As Far as You Can Go

In February 1961 I was in New York, looking less and less often at the poems which were the subject of the thesis I felt less and less like completing, and writing
A Disturbing Influence
instead. The Professor of Poetry at Oxford in my final years had been W. H. Auden. He had been a hero of mine since I first read his poems at school, and it was because of him and the other Thirties poets, especially the romantic Stephen Spender, that I wanted to be a poet myself. As well as delivering his annual lectures, Auden seemed to consider it was part of his duty to read the poems of those undergraduates who dared to ask his opinion – a form of penance, perhaps. I had myself received a not exactly encouraging letter from him from his summer place in Ischia. But he had also said to look him up when I got New York, and now I did, and he invited me to his birthday party in St Mark’s Place.

The party was full of famous people, none of whom I knew except by reputation, and I was feeling very out of place when I was rescued by Alan Pryce-Jones: father of my friend David, recent editor of the
Times Literary Supplement
, and now advisor to the Ford Foundation on how to spend its money on the arts. A devoted partygoer, he soon swept me away uptown to the apartment of Alfreda and Brian Urquhart, where another party was going on, presided over by a picture of Mrs Fraser by Sidney Nolan. Brian was British, and after a brave and hazardous war had been with the UN since its foundation. He was now a key assistant to Dag Hammarskjöld. Alfreda was the only child of an Anglo-American family. Though both her parents were American, her father, Constant Huntington, was a London publisher, and her mother, Gladys Parrish, who had recently died, was the anonymous author of the suggestively incestuous novel
Madame Solario
. Brian and Alfreda had three children, their daughter then being educated in America, their two sons in England. I think it was that night that I met John Richardson, who later wrote the enormous life of Picasso, and Robert Rushmore, who was to be Alfreda’s second husband. There were certainly also some of the people from all over the world connected to Brian’s UN life. I was made to feel at home at once, and began one of the most important friendships of my life.

Having been rather lonely in New York, I now felt in touch with important people and world events, with real life, in fact. There was also much entertainment, including Alan’s Ford Foundation lunches, at one of which I ducked in and out under the wide brim of Marianne Moore’s hat to discuss the prospects of the Yankees.

Though Brian’s job was of course based in New York, the Huntingtons owned one large and three smaller houses at the west end of the Sussex village of Amberley, below the South Downs, with an ancient church and castle. Here Alfreda spent the summer with the children, Brian coming when he could. Her parents and grand-parents seem to have been like characters in a novel by Henry James, and Amberley, although the opposite end of Sussex from his own, had everything James treasured about England. The whole place felt extraordinarily old-fashioned. There was a thatched ale-house, serving beer from the cask, and late Victorian and Edwardian poets had lived in neighbouring villages. The large house was little used now, as Alfreda’s father lived in London; but in the garden was a summer house cum studio with wonderful views over the Wild Brooks which stretched all the way to Pulborough. Opposite was Oak Tree Cottage, later enlarged to be Oak Tree House, where Alfreda lived. It had a tennis court and a vegetable garden and another house in the grounds. There was also a cottage next to the main house, presumably once for servants, and when I returned to England that summer, Alfreda offered it to me as a place to write. And there, as well as making friends who have lasted my whole life, I wrote
As Far As You Can Go
, and dedicated it to her.

There were, at the time, a number of novels by English writers who had been lucky enough to have fellowships or to teach in America. It was a petty genre. Few of them avoided sections of travel writing disguised as fiction, and mine has a lot of enthusiastic appreciation of the landscape of Arizona and Nevada and Utah. I’m not sure this isn’t better than the fiction itself. Partly inspired by Amberley’s Anglo-American connections, perhaps, I was trying to do a reverse Henry James novel, about a European discovering America rather than vice-versa. The premise was not necessarily a bad one, but I fear I failed to treat it as well as I might have done. One reason for this was the distraction – and great enjoyment – that I got from Alfreda’s family and friends; the social life was really quite intense. Another was the fact that there was a civil war going on in the Congo, and Brian had to fly out there. He was nearly murdered by the Katangans, and for several days we were all in great alarm; then Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash. Real life made the wanderings of a callow British youth seem rather unimportant.

Then illness struck. One evening we went to a party given by a Chinese restaurant tycoon some distance away, and on our way back, in the dawn, we decided to go mushrooming on the Downs. I began to feel strange, but it wasn’t the mushrooms; when we got home it was obviously mumps. I’m not sure where Alfreda and the children were going, but I was suddenly alone in Amberley, and feeling the need of care. So I went to my parents in Gloucestershire, who were also about to go abroad, which was fortunate, as my mother kept urging the doctor to treat my most valuable but very swollen glands in an alarmingly irreversible manner. Mercifully he did not, and as there was someone less frightening to look after me, I soon recovered and went back to the novel. But the momentum was, I think, lost.

The beginning is fine – the description of the fire in a Chelsea flat is an accurate account of a fire that had happened to me shortly before I went to America. (The flat belonged to my friend the poet Dom Moraes, who had gone back to India for a while; most of my Oxford friends seemed to be careering round the world.) The description of the American desert is pretty good too. But the plot, when I got to it in Los Angeles, now seems to me as half-hearted as the main character’s love-affair, and I think I should have regarded the book as a first draft, not a finished effort. The mumps, I think, did for it.

Julian Mitchell

I
N THE MURKY SECONDS
of struggle between sleep and waking he heard the pattering of rain on the tin roof of Mr Blackthorn’s bicycle-shed, and before he opened his eyes he groaned sadly, for this would mean the end of summer and he still hadn’t taken his holiday. Dragging himself towards wakefulness he made the groan an angry grunt, punched his pillow weakly, then rolled over on his back and said “Damn” out loud.

The room seemed full of light through the thin curtains. The patter of raindrops sounded just like the crackling of a newly kindled fire.

In a second he was out of bed and tearing back the
curtains
, looking with terror at a cloudless early morning sky. Then he was half-dressed, trousers and unbuttoned shirt, bare feet, hammering at the door of Mrs Fanshaw’s flat on the floor above, and then he remembered and ran and was outside in the street looking at the black smoke drifting lazily up and over the chimney-pots, at the almost silent flames leaping behind the heat-cracked glass of her kitchen window, at the placid row of houses, and then he was shouting “Help!”, twisting his neck as he shouted, “Fire!”, searching for a sign of life, “Help! Fire! Help! Fire! Help!”, his voice cracking on the final “Help!” as the door of number fifteen opened and out tumbled a man in a thick brown schoolboy’s dressing-gown, saying, “What? What? Where?”, his hands groping about in front of his face, pushing aside persistent cobwebs of sleep, trying desperately to wake up.

“Here!” shouted Harold Barlow, pointing. “Call the Fire Brigade!”

“First class,” said the man. He looked at number
seventeen
, saw the smoke and was instantly awake, though his fingers continued to fumble, dropping now to the knot of his dressing-gown cord. He went back into his house at a shuffling run, casting a slipper as he stumbled on the step.

Harold began to bang on the door of number nineteen, on the other side of his own house. He rang the bell and slammed the brass knocker. No one answered.

From the other side of the street a voice said, “They’re away. What’s the matter?”

“The house is on fire.”

The voice, which came from behind a lace curtain and seemed female, said, “It looks more like next door.”

“I mean next door,” said Harold. “Are you sure they’re away?”

“Oh, yes.” The curtain was pushed aside and a head in curl-papers emerged. “They always go to Bognor for a week in August.”

Who else should I warn, he wondered, leaving the step of number nineteen at a run, finding nowhere to run to. He stopped in the middle of the street. There was no one at number seventeen except himself. Mrs Fanshaw was in Poole, looking after her invalid sister while the nurse was on holiday, and Mr Blackthorn had gone on a coach-trip to Rome. There might, though, be other people next door in number fifteen. The flames might suddenly burst from
number
seventeen to attack the whole row, a new Fire of London might be starting right now in his house, he should do
something
. He began to run again, then stopped himself. The Fire Brigade would be on its way already.

The man in the dressing-gown reappeared, found his
slipper
and put it on. He danced up and down on one foot as he pulled it over his heel, saying, “Fools! They put me on to Ambulance, of all things! Ambulance! I shall write to
The
Times.
Can you imagine such a thing?”

“But you did get the Fire Brigade?”

“What? Yes, of course. But I wasted nearly a minute. Someone’s life might have been lost.”

“Is there anyone else in your house? They ought to be woken and warned.”

“First class,” said the man. He had knotted the cord of his dressing-gown just to the left of centre, and Harold felt a sudden absurd urge to straighten it. His mind was full of irrelevancies. As the man shuffled back into number fifteen to wake and warn, Harold looked at his feet with an almost drunken fascination. They were bare, they were standing on tarmac, they were of a fascinating shape. Lost in wonder, he gaped at them.

The moment passed. With a little sweat of shame he wiped his soles on his trouser-legs. Even if he did seem a little ridiculous alone in the middle of the street, he had behaved responsibly and well, he had done the right thing. But now the initial excitement was over he began to feel disappointed that the right thing was so unromantic and obvious.

The danger had been small, really, and his part, if
anything
, smaller. It seemed definitely over now, anyway. At any moment the principal actors would appear, splendidly booted and helmeted, alarums and excursions would take place in a properly ordered manner, and Harold Barlow would become a mere scene-setter. While he still held the centre of the stage it was a pity to have nothing to do. It was like being Hamlet, all set for a great soliloquy, only Shakespeare hadn’t delivered the lines on time and till they were written the actor could do nothing at all but look foolish. Already a small crowd of extras was gathering. It was in all stages of dress and undress except total nakedness, but total nakedness was hinted at by various torsos at windows up and down the street. Everyone was looking at Harold. Someone asked him what was going on.

He stood a little straighter on his bare feet. People seemed to be expecting him to do something, and if that was what
people were expecting, then he should not let them down. In any case he was damned if he was going to play one of those small parts whose function is simply to waste five or ten minutes while late arrivals whisper and bumble to their seats, open boxes of chocolates, crackle programmes and ask each other if they can hear all right. He would go and see if there wasn’t something he could do.

He walked towards his front door, feeling in his pocket for the key. It wasn’t there. In his hurry he had locked himself out of the house and any chance of a heroic role. He stopped walking and thought of his bedside-table. The coins would be turning into shapeless and valueless cupro-nickel, the pound notes curling into fragile brown ash, the print still visible, becoming nothing at a touch, and the keys would be liquefying, spreading to the edge of the table, beginning to drip to the floor. It was all rather depressing.

Looking up at the window, though, the fire seemed still to be confined to Mrs Fanshaw’s kitchen. But the smoke was thicker and blacker, and wisps were beginning to appear from the sitting-room.

Perhaps I could have put it out myself, he thought. I should at least have tried to do something before I ran. But no. You’re supposed to call the Fire Brigade first.

The man in the dressing-gown came out of number fifteen again and said, “They’re all up.”

“Good,” said Harold. It was good not to be alone in the middle of the stage. He nodded and smiled.

“Sounds nasty,” said the man, looking up at the fire.

It was true that there was a sinister roaring noise, hollow and violent, but still very quiet, more of a threat than a challenge so far.

“Bet you anything you like it was the fridge,” said the man, his hands deep in the pockets of the dressing-gown. “The wiring in these houses is simply shocking.”

Harold laughed, thinking he was meant to. The man
looked at him very seriously and said, “It’s no joke, you know. No joke at all.”

He was about fifty, with a grey exhausted face, like that of someone who hasn’t slept for more than an hour or two a night since he was a young man. His hair was very pale ginger, grey at the temples and rather fine. He had a small neat moustache, younger in colour.

“I can’t think why I laughed,” said Harold. “It isn’t funny at all.”

“There ought to be a law against it. There probably is, as a matter of fact. Landlords have everything too much their own way these days, that’s the trouble.”

“Look,” said Harold, in no mood for social criticism, “can I get into our garden from yours? I’ve locked myself out, and I think the lock on the back door is weaker than the one on the front. I thought I’d go and see if there was
anything
I could do.”

“First class.”

They went into number fifteen, past an umbrella-stand, a row of coats, a brief glimpse of an untidy kitchen. The garden was a patch of withered one-time grass, with a sundial in the middle.

“Remember to put your shoulder against it and really
shove
,”
said the man, helping Harold over the fence.

Mr Blackthorn’s garden was identically barren, but there was a figure of Peter Pan instead of the sundial. Smoke drifted indifferently from a top-floor window, eddying in and out, looking as innocent as if it came from an overdone Sunday roast. For a moment Harold could almost smell the meat, mixed with the permanent odour of gas-cooker that leaked down from Mrs Fanshaw’s.

He tried the door, finding it locked. Then he shoved weakly against it.

“Use your shoulder, man,” said the dressing-gown. “
Shove
.”

Feeling like someone in a detective story, Harold bruised his shoulder against the door. There was a creaking noise, his shoulder hurt, the door stayed shut. He launched himself again, using the other shoulder. The door opened with a magnificent splintering sound, like an axe going through dry wood, as the lock burst from its screws. In spite of the pain it was rather satisfying.

He ran up the stairs and used the same technique on Mrs Fanshaw’s door. It gave in at the first batter, and Harold was met by a vicious blast of heat that staggered him back to the landing. He pulled out his shirt-tail and put it over his mouth, then forced himself to enter. The fire was still only in the kitchen, but its roar was very loud now, and the floor was completely ablaze, a flower-bed of leaping yellow and red, the flames menacing the ceiling.

He ran to the bathroom for water, but could find only a tooth-mug, his mind at once recalling an old joke about
putting
out a fire with a glass of water, something he’d seen on a stage—the Crazy Gang, probably. But this wasn’t a joke. Back at the kitchen door the volume of noise seemed to have risen, yet everything looked strangely normal, as though the fire was simply a semi-transparent curtain through which he could see cooker, refrigerator, table, cupboards, pots, pans, and even a
Country
Life
calendar still unsinged.

He thought he should try and shut the door to cut off the draught. His hand was almost on the knob when he noticed the paint peeling off the wood in front of his eyes, and felt the heat of the metal thrust fiercely against his hovering palm. He sprang back, eyes suddenly streaming, hearing himself cough and splutter. I’m being a complete fool, he thought. He raced through the flat shutting all the windows he could find, then realized that he had left the front door open, and that a door at the top of a stair-well would be a vital source of draught.

By the time he was back at the kitchen door the fire was
on its way into the passage, and he had to leap a narrow stream of flame. He slammed the front door behind him, but having broken the lock in forcing it open, he could not now make it stay shut. It opened inwards, and each time Harold thought he had it securely closed it began to creep open again. There was no way of jamming it shut without locking himself in with the fire. Christ, I’ve only made things worse, he thought. He pulled against the door, straining with his whole force on the knob, willing it to stay closed. He let it go gingerly, only to see it start to swing open again, revealing the fire now jumping towards Mrs Fanshaw’s bedroom, snatching at a nightdress on the back of the door (he should have closed it), swallowing it whole.

He gave one more tug to the door, then fled down the stairs. In his own flat there was no sign of damage as yet, but the ceiling was making suffering noises, like an animal in pain; joists groaned, planks creaked, there was a constant
screaming
as the warping floorboards pulled out their own nails.

He put on gym-shoes, pocketed his money and keys, still cool and unmolten, thinking, At least I’ll be able to open the front door for them, they won’t have to smash it down. What in his room was worth saving? Watch, cuff-links, he owned nothing else of any value at all. Let the bloody place burn. But there were his books, too many to save. The firemen would be sure to soak them somehow. Too bad. He laid his macintosh tenderly over the bookcase, then went downstairs.

When he came out on the steps of the house, blinking back the sweat and smarting tears, feeling his eyelashes slightly shorter than usual, there was a sympathetic surge towards him from the now quite sizeable crowd. There was even a small cheer, rapidly fading into general rhubarb noises such as “There he is” and “Well done, son” and “Is that the one?” and “He looks all right, doesn’t he?” Harold drew himself up, a genuine hero now, and was about to nod genially to the extras when a distant self-important clanging
turned all heads towards Broadchurch Street. The clanging grew deafening as the engines turned into Craxton Street. They pulled up sharply, and at once the street was full of men uncoiling hoses, jumping down from the engines,
shouting
and gesticulating.

“It’s in the kitchen on the third floor,” said Harold to a stout man who seemed to be in charge. “This one, number seventeen. The door’s open.”

He was only just in time, as a fireman already had his axe half out of his belt, a look of cold pleasure in his eyes as he contemplated the legal and virtuous destruction of private property.

Several firemen ran in, followed by the stout man. Harold followed slowly, hoping they wouldn’t swamp the whole house, depressed that his role was now over, wondering idly why firemen wore such funny helmets. He paused on the landing to enjoy his sense of failure. It had been an
opportunity
for the grand gesture, the instinctive assumption of those heroic poses demanded by an age-old calamity. And what had he done? He’d locked himself out of his own house. He’d yelled for help. To be a hero you have to have the right props. Nowadays you have to have a telephone, for instance, and a bucket. With those he could have fought the fire by himself, valiant and alone, a new Horatius, till help came clanging down the street, gleaming red. There would have been handclasps from the stout man in charge, possibly even public congratulations.