Accident, p.11
Accident, page 11
I said “I envy you.”
Charlie said “But she’d been sleeping with this man William first, so I haven’t got too much of a conscience.”
I thought—I know nothing. Thank goodness I have slept with Francesca.
Charlie said “She was extraordinary. We’d go to her room in the middle of the afternoon. Didn’t even have a lock on the door.”
I thought—This is disgusting.
Charlie said “What would have happened if we’d been caught?”
I said “I don’t know.”
Charlie said “We were once. Some ghastly girl came in.”
I said “I expect she loved it.” I thought—Flatter him.
“Then we had to find somewhere else.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
I thought—I make myself sick.
I said “What, that first Sunday she came with William?” Charlie jumped up and held his head in his hands. He shouted “It’s so awful, awful, awful!”
I thought—Stagger a bit more round the furniture.
“God!” Charlie shouted.
I thought—I’ve got to feel something. If you can’t cry because you’re sad, be sad because you cry.
I said “Don’t leave Laura. You’d be crazy.”
Charlie said “Of course it’s the children.”
I said “You break yourself. You know this.”
Charlie said “Let’s have lunch.”
I said “I’ve got a committee.”
“Oh, never mind then.”
“No, I’ll put it off.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
I moved around the room touching papers. I thought—I must stay with Charlie. Make a sacrifice for him. I said “A total moral collapse.” I thought—Everything going quite well, really.
21.
There was a night somewhere around this time either at my mother-in-law’s where I sometimes now stayed (thick bed, pillows, suffocation of stuff) or in my room at home forlorn as if there had been a death; when my sleeping pills didn’t work (those harbingers of spring) neither the first lot nor the second, and the third lot wouldn’t kill me, though I didn’t mind if they did, being a bag of old guts now, shot at by the night, lights and luminous. Something rotting inside, food, a great bog, cancer. Something swelling like a balloon (once it had not been like this) making the soft things hard and snap like drainpipes. Fall of dead leaves from an autumn roof. I had lost the sense of body, the parliament of cells. Something fallen into a ditch blind with myxomatosis. To wish for destruction as a mercy; to be dissected on a slab. The air was poisoned; the nettles woven into sheets. The light an anodyne to destroy me.
Once it had not been like this. There had been the first touch, the point of it. A body in the moonlight. The hard white luminous thing. The blind man touching. The first word of a child. Learning to grow in the cold air. Flames on snow. Not melting.
Rosalind and I had been like this.
Now there was a bead curtain, a counter selling mealies. I would roll over in my bed weeping. Girls with hair in globes and cautious monkey faces. Sitting on trees and searching through the bars for nuts. Quiet and virginal, where love would be.
Rosalind and I were not like this.
Rosalind and I had met in Oxford when I was still young—a story to tell to my children and my grandchildren. Understand it.
I rolled on my bed, not sleeping.
Rosalind and I had met in Oxford when I was still young, what it is to be young, walking in green fields, standing on street comers, dust in your hair. Had felt so much then. Like some irritation on the skin, pollen, causing violence. I had stood on a hilltop and yelled: had crouched and prayed for extinction. Oxford was a village unchanged since prehistory; its ancients, ghosts, dead propped in chairs. At the full moon people appeared in masks. Its priests, its power and congregation.
Rosalind and I had met in the bar of an Oxford pub. She was an apparition from beyond my mind, a myth, the white flower of a cactus. A large girl with holes in her clothes. A sort of refugee. I did not know these things: Charlie and I had been moles, burrowing. Rosalind was a cathedral. When one is young one does not see these as people. They are things one comes across. A treasure or secret. To adore: to give oneself to. Grey stone and crumbling creepers.
In the Oxford pub there had been woodwork, stains, brass, glass. People talking with hands round their ears. The leopard and the hunter. I looked down the sights. I thought —The trick of memory. I have known her before.
In the Oxford pub. People playing darts.
I had said “Do you play darts?”
The whole animal kingdom brayed. Whooping of birds, screams, gurgle of hippos. Monkeys crashing in trees. A still lake.
When she moved she walked down an avenue, that stuff, skirt, woven, cobwebs. A sort of mesh within which fish lived and died. This scene, now, brass, glass, woodwork. Rosalind and I had not seen each other before. I was trying to pick her up in an Oxford pub. I was a scurrying thing in a duffle coat: an arm on the bar, a counter. Moving to and fro to music. I picked up darts. Wiped the slate. I turned to this tall blonde girl. I had the darts in my hand. Offered them.
She held the first dart with its feathers to the front and threw it with such force that it went over a high glass partition and disappeared travelling fast into the saloon. I thought it might have killed someone. I gazed after it: that diagram in space with thin and ghostly music. The man on a hilltop with machine guns. I said—You’re holding it wrong. She said—How should I hold it? I showed her. The second dart followed the first, swinging over the wall beyond sight, beyond gravity. I only just remember this, the dream taking over, you have no power. Rosalind said— Is that right now? I said—It depends what you’re doing. A man came in from the saloon with the two darts in his hand. A big red-faced man with red eyes. Rosalind thanked him. She threw the third dart and it hit the board in the double five. I went to the slate and chalked up the 301 and underneath it the 291. I went to the second of the two white lines on the strip of corrugated rubber. Put my toe there. The cigarette advertisement. Holding the dart in my hand. A small light wooden thing; weighted.
We do not feel this now. Love. To take off, flying. The tall blonde girl and the man in the duffle coat in the Oxford pub. The crowd on the steps of Odessa and the soldiers coming down in a line. Two refugees (Rosalind and myself) inside the caisson of a bridge, listening. The girl not speaking much. The man older, a bit of an actor. I cannot visualise him. He always has his back to the viewer and his shoulders hunched. We have sharp nails with which to bury all this. The crowds outside the Tuileries. Grapeshot.
Rosalind was a soft flame in this hard world. Something so strong, beautiful. A pain in my heart at so much beauty. My hand shakes as I write this. There is so much sorrow, death. I adored Rosalind. The dream is more real. The perfect flower.
We are not like this now. What I remember are the physical surroundings of love: snow, heat, the edge of the sea. I remember myself as being involved in something separate; a child, a foundling with no parents. I lay in the lap of the earth and cried. I do not remember much else. And yet there was the whole landscape; a detail would show a different world. The towers, terraces. Now we watch the next generation of William and Anna. The old green thing. The touch of it.
Now we are older in our own rooms, our chairs. It has happened while our senses were not looking. All in our head. The connection between ourselves and them is only in stories. But in our dead villages with the old on our doorsteps what do we do, what do we wait for ? To take off above the trees like witches; to be buried a week without air. A hand moves up and down in front of our face. A finger clicks. We are asked to wake up. We do not know if we can, there is too much suffering. Too much ecstasy. Do we ever have a choice. Our brain looks down on it. We want to kill what we don’t have. So they won’t have it.
22.
Anna said on the telephone—“Do you know who this is?”
I said “Yes.”
“How are you?”
“How are you I should ask.”
“Is your wife all right?”
I couldn’t think what to say.
She said “Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I wondered if I could come and see you.”
I was in my room, in college, with a pupil. I was working late that week to catch up with lost time. My pupil was a young man in red socks. I reached for my engagement book.
I said “Aren’t you coming some time this week?”
She said “I wondered if I could possibly come before.”
I had the impression there was someone with her the other end.
I couldn’t find my engagement book. I pulled a blank sheet of paper towards me and pretended to write something. My pupil sat with his feet turned inwards. I started drawing diagonals on the blank sheet of paper. I said “I’m teaching till half past six, could you come then?”
She said “I’d love to.”
When Anna came she was wearing a shapeless red dress with the waist somewhere round the hips. The skirt was above her knees. Her hair was fairer and smoother: it seemed dyed. Her arms and legs brown; her eyes paler, as in a negative.
I said “You’re looking very smart.”
She said “Thank you.”
That soft rather pouting mouth. Eyes bright. I could never do anything except describe her.
She said “I never thanked you for having me to stay the other day.”
I said “That’s all right.” I thought—This means nothing.
I don’t begin to understand her.
She said “I want your advice, rather.”
I said “I’m not very good at it.”
She said “Oh I’m sure you are.”
I thought—Charlie’s been talking to her.
She began acting with a cigarette. I thought—This might be the first time she has smoked. Girls have a sort of mindlessness about them. Coming out of their shells with petals.
She said “I’m thinking of getting married.”
I said “Are you?”
“You don’t seem interested.”
“I am.”
Puffing at her cigarette. “You said the other day that big things like getting married weren’t important, what mattered were the small things.”
“I said that?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
I was angry. I recognised something destructive.
The room, bookcase, red carpet, papers.
I said “Who are you marrying?”
She said “William.”
I thought—Well that’s all right.
Then—Perhaps real suffering might appear the same.
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Young. Inside her sack dress. Being carted off to the river.
“When did you decide?”
“The other day.”
Waving smoke about on a stage.
I said “What about Charlie?”
She said “That was what I was going to ask you.” “What?”
“If you would tell him when you see him.”
Myself alone with Anna. Distance about two yards.
She said “I’d just like to know how he is, what he thinks about it.”
“You just want to know.”
Yes.
I made a gesture. My hands pointing up with the palms inwards. I said “Anna—”
She said “Yes?”
Hurt. Distrustful. Charlie and Anna had been staying at my house. Charlie had wanted to leave Laura. I had said he wouldn’t. I had encouraged Charlie and Anna.
I said “This isn’t a game.”
“Of course not.”
“What happened with you and Charlie?”
“Haven’t you seen him?”
“No.”
“I thought you had.”
I thought—I’m lying. Then—She’s a fool.
I said “I haven’t seen him for some time.”
Something fighting inside her. Cats.
I said “This is very difficult. We’re going to get in a muddle here. What is it you want me to ask Charlie?”
“I’m very fond of him, and I’d like to know what he thought.”
I said “This doesn’t make sense.”
She said “I think he likes William, don’t you?”
Something utterly alone about her.
I said “You aren’t seeing Charlie any more?”
“Oh I expect so.”
“But you broke it off?”
“Broke what off?”
I thought—They slip into small bright spheres like mercury.
I said “Did you love Charlie?”
Anna puffed and blinked. She said “I wouldn’t like Charlie to disapprove.”
I said “Charlie—”
She said “I do care.”
I said “Anna, we’re to blame in this, Charlie is, but you’re not at all. Charlie can look after himself.”
She said “I expect he will if you tell him to.”
I said “What?”
Some totally different girl. Angry. Throwing her head about.
I said “Anna. I know I’ve been to blame.”
“He is your friend after all.”
I said “Listen, what’s happened is this. You’ve been hurt about Charlie. I’m terribly sorry. But you now want to hurt something back. I don’t blame you. But not William. Don’t make the whole thing worse.”
She said “Oh you are moralising.”
I said “Why marry?”
She said “I thought you were a friend of William’s.”
I said “Are you going to have a baby?”
She looked amazed. Then she said “Oh how English!”
I said “Then do you love William?”
She said “How sweet, do you think that’s the only reason why people marry?”
I said “We’re not getting anywhere.”
I thought—Perhaps it would help her if I made a fool of
myself.
I said “Of course I’ll tell Charlie. But Charlie and I are much older, married, we’ve got what we want. You don’t know about people like us. We can always go back when things are difficult.”
I thought—Perhaps she really can destroy us.
She said “Why don’t you want me to marry William?”
I said “I’ve told you.”
She said “You couldn’t be more wrong.”
I said “Ah right.”
She waited for a bit. Finished her cigarette.
I thought—I’ve done this wrong. I should have just listened.
She said “When will you be seeing Charlie?”
I said “I don’t know.”
I thought—I once thought she might be fond of me!
23.
I drove the forty miles again to where Charlie and Laura lived. The world of wives, secretaries, golf balls, officers. Heraldic signs like physics, sand and firing ranges, roundabouts and railway bridges. A demonstration like a toy shop. Trains went through mottled tunnels and ran past cows of brown and white plastic. Red racing cars moved with men in a permanently seated position. Behind counters were giant men invisible, leaning over roofs, solicitous.
I thought—Charlie is my past. We walk one behind the other in a sort of patrol.
Charlie’s and Laura’s house had its lilacs and paved courtyard. I walked through the hall with the broken toys and seascapes. Charlie and I strutting when we were young. Cocky: two-faced. I went through the house on to the lawn. Charlie and Laura were weeding. I thought—I have done this before. Not just the last time with Laura, but with Charlie. Charlie had his shirt off and a thin hairy body. He showed no sign of recognition. Laura was holding a wickerwork basket with wheels and a handle like a walking stick. There was the same hosepipe and the bright poplars. Laura looked up through her spectacles. I called for the hundredth time “I was just passing!” Laura’s mouth in its thin red line. I wondered if she had told Charlie I had seen her. It did not matter. Charlie was holding the hosepipe out of which water was running slowly into a puddle. Laura wiped her hands. Charlie squeezed the end of the hosepipe so that water splashed into the puddle in jerks like a horse peeing. Laura shouted “Charlie!” Charlie stopped. I walked round the flower bed. They had a bed of magnolias with the flowers all gone. Roses. Pansies. Charlie screamed. Laura was holding a garden fork and seemed to have jabbed him with it. He was wearing a pair of blue serge trousers done up with string. His ribs showed through his skin. I thought —We are a trio of old professionals; a soft shoe shuffle in straw hats. Laura was squatting and weeding. Charlie tried to help her. Laura gave him a push and said “Keep your hands to yourself.” Charlie fell back on his elbows. He said “That’s my trouble, can’t keep me hands to meself.” He waved his hands about, banging the backs of them against his thighs. I said “Have some stuff put on them.” Laura was on all fours over the flower bed. Charlie put a finger on her bottom and then screamed and thrashed his hands about. Laura shouted “Oh shut up Charlie!” I had tears in my eyes so that I could not see through my spectacles. I took them off and there was the changing scene, the bottom of the sea with green and silver weeds. Laura said “Have you come from Oxford?” I said “Yes.” Laura said “Have you seen old pop-eye?” I knew what she meant. I was shocked. A chill from great depths. Charlie had his mouth open and seemed to have fallen on the grass from a height. Laura swivelled and stared straight into his face. She said “That old tart. German.” The water was running out of the hosepipe and spreading towards Charlie’s legs. Laura said “Why don’t you wipe your spectacles?” She was talking to Charlie. I put my spectacles on and looked up at the sky. The light made a curve and a blue bowl. There was a buzzing in the garden, the leaves, paeonies. I said “I seem to spend my time driving between here and Oxford and my mother-in-law’s.” Laura said to Charlie “Go and turn the tap off.” Charlie seemed paralysed. Laura began butting him on the chest with her head. I thought—This is some punishment: I am chained. Charlie rolled over on all fours and began crawling. He went like this right across the lawn. People rode like this on horses, old men in harness. Charlie turned the tap off. Their skin so thick they couldn’t feel.
