The Bachelors (22 page)

‘The
divorce will—’

‘No,
not the divorce. The case, the charge of fraud.’

‘It may
not come to anything after all. The police may decide they haven’t good enough
evidence.’

‘I
should like to give that Freda Flower a piece of my mind. Saying you forged the
letter. Have you seen anything of Elsie?’

‘No, I
wish she hadn’t touched the letter. It puts me in an awkward position. The
police think I’m behind the theft.’ He placed his head on one side with pathos.

‘Do
they know? Who told them?’

‘The
man who lost it, I suppose.’

‘That’s
Ronald Bridges,’ Alice said. ‘He takes fits. What’s in the letter?’

‘Not
very much. It came with the cheque Freda sent me and it says, “Please use this
money to further your psychic and spiritualistic work. I leave it entirely in
your hands” — something like that. An unprincipled woman. I should never have
taken the money.’

Alice
moved in a desperate access of temper against Freda Flower and her own doubts;
she sat up violently and began to throw back the covers and reach for her
clothes at the same time. ‘I’ll go and see that woman right away. I’ll frighten
the wits out of her—’

‘No,
no,’ Patrick said.

‘I’ll
tell her it won’t be you who’s going to gaol, it will be her that’s going to
Holloway if she stands up before the magistrate and says you forged that
letter. I’ll tell her, and she can see for herself, that I’m pregnant, and I’ll
say, “What right have you,” I’ll say, “to come between me and the man I love
with a court case? You should have thought it over,” I’ll say,” before you sent
him that cheque “‘

‘No,
no, keep calm,’ Patrick said.

‘I’ll
say, “You should have thought it over, and no doubt you thought he would marry
you when he got his divorce, you ridiculous old bag,” I’ll say, “now he’s
devoted the money to a cause and distributed it among the spiritualist students,
now you say you didn’t give it to him,” I’ll say. And I’ll say, “Mrs. Flower,”
I’ll say, “you know the police are prejudiced and everyone’s prejudiced
against spiritualism, and they will swear it’s a forgery and pay their men to
swear to it. Now, Mrs. Flower,” I’ll say, “where will that get you, Mrs. Flower?
It will get you to Holloway, that’s where. You think you’re going to come
between Patrick and me? No, Mrs. Flower,” I’ll say. “Oh no, Mrs. Flower.”‘
Alice curled up and wept noisily.

Patrick
sat in his calm, watching her, and he experienced that murmuring of his mind
which was his memory. He could not recall where he had seen a similar sight
before, but he felt he had. His memory was impressionistic, formed of a few
distinguishable sensations among a mass of cloudy matter generally forming his
past. He remembered most of all his childhood, and could possibly have brought
to mind the latent image of being taken with his class round an art gallery by
his art teacher, a woman. She is endeavouring to explain impressionist art by
bidding them look at the palm of their hands for a moment, and nowhere else. ‘All
round your hand you are aware of objects — you see them, but not distinctly.
What you see round the palm of your hand is an
impression.’
Patrick’s
memory had become this type of impression and if he focused his attention for
long upon the things of the past it was mainly of his childhood that he
thought, a happy childhood, and his lifelong justification for all his
subsequent actions. It had bewildered him when the prison psychoanalysts had
put it to him as a matter of course that something had been wrong with his
childhood. That is not the case at all: something has been wrong, from time to
time, ever since. Life has been full of unfortunate occurrences, and the dream
of childhood still remains in his mind as that from which everything else
deviates. He is a dreamy child: a dreamer of dreams, they say with pride, as he
wanders back from walks in the botanical gardens, or looks up from his book
Mary
Rose
by J. M. Barrie is Patrick’s favourite, and he is taken to the theatre
to see it acted, and is sharply shocked by the sight of the real actresses and
actors with painted faces performing outwardly on the open platform this tender
romance about the girl who was stolen by the fairies on a Hebridean island. As
a young man he memorises the early poems of W. B. Yeats and will never forget
them. Now, on his first enchanted visit to the Western Isles he first
encounters an unfortunate occurrence, having sat up reciting to an American
lady far into the night and the next morning being accused of having taken
money from her purse. He is thinking of her, in his poetic innocence, as a
kindred soul to whom money does not matter, but now she carries on as if money
mattered. A little while, and he learns from a man that the early Christians
shared all their worldly possessions one with the other, and Patrick memorises
this lesson and repeats it to all. Another little while, and he has sex
relations with a woman, and is upset by all the disgusting details and is
eventually carried away into transports. There is a lot of nasty stuff in life
which comes breaking up our ecstasy, our inheritance. I think, said Patrick,
people should read more poetry and dream their dreams, and I do not recognise
man-made laws and dogmas. There is always a fuss about some petty cash, or
punctuality. ‘Tread softly,’ he recites to the young girls he meets, ‘because
you tread on my dreams.’ The girls are usually enchanted. ‘I have spread my
dreams under your feet,’ he says, ‘tread softly…’ Even older ladies are enchanted.
His wispy father fully accepts the position of Patrick, and dies. The widowed
mother cannot understand how he is not getting on in life, with such fine stuff
in him. She protests, at last, that she is penniless, and when she dies, and
turns out not to have been quite penniless, Patrick is amazed. He had not
thought her to be a materialist at heart. There is a girl at the time going to
have a baby, and that is her business. He removes to London, then, away from
these unfortunate occurrences and finds his feet as a spiritualist and becomes
a remarkable medium, which he always was, without knowing it, all along. There
are ups and downs and he always does his best to help Mr. Fergusson with
information. Patrick trembles with fear and relief when he thinks of Mr.
Fergusson who first put him on a charge; and that was the first meeting.

Patrick
has tried to explain how let down he always feels by people who trust him and
enter into an agreement to trust him, as it were against their better
judgment, blinding themselves, and then suddenly no longer trust him, and turn
upon him. Mr. Fergusson perhaps understands this.

There
is another charge, and the unfortunate sentence, but afterwards Mr. Fergusson,
with his strong-looking chest and reliable uniform, is still sitting at the
police station, and they make another arrangement about information so that
Patrick feels much better and feels he has a real friend in Mr. Fergusson with
his few words, even though Mr. Fergusson cannot help putting him on a charge
sometimes; and he is afraid of Mr. Fergusson.

Patrick
contemplates Alice curled up in distress. It is so much easier to get away from
a girl in any other part of the country than in London. In the provinces one
only has to go to London and disappear. But once you have a girl in your life
in London she knows all your associates, you have established yourself, she
knows some of your affairs; she knows where to find you; and it is impossible
to disappear from Alice without disappearing from the centre of things, the
spiritualist movement — Marlene — his Circle — ‘My bread and butter.’ Patrick
is indignant. He has loved Alice.

He has
not taken any money from her. He has given her money, has supported her for
nearly a year. She has agreed to trust him, it is a pact. She is mine, he is
thinking. The others were not mine but this one is mine. I have loved her, I
still love her. I don’t take anything from Alice. I give. And I will release
her spirit from this gross body. He looks with justification at the syringe by
her bedside, and is perfectly convinced about how things will go in Austria
(all being well), since a man has to protect his bread and butter, and Alice
has agreed to die, though not in so many words.

Patrick
watched her calmly and reflected that he had been weak with Alice. She had
talked and talked about marriage, as if he were a materialist with a belief in
empty forms. He had told her frequently he was not a person of Conventions: ‘I
live by the life of the spirit.’ She had only replied ‘I’m not conventional,
either.’ And when she had conceived this disgusting baby she had been frantic
for marriage. It was absurd that she refused to have the baby done away with
and was frantic for marriage.

It was
her love for him and his spiritual values that made her so like the other
women, crumpled up on the bed after their fury. A little dread entered in among
his bones: it was about the chances of the Flower case coming up, and the
possibility of a conviction. He absented himself from this idea and gave
himself up to spiritual reflection again. Before Alice had recovered herself,
he, watching from his chair, was surprised by a sensation which he had never
experienced before. This was an acute throb of anticipatory pleasure at the
mental vision of Alice, crumpled up — in the same position as she now was on
the bed — on the mountainside in Austria. She is mine, I haven’t taken a penny
from this one, I have given to this one. I can do what pleases me. I love this
one. She has agreed to trust. Crumpled up on the mountainside in Austria,
Alice, overloaded with insulin, far from help, beyond the reach of a doctor,
beyond help — far from the intrusive knowledge of his friends and enemies in
London, outside the scope of his bread and butter, free from her heavy body,
beyond good and evil. She has agreed to it, not in so many words, but…

She
looked up from the bed, and was startled. But the fear left her face. There is
a pact, he thought. She has agreed to believe in me.

It was still Sunday night
and Ronald had gone up the stairs to Elsie Forrest’s room at no Vesey Street
near Victoria and had sat on the stairs awaiting her return at half-past
eleven, when, as she approached her door, he stood up.

‘Christ!’
she said when she saw him.

‘I hope
I didn’t give you a fright.’

‘What d’you
want?’

‘To
come inside and talk to you,’ Ronald said.

‘You
threaten me, I’ll wake up the house.’

Ronald
sat down on the top stair. ‘I’m not threatening you. I’m only asking if I may
talk to you. If you don’t want me to talk to you, would you mind talking to me?’

She
opened the door. ‘Come on in,’ she said, and stood and looked at him as he
walked into her bed-sitting-room.

‘I’ve
got nothing in the place to drink,’ she said.

‘Not
even tea?’ said Ronald.

She
said, ‘Take your things off and sit down.’

She
took off her own coat and hung it in the cupboard, from which she brought a
coat-hanger and carefully set Ronald’s coat upon it and set it up on a hook
behind the door. Ronald sat on the divan and stretched out his legs.

As she
put the kettle on the little electric grill stove behind a curtain she said, ‘What
was it you wanted to talk about?’ She looked at him from the sides of her eyes
as she set out the tea cups.

‘Anything
you like.’

She was
looking at him, not to size up what he had come to talk about, but in an
evaluating way which made Ronald feel like something in the sales.

‘You’re
Ronald Bridges,’ she said.

‘You’re
Elsie Forrest,’ he said.

‘You
want the letter,’ she said. She went over to the window and drew the limp short
makeshift curtains.

He
said, ‘Have the police been to see you?’

‘No,’
she said. ‘And you know they haven’t. You wouldn’t be fool enough to tell the
cops until you had tried to get it back yourself. It would tell against your
reputation, losing a confidential document, wouldn’t it? Why didn’t you keep it
confidential if it was confidential?’

‘I don’t
know,’ he said.

‘You
wouldn’t be foolish enough to tell the cops,’ she said.

‘No,’
he said. ‘But a friend of mine has done so.’

‘I don’t
believe it,’ she said. ‘No detectives have called here.’

‘I’ve
told them to leave it to me for the time being.’

‘I don’t
believe it,’ she said.

‘All
right,’ he said. ‘The kettle’s boiling over,’ he said.

She
made the tea, and Ronald watched her. She looked very neurotic, moving in a
jerky way, her body giving little twitches of habitual umbrage. Her blonde
greasy hair hung over her face as she poured out the tea.

‘Your
friend Matthew Finch came to see me,’ she said.

‘Yes, I
know,’ Ronald said.

‘He was
after the letter.’ ‘Yes, I know.’

‘He
didn’t get it,’ she said. ‘I know.’

‘And
that’s why you’ve come after it.’

‘I didn’t
need to come after it,’ he said.

‘All
right,’ she said, ‘send the police. I’ll face all that.’ She sat down beside
him on the sofa and, folding her hands in her lap, looked straight ahead of
her. ‘I’ve faced it already,’ she said with tragic intensity, such as Alice
employed when talking to a man and the stress of the occasion demanded it.