by Sam Lock
The squalor of this he didn’t enjoy exactly – that would be a misleading word to use – but he passively accepted it, knowing, at the same time, that the remedy was such a simple one. Just a few, firm decisions that would swiftly return him to the present; the buying of his Christmas presents being one of them.
He didn’t read at such moments: didn’t even listen to music: just sat in his room, allowing the day to go by: sometimes – less often now – walking the streets alone, and identifying in some way with the collective mass of people that he would pass on the crowded pavements, or with whom he would mingle in the shops. He had had a few reflective thoughts on occasions – but these were extremely limited ones, when one considers what a lot goes on in a person’s mind in moments when they do nothing. And these had included thoughts about Arnold; and about John and Billy having discovered him, lifeless upon the carpet.
No affection, no sentiment, had been stirred in him by this. It was simply the hard fact of Arnold’s death that filled his mind; combined with the image of Arnold’s body, lying with its hairpiece free of its head.
He also had thoughts about his parents and about their age, which he had suddenly become aware of when he had last gone to visit them: particularly that of his father, whose health had recently declined a little. And had there been no fog, clear skies and a moon – then, no doubt, as he made his way home, he would have released one of those disturbing, animal-like moans of his.
But the fog that night was extremely dense – a heavy, cold, almost gruesome one; so that, as he entered a turning off the King’s Road that led towards the river, and to the dark, rambling house in which he lived (and which, when he went out, he now thought of as being empty), he looked more like some figure out of the Victorian age, than one of post-war London.
No one passed him as he made his way along; and because of the curtains being so drawn against the weather, there were no lights in the houses that lined the street – where an occasional holly-wreath, that had been placed over a door knocker, seemed dead and ghostly, as if it might be a forgotten wreath placed upon a tomb, rather than the symbol of Yuletide greetings and good cheer for which it was intended.
There was no such wreath, of course, on the door of Jason’s house. Nothing was different or seasonal there. Time for Jason stood still; and the approach of Christmas was playing no part in his life. Not even the thought that he would be seeing his children before the New Year. Yet he was acutely conscious of the fact that he was feeling neither sad nor sorry for himself, in the way that he had so often done in the past in such moments of mental crisis. On the contrary, he now felt a kind of hard, fixed calm; as if inside him, buried within him, and deep within the caverns of his mind, he knew that he was at last close to a real encounter with himself, and that the deepest truth of his life – its deepest story – would soon be properly revealed.
The following day, and in an attempt to keep some control of what was happening, Jason made this entry in his notebook.
‘Alas, I have slipped back – and I regret it. For a while, things seemed to be moving towards some safer kind of ground, and I had allowed myself to be pleased with that.
‘Oh! How stupid can I be? Have I not yet learned that the irrational is irrational? That it is precisely at those moments when I begin to think that I shall be well, that the monster comes to claim me? … And who – what – is this thing that possesses me? That makes me so passive, so inactive? Is it some game played by the gods – some tease – that allows men (and women too, of course) to forget the darkness of their origins and that they are mostly composed of ignorance?
‘I have heard all the arguments: that Oedipus did not know it was his mother he had married; that incest was his lot, his destiny; and that he therefore cannot be blamed for it. So why should I think that I can escape this pull towards the dark? Might it not be my lot to have steered my boat too much against the tide, and that now, having reached mid-age, my strength fails, as it inevitably must, and the tide begins to draw me in an opposite direction.
‘Whatever, one can only try to know and to be aware: of oneself: of one’s makeup: one’s story – one’s proper story that is. I have done my very best to remember my dreams – knowing, as I do, that that is where one’s true story lies; but try as I will, their images will not come to me. I am blocked, it seems, cut off from the rich seam of that world, and therefore cannot call on it for help – which is a sorry, perhaps even tragic, state of affairs.
‘The one thing that gives me relief is that I at last no longer feel sad – no longer feel sorry for myself. Slowly, I am coming to an acceptance of a kind, and know that what will be will be. Some people reading this – if such a thing should ever take place – might feel cross, or angry, because of my saying this: might mutter to themselves that “all he needs to do is to make an effort.” But isn’t writing this an effort? Am I not fighting for light – for consciousness – by setting down these thoughts? That certainly is what they are meant to be doing.
‘I have said nothing to Joseph about this matter, yet I count him my best friend; and I respect his mind; his occasional flights of sudden insight: his unusual powers of interpretation; of seeing things another way round – and cannot help wondering why this should be. Do I not want to share my troubles, except by writing of them here? For now that I come to think of it, I have spoken of them to no one. That could be the writer in me, I suppose, that guards his secrets, and that thinks of everything as material for his egotistical practice: the one of wanting to put words of a kind around every type of experience.
‘Whatever, I have tried my best to be honest and to have looked myself square in the face – warts and wrinkles and all (as I think I have said before on some previous page). Morally, people could say, I suppose, that I am weak. But is that true? The largest actions – the ones that govern us, that rule over us, are surely ones that lie outside the moral code: that are impersonal – abstract almost. And is there not something of that that is at work in me, and that I am being forced to recognise and to honour?
‘This at least I do know; that whatever my weaknesses may be – and like all humans, I have many – I am not being at all weak in this desire I have to in some way grasp my fate; and to face whatever it is, or whatever it might be, towards which I am being drawn. It may be a dangerous thing to do; but all life – all real life – is dangerous. Nothing that is real is safe. It is highly charged, volatile, explosive. The calm I feel begins to tell me this; which may seem a curious thing to say; but not if one thinks of words like “the lull before the storm” – when animals blink their eyes, as if in knowledge of the upheaval yet to come; and knowing, as they appear to do, that its advent is inevitable.
‘I think now of my family. Think of my parents – of my wife, my children, my brother – and of his wife and children too. Something tells me that at some time in the future they will be reading this; and I therefore need to let them know that they are in my mind; and that if, being truthful, I feel no really deep, no really passionate love for who they are, and for what they represent, I do feel concern. Concern that they will go on; that they will continue; and will live their lives out with some success; and wishing for them, as I am doing now, that their stories will be less painful ones than mine.
‘Mother, father – pray for me. Jeremy, my brother – pray for me. Joseph, my friend – pray for me. Betty, John and Billy – all pray for me. And for my wife, Jill, and for Tom and Sarah, my two children.
‘I do not know a god. I know only of something more un-named than that; a force, a drive, an energy, that governs us, and to which we must relate. Pray to that, please – all of you; that I may be freed from the horrible tension that I suffer, and so know, at last, at least a little of who I am … For who needs more than that?; than to know themselves: to have truly looked at themselves in the mirror, and to have seen there something of who they are?’
‘Betty, dear,’ said Lilian Callow, and speaking quietly, ‘we’d better not wake him,
I think. He’s slept soundly all afternoon and his colour has now come back. We’ll let him sleep on – and dine later; or I will; and you, perhaps, will bring something in to him on a tray.’
‘Oh, I’ll do that gladly, Mrs Callow. It’s been such a shock to me, seeing Mr Callow collapsed like that, as if some great scene in some great book I had read had suddenly come true.’
Lilian Callow smiled gently at this remark, knowing that Betty’s humour was serving at that moment as a cover for deeper emotions; and because she had seen how disturbed Betty had been when she had found her husband unconscious in his chair.
‘I took one look at him,’ Betty had said, ‘and just knew he wasn’t with us, if you know what I mean; and that it wasn’t the land of nod he had gone to either; it was somewhere deeper than that.’ For which reason a doctor had been called, and Edgar had been placed in a bed that Betty had quickly made up in his study, where he had remained asleep for most of the day.
‘Shouldn’t you ring Mr Jeremy, at least?’ Betty had then asked Lilian, expressing a concern she felt that something more serious might soon happen. ‘Not Jason, though,’ she added, ‘because it could upset him too much. But you should ring Mr Jeremy.’
‘I’ll do it in the morning, Betty. Don’t worry, I won’t keep it to myself.’
‘Are you sure, Mrs C, that you can wait until then?’
‘Yes, Betty, I am sure,’ answered Lilian, pressing Betty’s hand. ‘I am sure … Now; let’s leave him, and lay the table for dinner. Even if two places aren’t used, one has to be. For I must eat.’
The two women went off, half closing the study door quietly as they left, and both comforted by the fact that their patient had now begun to snore: a snore that grew louder as the evening wore on, so that its sound echoed throughout the ground-floor rooms of the house; and one that provoked a smile on the face of Lilian, and eventually, a gentle chuckle of laughter from Betty.
‘I wonder if Jason has bought his presents?’ Lilian said to Betty, after she had eaten alone, and after Betty had come into the dining room to help clear away the things.
‘It’s funny you should say that, Mrs C,’ was Betty’s reply, ‘I was wondering about that this morning as well.’
‘I expect that by now he will have,’ said Lilian, ‘although I’ve not heard from him for a week, you know; so I am hoping nothing is wrong; and that he’s not slipped back again or something.’
‘Oh, he’s just busy, I expect – that’s what it’ll be,’ said Betty, who, for once, was not using her instinct. ‘He hates shopping, as we’ve all been told goodness knows how many times over the years. So it will have been an effort for him; and he’s been made grumpy by it too, I expect,’ she added, with a laugh.
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Lilian. ‘He’ll ring tomorrow.’
‘Or the day after,’ said Betty, still not speaking out of her deepest thoughts.
‘Or the day after, then,’ repeated Lilian, as she put cutlery into a drawer, and as she turned to listen to the sound of her husband’s snore, and to the slow but steady rhythm of his breathing.
XVIII
Edgar Callow was not seriously ill. At first, his wife believed that he had suffered a minor stroke; but the doctor was sure it was not the case; and, after sleeping that night until close to ten o’clock, Edgar woke feeling refreshed and almost himself again. And it was exactly at that time that his second son, Jason, who was so loved and admired by his mother, and for whom he had a rather strong affection himself, returned once more to the house in which he lived; and after having been out yet again to dine alone at one of his local restaurants.
That night, the sky was clear, and there was no fog; and the stars winked and twinkled in a blue-black sky; and in a way that made Jason strangely happy. He still felt that threat of a danger within him, and in that sense still felt troubled; but the calm he had been experiencing of late was still at work, and he reminded himself of how pleased he should be to be living in such a well-known part of London: so rich in artistic history, with its memories of Turner and Carlyle; of Whistler and Oscar Wilde.
And now, this night, as he walked home, a strength of will at last came back to him; making him determine that he would return once more to the smaller things of life; to being clean and decently dressed again; with his hair and beard trimmed properly; and to buying the Christmas presents that he had planned to buy – including a pair of braces for his father that he had seen in a shop window in Knightsbridge: that were dark green in colour, with pink-beige leather thongs and two smart gold-coloured clips, and that he felt sure his father would like.
As he drew close to what he still thought of as being Arnold’s abode, he noticed that on the knocker of the door across the street – that is, on the door of Lady Cynthia’s’ house – an enormous holly-wreath had been placed; one that was enlivened by fir cones and mistletoe; and topped by a great bow of golden ribbon; and that spoke to him of the spirit of good cheer that is meant to be a part of Christmastime.
Taking his keys out of his pocket, Jason unlocked the door and let himself in; immediately switching on the lights in the main hallway, as was his habit; then closing and bolting the door behind him. But as he crossed towards the staircase and began the climb to his rooms, he heard a knock on the door that he had just closed. Not a heavy knock: and one that seemed to indicate that the caller had seen him come in, and was expecting him to respond to it quickly. So Jason turned back and recrossed the hallway; then unbolted the door and opened it.
Standing outside was a young man that Jason knew at once was familiar to him; although he couldn’t place exactly who he was or where exactly he had seen him.
‘Mr Callow?’ the young man asked.
‘Yes,’ said Jason politely, but with reservation.
‘You don’t remember me,’ the young man said.
‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ replied Jason, although the young man’s dark, quick-moving eyes were stirring a memory in his mind.
‘We met some months ago,’ said the young man, ‘in a coffee bar: on the King’s Road.’
‘I don’t remember it,’ said Jason, and in spite of the fact that the memory of it was now coming back to him.
‘I sat down opposite you – at table.’
‘Some months ago, you said?’ asked Jason, thinking that he should be guarded.
‘Yes. In August, I think it was.’
‘Oh. Well. Yes. Perhaps I do. Did we speak?’
‘No. Not very much.’
‘Then how do you know my name?’
‘By this,’ the young man said, producing an envelope from his pocket. ‘You left it on the table; which is how I know both your name and your address.’
Jason took the envelope and looked at it, then saw that it was one containing a bill that had been paid; and that he probably hadn’t missed because it was acting only as a receipt.
‘Oh,’ said Jason, ‘thank you.’
‘I didn’t post it, or put it through your letter box, because I thought it would be nice to meet you again. You are a writer – aren’t you? I’ve read two of your books. I did call here once, but an elderly gentleman answered and told me you weren’t at home. Then I was away – and have been ever since: at work: in Guildford. I am an actor.’
‘Oh,’ replied Jason, not knowing what else to say. ‘Well, thank you again.’
‘Can I come in?’ the young man asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well – have a drink, perhaps: have a talk … As I say, I have read your work. I am an admirer of yours.’
Jason hesitated, not knowing what this odd exchange could mean, and whether he should respond to the request or not.
‘I won’t stay long,’ the young man said, speaking in a very gentle manner, and with a quick, fetching smile, ‘but I would like it, if you don’t mind.’
‘Very well,’ said Jason. ‘I live at the top of the house, I’m afraid. But do come up, if you wish to. I only have whisky.’
‘Very well,’ Jason repeated, pulling the door wide-open and allowing the young man to enter – then closing the door behind him, but this time without bolting it.
‘Your name?’ asked Jason, thinking he needed to know that.
‘Darren,’ said the young man.
‘A nice name,’ said Jason.
‘Thank you,’ the young man replied.
*
It was now close to eleven o’clock, and from the windows of Lady Cynthia’s house, strains of Wagnerian music were drifting into the cold night air; and Lady Cynthia, who was in her bedroom, was preparing to go to bed, whilst her lover, Captain Smythe, was downstairs having a nightcap.
‘Frederick,’ Lady Cynthia called out, having gone to the head of the staircase, and using her lover’s Christian name for once, ‘you will check the door – won’t you? – before you come up.’
‘My dear, of course,’ came the emphatic reply, in a sharp, military voice.
‘And you will turn off the music, as well.’
‘That too, my love,’ Captain Smythe replied, as he swiftly refilled his glass.
For a while the two lovers remained silent and apart – Captain Smythe lost in his thoughts and enjoying the quiet drink he was having alone; and Lady Cynthia, who was now glad to be in her bed, going over the events of the day; and thinking to herself that she had good cause to be happy, in that she was far from poor – was reasonably well-off, in fact – had quite a nice house, not a flat, in one of the best parts of the city; and that if her lover, Captain Smythe, wasn’t exactly all that she desired (in that she was aware of how he could occasionally be unfaithful to her) he did, nonetheless, have his charms – and, for his age, a considerable amount of vigour.