A Garden of Trees (16 page)

Peter protests: “Annabelle, that hat is preposterous; you might be in the chorus of the Chocolate Soldier.” “They wore busbies, surely, or those cardboard things like jugs.” “Yours is like a cheese dish.” “We haven't eaten for twelve hours,” Marius says; “Let's go in here.”

But we don't, we go on, to the park, perhaps, where the band is playing (Peter: “Give us a song, Annabelle, you look like Lily Langtry”); or to Lords, for the last few overs of the day (Marius: “What we want is something revolutionary, a bowler who can send the ball up very high and get it coming down vertically on the stumps”); or to Kew, for the flowers (Annabelle: “I don't think anyone will see you if you go into the bushes”).

At Kew the flowers are out, some children are playing with a brightly coloured ball, the nursemaids are knitting beside their prams. The ball rolls to our feet, Peter picks it up (“Look out for the greenhouse”), he kicks it, it shoots up over the trees like a rocket. We spend several minutes trying to fish it out of the river, we borrow a walking-stick from an old man asleep. The children watch us, severe, reproachful. We are so much younger than they. Peter gets the ball to the edge of the river; he slashes at it, wickedly, with the stick; it disappears gracefully over the trees from whence it came. The children seize it, the old man dreams, Annabelle smells a petal from a blossom like snow.

In the park we meet friends, friends of Annabelle's, they want us to go somewhere, they have several cars. We climb in. It is a garden-party day with garden-party people, some boats on the river, fireworks, games. Annabelle walks through the crowd like a reaper through an orchard; she is in grey, and takes her hat off, because other women are in purple and have cherries in their hair. The men are tightly waisted, carrying gloves and rolled umbrellas. The day is hot. Peter undoes more buttons as the others mop their brows. We glide away, discreetly, seeing a fair-ground in a field. Crossing over a bridge above an ornamental garden we are like willow-patterned people on a plate of painted green.

There are swing-boats, and we swing, and the earth slips sideways like the tumbling of a tray. Annabelle is above me, her hands are towards my head, the rope pulls her arms and her arms go with it, her hair is flung to the sunlight like the rising pulse of flames. She pulls, standing upright, her body is like a bird; she comes downwards, down upon me, then beneath me, as if she were drowned. The bird flies, falls to the water, she floats like a swimmer stretched laughing on the sea. As I stand up to pull, my knees touch hers, her body is like the waves upon which seagulls rest, and I am the bird.

Peter is by the cocoanut-shy. “I say, these things are stuck on with glue.” “I know, old man, but you can't expect to win every time.” “I haven't won once.” “I know, old man, but you're honestly not supposed to.”

Annabelle props her elbows on the counter of a booth. She is given an air-gun, loaded. She leans forwards so that her waist is against the edge of the counter and the black band of her belt seems to cut her body in two. I stand behind her. Her dress is pulled forwards in tiny wrinkles from her armpits and her skirt curves outwards with the softness of skin. One foot is against the upright structure of the counter and the other is back with her toe just touching the ground. I can see her breathing. Then she holds her breath, and the muscle in her leg tightens, and she shoots a clay pipe from a shelf.

Peter is rotating dispassionately on the end of a chain. “Rather dull, this.” We encourage him, and he stands on his head. The machine is stopped. “Sorry, old man, but it's strictly anti-rules.” “I say, do all you people talk like this?” “Like what, old man, but you might get a nasty flesh wound.” “Flesh wound be damned, I might get killed.”

As we go back in the cars I am alone with Annabelle. We sit looking out of our respective windows. The road passes. Time passes. We do not speak. The car is a tiny boat which has to be balanced very still. The road is dark, and the lights from other cars blind us. If only I could see into the dark, I think, and if other people did not blind me, I might not be so alone when I am alone with Annabelle.

It was at Lords, finally, watching the cricket, that I met the Australian with whom I had shared a cabin on the boat. We were standing by the tavern, and Marius and Peter were having their protracted argument about the ball that should come down vertically on the stumps. (“You could hook it.” “Not if he pitched it dead on.” “He can't have it both ways.” “Neither can you unless you sit on the stumps.”) The Australian came out of the Tavern with a mug of beer, and he did not see me at first. He was listening to the conversation. Annabelle had now joined in. (“Why shouldn't you sit on the stumps?” “Danger of L.B.W.” “But the umpire never could tell unless he was up in the sky like a balloon.” “No reason why he shouldn't be.” “He might get biased in a wind.”) The Australian had his head on one side and was grinning, incredulously. He began to roll a cigarette with the quick, damp movements that I remembered so well. The talk went on. (“It all depends on getting it very high.” “It sounds to me just like your grapefruits.” “You couldn't hook a grapefruit, not at Lords.” “You might hook a lemon at the Oval.” “Oh Marius, really, what a dreadful joke.”)

Then the Australian saw me. I detached myself from the group and greeted him. “Well,” he said, “and so you haven't got any friends?” His gold teeth were showing, and I was glad to see him. “We were trying to find some way of beating you Australians,” I said. (“It would burst.” “Not if you glided it.” “You couldn't glide a banana.” “If you avoided the slips.” “Oh Marius, really, what an utterly dreadful joke.”) “You certainly have got some friends,” said the Australian. “Yes,” I said. (“You might pull a plum.” “Like Little Jack Horner.” “Would that be L.J. Horner, Sydney, second test?”) “Yes that would be Christmas,” said the Australian, joining in. I introduced him. “He must have been quite young at the time,” Marius said. “Yes that was the game when Old King Cole was called on to bowl,” said the Australian, leaning back on his heels and roaring with laughter.

The Australian was a great success. He said that Annabelle was a corker, Marius sharp, and Peter dry. He called Peter's bluff, and outwitted him in complexities. With Marius he got involved in a discussion on the cultivation of fruits. We never knew when he was serious. He paid Annabelle elaborate compliments, and we drank a lot of beer. He played our game like a professional—one of those new-world professionals who take sport so devoutly. As we talked with him and followed him through the maze of his serious jokes, in spite of the laughter and the success of the day, I had the impression that we were only amateurs at this sport, that we would never make a business of it as he did; and after we left him it seemed we could retire unhurt. And just before we parted he came over and said to me, grinning all golden with his teeth: “And you said that you hadn't got a girl.”

III
A GARDEN OF TREES

8

So, in a playground, as children, we waited; there was talk but no action because there was nothing to do. In the playground there was no responsibility, no conflict—it was a small enclosed existence in a corner shut off from the world. The sun shone and we did not look over the railings. We thought we knew about love because Marius had talked about love, we thought we moved in awe of our secrets because they were secret: but our emotions, however real they appeared, were emotions of the imagination. We created our rituals—the swings, the see-saws, of the children's mind—but they were symbols which went no further than the confines of our waiting. We remembered our words; we thought we saw a tragedy here, a reflection there, eternity in our secrets; but so long as they remained words and not actions they had little relevance to living. Enclosed thus we could have continued but for the prevalence of time. Time came in, like a nursemaid, with the demands of reality; and on a summer morning Marius asked me if I would like to see his wife.

It was a windy day. I had slept badly on a sofa in the flat, and my eyes were heavy as if drained of moisture. Marius came early, before the others were up, and when he asked me I did not think of what to expect. I dressed, and had breakfast, and followed him. We went in a taxi, I did not know where.

The day seemed blown with the litter of ages. Driving through the wind it was as if we were leaving our past behind like paper. Out beyond the railings, across the waiting world, I felt little except the numbness. And yet there, at the end, was the centre of the mystery. Marius's wife had always seemed to me the guardian of our secrets. Stepping out of the taxi and standing on the threshold I might have been some novice on this edge of another life.

A mottled, unpretentious building, one of a row, more of a nursing home than a hospital, with large knobs of bells on either side of the door. We waited. Inside there was an atmosphere of caution combined with disregard. Silent, neat officials lurked behind half-closed doors, watching yet oblivious, not caring to hide and yet not willing to help. Marius led the way, ignoring them, steadily, like a soldier marching through an occupied town. I followed him up the carpeted stairs and along the vanishing rubber-tiled corridors. There was a silence like that which precedes an action. Then he stopped and knocked on a door. Again we waited.

This was a private nursing home, I could see; quiet, rich, discreet; suffering muffled behind doors of polished wood, the privacy of richness observed as in a bank. At the far end of the passage nurses glided, carrying objects shrouded under heavy white cloths. Disease, dying, was well camouflaged here, white-painted with cleanliness, scrubbed with optimism—the buoyant, determined optimism of a healthy pretence. As we waited a figure emerged upon the passage like a ghost, a disheveled old man in a dressing-gown, lost, flat-slippered, poling his old thin neck out of his garment like a tortoise, peering and bewildered. A nurse saw him, and seized him, and steered him flip-flap down the passage to the bathroom. He seemed dingy and crumbling in the stiffness of the building, as if he had strayed from the housemaid's cupboard where the dustpans and brushes are kept. The patients often seem out of place in a nursing home. Marius became uneasy waiting outside the door, so he pushed and went in.

A white, bright room, with flowers. A lot of painted steel, painted girders, like the cabin of a ship. A high bed, hard yet somehow crooked, and a whiteness, a terrible whiteness, like snow.

And the woman in the bed was part of it. She was hard, stiff, quite motionless, white skin against the white pillows; silent, and lined, and erect; nothing of the old man's decay, crumbling; no shuffling, flip-flap shuffling, no age, softness; just hard and white and a creaking, somehow, with the tension of being alive. The being-alive creaking against the not-being.

Her hair was black, and her eyes were black; still no colour. Blackness was only the intensifying of whiteness, and whiteness remained. A young face, petrified; a terrible thinness stretched over bones like a sheet over iron spikes. Arms and shoulders covered, draped; just the neck fluted like a pillar and the fragile, staring, breakable china face. Such a beautiful face. And one hand curved up on the counterpane like a sun-dried, brittle, fossilized shell.

“I have brought a friend,” Marius said. “Do you want us?”

Her eyes moved, and her head slightly, and she whispered, “Yes.”

“Here is a chair,” Marius said. I sat on it. Marius leaned on a table by her bed.

“It is kind of you to come,” she said to me, whispering; the fragile, unblinking black eyes staring at me. Then her eyelids closed, for a moment, with an almost imperceptible movement, like the falling of a drop of water, and when she spoke again her voice was clear, defined, like the echoes of a flute. “You are a friend,” she said. “I have not seen you before.”

“No,” I said; “I am sorry.” I did not know what I was saying.

“Marius has brought you,” she said. “I do not see many people now.” She spoke liltingly, with great precision. She blinked again. Then her white, cockle-shell hand fluttered up towards Marius. “Marius,” she said; “why have you brought him?”

“Would you like to talk?” he said. “Shall I go?”

“Yes,” she said. “For a minute.”

And Marius went.

In the quietness I could hear the distant, cavernous sounds of the traffic of London. There was no sound from the building, no sound at all. Facing the white blinding stare of the woman amongst the pillows I felt that I was dead.

“Tell me,” she said, “when you first met Marius.”

I told her of our meeting, and after.

“And was he alone?” she said.

I told her of Annabelle.

“Tell me more about her,” she said.

I told her. And then I told her about Peter, and the flat, and what I knew of them.

“Thank you,” she said. She lay for a while, not heeding me. Then she moistened her lips, and I saw how incredibly strong her teeth were, a young woman's teeth, like lilies. “Do you always tell the truth?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Perhaps you do. I am sorry to ask you so many questions. There are just one or two things I wish to know, you see, that Marius cannot tell me. The truth anyway is not something that can be told.”

“No,” I said.

“I am dying,” she said. “Has Marius told you that?”

“No,” I said.

“Has he told you anything about me?”

“No,” I said.

“Perhaps that too is something that cannot be told. And what do you think of Marius?”

“I think . . . ” I began. My voice sounded thick, artificial, like a buffoon. It rose upon the air like some inflated condescension. My throat would not obey my ears, and I could not bear it. “I think a great deal,” I said.

“Do you?” she said. She seemed to frown, as if in embarrassment. Her hand fluttered up towards her eyes. “I want to know that Marius will not be destroyed,” she said.

It did not seem that there was anything now that I could say. The room had become like a box in which bodies are preserved for centuries. Around us hung the dust in the shapes that life had given it, the eyes and hands and tongues that are moistened into movement, that are dried again in tombs until a breath can collapse and shatter them. In front of our throats stretched a tension of gossamer that only the note of a reed could pierce. When she spoke her voice was clear as a needle: it did not harm. But for me, I could not speak as men speak, with their faces, because the noise of impurity would have scattered the dust. But there was something that had to be said, and when I heard it it was not as if it had come from me, but rather from outside, from where men, in another age and another existence, seek to ravage the tomb with the clink of their axes. I said, “What was it that happened to you?”

“Has Marius ever talked to you about love?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And did you agree with it?”

“I don't know,” I said. And then again, as an echo, as the sound of a pick in the stillness where dead men have not heard a sound for centuries, I said, “What was it that happened to you?”

“Me?” she said. “Shall I tell you?”

I looked away from her. The sounds were clearer now. Sand began to fall between the corners of the girders, a trickle like an hour-glass when the earth is rocked. “Yes,” I said.

“I said that it was something that cannot be told. I shot myself. Is that what you want?”

“No,” I said.

“Marius came into the room and I hit him. Marius was a shadow. There is nothing to believe in when people are shadows. Is that what you have found?”

“No,” I said.

“There is a futility that is deathly. The weight of it kills you and there is nothing to be done. It was that with Marius.”

“With Marius?” I said.

“I have told you,” she said. “I went out onto the sand.”

“The sand?” I said.

“We lived there, did you know?”

“Yes,” I said.

“My hand waved in the wind. I was not good at it. What else shall I tell you?”

“Tell me why you hit him.”

“Because I was afraid.”

We sat side by side like monuments, our hands folded, our eyes in front of us with the blindness of marble. “Why?” I said.

“Why is one afraid? I do not know. Do you? It is a place that is much older than its people. Perhaps that is what makes one afraid. Have you been there?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We lived under the sun. A large house, by the sea, where the wind blew. We saw no white people, only fishermen and servants. Marius sat on the rocks and did not do anything. We loved the place. I did. I have never loved any other place.”

“Love?” I said.

“I will tell you,” she said. “I have never told it to anyone before. Marius talks about love. We talked about love when we were married. I was rich, and a European, and Marius was not. I hated Europe, I always have done, and I married Marius. When the war came we stayed there. I would not have minded. Europe could have destroyed itself. When we talked about love it sounded something new.”

“And it was not?”

“Marius sat out beneath a palm tree. It is wrong to talk about it. It is easier to talk than to believe. When you talk there are only shadows and they deceive you. Have you found this?”

“No,” I said.

“The men built Marius a shelter from the wind, and he had a table in front of him on which he wrote. When the war came he folded the paper into a dart and sent it floating through the trees like a bird. I remember how I watched it. He sent the war floating away from us. It was like the dove that went out of the ark, and we were alone.”

“And you were not?”

“We never talked about the war, nor about Europe. We thought that there were other things to talk of. Marius tore up the paper that was left beneath the palm tree, and he dropped it into the water where the fishes came to nibble at it like bread. When we had no more to say we said nothing. That is what happens. Why are you frightened, do you know?”

“No,” I said.

“Marius went out each day onto the rocks, and I watched him. He was quiet as a rock himself, and he let the sea come up to him and wash him. There was nothing to do. Then he stayed out at night even, sleeping on the beach where the crabs ran, and I came out to join him, and the house was empty, behind us, with the servants running it, quite silently, as they do, and us on the rock in front of the palm trees.”

“And Marius?” I said.

“Then he went away from me, searching for something. I did not know what was happening. When you have put your trust in shadows there is nothing that is real. Have you found this? He went with the fishermen in their boats as they sailed after the flying fish, he went with them into the hills and stayed in their villages. They treated him as their god, their personal god, but he did not do anything. That is what happens when nothing is real. The nothingness destroys you. The weight of it grows. The estate was mine, a huge rotting estate with sugar-canes and fruit trees, but it was he who became part of it, who decayed with it, who felt it. He sat with them in front of their huts and ate their food and watched them. He sat for hours with his hands among the grasses and there was a silence about him like death. He never did anything. I did not see much of him then. In the evening it grew cold and I went back to the empty house where no fires were laid and I sat there. There was a futility that was timeless, that was worse than death. I felt sometimes that it would strangle me. I remember the sounds that came down from the hills.”

“The sounds?” I said.

“I remember them. There was a day when the wind stopped. Marius came down and sat with his back to me, on the verandah, in the darkness. It was an evening of unusual heat. I waited for him. There was a futility that was deathly. Love, I remembered. Then he went away from the house towards the sea and I followed him. He sat on a rock and dropped stones into the water and he watched them become silver and seem to burn beneath the surface. ‘That is the phosphorous,' I said. I sat down beside him. ‘What are you going to do?' I said. He put his arm into the water so that it shone like something molten. ‘Who am I?' he said. I thought he was mad, then. I am sure I thought him mad. This is what happened.”

“What happened?” I said.

“If he did not know how could I persuade him? There was a despair that crushed me. The moonlight was behind him and his eyes went black. ‘I am nothing,' he said, and he lifted his hand out of the water so that it dripped like a baptism.”

“What happened?” I said.

“I tried to know what he was feeling. Why are you frightened, do you know? It is the emptiness that kills you. His shape in the darkness was like wings, like animals, and it was not he, had he not said so? I am not, he had said. And that is what I knew, that he wasn't, in the darkness.”