Judith (31 page)

Then – But it is all right to interpret, no not interpret, like this, on another level?

The grass and nettles gave on to an area of cobbles and what seemed to be the backyards of a large country house. There were stables and lofts and granaries and kennels. I thought – This is where children must once have played – or those enormous babies who were ladies and gentlemen walking on the grass. Bert stopped and said ‘Look, you should not really come any further.' I said ‘What are you going to do: you're going to look for that bomb?'

He faced me and put his hands on my shoulders and his forehead against mine.

He said ‘Look: I can't say I'll marry you now!'

I thought – You mean, you can't say you'll marry me now?

I said ‘All right.'

We went on.

I thought – Somewhere or other, has not something like this happened before?

Well, Jason, you did want to marry Lilia?

Then round some corner (no, I do not think we make things happen like this: I think we make ourselves so that things happen like this; one thing after another) – round some corner there popped up the façade of an enormous building: it was as if we had been going along that path in the jungle near the Garden, of course (you have made the connection?), although this was not, in fact, exactly a façade, because what we were now looking at was seen from the back – from what had once been the inside of a building – the rest was not there, it had been knocked down. There remained just this front elevation of a large country house in the baroque style: there was ornamentation around the doors and windows and even a pediment and a scroll or two: it was three storeys high: but because we were looking at it from the inside, through its windows we saw the sky. The windows of those enormous churches in the jungle had led to darkness. And so on. I thought – No wonder people close their eyes!

Bert said ‘You have been here before?'

I said ‘No, I haven't been here before.'

Bert said ‘You've been to the cottage.'

I said ‘I've been to the cottage with you!'

Bert held my hand.

There was a fence round the ruins of the building and the usual notices about keeping out; and then a particular one saying DANGER OF FALLING MASONRY. I thought – This is an extension of that area that is forbidden within what is forbidden: so, again, you are invited in: you can work this out?

Bert said ‘We used to play here as children. We were supposed not to be allowed to climb.'

There were weeds and piles of rubble where the main part of the house had once been. I thought – This, do you think, is one of the boxes with the lid off?

Bert said ‘The façade was preserved because of its aesthetic qualifications.'

I said ‘Oh, Bert, I'm so sorry!'

He said ‘I want you to go back.'

I said ‘I want to go on.'

Bert stepped over the fence that went round the building. I followed. Our cameras and recording equipment banged around us. We were now inside what had once been the house. Bert's great great grandmother had lived here, or something. I thought – you mean, he is not really looking for the bomb?

The doors and windows of the lower floor of the façade were boarded up so you could not see through them to the landscape beyond. You could only see through the windows of the two top floors where there was the sky.

I thought – If, inside the theatre of memory, you have become yourself one of the figures that pop up at windows, what is it that you might see when you look out?

What had once been the side walls of the house had been cut offat a slope so that there were still bits of them like buttresses against the façade. Beyond these side walls were the half-standing ruins of outhouses and a shrubbery, so that here one could still not see through to any landscape in front. The whole structure was, indeed, like the backdrop of a stage-set, seen from the back.

I thought – The battle-area is beyond the façade: but if no one comes here, has the audience left the theatre, or has the play not even begun?

In the corner on the left, beside the side-buttress and the inside of the façade, there were the remains of a spiral staircase which must have once gone up to some sort of tower. The staircase had been sliced through vertically as in some architect's drawing: only stretches or segments of it remained against the back wall of the façade. I thought – It is one of the ladders on which figures in the theatre of memory climb when they want someone to remember – what – the shape of their lives? its meaning? This is one of the staircases, is it, on which one climbs to say – Coo-ee?

Bert said ‘Do you see that piece of plastic?'

I said ‘What piece of plastic?'

He pointed to the top of the building where there was no roof nor battlements nor towers: but where there was what looked like a piece of plastic wrapped round a stone.

He said ‘Do you think it's a bomb?'

I said ‘Bert, you're mad!'

He said ‘I tried to get up there yesterday but I couldn't.'

I thought – He must know more than I think he knows: or why is he doing this?

I said ‘Why couldn't you?'

He said ‘Perhaps I need an audience.'

I said ‘Bert, I'm so miserable!'

He said ‘Yes, I'm sorry too.'

He put his arms around me.

Then he said ‘Could you help me up on to the top level of that staircase?'

I said ‘Yes.'

I thought – Perhaps this is some ordeal: some ritual?

He said ‘Why do you say now you'll marry me?'

I said ‘I've said I'll help you!'

I took his arms away from me.

He said ‘Eeny meeny miney mo –'

I said ‘It depends where you begin.'

He said ‘Well, where did we?'

He walked over the rubble to what was left of the spiral staircase. I followed him. I thought – At least you may know what we are talking about: do you?

The first remaining segment of the staircase rose to a height of about a metre; then it ended. The next segment was parallel to it about two metres above.

Bert looked up to the top of the building where the piece of plastic wrapping was. He said ‘Height off ground: wind direction –'

I thought – You mean, people will think you are mad anyway?

He climbed the first segment of the spiral staircase. He then
reached up to the outside of the top of the second. He was festooned with his cine equipment: the camera swung. I thought – Well, people just do like doing, and watching, don't they, things like this.

He said ‘Can I put a foot on your shoulder?'

I said ‘Yes.'

I thought – Some old memories are still trying to get out of the tin can?

By my standing underneath him and his putting his foot on my shoulder he was able to scramble up on to the second segment of the staircase. I thought – This is a demonstration that we never know what things are for: will we know, if it is counter-productive?

I said ‘Do you want the sound equipment?'

He said ‘Yes.'

I thought – So you mean, at the end of all this, we might have found out what it is for?

He said ‘Do you think you could possibly come up where I was just now and then I can help you up here: and then you can help me up on to the third level?'

I said ‘All right.'

I climbed the first segment of the staircase and stood on the outer edge of the top step. I thought – A stone will come loose? I will fall and dangle at the end of a rope?

I said ‘This is very difficult.'

He said ‘Yes, I know.'

I handed him up his sound equipment. He put it by him on the second level. Then he knelt and I reached up to him my arms and he took hold of them. I thought – But one day you will marry me?

He said ‘Swing like a pendulum.'

I said ‘Swing like a pendulum.'

He said ‘Then you can get a foothold.'

By hanging from his arms, and swinging, I did manage to get a foot up on to the second level; then, with a good deal of scraping, my body after it.

I thought – Those two climbers on the north face of the
Eiger: cut the rope and one of them dies: if you don't, both of them will –

– This was always about something being born?

He said ‘This is the hardest part.'

‘Yes.'

‘I can't stand on your shoulders.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because if I do, either you or I will fall backwards.'

I thought – You cut the rope that is from an umbilicus?

We were standing with our backs against the inside wall of the façade. I thought – Or perhaps with one great heave – upsadaisy!

Bert began to try to climb up on to the third level of the staircase. I held my hands cupped so that he could put his foot in them. I still do not know how to describe all this: as if nothing were happening? I thought – Even if he gets to the top he will have to come down: or does he think he will be taken up in a chariot-rocket to heaven?

Bert scrabbled and clawed like someone – well – trying to give birth? trying to be born?

Give a squeeze, do you think, to his little toe? his ankle?

If Bert got on to the third level of the staircase it did seem, it is true, that it would not be too difficult for him to get to the top of the façade: there were projecting stones and bits of metal.

Bert reached the third level. I handed up to him his equipment from the second. He said ‘Thanks.'

I thought – You mean, you have now got away from me?

He lay on his stomach and looked down.

I thought – Ah, you are not a snake!

He said ‘I mean, thank you for saying what you said.'

I said ‘You do what you like.'

There was the sound of a helicopter again overhead. I did not want to go on with this. I turned away and sat with my back against the wall.

Of course, it was conceivable, was it not, that there might have been some sort of bomb wrapped in plastic at the top
of the ruined building: it was likely, I supposed, that the helicopter was to do with the army or the police who might have been on the look-out for a bomb. Or the helicopter might really be to do with Bert's film company (Bert did, after all, have a film company!): or it might have been that Bert had made the whole thing up. None of this seemed much to matter. I sat with my back against the wall on the second level of the staircase. From the bottom of this level it would not be too difficult to get down. Bert had gone further up taking his camera and his sound equipment with him.

I thought – Well, if he is the man on the tightrope, I am not going to be stuck posing as the girl in spangles at the bottom.

From where I sat I could see the outline of what had once been the huge country house. There was a drawing-room, and a hall, and passages, and a kitchen.

I thought – That is where Bert's ancestors were put away?

To the right of the outline of the building there was the wall of the old kitchen garden from which we had come.

I thought – There are maps of the past: but of the present?

The helicopter was coming overhead. It was making its whirring and clacking. There was a man at the side with what seemed to be a loud-hailer.

I thought – But even if Bert is making this up, he cannot know the ending –

He may simply be shot?

Could one live like this if one had children?

One would want a happy ending, would one not?

I was keeping as close to the wall as possible so as to be out of sight of the man with the loud-hailer.

I had not noticed that not so far from the end of the second level of the staircase there was a first-floor window, not bricked up, through which, if I could get there, I might see whatever it was at the back of, or rather I mean at the front of, the building. I had imagined that beyond here was the battle-area: there must once have been magnificent lawns and terraces and gardens.

I had a glimpse of Bert who was getting to the very top of
the building. I thought – Of course, he is like one of those old heroes on Everest who go on and on and do not come back: who seem to have slid right over the rim of the world –

The man in the helicopter appeared to have seen Bert. There was a voice from the loud-hailer. The sound got lost in the wind.

I wondered if, when the helicopter had gone, I might climb along, finding footholds, to where I could see through the first-floor window. I thought – It is important in this dimension, of course, to appear to be doing things for oneself.

– Might it be that I would see as if out of, or would it be into, a painting?

There were bits of stone and metal projecting from the wall here like those from the wall along which Bert was climbing.

One of the ways in which memory was stirred here was to do with that time, yes, years ago, when I had climbed out on to and along the parapet and battlements of Oliver's flat – first in order to save his life; then, it had seemed, in order to save mine. In remembering this it was not as if I were going back into the past: one looks down at the past from the present. But then, there had been that body which had fallen on to the pavement. There might be such a thing again, might there not, with Bert (or myself?) climbing.

The helicopter was overhead like an enormous angel of life or death. I thought – I should not hide. I will see what is beyond that window.

I began to climb out on to the wall beyond the second level of the staircase. I thought – This could be a further peephole at the far side of the box?

Bert had reached the very top of the building. He was crawling along the ledge like a target at a fun-fair shooting-range. The helicopter was directly overhead. It seemed to be trying to blow him off with its wings – or to give him something to fight against. I thought – He is like a bird of paradise with its long tail: this is there to strengthen him: but if he falls?

Then – This is ridiculous.

The helicopter was lowering a rope towards Bert.