And as he stands on the bar, dodging and blocking and suffering the bombardment, Gog feels a curious kind of pleasure at the danger and the pain. The voice of Maire seems to whisper in his ear, “I could search the whole world over and never find a man so exquisitely torturable . . . He’s the perfect victim.” But Gog does not duck behind the counter. He stays up above the mêlée, as though he seeks his own perfection in being the victim, as though he chooses himself to endure all the pain that the free-for-all of humankind can inflict upon him. If Maurice hadn’t put him on the bar, perhaps he would have put himself there. Perhaps he’d have chosen to be standing above everyone, St. Sebastian Gog pierced by darts and glass, the martyr in the frail armour of his skin and the steel mesh of his righteousness. Or if he hadn’t chosen to set himself up as a holy coconut shy, his imagination would put him there.
A flying beer-mug in silver plate, however, catches Gog a glancing blow on the temple and knocks him off his perch on high. He collapses beyond the bar, landing softly on the lying body of the bar-keeper. Once down, he finds his strength drained and his many small wounds hurting like measles, so that he is on fire to pick away at each of his fifty irritations. By knocking the dart-boards on his wrists against the back edge of the bar, he manages first to free his hands and then to unstrap the circular codpiece from his midriff. Exhausted, he sits back, slowly picking out the darts from their home in his flesh and allowing the trickles of blood flowing from his wounds to harden into scabs. The blows and the thuds and the screaming of the women and the curses of the men sound like a loud lullaby to him, as he squats peacefully within the recess under the bar. A Gorblimey leaps behind the counter and begins tossing bottles like grenades into the fracas; but he never looks down to see the hiding sacrificial victim at his feet; and soon he is felled by a flying table-leg and tumbles beside the bar-keeper. A new note joins the soporific roaring, the shrilling of whistles, and Gog hears distantly through the oaken panels the clubbing of truncheons and the shouting of orders. But he sits, hugging his knees, content to be forgotten in the battle, until the noise beyond the bar dies to a murmur and then to silence. And Gog congratulates himself for keeping out of trouble for once. But he is complacent too soon, for a large pair of shiny boots suddenly plunks itself back of the bar and stands by Gog, who looks slowly up glistening spats and up creases sharp as bayonets, on past bright belt-buckle and brass tunic buttons to the square red jaw and flaring nostrils and brows of a Military Policeman, looking down at him from under the bald dome of his helmet.
“Up, you mother-fuggin’ bastid,” the M.P. says, in a broad voice that seems to drawl and menace simultaneously.
Gog rises in front of the M.P. and finds that, for once, his eyes are on a level with another man’s eyes. What Gog has not realized is that the huge policeman is a true dandy. The truncheon in his hand has a gold-plated grip, as does the revolver-butt sticking out of the patent leather holster at his waist. Round his wrist, the policeman wears a silver watch-band, studded with rubies; even the whistle at his breast-pocket is silver and set with a large turquoise. The red scarf round the man’s neck is knotted with an attention to casual detail worthy of a Brummel. Only the face of the policeman is coarse, the flesh on the cheeks hanging puffy down to the jawbone and the eyes tucked away in pouches of lids.
“Git’n the paddy-wagon,” the M.P. says. “Off’n the guard room.”
“You have no authority over me,” Gog says. “I’m a civilian. And, as you see, I wasn’t fighting. I just got out of harm’s way until it was all over.”
“No authority?” the policeman mocks, swinging his club round and round on its thong so fast that it looks like a propeller. “One thang Ah know. This riot stick kin bust the skull of any cott’n-pick’n bum talk’n crap. Now, git’n the waggon, or Ah take you.”
The policeman puts his hand on Gog’s bicep and shoves him up against the bar. Gog wrenches himself free.
“I said you have no authority . . .”
Gog sees the truncheon descending through the air and he moves his head sideways and the wood lands shatteringly on his left shoulder. He swings with his right fist into the face of the M.P., sending him crashing back into the shelves behind the bar, so that empty pre-war liqueur bottles topple and shatter everywhere. As the policeman begins to slide down, Gog catches him by the neck with both hands to pull his head from his shoulders. And while he squeezes the windpipe of the M.P., Gog has a flash of hallucination that he is standing behind his own body, as if watching a film of himself or of his twin brother, a film in which he plays a British giant strangling an alien invader. Then the M.P. brings up his knee into Gog’s vitals, and Gog rejoins his own agonized body as he bows forwards in pain, bringing the policeman down over his back and shifting his grasp. Now Gog catches his dandy enemy by haunch and shoulder with his arms and crushes the policeman against his own back ribs and straightens upwards until the M.P. screams and clasps Gog’s hair with one hand and puts a thumb in his eye so that Gog has to fall backwards upon him to drive the breath from his body. But the falling Gog catches his foot under the body of the bar-keeper so that his ankle is wrenched and he cannot use his weight to crush the policeman. And the policeman rises and catches Gog about the ribs with his right hand and presses the breath from Gog’s body until Gog’s ribs crack like the skin of a roasting pig. And Gog links his hands in one mighty fist behind the back of the M.P. and presses against the other’s ribs. Both men hug each other tight in the shackles of their arms, making the air quake with their breathless gaspings. And Gog hears the ribs of the policeman split, one, two, three, two on the right side and one on the left. But the splitting of his bones rouses the policeman to wrath and with a mighty heave he throws Gog up over his shoulders so that Gog slips down the further side of his back and Gog’s head dangles on the bar floor and Gog’s ankles are joined in his enemy’s grasp like a halter round the other’s neck. Now the policeman rushes forwards with both hands pushing at Gog’s ankles about his neck and the speed of his going through the bar-flap and across the pub and out into the street knocks Gog’s face cruelly against the face of the lying bar-keeper and scrubs his nose along the floor-boards and bangs the back of his skull on the pavement as he glances up to see the sign of the sneering Duke of Wellington above, the Iron Duke who certainly wouldn’t have let a foreigner do such a thing to him. Then other hands lift up Gog and swing him so that he lands on top of a pile of bodies, his head dangling over the edge of the lorry. And Gog howls as his head falls backwards and he sees the bright air and the sky again moaning blue tears above him.
Then Gog’s head is shoved inside the truck and the policemen clamber in on top of the heap of bodies and the truck’s under way and Gog remains lying where he is, for every time one of the piled soldiers raises his skull, it earns a crack of a truncheon and sudden relapse. Gog feels like a living corpse in a plague cart of the dead; but he does not stir until the lorry stops and the tailboard is let down and military policemen begin hauling out the clubbed soldiers and sailors like haunches of beef. Then Gog walks giddily into the Nissen hut ahead of him, going quietly, his hands held up over his scalp and face for fear of another welt on the skull. And he is led straightaway into a cell and locked up there with a dozen assorted groaning men in various uniforms. Luckily, he is near a wooden plank with a wooden pillow that looks like the chosen bed of an embalmed mummy, and he sprawls on the hard board and falls at once into a deep sleep from the effects of his long walk and delayed concussion.
Gog wakes to the sound of whistles, but these are whistles of lust and appreciation. “Git,” the threatening voice of the military policeman drawls, “or Ah’ll bust you bums.” Then a hand shakes Gog by his bruised shoulder, so that he groans. He sits up to see the huge M.P. standing with Maire at the end of the wooden bunk. Maire is wearing white kid boots and white bell-bottomed trousers tight as a sailor’s round her hips. Her white pseudo-naval tunic is slashed low between her breasts and laced loosely together for indecency’s sa
ke by a lanyard running between gold eyes. On her hands, black gloves; on her black hair, a black peaked hat with a ridiculous white daisy stitched in the place of a cap-badge. She ignores totally the men slouching about her and leering up. She has eyes only for the vast policeman, who swells with pride and says, “He’s all yourn, ma’am. Know he was yourn, Ah’d bruised him gentle.”
Maire plucks at the silver whistle set with turquoise on the M.P.’s chest and says clearly, “I don’t want him bruised gentle. I want him black and blue for being such a bloody fool as to get into a bar brawl. I hope he didn’t hurt such a fine man as yourself. May I compliment you on your manners? I haven’t felt so well treated since before the war. Whoever wins a war, courtesy loses.”
“Ah’m from the South, ma’am. And we know how to treat ladies ther.”
“And niggers,” Gog says. “I see where you learned to treat us.”
“Shut up,” Maire says furiously, then turns honeyed to the M.P. “What did I tell you? He deserves all he gets. He won’t ever learn. He provokes punishment. Oh, officer,” she pleads, tapping delicately on the non-ranking policeman’s chest, “if only I had a large and sensible man like you to protect me, I wouldn’t ever feel frightened and alone. But it’s I who have to get this born fool out of all the scrapes he gets in. You wouldn’t believe the awful situations he drags me into. When he should be defending me, protecting me, keeping me from the sordid side of life. Oh, officer, give him back and I’ll take him home and you won’t be bothered again, I promise you, the word of a lady.”
“You don’t need swear nothang to me,” the M.P. says graciously. “Ah know a lady when Ah see a lady. Ah don’t need no word from you more’n Ah need a word from my mother.” He turns and hoicks Gog onto his feet and pushes him stumbling towards the open cell door. “You, git. You ain’t worth a hog’s bladder. Lady, take him home and scoot him down with a hose and reckon you ain’t no luck hav’n a cott’n-pick’n bum round the house and no man.”
“I thank you kindly,” Maire says, and she takes the policeman’s hand and squeezes it and says in a low voice, “If only we’d met in different circumstances. But that’s life, isn’t it, officer? A matter of Too Late.”
“It’s never too soon, ma’am,” the policeman says, “for you to visit my home town, Troy, Georgia.” “I will,” Maire says, as she follows Gog out of the cell door and down the passageway and past the group of policemen standing by the entrance to the hut, who greet her deferentially, “Good-bye, ma’am. Call again soon.” And Maire says, “I certainly will call again soon, when I can call alone. Thank you for all your kindness.” And she’s out of the Nissen hut into the night, pushing Gog before her. And he sees a white square car ahead of him, with Jules standing by the rear door, supercilious and thin-shouldered and capped as usual.
“Where does that come from?” Gog says, jerking his thumb towards the car.
“Never you mind,” Maire says, “I happen to have friends, good friends, who’ll lend me anything I need. They know they’ll be repaid, in kind. Or if not, they hope they’ll be repaid, and that’s even better than actual repayment sometimes, especially when they’re getting on a bit and are worried about putting up a poor show.”
Gog jibs at the door of the car, which Jules holds open for him. “I’m not getting in, I don’t have to.”
“But you do,” Maire says. And she produces a signed Army Form in her hand, a pass out of the camp which Gog sees all about him, dark box after dark box after dark box to the limits of the barbed-wire fence enclosing them all. “You can’t get out of here, Gog, unless you drive out with me. I had to work for this bit of bumph, sucking up to those revolting morons. But I’ve got it. You can’t get out without it, Gog. It’s always like that, isn’t it? I’m your passport to sanity and the outer world. Left to yourself, you’re always in a bloody mess.”
So Gog climbs into the back seat of the white car where the porcupine cat is lying and Maire climbs in beside him and Jules gets into the driver’s seat, no longer partitioned off from the rest of the car. And they drive to the entrance of the camp and present the pass to the sentry on duty and the red-and-white bar across the roadway is raised and they move on, heading without compass bearing into the night. Maire sits triumphant and straight in the corner of the back seat and she stares at Gog with her pale eyes and the porcupine cat on her lap stares at Gog with its eyes of amber-green, until he is forced to look down, and Maire says, “I told you so. When will you learn? You can’t get away from me. You can’t live without me. All roads lead to Maire. Wherever you go, all roads lead to Maire.” She pulls at the quills of fur on the back of the cat’s neck until it miaows. “And to Mishkin.”
XXII
The road from Exeter is lit by an overfed moon with bulging cheeks, which leers down at the stubble on the silvered fields as if it had gobbled all the grain of the harvest. The complexion of the moon is flushed and pink from its feast and it hangs in a charcoal sky as sober as the suit of an expensive businessman.
For a long time, Gog sits dumbly in the back seat, while Maire remains silent beside him. She seems thoughtful, as though she were considering a change of tactics. Thus Gog is not surprised, when he asks where she is taking him, to get the answer, “I’m taking you back to the West Country by the route I drove you down to Totnes. It’s on your way.”
“On my way,” Gog says. “You’re helping me on my way. I thought I was only allowed to go on yours.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Maire says, “that perhaps I’ve been trying to influence you too much. If you say walking will cure you, perhaps you should give it a try. You can’t escape me, Gog, anyway. So perhaps you should have the illusion of brief freedom. After all, even when you think you’re alone, you carry me around inside your skull, ready to leap out on you at any time. I’m always there, deep inside you, however far away you think I am. And you are walking back to me in London, aren’t you?”
“I’m walking back to London,” Gog agrees, “and you will be there, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Maire says. “I’ll be in London.” She takes a piece of paper out of her bag and writes on the paper and puts it in Gog’s pocket. “That’s your home address, in case you’ve forgotten it.”
“So you’re not taking me to the psychiatrists any more? Why, have you lost faith in them?”
“No,” Maire says. “Only I sometimes have more faith in other things. Like in faith, for instance. It’s got a longer history of successful healing, particularly of people possessed by demons like you. You’d have been burnt for being possessed by Magog in the Middle Ages. Or you’d have been sent on a pilgrimage till you were cured. Well, I thought of burning you, but we’ve had a little too much of burned people, what with the blitz and the V-2’s. So I decided that perhaps you should try a pilgrimage to the holy places, a long pilgrimage. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Does it count as a pilgrimage,” Gog asks, “when you’re in search of yourself, not of God?”
“God may help you to find Himself through your quest into yourself,” Maire answers piously. “Or so a charming Dominican told me before the war. They’re so sexy, wearing those long priestly skirts, yet you always know there’s a man below – even if there may not be a God above.”
“You don’t sound very much of a believer yourself,” Gog says.
“Nonsense. I’m very much a believer. I shall certainly repent on my deathbed, but I must have something worth repenting about during my life, mustn’t I? What’s the use of all God’s infinite compassion and forgiveness, if He doesn’t have a chance to use it on a real sinner? So you go off on your pilgrimage, Gog. I’ll set you off at the holiest place in England, Glastonbury, and you can put a few prickles from the Holy Thorn round your deluded brow, if you really want to feel religious. Then you can walk off to the second holiest place in England, Canterbury. Via Stonehenge, if you want to go back to all your old Druidic nonsense. If that isn’t a proper pilgrimage, what is?”
“It’s as good a way of getting to London as any,” Gog says. “An almost sacred way.”
“And you,” Maire says, lighting a cigarette so that her pale eyes wink sardonically in the flame of the match and two smaller flames spurt in the eyes of the watching Mishkin, “you will be a saint en route, naturally.”
“No,” Gog says, “just a man walking to London.”
“A saint,” Maire says. “That’s how you like to think of yourself. As a suffering saint who can endure all the torments the world and his wife can inflict on him. Your mock humility doesn’t take me in. But let me tell you a story about a true Saint. A very moral story. It’ll pass the time to Glastonbury and it might make you think a bit on your sacred way.”
And so Maire tells the story of the Saint’s Wife to Gog, as Jules drives them towards Glastonbury through the summer night. And Maire’s round pale face is a second moon within the car, smiling as the full moon sometimes smiles, the point of her cigarette a comet in the darkness.
“Once there was a Saint,” Maire relates, “who was the holiest man in all the world. He flagellated himself with whips and scorpions, he fasted for months on end until he was mere skin and bone, he sprained his wrist from laying his hand on the multitudes of the kneeling faithful. He couldn’t meet a beggar without giving him his whole coat and his trousers, too. In fact, the Saint (whom we’ll call Gog just so that we can identify with him) was so holy that people flocked to England on their coracles from all over the world just to gawp at him and touch the hem of his robe – if he hadn’t also given that away to some poor naked cannibal, who didn’t want it. After Stonehenge, Saint Gog was England’s greatest tourist attraction, and his fame spread to the length and the breadth of the whole earth.
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