Complete Poems and Plays (38 page)

In my absence. I shall be less embarrassing to you. Agatha?

A
GATHA
.
I think, Harry, that having got so far —

If you want no pretences, let us have no pretences:

And you must try at once to make us understand,

And we must try to understand you.

H
ARRY
.
But how can I explain, how can I explain to
you
?

You will understand less after I have explained it.

All that I could hope to make you understand

Is only events: not what has happened.

And people to whom nothing has ever happened

Cannot understand the unimportance of events.

G
ERALD
.
Well, you can’t say that nothing has happened to
me
.

I started as a youngster on the North-West Frontier —

Been in tight corners most of my life

And some pretty nasty messes.

C
HARLES
.
And there isn’t much would surprise me, Harry;

Or shock me, either.

H
ARRY
.
                         You are all people

To whom nothing has happened, at most a continual impact

Of external events. You have gone through life in sleep,

Never woken to the nightmare. I tell you, life would be unendurable

If you were wide awake. You do not know

The noxious smell untraceable in the drains,

Inaccessible to the plumbers, that has its hour of the night; you do not know

The unspoken voice of sorrow in the ancient bedroom

At three o’clock in the morning. I am not speaking

Of my own experience, but trying to give you

Comparisons in a more familiar medium. I am the old house

With the noxious smell and the sorrow before morning,

In which all past is present, all degradation

Is unredeemable. As for what happens —

Of the past you can only see what is past,

Not what is always present. That is what matters.

A
GATHA
.
Nevertheless, Harry, best tell us as you can:

Talk in your own language, without stopping to debate

Whether it may be too far beyond our understanding.

H
ARRY
.
The sudden solitude in a crowded desert

In a thick smoke, many creatures moving

Without direction, for no direction

Leads anywhere but round and round in that vapour —

Without purpose, and without principle of conduct

In flickering intervals of light and darkness;

The partial anæsthesia of suffering without feeling

And partial observation of one’s own automatism

While the slow stain sinks deeper through the skin

Tainting the flesh and discolouring the bone —

This is what matters, but it is unspeakable,

Untranslatable: I talk in general terms

Because the particular has no language. One thinks to escape

By violence, but one is still alone

In an over-crowded desert, jostled by ghosts.

It was only reversing the senseless direction

For a momentary rest on the burning wheel

That cloudless night in the mid-Atlantic

When I pushed her over.

V
IOLET
.
                                Pushed her?

H
ARRY
.
You would never imagine anyone could sink so quickly.

I had always supposed, wherever I went

That she would be with me; whatever I did

That she was unkillable. It was not like that.

Everything is true in a different sense.

I expected to find her when I went back to the cabin.

Later, I became excited, I think I made enquiries;

The purser and the steward were extremely sympathetic

And the doctor very attentive.

That night I slept heavily, alone.

A
MY
.
                                                 Harry!

C
HARLES
.
You mustn’t indulge such dangerous fancies.

It’s only doing harm to your mother and yourself.

Of course we know what really happened, we read it in the papers —

No need to revert to it. Remember, my boy,

I understand, your life together made it seem more horrible.

There’s a lot in my own past life that presses on my chest

When I wake, as I do now, early before morning.

I understand these feelings better than you know —

But
you
have no reason to reproach yourself.

Your conscience can be clear.

H
ARRY
.
                                         It goes a good deal deeper

Than what people call their conscience; it is just the cancer

That eats away the self. I knew how you would take it.

First of all, you isolate the single event

As something so dreadful that it couldn’t have happened,

Because you could not bear it. So you must believe

That I suffer from delusions. It is not my conscience,

Not my mind, that is diseased, but the world I have to live in.

— I lay two days in contented drowsiness;

Then I recovered. I am afraid of sleep:

A condition in which one can be caught for the last time.

And also waking. She is nearer than ever.

The contamination has reached the marrow

And
they
are always near. Here, nearer than ever.

They are very close here. I had not expected that.

A
MY
.
Harry, Harry, you are very tired

And overwrought. Coming so far

And making such haste, the change is too sudden for you.

You are unused to our foggy climate

And the northern country. When you see Wishwood

Again by day, all will be the same again.

I beg you to go now and rest before dinner.

Get Downing to draw you a hot bath,

And you will feel better.

A
GATHA
.
There are certain points I do not yet understand:

They will be clear later. I am also convinced

That you only hold a fragment of the explanation.

It is only because of what you do not understand

That you feel the need to declare what you do.

There is more to understand: hold fast to that

As the way to freedom.

H
ARRY
.
                              I think I see what you mean,

Dimly — as you once explained the sobbing in the chimney

The evil in the dark closet, which they said was not there,

Which they explained away, but you explained them

Or at least, made me cease to be afraid of them.

I will go and have my bath.

[
Exit
]

G
ERALD
.
                                  God preserve us!

I never thought it would be as bad as this.

V
IOLET
.
There is only one thing to be done:

Harry must see a doctor.

I
VY
.
                                      But I understand —

I have heard of such cases before — that people in his condition

Often betray the most immoderate resentment

At such a suggestion. They can be very cunning —

Their malady makes them so. They do not want to be cured

And they know what you are thinking.

C
HARLES
.
He has probably let this notion grow in his mind,

Living among strangers, with no one to talk to.

I suspect it is simply that the wish to get rid of her

Makes him believe he did. He cannot trust his good fortune.

I believe that all he needs is someone to talk to,

To get it off his mind. I’ll have a talk to him tomorrow.

A
MY
.
Most certainly not, Charles, you are not the right person.

I prefer to believe that a few days at Wishwood

Among his own family, is all that he needs.

G
ERALD
.
Nevertheless, Amy, there’s something in Violet’s suggestion.

Why not ring up Warburton, and ask him to join us?

He’s an old friend of the family, it’s perfectly natural

That he should be asked. He looked after all the boys

When they were children. I’ll have a word with him.

He can talk to Harry, and Harry need have no suspicion.

I’d trust Warburton’s opinion.

A
MY
.
                                             If anyone speaks to Dr. Warburton

It should be myself. What does Agatha think?

A
GATHA
.
It seems a necessary move

In an unnecessary action,

Not for the good that it will do

But that nothing may be left undone

On the margin of the impossible.

A
MY
.
                                                 Very well.

I will ring up the doctor myself.

[
Exit
]

C
HARLES
.
Meanwhile, I have an idea. Why not question Downing?

He’s been with Harry ten years, he’s absolutely discreet.

He was with them on the boat. He might be of use.

I
VY
.
Charles! you don’t really suppose

That he might have pushed her over?

C
HARLES
.
In any case, I shouldn’t blame Harry.

I might have done the same thing once, myself.

Nobody knows what he’s likely to do

Until there’s somebody he wants to get rid of.

G
ERALD
.
Even so, we don’t want Downing to know

Any more than he knows already.

And even if he knew, it’s very much better

That he shouldn’t know that we knew it also.

Why not let sleeping dogs lie?