Eyeless In Gaza (32 page)

‘But the Greeks,' Mr Croyland protested, ‘the Florentines, the Chinese . . .' He sketched in the air an exquisitely graceful gesture, as though he were running his fingers over the flanks of a Sung jar, round the cup-shaped navel of a High Renaissance water-nymph. Subtly, with what was meant to be the expression of a Luini Madonna, he smiled; but always, through the opening fur, his large yellow teeth showed ferociously, rapaciously – even when he talked about the Schifanoia frescoes, even when he whispered, as though it were an Orphic secret, the name of Vermeer of Delft.

But nonsense, Staithes insisted, almost invariably nonsense and rubbish. And most of what wasn't nonsense or rubbish was only just ordinarily good. ‘Like what you or I could do
with a little practice,' he explained. ‘And if one knows oneself – the miserable inept little self that can yet accomplish such feats – well, really, one can't be bothered to take the feats very seriously.'

Mr Croyland, it was evident from his frown, didn't think of his own self in quite this spirit.

‘Not but what one can enjoy the stuff for all kinds of irrelevant reasons,' Staithes admitted. ‘For its ingenuity, for example, if one's in any way a technician or an interpreter. Steady progressions in the bass, for example, while the right hand is modulating apparently at random. Invariably delightful! But then, so's carpentry. No; ultimately it isn't interesting, that ordinarily good stuff. However great the accomplishment or the talent. Ultimately it's without value; it differs from the bad only in degree. Composing like Brahms, for example – what is it, after all, but a vastly more elaborate and intellectual way of composing like Meyerbeer? Whereas the best Beethoven is as far beyond the best Brahms as it's beyond the worst Meyerbeer. There's a difference in kind. One's in another world.'

‘Another world,' echoed Mr Croyland in a religious whisper. ‘But that's just what I've been trying to get you to admit. With the highest art one enters another world.'

Beppo fizzled with emphatic agreement.

‘A world,' Mr Croyland insisted, ‘of gods and angels.'

‘Don't forget the invisible lovers,' said Helen, who was finding, as she drank her white wine, that everything was becoming more and more uproariously amusing.

Mr Croyland ignored the interruption. ‘A next world,' he went on. ‘The great artists carry you up to
heaven
.'

‘But they never allow you to stay there,' Mark Staithes objected. ‘They give you just a taste of the next world, then let you fall back, flop, into the mud. Marvellous while it lasts. But the time's so short. And even while they've actually got
me in heaven, I catch myself asking: Is that all? Isn't there anything more, anything further? The other world isn't other enough. Even
Macbeth
, even the Mass in D, even the El Greco
Assumption
.' He shook his head. ‘They used to satisfy me. They used to be an escape and a support. But now . . . now I find myself wanting something more, something heavenlier, something less human. Yes, less human,' he repeated. Then the flayed face twisted itself up into an agonized smile. ‘I feel rather like Nurse Cavell about it,' he added. ‘Painting, music, literature, thought – they're not enough.'

‘What is enough, then?' asked Beppo. ‘Politics? Science? Money-making?' Staithes shook his head after every suggestion.

‘But what else is there?' asked Beppo.

Still anatomically smiling, Mark looked at him for a moment in silence, then said, ‘Nothing – absolutely nothing.'

‘Speak for yourself,' said Mr Croyland. ‘They're enough for me.' He dropped his eyelids once more and retired into spiritual fastnesses.

Looking at him, Staithes was moved by a sudden angry desire to puncture the old gentleman's balloon-like complacency – to rip a hole in that great bag of cultural gas, by means of which Mr Croyland contrived to hoist his squalid traffickings sky-high into the rarefied air of pure aesthetics. ‘And what about death? You find them adequate against death?' he insisted in a tone that had suddenly become brutally inquisitorial. He paused, and for a moment the old man was enveloped in a horribly significant silence – the silence of those who in the presence of a victim or an incurable tactfully ignore the impending doom. ‘Adequate against life, for that matter,' Mark Staithes went on, relenting; ‘against life in any of its more unpleasant or dangerous aspects.'

‘Such as dogs falling on one out of aeroplanes!' Helen burst out laughing.

‘But what
are
you talking about?' cried Beppo.

‘Father Hopkins won't keep dogs off,' she went on breathlessly. ‘I agree with
you,
Mark. A good umbrella, any day . . .'

Mr Croyland rose to his feet. ‘I must go to bed,' he said. ‘And so should you, my dear.' The little white hand upon her shoulder was benevolent, almost apostolic. ‘You're tired after your journey.'

‘You mean, you think I'm drunk,' Helen answered, wiping her eyes. ‘Well, perhaps you're right. Gosh,' she added, ‘how nice it is to laugh for a change!'

When Mr Croyland was gone, and Beppo with him, Staithes turned towards her. ‘You're in a queer state, Helen.'

‘I'm amused,' she explained.

‘What by?'

‘By everything. But it began with Dante; Dante and Hans Andersen. If you'd been married to Hugh, you'd know why
that
was so extraordinarily funny. Imagine Europa if the bull had turned out after all to be Narcissus!'

‘I don't think you'd better talk so loud,' said Staithes, looking across the room to where, with an expression on his face of hopeless misery, Hugh was pretending to listen to an animated discussion between Caldwell and the young German.

Helen also looked round for a moment; then turned back with a careless shrug of the shoulders. ‘If
he
says he's invisible, why shouldn't
I
say I'm inaudible?' Her eyes brightened again with laughter. ‘I shall write a book called
The Inaudible Mistress
. A woman who says exactly what she thinks about her lovers while they're making love to her. But they can't hear her. Not a word.' She emptied her glass and refilled it.

‘And what does she say about them?'

‘The truth, of course. Nothing but the truth. That the romantic Don Juan is just a crook. Only I'm afraid that in
reality she wouldn't find that out till afterwards. Still, one might be allowed a bit of poetic licence – make the
esprit d'escalier
happen at the same time as the romantic affair. The moonlight, and “My darling,” and “I adore you,” and those extraordinary sensations – and at the same moment “You're nothing but a sneak-thief, nothing but a low blackguardly swindler.” And then there'd be the spiritual lover – Hans Dante, in fact.' She shook her head. ‘Talk of Kraft Ebbing!'

‘But what does she say to him?'

‘What indeed!' Helen took a gulp of wine. ‘Luckily she's inaudible. We'd better skip that chapter and come straight to the epicurean sage. With the sage, she doesn't have to be quite so obscure. “You think you're a man, because you happen not to be impotent.” That's what she says to him. “But in fact you're not a man. You're sub-human. In spite of your sageness – because of it even. Worse than the crook in some ways.” And then, bang, like a sign from heaven, down comes the dog!'

‘But what dog?'

‘Why, the dog Father Hopkins can't protect you from. The sort of dog that bursts like a bomb when you drop it out of an aeroplane. Bang!' The laughing excitement seethed and bubbled within her, seeking expression, seeking an outlet; and the only possible assuagement was through some kind of outrage, some violence publicly done to her own and other people's feelings. ‘It almost fell on Anthony and me,' she went on, finding a strange relief in speaking thus openly and hilariously about the unmentionable event. ‘On the roof of his house it was. And we had no clothes on. Like the Garden of Eden. And then, out of the blue, down came that dog – and exploded, I tell you, literally exploded.' She threw out her hands in a violent gesture. ‘Dog's blood from head to foot. We were drenched – but
drenched
! In spite of which this imbecile goes and writes me a letter.' She opened her bag and
produced it. ‘Imagining I'd read it, I suppose. As though nothing had happened, as though we were still in the Garden of Eden. I always told him he was a fool. There!' She handed the letter to Staithes. ‘You open it and see what the idiot has to say. Something witty, no doubt; something airy and casual; humorously wondering why I took it into my funny little head to go away.' Then, noticing that Mark was still holding the letter unopened, ‘But why don't you read it?' she asked.

‘Do you really want me to?'

‘Of course. Read it aloud. Read it with expression.' She rolled the
r
derisively.

‘Very well, then.' He tore open the envelope and unfolded the thin sheets. ‘“I went to look for you at the hotel,”' he read out slowly, frowning over the small and hurried script. ‘“You were gone – and it was like a kind of death.”'

‘Ass!' commented Helen.

‘“It's probably too late, probably useless; but I feel I must try to tell you in this letter some of the things I meant to say to you, yesterday evening, in words. In one way it's easier – for I'm inept when it comes to establishing a purely
personal
contact with another human being. But in another way, it's much more difficult; for these written words will just be words and no more, will come to you, floating in a void, unsupported, without the life of my physical presence.”'

Helen gave a snort of contemptuous laughter. ‘As though
that
would have been a recommendation!' She drank some more wine.

‘“Well, what I wanted to tell you,”' Staithes read on, ‘“was this: that suddenly (it was like a conversion, like an inspiration) while you were kneeling there yesterday on the roof, after that horrible thing had happened . . .”'

‘He means the dog,' said Helen. ‘Why can't he say so?'

‘“. . . suddenly I realized . . .”' Mark Staithes broke off. ‘Look here,' he said, ‘I really can't go on.'

‘Why not? I insist on your going on,' she cried excitedly.

He shook his head. ‘I've got no right!'

‘But I've given you the right.'

‘Yes, I know. But he hasn't.'

‘What has he got to do with it? Now that I've received the letter . . .'

‘But it's a love-letter.'

‘A love-letter?' Helen repeated incredulously, then burst out laughing. ‘That's too good!' she cried. ‘That's really sublime! Here, give it to me.' She snatched the letter out of his hand. ‘Where are we? Ah, here! “. . . kneeling on the roof after that horrible thing had happened, suddenly I realized that I'd been living a kind of outrageous lie towards you!”' She declaimed the words rhetorically and to the accompaniment of florid gesticulations. ‘“I realized that in spite of all the elaborate pretence that it was just a kind of detached irresponsible amusement, I really loved you.” He really lo-o-oved me,' she repeated, drawing the word into a grotesque caricature of itself. ‘Isn't that wonderful? He really lo-o-oved me.' Then, turning round in her chair, ‘Hugh!' she called across the room.

‘Helen, be quiet!'

But the desire, the need to consummate the outrage was urgent within her.

She shook off the restraining hand that Staithes had laid on her arm, shouted Hugh's name again and, when they all turned towards her, ‘I just wanted to tell you he really lo-o-oved me,' she said, waving the letter.

‘Oh, for God's sake shut up!'

‘I most certainly won't shut up,' she retorted, turning back to Mark. ‘Why shouldn't I tell Hugh the good news? He'll be delighted, seeing how much he lo-o-oves me himself. Don't
you, Hughie?' She swung back again, and her face was flushed and brilliant with excitement. ‘Don't you?' Hugh made no answer, but sat there pale and speechless, looking at the floor.

‘Of course you do,' she answered for him. ‘In spite of all appearances to the contrary. Or rather,' she emended, uttering a little laugh, ‘in spite of all disappearances – seeing that it was always invisible, that love of yours. Oh yes, Hughie darling, definitely invisible. But still . . . still, in spite of all disappearances to the contrary, you do lo-o-ove me, don't you? Don't you?' she insisted, trying to force him to answer her, ‘don't you?'

Hugh rose to his feet and, without speaking a word, almost ran out of the room.

‘Hugh!' Caldwell shouted after him, ‘Hugh!' There was no answer. Caldwell looked round at the others. ‘I think perhaps one ought to see that he's all right,' he said, with the maternal solicitude of a publisher who sees a first-rate literary property rushing perhaps towards suicide. ‘One never knows.' And jumping up he hurried after Hugh. The door slammed.

There was a moment's silence. Then, startlingly, Helen broke into laughter. ‘Don't be alarmed, Herr Giesebrecht,' she said turning to the young German. ‘It's just a little bit of English family life.
Die Familie im Wohnzimmer
, as we used to learn at school.
Was tut die Mutter? Die Mutter spielt Klavier. Und was tut der Vater? Der Vater sitzt in einem Lehnstuhl und raucht seine Pfeife
. Just that, Herr Giesebrecht, no more. Just a typical bourgeois family.'

‘Bourgeois,' the young man repeated, and nodded gravely. ‘You say better than you know.'

‘Do I?'

‘You are a wictim,' he went on, very slowly, and separating word from word, ‘a wictim of capitalist society. It is full of wices . . .'

Helen threw back her head and laughed again more loudly
than before; then, controlling herself with an effort, ‘You mustn't think I'm laughing at you,' she gasped. ‘I think you're being sweet to me – extraordinarily decent. And probably you're quite right about capitalist society. Only somehow at this particular moment – I don't know why – it seemed rather . . . rather . . .' The laughter broke out once more. ‘I'm sorry.'