Darkness Visible (27 page)

“Look, Edwin—”

The black hat and blasted face rose above the level of the landing. The shock of grey-white hair and the pinched face of the old man in the park followed behind him. The old man stopped on the stairs with a kind of writhing twist.

“Oh no! No you don’t Matty! What is this, Pederasts Anonymous? Three cured and one to go?”

The man called Matty had him by the lapel.

“Mr Pedigree—”

“You’re as big a fool as ever, Matty! Let me go, d’you hear?”

It was ridiculous. The two strange and unattractive men seemed to be wrestling on the stairs. Edwin was dancing round the top.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”

Sim had a profound wish to be out of it and away from the
ravished building that was so brutally robbed of its silence. But the stairs were blocked. Exhausted for the moment by his efforts to escape, the old man was gasping and trying to speak at the same time.

“You—talk about my condition—it’s a beautiful condition—nobody knows. Are you a psychiatrist? I don’t
want
to be cured, they know that—so good day to you—” and with an absurd effort at the socially correct thing, he was bowing to Sim and to Edwin above him and at the same time trying to wrench himself away “—a very good day to you—”

“Edwin, let’s get out of here for God’s sake! It’s all a mistake, ridiculous and humiliating!”

“You have nothing on me—any of you—let me go, Matty, I’ll, I’ll have the law—” And then the man in the black hat had let him go, had dropped his hands. They stood on the stairs, partly visible like bathers on an underwater slope. Pedigree had his face at the level of Windgrove’s shoulder. He caught sight of the ear a foot above him. He convulsed with loathing.

“You hideous, hideous creature!”

Slowly and inexorably the blood consumed the right side of Matty’s face. He stood, doing nothing, saying nothing. The old man turned away hastily. They heard his feet on the cobbles of the courtyard, saw him appear on the garden path between the overgrown flower beds. He was hurrying away. Half-way up the path he turned, still moving, and glanced under his shoulder at the dormer windows with all the venom of a villain in a melodrama. Sim saw his lips move; but the curious muffling—for after this desecration of the place, that magical quality had declined from a mystery to an impediment—smothered his words. Then he climbed the stairs and went through the hall and out into the street.

Edwin spoke.

“He must have thought we were police.”

Windrove’s face was white and brown again. His black hat had been pushed a little on one side and the ear was only too visible. As if he knew what Sim was looking at, he took off his hat to settle his hair. Now the reason for the hat was more evident. He smoothed his hair down carefully, then adjusted the black hat to hold it down.

This revelation of a fact seemed to go some way towards making
it tolerable for the viewer. Windgraff—Matty, had the old man said?—Matty when he revealed his disability, his deformity, his, one must so call it, handicap, was no longer a forbidding monstrosity but only another man. Sim found himself, before he was aware of making up his mind, sharing round the social small change. He held out his hand.

“I am Sim Goodchild. How do you do.”

Windgrove looked down at the hand as if it were an object to be examined and not shaken. Then he took the hand, turned it over and peered into the palm. Sim was slightly disconcerted by this and looked down himself to see if the palm was dirtied in any way, or interesting, or decorated—and by the time the words had fallen through his awareness he understood that his palm was being read, so he stood there, relaxed, and now not a little amused. He looked into his own palm, pale, crinkled, the volume, as it were, most delicately bound in this rarest or at least most expensive of all binding material—and then he fell through into an awareness of his own hand that stopped time in its revolution. The palm was exquisitely beautiful, it was made of light. It was precious and preciously inscribed with a sureness and delicacy beyond art and grounded somewhere else in absolute health.

In a convulsion unlike anything he had ever known, Sim stared into the gigantic world of his own palm and saw that it was holy.

The little room came back, the strange, but no longer forbidding creature still stared down, Edwin was moving chairs to the table.

It was true. The place of silence was magical. And dirty.

Windrave let go his hand and he took it back in all its beauty, its revelation. Edwin spoke. It was possible to detect a little dust on the words, a little touch of jealousy.

“Did you promise him a long life?”

“Don’t, Edwin. Nothing like that—”

Windrove went to the other side of the table and that became at once the head of it. Edwin sat down on his right. Sim slid into a chair on his left, three sides of the table and an empty side where Pedigree was not.

Windgrove shut his eyes.

Sim stared round the room, free of it. Here and there, were drawing pins that had held up decorations. A rather poor mirror. The divan by the dormer with its rows of, of
bobbles
—the doll with her frills that sat, propped on the far corner of the cupboard and
held there by a cushion—those pony pictures and that photograph of a young man, a pop star probably but now anonymous—

The man laid his hands on the table, palms upward. Sim saw Edwin glance down and take the right-hand one in his own left hand and reach across with the right. He had a moment of embarrassment at the idea, but reached out and took Edwin’s hand in his, and laid his right hand on Windrow’s left. It was a tough and elastic substance he touched, no universe, but warm, astonishingly warm, hot.

He was shaken by a gust of interior laughter. The Philosophical Society, with its minutes, chairman, committee, its taking of halls and assembly rooms, its distinguished guests, to have come down to this—two old men holding hands with a—what?

It was a time after that—a minute, ten minutes, half an hour, that Sim discovered he wanted to scratch his nose. He wondered whether to be brutal and lift his hands away, thus breaking the small circle, but determined not. It was a small sacrifice after all; and now, if one did detach oneself from the desire to scratch one immediately found how far away those others were, miles, it seemed, so that the circle, instead of being a small one was gigantic, more than a stone circle, county-wide, country-wide—vast.

Sim found he wanted to scratch his nose again. It was provoking to have two such disparate scales, the one of inches, the other, universal more or less—the nose must be
wrestled
with! It was an itch just a fraction to the left of the tip, a tickle fiendishly adjusted to set every nerve of the skin throughout the body tickling in sympathy. He fought resolutely, feeling how hard his right hand was held—and now the left as well, squeezed, who was squeezing who—so that his breath came in great gasps with the effort. His face contorted with the anguish of it and he struggled to get his hands away but they were held firm. All he could do was screw up his face again and again round his nose, trying to reach the tip absurdly with his cheeks, with his lips, his tongue, with anything—and then, inspired, he bent down and rubbed his nose on the wooden surface between his hands. The relief was almost as exquisite as the palm of his hand. He lay, his nose against the wood and let his breathing become even again.

Edwin spoke above his head. Or not Edwin and not speech. Music. Song. It was a single note, golden, radiant, like no singer
that ever was. There was, surely, no mere human breath that could sustain the note that spread as Sim’s palm had spread before him, widened, became, or was, precious range after range beyond experience, turning itself into pain and beyond pain, taking pain and pleasure and destroying them, being, becoming. It stopped for a while with promise of what was to come. It began, continued, ceased. It had been a word. That beginning, that change of state explosive and vital had been a consonant, and the realm of gold that grew from it a vowel lasting for an aeon; and the semi-vowel of the close was not an end since there was, there could be no end but only a readjustment so that the world of spirit could hide itself again, slowly, slowly fading from sight, reluctant as a lover to go and with the ineffable promise that it would love always and if asked would always come again.

When the man in black let go of Sim’s hand, all the hands had become nothing more than just hands again. Sim saw that, because as he lifted his face off the wood, he brought his hands together in front of it; and there was the right palm, a tiny bit sweaty, but not in any sense dirty, and just a palm like any other. He sat up and saw Edwin mopping his face with a paper tissue. With one accord they turned to look at Windrove. He sat, his hands open on the table, his face bowed, his chin on his chest. The brim of the black hat hid his face.

A drop of clear water fell from under the brim and lay on the table. Matty lifted his head; but Sim could read no expression in this blasted side of the face.

Edwin spoke.

“Thank you—thank you a thousand times! God bless you.”

Matty looked at Edwin closely, then at Sim who saw that now there was indeed an expression to be read on the brown side of the face. Exhaustion. Windrove stood up, and without speaking moved to the stairs, then began to descend them. Edwin jumped to his feet.

“Windgrove! When? And look—”

He went quickly to the stairs and down them. Sim heard his rapid speech indistinctly from the courtyard.

“When may we meet next?”

“Are you sure? Here?”

“Shall you bring Pedigree?”

“Look here, are you, er, OK for money?”

Presently there came the click of the latch from the door leading out to the towpath. Edwin came up the stairs.

Reluctantly Sim stood up, looking round him at the pictures and the places where pictures had been, the doll, the cupboard with the gollywog hanging on it. Side by side they left, courteously insisted on each other going first down the stairs and then side by side again up the garden path, up the stairs, through the hall—the typewriter still clattering in Stanhope’s study—and out into the street. Edwin stopped and they faced each other.

Edwin spoke with profound emotion.

“You are such a wonderful team!”

“Who?”

“You and he—in the occult sense.”

“I and—he?”

“A wonderful team! I was so right you know!”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you went into that trance—I could see the spiritual combat mirrored in your face. Then you passed over, right there, in front of me!”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Sim! Sim! The two of you played on me like an instrument!”

“Look Edwin—”

“You
know
something happened, Sim, don’t be modest, it’s false humility—”

“Of course something happened but—”

“We broke a barrier, broke down a partition. Didn’t we now?”

Sim was about to deny it hotly, when he began to remember. There was no question but that something had happened and likely enough it needed the three of them.

“Perhaps we did.”

My dear friend Mr Pedigree came as far as the stairs in the stables of Sprawson’s but would not stay he is afraid we mean him harm and I do not know what to do. He went off and I was left with Mr Bell who still teaches at Foundlings and Mr Goodchild from the bookshop. They expected something words perhaps. We made a circle with ourselves for protection against evil spirits for there were many in the stables green and purple and black. I held them off as best I could. They stood behind the two gentlemen and clawed at them. How do the two gentlemen live when I am not there I ask myself. Mr Bell offered me money it was funny. But I cried like a child for poor Mr Pedigree who is bound every way by his person it is hideous to see hideous. I can only spare him the time I can spare from being a guardian to the boy. If it were not for worrying about Mr Pedigree I would have a happy life guarding the boy. I will be his servant all the days of my life and look forward to many years of happiness if only I can heal Mr Pedigree and my spiritual face.

Great and terrible things are afoot. I thought that only me and Ezekiel had been given the way of showing things to those people who can see (as with matchboxes, thorns, shards, and marrying a wicked woman etc.) because it. I cannot say what I mean.

She had lost her engagement ring she is engaged to Mr Masterman the PT master who is quite famous I am told. We were all looking for it wherever she had been. I told the boys to look under the elms and looked near them myself. Then she came after
they had gone and asked had I looked under the elms I said no meaning to go on and say the boys had looked for to say I had looked myself would be a lie but she said before I could speak well I will look and walked off. She is very beautiful and smiling and I gave my foolish person a hard pinch as hard as I could for punishment for what it did and I went on looking for the ring. But looking up (I must remember to give it another hard pinch for that but at the time I did not think) I saw her drop the ring which she said she had lost and then pretend to find it, she threw her arms on both sides and cried bingo. She came to me laughing with the ring held out on the finger of her left hand. I could not say anything but was quite at a stand. She said I must tell everyone where I told her it might be—in fact I ought to tell Mr M I found it. This evening I do not know what to do. Since I vowed to do whatever a person asked me if it is not wicked I do not know whether what she asks is wicked. I am lost like it might be the ring. Now I ask myself what this sign means. Can to lie be a sign I ask myself. She smiled and lied. She lied by doing not by saying. Her saying was true but not true. She did not find it but she found it. I do not know.

All day I was in a daze thinking about the ring and what it meant. She is the terrible woman but why did she give the sign to me? It is a challenge. It means she does not care if her jewel is lost or not. I went to bed after my portion and offering myself to be a sacrifice if it was right. I do not know if what I then had was a vision or a dream. If it was a dream it was not like an ordinary dream they say people have because who could stand such a thing every night I ask myself it may have been like a dream in the Bible. Pharaoh must have been troubled or he would not have sent to find out. It was no ordinary dream. Or perhaps it was a vision and I was really there. It was the woman in the Apocalypse. She came in terrible glory all in colours that hurt she was allowed to torment me because of my bad thoughts about Miss Stanhope. Yet it was not just my fault my thinking about her, she acting so queer with the jewel it took me all day to see she knew about signs and how to show them. But the thing is the woman in the Apocalypse put on Miss Stanhope’s face and laughing and caused me to defile myself with much pain which when I woke up I discovered and was
frightened and astonished because since Harry Bummer in Northern Territory I thought I could not defile myself and then I could not either be
frightened or ashamed.

Then on this day (but no dream) 15/6/78 all day as I worked I tried to be ashamed but could not. The finding I can sin like other men. I cannot say what I mean. I listened to the birds to hear if they were laughing and jeering like kookaburras but they were not. Is she then disguised as an angel of light or is she a good spirit. I can see the sky now. I mean I can look into it and it is very slightly coloured all the way up. The boys came but briefly. I tried to tell them these things about everything rejoicing as it might be with Hallelujahs and that. But I could not. It is like going over from black-and-white to colour. There was a bit of sun on a tree over by long meadow and I. The boys went off to music appreciation. I could hear but only a bit. So I
left
my
work
and went after them and stood by the garage near the music-room window. They played music on the gramophone it came out loud and I heard it like I see the trees and the sky now and the boys like angels it was a big orchestra playing Beethoven a symphony and I for the first time I began to dance there on the gravel outside the music dept window. Mrs Appleby saw me and came so I stood. She looked like an archangel laughing so I stood. She shouted to me marvellous isn’t it the Seventh I didn’t know you cared for music and I shouted back laughing neither did I. She looked like an archangel laughing so my mouth shouted no matter what I could do. I am a man I could have a son. She said what an extraordinary thing to say are you alright. I remembered then my vow of silence and it seemed very small but I thought I have gone near enough by talking to the boys so I blessed her with my right hand like a priest. She looked surprised and went away quickly. This is all what Mr Pierce used to call a turn up for the book.

Since writing that down, I mean between the word book and the word since I have been shown a great thing. It was not the spirits and it was not a vision or a dream it was an opening. I saw a portion of providence. I hope that one day the boy will read these words. I understand that his reading of them in the years to come is what made me write them down though at the time I had some foolish thought of evidence to show I am not mad (17/5/65). The truth is that between book and Since the eyes of my understanding have been opened. What good is not directly breathed into the
world by the holy spirit must come down by and through the nature of men. I saw them, small, wizened, some of them with faces like mine, some crippled, some broken. Behind each was a spirit like the rising of the sun. It was a sight beyond joy and beyond dancing. Then a voice said to me it is the music that frays and breaks the string.

I must take what time I have to tell of the wonderful thing that happened last night after I had repeated my portion. I will write as quick as I can for in a little while I must ride my bike into Greenfield and see Mr Bell and Mr Goodchild and Mr Pedigree for this time I think he will agree to go with me. Last night I thought there was work to do; and I in a way held out the warmth of my person to the
spirits
and they drew me gently into their presence. The elder in the red robe with a crown and the elder with the blue robe and a coronet was waiting and greeted me kindly. I thanked them for their care of me and hoped for their continued friendship. I thanked them in particular for the years in which they did away in me with the root of a temptation which now of course I am able to see for the small thing it is. When I told them this they brightened wonderfully so that it dazzled my eyes. They showed: We saw how you gazed on the daughters of men and found them fair. I asked them about Miss Stanhope and the sign of her dropping her ring and confessed that I could not see what it meant. Then they showed: All this is hidden from us. Many years ago we called her before us but she did not come.

I had been standing outside the harness room looking up at the sky, but now I went into my bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. It is difficult my dear, dear boy, to write of what happened after that because of the strangeness and greatness. At once the elders drew me to them. They showed: Now we have answered your questions we will add to your information so that it overflows. The cry that went up to heaven brought you down. Now there is a great spirit that shall stand behind the being of the child you are guarding. That is what you are for. You are to be a burnt offering. Now we shall introduce you to a friend of ours and we shall eat and drink with you.

Although I am now accustomed to them and know my spiritual
name and indeed do not go cold when they call me, yet this news was like being in a lower part of heaven as I may say and it made me cold all over again like that time (17/5/65) and all the hair on my person stood up, each on a separate lump. But when every bit of warmth had gone out from me I saw their friend standing between them. He was dressed all in white and with the circle of the sun round his head. The red and blue elders took off their crowns and threw them down and I took off mine and threw it down. I was in great awe of the spirit in white but the red elder showed: This is the spiritual being who shall stand behind the child you are guarding. That child shall bring the spiritual language into the world and nation shall speak it unto nation. When I heard this, my head lowered before them I had such joy for men that the tears fell out of my eyes on the table. Then, still with my eyes lowered I made them welcome at my small table where there seemed to be room. Then the blue elder showed: There is joy in all the heavens today because the like of this meeting has not been seen since the days of Abraham. Then I offered them spiritual food and drink which they accepted. When this was done I had a great desire to sacrifice and asked what I should do and what they now wanted. The red spirit showed: We want nothing but to visit with you and to rejoice with you since you are one of us. And since you are an elder we will share that wisdom with you which though still in the body you ought to have. They did not do this by showing the great book but by a most wonderful opening which even if it was a thing I was able to do it would not be lawful to describe.

All this while the white spirit with the circle of the sun round his head sat across the table from me and after my first being able to see him I had not dared to raise my eyes to his face. Now, because of the glory of the opening and because they had called him their friend and mine I did raise my eyes to his face and the sword proceeded out of his mouth and struck me through the heart with a terrible pain so that as I found out later, I fainted and fell forward across the table. When I woke up again they had put me from them, and

The village clock struck from the church tower. Matty started up from his small table. He shut the exercise book and put it away in the chest of drawers. He hurried down to the harness room and
seized his bike from where it leaned against the wall. He drew in his breath with a hiss. The back tyre was flat. He heaved the machine over and stood it on the saddle and handlebars. He hurried to the tap, filled a bucket with water and began to pull out the inner tyre, plunging it under water to find where the puncture was.