‘Do this thing for me, Jake,’ said Hugo. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.’
‘Damn you,’ I said.
I went to the door and examined my watch. It was just after four. If I was to act I must act at once. I looked at Hugo’s nocturnal face. I knew that I would do whatever he wished. I had to. ‘Damn you,’ I said again, and I took hold of the door handle. I swung the door open quietly and left it ajar. I stood for a moment in the corridor getting used to the light. Then I began to walk quietly. The Locker Room was next door but one to the Sister’s Room, on the side nearest to me. It contained lockers in one-one correlation to the number of patients in Corelli III, each locker being assigned to a particular bed. The keys of the lockers were kept there too, in a drawer. Once I could get into the room there would be no difficulty in finding Hugo’s clothes; but of course the room itself might be locked. I found myself hoping sincerely that it might. ‘Oh, let it be locked!’ I said to myself, as my hand touched the door of the Locker Room. It was not locked. The door opened for me noiselessly. As I stood inside in the semi-darkness I had a rapid debate as to whether I wouldn’t go back and tell Hugo that the door had been locked. It might have been locked. It might easily have been locked. I struggled with this idea, not certain whether or not I ought to regard it as a temptation. I tried to conjure up some sense of obligation to the Hospital; but it was too late to call upon these reserves. If I had been going to be moved by any bond or contract with the Hospital the time for that was four minutes ago. I was now embarked upon helping Hugo. I was committed to Hugo. To lie to him would be an act of treachery. I put my hand on the keys.
I opened the locker and very quietly removed its contents piece by piece on to the table. Hugo’s old check shirt, his even older corduroy trousers, a newish sports-coat that smelt of soap, a Jaeger vest and pants, socks with holes in, and dirty boots. Small objects jingled in Hugo’s pockets. I held my breath and began to load myself, piling the garments up in my embrace and putting the boots on top, so that I could hardly see out over the armful. Then I found that I had left the locker door open and the bunch of keys hanging in the lock. One by one I replaced the things on the table, closed the locker, and returned the keys to the drawer. Not that it mattered, since the disappearance of Hugo could be noticed almost as soon as the theft from the locker; but I like to be neat. Then I loaded up again and shuffled towards the door. As I went I kept having auditory images of what it would sound like if one of Hugo’s boots were to fall off on to the floor. But there was no mishap. I glided down the corridor with a feeling in my back as if someone were pointing a Sten gun at it. The door of Hugo’s room was ajar and I sidled in and decanted the pile of clothes on to the bed with a soft bump.
Hugo had got up and was standing by the window, dressed in a shapeless white nightgown and biting his nails.
‘That’s colossal!’ he said. He seized on his clothes with glee while I shut the door again soundlessly.
‘Hurry up!’ I told him. ‘If we’re getting out let’s get out.’ I had never felt less sympathy and consideration for Hugo than at that moment. I noticed that as he dressed he kept putting his hand to his head, and I wondered idly whether this escapade mightn’t really do him some serious harm; but this possibility no longer interested me, either as a debating point, since the time for debate was over, or as a factor in Hugo’s welfare, since any concern I might have had about the latter was thoroughly driven out by more poignant worries about myself. I felt extreme irritation with Hugo for having put me in the position of being disloyal to the Hospital, and great anxiety about our prospects of getting out unobserved. As to what would happen to me if we were caught I felt a terror which was augmented in proportion to the vagueness of my conceptions. I trembled.
Hugo was ready. He was tidying up his bed in a futile way. ‘Leave that!’ I told him with as much brutality as I could. ‘Look,’ I said to Hugo, ‘we have to get past the Night Sister’s room, which has glass in the door, so we shall have to crawl that bit. You’d better take those boots off. They look ready to make a noise all by themselves. Follow me and do what I do. Don’t speak, and for heaven’s sake see that there’s nothing likely to fall out of your pockets. All right?’ Hugo nodded, his eyes rounded and his face beaming with innocence. I looked at him with exasperation. Then I put my head out of the door.
There was no sign of life from the Night Sister and not a sound of any kind to be heard. I slid out and Hugo followed, making a noise like a bear, a mixture of grunting and lumbering. I turned back and frowned and put my finger to my lips. Hugo nodded enthusiastically. The light was still on in the Night Sister’s room, and as we approached it I could hear her moving about inside. I crouched down and scudded past, keeping well below the level of the glass. Then I turned to watch Hugo. He was hesitating. He obviously didn’t know what to do with his boots, which he was carrying one in each hand. We eyed each other across the gap and Hugo made an interrogatory movement. I replied with a gesture which indicated that I washed my hands of his predicament, and walked on to the door of the ward. Then I turned back again, and nearly laughed out loud. Hugo had got his two boots gripped by their tongues between his teeth, and was negotiating the passage on hands and feet, his posterior rising mountainously into the air. I watched anxiously, wondering whether the attention of the Night Sister might not be caught by the movement of this semicircular surface which must be jutting out well into her field of vision. But nothing happened, and Hugo joined me by the door with the saliva dripping into the inside of his boots. I shook my head at him, and together we left Corelli III.
Now there was no protection, only hope. We walked down the main stairs, Hugo crowned with bandages. It was blatant. The Hospital lay about us quietly, and focused its brilliant lights upon us, like a great eye watching us, into the very pupil of which the pair of us were walking. I waited for the echoing call from many stories above which should accuse us and tell us to halt; but it did not come. We left the stairway, and now we were approaching the Transept Kitchen. To my joy I saw that the Kitchen was dark; there was no one there. In a moment we should be free. Already my heart was beating with the joy of achievement and my thoughts taking to wings of triumph. We had done it! Only a few steps now separated us from the door of the store room. I turned to look at Hugo.
As I did so, a figure appeared round the corner of the corridor some fifteen yards in front of us. It was Stitch, wearing a blue dressing-gown. All three of us stopped dead. Stitch took us in and we took in Stitch. Then I saw Stitch’s mouth beginning to open.
‘Quick, this way!’ I said to Hugo out loud. These were the first words which I had uttered aloud for many hours and they rang out strangely. I leapt to the store-room door and pushed Hugo through it.
‘Through the window!’ I called after him. I could hear him blundering ahead of me and I could hear Stitch’s feet scrabbling on the floor of the corridor. I slammed the door of the store-room behind me, and as I turned towards the window, with a sudden inspiration I seized hold of a stack of bedsteads on one side and gave it a violent pull towards the centre of the room; I felt it move to the vertical, totter, and begin to fall inwards. I sprang to the other side and in an instant I had set the stack in motion there too. Like two packs of cards meeting, and with a clatter like the day of judgement, the two piles met and interlocked across the door. I heard Stitch cursing on the other side. I followed Hugo.
Hugo had left the window wide open. I sprang through it like Nijinsky, and cannoned into Hugo, who was hopping about on the lawn.
‘My boots! My boots!’ cried Hugo in anguish. He had evidently put them down inside the window as he was getting out.
‘Never mind your bloody boots! Run for it!’ I told him. Behind us there rang out the metallic din which was Stitch trying to open the door and being prevented by the barricade of bedsteads. I threw back my head to run, and saw with surprise that the garden was clearly revealed in the grey morning light; and as we sped along between the cherry trees
it would not have surprised me if someone had opened fire on us from an upstairs window.
We crossed the lawn and the gravel and leapt over the chains and bolted along the pavement in the direction of Goldhawk Road. Hugo’s bandage was coming undone and flapped behind him like a pennant. Before we turned the corner I looked back; but there was no sign of pursuit. We slowed down.
‘And how’s your head now?’ I said to Hugo. We must have been doing a good twenty miles per hour.
‘Hellish!’ said Hugo. He leaned against a wall. ‘Damn it, Jake,’ he said, ‘you might have let me pick up my boots. They were special ones. I got them in Austria.’
‘You’d better see a doctor some time today,’ I told Hugo. ‘I don’t want to have any more on my conscience.’
‘I’ll see a chap I know in the City,’ said Hugo. We walked slowly on in the direction of Shepherd’s Bush.
The light was increasing fast. It must have been after five, and when we reached Shepherd’s Bush Green the sun was shining through a mist. There was no one about. We stopped once to fix Hugo’s bandage. Then we padded along in silence. As I looked at Hugo’s big feet, which were bulging through various holes in his socks, I could not but think of Anna; and with this thought I suddenly felt for Hugo a mixture of compassion and anger. What a lot of trouble the man had caused me! Yet none of it could have been otherwise.
‘You’ve made me lose my job,’ I told him.
‘You may not have been recognized,’ said Hugo.
‘I was recognized,’ I said. ‘That fellow that saw us works in Corelli. He’s my enemy.’
‘Sorry,’ said Hugo.
We were walking along Holland Park Avenue. It was broad daylight and the mist had cleared. The sun, just risen over the houses, gave us sharp shadows. We passed by sleeping windows. London was not yet awake. Then one or two workmen’s buses passed by. Yet still we walked. Hugo’s head was down, and he was biting his nails and looking sightlessly at the pavement. I observed him closely as one might observe a picture or a dead man. I had a strange sense of his being both very distant and yet closer to me than he had ever been or would be again. I was reluctant to speak. So we went for a long time in silence.
‘When are you going to Nottingham?’ I said at last.
‘Oh,’ said Hugo vaguely, lifting his head, ‘in two or three days, I hope. It depends how long it takes to wind things up here.’
I looked at his face, and although no line of it had changed I saw it as the face of an unhappy man. I sighed. ‘Have you anywhere to live up there?’
‘Not yet,’ said Hugo. ‘I shall have to find digs.’
‘Can I see you again before you go?’ I asked him.
‘I’m afraid I’ll be very busy,’ said Hugo. I sighed again.
It then occurred to us at the same moment, both that this was the end of our conversation and that it was going to be very difficult to take leave of each other.
‘Lend me half a crown, Jake,’ said Hugo. I handed it over. We were still walking.
‘I must dash on, if you’ll excuse me,’ said Hugo.
‘O.K.,’ I said.
‘Thanks a lot for helping me out,’ he said.
‘That’s all right,’ I said.
He wanted to be rid of me. I wanted to be rid of him. There was a moment of silence while each of us tried to think of the appropriate thing to say. Neither succeeded. For an instant our eyes met. Then Hugo said abruptly, ‘I must dash. Sorry.’
He began walking very fast, and turned down Campden Hill Road. I followed him at my ordinary pace. He drew ahead. I walked after him along the road. He turned into Sheffield Terrace, and when I turned the corner he was about thirty yards ahead. He looked back and saw me and quickened his pace. He turned into Hornton Street; I followed at the same pace, and saw him in the distance turning into Gloucester Walk. When I got to the corner of Gloucester Walk he had disappeared.
Nineteen
As I walked through Kensington the day began. There was nothing to do in it. I wandered along looking into the windows of shops. I went into Lyons’ and had some breakfast. That took up quite a long time. Then I set off walking again. I walked down the Earls Court Road and stood for a while outside the house where Madge had lived. The curtains on the windows had been changed. Everything looked different. I began to doubt whether it was the same house. I moved on. Beside Earls Court Station I had a cup of tea. I thought of ringing up Dave, but couldn’t think that I had anything particular to say to him.
It was the middle of the morning. At the Hospital they would be washing up the mugs in the kitchen of Corelli III. I went into a flower shop and ordered a grotesquely large bunch of roses to be sent to Miss Piddingham. I sent no note or message with them. She would know very well who they were from. At last the pubs opened. I had a drink. It occurred to me that I had something to say to Dave after all, which was to ask whether there was any news of Finn. I telephoned the Goldhawk Road number, but got no answer. My need of Finn began to be very great and I had to force my attention away from it. I had some more drinks. The time passed slowly.
During this time I didn’t at first think of anything special. There was too much to think about. I just sat quietly and let things take shape deeply within me. I could just sense the great forms moving in the darkness, beneath the level of my attention and without my aid, until gradually I began to see where I was. My memories of Anna had been completely transformed. Into each one of them a new dimension had been introduced. I had omitted to ask Hugo when exactly it was that Anna had encountered him and, as he so horribly put it, taken one look. But it was very likely that since Hugo’s acquaintance with Sadie dated back such a long way, Hugo’s acquaintance with Anna might well overlap with the later phases of my relations with her, before our long absence from each other. At this thought, it seemed that every picture I had ever had of Anna was contaminated, and I could feel my very memory images altering, like statues that sweat blood.
I had no longer any picture of Anna. She faded like a sorcerer’s apparition; and yet somehow her presence remained to me, more substantial than ever before. It seemed as if, for the first time, Anna really existed now as a separate being and not as a part of myself. To experience this was extremely painful. Yet as I tried to keep my eyes fixed upon where she was I felt towards her a sense of initiative which was perhaps after all one of the guises of love. Anna was something which had to be learnt afresh. When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love.
I began thinking about Hugo. He towered in my mind like a monolith: an unshaped and undivided stone which men before history had set up for some human purpose which would remain for ever obscure. His very otherness was to be sought not in himself but in myself or Anna. Yet herein he recognized nothing of what he had made. He was a man without claims and without reflections. Why had I pursued him? He had nothing to tell me. To have seen him was enough. He was a sign, a portent, a miracle. Yet no sooner had I thought this than I began to be curious again about him. I pictured him in Nottingham in some small desolate workshop, holding a watch in his enormous hand. I saw the tiny restless movements of the watch, I saw its many jewels. Had I finished with Hugo?
I left the pub. I was somewhere in the Fulham Road. I waited quietly upon the kerb until I saw a taxi approaching. I hailed it. ‘Holborn Viaduct,’ I said to the driver. I lay back in the taxi; and as I did so I felt that this was the last action for a very long time that would seem to me to be inevitable. London sped past me, beloved city, almost invisible in its familiarity. South Kensington, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Comer. This was the last act which would provoke no question and require no reason. After this would come the long agony of reflection. London passed before me like the life of a drowning man which they say flashes upon him al
l at once in the final moment. Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue, New Oxford Street, High Holborn.
I paid the taximan. It was the middle of the afternoon. I stood upon the Viaduct looking down into the chasm of Farringdon Street. A pigeon flew up out of it, moving its wings lazily, and I watched it flying slowly south towards the spire of St Bride’s. The sun was warm on my neck. I dallied. I wanted to hold on, just a little longer, to my last act. A premonition of pain made me delay; the pain that comes after the drama, when the bodies have been carried from the stage and the trumpets are silent and an empty day dawns which will dawn again and again to make mock of our contrived finalities. I put my foot on the stair.
It was a long way. When I was half-way up I stopped to listen for the starlings, but I could hear nothing. It is towards evening that they sing and chatter. The question of whether Hugo would be there or not was one that I had hardly even asked myself. On the penultimate landing I paused for breath. The door was shut. I came up to it and knocked. There was no reply. I knocked again, very loudly. The place was completely silent. Then I tried the door. It opened, and I stepped in.
As I entered Hugo’s sitting-room there was a sudden wild flurry. The room was whirring and disintegrating into a number of black pieces. I grasped the door in a fright. Then I saw. The place was full of birds. Several starlings which had not found the window in their first dart fluttered madly about, striking the walls and the glass panes. Then they found the opening and were gone. I looked about me. Hugo’s flat seemed already more like an aviary than the abode of a human being. White dung spattered the carpet, and through the open window the rain had come in and made a deep stain upon the wall. It looked as if Hugo had not been there for some time. I walked through into the bedroom. The bed was stripped. The wardrobe was empty. I pondered for a while on these phenomena. Then I went back into the other room and lifted the telephone. I had a strange fancy that I should find Hugo at the other end of it. But it appeared to be dead. Then I sat down on the settee. I was not waiting for anything. Some time passed. A clock in the City struck some hour. Then other clocks followed. I did not try to count.