Page 45 of The Girl in a Swing

I bin afraid p'raps you might be thinkin' otherwise, but fact

  is everyone as knows you feels very sorry. You got plenty of

  friends round 'ere, same's what you've always 'ad. 'Hope you

  don't mind me mentionin' it, but I reckoned I would, seein'

  as we've knowed each other a fair old time, like.'

  On Thursday morning, the day on which I first returned to

  the shop, I found Barbara Stannard helping Deirdre to unpack

  a crate of glass.

  'I hope you don't mind my having come in, Alan,' she said,

  looking up from the floor where she was kneeling. 'There

  didn't seem any point in ringing up or bothering you before

  you came back. I heard you were short-handed, so I just

  came along.'

  'It's very kind of you,' I answered. 'What about your own

  job?' (She was secretary to a training stable near Chieveley.)

  'Oh, they're quite happy to let me go for a bit. David

  asked me to tell you it's quite all right, as long as you feel

  I can be of some help here.'

  Deirdre followed me up the glass-roofed passage to the

  office, which was empty.

  'Mrs Taswell not in to-day?' I asked, looking at the unopened

  morning's post.

  'She's gone, Mistralan. Didn't no one tell you?'

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  'I expect my sister forgot to mention it, Deirdre. You mean

  she's left?'

  'That's right, Mistralan. She's bin gone - oh, more'n a

  week now. Why, she wasn't never in that day when the

  police rang up. That's why they was s' long gett'n' through wasn't

  no one in 'ere, see?'

  'You mean she hasn't been here at all since the Monday

  of last week?'

  'That's right, Mistralan. She's gone altogether, 'cos I goes

  round to 'er place, find out when she was coming back, an'

  they tells me she packed and left that Tuesday mornin'. Never

  said where she was goin' ner nothin'. Didn't leave no address.'

  'So she left even before - yes, I see, Deirdre. Well, never

  mind; we shall manage, shan't we? It all looks quite tidy.'

  'Well, Miss Stannard bin doin' a bit in 'ere, Mistralan. She

  told me she's answered one or two letters, an' the rest she

  left to ask what you wants doin' with 'em, like.'

  'Thanks. I'll have a look through them.'

  But instead of going back to the shop Deirdre began to

  cry, so that I found myself in the strange position of having

  to try to comfort her. I was surprised by the obvious depth

  of her grief. For some time she wept unrestrainedly. At last,

  raising her head from the desk, she said, 'I'm ever s' sorry,

  Mistralan. I knows you must reckon as I'm goin' too far,

  like. On'y where 'tis, see - I never said nothin' before - my

  Mum left home - bin gone best part of a year now. There's

  on'y bin just Dad an' me. And Mrs Desland, she was that

  good to me - such a beautiful lady - like an angel she was I

  never known anyone like 'er - oh, she'd 'ave made such a

  wonderful mother.' And the poor child began to sob again.

  I told her to sit in the office for as long as she wanted,

  and went back to try, as best I could, to give some instructions

  to Barbara.

  Though I cannot tell why, I know without doubt that I

  shall never again undergo any supernatural experience. That

  music has ended, and now there will be silence. In waking

  life, one person cannot be another: identity is single and

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  absolute; but in dreams it is otherwise. Mrs Cook - Kirsten Kathe

  - is gone, and will never return. I wonder, did Armand

  Deslandes feel the same diminution and loss when Jeannette's

  vengeance came down on him and he fled to England with

  his workaday young wife? And what was the truth, I wonder,

  about Armand and Jeannette Leclerc? No telling.

  No telling. And I - I am left alone with No Telling. What

  I know I can tell to no one - not to my mother, not to my

  beloved sister or my priest. No Telling has set me apart,

  solitary as the sleepless King of the Grove, the slave of Nemi

  with his drawn sword. What was it Tony said of Kathe's

  beauty? 'People like her carry a heavy load. It's another way

  of life, with its own rules.' Well, Kathe no longer carries that

  load, but she has left me another, to carry until the time

  comes to lay it down where she is lying.

  No Telling. To have a grim and bitter secret from those

  dearest to me - to carry it alone, always - where shall I

  find strength for this? Already, once, before realizing what

  I was doing, I have involuntarily come close to letting slip

  the burden. On the evening after the burial Flick and I were

  sitting together in the drawing-room. We had said nothing

  for some little time. She was knitting and I was trying to

  read. Suddenly there came upon me once again the memory

  of the still, inshore water beside the beach. With sharp and

  dreadful clarity I saw the unnatural rippling of the surface

  and felt the cold wave lap over my naked flesh. Springing

  to my feet, I crossed the room and fell on my knees before

  Flick, clasping her wrists and drawing her hands down against

  my face.

  As she comforted me, supposing me to be moved by grief,

  I felt her sensible, intelligent love drop like a steel grille

  between my fugitive self and my hysteria howling like a mob

  outside.

  'Flick?'

  'What, dear?'

  'Do you believe in the supernatural?'

  She considered. 'Yes - in a sort of way.'

  'When something terrible has happened - has been done

  - do you believe that it may sometimes bring itself to light?'

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  At length she answered, 'I think - only to people who

  already know unconsciously. It would be like Macbeth's

  dagger, wouldn't it? - or like a dream. You know - we make

  up our dreams ourselves, but then they tell us something

  we didn't know we knew. You remember that ballad about

  Binnorie. If the people in the hall heard the harp sing "There

  sits my sister who drowned me", it was because they knew

  already, but hadn't consciously realized it.' She stroked my

  hair. 'Why do you ask?'

  'Oh, well,' I replied, 'just something that came into my

  mind.'

  'The dead are at peace, Alan dear,' she said. 'That's a sure

  comfort, however little else we know. Kathe's at peace. And

  you're not to blame. No one thinks so - no one at all.'

  I had shifted the load for a moment, felt it slip and caught

  it before it could fall. It will never slip again, Kathe.

  Many times, though not of my own wish, I have found myself

  pondering how - in what way - it might have happened:

  and perhaps I know. It would not have been difficult, given

  resolution. They would have left her lodgings together on

  the Sunday afternoon, ostensibly to go direct to Kastrup

  airport; no one concerned to see them off, no one caring

  particularly - the drowsy, dull-witted landlady, the lodginghouse

  acquaintances with something better to do on a Sunday

  afternoon: even Inge - if she ever existed - given some

&nbsp
; plausible excuse. But then they would have gone north, up

  the east coast of Sjaelland; beyond Helsing0r, I dare say,

  where the shore is more accessible and in places more lonely.

  Somehow I imagine their journey ending in the neighbourhood

  of Gilleleje. But there is no deep water inshore anywhere

  along that coast: so it would be necessary to have

  thought carefully beforehand, and then to act quite deliberately,

  before going on to spend the night in some place where

  one was not known and returning southward next day to

  catch the flight to England.

  And in whatever was done I also played my part - small

  but integral. For her intuition was not unsound. She perceived

  clearly enough, did she not, a man who preferred life

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  to be tidy; who had already, so far as possible, set up his

  barriers against irregularity and intrusion? 'It'll catch up with

  you one of these days.' If, in Copenhagen, she had told me

  all that she could, I have little doubt what my reaction would

  have been.

  Her religion, I think - the deep, unreasoning heart - was,

  really, primitive, a kind of superstition related to locality.

  Avoid the temenos of any deity with reason to be hostile; or

  else propitiate. (And if propitiation should fail?) Yet who is

  to say she was mistaken in this? My former faith, at least, lies

  in fragments behind her footsteps.

  Tony has been in every day, each time prepared with something

  for us to do or talk about, so that neither Flick nor I

  should be apprehensive - though we would not - that he

  might be meaning to offer consolation or speak of religion.

  Once he brought with him one of Korchnoi's games of chess,

  involving a brilliant sacrifice, which had been printed in the

  previous day's Guardian, and we played it through together;

  though I recall little now about the moves. Next day it was

  a new Iris Murdoch; and yesterday he brought one of his

  own pelargonia, plainly unhappy in its pot, and asked my

  advice. We re-potted it in some fresh John Innes and I put it

  in the greenhouse to keep an eye on it.

  On Friday evening, as we were walking together in the

  garden, I said - merely out of a wish to make him think

  that he had helped me; because I would have liked to feel

  it and not because I did - 'I'm grateful, at any rate, for this

  continuum.' It could have referred, as I hoped he would feel,

  either to the garden or to his own company.

  'Yes,' replied Tony, 'I suppose one has to try to make oneself

  feel something of that kind.' He stopped to pull some

  pods off an antirrhinum and went on, 'It's none of my business,

  Alan, but for what it's worth, I think you should refuse

  to be comforted.'

  'Oh?'

  'It's like trying to feel fervent during the two minutes'

  silence - it doesn't really work.'

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  'You mean, don't let anybody try to offer me comfort; or,

  don't think there's any valid comfort they could give?'

  'Well, I meant a bit more than either, actually. I meant,

  don't even be comforted in yourself. Don't seek comfort.

  Don't pray for it. Don't avoid the suffering, don't try to

  palliate it at all.'

  I waited silently for him to go on.

  'Clergymen see a good deal of misery, you know; clergymen

  and doctors. More than most people, I dare say. And for

  some reason there's a general misconception that the purpose

  of religion - or one purpose, anyway - is to enable

  people to suffer less. God knows where that came from, but

  it's about as silly as the other idea - that religion's got some

  explanation to offer of human suffering. No, don't seek cornfort,

  Alan. Kathe deserves all your grief.'

  Now indeed my loneliness and isolation came down upon

  me like a blizzard, even more bitterly than when I had

  realized that I could not tell what I knew to my own sister.

  My closest friend, and the best clergyman that I had ever

  known, was talking good sense from the natural assumption

  that I, like any normal person, could not help resenting a

  heavy misfortune and bereavement, and must wish by some

  means to try to lessen my unhappiness. Here was a bitter

  paradox. In the light of the truth which he did not know, his

  advice was right. Whence should I seek comfort? Yet because

  he did not know the truth, in offering that advice he was

  further away from me than if he had been some sanctimonious

  old numbskull of seventy years ago, maundering

  about God's infinite wisdom and the trials sent to afflict us in

  this vale of tears.

  I cannot justify my resentment of the death of Kathe. It

  was appointed that she should die. Yet though I cannot

  justify it, in my heart I wish I had shared both what she did

  and what she underwent. I wish I had died with her. She has

  dispersed from that heart like twilight a life-time of conventional

  faith and belief. Night splits and the dawn breaks

  loose. I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on,

  stalk on. This is not the kind of world in which comfort is to

  be sought or expected.

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  Nor any such comfort as a good conscience - whatever

  that may mean. I am perjured. Deliberately, and with a

  sense of achievement in the plausibility with which it was

  done, I perjured myself in order to conceal what I believe

  was the truth. I suppose many people, if they knew, might

  sympathize with and even condone my deception, since

  coroners' courts are not the places for speaking of such experiences

  as mine, and in any case I could not have given

  an honest account without being believed mad. Yet even

  setting such considerations aside, they might well say, 'You

  loved your wife, she was and remains dead, and what purpose

  would have been served by disclosing something better

  left concealed, something which could do no good and bring

  no one back to life?'

  I know. Yet far beyond such questions, there is a flame with

  which I burn in the dark alone. It is this: I neither condemn

  Kathe nor dissociate myself from whatever she did. 'Ah, my

  beautiful wife - how could she do it?' I know very well how,

  and why. I feel her motive as she felt it. That is why I was

  appointed to be her lover. She could not forgive herself, and

  so she died. But I forgive her. More - I do not, I cannot wish

  anything undone, if that would mean that we had never

  loved - no, not though I heard, and shall never forget, the

  weeping in the garden.

  On the beach she said, 'You know, don't you? And you

  love me - you can't help it?' What would I care what she

  had done, or even whether she might do the same to me, if

  only she were alive again? It is not for me to know the times

  or the seasons, which Kathe put in her own power. She needs

  no forgiveness for any act - not even one unnatural beyond

  all course of kind. God does the like every day. If she were

  to return to me now - to walk in at the door - I wou
ld help

  her to conceal it; not from shame, but simply so that our

  love might continue, secure from all who could never cornprehend

  it.

  The difference between others and Kathe was the difference

  between overcast skies and a sky full of stars. Kathe,

  merely by her presence, created pleasure, excitement and

  beauty inconceivable save by me who experienced it and

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  those about us who glimpsed it; voluptuous and splendid

  beyond imagination; tempest, cataract and rainbow, a world

  where grains of dust were turned to jewels; full of a terrifying,

  overwhelming joy, like huge waves breaking on a shore

  where no ship can live. What has that world to do with relative

  ideas of right and wrong?

  Kathe needed nothing from God. He just had the power

  to kill her, that's all; to destroy her flesh and blood, the tools

  without which she could not work. The truth of Kathe was

  no more subject to moral judgements than the weather is

  subject to meteorology. She herself could not carry the weight

  of it, was demented and driven beyond humanity by its

  terrible brilliance. At her side I turned round, looked out of

  the cave and saw the substances that cast the shadows. In

  her arms my eyes were opened like the shepherds', so that for

  a time I saw reality - the sky full of shining, choiring presences,

  the grass trodden by flaming beasts and not one

  blade disturbed as they seized and devoured their rejoicing

  prey. I am that prey. I am Lucifer, falling, falling from morn

  to noon, from noon to dewy eve, a summer's day. How

  should I seek anything so trivial as comfort? Even the future

  seems long ago now. It is me that she has drowned, and

  henceforth, instead of flying at her side, I shall crawl, yard

  by yard and alone, across the daily waste of littered, turbid

  mud. Kathe giveth and Kathe taketh away.

  Human beings in the universe are like dogs or cats in a

  house. Most of what is really happening is beyond our cornprehension

  and it is safest, as they do, simply to acquiesce

  or ignore; to hope to be suffered to live out our lives in

  peace. That peace is lost to me now, yet I ask no forgiveness,

  either for not condemning her or for the resentment in my

  heart against her condemnation. Tony was not to know that

  I seek no solace - no, not even for the pain of loss. I would

  incur any condemnation to lie once more in her arms for

  three-quarters of an hour - yes, let's do it properly - to

  clasp her, to look into her eyes and cry, 'O, it's here, it's now,

  it's you!'

  On the table before me stands the Girl in a Swing. Did

  Samuel Parr himself model her, even as he wept for his

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  Phoebe? It is not impossible. Whatever may befall, I will

  never sell her. Glazy, smooth and shapely as an acorn, she

  contains within herself a value, like a great oak tree, which

  might have been Kathe's future and mine - distinction,

  wealth, prosperity; green boughs, spreading over us and our

  children their myriads of leaves. But instead she has become

  a keepsake and a talisman for one stumbling in the nettles

  and the rain. So she shall never be planted now.

  One other thing I know beyond question. They are neither

  fortuitous nor sterile, my suffering and loss. 'Ah my lord

  Arthur, what shall become of me, now y& go from me and

  leave me here alone among mine enemies?' 'Comfort thyself,'

  said the king, 'and do as well as thou mayest, for in me

  there is no trust for to trust in; and if thou never hear more

  of me, pray for my soul.' But I will not pray for Kathe. She

  does not need my prayers. I would as soon presume to pray

  for Kali.

  'Do as well as thou mayest.' What the acolyte finds on the

  cold hillside where he wakes, alone and trembling with the

  fear of what for peace of mind's sake he had better never

  have seen, is the wisdom found in the stony field, the knowledge

  of work able to be done by himself alone. Kathe, flesh

  and dancing spirit, sits in the swing, exquisite as porcelain,

  secretly smiling to see that I alone perceive her swinging

  between the huge, serrated leaves, from earth to sky and

  back again. Porcelain and pottery - they are my mystery. The

  world exists in order that we may create from it their excellence;

  and so that I - I myself - can communicate to

  others that beauty which else they might never see. I should

  understand something now, should I not, of that grace and

  those forms, dug from and shaped to transcend this dreary