Bethany
Page 22
I help them bring things down from the bedrooms. I give them all sorts of things – food, a sleeping bag, odd things they may find useful. Tokens of love, tokens of gratitude.
Alex has disappeared. When they have gone, what on earth, across this impassable gulf, will we find to say to each other?
In fact I was surprised by her restraint. I expected her to tell me to go. That she didn’t indicates presumably that she is willing to listen to me. If I can find a way of getting through the wall.
I must have hurt her dreadfully. She is brave, Alex.
There was a moment when I thought Simon had gone too far.
‘Keep away from that child!’
Alex has put out a hand to prevent one of the children from falling. Simon snatches the child away.
‘You’re corrupt. Don’t you dare to go near a child.’
I feel a surge of protest.
Alex accepts it in silence.
She has not said a word for about an hour, while Simon has moved gradually from exposition to anger. He has called her a deceiver, a manipulator, a schemer. I have not defended her because it is all true.
But she would never hurt children. With children she does not lie, or scheme, or charm. I know. She loves children.
I feel slightly nauseated.
I should like to get out of this room, but I cannot leave. Cannot leave until this dreadful meeting is over.
I will go and talk to her. After all, she came to me.
‘Alex.’
She is sitting at the bureau, writing in an exercise book. Oh dear.
‘I understand it now,’ she says.
I lean in the doorway, waiting.
‘It was all a terrible misunderstanding,’ she says. ‘A series of misunderstandings, none of which was ever cleared up.’
I wait.
‘Do you know why Simon resigned from the partnership?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He resigned because he felt there was someone who didn’t want the partnership to work. That being so, there was no point in forming it.’
‘He wrote “Communication break” in the diary.’
‘Yes.’
‘Whose communication break was it?’
‘Yours.’
‘It was his.’
I close my eyes for a moment. I initiated this conversation: I must see it through.
‘He couldn’t cope with the responsibility. Imagine: taking over a twenty-two-thousand-pound house with another four thousand pounds’ worth of assets – for him and his friends! He suddenly saw what it looked like, and he couldn’t do it. He got cold feet.’
I stare at her. It’s wickedly ingenious.
‘He didn’t realise that I knew all that, and that it didn’t matter, and that I was going to give them the house anyway.’
‘What d’you mean, you were going to give them the house anyway?’
‘That’s why I went to see the solicitor a few days later. I wanted to know if I could make the house over to them. The solicitor said I could only make a gift to specified people, but I said that wasn’t any good because other people might come to live in the house, and I wanted to give it to whoever was living in it. He said I couldn’t.’
Is she lying? No, I think she’s telling the truth. In that case Simon was wrong about what happened at the partnership meeting. He imagined a communication break. Well, it’s unfortunate but it’s not important. The business of the house has never really been important in spite of what was said on the last morning. It obscures the real issue, which is Alex’s character.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘I accept that. But it’s unimportant.’
‘It is not unimportant. It was part of the evidence against me, and it was based on a misunderstanding. All these things mounted up until in the end I was made to appear like a monster.’
‘All right. One part of the evidence against you may be discounted. What else?’
‘When Simon resigned the partnership was dissolved, but you all went on thinking it was still in existence. So you expected things of me which I didn’t realise were expected of me. Quite naturally, when I didn’t behave as you expected, you thought I was acting against the partnership. But it didn’t exist.’
All anyone has ever expected of Alex is truthfulness and love.
‘The others may have thought the partnership was still in force. I certainly didn’t. But it makes no difference. What concerned the group was your behaviour in the group.’
‘Do you admit there may have been a misunderstanding?’
‘Yes, it is possible that there was a misunderstanding.’
‘Thank you.’ She consults the page of writing in front of her. She has been working very hard.
‘The day my brother came here,’ she says.
She never refers to Philip by name.
‘Yes?’
‘Dao thought I’d said something unpleasant about Simon to him.’
‘Yes, but you told her you hadn’t, and that cleared it up.’
‘But it didn’t. She didn’t believe me. Simon didn’t believe me. He couldn’t have done, or he wouldn’t have accused me of telling lies. What other lies could he possibly have been referring to? I haven’t told any lies.’
She believes it. I wonder if she knows what a lie is.
‘I think you’re mistaken,’ I say. ‘If Simon had meant that, he would have said so.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. He’s never specific. It’s part of his cleverness. He lets people condemn themselves.’
‘You should pursue the implications of that remark.’
‘Kay, can you be absolutely sure that that wasn’t what he had in mind?’
I hesitate fractionally. Whatever the risk of her misusing the truth, not the slightest deviation from the truth is permitted.
‘No.’
‘Right. Now we come to the most crucial misunderstanding of all. Do you remember the night before I went to London, when Simon and I talked in the parlour?’
‘I don’t think I shall ever forget it.’
She darts me a look which I can’t interpret.
‘He thought I walked out on him,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘We weren’t getting anywhere. He suddenly got up and left. I thought he’d gone to bed. I thought it was one of his dramatic departures. So I went to bed. But he hadn’t gone to bed, he’d gone outside – for a pee, I suppose. I heard him come up the stairs later.’
She watches intently for my reaction.
She is telling the truth, and I can see how it would have upset him. He would interpret it as the most extreme form of communication break short of violence. But something is missing from the data.
‘Okay. But if you knew that, why did you go to London instead of staying here to sort it out with him? You must have wanted not to continue the conversation.’
She is silent. I pursue it.
‘You must have been talking about something pretty important.’
She doesn’t want to answer. She doesn’t have to tell me what it was: but she must confront it.
‘He talked. I wouldn’t answer him.’
‘Why not?’
Alex makes a gesture of hopelessness.
‘All right. I didn’t want to tell you. Simon loved me.’
This is a depth-charge compared with which the other evasions are little squibs. My head rocks with it. Doesn’t she care what she does to people’s minds?
‘Of course he did,’ I reply. ‘He said so.’
‘Yes, and he couldn’t handle it. He kissed me once, you know.’
‘So what?’
‘Properly. On the mouth.’
If she carries on like this I’m afraid she may begin to confuse me. I feel anger and pity. I repress the first and keep the second on a short leash.
‘Are you suggesting that his feelings for you were so strong that they threatened his relationship with Dao and the survival of the group?’
‘No,’ says Alex. ‘I think he could have h
andled it if it hadn’t been for my own feelings. If I’d just done what he wanted, the way all the rest of you did what he wanted, it would have been all right. He’s used to being surrounded by adoring women. But I can’t play that game. I’ve never submitted emotionally to a man in my life.’
‘What are you saying, exactly?’
‘I was in love with Simon. That’s why I had to fight him. That’s why I had to go away. That’s what upset him.’
I lean against the door-frame and breathe slowly. There it is, unveiled. The final, enormous, pitiable evasion. And clever. Let me not underestimate its cleverness. If I were just a shade less clear in my mind I should have been thrown by it, by its plausibility, its emotional weight.
‘I tried to tell you,’ says Alex. ‘That day we sat and talked under the chestnut tree. But it was no good because I was in such a turmoil I wasn’t coherent, and all you could say was that I was evading something. Which I was, I suppose: I didn’t really want to tell you.’
‘You are still evading something now.’
She looks at me, startled.
‘I was in love with Simon for a time,’ I say.
‘I know you were.’
‘Everybody who meets Simon is in love with him for a time. They don’t use it as an excuse for everything unacceptable they do.’
‘You’re still in love with him,’ says Alex. ‘You’ve become Simon. You talk like him, you stand like him, you walk like him. He’s taken you over.’
‘I expect I do talk like him. I say what I perceive to be true, and the same truth is likely to be put into the same words. Does it matter who uses the words first?’
‘You see what I mean,’ says Alex.
I shrug.
‘All the time I’m talking to you,’ says Alex, ‘I sense that you aren’t listening.’
‘I am listening more carefully than I have ever listened to you in my life.’
‘But you’re listening for something.’
This sets me back a little. Yes, I am listening for the lie. How else, in the circumstances, should I listen?
‘Yes,’ I admit, ‘I am testing the truth of what you say as you say it.’
‘It’s more than that. You’re screening it for bad motives. For weeks, everything I’ve said and done has been screened for negative content.’
‘Nonsense. One simply sees things. You know that. You’ve experienced that clear perception. One sees.’
‘One sees what one looks for.’
I gaze at her blankly.
‘There’s good and bad in everyone,’ she says.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, spare me the platitudes.’
‘But it’s true, Kay. I understand your perception – for God’s sake, if I didn’t I’d have kicked you out as soon as they left. The bad you see in me is there. But there’s bad in everyone. There’s bad in you: Simon found it.’
‘Yes, and I acknowledged it.’
‘And I didn’t acknowledge mine because I will not be bullied and shouted at.’
‘He didn’t shout at you.’
‘He did. Just before they left, he lost his self-control completely, and he raved at me.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I am not lying. For days every time I’ve opened my mouth you’ve told me I was lying.’
‘So you were.’
‘I have to see what you see, don’t I? You won’t let me see what I see.’
‘What you see is a distortion.’
‘It’s my reality.’
‘That’s your trouble. You won’t share anyone else’s reality. Then you wonder why you can’t communicate with them.’
‘What I see is true for me. We’re all right in our own way.’
‘Including Hitler, I suppose.’
‘Yes, including Hitler. Even he had a little bit of truth. We’ve all got our own kind of truth.’
I am about to hurl myself with all my weight against this lie, when something holds me back. A tiny thing, a flicker in the mind. A flicker of infinity. In an instant it has sapped my strength.
‘That is sophistry,’ I say. ‘You are using a small truth to evade a larger one. That’s a very dangerous game.’
She turns on me and hurls four words.
‘Don’t change my data.’
I walk quickly away from the suddenly dark room, down the stairs and out into the garden.
How beautiful the roses are. Delicate, thin-veined. The bees investigate them, as bees have always done.
I sit on the grass. The sun is hot.
I should like to sleep now.
In front of me is a door. If I do not open it I am dead. If I open it I may find my death inside.
Open it, then.
Oh God, the height, the terror. The unimaginable dance.
Rest. Breathe. Rest.
I cannot face it.
It must be faced.
Consider it as a philosophical problem. Is there one truth, or are there many? Are there degrees of truth? Is truth absolute or relative?
It is absolute. I know it is. I have seen truth.
And a moment ago, what did you see?
The sky turned over and I saw its back.
What did you see?
I saw infinity, and everything in it was true.
Very well. If everything is true …
No. With all my being, No.
I saw the truth of Alex. I saw her darkness. That truth excluded what she calls her truth. I saw that her truth was a lie.
I cannot have been mistaken. I cannot have been mistaken.
Who is right?
My truth condemns her. Hers condemns me.
If we are both right, then she is right and I am wrong.
If I am right, she is wrong.
But I must not change her data.
This is not a philosophical problem. This is a question on which hangs the meaning of my life. And if of my life, then of Alex’s life and of life itself. If I do not find the right answer, I shall have destroyed myself. If the answer I find tells me I was wrong, I shall have destroyed myself. If I do not find an answer, I cannot go on living because I shall not know in what way to live. I am required to decide, now in this garden, what is the truth of the universe.
And where do I begin, when I do not know with what eyes to look?
I cannot solve this problem with my reason. It will work only from the premises supplied to it, and I do not know what premises to supply. I do not have a starting-point. My reason will not find its own starting-point.
What will supply me with a starting-point? Not any recollection from the past, because my understanding of the past depends on my understanding of the present, and it is the present I am seeking to understand.
Should I then trust my intuition? It arises in a region beyond consciousness and I cannot search its motives: it will supply me with the starting-point I need to prove that I am right, and in doing so it will destroy me.
I cannot look outside me for the answer. No other human being can answer this question for me. I can trust no one and nothing, least of all myself.
Dear God, help me.
It is a kind of crucifixion. We are all Christ.
I must put down this burden, and I cannot. I carry the universe on my back. I am Christ, I am Atlas. I cannot lay it down without destroying the world.
On the past depends the present.
On the present depends the past.
If I look at the past with the eyes of the past I see Alex enclosed in a wall of darkness.
If I look at the past with the eyes of the present I see nothing at all.
I see something.
It is the same scene, but there is a difference.
It is a different scene.
It is the same scene.
We are all assembled in the parlour. Dao has summoned a meeting. The group is serious and silent. Simon sits waiting in his chair. He is waiting for the obstructive member of the group to see her error. She will not see it. She refuses to acc
ept that anything that has been said to her has any connection with her. She does not seem to understand what is happening. There is a wall. On one side of it is darkness. She cannot see what is happening on the far side of the wall, and no one can tell her. I cannot understand a word they are saying to me.
Alex. Me.
Me. Alex.
On what happened then depends what is happening now.
On what is happening now depends what happened then.
If I was right, Alex was right.
If Alex was wrong, I was wrong.
But I admitted that I was wrong.
And I did not believe it. To my dying day I shall believe that Simon was wrong and I was right.
Why then did I submit to him, that afternoon on the landing?
Because I could not bear to leave this house.
It is very cold out here.
Follow it, follow the path. There is nothing left now, except the path. Follow it to the end.
‘We have thought of three alternatives,’ says Simon. ‘Between them they cover all the possibilities. Alex will choose the one that suits her best.’
He speaks cheerfully, almost affectionately, like a kind schoolmaster propounding a simple choice.
I am struck suddenly by the depth of his ignorance about Alex. He does not understand her at all: he never has. What I thought was understanding was merely his brilliant grasp of the general principles of human psychology, which fitted her as well, and as roughly, as they do anyone. By the accidental closeness of the fit here and there one is misled into thinking that the whole suit is tailor-made.
So Simon, assuming that Alex is like most people in a respect in which she is unlike most people, puts to her three alternatives. To him, to most people, they are three discrete ideas; three diverging roads; three apples on a table. But Alex, brought up in the wild, does not see three separate things. She sees a net.
She sees a net and before it can close over her she darts under it and away.
‘I do not accept the group’s alternatives.’
Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t understand that she has to accept them: that this is her test. Simon doesn’t understand that she can’t accept them: that this is his test.
Only I understand.
Only I understand that they are both doing the only thing they can.
Only I can see what is happening, and I say nothing. Why do I say nothing?