Jackson's Dilemma (3 page)

Benet now, looking at himself in the mirror, experienced a usual surprise. He still looked so remarkably young. He also, when thus caught, always seemed to have his mouth open. (Did he always go about with his mouth open?) He was of medium height, about the height of Uncle Tim, though shorter than Pat. He was lean and slender, always neatly dressed even when gardening. He had thick ruffled hair, copious red and brown, flowing down over his ears, without any streaks of grey, a broad calm face, a high bland brow, dark blue eyes, a neat straight nose, full lips which often smiled though their owner was now often sad. Ever since he had left the Civil Service he had had troubles. Tim of course - his unsuccessful return to philosophy - his having never been in love - was that a trouble? What am I to do next? Of course this business with the girls had been a happy distraction.

The drawing room was a big room with glass doors opening on to the main lawn. There were books here too, in low wooden bookcases, all sorts of books, atlases, cookery books, guides to English Counties, to London, France, Italy, big books on famous painters, books about games, books about animals, trees, the sea, books about machines, about science and scientists, books about poetry, about music. Of these books Benet had read only a few. Benet’s numerous philosophy books were beyond in the study, a room which opened off the drawing room. The drawing room floor was covered with a huge dark, dark-blue almost black, now very worn, carpet covered with minute trees and flowers and birds and animals, brought back from India by Uncle Tim when he was still young. There was a fine open fireplace surrounded by a heavy curly mahogany Victorian surround, numerous pictures on the walls, some of Quaker ancestors with dogs, more recent water colours with various views of the house, and of the river Lip. Uncle Tim had donated some Indian miniatures, said to be very valuable. There were numerous old armchairs with embroidered cushions, and a (not valuable) piano introduced into the house by Benet’s sweet short-lived lovely mother, Eleanor Morton. Benet recalled the happy childhood evenings when she played and they all sang. She soon set her opera music aside. Tim and Pat and indeed Benet preferred
‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’,
and (a song which brought tears to Tim’s eyes) ‘The Road to Mandalay’.

Benet surveyed the room, re-arranging upon the mantelpiece, which still subsisted inside the Victorian surround, the netsuke which Owen Silbery had given him long ago; then he went through into his study. This also looked upon the terrace, and the immense lawn which had been dotted here and there with various tall and bushy trees by Benet’s great-grandfather and other far more remote ancestors, even beyond the Quaker time. A little farther off there was a small copse of dainty birch trees, and beyond that the dark forest of huge Wellingtonias. Somewhere else, beyond the fountain and the rose garden, Benet had vaguely dreamed of erecting some little Grecian building with marble columns; within which, the girls had insisted, there might one day be a warm indoor all-the-year-round swimming pool! Had the girls convinced him at last about that pool? Smiling, he opened the window which Sylvia was always shutting, and let in a thick warm pressure of air, filled with the odours of flowers and mown grass and mingled with the music of blackbirds, thrushes, larks, finches, sparrows, robins, collared doves and a distant cuckoo. He thought for a delicious moment how lucky he was - then he turned to worrying about his guests, about tomorrow and the wedding.

 

After that, and when he was about to leave the room, he looked down at what he had been writing earlier in the day, not upon a typewriter or word-processor, machines which he despised, but upon the inky foolscap pages of his book on Heidegger. Benet had intended for some time to write, or attempt to write, that book. However, he found it difficult to plan the work and to decide what he really, in his heart,
thought
of his huge ambiguous subject. He had made a great many notes, with question marks, in fact his book so far consisted largely of notes, unconnected and unexplained. Benet found himself accusing himself of being fascinated by a certain dangerous aspect of Heidegger which was in fact so deeply buried in his own, Benet‘s, soul that he could not scrutinise or even dislodge it. Of course Benet admired
Sein
und Zeit and loved (perhaps
this
was the point) the attractive image of Man as the
Shepherd of Being.
Later Heidegger he detested; Heidegger’s sickening acceptance of Hitler, his misuse of the Pre-Socratic Greeks, his betrayal of his early religious picture of man opening the door to Being, his transformation of Being into a cruel ruthless fate, his appropriation of poor innocent Hölderlin, his poeticisation of philosophy, discarding truth, goodness, freedom, love, the individual, everything which the philosopher ought to explain and defend. Or was the era of the philosopher nearly over, as Pat used mockingly to tell him? Benet wished now that he had talked more with Uncle Tim about the Indian gods. How close had Tim come to those gods whom Benet himself knew only through Kipling and Tim’s rambling talk? Was it too late to learn the Hindu scriptures - was it
all
too late? A big bronze dancing Shiva, dancing within his ring of fire, forever destroying the cosmos and re-creating it, had stood upon Tim’s desk, which now was Benet’s desk. I wish I had started all this up earlier, thought Benet, I kept putting it off until I retired, I should have
held
on to philosophy, instead of going into the Civil Service, as Pat insisted. Of course Benet had never believed in God, but he had somehow believed in Christ, and in Plato, a Platonic Christ, an icon of goodness. Pat had not believed in God, indeed he hated Christianity. Eleanor had been a silent Christian. He recalled now how he had intuited her Christianity. Of course he never thought of such things then. And now - well, Heidegger, the greatest philosopher of the century? But what was Benet thinking somehow so deeply about when he turned his mind to that remarkable thinker? It seemed to him that after all his philosophical reflections, there was a sound which rang some deeper tremor of the imagination. Perhaps it was his more profound desire to lay out before him the
history
of Heidegger’s
inner life,
the nature of his
sufferings:
the man who began as a divinity student and became a follower of Hitler, and then -? Remorse? Was that the very concept which sounded the bell? What had Heidegger said to Hannah Arendt after it was all over? What had
that
pain been like - what had those millions of pains been like? A huge tormented life? Was Heidegger really Anti-Christ? ‘The darkness, oh the darkness,’ Benet said aloud.

He rose and left the study and crossed the great carpet to the glass doors and walked out onto the lawn. Here he listened again to the sounds, which he had failed to hear when he was so strangely struggling with that mysterious demon. The sweet sounds of the garden birds, and now, coming from the river, the geese flying overhead uttering their strange tragic gabble. Damn it, he said to himself, I am supposed to be
organising
this evening,
and
tomorrow! Oh I wish it was over and all well. Of course nothing will go wrong, they themselves will orchestrate everything!

 

Benet was now checking the dining table. The dining room, adjacent to the hall and the front door, looked upon the drive where, emerging from among the trees, cars were soon to be expected. Sylvia, who loved Benet dearly, almost as much as she had loved Uncle Tim, smiled tolerantly across the table as he intently pushed things about, then she quietly left the room. The
placement
was proving difficult as usual. There were few guests, only from the ‘inner circle’. Strictly Benet should have Mildred on his right and Rosalind on his left. However, actually, Benet wanted to have Edward on his right, he wanted very much to talk to Edward, he felt that Edward needed
protecting
and he wanted to be
fatherly
to him. So then Edward would have Mildred on his right. Then there were Owen, and Tuan
alias
Thomas Abelson. But would that do? Owen was always difficult and should not sit next to Mildred whom he knew so well, nor to Rosalind whom he sometimes reduced to tears. Was Tuan, so called by Tim after Conrad’s novel, a solution? Hardly, put anywhere he was rather inarticulate. Suppose Benet took him on, upon his left? Benet was shy of this, and would feel bound to talk a lot to him, thus reducing his time to Edward. At last he decided to keep Rosalind on his left, Owen between Rosalind and Tuan, and Tuan thus next to Mildred, who was next to Edward who was next to Benet. Rosalind would have to look after herself, and Tuan would be at the far end of the table facing Benet. He must remember to put out the cards. It was a small table where they would all hear each other, of course it could be lengthened by leaves. Benet reflected upon how rarely he had done that since Tim died. A moth appeared and fluttered quietly across the room. Benet blew it gently away, not wanting to damage its frail antlers. Sylvia was the one who made war on moths.

 

A small dark car appeared out of the wood and slewed round noisily upon the beautifully raked and weeded gravel. Benet hurried out into the hall and opened the front door. Mildred and Rosalind emerged, waved, then began to unpack various boxes. Benet went forward to help. He had known Rosalind and her sister and their mother, on and off, through summers when they had come back to the cottage in Lipcot. Rosalind had grown up almost as beautiful as Marian, and, following Shakespeare’s heroine, persistently dressed as a boy, not in jeans, but as a real trousered well-dressed boy, even with waistcoat. Her bright straight golden hair, falling beyond her shoulders, was allowed as boyish. Mildred was an old friend. Long ago Benet, or so he claimed, had dissuaded her from becoming a nun. Later, for a while, she was a member of the Salvation Army. However, she remained nun-like. Owen who had known her longer than Benet, often painted her, spoke of her pale wistful pre-Raphaelite look. She wore long dark brown dresses and her long thick dark brown hair was supported by big tortoiseshell combs. She lived austerely in a small flat, worked as a dress-maker, caring for the poor, visiting the sick, assisting the homeless. She also frequented the British Museum; ‘her gods are there,’ Owen used to say. Apparently or perhaps she had some sort of small pension. She had, some time ago, entered the lives of Owen and Benet through Uncle Tim, who said he had found her wandering late at night near Saint Paul’s. What Tim, or Mildred, was doing there was never made clear. She spoke in what some called an ‘aristocratic voice’. Others said ‘like a head mistress’. She too, through Benet, had met the girls some time ago. She quite often went to church and was prepared to be called ‘some sort of Christian’.

‘Hello, Sylvia,’ said Mildred, ignoring Benet, to the pretty girl who had run out too.

Benet kissed Rosalind, Rosalind hugged Sylvia, talking they moved toward the house carrying the bags and boxes. At that moment, out of the trees, more than ever like the Green Man, silent Clun the gardener, Sylvia’s father, with a gesture, got into the car and drove it away.

Rosalind went upstairs with Sylvia, and into the rarely used ‘old part’ of the house. Mildred had ‘her own room’ there too, though often when visiting she preferred to stay in the inn. Now she followed Benet into the drawing room. They sat down on the sofa and looked at each other. Benet reached out and took her hand.

‘Now look here,’ said Mildred (a well-known formula), withdrawing her hand, ‘how are you going to manage? Will you be able to feed them all after the wedding? Half the village will want to join in, you know. I’ve hired this car, by the way, Rosalind still hasn’t got one.’

Benet, who had not thought too clearly about all this, said, ‘Oh, it will be all right. They’ll stay at the gate. Only the three or four old faithfuls may decide to come into the church. And afterwards it’s just our lot up at Penn.’

‘Hmmm. How many guests have you invited to the wedding, not just tonight of course - ? Is Anna coming tonight, by the way?’

‘No, she is coming tomorrow. Very few guests.
They
wanted a three-minute wedding with a Registrar!’

‘I suppose Ada ditched that. But why isn’t she coming?’

‘Marian says she has just found another man! I don’t know. My God, Mildred, I shall be so glad when this is over!’

‘Nonsense, you’ll enjoy it. Anyway I will. Any friends of Edward’s?’

‘No. He doesn’t want any. He says he hasn’t got any!’

‘Typical Edward. I’m so glad he is marrying at last, such hawkish looks, but he is pure in heart. So Marian is coming down very early tomorrow morning, upon the
day itself
! She always liked treats and surprises. That’s typical too. Oh look!’

Rosalind, now wearing her bridesmaid’s dress, had quietly entered the room carrying her bouquet.

 

 

 

 

When all were assembled and the parade to the dining room began, Benet was delayed by Rosalind. (Had Edward got a best man? No, Edward had
not
got a best man!) Thus Mildred, entering the room first, sat down in her frequent place on Benet’s right, and thereafter seeing Edward, standing helpless, signalled him to her other side. Owen, who was longing to talk to Edward, at once sat down beside him, at the same time capturing, by gripping his sleeve, the timid wandering Tuan who was shy and often silent. Rosalind, then entering alone, placed herself on Benet’s left, finding herself thus next to the harmless Tuan on the other side. Benet, who had just realised that he had forgotten his instructions, entered last, thus placed, silently cursing, between the two women. Before dinner Mildred and Rosalind had hoped for some music and singing, but Benet had quietly and hastily informed them that Edward would not like it.

The guests, now at table, knew each other in some cases very well, in other cases just fairly well. Mildred and Owen, both ‘oddities’, were close friends, by some deemed a ‘strange couple’. Benet had met them years ago through Uncle Tim, who had discovered Owen in an exhibition of Indian pictures. Tuan was a later acquisition, allegedly ‘picked up’ by Uncle Tim in a train from Edinburgh. He was extremely slim, even thin, with a long neck and a dark complexion, straight black hair, dark brown eyes, a thin mouth and a shy smile. Tim called him (without any visible evidence) ‘the Theology Student‘, and conjectured that he must have had some sort of awful shock in the past. In any case Tuan said little of his past and nothing of his family. He had been at Edinburgh University, even taught at a London university, and now worked in a bookshop. He had been devoted to Tim and shed many tears at his death. He was also now attached to Benet and to Owen Silbery. He was deemed not to be gay. Owen was a painter, in fact a distinguished and well-known painter. He announced himself sometimes as ‘in the style of Goya’, and moreover, it was said, painted horrific pornographic pictures which he sold secretly. He was in fact well known as a portrait painter, and one who could satisfy his clients. His pictures were bought at high prices. He was tall, becoming stout, but remained handsome, even ‘dashing’, a big head, a high and constantly lined brow, a large sturdy nose, watery pale blue eyes and thick lips, and long black straggling hair, said to be dyed. He could smile and laugh a lot and was much addicted to drink, only saved (it was said) by the attentions of the saintly Mildred.