Accident, p.1
Accident, page 1
ACCIDENT
By the same author
MEETING PLACE
SPACES OF THE DARK
THE RAINBEARERS
CORRUPTION
AFRICAN SWITCHBACK
THE LIFE OF RAYMOND RAYNES
Accident
A Novel by
NICHOLAS MOSLEY
Coward-McCann, Inc.
New York
COPYRIGHT ©1965 BY NICHOLAS MOSLEY
First American Edition 1966
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-13125
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The characters in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any living person
I
I.
Trees at night are like an army marching. I came across the car on its side across the road. It stretched from bank to bank like the stump of a tree uprooted.
I had been coming down the road with my torch making a circle on the gravel. The underneath of the car was towards me mottled with drops of earth like rain. I climbed on the side of the car. My torch reappeared beneath me moving in glass at different levels. There was a fast ticking like a clock with the pendulum gone. I registered this— the petrol pump. I opened the front door upwards, lying on my back and pushing with a hand and foot. I put my torch in my mouth. My breath made a snoring sound. The door crashed back against the body of the car and my torch swung downwards. I thought I had lost all my teeth.
I said—“William?’
Inside there was the ignition key. I turned it and the ticking stopped. There were bodies—piled and untouchable.
Rolling to my front and resting my torch on the edge of the door making lights inside like diamonds I reached down and touched cloth, soft, that thing of bones, untouchable.
I said—“Anna?”
Anna groaned.
I began pulling at her. I did not know if you did this. The bones in the white skin sharp as razors. I thought— Somebody help me.
The indecency of the dead.
Anna screamed.
I said “Anna, where is it?”
She began pushing against something below her, climbing with her shoes on its face. J thought—They always do this.
I said “Are you all right?”
She reared up out of the car with her head and shoulders, the clouds and the white moon moving above her. She pushed her hair back. There was the smell of petrol. And another smell, sickening.
I shouted “You’re standing on him!”
She came out of the car like a dancer, myself lifting her, my hands on her thighs. I said “Am I hurting you?” We turned in the air and moved towards the trees and the dark bank. I lowered her and my head went on to the ground. There was something on my hair, my hands. I made a circle of finger and thumb and drew it up each finger. It had no colour, smell.
Climbing on to the car again and looking down I saw William with his face to the ground among the glass splinters. I tried to get into the back seat but the front door had fallen back so I had to lower myself through the front with my legs sideways not to stand on him. I knelt on the broken glass, my hand out, the blood tasting clean. The car like a diving bell.
I said—“William?”
I knew he was dead. I felt his wrist, shoulder. How one does know this. I put my head against his neck and listened.
Anna appeared above me, her huge body at the window. She leaned right into the car with her arms hanging down.
I pushed at her.
One of her hands reached a handbag by William’s feet. She helped me raise her, one hand on the steering wheel. The steering wheel was in the top half of the car.
I began walking up the road towards the telephone.
Anna was sitting on the bank. She had opened her bag and was doing something to her face with a handkerchief.
I had emerged from the car head and shoulders. The trees and the night sky. The steering wheel was at my waist. When I had leaned down, and had first touched Anna, I had had one hand on the steering wheel.
I began walking up the road towards the telephone. Somewhere I had smelled whisky. In the broken glass at the bottom, on the bank where I had lowered Anna. Anna had been on top of William. I stood and watched her. She was wiping her mouth.
I said “Can you walk?”
She did not look at me. She was wearing an evening dress, white, with a skirt that bulged up in a hoop. The grass and the dark bank with dampness on it.
I said “I’m going to telephone.”
I walked up the lane towards my house. Three minutes to the back gate and the grey posts rotting. In the hall there were broken toys and a bicycle. The dog came towards me, shivering. I said into the telephone “There’s an accident in Copper Lane, could you come quickly?”
I sat by the telephone. Night, objects, expectant. I should be running. Time catching up with me.
I was going out of the house again when Anna was there on the doorstep, an apparition. She was holding her bag in front of her: her head in profile: a ruined housemaid. The trees in the sky like dead banners. I said “Anna, are you all right?” I felt her arms, shoulders. The smell of whisky again. I said “Come in.” I led her through to the sitting room and turned on an electric fire. She sat in a chair. She did not do anything.
Her hair fair and her flat face puffy. Her dress with her body coming out of it like a bathing dress. Toes turned inwards. I thought—I should get a blanket. There was blue wall-paper and a yellow rug and black curtains with a gold pelmet. The police and the ambulance would be coming. Cranes and searchlights. I put my hand on Anna’s head. The skull was small, fragile. I said “Were you driving?” Her head was by my thighs. I said “Don’t worry, Anna.” The dead time. Running down of the world. Two o’clock in the morning.
The policeman was our village policeman. He had a tapering head that seemed to have fitted itself to his helmet like a nut. He held his helmet under his arm. He said— “Codrington, Mr. William Codrington.”
I said “That’s right.”
I was sitting in the chair that Anna had been sitting in. He said “Do you know what he might have been doing?” I said “Won’t you sit down?”
The policeman put his helmet on the floor.
He said “He might have been coming to see you?”
I said “I’m the only house for some distance up the lane.” “But you did know him?”
“He was my pupil.”
“At the university?”
“Yes.”
He had his notebook, folded over backwards, and a yellow pencil.
“Would he have a reason to come and see you?”
I said “He’d been at this party.” I felt I was ill. I put a hand to my forehead. I could make myself ill. I said—“A party at college, he must have come from there.”
The policeman looked at me. A yellow face. Round. The eyes not seeing anything.
I said “Does it matter?” I added “Now?”
The policeman said “You needn’t say anything if you don’t want to.”
I said “I think he was in some trouble. He wanted to see me.”
The policeman said “Trouble.”
I said “They come to us for all sorts of things. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this.”
The policeman turned back a page of his notebook. A board creaked upstairs. I thought—I can say it is my wife, my children.
He said “You came across the car about one forty-five?”
“Yes, I heard it. At least I thought I did.”
“And you went down the lane.”
“Yes.”
“And you found the car on its side. You thought Mr. Codrington was already dead. You did not move him. You came back and rang the police.”
I did not think he would have remembered all this. There had been the police, a car, and an ambulance. I had gone back when I had left Anna. I had talked to them. I had said— I didn’t move him. They had lifted him from the car, a man in a mackintosh, the policeman, and a man in a white coat. William was wearing a white tie. The ambulance had a blue light. The men had stood with their backs to me.
I had left Anna in the chair in the sitting room.
The policeman said “Is that correct?”
I said “Yes.” I thought—I should be getting him out of the house. Doing something.
The policeman closed his book. He said “We have to ask these questions.”
I said “He was my friend.” The policeman had half stood up. Now he sat down again.
I could not think what else I might have said. They had lifted William into the ambulance. There had been a brown blanket at his head and feet. A crane with a hook on the front of the car. The policeman had said—May I use your telephone? When we got back to the house Anna was not there. I had left her in the chair in which I was now sitting.
The policeman said “It was his car?”
I said “Yes.”
I did not know where Anna had gone. I had come into the sitting room in front of the policeman. I had left him by the telephone. I had intended to say—Go, Anna, if you want to. But Anna had gone.
The policeman said “I think the rest can wait.”
I stood up. We went into the hall. Anna had had a bag. She had not had a bag in the sitting room. It was an evening bag, long, made of black velvet.
The policeman said “I’ll call you in the morning.”
I said “Please do.
He looked at me. I thought—The bag is not in the hall.
I said “They all drive too fast.”
He said “They do.”
I closed the door behind him. I stood with my back to it. I was pretending to keep something out. Surrounded. Till morning.
I moved through the house like someone bankrupt before the bailiffs arrive; through the dining room, kitchen, this is where Anna and Charlie had once sat: he like a satyr taking a bite out of her neck, she a white Rubens with fruit in her hair. To the back yard where Anna might be hiding (I imagined) standing in the dark among the coal and dustbins with the trees and black clouds moving. What we have asked for; choice, freedom. I went back into the house and listened. There was the sound of cats in a cavern, with the rocks of walls dripping. I went up the stairs. Here Anna had once appeared with her hair dark and different so I had not recognised her. In those days we had lived so much in our minds, like policemen. I went on the landing to the spare room which had a four-poster bed and grey curtains and a square armchair. Anna was lying on the bed with shoes off and her skirt in the air, no stockings. Fallen in some ballet on a tomb. She had stayed here once before when she had come with William. Had borrowed a black nightdress which I had afterwards kept in a drawer. Her legs went up into the top of her skirt and disappeared there. Thick, rather puffy face. Boyish, like a cherub. Austrians had these faces; their eyes far apart. Her mother had been English. Anna’s mouth was open as if she had been hit. Fair hairs near the edge of it.
Her bag was on the dressing table. Two screwed-up paper handkerchiefs beside it.
I felt tears coming to my eyes. Tried to encourage them. We had lived so much in our minds, dry and waiting.
Terrified.
I went down to the hall again, to the telephone. I gave a number and told the exchange to go on ringing. There was the night. Silence. The dead time. Objects coming alive and waiting.
I said “Charlie? Listen—”
II
2.
My name is Stephen Jervis. I am a fellow of St. Mark’s College, Oxford. I teach philosophy.
I have a room in college that looks out over the green lawns of a quadrangle. On the grass there is a white goat tethered. The peg to which the goat is tethered is moved from time to time, which makes overlapping circles like ancient earthworks seen from an aeroplane.
I have about eighteen pupils who each come to me for an hour each week. These tutorials are my main work, though I sometimes lecture and have a minor job in college administration.
When my pupils come to me they cross the quadrangle where the goat is tied and they climb uncarpeted stairs making a noise like a house with no furniture. My room is long and low with a central beam supported by oak pillars. There are books along one long wall and opposite it high windows with a deep ledge in front. I stand with my elbows on this ledge and look out on the goat, the circled lawn.
We sometimes have pupils sent to us from the women’s colleges. These are on some special course or unable to be dealt with by their own colleges. One of my pupils at the beginning of the summer term was Anna von Graz und Leoben.
Particulars of our pupils come to us at the beginning of term on a list. Anna had been one year at a German university; had come to Oxford to read politics, philosophy and economics. She had taken her entrance exam in languages. She was due for her term reading philosophy.
At the beginning of each term there is a starting-up of machinery; people moving along stone paths again in and out of shadows. As I lean on the window-ledge of my room I see this image of myself—a man in a gown with rather long hair flowing, caught against the wall of a crumbling building.
The first time I saw Anna she squatted down by the goat to talk to it. The shadow of the rope made a thick line on the grass. A big blonde girl in a tartan skirt. The goat was tufted.
I hardly heard her come up the stairs. She must have crept like a mother in a fairy story.
I can do my introductory talk about philosophy without much thinking about it. Philosophy is a work, a process of enquiry: it’s not an empirical science leading to laws and conclusions nor a formal deduction like mathematics. Its business is to discover and clarify the categories by which we think, and thus to allow the construction of more adequate terms and models. It does not find specific answers to specific questions, but rather deals with questions to which there are no specific answers. There is a lot of nonsense talked about philosophy nowadays; people say it is no longer a guide to everyday experience. This criticism is superficial. There is no more useful work than to illuminate old obscurities and contradictions, and by understanding them prevent more pathological confusions. For the rest— for what has to grow—this has to be found by the whole of life, and not particularly by intellectual discipline.
My pupils sit, and look at their notebooks, and sometimes write something down with their pencils. I wonder what they are thinking.
I sometimes ask—“Why do you want to do philosophy?” What I am saying is only half true. There is a part of me which knows that philosophy is more negative, a way of limiting personality. But so is all routine. What do we do about this—in any form—we do not know.
I said—“Have you done any of this before?”
Anna said she had done some in Germany, where she believed it was different.
I said “What have you read?”
She said Nietzsche, Heidegger.
I said Yes, it was different.
She had only a faint foreign accent. A wide face, eyes set far apart. There are people you don’t like to look at. You feel you know.
Some of my pupils I recognise to have the same talent as myself—a sort of alertness, an irony about them. With these people I can work; we learn together. With others we cover the ground but leave no mark. There is a sort of distrust about them. I catch them looking at me as if they do not hear, or as if I am saying something different from what I imagine. It is something to do with being still young; sleeping. But with these I sometimes feel an interest quite apart from what I am teaching.
I said “We’ll be doing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, metaphysics, Descartes and Locke and so on. See how you manage. I’ll give you some reading. It’s mainly a question of seeing what the problem is.”
She said “What is the problem?”
I said “That’s what you’ve got to find out.”
She had those slightly protuberant eyes of aristocrats. Inbred, a softness about them; to be sucked in and swallowed. She wore a white blouse to the waist. Sunburnt.
I said “Read the Discourse on Method. See what you think. Write me an essay on—”
I went to the ledge in front of the window, leaned on it, frowned, took out my pipe. I go through these rituals as part of the timing, the filling-in of areas. I looked for matches, pressed my pipe, blew through it. The hard wood under my elbow. The relationship between teacher and pupil being a sort of parade, marching backwards and forwards in column. Then a halt and a sudden turning in line.
I said “Write me an essay on just what the problem is.”
I ticked off some lectures on a list. I gave her the names of books and she wrote them down. I went to my chair and sat with my body almost horizontal. Teaching is a burden, one person imparting something to another. Sometimes this happens directly like a gift. This is no good: talking to oneself.
Anna had fair hair. Clearly defined lips. No lipstick.
Between puffs on my pipe I spoke hesitantly. I frowned and held the stem like a gun against my forehead. Teaching has to be thrown over like something on the floor. Then people can either pick it up or not, as they want to.
I said “Are you a Catholic?”
She said “Yes.”
I remembered Charlie saying—Never trust a girl who’s a Catholic.
I said “Have you read Catholic philosophy?”
She said “No.”
I said “It’s a difficult essay I’ve set you, in a way it’s the last question.”
At the beginning of term that year, May, it was already hot. The sun came through the windows on to areas of skin, of furniture. Feeling in concentrated areas with the heat moving across them.
I said “You’ve settled in all right?”
She said “It’s my second term.”
