The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (28 page)

How can I bear it, he thought, how can I go on bearing it without becoming something savage and awful? There seemed a
requirement
of violence, something he had never known before. The mild image of Jesus, never far from his mind, rose quietly over the horizon of his grief. Help me, Lord, he prayed, oh help me. Let me not die of misery and hate. So was he not alone? Was he then thoroughly and into his bitter depths
known
by Someone? Had he a benign Companion who could judge and console, and turn what was evil somehow into good? Was there even here some positive good thing which he and he only could perform? Was there invincible Good in the world after all? He gazed upon the calm pastel-shaded image of the Redeemer which hovered like a ghost within the sun-reddened cave of his now closed eyelids. And he knew, with a return of even deeper agony, that this appealing vision was only an empty fantasm after all.

‘Your resemblance to the Old Man of the Sea is becoming tedious to me.’ Monty’s voice.

‘Who was that on the telephone? Your mother?’ A strange voice.

‘That was Harriet asking me to come over at once. Emily’s there. As I told you, you’re invited.’

‘I’m not sure that I want to come,’ said Edgar, for it was he.

‘Do as you please. If you stay here you’d better not drink any more of that whisky. Good-bye.’

Edgar and Monty were sitting on the verandah. David who, unseen, was listening, was standing in the Moorish drawing-room, beside the purple sofa, near to the de Morgan-tiled bookcase which had been a fountain in Mr Lockett’s time. He had spent the whole day wandering about on or near the motorway. A haze of hunger and faintness travelled with him, buzzing lightly. He felt disembodied and mad as if he had become some sort of demon. No, not disembodied: the great hand of physical desire, descending from those heavens where his friend Jesus had once lived, had been twisting him all day. Vague images of girls floated around him, battering him like malevolent butterflies.

After five o’clock he had begun intensely to need to talk to Monty. The idea of talking to Monty suddenly, in a world without solace, presented itself as a refuge. He ran, sometimes staggering a little under the hunger and giddiness haze, back across the fields, along the lane, beside the wall and through the leafy roads as far as Locketts. And now Monty was not alone and was just going to go out to meet that dreadful woman.

Standing in the half-shuttered room, David decided to wait to see if Monty would leave the house by himself, and then to pursue him.

A book lay open upon the table. Poetry. In Greek. David’s mind, switched like a well-trained engine, read the words, which he knew well,

Then swift-footed Achilles answered him. ‘Why, oh beloved head, are you come here to tell me what things I should do? Indeed, Patroclus, I will fulfil them all and be obedient to your bidding. But please come nearer to me, and even for a little while let us embrace each other and satisfy our hearts with grieving.’ So saying he reached out his hands, but could not clasp him. The spirit like a vapour fled away beneath the earth, gibbering faintly.

The terrible image of bereavement and loss, winged by beauty, seized on him like an eagle and he cried aloud. He sat down upon the purple sofa and wept, putting his face in his hands.

‘What’s that?’ said Edgar, jumping up in alarm.

Monty threw back the shutter and the weeping boy was revealed. ‘It’s David. Harriet’s son.’

Monty was in a mood of irritation and self-dissatisfaction almost amounting to anger. He had intended to spend the morning in meditation and to bring his mind into a state of absolute calm. He was becoming now almost frightened by his mental condition. Other men suffered bereavements and did not seem to drift away into this state of almost unliveable consciousness. The idea of killing himself was now more real to him than it had ever been, and he understood for the first time how it is that men can prefer extinction to the continuation of agonizing mental pain. He simply must somehow stop himself from suffering in this way. A guilt about Sophie roved sharply inside him and a cinematograph in his head re-enacted and re-enacted certain scenes. He must, he thought, now somehow switch himself off or else move on into some new and even more awful mode of being. But even as he composed himself into slit-eyed immobility and called upon the stillness beyond the stillness where the fretful struggle of self and other is eternally laid at rest, he knew that he could not thus achieve what was needful. Such wisdom as he owned had told him that he could only survive his grief by giving in to it entirely, and though that way might seem to lead into madness there still appeared to be no alternative.

With a sort of mindless stubbornness he held on to the idea of becoming a schoolmaster. Before Sophie’s death, though he had been in great pain (a pain which seemed like bliss compared with present pain) he had at least been able to think, and he had thought that it would be good for him thus to do an ordinary plain job. A complete change of world might even help him should he ever want to write again. He needed simple compulsory things in his life, to clothe himself in some humble serviceable role. Moments of vision suggested that to be forced to help people might be healing, might mysteriously make his long struggles with ‘it’ bear fruit at last, might at least help him to bear his (then future) bereavement without becoming in some way eviL For Monty well knew how untouched within him were certain dark things with which he could not ‘play’, as Blaise for instance played with his. Even Milo Fane, though certainly a product of the ‘dark’ things, was not really a part of them. Perhaps they had more to do with Magnus Bowles than they had to do with Milo Fane. Milo was a frivolity compared with
them.
Now that Sophie was dead the schoolmastering idea remained, drained of ‘interest’, but at least presenting a possible goal in a world without live ends, a way of countering this truly fearful self-absorption. The lack of ‘interest’ could even prove an advantage. Might not ‘it’ reward him for a motiveless decent act, if that was indeed what the school-mastering idea represented?

However it was one thing to dream of a new and useful mode of life, quite another to get oneself out of a comfortable book-lined house in Buckinghamshire and into a masters’ common room. This was where, Monty had reluctantly to admit, Edgar Demarnay came in. Edgar had taken over the idea with enthusiasm and had begun to give it body. Monty could teach history and Latin, could he not? After all, he had taught history and Latin long ago, before Milo. And he could teach Greek when he had had time to brush it up a bit. How enjoyable. Edgar felt quite envious. Teaching a fine dead language to clever boys was surely one of the most delightful occupations in the world. As for a job for Monty nothing was easier. Old Binkie Fairhazel, Monty remembered Binkie from college, was now headmaster of a school called Bankhurst near Northampton, and had written to Edgar as soon as he had heard of Edgar’s appointment to ask him to look out for a classics master. Well, Monty’s Greek was rusty, but he could soon bring it up to scratch. Old Binkie would be delighted. No doubt, thought Monty, recalling the contemptuous way he had treated Binkie at college. He scoffed at Edgar’s idea but let a sense of destiny carry him nevertheless towards it. Must he not wait for ‘signs’ and was not Edgar one? Could he without help find himself a job before September? No. Where was he, will-less as he was, to go? Edgar pointed out that the Northampton school was not far from Oxford and was even closer to Mockingham. Would he, Monty wondered, ever sit once more upon the terrace at Mockingham, drinking brandy and smoking cigars with Edgar, and looking down at the river and the famous vista through the woods? He would need a few weekends off if he were to castigate himself to the extent of Binkie Fairhazel.

He also reminded himself that he wanted to be out of Locketts before his mother arrived. He wanted to be able to decide to sell Locketts. Only something detained him, something interfered with all his plans, and that something was Harriet. He felt, he told himself, no dangerous degree of affection for Harriet, but he did feel affection and a sort of sense of responsibility for her. He also felt a considerably less pure-minded interest in her predicament and curiosity to see how it would develop. This mean little interest and curiosity were, in their way, a sort of mediocre consolation to him since they were a genuine distraction from his bereavement. Harriet was the only person in the world who now moved him in any way. Harriet, and of course David. Would it not be better to stay near them, even running the gauntlet of his mother’s visit, and let the schoolmaster idea drift for a while? Besides, if he let Edgar help him he would be that much more bound to that Old Man of the Sea.

Harriet was the sort of ‘soft’ or ‘angelic’ woman whom Monty had always felt to be
his
kind of woman in the old days, in the days of his ‘frightfulness’. Harriet’s truthfulness, her unshadowed openness, her absolute obviousness, her naive untested goodness, her evident innocence calmed and cheered him a little, could do so even now. She was a gentle utterly harmless person who could make no one her victim. How was it that when Monty fell really in love he fell for a devious disloyal two-faced sharp-edged little monster like Sophie? Sophie’s nose was the reason, or there was no reason. Or her shoes. He had simply wanted that alien unjustifiable unassimilable being more than anything in the world. Harriet was a consoler though and the picture of her sweetness and harmlessness was a good one to be held up now in front of his face. Perhaps after all he would stay with Harriet And now he thought, as he listened to Edgar telling him about alterations he was planning at Mockingham and what the National Trust man had said and how he had seen a sparrow-hawk in the valley, it was nearly time for him to go to Harriet’s idiotic party for Emily McHugh. Monty had rather disliked Emily and suspected it was mutual. He saw clearly the sort of demoness that sat enthroned inside that vital blue-eyed ferocious calculating little being. But what so moved Blaise here repelled Monty. Now he must go to the party, be polite, pretend to be meeting Emily for the first time, and listen to Harriet talking, as she invariably did when she met him, about Magnus Bowles. At that moment David cried out.

Monty, whose grief had no tears, gazed with sudden fury upon the blubbing boy. ‘Stop that at once, will you!’

‘Don’t be angry about it,’ said Edgar. ‘He’s got a lot to cry for. I think maybe I shall cry myself.’

‘You’re foully drunk.’

‘I’m not – yet. There, David, don’t cry, dear boy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said David, rubbing the sleeve of his now filthy shirt across his eyes.

‘Introduce us, Monty,’ said Edgar.

‘Oh God. David Gavender, Professor Edgar Demarnay.’

‘Not professor now ac —’

‘David, are you coming to this Emily McHugh party of your mother’s?’

‘No.’

‘Hadn’t you better get meeting her over with? You need only stay for a few minutes.’

‘No. I can’t—’

‘You go,‘ said Edgar. ‘I’ll stay here and – hie – talk to David.’

‘Oh –
hell -
said Monty. He left them and walked quickly out of the house. He suddenly stupidly passionately did not want to leave Edgar alone with the tearful David. If only he had been by himself, a tearful David would have interested him, though he would have been angry all the same. Now Edgar would crawl over everything, interfering, misunderstanding, messing about, getting more and more
in.
He had to attend Harriet’s ghastly party, but he resolved to return home very soon and tell Edgar to go. As he turned into the front garden of Hood House Seagull snapped at his heels. Monty kicked him.

‘Are you the Professor Demarnay who wrote
Babylonian Mathematics and Greek Logic?’

‘Yes.’

‘And
Empedocles as Poetry?’

‘Yes.’

‘And
Pythagoras and His Debt to Scythia?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did that edition of the
Cratylus?’

‘Yes, but don’t let’s go on all night, dear boy. Dry those charming tears and tell me
all
about it.’

Monty had had several short drinks. With Edgar he had drunk slowly. Now he was drinking fast. So indeed was everyone else. There were some exquisite little sandwiches, but no one had eaten any. There was even about the strange gathering the semblance of a real party. No one seemed at a loss for words. There had been no disasters so far. Introduced by Harriet to Emily McHugh, Monty had bowed silently and so had she. Constance Pinn, introduced, smiled conspiratorially and seized his hand, scratching his palm hard with her index finger. Pinn had since then been trying to engage him in conversation and Monty had been determinedly avoiding any
tête-à-tête.
Pinn was handsome, dressed with ostentatious simplicity in her black dress with the lace collar. (Brussels lace, cast off by a girl at school.) Her sleek slightly domed auburn hair glowed wirily with health and confidence. Emily was handsome too and had got her clothes right for once. She was wearing a white blouse and the Italian cameo brooch with a blue velvet waistcoat and black trousers. She kept fingering her dark hair, which was newly washed and pleasantly floppy, and thrusting it back with boyish gestures. Her blue eyes were bright and brave, darting rather self-consciously about, observing furniture rather than persons. Harriet by contrast was pale and untidy, hairpins much in evidence and looking tired. She rarely wore jewellery, but had put on the silver-gilt bracelet with engraved roses which her father had given her. She kept clicking and unclicking its catch. The belt of her grey voile dress had come undone and trailed. She had whispered to Monty early on, ‘Stay till they’ve gone, won’t you.’ So in spite of the horrid possibility of a David-Edgar entente, it seemed that he had to stay. In any case, now that he saw Harriet with her tumbling hair and her nervous hands and her trailing belt he wanted to stay.

Harriet had told Emily ‘I hope David will come soon,’ but David had not come. She had asked Monty about Edgar and he had replied vaguely. No David, no Edgar, and Emily and Pinn, who had both drunk plenty, showed no signs of proposing to go. Blaise, red in the face, was all smiles, agreeing quickly with anyone who addressed him. Harriet kept touching his arm reassuringly, perhaps possessively. Pinn, who was now getting the giggles, kept staring at him and laughing. Emily resolutely ignored him. She also ignored Monty and Pinn and addressed her remarks exclusively to Harriet. Monty, evading Pinn, talked mainly to Blaise who though incapable of listening or of answering rationally could quite respectably babble. Monty was beginning to feel, with the effect of drink, a sort of exhilaration. It was not exactly that he wanted something scandalous to occur, he was just horribly interested.