Hit and run.
Happens every day somewhere, probably with extenuating circumstances, as in this case, clearly.
“—so, believe me, she did full justice to your genius.”
I surfaced from molten metal.
“Genius?”
“That’s what she meant.”
“Nonsense. Don’t forget I know Liz—oh I know her! She thought I had talent, ingenuity. I hit the jackpot. Someone has to.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God, the process, link by link, we don’t know what will come from this seed, what ghastly foliage and flowers, yet come it does, presenting us with more and more seeds, millions, until the whole of now, the universal Now, is nothing but irremediable result.
“If you could only see your way.”
“That’s funny. That’s very, very funny.”
“Just your signature with a sentence or two appointing me your literary executor, no harm, I’d co-operate, of course.”
“I’m a bit drunk. Talk tomorrow.”
“And, you see, I should be authorized to catalogue the papers left in her charge.”
I contemplated his eager, diffident, stubborn face, that of the prospector who had chipped quartz and seen the yellow gleam inside it. My sentence and signature would confirm his staked-out claim. Then the letters, manuscripts, journals, journals right back to school days—
Jeffers is a frightfully good chap and I am keen on being his—it’s marvellous being in the second with him—Jeffers caught a frightfully good catch off my bowling at first slip—I told him it was a frightfully good catch and he didn’t seem to mind my speaking to him— Thank God that kind of farcically misplaced emotion had never pursued me into adulthood to make an even deeper confusion of life!
He was continuing to stare at me.
“So if you could see your way—”
“I’ve seen it, the whole lot, inch by inch.”
There was no doubt of it. Given the least slackening of attention on my part, Rick’s face, or his two faces, would slide apart. Well, why not? He had two faces.
“Of course, Wilf, where you wanted it would remain in confidence.”
With considerable effort I brought his two faces together. I had an idiotic thought that he probably kept a different expression in each face, which was why when you merged them they cancelled each other out.
“How the devil did I get like this? Haven’t drunk much.”
“It’s the altitude.”
“Used to be the lobster. You know. Thingummy.”
“Pickwick.”
“Age and decay. No, Rick, duty and dereliction leads me back to solitude.”
“Shelley.”
I had to respect that, however unwillingly, because I only knew the quotation by a freakish chance. The line was in Shelley’s scraps, not his published works. How the devil? Since my time they’d have published it all, of course, a Shelley factory like the Boswell factory, leave no leaf unturned, never mind what the poor bugger thought about it himself. Death pays all debts. Christ!
“Proper parlour game, isn’t it?”
“Look, Wilf, I could write the whole thing out on this menu. The manager could witness it, you could sign it, then the whole thing would be done.”
“Signed and sealed. We could seal it with the bottom of a brandy glass. S.W.A.L.K. No, that’s different.”
“I’m not following you, sir.”
“Ha! Something you don’t know! Victory!”
“I’ll write on this one. ‘I hereby authorize Professor Rick L. Tucker of the University of Astrakhan, Nebraska—’”
“Getting both feet in the door, aren’t you?”
“There you are, Wilf. Use my pen.”
Rick’s balloon glass still had much brandy in it. I took it, spilled some on the back of the menu. I pressed the foot of the glass into the mess. It left some sort of circle like a seal.
“You needn’t write where the brandy is, Wilf. Write there, on the side where the menu’s dry.”
The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not even the time plant with its clouds of seed but other plants of this and that, all busily flourishing in the present and pressing on into my future—deeds unknown, but to be resurrected—
“No, Rick, no! I’d rather die than say yes!”
“Wilf—please! You don’t know what it would mean to me!”
“Oh yes I do indeed. And what it would mean to me.”
I printed a large, fierce NO on the back of the menu and held it out to him.
“A memento of a happy occasion.”
Chapter VI
This isn’t going to be an account of my travels. I suppose it’s mainly about me and the Tuckers, man and wife. It’s about more than that, though I can’t really say what, the words are too weak, even mine; and God knows, by now they ought to be about as strong as most words can be.
Cry, cry.
What shall I cry?
Useless to cry. We have no common language. Oh yes, there is language all right, as for example regulations for transporting flammable materials by air or how to make your own Russian salad. But our words have been clipped like gold coins, adulterated and struck with a worn stamp.
Well there.
I put myself to bed and did not get up next morning. As the manager had said, I needed to acclimatize. Rick came and knocked so insistently that I had to let him in, even though I’d only just got round to drinking my breakfast coffee. He said Mary Lou was having her breakfast in bed too. He commented on my sitting-room, said what a marvel the view was. Their window looked out on the back of a chalet so near you could count the flies on it.
“Mary Lou is welcome to my view any time she feels like it.”
Rick paused, then said they might take me up on that. Was there anything he could do for me? For example, did I need anything done about the hire car? He looked covetously at the journal open on my bedside table. I shut it pointedly. Rick asked if I had anything to dictate. His machine—
“Nothing. For God’s sake, what do you think I am? A writer?”
He was electing himself my secretary.
“Goodbye, Rick. Don’t let me keep you.”
He ignored this and said he’d spend the day exploring the way along to the Hochalpenblick.
“Then we can go again tomorrow, if it’s not too much for you.”
“When Mary Lou is strong enough.”
He thought about that remark for a while. I amplified.
“When the going gets too tough she can give you a hand dragging me along.”
“She’s happy to sit, Wilf.”
“Not a sports girl?”
“She just loves your Wimbledon.”
“Preserve us.”
“I’ll tell her you said to look in later.”
“Did I?”
“The view, Wilf, the view!”
“Ah yes. The view. Mary Lou and me, we’ll sit side by side and admire the view. She’d better not fall off the balcony.”
“I suppose it’s no good asking—”
“Not the slightest.”
Rick thought for a while.
“Still,” he said at last, “I’ll ask her to bring it.”
He went away, still nodding to himself. I forgot him, dressed and sat looking at the view. After all, it was what the hotel was supposed to be for. I have just examined what remains of my journal for that year—one of those journals so soon to perish in the holocaust—and find the date unusually full. There’s nothing about the view but much about the glamour of young women, Nimue and the Shakespearian mirages, Perdita, Miranda. There’s an attempt at describing Mary Lou but it is scribbled out and the Wilfred Barclay of that date writes about Helen of Troy! He comments on the way in which Homer gets his story across by describing not the woman but her effect on others. The old men on the wall watch her pass and say it is small wonder such a woman caused so much trouble, nevertheless let her go home before we have even more trouble! Or some such words. I’ve only read Homer
in translations but that’s what I remember. Well. Mary Lou made the sun come out on the lake and when she went the sun went with her. Mary Lou threw up and one was instantly sorry for her transparent face instead of being—as if Wilf did it, for example—disgusted. I can’t—I couldn’t—even describe her hands, so pale and slim and small. I ended, I find, by comparing myself to the old men on the wall. Yes, let Helen go home before there’s trouble.
I had written all that I remember, despite the view, when there was a knock at the outer door. I crossed the lobby and opened it to our little Helen, who held a tray with coffee for two on it.
“Come in! Come in! Here—let me take that—do sit down!”
I was in a state of absurd confusion. Mary Lou folded herself into a chair and destroyed any attempt I might have made at direct description before I got it on paper. She rested her hands in her lap, wrapped her ankles round each other as in deportment. She turned her head to gaze out of the window and it seemed that localized movement altered every line of her body.
“You have a truly wonderful view here, Mr Barclay.”
“Wilf, please, as before. Yes, I’m finding it difficult to look at anything else.”
Defeated by holiness, the medieval illuminators stood their saints in a world of gold; then later, as perhaps—vision—became more selective, set a saintly head against an aureole. Beauty too, I think; which was what the old men saw as they sat on the wall, their voices thin and dry as the stridulation of crickets.
“Truly inspirational.”
“My God, yes. There aren’t any words.”
“Reminds me.” She unzipped her little handbag. Put back her hair with the flow of one forearm then took out an envelope. “Rick said to give you this.”
“What is it?”
There was a change of colour in her face, very slight—but then everything about her seemed suggestion rather than fact. Perhaps she didn’t exist at all but was a phantom of absolute beauty like the false Helen who caused all that pain to seek her through the world.
“Rick said to give it you.”
“May I?”
There was another smaller envelope inside it, which had a note wrapped round, Gone prospecting for our walk tomorrow. Hope Mary Lou has more luck than I did. Rick.
I glanced at Mary Lou, who had her head turned away. She was looking at the view, of course, her hands grasping the arms of her chair not quite gracefully. I opened the inner envelope. It contained a sheet of hotel stationery with a sentence or two typed on it, appointing Assistant Professor Rick L. Tucker of the University of Astrakhan, Nebraska, as literary executor and giving him such access as he might require to the papers currently in the care of Mrs Elizabeth Capstone Bowers. My name was typed at the bottom with a space above it for my signature.
I looked at Mary Lou again.
“You don’t know what this is?”
She answered in what can only be called a tiny voice.
“Rick said to give it you.”
Avoiding the lie direct, poor girl. It might be so. Probably she loathed me and the whole situation. It was an unfair loathing, for I had tried to get away and been followed to the Weisswald.
“Tell me, Mary Lou. What do you want for Rick?”
Mary Lou thought; or rather, she tried to think. The effort produced a slight corrugation in her lovely forehead, no more.
“Oh come! You must have some idea!”
“Whatever he wants, I guess.”
“Full professor? A chair? Books? Television appearances? Fame? Wealth? Maybe something in or from—I don’t know how these things work—the Library of Congress?”
“I—”
“Yes?”
“Wouldn’t you like some coffee, Mr Barclay? Cream? Sugar?”
“Just black. Wilf, please. Look, I’ll put it another way. Have you any idea at all why Rick latched on to me? You see, writers are ten a penny. A hundred a penny. There are probably more writers than there are professors, seeing that some of each are also the other. Come, no flattery. I want the cold, honest truth.”
“I guess he admires your work.”
I bowed. But Mary Lou went on with much simplicity.
“I expect I shall too.”
It took me some time and most of my coffee to find an answer to that one.
“Indeed, my dear, they are very adult reading—except The Birds of Prey, of course. I rather let myself down with that one. Condottieri!”
She nodded sagely.
“That’s what Rick says.”
“Oh he does, does he?”
“Yes, sir. He said like as not you wrote it with the film in view.”
“I did not! Only, only—you know, people were like that in the fourteenth century. It was quite natural to—swashbuckle. In Italy anyway. Well. So. If he thinks like that, why is he stuck with me?”
“He said no one else was doing you as of this moment in time.”
“I’m wounded.”
“He couldn’t find anyone. He did look, Mr Barclay, Wilf, because I did too. I was his student, you know. We worked together on you, sir. He said in that kind of study you can be beaten by a nose. He said it was essential to be quick as well as exact. We had to know the subject thoroughly.”
“Me, in fact.”
“He said he was investing our time and money in you—Wilf—and we couldn’t afford to make a mistake.”
“Maybe he made a big one.”
“It was the back room on the first floor, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Felstead Regina.”
“The cottages? The one at the end of the lane? Looking out into the woods?”
“Yes, sir, where you were born. We got photographs. That was the room, wasn’t it?”
“So my mother said. She ought to know. My God.”
“It was a small window.”
“My God. My God.”
“The man who lives there now didn’t mind at all. He let us go up.”
“You haven’t got a photograph of the house where I died?”
“Sir?”
“My God.”
“Have I said anything—?”
I poured myself more coffee and drank it in one gulp.
“No, no. Please go on. You are—you are helping Rick.”
“Well. There’s Mr Halliday, you see.”
“I don’t know a Mr Halliday.”
“He’s rich. Real rich I mean. He’s read your books. He likes them.”
“It’s nice when rich men can read.”
“Yes. It’s nice for them, isn’t it? He liked your second book best, that’s All We Like Sheep.”
“How do you know the names of my books when you haven’t read them?”
“I majored in flower arranging and bibliography. His secretary, that’s Mr Halliday’s secretary, she said he particularly liked All We Like Sheep. She said he had noted one sentence particularly.”
“Ah.”
“Let me see if I can get this right. It was where you admit to liking sex but having no capacity for love.”
After that neither of us said anything for a long time. How long? In a novel I’d watch a clock on the wall, perhaps noting the ornamentation round the glass, and then be surprised to see how the minute hand had moved from ten to upright. There wasn’t a clock on the wall. Well. I’d think thoughts. But there wasn’t anything but a long time.
Mary Lou put down her cup.
“Well—”
“No—not for a minute. Don’t go. I mean, why? Why Mr Halliday? Is he advancing lovelessness as a programme? For God’s sake!”
“No, Wilf. Mr Halliday is very fond of ladies.”
“Then I don’t see where I come in. Let’s leave the question. He probably picked me out of a reference book with a pin.”
“He did not, now! He read that book—”
“All We Like Sheep.”
“—and then he ordered all the others—”
“Majestic!”
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“—then he sent his secretary to ask round. She asked the President of Astrakhan. You see Mr Halliday had already given them the ecumenical temple, the skijump and the snow machine and the courts for real tennis—”
“I quite see he had a pull. He interviewed Rick—”
“Like I said, Mr Barclay, it was his secretary. He avoids all human contact. At least—”
“Except for his collection of women. The old devil!”
“But he’s not old, Mr Barclay. Why, he’s no older than you are!”
Pause.
“He hasn’t written best-selling novels by any chance?”
“I don’t think so. No. I know so. But you can see it was a real break. I mean after Rick had done phonetics he decided to specialize in you—because he did like your books, Mr Barclay, he really did. Then Mr Halliday’s secretary communicated with the President of Astrakhan who asked Professor Saunders and there you are!”
“But a man as rich as that could afford more than one author—he could collect them like ladies!”
Mary Lou nodded. Then just when I thought my humiliation was complete she gave me a short list of other writers in whom Mr Halliday was interested. I had never read any of them.
I picked up Rick’s letter, looked at it then set it down again. Men without love. There was something in it. Mum, the father I never knew, Elizabeth, Emily. Admittedly the man in All We Like Sheep who had claimed to have no capacity for love was nothing but a character I had sketched in for plot purposes; but did he, after all, speak for me? I was sometimes lonely. But that was the loneliness of a man who wanted people about, the noise and shapes of people, a certain liveliness. I desired with lessening frequency the shape of a female body to use. Even this recognition of the exquisiteness of Mary Lou’s femininity was not in any way, I told myself, crude—it was partly paternal, protective, compassionate, sad.