took out my handkerchief and dabbed my eyes. ‘Can’t have him finding me here at all, if you come to that.’ I squinted up at the clock, but my vision was too blurred for me to be able to read it.

  ‘We still have a quarter of an hour,’ she said.

  ‘But you’ve got to finish the book, haven’t you?’

  She smiled. ‘All right. Ten minutes, then.’

  ‘Are you sure that’ll give you enough time?’

  ‘I just have to find out whether he drinks himself to death, and she marries her horrid fiancé. And, to be honest, I’m much more interested in what’s going to happen to you.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, after a second’s pause. ‘When I’ve spoken to Mrs. Cooper, and told her where she can find her daughter, I suppose I shall return home.’

  ‘What, back to the wife who doesn’t care for you, you mean? And the garden hut to which she’s banished you, so that she can consort with her spiritualist friends in your house?’

  ‘I don’t really have much choice in the matter, Miss –’

  She smiled. ‘Miss?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m sorry. Alice. No one else will take me in. And I can’t go on being a vagrant for ever. For one thing, there’s the sordid business of making a living to consider.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. Over the past few weeks I really haven’t given it much thought. But I’d better get an idea pretty sharpish, or in no time at all we’ll find the duns hammering at our door.’

  She didn’t reply at once; but I could tell from the abstracted way she pursed and relaxed her lips that she was wrestling with some complex question in her own head. Then, as if she had finally settled it to her satisfaction, she nodded and said:

  ‘I have an idea.’

  I managed a smile. ‘I’ve a suspicion I know what it is.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not talking about another book – though of course … one day … I hope … No, this is something quite practical. Will you promise me you’ll at least consider it?’

  ‘I don’t know what it is, yet.’

  ‘But if I tell you, will you promise?’

  I bowed my head.

  ‘A lecture tour.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A lecture tour of the States. I know I could arrange it for you: you have so many admirers in America who’d be just thrilled to hear you speak. And it would be the perfect solution, wouldn’t it – you could go on being a vagrant, and get handsomely paid for it at the same time? Two birds wit
h one stone.’

  ‘I … I don’t think I could.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I should feel a fraud.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘It would be a kind of false pretences. People would expect to hear the man I used to be. Not’ – tugging on my lapels – ‘this.’

  She held up a hand to silence me. ‘Well, don’t make a decision now. You promised you’d think it over.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And’, she went on, more quietly, ‘I’m sure you would find someone to take you in there, if … if that’s what you wanted.’

  She tried to hold my gaze but couldn’t, and turned away, pressing her fingers to her cheeks in an effort to extinguish the fire that had suddenly suffused them.

  ‘Well, that’s a very kind offer,’ I said.

  Still holding her face in her hands she turned towards me and shot me a furious glance.

  ‘I know, I know,’ I mumbled. ‘But this isn’t the place for a grand scene. Let me have your address, and I’ll write to you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course really. I give you my word.’

  She stared at me for a second more, then tore a page from her notebook. While she was writing I called the waiter and paid him. Then I got up and pulled on my coat.

  ‘There you are,’ she said, handing me the sheet.

  ‘Thank you. No, please, don’t get up.’ I held out my hand. She looked at it incredulously for a moment, as if she had given me a jewel and I was offering her a bus ticket in return. Then, with a sigh, she took it and gave it a perfunctory shake.

  I turned and hurried to the door. I could imagine her hurt gaze following me all the way across the room, but I dared not look back for fear that, if I did, I should break down and howl.

  XVII

  As I made my way back to Sussex Gardens, I was afflicted by an unpleasant sensation I had not felt since my first experiences of drunkenness as a young man. The city seemed to be revolving slowly, like a sluggish roundabout, so that with every step I was forced to compensate for some faint centrifugal pressure; and several times I had to stop and cling on to a railing to stop myself from falling. I knew I needed to take stock of everything that had happened in the past hour, and begin to try to adjust myself to the strangely altered vision of the world it had created; but it is impossible to think clearly when you feel at any moment you may be violently sick.