Nothing But the Truth

by Sam Lock

  And most of us (this is just a personal view, of course) will attempt at times to reject some part of our story, whilst at others, we grasp hold of our story gladly. But the really big, the really dramatic moments of psychic turbulence in our lives, are provoked, it would seem, when (perhaps through a stubborn imposition of the will) a person actively chooses to suppress a part of their true story; and through doing that, to suppress a part of their true self. Which, it would appear, looking at it only from the outside, is what had happened to Jason Callow: he had failed – indeed, had perhaps even refused – to grasp hold of his full story, and had severed himself, as a result of that, from what one might call the ‘narrative’ of his true self – which, considering that he was a writer – and, moreover, a novelist – had put him in a dangerous position; for it meant that his books – his novels – were in fact literary lies: untruthful cover-ups of a kind; that were being bought by members of the public who gladly subscribed to what he had done, and who were giving it their support.

  Jason had already knocked a number of times on the door of Arnold’s apartment; and having received no reply, was wondering whether he should return to his rooms and try the telephone, or perhaps knock yet again even louder. Then he suddenly recalled how he had once seen Arnold stoop to slip a key beneath a narrow run of stair-carpet that passed in front of his door; and to Jason’s surprise (for he hadn’t a clear memory of the exact position) he found the key almost immediately and was able to enter the flat.

  As Jason opened the door to let himself in, the soft light of Arnold’s rooms (that flowed from a series of lamps whose shades were all faded and torn, and that were amber with age and with use) flooded past him onto the landing. And as he then turned to close the door, he saw how his shadow caught at the far wall of the stairwell, then raced to gigantic proportions; as it grew quickly; and where he watched it nervously for a while, before turning to the light and warmth of the interior, which smelled oddly sweet, he noticed; perhaps even a trifle sickly; and might have been due, he thought, to the lingering smell of a popular, cheap cologne that Arnold used: or of incense, perhaps, that he would burn from time to time.

  As Jason passed from the small entrance-hall into the main living-room of the flat, where Arnold’s collection of knick-knacks were displayed – all in glass-fronted cupboards that weren’t of very good quality, and some of which had bow-shaped doors, and intricately fashioned handles, that were made of brass perhaps, but that had now become blackened with neglect – he noted, for the first time, that above and at either side of these cupboards, and all hanging by faded, velvet ribbons from a sturdy wooden picture-rail, were a number of large, metal-framed photographs of early stars of the British cinema – Margaret Lockwood and the like. ‘To Arnold with all my love’, being the type of message written across them; or ‘To Dearest Arnie – love you ever’ – followed by a signature not quite readable; but judging by the size of the scrawly handwriting, one of someone now quite old; whose features, if one could now see them, would bear no resemblance whatsoever to those of the smart, matinée-idol figure that peered at one out of the picture-frame.

  Arnold hadn’t fallen asleep in a chair, he had fallen from one; and lay stretched out upon the floor with his arms flung to either side; his chin sticking upwards into the air; and with his hairpiece half free of his head – which meant that the gingerish tones of his complexion changed suddenly as they passed upward from his forehead to the almost lurid pink of his scalp.

  Jason knew at once that Arnold was not dead. How he knew it he couldn’t be sure: perhaps the memory of dead bodies that he had experienced in the war, when in the army: perhaps too because the room felt strangely alive; and also because he could smell that the heat of Arnold’s body was releasing the odour of the cheap perfume that he was inclined to use so lavishly: and perhaps as well, because Jason had noted in his mind that there were heavy beads of perspiration on his forehead.

  Had Arnold been drinking? Jason wondered. He certainly liked the odd nip or two of whisky, or the occasional glass of port or of wine: but he wasn’t a real drinker. His breathing, however, was steady, and Jason felt quite confident that he had suffered no stroke or sudden collapse of that kind; and half imagined that he had probably been singing old love-songs to himself – or crooning them, would be a better way of describing it. For he was always reminiscing about what he called the ‘good old days’ before the war, and singing songs from Astaire-Rogers films, or ones made famous by Bing Crosby. ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ being a favourite of his; or ‘Deep Purple’ (how he loved the line, ‘over misty garden walls’); and he would often sing with a kind of chuckle in his throat, a song that he learned later, called ‘Kiss the Boys Goodbye’, into which he threw great meaning and innuendo.

  As Jason’s mind went swiftly through these various thoughts, Arnold suddenly opened his eyes and looked directly up at him.

  ‘Jason! How nice to see you,’ Arnold said to him with a smile. ‘Won’t you –’

  ‘Arnold, you’ve fallen; from your chair or something. Are you all right?’

  ‘All right, dear? I’m in seventh heaven.’

  ‘Yes. But I mean – have you hurt yourself?’

  ‘Hurt myself?’ said Arnold, now quickly fumbling with his hairpiece and pushing it back into position. ‘Just letting me hair down, dear – that’s all that it was. Drunk a little too much for once, I’m afraid. You shouldn’t have bothered to come down, you know. Very kind of you and all that; but I’d have got myself off to bed eventually.’

  ‘The lights were on,’ said Jason.

  ‘The lights?’

  ‘Yes. You’d forgotten to draw your curtains, and the light from your windows was spilling into the garden and from the garden into my rooms.’

  ‘Oh, well. I don’t always draw them in the summer, you know, when it’s so hot … Still, it was very nice of you to bother, Jason: to be concerned. A real saint you are.’

  Jason didn’t reply to this. He was concerned; but didn’t quite want Arnold to think that he was; so he gruffly told Arnold to catch hold of him firmly by the arm, and pull himself to his feet; which he did, obediently, and with comparative ease. And then, without either of them speaking to the other, Jason guided Arnold into his bedroom; asked if he could get himself to bed: was assured quite assertively that he could, if Jason would just switch the lights off in the living room and the hall: and then, without any further exchange between them, Jason left.

  PART TWO

  V

  ‘Jeremy! Where is Jason?’

  ‘I don’t know, Betty.’

  ‘But I thought you went out to play together.’

  ‘We did; but I wanted to see to my bicycle; and Jason ran off – down to the river.’

  ‘Well, go and fetch him – there’s a good boy.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ asked Jeremy, who was about to fix a patch on the tube of his bicycle tyre.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ answered Betty, diplomatically, ‘but lunch will be on the table soon; and you know how anxious your father will be if you’re late.’

  ‘I’m never late,’ said Jeremy, defiantly.

  ‘I know – I meant Jason. So please go down and fetch him. He’ll be in a mess, I expect. He’s such a mucky boy.’

  Jeremy responded with a smile, then bounded off, watched lovingly by Betty, whose favourite he was, and who had been recently noticing with pride how sturdy he had become; and at the back of whose mind a consciousness had been forming that he was about to become a man; and of the changes this would bring to her life; in that their relationship would change, and that it was something for which she should be preparing herself.

  Beyond the gardens of the house, that were kept so orderly and trim, a narrow path led through the tangled branches of a small orchard to the sudden sweep of an open meadow; and then beyond that, to the curving banks of a broad river, where the two boys had played together so often when they were small; and where now, as he approached, Jeremy cou
ld see Jason standing upon a large stone, with the water swirling about it; and concentrating, it would seem, upon some particular action, for his eyes stared fixedly downward.

  Before calling out to say that lunch was about to be ready, Jeremy paused – slowing down in pace and walking with caution; half hoping that his brother hadn’t heard his approach. Then, as he drew close to the river bank, he saw that Jason had caught a fish – quite a large one – and had placed it beneath one of his shoes, pressing it firmly against the stone upon which he was standing.

  ‘Now then,’ Jeremy heard his brother say, ‘you are going to die. I am going to punish you. I am going to kill you.’

  Disturbed by the intensity of Jason’s voice, Jeremy stopped and kept still.

  ‘Kill you! – that’s what I’m going to do,’ Jason suddenly blurted out, ‘– ’till the blood runs out: ’till I see the blood, do you hear?’ – with which he stooped to plunge a hand into the water and to select a small, well-rounded stone from the river-bed. Then, using it, he began to batter the struggling creature to death.

  In the sharp, midday sunlight, the silver of fins and scales sent out quick flashes of light, as the fish squirmed and struggled in the grip of Jason’s shoe. Then the blood began to flow; the silver to become stained with scarlet: the scarlet escaping into the water; then dissolving, as the current bore it away.

  ‘Jason!’ Jeremy shouted angrily. ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing that?’

  Jason looked up at him with no sign of understanding in his eyes. Then, as he seemed to return from some cut-off area of the mind, he smiled: not in a silly or stupid manner exactly; but it was a distant and impersonal smile; and one that appeared to express some unusual form of satisfaction.

  ‘It’s dead,’ he said, looking down at the now lifeless fish. ‘I killed it.’

  ‘I must say, Betty,’ remarked Lilian Callow, ‘I am always glad when lunch is over. For some reason, I get more done in the afternoons.’

  ‘Well, there we’re opposites, Mrs C. All I can think of after lunch is having a snooze. I’m more of a morning person, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, you are, Betty. You always have been.’

  Betty laughed when Lilian said this, and began to tidy the corner of the dining-room, where she had been putting away some cutlery that she had just brought in from the kitchen.

  ‘Betty,’ said Lilian, ‘you looked flustered at lunch. Were the boys late or something?’

  ‘Not Jeremy,’ said Betty, ‘but Jason almost was. He’d been down to the river and had caught himself a fish. Such a mess he was in too. There were spots of blood all over his trousers.’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Yes. From the fish. Jeremy said he’d trampled upon it; then battered it with a stone. Kept saying he’d killed it.’

  ‘Oh, my! That sounds rather savage – doesn’t it, Betty? How did he manage to catch the fish, I wonder?’

  ‘With his hands, Mrs Callow. Tickles them, he does – then grabs at them. He says he’s seen the poachers do it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think we should be encouraging him in that sort of thing. You know how Mr Callow and I dislike blood sports – of any kind: if fishing can be said to be one.’

  ‘Oh, it can, the way Jason does it,’ Betty answered with a chuckle. ‘But there’s no real harm in it, I think. Boys will be boys.’

  ‘Was it large, Betty?’

  ‘The fish? Yes. A real whopper.’

  ‘My! What a little Hercules we seem to have brought into this world.’

  ‘Hercules, Mrs Callow?’

  ‘Yes. You must have heard of him, Betty – a character in Greek mythology: in Greek legend, that is.’

  ‘Well, I have heard about such stories, at least. Isn’t there one about a man who sleeps with his mother? – Who marries her, in fact?’

  ‘Yes; without knowing it, of course. He is innocent of the crime he commits.’

  ‘Well, that sounds like some old rum of a tale to me, Mrs Callow. I don’t care for stories in which there is no hope of improvement. Did he have children by her? By his mother, I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Without knowing they would be his own brothers and sisters, so to speak?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Betty, with a frightened look in her eye. ‘I think I’ll stick to Charles Dickens.’

  VI

  After he had lingered for a while, to make sure that Arnold was asleep, Jason switched off the lights in Arnold’s apartment and climbed the stairs to his own suite of rooms; that were now in darkness – or rather in near darkness; for now the silver glow of moonlight spilled in from the skies beyond his windows. And as he did so, Jason found himself reflecting upon an action he had taken just a few days before, when, without thinking of what he was doing, and in a most urgent, compulsive manner, he had purchased a pair of shiny, hard-covered notebooks.

  For years, it had been Jason’s habit to write down any odd thoughts he might have upon smallish scraps of paper, and then, in order to build a first draft of whatever he might be working at, to gradually transfer these notes into a series of soft-covered exercise books. So to have suddenly broken that habit, and to have bought such a different type of writing material, was an unusual action for him to take: and he was made curious by it; having learned that the things we ‘do’ – the actions we take – seem mostly to be governed by some subconscious form of impulse, in that we are in the main subjective creatures – who, tragically, it would seem, are limited by the fact that the conscious part of our make-up is only a fraction of our entire being.

  Why, he asked himself, had he bought these two books? For what reason was he now going to find them, as if waiting for him, placed close to the foot of his bed? Why had he not put them away? Why had he not hidden them; in some cupboard; or in a drawer?

  On entering his bedroom, he swiftly crossed the room to switch on a tall, anglepoise lamp that stood close to one of the room’s half-open windows; and on turning, found himself confronted by these two notebooks; lying side by side upon a chest, in which an extra pillow and a few blankets were stored.

  ‘Why? he asked himself again, as he picked up one of the books, and as he held it respectfully in his hands – opening it with care, and looking through its off-white virginal pages.

  ‘And why two of them?’ he added.

  The replies to his questions were to be given the following day. Not in the early part of it, when he felt lost and confused, and when he was suffering yet another fit of depression, but in the late afternoon, when the house was quiet and when a gentle breeze from the river blew in through his open windows. For it was then that he took up what he would come to think of as the ‘first’ of these two books – and, almost without being conscious of what he was doing, and as if he was continuing the action that had driven him to buy them, he began to write.

  He had been reading – stretched out upon his bed: had got up to have a drink and to go to the lavatory: had seen the notebooks as he had re-entered the room, and had simply crossed to them, picked up one of them; sat down on the edge of his bed; stretched out to reach for a pencil that he happened to have seen on his bedside table – and then, leaning upon one elbow, had begun to set down, in the first pages of this book, a stream of thoughts: thoughts that he was now aware had been locked inside him for a very long time, and that he must find some means – some way – of releasing.

  ‘Why?’ – his narrative began with that very word, using the question as its opener – ‘have I begun to write in this book? It is not my habit to write directly onto pages that are fixed; set; that are already bound. It never has been. Nor is it a habit of mine to write down anything that is in no way pre-plotted or pre-planned – anything of length, that is, and that has not been drafted in previous notes and sketches; sometimes on the backs of used envelopes; even, just once or twice, on sheets of toilet paper, when I have been out for the day, perhaps, and have had nothing with me upon which to write, and a public c
onvenience has provided me with the quickest means of supplying such a thing. And I have quite liked that: quite enjoyed it – the use of the toilet paper, I mean. Not because of it being “for” the toilet (that sort of thing holds no meaning for me) but because the public kind is usually less soft than the domestic one. And I have taken pleasure in writing with pen, or more probably with pencil, upon its slightly shiny surface. The mind, it seems to me, has a peculiar way of working, and it is one that puzzles me. Mine certainly does, and has been puzzling me for days – no, for weeks. Why, for instance, have I not been answering my doorbell and my telephone? Why have I not rung, why have I not spoken to, my parents?; considering that I usually do – always do, in fact – at least once a fortnight, if not a little more. They are growing old. I am fond of them. They are fond of me. Yet for some reason, I have been unable to do it – which is stupid; and seems in some way to be immature – adolescent of me.

  ‘When I was young – when I was a teenager, that is, which my own children are now – I would often suffer blockages of that kind: would forget my parents’ birthdays, for example – then remember them too late, and then do nothing about it. Or I would tell myself a hundred times that I should send a note to an uncle, or to an aunt, for some present that had been sent to me, yet still be unable to do it; and would be finally prompted into it by my mother; or by Betty, my parents’ housekeeper, who would make me feel ashamed of myself; and that I had behaved badly – which I had, of course. But I suspect that almost everyone experiences that type of thing when they are young: a kind of tidal flow of energy that is flowing away from the exterior world with all its duties and demands; and that is carrying one – where? To some unknown destination? To a world in which one simply dreams: passes the time – wastes it, perhaps? Everyone, I am sure, has experienced that.