At last Jack rang Elizabeth, who was already at her place of work, heard where Joseph was likely to be, and finally reached his son. On hearing that his grandfather was dead, Joseph said: 'Oh that's bad, I am sorry.' On being asked if he and his friends 'with nothing better to do' would like to join the Twenty-Four-Hour Fast, he said: 'But haven't you been reading the newspapers?' Jack did not want to say that he had not read them enough to know what his son's programme was likely to be, but it turned out that 'all of us' were organizing a Protest March for that Sunday.
In his son's briskness, modified because of the death, Jack heard his own youth speaking, and a sense of justice made him sound apologetic towards his son. He felt, too, the start of exhaustion. This was because his effort to be fair made it necessary to resurrect his own youth as he talked to Joseph, and it took the energy that in fantasy he would be using to bring Joseph around to see his point of view: he had recently been indulging fantasies of confronting Joseph with: 'Look, I have something of great importance to say, can you let me have an hour or two?' He was on the point of saying this now, but Joseph said: 'I have to rush off, I'm sorry, see you, give my love to everyone.'
He knew exactly what he wanted to say, not only to his son — to his own youthful self — but to the entire generation, or, rather, to that part of it which was political, the political youth. What he felt was, he knew, paradoxical: it was because his son was so much like him that he felt he had no son, no heir. What he wanted was for his son to carry on from himself, from where, he Jack, stood now: to be his continuation.
It was not that his youthful self had been, was conceited, crude, inexperienced, intolerant: he knew very well that his own middle-aged capacities of tact, and the rest were not much more than the oil these same qualities — not much changed — used to get their own way; he wasn't one to admire middle-aged blandness, expertise.
What he could not endure was that his son, all of them, would have to make the identical journey he and his contemporaries had made, to learn lessons exactly as if they had never been learned before.
Here, at precisely this point, was the famous 'generation gap' here it had always been. It was not that the young were unlike their parents, that they blazed new trails, thought new thoughts, displayed new forms of courage: on the contrary, they behaved exactly like their parents, thought as they had — and, exactly like their parents, could not listen to this simple message: that it had all been done before.
It was this that was so depressing, and which caused the dryness of only just achieved tolerance on the part of the middle-aged towards 'the youth' — who, as they had to 'experiment' were the only good they had, or could expect, in their lives.
But this time the 'gap' was much worse because a new kind of despair had entered into the consciousness of mankind: things were too desperate, the future of humanity depended on, humanity being able to achieve new forms of intelligence, of being able to learn from experience. That humanity was unable to learn form experience was written there for everyone to see, since the new generation of the intelligent and consciously active youth behaved identically with every generation before them.
This endless cycle, of young people able to come to maturity only in making themselves into a caste which had to despise and dismiss their parents, insisting pointlessly on making their own discoveries — it was, quite simply, uneconomic. The world could not afford it.
Every middle-aged person (exactly as his or her parents had done) swallowed the disappointment of looking at all the intelligence and bravery of their Children being absorbed in — repetition, which would end, inevitably, in them turning into the Old Guard. Would, that is, if Calamity did not strike first. Which everybody knew now it was going to.
Watching his son and his friends was like watching laboratory animals unable to behave in any way other than that to which they had been trained — as he had done, as the Old Guard had done... At this point in the fantasy, his son having accepted or at least listened to all this, Jack went on to what was really his main point. What was worst of all was that 'the youth' had not learned, were repeating, the old story of socialist recrimination and division. Looking back over his time — and, after all, recently he had had plenty of time to do just this, and was not that important, that a man had reached quiet water after such a buffeting and a racing an could think and reflect? — he could see one main message. This was that the reason for the failure of socialism to achieve what it could was obvious: that some process, some mechanism, was at work which made it inevitable that every political movement had to splinter and divide, then divide again and again, into smaller groups, sects, parties, each one dominated, at least temporarily, by some strong figure, some hero, or father, or guru figure, each abusing and insulting the other. If there had been a united socialist movement, not only in his time — which he saw as that since the Second World War — but in the time before that, and the epoch before that, and before that, there would have been a socialist Britain long ago.
But as night followed day, the same automatic process went on...But if it was automatic, he imagined his son saying, then why talk to me like this? — Ah, Jack would reply, but you have to be better, don't you see? You have to, otherwise it's all at an end, it's finished, can't you see that? Can't you see that this process where one generation springs, virginal and guiltless — or so it sees itself — out of its debased predecessors, with everything new to learn, makes it inevitable that there must soon be division, and self-righteousness, and vituperation? Can't you see that that has happened to your lot? There are a dozen small newspapers, a dozen because of their differences. But suppose there had been one or two? There are a dozen little groups, each jealously defending their differences of dogma on policy, sec, history. Suppose there had been just one?
But of course there could not be only one, history showed there could not — history showed this, clearly, to those who were prepared to study history. But the young did not study history, because history began with them. Exactly as history had begun with Jack and his friends.
But the world could no longer afford this... The fantasy did not culminate in satisfactory emotion, in an embrace, for instance, between father and son; it ended in a muddle of dull thoughts. Because the fantasy had become increasingly painful, Jack had recently developed it in a way which was less personal — less challenging, less real? He had been thinking that he could discuss all these thoughts with the Old Guard and afterwards there could perhaps be a conference? Yes, there might be a confrontation, or something of that kind, between the Old Guard and the New Young. Things could be said publicly which never seemed to get themselves said privately? It could all be thrashed out and then... meanwhile there was the funeral to get through.
That night, Friday, the one before the funeral, no sooner had he gone to sleep than he dreamed. It was not the same dream, that of the night in the hotel room, but it came as it were out of the same area. A corridor, long, dark, narrow, led to the place of the first dream, but at its entrance stood a female figure which at first he believed was his mother as a young woman. He believed this because of what he felt, which was an angry shame and inadequacy: these emotions were associated for him with some childhood experience which he supposed he must have suppressed; sometimes he thought he was on the point of remembering it. The figure wore a straight white dress with loose lacy sleeves. It had been his mothers dress, but both Elizabeth and Carrie had worn it 'for fun'. This monitor was at the same time his mother and his daughters, and she was directing him forward into the darkness of the tunnel.
His wife was switching on lights and looking at him with concern. He soothed her back to sleep, and for the second night running left his bed soon after he had got into it to read the night away and listen to radio stations from all over the world.
Next morning he travelled to the airport in light fog, to find the flight delayed. He had left himself half an hours free play, and in half an hour the flight was called and he was airborne, floating west
inside grey cloud that was his inner state. He who had flown unmoved through the skies of most countries of the would, and in every kind of weather, was feeling claustrophobic, and had to suppress wanting to batter his way out of the plane to run away across the mists and fogs of this upper country. He made himself think of something else: returned to the fantasy about the Conference. He imagined the scene, the hall packed to the doors, the platform manned by the well-known among the various generations of socialists. He saw himself there, with Walter on one side and his son on the other. He imagined how he, or Walter, would speak, explaining to the young that the survival of the world depended on them, that they had the chance to break this cycle of having to repeat and repeat experience: they could be the first generation consciously to take a decision to look at history, to absorb it, and in one bound to transcend it. It would be like a willed mutation.
He imagined the enthusiasm of the Conference — a sober and intelligent enthusiasm of course. He imagined the ending of the Conference when... and here his experience took hold of him, and told him what would happen. In the first place, only some of the various socialist groups would be at the Conference. Rare people, indeed, would be prepared to give up the hegemony of their little groups to something designed to end little groups. The Conference would throw up some strong personalities who would energize and lead: but very soon these would disagree and become enemies and form rival movements. In no time at all, this movement to end schism would have added to it. As always happened. So, if this was what Jack knew was bound to happen, why did he... They were descending through heavy cloud. There was heavy rain in S_. The taxi crawled through slow traffic. By now he knew he would not be in time to reach the cemetery. If he had really wanted to make sure of being at the funeral he would have come down last night. Why hadn't he? He might as well go back now for all the good he was doing; but he went on. At the cemetery the funeral was over. Two young men were shovelling earth into the hole at the bottom of which lay his father: like the men in the street who continually dig up and rebury drains and pipes and wires. He took the same taxi back to the house in the church precincts, where he found Mrs Markham tidying the rooms ready to hold the last years of another man or woman, and his brother Cedric sorting out the old man's papers. Cedric was crisp: he quite understood the delay; he too would have been late for the funeral if he had not taken the precaution of booking rooms in the Royal Arms. But both he and Ellen had been there, with his wife and Ellen's husband. Also Ann. It would have been nice if Jack had been there, but it didn't matter.
It was now a warm day, all fog forgotten. Jack found a suitable flight back to London. High in sunlight he wondered if his father had felt as if he had not heir? He had been a lawyer: Cedric had succeeded him. In his youth he had defended labour agitators, conscientious objectors, taken on that kind of case: from religious conviction, not from social feeling. Well, did it make any difference why a thing was done, if it was done? This thought, seditious of everything Jack believed, lodged in his head — and did not show signs of leaving. It occurred to Jack that perhaps the old man had seen himself as his heir, and not Cedric, who had always been so cautious and respectable? Well, he would not know what his father had thought: he had missed his chance to find out.
Perhaps he could talk to Ann and find out what the old man had been thinking? The feebleness of this deepened the inadequacy which was undermining him — an inadequacy which seemed to come from the dream of the female in a white dress. Why had that dream fitted his two lovely daughters into that stern unforgiving figure? He dozed, but kept waking himself for fear of dreaming. That he was now in brilliant sunshine over a floor of shining white cloud so soon after the flight through fog, dislocated his sense of time, of continuity even more: it was four days ago that he had had that telegram from Mrs Markham?
They ran into fog again above Heathrow, and had to crawl around in the air fog half an hour before they could land. It was now four, and the Twenty-Four-Hour Fast had begun at two. He decided he would not join them, but he would drop in and explain why not.
He took the Underground to Trafalgar Square.
Twenty people, all well known to him and to the public were grouped on the steps and porch of St Martins. Some sat on cushions, some on stools. A large professionally made banner said: THIS IS A TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR FAST FOR THE STARVING MILLIONS OF BANGLADESH. Each faster had flasks of water, blankets and coats for the night ahead. Meanwhile it was a warm misty afternoon. Walter had a thick black sweater tied around his neck by the sleeves. Walter was the centre of the thing: the others related to him. Jack stood on the other side of the road thinking that his idea of talking with these his old friends about a joint conference with 'the youth' was absurd, impractical: now that he was again in the atmosphere of ordinary partisan politics he could see that it was.
He was longing to join them, but this was because he wanted to be enclosed in a group of like-minded people, to be supported by them, to be safe and shielded from doubts and fears. And dreams.
By Walter was his wife Norah, a small pretty woman whom he had always thought of as Walter's doormat. He had done, that is, until he had understood how afraid Rosemary had been of himself. Norah had once said to him after a meeting: 'If Walter had been an ordinary man I might have resented giving up my career, but when you are married to some one like Walter, then of course you are glad to submerge yourself. I feel as if this has been my contribution to the Movement.' Norah had been a journalist.
Walter's face usually a fist of intention and power, was beaming, expansive: they all looked as if they were at a picnic, Jack thought. Smug, too. That he should think this astounded him, for he knew that he loved and admired them. Yet now, looking at Walter's handsome face, so well known to everyone from newspaper and television, it had over it a mask of vanity. This was so extraordinary a metamorphosis of Jack's view of his friend that he felt as if an alien was inhabiting him: a film had come over his eyes, distorting the faces of everyone he looked at. He was looking at masks of vanity, complacency, stupidity or, in the case of Walter's Norah, a foolish admiration. Then Jack's sense of what was happening changed: it was not that he was looking through distorting film, but that a film had been stripped off what he looked at. He was staring at faces that horrified him because of their naked self-centeredness; he searched faces that must be like his own, for something he could admire, or need. And hastily he wiped his hand down over his own face, for he knew that on it was fastened a mask of vanity; he could feel it there. Under it, under an integument that was growing inwards into his flesh, he could feel something small, formless, blind — something pitiful and unborn.
Now, disgusted with his treachery, but still unable to take his hand down from his face, unable to prevent himself from trying to tug off that mask fastened there, he walked over to his friends who, seeing him come, smiled and looked about them for a place where he could sit. He said: 'I can't join you I am afraid. Transport trouble,' he added ridiculously, as first surprise, then incomprehension, showed on their faces. Now he saw that Walter had already registered: His father! — and saw that this born commander was framing the words he would use as soon as Jack turned his back: 'His father has died, he has just come from the funeral.' But this was no reason why he shouldn't be with them: he agreed, absolutely. Now he moved away, but glanced back with a wave and a smile: they were all gazing after the small drama embodied in: His father has just died. They looked as if they were hungry for the sensation of it — he was disliking himself for criticizing people whom he knew to be decent and courageous, who, ever since he had known them, had taken risks, given up opportunities, devoted themselves to what they believed to be right. To what he believed was right... He was also a bit frightened. Thoughts that he would never have believed he was capable of accommodating were taking root in him: he felt as if armies of others waited to invade.
He decided to walk down to the river, perhaps even to take a trip to Greenwich, if he could get on to a boat at all on a warm Saturda
y afternoon. He saw coming towards him a little procession under banners of: JESUS IS YOUR SAVIOUR AND JESUS LIVES! All the faces under the banners were young; these people were in no way distinguished by their clothes from the young ones he had watched marching, with whom he had marched, for the last fifteen years or more. Their clothes were gay and imaginative, their hair long, their faces all promise. He was smiling at Ann, who carried a square of cardboard that said: JESUS CARES ABOUT BANGLADESH. A voice said, 'Hello, Dad!' and he saw his Elizabeth, her golden hair in heavy pigtails over either shoulder. Hands, Ann's and Elizabeth's, pulled him in beside them. In this way one of the most prominent members of the Old Guard found himself marching under a poster which said: CHRIST CAME TO FEED THE HUNGRY, REMEMBER BANGLADESH! Ann's little face beamed with happiness and the results of the exercise. 'It was a nice funeral,' she said. 'I was telling Liz about it. It had a good feeling. Grandad liked it, I am sure.'
To this Jack found himself unable to reply, but he smiled and, with a couple of hundred Jesus-lovers, negotiated the Square, aided by some indulgent policemen. In a few moments he would pass his friends on the steps of the church.
'I shouldn't be here,' he said. 'False pretences.'
'Oh why?' inquired his daughter, really disappointed in him. 'I don't see that at all!'
Ann's look was affectionate and forgiving.
Around him they were singing 'Onward Christian soldiers.' They sang and marched, or, rather, shuffled and ambled, and he modified his pace to theirs, and allowed his depression to think for him that whether the banners were secular and atheist on principle, or under the aegis of Jesus, twenty-four million people would die in the world this year of starvation, and that he would not give a penny for the chances of anybody in this Square living another ten years without encountering disaster.
The Temptation of Jack Orkney Page 5