I had stood in the library before my father, he with my wretched verses in his hands and his eyes turned upon me in interrogation, and I had gone from him not in rebellion at the life he had forced me to lead, but in horror at the self who had brought such a scene to pass between father and son. When I would have thrown myself into the river it was because I hated the coward who lingered on the bridge.This was I, then, twisting and turning in my tangled web, seeking an outlet when I had carefully arranged that there should be none.
It seemed to me, though, that there was madness in too great a depth of introspection, and however much I delved into my own instincts I could not change what I should find there, so it were better to shrug my shoulders and shake my head, to whistle and to laugh, and keep up a pretence that I did not care what came to me until the very believing of this pretence made it at length reality.
Still, there was no need to go into this now, for here was the car taking us along a winding road, and the mountains stood up around us and the forested hills, and the white streams ran, too, to keep us company.
Soon there would be high ground, and another fjord more beautiful than the one we had left, and Jake to turn to at a change of mood, and, anyway, I was alive and young, so why should I worry - these being the only things that really mattered.
Then I heard Jake laugh, and I saw him looking at me with an expression in his eyes that meant he knew what I had been going over in my mind.
‘So that’s that, and everything all cut and dried, eh?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I guess I know where I am now.’
‘You’re thinking that after all it’s a grand day, and this country’s pretty good, and it’s been an experience, and, anyway, you’re not such a bad fellow - and perhaps next time. . . .’
‘Yes,’ I said.
8
We went from Sandene to Olden, and at Olden Jake had to pay off the car because it was getting too expensive. I had got used to his paying for everything now; I did not have any shame about it. It was not as though he were merely someone I had met; he was definitely part of myself and part of my life.
Sometimes I wondered what I should be without him, for never before had there been anyone in my existence that had counted, and the years at home seemed just a stretch of time without any meaning at all.
It seemed incredible to me now that I had ever lived as I had done, a pitiful figure crouching in my father’s shadow, and the personality that had held so great a power for me had drifted away into nothing, compared to the living breathing creature that was Jake.
I thought about him sometimes, this father of mine, and how strange it was that the supreme influence of twenty-one years should have fallen away thus without my conscious knowledge of its parting. I knew that if I returned home the big park gates would close upon me and I should no longer be aware of this suggestion of captivity, but would travel along the chestnut drive feeling that the trees were smaller than before, an avenue now and not the sentinels of a shadowed cloister, and the very sweep of the gravel finally bringing to my view the grey stone of the house would hold no shudder of oppression, for these things were of the past, belonging to a dead childhood, and I would look upon the most familiar scenes of spent misery and discontent with new eyes. They could not hold me now, neither the house, nor the garden, nor the shadow of my father seated at his desk by the open window of the library; they could not hold me any more than a dream holds a child who wakes in the morning, seeing the kind brave light of day, and knows the little horrors of his dark night were of his own imagining, not lasting nor true.
All I had done to rid me of my ghosts was to fall in with Jake as my strength and my conscience, my leader and my companion, and he had washed away every memory of my bitterness and repression with a look, and a smile, and a word here and there; so that my home was a sleeping house in a still garden, my father a dreaming poet with no shadow of scorn in his eyes. I did not hate them any more; they were just a pattern in a finished screen, now folded and put away for ever.
I had sailed in a ship and felt the wind in my face, I had wandered in strange cities, I had ridden over the mountains, I had slept under a white sky, I had loved a girl with my body: all these little moments had been lived through and forgotten, nothing in themselves, making other patterns on that screen.
Only Jake remained, and I asked no more than this, his continual presence at my side, and long days and nights ahead of us, and laughter and talk, and an open road, and the sun.
We stayed a couple of nights at Olden, because Jake wanted to see the Briksdal Glacier and I to explore the fjord in a boat, and then we pored over the map and saw a road that would take us on to Marak at the head of another fjord, or if we turned east at Griotli we should strike inland for over a hundred kilometres perhaps until we came to Otta on the railway from Trondhjem to Oslo.
It was some fifty kilometres from Olden to Griotli, and we were lucky in this, getting seats in an open tourist car bound for Marak, thus taking us a good way on our journey.
I was tired of the fjords now; I wanted to get away to something different.
We struck east then at Griotli, where we found neither cars nor horses, so there was nothing for it but to start walking, and we reckoned that if we did twenty miles a day we should make Otta and the railway in five days or thereabouts.
We made packs of whatever kit we had, and slung it over our backs, and set off from Griotli knowing that time did not matter to us at all, and we could sleep in the hills or in the shelter of a peasant’s hut, and food could be found at odd places.
We could rest when we chose, and walk when we chose, and the weather was grand, and we were together and we did not care.
Once more it was like being in the mountains from Fagerness to Laardel, and the fjords, and the steamer, and the girl might not have happened for the little I thought of them. I don’t believe I thought of anything much during that six days’ tramp from Griotli to Otta. Nothing mattered but the sun shining and the wind from the hills blowing upon my face, the feel of the hard road beneath my feet - ever and again striking off from this road on to the rough tracks and the hill paths - then throwing off my pack and lying beneath the forest trees with my head in my hands, and the sound of a rushing stream in my ears.
Back in the mountains there had been something of peace and exultation; an understanding of beauty beyond my grasp and a dumb longing to stand a little higher than myself, but here there was the glory of tangible things, the touch of earth, the feeling of water running over my hands, the smell of trees clustered together - the very knowledge of being alive with this world to live in.
Back in the mountains Jake had been the leader, I sitting carelessly astride my horse letting him follow slowly in the footprints of the other, with my spirit shaken by what I saw and timid of the thoughts that came to me, wrapped in a silent ecstasy; while here I climbed a grass track calling to Jake over my shoulder, he ploughing away steadily behind me, or I found myself alone on the road ahead of him, obeying some instinct within me that made me run like a boy and swing by the branch of a tree, throw a stone in a stream, shouting a song into the air. Then I would stand on a ledge of high ground, and wave my hand to him, a dark figure in the road below; and while I waited I kicked my heels on the ground, watching a blue shadow pass across the distant hills; smoking a cigarette with my face lifted to the sun, and I whistled a tune without words and smiled for no reason.
Presently Jake would join me, and we would sit there together plucking at a stem of grass, sifting the sand with our hands, chucking stones down into the valley.
I did not want anything to be changed; it could have gone on like this for ever for all I cared.
‘This is all right, isn’t it, Jake?’ I would say.
‘Good enough for me,’ he would answer.
‘God! I’m happy. I don’t see how anything could be better than this.’
Jake laughed, and I knew why he was laughing.
‘You
don’t believe a word I say, ever, do you, Jake?’
‘Always, Dick.You’re an enthusiast though, that’s why I smiled. I wondered what would happen if it came on to rain and the wind changed.’
‘I shouldn’t care. I like a stinging wind and the rain in my face. Those aren’t the sort of things that change me.’
‘What price London now, Dick?’
‘Any price you like. I feel fit. I feel grand - I’m ready for anything. Think of standing in Piccadilly and looking up at the electric signs - just before dark when the light is grey and the theatres are opening - and the traffic all jammed up anyhow in a block, and the smell of dust and food from a restaurant, and a news-boy shouting in your ear. . . . It isn’t so bad, Jake, what d’you think?’
‘You’ve never lived there, you make everything as a picture in your mind.You go through life doing that, don’t you?’ he said.
‘I can’t help it. I’ve always done it, even when I’ve hated things. No, this suits me, Jake, out here on this road with the hills behind us, and a stream at our feet. I feel like living every minute and holding on to it. That’s what I want to do - to hold on to it.’
‘You can’t do that. When you live too fiercely it slips away from you, and you find you’ve missed the whole thing.’
‘Yes - I’ve felt that.’
‘Keep calm if you can - don’t get blown about the place. You’ll enjoy everything so much more, especially afterwards.’
‘How d’you mean, afterwards?’ I asked.
‘When all this, and all you do later, is behind you.’
‘Don’t be a ghoul, Jake. I don’t have to think of that. Now is the time that matters. I don’t want to sit back and call up dead dreams. Memories - what hell.’
‘No, it’s the best time,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I know, that’s all,’ he answered.
‘What, being old, with a bald head and a pain in my back?’
‘No - that’s got nothing to do with it.’
‘I don’t get you at all. You have a whole lot of theories that don’t fit in with mine.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ he smiled.
‘Now you’re laughing again. You’re a terrible fellow, Jake.’
‘I can’t stop myself when I look at you, with your eyes glaring, and your hair standing up on end - just letting yourself burn to a cinder with your terrific ideas.’
‘How d’you expect me to live?’ I scowled.
‘I’m only ragging, Dick. I don’t ask you to be different.’
‘You’d like me to have comfortable, steady principles, and never feel hot over anything, and just take life as it comes instead of rushing to meet it half-way.’
‘No, Dick.’
‘Sure, you would. You won’t be easy till I’m laid up in a bathchair, with a morning paper for an excitement. Well, you’ll be disappointed, Jake, I shan’t live for that to happen to me.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘I have a sort of hunch that I’ll have a terrific time and then die -’
‘Oh! we all think that,’ he said.
‘No, that’s me all right.’
‘You’re a boy, Dick, and all your thoughts are boy’s thoughts. Believe me, you’ll wake up one day and find yourself a successful stockbroker with a big belly, unable to go without your early cup of tea.’
‘And not minding?’
‘And most especially not minding,’ he laughed.
‘There can’t be any mortal thing worse than that, can there, Jake?’
‘Of course there can. You’d be happy enough with your cup of tea. Try starving, being without clothes in winter, lying on your back ill, never getting better.’
‘But those are big things, Jake, when you can curse and suffer. It’s mediocrity I hate. Little days and little nights. Moving around in a small circle, knowing you don’t matter.’
‘Rot, Dick. Think of the million mediocre people who go to make up a world. They eat and sleep and marry and have children, and do their job and die.’
‘I don’t want to be like that,’ I said. ‘I don’t care a damn about the rest of the world.’
‘You belong to it. You’ll have to care.’
‘Not yet, Jake, anyway. Let me go on drifting.’
‘What have I got to do with it?’
‘Everything. You know damn well you can make what you like out of me.’
‘That isn’t true,’ he said slowly.
‘It is true. If you said “Dick, you’ve got to write”, I’d say “Yes”, and I’d get a piece of paper and a pencil, and I wouldn’t leave them until I’d written something worth writing, something you told me was good.’
‘Then what would you do?’
‘I’d send it to my father and say, “Well, what about it?” and if he didn’t like it I’d laugh, for yours would be the only opinion worth a cent to me.’
‘You’re becoming a responsibility, Dick.’
‘You shouldn’t have stopped me from going over that bridge,’ I said.
‘I see. So whatever happens, I’m to take all the blame, am I?’
‘Sure.’
‘Even if you become a stockbroker?’
‘More than ever if I become a stockbroker.’
Jake laughed and threw away his cigarette. ‘Come on, Dick. We’ve got to push if we want to reach Otta in two days.’
‘Why do we bother?’
‘Must get somewhere.’ He stood up and looked down at me with a smile.
‘I like hanging around here doing nothing,’ I said.
‘I know you do. You’re born lazy right through. If you stay much longer in this country you won’t become anything, not even a bank clerk!’
‘The South Sea Islands would suit me, Jake.’
‘I guess they would. You’d sleep all day and drink all night, and write dud poetry, and make love to native girls under a palm tree.’
‘Sounds good,’ I murmured, chewing a stem of grass.
‘That’s because I’ve made a picture of it. In reality you’d loathe the flies, and you’d loathe the rain, and you’d sit bored stiff with a glass of bad whisky listening to the small-town gossip of a local trader,’ he said.
‘I’d be disappointed?’
‘Of course you’d be disappointed.You always expect too much.’
‘You’re hard on me, Jake.’
‘I’m not hard on you.’
‘Oh! hell. So we’ve got to push on to Otta, have we?’
‘Yes.’
‘You think it’s bad to drift like this? So we’ve got to find a train to take us to a city and I have to set to and do a job of work. Is that it?’
‘I think it’s time you took a pull on yourself, Dick.’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘You can leave me out of it,’ he frowned. ‘I’m thinking of what’s going to be good for you.’
‘I want to know what you feel.’
‘Go on wanting.’
‘No, tell me, Jake.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘If you were alone, what would you do? Where would you go?’
‘Oh - if I were alone . . .’ He broke off abruptly.
‘Yes.’
‘God knows.’
‘I believe you’d strike up to the North Cape and lose yourself looking for icebergs,’ I said.
‘Possibly.’
‘Instead of which, I’ve made you responsible for me, and you have to stick around.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t see what you get out of all this.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No, I’m damned if I do. Listen, Jake, have we really got to cope with the world?’
‘I think you ought to.’
‘Maybe you know best. Jake, would you get sick of it all if we stayed out here?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you go back then?’ I asked.
‘Because of you.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Never mind.’
‘We’re just going through some bloody idea of yours that it’s slack to stay here and enjoy ourselves?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t believe in being happy when you can?’
‘Oh! quit talking, Dick. You’d argue till the skies fell.’
‘Anyway, you haven’t answered my question yet.’
‘What question?’
‘Whether you want me to take a pull on myself, as you say.’
‘For your own sake, yes.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t matter.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
‘I have told you.’
It was hopeless to have any sort of argument with Jake. He put one off all the time. I called him every name under the sun, and he only laughed. I tried to hit him, and he laughed again. We got up and pulled on our packs once more. I walked at his side, kicking a stone in front of me.
‘You’re bored with me,’ I said.
‘It looks like it.’
‘You’re fed up, that’s it.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m no sort of a companion. I’m a dud, and a fool.You wish you were back in prison.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Jake - can’t you be serious for one minute?’
‘No.’
It was useless to speak to him at all.
‘When we get to Otta,’ said Jake, ‘we’ve got to decide something. ’
‘What’s that?’
‘Whether we go north or south.’
‘Let’s take a squint at the map,’ I said. He stretched it out, and we saw the dark line of the railway crossing Otta and bearing north to Trondhjem on the coast, or south to Oslo and Stockholm, and Copenhagen.
I'll Never Be Young Again Page 12