The Furnished Room (20 page)

‘That was the blind man. Now the clear-sighted. He looks around at his possibilities: pleasure, travel, money, etc. But his wretched eyes act like a pulverizing gun. One blast from his eyes, and the thing looked at crumbles into dust. He sees in advance the futility of all goals, and so never attempts to reach them. Instead, he stagnates, seeing nothing worthy of his beliefs, nothing to make him move in one direction rather than another. The man thus paralysed is not free. But there is one course possible to him: if he can't feel the normal human blood in his veins, he can inject himself with poison, with fever.' When he had finished, Beckett could still hear his last words, in his flat assertive voice, hanging in the air. He thought with depression: People dislike me, as a clever prig student is disliked.

Gash said: ‘When I was a young man of about your age I had everything I could desire. A good career, a wife whom I loved, and more money than I knew how to use. I was successful in business, society, and love, and I enjoyed myself enormously. Then I started to lose my taste for my manner of life. It was like losing one's taste for food when one has a cold. Everything I looked at seemed tinged with futility and greyness, and I felt a permanent vague dissatisfaction which had, so far as I could see, no tangible cause. This condition worsened and I began to suffer from headaches. I tried a holiday abroad, which only brought temporary relief. I next toyed with various ideas, including, under the influence of the Dominic family, that of joining the Catholic Church. None of these mental fads lasted for long. Finally I took a drastic step. I resigned my position with my firm, parted from my wife, friends, and family, and went to join a small religious community who had a house in Scotland. These men practised disciplines for the attainment of spiritual ecstasy, which I still practise daily.'

‘I find your life story very interesting. But I could not do the same myself. So I hope you're not advising me to become a monk.'

‘I was advising nothing,' Gash said. ‘The point I wished to make was that freedom follows an act of rejection. I must add that, in my opinion, all men who are capable of greatness have to go through a preliminary trough of spiritual deadness. This deadness is the necessary preliminary to rebirth. I believe that the great are drawn from the ranks of the twice-born, from those who have undergone death and rebirth.'

‘What is rebirth?'

‘I could answer your question, and many other questions. I could chart your future spiritual development. But it would be of no use to you.' As Beckett looked startled, Gash continued: ‘Don't be alarmed, I'm not a charlatan, claiming to read your future! I meant that, from my own experience along the same path, I could chart the progress of the path for you. It would be useless because experiences cannot be given. You must undergo them yourself. When you have done so, you will make your own definition of rebirth and won't have to ask me for mine.' Gash put his hand on Beckett's shoulder. ‘I have only one piece of advice. Don't rush precipitately into some rash action which you may later regret, but wait for the experience of rebirth which will assuredly come to you sooner or later.'

The old man's face was near his own; the smell of decay hung from the womanish soft mouth. Beckett felt sudden revulsion. He thought, rebelliously, that it was all very well for Gash to talk. Gash was even more divorced from the everyday world than he was. All the same, Gash's voice had the ring of authenticity, like the voice of a workman who thoroughly knows his job.

Gash removed his hand. ‘Well, go now. But come and see me again, any time you please.'

In the doorway, Beckett said: ‘By the way, I asked you about the mental hospital because popular gossip says you were confined for a sex crime. I don't know what you feel about this. Personally, I should be rather flattered at being considered the local sex maniac!'

Gash said: ‘How amazing! I'm sorry to disappoint the gossips. But tell them that in my youth, although never actually qualifying for the status of sex maniac, I was very passionate and never ran short of beautiful, charming, and cultivated women.'

‘I'll tell them!' Beckett said.

Beckett's money diminished rapidly. He lived cheaply, buying meat sold as pets' pieces, and scavenging vegetables from the gutter in Portobello Market. He made his excursions in the evenings, when the stalls were closing and many vegetables were dropped. If he was too late the roadsweeper beat him to it, and swept up the vegetables into the Royal Borough of Kensington cart.

He received a letter from Ilsa enclosing a fifteen-shilling postal order. Her writing style was flat and undistinguished, punctuated with exclamation marks. She related that Katey had caught a summer cold, that they had got a cute chianti-bottle lamp for their living room, that yesterday she had been to the cinema and the film was v. good; that she liked her new job but some of the customers were bloody mean about tips. There then followed complicated explanations why she was sending fifteen shillings instead of a pound. This made him laugh. It was somehow typical of Ilsa to fall just short of the mark.

That evening he had an alteration of vision. It was as if the mechanism of his sight had been sharply jolted into a clearer and truer focus, so that he saw clearly instead of partially. He happened to be looking at the washstand at the time and suddenly all the objects on it looked different. Trying to define this difference, he could only express it as more intense being. The rose-patterned china bowl, the empty milk-bottles, his tooth things and the ball of socks to be washed, all existed more intensely. They no longer looked like their names, but like clusters of living electrons that formed perpetual-motion matter. Life was the sinews of these objects, these wrestling shapes and shadows that were twisted into the substance of the marble slab.

He thought that there must be shutters on the human senses and capacity for experience. Generally the shutters were half closed, admitting only imperfect, lazy sense-impressions. On the few occasions when the shutters were raised, the world appeared, not fully, but at any rate more clearly than usual.

Why then could not men always live and experience fully? Why were they shuttered, as if reality was so blazing that it could be seen only through a protective screen? Why did the state of boredom and depression, the polar opposite to vision, occur so frequently?

His thoughts were interrupted by a rap on his door.

The landlady called: ‘Mr Beckett... visitor...'

He ran down the three flights. In the front hall stood his mother. She was wearing a fawn hat with a decoration like curled antennae on the front, a beige jacket, and her churchgoer best dress that she had bought three years ago from the High Street drapers. Her prayer-clasped hands were in net gloves, and from her right wrist dangled a navy holdall containing her handbag and her plastic mac.

He said: ‘Hello, Mum.'

‘Darling boy…' She held him tightly. ‘My darling boy.'

He smiled at her.

She smiled back.

The landlady watched them stolidly with her grudging, dissatisfied eyes, and her arms folded on her chest like a garden-fence gossip.

Beckett said awkwardly to his mother: ‘I live on the top floor. Come on up.'

Passing the landlady on the stairs, his mother said: ‘Excuse me...' fluttering a nervous smile.

Beckett whispered: ‘Don't smile at that old cow.'

‘What, dear?'

‘Oh, nothing.'

‘Why shouldn't I smile at her?'

‘She's a lower form of life and should be ignored.'

‘Really, dear!'

In the room, he said: ‘Well, this is a surprise. I didn't expect to see you.'

There was a hint of reproach in her voice. ‘Didn't you, Joe?'

‘No!' he said jovially. ‘Well! Sit down.'

‘I had to come up to town to see Aunty Anne, dear, so I thought I'd look in and see you first.' She sat, and looked round cosily. ‘My darling! So this is your room, where you live. I've often pictured it in my imagination, trying to imagine the place you live in.'

‘Bit of a mess at the moment, I'm afraid.'

She prodded the bed, evaluating like a woman at a sale. ‘I believe I've got just the thing for a cover for this bed. Those old curtains that used to be in your bedroom at home. You remember, the flowered ones. I'll take the curtain rings out, and wash and iron them for you.'

‘The bed's all right without a cover.'

‘Yes, that's what I'll do. The colours should come up nicely if I put some salt in the water.'

‘I don't
need
them, Mum.'

‘Oh, let Mother do this for you! It would be no trouble, really, dear.'

He said ungraciously: ‘All right.' He filled the kettle and put it on the gas ring. ‘Anyway, how are you, Mum?'

‘Better, dear, though I haven't been at all well lately.'

‘Haven't you? I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘I told you, in my last letter, that I was ill. Didn't you read my letter?'

‘Yes, three times.' It was true: he had read her letter thrice. But the words had slipped over the surface of his mind without making an impression, and he had not registered that she was ill. Now he felt guilty, and resentful at her for causing his guilt.

‘I
did
hope you'd answer my letter. Especially as I told you I wasn't well.'

‘Yes. I meant to write back, but somehow I never —'

‘I don't expect long letters. Just a postcard from time to time would be a comfort.'

‘Yes.'

‘Otherwise Mother worries.'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, never mind, dear. We're together now, and that's the main thing.' She smiled, her tired, anxious eyes loving him. ‘My boy! Tell me all your news.'

‘There isn't much, actually, Mum.'

‘Well, there must be something.'

‘Not really.'

‘Have you made any nice friends?'

‘I know some people, yes.' He knew what she was getting at, but perversely feigned stupidity, determined not to help her.

‘Anyone special, dear?'

‘What do you mean, “special”?'

‘Well, special.'

‘What do you mean?'

She was forced to say it. ‘Any nice girl?'

‘No.'

‘Oh, I am disappointed. But perhaps you'll meet someone you like soon.'

‘Yes.'

‘Darling!' Then she asked: ‘What about that girl you mentioned last summer?'

‘What girl?'

‘What was her name?'

He said reluctantly: ‘Ilsa Barnes?'

‘That was it. What happened to her?'

‘Oh, well. Nothing, really.'

‘Don't you see her any more?'

‘Not really, no.'

‘But you seemed so fond of her, Joe.'

He grunted noncommittally.

‘Perhaps you
will
see her again?'

To buy her off, he agreed: ‘Perhaps.'

‘Of course, dear.' She said brightly: ‘Ilsa! That's a German name, isn't it? Is she German?'

‘No, English. From Sussex.'

‘Sussex! What part of Sussex?'

‘A place called Lowhurst. Near Rye, somewhere.'

‘Oh, I know Rye. It's a lovely place. I went there once for a holiday when I was a girl. I expect it's a lot changed now, though. Fancy that! I don't know Lowhurst itself, though. Well,' she said, ‘so Ilsa is a country girl. That's nice. I expect you show her round London, don't you?'

‘Oh no. She's been in London three years now, and probably knows it better than I do.'

‘Still, I expect there's a lot she hasn't seen. St Paul's for instance, or the Crown Jewels in the Tower. Has she seen those?'

‘I don't expect so; no.'

‘Well, then!' she said triumphantly. ‘You'll be able to take her, won't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Aunty Anne and I went to the Tower last time I was in London. There was such a feeling of history there, of people in times gone by...' She had an expression of timid enthusiasm, like a child wanting her hesitant hope confirmed. Then, unselfishly, she stopped discussing herself to discuss him. ‘After all, dear, your Ilsa comes from the country and London must seem very strange to her. She'll be glad to have a nice boy like you to take care of her and show her around. And Joe...'

‘Uh-huh?'

‘Make sure you
are
a nice boy, won't you? Don't lead her astray. Remember she's a country girl, a long way from home, and I'm sure her mother worries about her, as I do about you, dear.'

Embarrassed, he said nothing.

‘I'd so like to have a daughter-in-law. I want to be a granny
soon
!'

‘Mum, need we discuss this?'

‘But you'll want to get married one day, won't you?'

‘Not particularly.'

‘But why not, dear?'

‘I just don't.'

‘Now don't be silly, Joe.' She said in the irritating voice of a woman in the right: ‘All these ideas about not marrying and wonderful free-love are all very oldfashioned and very very boring. People discovered long ago that free-love wasn't half as wonderful as they had supposed; there is nothing free about behaving like an alley-cat. And there is nothing of love in it either, because a man must trust and respect a girl in order to love her. If a girl lets you paw her about, how can you trust her not to let other men paw her about behind your back? Believe me, if you really love a girl, you'll have a regard for her honour and self-respect. You won't want to drag her through the gutter to satisfy your animal lust.'

Surreptitiously, he looked at his watch. It was ten past seven.

‘Joe...'

‘Yes?'