The Comforters

  ‘Have you ever been to a Black Mass?’

  ‘No. It takes me all my time to keep up with the white Mass on Sundays.’

  ‘What’s the white Mass? Ernest, tell me what’s the white Mass?’

  ‘She means the Mass, dear. The ordinary Catholic Mass,’ Ernest said.

  ‘Oh, but this is different. The Black Mass has tremendous power. It can actually make objects move. Nobody touches them. They move. I’ve read heaps about it. There are naked girls, and they say everything backward. And obscenity. Ernest, you don’t take me seriously, but you just go to a Black Mass, and see. I challenge you. I wouldn’t dare go. I’d die.’

  Caroline and Laurence spoke simultaneously, ‘Catholics can’t go to Black Masses.’

  ‘Not allowed,’ Ernest explained.

  ‘They treat you like kids,’ said Eleanor, ‘don’t they, Laurence?’ she said, for she knew he had lapsed from religion.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said agreeably.

  ‘Why is the Black Mass forbidden, if there isn’t some tremendous evil in it?’ she persisted, her hand on Caroline ‘s.

  ‘I don’t say there isn’t great evil in it,’ Caroline replied, ‘I only say it’s a lot of tomfoolery.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dismiss it so lightly as that,’ Ernest argued.

  ‘It depends on how you regard evil,’ Caroline said. ‘I mean, as compared with the power of goodness. The effectuality of the Black Mass, for instance, must be trivial so long as we have the real Mass.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dismiss the power of evil lightly,’ Ernest insisted. ‘It does exist, obviously.’

  ‘I thought,’ said Eleanor, ‘that Catholics all believed the same thing. But I can see you don’t.’

  ‘Caroline is being mystical,’ Ernest said.

  ‘Caroline is a mystic,’ said Eleanor. ‘I’ve always said so. She’s a mystic, isn’t she, Laurence?’

  ‘Every time,’ said Laurence, very pleasantly.

  ‘And the trouble with these mystics, they theorise on the basis of other people’s sufferings, and in the end they belittle suffering. Caroline, if you’d suffered as much as I’ve suffered, you wouldn’t be talking like something out of this world.’

  ‘I won’t compete with you on the question of suffering,’ Caroline spoke acidly, for, after all, she rather fancied herself as a sufferer.

  ‘Poor girl, you are haunted by the evil ones,’ Eleanor said, which was maddening just at that moment.

  ‘I shouldn’t have much to do with Willi,’ Eleanor continued. ‘Take my advice and keep clear.’

  ‘Poor Willi!’ Caroline said with a happy laugh, though meaning malice.

  ‘The Baron is charming, bless him,’ said Laurence, in an absent way, for he was conferring with Ernest over paying their bill.

  ‘Willi makes his money out of the Black Mass,’ Eleanor stated. ‘That’s where he gets it from, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, surely it can’t be a business matter?’ Laurence put in again. ‘They do quite a trade in consecrated wafers,’ said Eleanor. ‘In what?’ Caroline said, seriously disturbed for the first time since the subject was mentioned.

  Laurence said, ‘I doubt if they make a point of the wafers being consecrated.’

  ‘I believe they do,’ Ernest said. ‘I’m afraid that seems to be the whole point of the Black Mass.’

  ‘It’s a very rare thing these days,’ Caroline said. ‘Satanism fizzled out in the twenties.’

  ‘Oh, did it?’ Eleanor said, getting ready to argue the point.

  Laurence interrupted with, ‘Why did you say your ex-husband should be in prison?’

  ‘Mind y’r own business, lovey.’ Eleanor screwed up her face into an inebriate smile.

  ‘Is there a relation of his, do you know, called Georgina Hogg?’

  ‘I can see,’ said Caroline, ‘we’ve reached the stage where each one discourses upon his private obsession, regardless —’

  ‘I just wondered,’ Laurence explained, ‘because that crest on Eleanor’s cigarette case is the same as the one on some of Georgina’s possessions.’

  Eleanor did not reply. She had a look of drunken incoherence which may have covered any emotion.

  ‘Possibly derived from the same name, originally,’ Caroline suggested. ‘“Hogg” and “Hogarth”.’

  When they went to get their coats Caroline had to take Eleanor’s arm to keep her steady, although she felt a slight electricity singing in her own limbs. In the cloakroom Eleanor revived a little, and putting on her lipstick shifted over her attitude to the woman-to-woman basis. ‘Men are clods.

  ‘And keep away, Caroline, do, from the Baron.

  ‘And Laurence said something about a woman called Hogg? I couldn’t quite catch — I’m so sleepy, so tight.’ In evidence, she yawned with her mouth all over her face.

  Caroline replied with exaggerated precision, annoyed at having to repeat what Eleanor already knew.

  ‘Yes. She was a nursemaid or governess with the Manders years ago. Laurence thought there might be some connexion between her and your husband because the crest on your cigarette case is the same as the crest on Mrs Hogg’s possessions, apparently.’

  ‘A nursemaid with a family crest?’

  ‘Apparently. It’s quite possible,’ said Caroline.

  ‘There may be some original connexion between the names “Hogg” and “Hogarth”,’ Eleanor said, as if she had not heard Caroline’s remark to this effect, and had just thought of it herself.

  ‘Quite,’ said Caroline, and noticed that this abrupt finality did not have a satisfying effect on Eleanor.

  As they waited for their coats Eleanor asked, ‘Where are you living now?’

  ‘In Queen’s Gate, quite near our old flat.’

  ‘And Laurence?’

  ‘Laurence is still in the old flat.’

  ‘Officially, that is?’ said Eleanor. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, dear Carrie, I heard that Laurence couldn’t tear himself away from you, and was stopping over at your new place.’

  ‘Oh, that’s only a temporary arrangement. I haven’t been well.’

  ‘A temporary arrangement! You Roman Catholics can get away with anything. You just nip into the confessional in between temporary arrangements, so to speak.’

  ‘We sleep in separate rooms, as it happens.’ Then Caroline was furious with herself for making this defence where none was due. Laurence wouldn’t like it, either. ‘I rate friendship infinitely higher than erotic love,’ she added, trying to improve matters, but making them worse.

  They found Laurence and Ernest outside with a taxi. ‘Let’s walk a little way and get some air,’ Caroline said to Laurence. ‘Oh, then we’ll walk with you. That would be nice,’ said Eleanor. But Ernest, with his tact, got her into the cab. Before they said good night, Eleanor, slurred and mouthy, declared, ‘Now, Laurence, take care of Caroline. She’s just been telling me that you both sleep in separate rooms. It’s a good story if you stick to it. And it must be a frightful strain either way. No wonder Caroline’s haunted.’

  They left London next day by car, though Laurence’s M.G. was overdue for repair, instead of going by train. This was owing to their getting up late and frittering the day in talk, first about poor Eleanor, as they agreed she was, then about themselves.

  Caroline had not slept much that night. To start with it was after four o’clock by the time she parted from Laurence who was sleeping on a camp bed in the kitchen. She lay awake for about half an hour and then she was visited by the voices, preceded by the typewriter. This was the first time it had happened while Laurence was in the flat.

  As soon as she heard the familiar tapping she called softly to Laurence; he was quite near, only a few yards away through the open door.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  He was instantly awake. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t come. Only listen. Here’s that noise again. Keep quiet.’

  It had already started its chanting. She switched on the
light and grabbed her notebook and pencil. She missed the first bit, but she got:

  … next day by car, though Laurence’s M.G. was due for repair, instead of going by train. This was owing to their getting up late and frittering the day in talk, first about poor Eleanor, as they agreed she was, then about themselves. Click. Click.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Caroline then called out to Laurence.

  ‘No, my dear, I didn’t hear a thing.’

  He had got out of bed and now came in, looking anxious. ‘Are you all right?’

  She was sitting up, gazing at her shorthand notes.

  ‘I can’t make this out,’ she said. ‘I can’t make it out at all.’

  She read it to him.

  ‘You’re thinking ahead. Don’t worry about tomorrow. We can sleep late and catch an afternoon train.’

  ‘I didn’t imagine these words. They were told me,’ she stated, but unprotesting factually.

  ‘Shall I come in beside you?’

  ‘Make some tea first.’

  He did this, while Caroline continued gazing at the notebook. When he brought their tea, he said, ‘I’ll come in beside you.’ It was a three-quarter divan and so there was just room. Caroline considered the situation as she drank her tea, then she said, ‘I’ll be all right by myself, really I will.’

  ‘It’s cold in the kitchen,’ said Laurence.

  He began to snuggle down.

  ‘I’ll put a pillow down the middle,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Wouldn’t a bread-knife and a prayer book do instead?’

  ‘Clear off,’ said Caroline.

  ‘All I want is a beautiful night’s sleep.’

  ‘Same here,’ she said.

  Eventually they brought in the camp bed from the kitchen and settled down alongside. He reflected how strangely near impracticable sexual relations would be between them, now that Caroline thought them sinful. She was thinking the same thing.

  It was past eleven when they woke next morning.

  It was while they cooked their omelettes for lunch that she told Laurence, as if it were an undeniable fact, of her theory about the author making a book out of their lives.

  Laurence knew that people with obsessions could usually find evidence to fit their craziest convictions. From the time he had learned about the voices, he had been debating within himself what this might mean to his relationship with Caroline. He had hoped that the failure of the tape-machine to record the sounds would prove her delusion to her. And when this failed to impress her he wondered whether it would be possible for him to humour her fantasy indefinitely, so that she could be the same Caroline except for this one difference in their notions of reality; or whether reality would force them apart, and the time arrive when he needs must break with, ‘Caroline, you are wrong, mistaken, mad. There are no voices; there is no typewriter; it is all a delusion. You must get mental treatment.’

  It was on his tongue to tell her so when, standing in her dressing-gown cooking the eggs and bacon, she told him, ‘I’ve discovered the truth of the matter’; the truth of the matter being, it transpired, this fabulous idea of themselves and their friends being used as characters in a novel.

  ‘How do you know it’s a novel?’

  ‘“The characters in this novel are all fictitious,”‘ she quoted with a truly mad sort of laugh.

  ‘In fact,’ she continued, ‘I’ve begun to study the experience objectively. That’s a sign, isn’t it, that I’m well again?’

  He thought not. He went so far to suggest, ‘Your work on the novel form — isn’t it possible that your mind —’

  ‘It’s convenient that I know something of the novel form,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He argued a little, questioned her. Was the author disembodied? —She didn’t know. If so, how could he use a typewriter? How could she overhear him? How could one author chant in chorus? — That she didn’t know, that she didn’t know. Was the author human or a spirit, and if so —’How can I answer these questions? I’ve only begun to ask them myself. The author obviously exists in a different dimension from ours. That will make the investigation difficult.’

  He realized, then, that he was arguing madness upon madness, was up against a private revelation. He almost wished he were still a believer, so that he could the more forcefully use some Catholic polemic against her privacy.

  ‘From the Catholic point of view, I should have thought there were spiritual dangers in holding this conviction.’

  ‘There are spiritual dangers in everything. From the Catholic point of view the chief danger about a conviction is the temptation to deny it.’

  ‘But you ought to subject it to reason.’

  ‘I’m doing so,’ Caroline said. ‘I have started investigations,’ and she was becoming delighted with this talk.

  He said then, ‘Don’t you think the idea of an invisible person tuning in to your life might possibly upset your faith?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘That’s why he ought to be subjected to reason!’

  ‘Well,’ he said wearily, ‘I’ve never heard of a Catholic being allowed to traffic with the unknown like this.’

  ‘The author is doing all the trafficking,’ she explained. ‘But I’m going to make it difficult for him, you’ll see.’

  ‘The whole thing is far too gnostic,’ he said.

  That did amuse her. ‘That does amuse me,’ she said; ‘you expressing yourself so orthodox.’

  ‘It makes damn all difference to me if you’re a heretic, darling, because you’re sweet. But sooner or later you’ll come bump against authority. Did you tell Father Jerome about this idea?’

  ‘I mentioned the possibility. I had only just realized it.’

  ‘Didn’t he object?’

  ‘No, why should he? It isn’t a sin to be a little cracked in the head.’ She added, ‘I know that I am slightly insane.’

  ‘No,’ he said gently, ‘you are quite sane, Caroline.’

  ‘From your point of view,’ she insisted, ‘I am out of my senses. It would be a human indignity to deny it.’

  He thought, How cunning of her to get round it that way, and he remembered that with madness comes cunning.

  ‘You have a mild nervous disorder,’ he said.

  ‘I have what you ought to call a delusion. In any normal opinion that’s a fact.’

  ‘Caroline, don’t distress yourself, dear.’

  ‘The normal opinion is bound to distress me because it’s a fact like the fact of the author and the facts of the Faith. They are all painful to me in different ways.

  ‘What can I do?’ he said, as he had said many times in the past days. ‘What can I do to help you?’

  ‘Will you be able to make an occasional concession to the logic of my madness?’ she asked him. ‘Because that will be necessary between us. Otherwise, we shall be really separated.’ She was terrified of being entirely separated from Laurence.

  ‘Haven’t I always tried to enter your world?’

  ‘Yes, but this is a very remote world I’m in now.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘You’re as good as normal in every other way.’ He wondered if she was hurt by this. He wondered he had not courage enough to make her see a mental doctor.

  She said, ‘We shall have to keep this secret. I don’t want the reputation of being crackers more than necessary. The Baron has broadcast enough already.’

  It was a pact. But less than a couple of hours later he saw how irksome it could be.

  They had already frittered the best part of the day, and it was past four when Laurence, after telephoning the station about the trains, said, ‘We’d better go by car. It’s O.K. for the one trip, and I can get it seen to at Hayward’s Heath quite quickly. Then we can have the use of it, much more convenient.’

  ‘Oh, you can hire a car at Hayward’s Heath,’ Caroline said quickly. ‘I want to go by train. We must go by train.’

  ‘Don’t be awkward. Get dressed, and I’ll ge
t the car out. Trains are hateful if you have the alternative of a car.’

  ‘Awkward is just what I’m going to be,’ Caroline said.

  She started hunting for her notebook.

  ‘I’ve just jerked up to the fact,’ she said, ‘that our day is doing what the voices said it would. Now, we chatted about Eleanor. Then about ourselves. All right. We’ve frittered the day. The narrative says we went by car; all right, we must go by train. You do see that, don’t you, Laurence? It’s a matter of asserting free will.’

  He quite saw. He thought, ‘Why the hell should we be enslaved by her secret fantasy?’

  ‘I don’t see,’ he said, ‘why we should be inconvenienced by it one way or another. Let’s act naturally.’

  But he saw that Caroline had it very much on the brain that her phantom should be outwitted in this one particular.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. He felt his honesty under threat of strangling. He desired their relationship to continue with the least possible change, but ever since her conversion it had been altering. Laurence could not feel that they were further apart than before, but he felt, now, that Caroline was on shifting ground, liable to be swept beyond his reach at any moment. He was not sure if he was agile enough to keep contact with her, nor that the effort would be worth it beyond a point at which Caroline might become unrecognizable.

  These misgivings nearly choked him while he said to Caroline, ‘All right, we’ll go by train.’

  But when, at this, she turned gay, he thought Predominantly, ‘She will help me with Grandmother in spite of her illness. The holiday will be good for Caroline. We still need each other.’ Also he thought, ‘I love the girl.’ And his excitement at the thought of unravelling his grandmother’s mysteries somehow made Caroline more lovable.

  She was dressed and had packed for them both, to make up to Laurence for his concession. It was half past five. Laurence was telephoning a wire to his grandmother, to expect them about eight o’clock.

  She probably prepared lunch,’ he said, as he put down the receiver.

  ‘Laurence, that’s too bad of us.’

  ‘But she’ll be so happy when we arrive, she won’t say a word. Are you ready?’