I Hear Voices (10 page)

I can not help feeling saddened that Arthur still distrusts me so.

“I’ll try not to, Arthur,” I assure him. ‘I’ll try not to say anything more than is suggested by the course of the
conversation
.”

“You won’t say what’s in your mind?” he demands, and then when I simply look at him with a pained and questioning
expression
, he continues, “you won’t say the sort of weird things that—well, that you sometimes
do
say?”

“I’ll try not to say anything weird, Arthur,” I promise. “But I don’t see how I can help saying what’s in my mind. Naturally, anything I say must be in my mind.”

“Yes, but,” cries Arthur, “you won’t say just anything that comes into your mind—I mean, not just the first thing you happen to think of. For example, what are you thinking of now?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I don’t think so.”

Arthur looks at me doubtfully, but he is unable to challenge this assertion. For a while we look at each other. Every time a thought comes into my mind I try to dismiss it. Arthur begins to grow restless.

“Are you still not thinking of anything?” he asks.

“I’m not sure,” I reply candidly. “Thoughts seem to be
echoing
in the background, like subdued voices in a huge cavern, and then there are sights and sounds that I’m aware of. But they’re not thoughts are they?”

“I’m not sure,” grumbles Arthur, peering a little uncertainly around his familiar office. “What are they like?”

“Like crackling sounds, like roaring sounds and buzzing sounds.”

“Just traffic,” comments Arthur, and in his voice I seem to detect a note of relief. “And the sights? What are they like?”

“Like orchards, like shipwrecks. One is like an old stone tower, a ruin and another—”

“You can’t
really
see those,” protests Arthur, getting to his feet and glowering at me. “There are no shipwrecks or orchards in my office What do you take me for? You’ve behaved in this way before. I try to help you. I do the best I can for you—we all do—poor Maria whom you’ve treated so abominably, Cousin Susan who guards you as tenderly as a mother, more tenderly than your natural mother, depraved woman, ever did, little Jane for whom, believe me, it is no blessing to have someone like you about—I don’t mention myself because it would be unseemly but I feel sure that whatever impression you have of my conduct, it can’t be one of total neglect. And then when we patiently exert ourselves—in ways that involve the most vital aspects of our lives too—the organization of our business arrangements—you start raving about orchards and trying to upset us. It’s most—most—most unsatisfactory.”

“I—I’m sorry, Arthur,” I stammer, feeling at once the
complete
validity, the inexorable justice, of his indictment. “I know I do nothing, nothing except tear my trousers and babble about shipwrecks. And where are the shipwrecks? There are none. It’s quite plain to me now.”

“Is it?” asks Arthur, with a note of rekindled hope in his voice. “You’re quite sure you don’t see any shipwrecks?”

“None,” I affirm. “Nor any tonsures, nor all those men clambering on the crags.”

But this fails to reassure Arthur and he hastily gets in touch with all the directors and tells them not to come, murmuring, as he does so, “I’ll have to reconsider this matter. I’ve been too hasty. I seem to have made a mistake or rather, as I sometimes feel is closer to the truth, a mistake seems to have encircled me. It seems to be about to close in on me.”

He is very considerate and tells me that he must extend my period of preliminary instruction, but he gets rather ill-
tempered
and reproachful when part of the mistake matures.

“Rotten luck,” he snarls, and then rushes out into the
anteroom
,
crying: “Didn’t you get my message?”

One of the directors has arrived. He is visibly put out by Arthur’s wild demeanor and withdraws haughtily into himself. Arthur snarls and snaps round him like an impertinent dog.

“I’ve been inspecting grain,” protests the director, with
obvious
reserve. “All day, in fact for several days, I’ve been
inspecting
our holdings. I’ve been through it all, the dirty estuary, the blind sea and the fields of grain—bound whither? I had to inquire. The pulverizing machines? I had to order them. Freights? Weights? All those and more—vessels and vassals. The hotels were bad—one was particularly bad. The girls were bad to me, and whiffs of my dry home kept breathing through. I’ve had the worst of times—a dry time—and I really—”

“Freights?” mutters Arthur, and a host of considerations descends upon him. He immediately draws the returned
director
away into his office, forgetting all about me and the problem I have created. A little later I hear him interspersing the
director’s
report with calm or anxious proposals.

“Quite,” I hear him say. “Exactly. We’ll send so and so. We’ll get in touch with so and so. Quite.”

“I suppose you don’t need me anymore,” I ask, interrupting them as circumspectly as I can.

“No,” replies Arthur, merely glancing at me. “We’ll
postpone
it for now. Mustn’t lose a moment. We’ll discuss it again later. Possibly.”

And so once more I leave Arthur’s office. The secretary says ‘Good-bye’ and looks after me with what may be a sympathetic glance, but I can not be sure. When I reach the stairs,
however
, I can not repress a smile for crisp and confused voices reach me from below and I surmise that no fewer than the majority of the directors have failed to receive Arthur’s
cancellation
and are hurrying up for the meeting. Most of them pass me with little more than an impersonal nod, or nothing at all,
but one, a rather red and tipsy-looking director, accosts me.

“I can probably guess why you’re smiling,” he begins. “It’s all over, is it? You’re well out of it, my boy. How the devil do you think I keep going, year after year? I keep going by
drinking,
every free moment. Not only am I inside the doors of those pleasant, reeking establishments as the dire barriers open but I keep a liberal supply of the necessary fluids about me at all times. I’ve got a flask in my pocket here,” and he tips his head sideways to indicate the decanter peeping out. “I’ve got bottles at home, bottles in the office, bottles in the car. I never get caught out, never, and I’m never drunk, not what you’d call drunk, if never sober. Yes, you’re well out of it. If you hadn’t been, you’d have got like me before long. We’re similar in some ways.”

He looks at me thoughtfully, if somewhat blearily, and
absently
unstoppers the decanter.

“Oh, I know, you don’t believe that. You think I’m one of Arthur’s crowd. No, I thought so too once and didn’t discover any different until too late. By that time I’d learned their
protocol
and that’s all I ever did learn. Well, I’ve been doing it ever since, signing the dry papers, grunting and scrutinizing and carrying on, but it’s all been a dream really. Have a drink?”

He hands me a little cup of whiskey and sits down on the stone steps. I drink the whiskey, aware that I do believe him, that I am quite sympathetic to what he is saying.

“All a dream,” he goes on, but not in a dreamy way, rather in a bluff, practical way as if he were calculating profits. “There’s a street corner mixed up in it, not one that I ever saw or stood on but a street corner somewhere.”

He pours himself a second whiskey and consumes it and the fiery veins burn more brightly on his cheeks.

“What street corner do you mean?” I ask him, and I
purposely
look away at a dusty grille.

“Well, I’ll tell you, as far as I can. I won’t say I’ve never told anyone before for I have brought the thing up sometimes, you know, when a bit warm around ten and someone standing near seems suddenly to be less than a total ass, but I’ve never really made much sense of it or felt that it made much sense to anybody else, sometimes not even to me.”

He pours himself yet another tot and then continues:

“It’s an ordinary street corner, in a suburb possibly, with some little neat bungalow type houses near it and a brick wall beyond which there are trees. Now I’m not saying that it isn’t really some place we lived in when I was a boy. Perhaps it is, but we didn’t move around much and I think I’d be able to place it if it were. And I can’t. More likely, the original, if there is one, is just some street corner I passed once and which got stuck in my mind in some way. But that’s not important. The thing about this street corner is that it doesn’t know anything about other street corners. It seems to be on its own. Do you see what I mean?”

“I’m in that area,” I say, and, as I say it, a shiver of
recollection
and bondage passes over me which I can not help
welcoming
for it seems appropriate to what the director is saying.

“Now, wait a minute,” he pleads. He presses his hand to his forehead and leans forward struggling with the elusiveness of his idea. “I’m not putting it right. It’s nothing that can be said directly. Because that could be contradicted. It’s something I
know
—the people in those idiotic bungalows are happy there. They have what they need, and they don’t need much and what they have, they don’t take from anybody else. There doesn’t seem to
be
anybody else. The children are allowed into the orchard—it’s really a sort of park for them, and they enjoy themselves there, romp if you see, during the warm days and on the other days, they go into the bungalows and enjoy
themselves
there. There are no newspapers—”

But here he suddenly shakes his head vigorously and waves his stick.

“No,” he admits, smiling a rather bitter, defeated smile, “I haven’t told you. I haven’t made it clear. Probably there’s
nothing
to tell, nothing that couldn’t be quite simply explained. But wait a minute. Wait a minute,” he urges although I have
neither
displayed, nor feel, any impatience, “I’ll tell you
something.
I’ll die soon—Oh, that’s all right. My heart’s doddering, my lungs are clogged—the doctor’s warned me—each bottle I kill has a stab at me and who knows when I’ll meet my match? It might be this meek-looking fellow here. No, that’s all right. I don’t mind that, although I’ve got a wife, but she’ll be all right—we’ve got a decent house in a decent neighborhood and she’ll have enough. She won’t miss me really—she’s not very affectionate at best and women don’t mourn a drunken
husband
—not that we haven’t been quite comfortable together in some ways—but still, as I was saying, it’s not that— dying; no, it’s more like this—I’ll have another shot if you can put up with me?”

He darts me a glance of rather heavy irony but also, I feel, of friendship, and then, not having really sought my
permission,
resumes:

“I’ve always thought about things, which means I’ve never felt that I understood them. Why do the papers say what they say? Why do we troop off and lead men against other batches of men? Why do we come home and sign papers and set up factories and so on? Well, I dare say a lot of people have thought similar things and some have gone on thinking them and some have given up. I’ve never given up, but whenever I think them and I seem to be reaching above them towards some sort of understanding that will make them seem more—reasonable if you understand me—bang, I think of that street corner. I’ve never got beyond it. My whole life’s been a sort of fumbling
under that roof. And now I’m going to die and I wouldn’t be surprised, no I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, as the pains begin to tear at my throat and I begin to dip down into the darkness, the last thought or picture I have of all the life I’ve lived is of that idiotic street corner that I can’t even place.”

He resettles his decanter in his pocket and we stand up. It is rather cool on the stone stairway and rather gloomy.

“Dreary place,” he remarks. “I think I’ll propose, now that you’re off the agenda, that we move to one of these new,
cheerful
places. I never do, you know, I never propose anything, though I stamp and murmur ‘hear, hear’ sometimes. Well, I must be getting up to the meeting. I don’t suppose you’ve got any comments on what I’ve been saying, have you?”

“Not really,” I confess. “I enjoyed hearing it.”

“Well, that’s something,” he retorts briskly. He gasps slightly as he sets his bulky and abused body into motion again, and then he puffs slowly off up the stairs. At the landing he turns to add something.

“It’s all right,” he adds. “What
could
you say, after all? Though the truth is, although I put it so badly, still I have the feeling that we got somewhere, don’t you think?”

But at this moment a burst of voices comes from the meeting and, as if he had heard his name being discreditably mentioned, he suddenly brandishes his stick and hobbles up and out of sight.

When I get home Cousin Susan asks:

“Well, how did you get on?”

“Not too badly, Susan,” I say, not very truthfully.

“Then you’re established in Arthur’s office? You’ve
embarked
on a joint enterprise?”

“Well, not finally,” I temporize, “there are still a good many details to be settled. As a matter of fact, a number of the directors arrived drunk and Arthur had to cancel the meeting.”

I do not get the impression that Susan is convinced by this, but she goes away dutifully to put on my egg and I go upstairs to my room and get into bed. I lie there motionlessly for a while, hoping to feel calm, but instead I feel increasingly lonely. Outside the window is the harsh glare of morning. Whippoorwills and large urban parrots are circling around a smoking chimney. Other whippoorwills and sparrows are
fluttering
above the street, watching the morning bustle of the city, interested only in those untidy, muttering ancients whom day brings forth with little bags of crusts.

“Another day,” cries Arthur, bursting cheerfully into my room.

“You’re on your way?”

“I’m going to the office, old son. I shall pass Harkin the weed man, dispensing weed. I pass him every morning. I think I know the way by now.”

“I should think you do, Arthur,” I agree. “You don’t have to think about it.”

“That’s right,” he admits, but on a slightly dubious note. “I can think about other things, problems that I have to face. I can keep my mind clear.”

“Of course you can.” But then an interesting point occurs to me. “Can you keep it clear at that corner by the lavatories which seems to be very old?”

“What are
you
going to do today?” Arthur interrupts me, moving a small condensation about.

“I thought I might feed the parrots,” I offer, knowing that, for some reasons, it pleases Arthur to think that I have made definite plans for the utilization of my time.

“There aren’t any parrots,” he retorts.

“Then I might feed the gulls,” I amend. “The azure gulls, lovely birds, unique birds, ornithologists agree—”

“No, you won’t,” he contradicts, not angrily but with a
certain
hard certainty in his voice. “You’ll just lie there thinking, like a blight or plague.”

The detached manner in which he speaks these words gives them a good deal of force and I find myself looking at him with surprise and even a certain reluctant admiration. But then he speaks some more and sinks at once to a lower level.

“Feed the gulls. You won’t find many gulls in this district. And if there were—hundreds of them, screaming about as if the house were a dead whale, catch you feeding them. I don’t know why I bother with you.”

And he abruptly leaves the room.

After he has gone, I lie still for quite a long time. I realize that he was right, that I have no intention of feeding the gulls, that I have really devised no plans whatsoever for the day. And yet it is not my intention to destroy the day. Very far from it. I awoke filled with determination to put it to some excellent use. I don’t think I had anything precisely in mind although, if I had been asked to express as clearly as I could the sort of thing that was forming there, I think I should have called it a
collaboration
. I had intended to suggest this to Arthur when he came in, but he took the opportunity to boast about some trivial
achievement
and assumed what can only be called an abstract virtue. I pointed this out to him and he could only reply by displaying various testimonials, one dating from the rural period that has never been verified, and one that anyone but a chamber athlete would despise. He also spoke of his single foreign tour when it was the custom of his detachment to make their way to a steamy oasis infested by parrots. Admittedly, his description of Coker, the Northern horn-man, bellowing droll Northern obscenities as the engaging parrots wiggled their brazen plumage at him, was fairly amusing, but, on another occasion, as he once
inadvertently
revealed, he was hard and unjust to this same Coker. He hates Coker because the man’s memory reproaches him,
but he can’t resist the applause he always wins when he
recounts
the spectacle. Arthur knew I’d penetrated to the
disreputable
core of the matter and so he closed on a note of bitterness. Later he came back into the room and purposely set fire to an end of straw trailing out of my old leather bag. He extinguished this in time but only to attempt to kindle a more intellectual blaze by remarking, in an apparently casual
manner,
making a show of directing his attention towards the
remarkable
Mrs. Groggins who was streaming her beauty down the street, “I can probably do twenty things that you can’t.” Naturally I didn’t challenge this, but Arthur could not resist adding, “Just one example—I can catch parrots.” I did smile faintly then, not that I found it really amusing, and Arthur, perhaps feeling slightly ashamed of himself, modified his
attitude
a little. He came and stood beside me for a moment and then, on his way out, rather casually, but with kind intent, said, “Never mind, I’ll bring you a few plumes.” And then I heard the particular sounds of his departure and the cries of the gulls, which have screamed round these rocks for untold ages, rising to a shriller note as he drove wildly out amongst them. And then the note of the gulls subsided again.

And now I lie quietly, gazing without interest at a point near the doorway. Nothing occurs to me. It is quiet in the house, It will remain quiet unless someone shakes the house. Sometimes they rebuild these houses or parts of them. Sometimes they redirect the whole line, so that if you stand at special sighting points, you can visualize later projects. An acquaintance of Groggins was persecuted like this. He protested, but his protest was used to make bullets. He said that it would be better to tear down the lot. He drew a graphic picture of the scene then, when pillars, rubble, charred frames and intimate debris made a playground for rats. These rats would do nothing with the wreckage but run nimbly here and there, finding bodies.
Finally
 
the rats would come up against pumice stone and be appalled by the acrid smell. They would picture the earth’s surface as so many smoking cones. Then they might sip
delicately.
But the thing has still to be negotiated. At this moment it glows in the forge. It has been hammered by sturdy men striding out of hamlets, by exhausted men, satiated finally on strands. Everyone has at least a little hammer and deals it feeble blows.

“Hello,” chirps Maria, entering in a cheerful and yet rather sheepish and beguiling mood. “Do you want an egg? I’ve brought you one.”

“Thank you, Maria,” I say, trying to sound as grateful as possible and, in fact, the autumn morning does stir appetite in my throat. “I’d be glad of some breakfast.”

“Here’s your breakfast,” she continues, setting the tray
carefully
on my lap. “When are you going to get up?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. I raise my spoon to tackle the egg, but suddenly the few trees along the street, lifting their heads into the first, thin seasonal mists and tasting their annual
decline,
breathe autumn into the room. I leave my egg unscathed. “It’s autumn again,” I remark, smiling at Maria.

She looks a little bewildered and yet fresh and enthusiastic.

“I know. I’ve just walked along to the shops. It’s funny, I noticed it too, suddenly. You don’t get much chance in this district. But you know that street—”

She gropes for the name of a street, and then, when she has found it, describes how she looked along it and saw how the trees, only lightly burdened now with crisp leaves, arched the roadway, recreating a little bit of ancient forest.

“It’s suddenly become autumn,” she remarks.

“It’s been very sudden,” I agree. “But you’re quite right. I felt it almost at the same moment.”

Maria does not say anything, but she is clearly thoughtful.
She may be thinking of some road above patches of wood or of her past. She goes to the window and draws the curtains more fully.

“Can you see any trees?” she asks.

I look but she is in the way and, anyway, I feel sure that no trees are actually visible from my bed. She suggests that I join her by the window.

“I
was
thinking of my past,” she confesses. “I don’t often do that. I don’t believe in regrets.”

“Do you have regrets?” I ask her.

“Of course,” she exclaims, turning towards me with a
surprised
expression. “Everyone has regrets. Are you coming to look at the trees? You can see them from here.”

“All right,” I agree.

I put my tray aside and climb rather reluctantly out of bed. The floor is cold with some of autumn’s moisture. With one part of me I feel a desire to embrace the unexpected season but I know that I could never be sufficient, and with another part I want to remain in bed and trace a development that Maria interrupted.

“Still, go on,” I urge. “Explain to me what you meant, about regrets.”

“About regrets,” she repeats vaguely, her glance drifting weakly from the tree tops which are either raking the mist as barbed wire rakes sheep or else are being shriveled by the mists and having the vital elements in the sap driven down into the safe roots. Her glance, leaving the crusts of nature without penetrating deeply into any aspect of them, is taken familiarly by Mrs. Groggins who is now returning from the shops in the company of a man called Scarl.

At the window I shiver a little. As far as one can see,
between
the prongs and casings, the mist is draped thinly over time. It is stirred faintly by aspiration, and these currents,
slowly being absorbed by tidal and transcendental streams of different kinds are carrying this part of the season away. Each part of the season is stored carefully. It is kept in special
cupboards
from which the Provider brings out the right things at the right time.

“There goes Lady Groggins,” remarks Maria. She looks with a sort of resentful admiration at the remarkable wife of old Groggins.

“And the regrets?” I insist. “You were going to tell me about the regrets.”

“I haven’t got any regrets,” returns Maria irritably.

She remarks that she could use a new coat. Then, having turned away and glanced thoughtfully, her mind running to domestic matters of cleaning and so forth, round the room, she suddenly comes back and says boldly:

“I wish I’d married Carlo, if you really want to know.”

“I’ve often wondered,” I admit. “Of course, there were rumors—”

“Rumors!” she snorts, thinking, doubtless, of her passion for the Italian and their contempt, at that time, for rumors: of the times when, sealed together in doorways or entwined in public gardens, the protests of all morality would have been as the whispering of a breeze above the thundering falls of their passion.