In his preoccupation he nearly tripped over some wretched creeper that, for want of a fence or anything to climb up, was sprawling about on the ground. Its leaves looked sticky and were a purplish dark green in colour, like an artichoke’s that is starting to go off. Roger glared at it. So this was the best they could do. It just showed how . . .
A voice called: ‘Hi.’ Roger looked up and saw a man, perhaps the man called Selby, smiling and waving at him from the next-door garden. He wore a shirt with a huge grey and yellow check pattern. Roger nodded and moved up towards the Bangs’ kitchen door before Selby could rush at him and thrust into his hands a typewritten slip with the Latin name of the creeper on it and a map showing its distribution in North America.
In the kitchen Helene was preparing breakfast, starting, specifically, to fry bacon that she was soon to drain on a paper towel and render so brittle that the mere act of serving would disintegrate it. But as yet Roger knew, and would have cared, nothing about this. Helene smiled cheerfully at him through the window and he looked back at her, aware that he had not yet thought of her that morning in any direct way at all, let alone as someone who might be going to bed with him that afternoon. Even while he voiced this idea to himself – taking in as he did so Helene’s pale-blue-and-white-striped housecoat and the total disarray of her hair, which consequently ranged in appearance from fur to cloudy wire – he felt its reality slipping away from him. It was like abandoning a theory for lack of evidence. And surely he had never seriously imagined that he could induce her to . . . but he managed to block off that one (the long-term one) before it could cross his mental threshold. So unwilling had he suddenly become to encounter Helene that he considered hanging about outside for a few more minutes in the hope that the rest of the household would arrive to dilute her. This was for him an unusual reaction, especially considering who was the potential diluter-in-chief. He abandoned the idea on seeing and hearing that Selby had moved round to the front of his house and was now exchanging humorous democratic shouts with the mailman and an elderly Negro who was sweeping dead leaves off the driveway of the house opposite.
He went inside and, at the promptings of some mysterious instinct, greeted Helene cordially. Then he drank orange-juice at a temperature and in a quantity that would have given him, had he been Roger Micheldene’s stomach, just cause to hit Roger Micheldene hard in the mouth. After that he put down half a dozen hot pancakes with maple syrup as well as the fragmented bacon, several ounces of Iowa-Idaho quince preserve on rye bread, and four cups of coffee. The total effect made him feel jaunty enough to light one of his crooked black Honduras cheroots and pat Arthur gently on the head before going back to his room and skimming through a piece of grandiose subliteracy about inarticulate wisdom in Kentucky.
The next four or five hours passed as he had expected. At the end of them he said to Helene: ‘Are we going to be able to go to bed this afternoon?’
‘Honey, I’m afraid it’d be terribly difficult.’
‘Yes, I thought it might be.’
‘You see, as a rule I’d be able to fix it with Sue Green to have Arthur, but Russ and Linda went to New York to their grandparents’ this week-end and Clay took Sue to the game and afterwards they’re having cocktails with the Oxenreiders – he’s the coach – and Jimmy Fraschini seems to have dropped over, and ordinarily I could have told them to go play around the Fraschinis’ place, but I don’t think I could really do that this afternoon because Arthur’s having tea there tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I see. Bit of a bore that Arthur isn’t going out to tea today instead of tomorrow.’
‘I know it, but . . . it didn’t work out that way.’
‘No.’
‘So I guess it looks as if . . .’
‘Yes. Well, I think in that case I’ll go and seek my own chaste couch for an hour or two, if you’ll excuse me. I didn’t sleep too well last night.’
For the twentieth time in the last half-hour Roger heard the slam of the screen door and the thunder of tiny feet as Arthur and his confederate entered the house to fetch some article of play or else simply entered. Roger had noticed – nobody in Arthur’s general neighbourhood could help noticing – that the child had no special interest in being indoors, any more than in being outdoors. What interested him very much was coming indoors, especially straight into a room of conversing adults. Sometimes, as now, he would employ a variant whereby a random commotion about the house preluded his abrupt arrival by an inner door. But to be already talking fast and loud when he crossed the threshold, in entreaty, protest, self-praise or simple narrative, was an unchanging feature.
Helene had been looking curiously at Roger for about a second and a half when Arthur made his entry saying: ‘Mommy, someone stole Robert, I left him guarding the station in the wood and now he isn’t there any more, so someone must have—’
‘Will you be quiet, Arthur? Mr Micheldene and I are talking.’
‘Mommy, I just told you someone stole Robert, you’ve got to help me look—’
‘Got to nothing. Now out. Take off, child. You and your buddy both.’ Helene got up and began pushing her son backwards towards the doorway. ‘Just disappear and hurry up about it.’
‘Mommy . . .’ Arthur’s gaze settled on Roger and filled with silent and hopeless accusation.
‘Get vaporized before I kill you,’ Helene said, shoving harder and more effectively. She slammed the door. Then she turned slowly, and Roger, in the midst of approving the small but notable advance just made in family relations, saw curiosity return to her face. Looking elegant, or as nearly elegant as she ever got, in a dark-blue rough-silk dress, she walked over to where he was sitting and stood quite close. After a moment she said: ‘Why aren’t you angry with me?’
‘Angry with you? Because the arrangements haven’t worked out? Why should that make me angry with you? You did your best, didn’t you?’
‘But that sort of thing doesn’t usually make any difference to . . .’ She paused, frowning. ‘I mean, ordinarily you just—’
‘I agree this sort of thing does make me frightfully angry as a rule, yes, but somehow not today.’
‘What’s so special about today?’
‘Well, I rather fancy the answer to that must be that in my heart of hearts, as it were, I never really quite got to the point of believing it was going to happen at all. So when I found out the whole thing had fallen through I wasn’t really surprised. Only being told what I knew already.’
While he was saying this Helene had winced sharply and started to gnaw the inside of her lips. Blinking fast, she stared out of the picture-window. ‘There’s the zoo,’ she said, indistinctly because she had a fingernail between her teeth.
‘The zoo?’
‘Well it’s hardly a zoo at all really. There’s a giraffe and some kind of ape, but the rest is all muskrats and foxes and coyotes and things. The main attraction’s the bear hunt.’
‘The bear hunt?’
‘Well, naturally it isn’t a regular bear hunt. There’s no bear. At least they do have this mangy old grizzly chained up to a tree but they don’t hunt it. All they do, they ride their ponies through the wood to where the bear is and then they kind of ride around it for a bit. Then they can have a hamburger, I guess. It’ll give us a clear hour or so anyway. If I know young Martha Selby she’ll do the whole job for five dollars inclusive.’
Eleven
‘Conticuere omnes,’ Roger was saying urgently to himself half an hour later, ‘intentique ora tenebant. Inde toro pater Aeneas sic fatus ab alto: “Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem; sed . . .” No, it’s . . . Hell: colle sub aprico celeberrimus ilice lucus . . . Trouble with the damned stuff it’s all chopped up into lengths so you have to know the beginning of every line and never get a clue out of what’s gone before. Oh God – hic haec hoc hic-haec-hoc yes yes yes now hunc hanc hoc three huiuses three huics hoc hac hoc right his hae ha . . . Ha? Ha ha ha horum his his? That can’t be right, can it? No, of course, it’s
haec, you idiot. Get on with it – hi hae haec then straight on to the Greek irregulars esthio and good old blosko-moloumai yes now back to hi hae haec hos has hos three horums . . .’
What Roger was saying to himself might have struck a casual observer, if one could have been contrived, as greatly at variance with what he was doing. In fact, however, the two were intimately linked. If he wanted to go on doing what he was doing for more than another ten seconds at the outside it was essential that he should go on saying things to himself – any old things as long as the supply of them could be kept up. Nothing else at hand suggested itself as a means of self-distraction. Very early in his career (he had only been troubled in this way a couple of times since then) he had found himself reading the better part of a chapter of Evelyn Waugh’s book on Rossetti in this situation, rather to the puzzlement and, after a time, to the irritation of his companion, an Irish waitress from the considerably worse of the two local hotels. The episode had done nothing to alleviate his generally harsh view of Pre-Raphaelite theory and practice, notably its religiose aspects.
His present difficulty with Helene was partly inherent in her, but could be traced more immediately to the prolonged bout of anticipation he had endured before she had rounded up the three children involved, dumped them at the zoo place and driven back to the house. Then there had been the moment when her usual policy of bodily self-effacement seemed to slip her mind and he was paid back twice over for everything he had missed the day by the swimming-pool. He found it hard to drive that out of his head, or to want to. Not the memory of seeing Arthur being got into the car, with a liberal helping hand from behind that brought him down on hands and knees, not even self-admiration at having managed Helene with such imagination and resource was any use to him. He kept having to fall back on this Latin and Greek and stuff.
All was very nearly lost when he found that esthio and blosko, though all right as far as they went, pointed nowhere much. He struggled half-way through the paradigm of horao with his mind becoming progressively blanker. ‘Oh Jesus,’ his internal monologue continued, ‘whan that Aprill with his shoures sote the droght of March hath perced to the rote, and bathed every vein in swich licour, of which vertue engendred is the flour, then . . . then whoops – the weeping Pleiads wester and the moon is under seas; from bourne to bourne of midnight far sighs the rainy breeze. It sighs from a lost country to a land I have not known; the weeping Pleiads wester and . . . the moon is under seas, that’s more like it, from bourne to bourne . . .’
After the weeping Pleiads had made half a dozen circuits he found things beginning to get easier. His mind stopped behaving like a motor with a slipping clutch and gradually withdrew into itself. He saw nothing; there were sounds, but he heard them less and less. He lost all interest in where he was and who he was with, in any part or aspect of the future. For perhaps a minute, though he himself could not have known how long, he came as close as he had ever done to being unaware of who he was. Then the minute ended and he began taking notice of things again, including who he was with. The memory of how he had felt combined with elation at having done what he had been at such pains to do and induced him to give up more of his time to the final blandishments than he normally cared to. One of the really good ones, he thought.
Helene propped her head on her elbow and stared at him. She was flushed and tousled now all right. ‘It was nice for you, wasn’t it?’ she said with little inquiry.
‘Of course, my dear, perfectly splendid, I assure you. Why, wasn’t it nice for you?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Good.’
‘You get what you want quite a lot of the time, don’t you?’
‘I most certainly do not. Quite the contrary, in fact. Whatever gave you that idea? If I got a bit more of what I wanted I might be rather easier to handle.’
‘Oh, so you know you’re not easy to handle?’
‘Of course. Demonstrably I’m not.’
‘Why do you want to do this so much?’
‘What, this? Is that a mystery? You’re absolutely simply and unequivocally the most attractive woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, let alone managed to get my—’
‘That’s good to hear, honey, but I didn’t mean with me personally, I meant with everybody. That’s who you really want, isn’t it? everybody?’
‘Fortunately, perhaps, there are certain immutable limitations in the structure of things which render the consummation of any such ambition beyond one’s grasp.’
‘Sure, sure, old thing, but it is everybody you want, isn’t it?’
‘God, I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. But then I’ve never managed to have anybody I really wanted for long enough, you see. If I did I might turn out to be much better about wanting everybody. I don’t know.’
‘What about your wives? Didn’t you really want them? Or did you not have them for long enough?’
‘Christ, it certainly wasn’t that. A total of twelve years, thanks most awfully. No, I imagine I must not really have wanted them. I certainly thought I did when I started off, got to admit that. That’s one of the snags.’
‘What is?’ She had the sheet wrapped half round her, tucked neatly under her armpits. Her tanned skin looked nice against it, but Roger could think of nicer alternative arrangements without having to rack his brains.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s such a long time between getting hold of somebody and finding out if you really wanted them in the first place. Like love at first sight. You can only tell if that’s happened by what happens afterwards.’
‘Oh, maybe, but we’re getting away from the subject. What is it about women that makes you want them? And please, no biology lesson.’
‘Well, I think it’s all most frightfully obscure really.’ Roger did not go on to try to describe how he had felt for that minute or so just now, because it failed to cross his mind. He was no better than the next man at remembering, or at knowing, why he did things. He had lied to Helene. Whether or not his motives about women were obscure he did not think they were. A man’s sexual aim, he had often said to himself, is to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature that is the opposite of these; to demonstrate to an animal which is pretending not to be an animal that it is an animal. But it seemed a good moment to keep quiet about all that. ‘What would you say?’ he asked after a short pause. ‘A way of getting to know someone better than you can in any other way? That sort of thing?’
‘Is that how you think of it?’
‘Why so surprised? Don’t a lot of people view it in that kind of way?’
‘I guess so, it’s just that somehow I shouldn’t have expected . . .’
‘What?’
‘Roger, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?’
‘Not in the very least. This is a fairly personal occasion.’
‘Why are you so awful?’
‘Yes, I used to ask myself that quite a lot. Not so much of late, however. Well, I think a frightful lot of it’s tied up with being a snob, you know. Very angst-producing business, being a snob. No time to relax and take things easy. You have to be on duty all the time, as it were.’
‘Oh, you know you’re a snob, too?’
‘As before, it’s demonstrable.’
‘I never knew you knew things like that about yourself.’
‘You’ve never asked me.’
‘No. Look, why aren’t you awful now? Today you haven’t been awful once.’
‘I don’t feel awful. I’ve no reason to feel awful. How could I be awful with you near me looking like that?’ He leaned over and kissed her.
‘What was that for?’
‘For? You’re looking surprised again.’
‘You’re noticing me.’
‘Oh? Don’t I usually?’
‘I was expecting you to be really awful, a real son of a bitch, when I told you I’d loused up getting rid of Arthur . . .’
‘I’ve explained about that.’
‘Because I really want you and I’ve got you. For an hour or so, anyway.’
‘Oh, darling, do you really?’
‘Of course, didn’t I make that clear?’
‘When?’
‘Well, just now. You know.’
‘Oh. Oh yes. Tell me more about being a snob. What sort of started you off on it?’
‘That’s easy, it was my father, no question about it. I’m not going to go into any of that Oedipus piffle but I really detested the bastard. He was a mean, vulgar, stupid little man who spent his evenings drinking beer and listening to variety programmes on the wireless and never noticed what he ate or wore or—’
‘Take it easy, I suppose he’d come up the hard way and never—’
‘Hard way, my God you should have seen it. Hard way indeed. No little sod ever had it easier. He didn’t make the money. It was his father who’d done that. Magnificent old boy. Screwed a quarter of a million quid out of the peasantry in twenty years by flogging them bloody awful crockery and glassware as he called it. Learnt to drink claret and fish salmon and ride to hounds and adored it all. Fell down dead at eighty when he was out with his gun. No, my esteemed parent was a member of the upper classes, went to school at Charterhouse – Berkhamsted was good enough for me, he thought – and Captain of Boats at Magdalen, what? and then nothing. Doing anything was what the lower classes did. So was caring about anything. You mustn’t have pictures in your house, because parvenus do that. So he sold my grandfather’s Courbets and Delacroixs and bought a racing car of some sort. He couldn’t drive it but he liked to know it was there. He didn’t marry a debutante – night-club owners and toy-balloon manufacturers do that. So he married the girl who answered the telephone at his solicitors’. He saw quite a lot of them because there were some things that had to be done and he made them do them all.
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