Ritual in the Dark (24 page)

No, it wasn’t. I’ve told you what it was like. I got to the stage of living like an animal—just eating and sleeping, and feeling a contempt for myself cover me like soot. I knew that if I’d got enough money I’d spend all my days buying books and gramophone records—or probably, like you, going to hear Sartre lecture in Paris, hear Callas sing in Milan.

Touché, dear boy, Austin murmured.

Well.. . enough of that. I think I’d just forgotten to live. I let myself slip into a state of sloppiness and boredom, that’s all. And since I’ve met you I’ve begun to recover the old sense of purpose. Oh, it’s not anything very clear. It’s just a sense of excitement, like being on the point of discovering something. But it’s genuine all right. And you started it, but it’s nothing to do with you personally.

Oh, I see. . .

Don’t take that personally. I’d be very sorry if you went away. . .

Nunne said gloomily:

Be careful. One of these days, you might be glad to run away from those glimpses of purpose.

Why?

Nunne seemed suddenly sober. He stared at the tablecloth. He said:

It depends what you pay for them. . . Is anything the matter? You look rather pale.

I’m feeling a little sick. It’s this heat, I think.

Can I get you anything? Try an angostura. I always have one when I feel sick.

No, thanks. I think I might go outside. . .

There’s a door next to the lavatory. It will take you into a backyard. Have a sit down out there.

Sorme said: Thanks.

The dancing stopped, and he stood up, hoping to get an unobstructed passage to the door. Unfortunately, the music started again immediately. Nunne said:

Listen, Gerard. If you feel sick, go up the fire escape, and into the second door on the left. You’ll find a bathroom.

Thanks, Austin.

He pushed his way to the door, feeling the sweat standing out on his face. The night air was cold. He felt better in the yard. It was as if something flat and alive, something with legs, turned itself slowly in the pit of his stomach.

The yard seemed completely black when he came out. He found the fire escape, and sat down on the bottom step. As he sat there, he heard a movement in the far corner of the yard, and whispering. He felt too sick to worry, leaning his cheek against the cold iron of the rail.

On the other side of the wall a train whistled and released steam, startling him. Drops of water fell on his face. The sky was clear, full of stars. On the other side of the door the music sounded exhausted and inconsequent.

Someone crossed the yard towards him. A man’s voice said:

Listen, would you mind going away?

A face was thrust close to him; the breath smelt of tobacco and garlic. It was too much for him. He jumped to his feet and turned his back away from the man as the first heave came. He was sick, his head pressed against the wall, tasting simultaneously champagne, whisky and asparagus. He felt a kind of incredulity, wondering how he could ever have swallowed these things, things that now seemed wholly revolting, that he could not imagine himself at any time finding pleasant. The stupidity of drinking champagne when he had no desire to drink also overwhelmed him. He heard the man recross the yard, and say:

Oh, Christ, he’s sick. Let’s get out.

Footsteps crossed the yard. Another male voice said:

Let’s go somewhere else.

They went through the door. He felt a smouldering loathing of them for being there at all, and a deep relief when they were gone. He lurched across to the fire escape and sat down again, glad of the cold that now came through his clothing. His stomach still twitched as he tried to forget it. He spat, and wiped the sweat off his face with his hands. He knew it was coming again, and wished it would all come at once and get it over with, and realised the extent to which his stomach rebelled at the quantity of alcohol. When it came to a head, he stood up and leaned over the rail, the heat rising in waves from his stomach like fever. He stood there for several minutes, coughing and trying to make it subside, thinking: Never again, never again, feeling the tears cold on his eyelashes. Finally, he sat down again. The sweat chilled on his neck and belly. He heard someone outside in the passageway, and was afraid they were coming into the yard. No one came, but the thought worried him. He stood up, trying to remember the instructions Austin had given him to find the bathroom. The door at the top of the first flight of stairs was locked. He climbed slowly up the next flight, stopping once to stare out over the railway siding that was now visible. The door stood open; he went through into a lighted passageway. The door of the bathroom stood open. He switched on the light, and locked himself in. He crossed to the lavatory and sat on the pan, leaning his back against the pipe. He felt like sitting there for the rest of the night. The heat was still rising from his body. The room smelt of primroses, and he disliked this. The twitching of his stomach made his breathing convulsive. He sat there for about a quarter of an hour, with no desire to move, staring at the threefold greaseline in the cracked enamel surface of the bath. Then it came again, and he knelt on the floor, vomiting into the lavatory, now bringing up nothing but small quantities of a bitter liquid, which he spat against the pattern of blue flowers that decorated the inside of the pan. He thought: Christ what have I done to my stomach, that it does this to me? His knees began to hurt, and he pulled over a bathmat covered with rubber nipples, and slid it under his shins. When the sickness subsided he pulled the chain and stretched out on the floor, resting his head on the mat. Someone tried the bathroom door, then went away. He lay still for another ten minutes, and came close to falling into a doze.

Nunne’s voice called: Gerard, are you in there?

Yes.

Are you all right?

No. He grinned to himself.

May I come in?

He pulled himself slowly to his feet, wishing Nunne would go away, and unlocked the door. Nunne came in.

Are you all right?

Sorme said thickly:

I have been sick three times. I suspect I am going to be sick three times more.

He sat on the edge of the bath.

Would you like me to drive you home?

I just want to stay here—that’s all. For a while.

Poor Gerard! I’m terribly sorry. You do look ill.

Sorme thought with fury: Bloody stupid comment. He said:

Just let me alone for a while, please.

All right. Look, I’ve got an idea. I’ll be back soon. Lock the door again.

Sorme leaned forward and locked the door behind him. He sat down on the floor, and buried his face in his hands. He noticed that his hands were dirty, probably with dust from the fire escape, and realised that he must have transferred a great deal of it to his face. He felt no desire to stand up and find out by inspecting his face in a mirror. The room was cold, and a draught came from under the door. He was glad of it. He was afraid he was going to be sick again; his stomach lurched threateningly when he thought inadvertently of food.

Nunne called:

It’s me. May I come in?

He opened the door again, getting a glimpse, as he did so, of his face in the shaving mirror. He looked like a coalminer. The tears had cut paths through the dirt.

Listen, Gerard, I’ve fixed up so that you can sleep here. They’ve got an empty room. Do you feel like coming up now?

I’d better wash my face.

Don’t worry. There’ll be a washbasin in your room. Come on.

Sorme followed him up a flight of stairs. He said:

You shouldn’t have bothered. I’ll be all right in half an hour. I could go home.

No need. It’s all fixed.

Nunne turned round, and added in a lower voice:

I’m staying too, anyway.

Sorme did not answer. He was thinking: Nowhere near me, I hope. As if Nunne guessed his thought, he added:

I’ll be in the room below you. So knock the floor if you want anything.

Sorme felt suddenly ashamed for the dislike he was beginning to feel. He said: Thanks.

*
  
*
  
*

It was better in the dark. After half an hour the sickness subsided, and left him feeling completely rested. It was a curious silence, compounded of exhaustion and strength. He was glad to lie there in the big double bed, hearing faintly shreds of music, tinny and far off. There was a window in the roof above his head, although no starlight penetrated the dusty glass. In spite of the tiredness, the sense of interior power that had been with him all day was still there. There was also a sense of unconnectedness, as if nothing that had ever happened to him had really happened. He thought vaguely: Good title for a book: things do not happen. He felt that even the prospect of his own death would leave him unmoved, certain that nothing final and irrevocable could happen. When he thought of Austin he felt pity, thinking: too involved. He will never be free. He doesn’t realise that things don’t happen, that nobody is really himself, that man is God in a box.

The bedclothes were thin and light, but he was not cold. He slept for a little, but woke again, feeling that it was somehow a pity to sleep and waste the feeling of certainty. A few seconds later he slept again anyway, and dreamed of Nunne: Nunne was standing on the rooftop of a house in Berkeley Square, and shrieking like Petrouchka at the night sky. He woke abruptly, deeply aware of Nunne, feeling his presence in the room. There was no one. Nunne had stood there, his arms flailing, shouting something at the sky; below, the crowds watched his protesting silhouette; many shouted, urging him to jump. But Nunne would not jump; Sorme was certain of it, and the certainty made him glad. In the empty house below, he hurried up uncarpeted stairs, hoping to reach the roof before it happened, feeling a happy excitement, certain now that there would be a light of prophecy over London, from Islington to Marylebone, from Primrose Hill to St John’s Wood, and hanging like a red sun over Kensington Gardens. Nunne wouldn’t jump. He would stand there, Austin, Vaslav, Petrouchka, above the rooftops. But he was not in an empty house. He was in a brothel, lying in an attic room. And Austin was there.

He was standing by the window, staring out. In the fault dawnlight, the big naked body looked like a marble statue. The shoulders were broad; rounded muscle, a dancer’s shoulders.

Sorme could not see his eyes. They would be stone eyes, not closed, immobile in the half light, nor like the eyes of the priest, grey in the ugly gargoyle’s face. When he closed his own eyes he saw the dancer, the big body, moving without effort through the air, slowly, unresisted, then coming to earth, as silent as a shadow. It was very clear. The face, slim and muscular, bending over him, a chaplet of rose leaves woven into the hair, a faun’s face, the brown animal eyes smiling at him, beyond good and evil.

Cold the dawnlight on marble roofs, more real than the jazz. You’re gonna miss me, honey. Glass corridors leading nowhere.

And then the leap, violent as the sun on ice, beyond the bed, floating without noise, on, through the open window.

The excitement rose in him like a fire. The rose, bloodblack in the silver light, now reddening in the dawn that blows over Paddington’s rooftops. Ending. A rose thrown from an open window, curving high over London’s waking rooftops, then falling, its petals loosening, into the grey soiled waters of the Thames.

He wanted to say it, with the full shock of amazement: So that’s who you are!

Certain now, as never before, the identification complete.

It was still there as he woke up, the joy and surprise of the discovery, fading as he looked around the lightening room. He said aloud: Vaslav.

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

His ROOM felt cold, and somehow unoccupied. He lit the gas under the kettle, and lay down on the bed, his eyes closed. It was a quarter past seven; it had taken him just over an hour to walk from Paddington. He felt weak and tired, but curiously at peace. He wondered whether Nunne would find the note he had left on the pillow; he had seen no one as he left the house.

In the room underneath a radio was playing. He heard a man’s voice call: What have you done with the plug off my electric razor? The sky outside the window was heavy with rain clouds and dawn. It was the first time for many months that he had been awake so early, and the sensation brought a certain freshness with it, and the thought of charladies in the Mile End Road catching City buses and of men in overalls carrying lunch tins. The rain clouds hung low, like smoke.

He made tea and sat on the bed to drink it, covering his knees with the eiderdown. The room was chilly, even with the gas fire burning. He read till he heard the eight o’clock pips from the radio below.

He met the German girl on his way back from the bathroom. She said:

There’s a letter on the table for you.

Oh, thanks.

The neat handwriting on the envelope was strange to him, but he recognised the heading on the notepaper. The typed message read:

There is something I would like to talk to you about. Could you ring me when you receive this, please? Gertrude Quincey.

The first-floor tenant, carrying a briefcase, pushed past him, saying irritably: Excuse me. Sorme moved automatically, staring at the two lines of type, frowning with the effort to guess what Miss Quincey could want. He pulled a handful of change out of his pocket, and found four pennies. As the number began to ring, he experienced a sudden misgiving about the earliness of the hour.

A woman’s voice said: Hello?

Gertrude?

Who is it?

Gerard Sorme.

Hello, Gerard! This is Caroline.

Hello, sweet. What are you doing there?

Having breakfast right at this moment.

Where’s your aunt?

In the garden. Hold on a moment and I’ll get her. . .

Wait. Don’t go yet. When am I going to see you?

That’s up to you.

Could you make it tomorrow night?

I.
         
. . Here comes Aunt Gertrude.

He heard her say: