A Severed Head (18 page)

I am yours sincerely
,
Martin Lynch-Gibbon

Dear Honor Klein,

I am afraid there is little point in trying to explain my conduct of last night, and scarcely any point even in apologizing. I was, as you observed, very drunk, and I behaved like a wild beast. I can only say that I am not only as shocked at myself, but also as amazed, as you could possibly be. I cannot account for it, nor would you be interested in a rigmarole of implausible hypotheses about the state of my psyche. It is enough to have assaulted you without boring you into the bargain. I must, however, write this letter to send, though without any hope of its being acceptable, my very humble and very sincere apology. I dare to hope that I did not seriously hurt you. If I caused you any pain, I assure you that my condition bums me more sharply than the harshest blow. I cannot think what came over me; nor can I at all conjecture what your state of mind about me can now be. It would hardly need saying, were it not that I fear I have consistently behaved badly to you, but you are to me an object of profound respect, not only because you are Palmer
’
s sister but because you are you: and I feel a most biting regret at having forfeited, I must fear for ever, the possibility of your good opinion. I will not prolong this letter. I hope, contrary to your prediction, that we may meet again: though I shall certainly not offer you my company in the foreseeable future, nor of course will I expect any answer to this communication. I am very sorry indeed for my shocking behaviour.

Yours sincerely,
Martin Lynch-Gibbon

Dear Honor,

I am sorry that I behaved to you like a beast and a madman. I cannot offer any explanation - nor is this indeed in the ordinary sense an apology. I feel that things between us, after last night, have passed beyond the region of apologies. I want to write to you something brief and something honest to be, as it were, in lieu of posturings of regret which might not be entirely sincere. I have in the past felt resentment against you, even dislike of you, and not entirely without cause. Ever since you appeared on the scene you have, for reasons which remain obscure to me, behaved towards me with hostility, and in two instances you have deliberately done me harm. I am not aware that I have in any way merited this treatment at your hands. I am at present passing through a time of great anxiety, indeed a time of great misery, and might have hoped at least to escape irresponsible persecution from strangers.

I am not saying of course that the fact of what I have called your persecution (which may indeed be the result of thoughtlessness rather than malice) in any way excuses or warrants my throwing you on the ground and beating you about the head. I only write down here what occurs to me when I set myself the task of apologizing; I only write down what seems to me to be the truth. You are, I add, and for all my resentment I can see this clearly, a person worthy of my respect and one who pre-eminently deserves the truth. I am confident that you will prefer this truthful letter to a conventional apology. I hope that I did not hurt you much. I believe that, since you know the world even better than I do, you will not have suffered serious shock or even experienced amazement. I hope we shall meet again and that this incident may serve as a stepping stone to an understanding of each other which has so far been, on both sides, conspicuously lacking.

With my good wishes, M. L.-G.

I sealed up the letters to Antonia and Georgie. I brooded for some time over the three versions of my letter to Honor Klein, and finally, with some misgivings, chose the second one. I was tempted to write a fourth version, and the notion of there being some further development of my thought which demanded expression became very compelling indeed. Yet when I reflected more I could not see what that further development could possibly be like. It remained though maddeningly present, shrouded in darkness. I eventually gave up, copied out Honor
’
s letter and sealed it, and went to the post. The fog had cleared. When I returned I ate some biscuits and dosed myself with whisky and hot milk. I felt exhausted, having put more intellectual effort into the letters to Honor than I had expended since I wrote
Sir Eyre Coote and the Campaign of Wandewash
; yet I was quieted by an irrational feeling of having done a good morning
’
s work. I went upstairs to lie down and fell into the most profound and peaceful sleep that I had experienced for a long time.

I was in torment. Two days had passed, but I had not been able to make up my mind either to leave London or to see Antonia or Georgie. A taboo seemed set upon the two women. It was as if in writing to them I had had the intention of clearing the decks for something, for some drama or some event; but what this could be I did not know, although a continual tension and expectancy affected me positively with a physical ache. In addition I felt sick, unable to eat, and if in desperation I drank alcohol I was afflicted with prompt internal pains. I could neither lie comfortably in bed nor find anything to do with myself if I got up. Reading was impossible, and a visit to the cinema almost reduced me to tears. I visited the office twice and had a talk with Mytten and arranged one or two routine matters, but to keep my mind upon these things was practically an agony. I took my temperature and found it exasperatingly normal. I could not conceive what was the matter with me and it was not until half-way through the third day that I found out.

Alexander rang up just before leaving again for the country and we talked some time on the phone. Our relations were such that scarcely any
‘
patching up
’
was either possible or needed. We simply fell back, half articulately, upon an old understanding. He was cautious, rueful, tactful, I was morose, ironical, complaining. We left it, with relief, at that. I was less pleased to receive a call from Rosemary who was now installed once more in London and very eager to come and organize my life. I felt I could not bear at present to see Rosemary and face her bright bird-like inquisitiveness. She suggested that she should come over and pack up my Minton dinner service and one or two other things which she said must on no account be trusted to the removal men. I said that she might do this, and added that I had not yet made any removal arrangements. She replied that this was just as well, as she knew of an excellent firm and would arrange it all for me. She arrived within half an hour and in a business-like conversation it was agreed that I should go as soon as possible to camp at Lowndes Square, not waiting until the arrival of the furniture. I had no desire to witness the gradual dismantling of the house. I was grateful to her: and as her tasks seemed sufficiently to delight her without the addition of my company I took myself off. As I shut the hall door I could hear Rosemary, her precise little voice ringing with authority, telephoning instructions to Harrods for the immediate delivery at my flat of the best available kind of camp bed.

London was misty, with golden sun-pierced mist in which buildings hung as insubstantial soaring presences. The beautiful dear city, muted and softened, half concealed in floating and slightly shifting clouds, seemed a city in the air, outlined in blurred dashes of grey and brown. I walked, inevitably, by the river. As I turned on to Victoria Embankment I saw that the tide was in, and upon the surface of the fast flowing water itself there played a warm light, turning its muddy hue to an old gilt, as if some pure part of the sunlight had escaped to play here under the great vault of the mist. The strange light suited my mood and as I sauntered slowly along beneath the shadowy cliff of New Scotland Yard I began to feel, if not relieved of pain, at least a little more able to collect my wits.

It was too cold to sit down, but I paused every now and then to lean on the parapet, and as I passed each damp dolphin-entwined lamp-post I felt a little nearer to something. Yet I did not seem to be making any famous progress with my troubles. I felt on the whole a thorough nausea about recent events. That I should have had some time to
‘
open up
’
my relations with Georgie seemed inevitable: yet I detested both the moment and the manner of this particular revelation and there were times when I wondered whether my love for Georgie was strong enough to support the sheer weight of mess and muddle under which I felt it now laboured. All the same, when I had found her with Alexander my sense of possessiveness had been immediate and violent: a possessiveness which lingered on now as a sort of aching resentment. It was odd that I felt no urgency about seeing her. What I really wanted most just then was to put Georgie in cold storage. It is unfortunate that other human beings cannot be conveniently immobilized. Do what I might, Georgie would go on thinking, would go on acting, during my absence and my silence. This thought caused me pain, but still did not galvanize me into the simple action of ringing her up.

To turn my mind to Antonia was no less painful. One thing which I had in the last day or two realized was that I was very far indeed from having unravelled my thoughts and feelings concerning my wife. That I had so readily jumped at a way of enduring, as it were acting my way through the situation, had, it now seemed, merely postponed the moment of a more radical and more dreadful estimate of what had happened. It occurred to me particularly that I had never taken sufficient trouble to find out exactly what Antonia herself was thinking and feeling. To have attempted it would, of course, have been exquisitely painful, and it was partly to shun just that trial that I had so jumped at my role, that I had accepted with such completeness the picture of things which Palmer and Antonia had seemed to be offering. I could not have borne, given that I despaired at once, to have kept things
‘
open
’
between Antonia and myself. But perhaps it was just my terrible mistake to have despaired at once. Was it a mistake, or was it indeed the acting out of some hidden desire? Whichever it was, it had been, I now felt, my duty to inquire more closely, at whatever cost to myself. It had been suggested that Antonia and Palmer were, for all the appearances, really in two minds. What was certain was that my alacrity had helped to stabilize their union; and as I thought this I wondered whether in some way my role was just now destined to change, and that having, as Palmer put it, reached an apex, I was now about to undertake some remarkable descent.

I greatly regretted too that I had been so frank with Antonia about Georgie. My own former instinct, which Georgie had endorsed, that an intimate talk about her with Antonia was something to be avoided, seemed now to have been a sound one. That intimate talk had done nothing but damage: damage to me since I had thereby in some way blunted my love for my dear mistress, damage to Georgie since she was not only betrayed but put positively in danger of being in Antonia
’
s power, and damage to Antonia since she had been thereby disturbed and excited and filled with schemes which could in the end only do harm. I was well aware, and it gave me a twisted gloomy satisfaction, that Antonia was very far from having made herself emotionally independent of me. She needed to have, and had indeed almost announced this as a programme, both Palmer and, in a subordinate role, myself. The discovery of Georgie
’
s existence had been a bad shock and a challenge; and although I was sure that Antonia imagined herself to be inspired by nothing but ingenious and affectionate benevolence, she was certainly determined to hold, to organize, to gain power over, the matter of Georgie and me: and if in the process the matter of Georgie and me suffered shipwreck Antonia would not be exactly heartbroken. She would then set herself, with oh such enthusiasm and satisfaction, to the task of consoling me.

I watched, where a long golden streak had opened in the mist, the water flowing under Waterloo Bridge. A concealed sun was shining on the great white buttresses. And I thought about Honor Klein. I had in fact really been thinking about her all the morning. It was with something of an effort that I had given my mind to other matters, even to other people. For this was at present the magnetic centre of my swinging thoughts, and with a puzzlement which it was something of a luxury to indulge I found myself brooding on Palmer
’
s curious sister. I was sorry now that I had sent her the second letter, though I was very relieved that I had not sent her the first one. The second letter was a poor trivial affair, making but little of what had been, after all, a somewhat remarkable occasion. The third letter would have been in many ways more suitable; or I regretted, rather, that I had not taken time and trouble to write the fourth one, whatever that would have turned out to be.

The third letter was certainly the most sincere, since I felt curiously little remorse about the scene in the cellar. The only thing I regretted, paradoxically, was that I had not been sober, although of course if I had been sober the scene would not have occurred. But I recalled the scene itself with a certain satisfaction: satisfaction mingled with some more obscure and disturbing emotions. I kept returning with wonderment to the thought that I had now touched her:
‘
touched
’
was putting it mildly, given what had happened. But it seemed, perhaps for that very reason, almost implausible in retrospect; and although I could picture her face screwed up with pain and fury, although I could see her black oily hair rolling in the dust and hear her gasp as I twisted her arm yet further, I could not altogether recall any sense of the contact of my flesh with hers. It was as if the extreme untouchability, which with a kind of repulsion I had earlier felt her to possess, had cast, on this sacrilegious occasion, a cloak about her. It was as if I had not really touched her.

I was beginning to feel rather sick again. I walked on under Waterloo Bridge and saw through the tilting, slightly lifting, mist the long gracious pillared façade of Somerset House. Receding, swaying, variously browned and greyed, it seemed like a piece of stage scenery. Below it upon the river, clear yet infinitely soft and simple as in a Chinese print, two swans sailed against a background of watery grey light, swept steadily downstream in the company of a dipping branch of some unidentified foliage. They receded, turning a little, and disappeared. I walked on, and then paused by the parapet looking out to where in the much-curtained distance the great form of St Paul
’
s must be. I could now just descry the warehouses directly opposite across the river, their fronts touched by diffused but increasing intimations of sunlight. The task of peering through the mist was becoming exasperating and painful. I cannot see, I cannot see, I said to myself: it was as if some inner blindness were being here tormentingly exteriorized. I saw shadows and hints of things, nothing clearly at all.

I turned back from the swirling tawny flood with its shadow palaces to look for reassurance at the solid pavement, and I saw that I was standing near a telephone box. I looked at the telephone box; and as I looked it seemed to take on a strange sudden glory, such as is said to invest the meanest object in the eyes of those who claim to experience the proof of the existence of God
e
contingentia mundi
. Like one of Köhler
’
s apes, my cluttered mind attempted to connect one thing with another. Very dimly and distantly, but hugely, it began to dawn upon me what the nature of my ailment was. It was something new and something, as I even then at once apprehended, terrible. My pain was that of a perhaps fatal illness. I moved towards the telephone box. My hands trembled so much that it was only at the third attempt that I was able to dial the Pelham Crescent number correctly. The maid answered. Dr Anderson and Mrs Lynch-Gibbon had gone away for the week-end, and Dr Klein had gone back to Cambridge.