The Gale of the World (8 page)

“I suppose I’m what’s called a bird,” Laura said aloud, as she lay in the bath. “A farmyard hen, to be trodden by any old cock! O Phillip, I need you so much. Will you write to me, I wonder? No, you won’t. Why should you?”

But if I drown myself then they will see my body—

The bath was a Victorian pattern of cast iron on three lion paws almost wholly hidden under coats of paint. The fourth paw was replaced by a broken brick. The bath itself was a scabby affair, showing scars of violence, for the house had suffered from bomb blast. Half the roof was still covered by a tarpaulin. On a wall above the bath was a copper geyser the barrel of which was as green inside as it was outside, judging by the pale layers of drippings down one end of the bath. The course of the cold tap drippings were brown from rust, she supposed—an iron pipe. The bath might symbolise the war. Green—brown—red. Red for the blood of abortion, she left alone after the ‘doctor’ and his felt hat, which never left his head, had gone. Leaving her with fear of bleeding to death, alone. Looking at three streams, two mere water-courses, dead cascades, and blood’s dull drip-drop in the plug-hole.

Ever since that time, whenever she had lain in the bath, Laura had been possessed by the same thoughts, turning her against her true feelings.

I hope he won’t write or phone. I never want to see him again, I am only good for writing—traumatic escape from the blood and cloaca shed in the bases of life. I don’t want to see Phillip, it is always the same pattern with every man.

Life was, as Shakespeare wrote, ‘a tale told by an idiot’. And told to an idiot. A woman was a forked ex-quadruped, with breasts like bags slung from her collar-bones. By which the parasitism of human life was maintained. She would never have a child. Not in this bloody world. Supposing it had been Phillip’s
child. No! Romantic delusion was death. She lifted a leg and put her hands, tips of thumbs and fingers together, round the thigh. The tips just met. She was not running to fat. Sexy legs, men always looked at them, imagining what was at the top. Was that all love was? The water was getting cold. I could drown in the bath and no-one would know. Painful to breathe-in water. Swallow aspirins, and fade out. No, he won’t telephone. I’m no good anyway. No-one ever waited, made love so that I really wanted it. Or stayed afterwards. Perhaps she was a repressed homosexual, men unconsciously wanting revenge? What made female cats attack a eunuch tom-cat? Because it was a peeping tom, and if strong, pounced on other courting toms—scratched, bit them, likewise females. Out of spite? Am I like that, really? Wanting revenge, because my father raped me when I was a child, was it punishment for coming on him when he was frigging the nanny goat behind the hedge? If I wrote that, no-one would believe it. Mother found out and I had to sleep with Grannie ever afterwards. The torture of her snoring. Could she use the phrase in that 1918 war-book about flying, which ‘Buster’ had given her to read, when the pilot was in hospital, sleepless … ‘the hours were black monarchs who ruled by torture’. She must get out, and write the scene. White bags and all. Was it when we started to walk upright? Animals are shapely, compared with women after twenty five. Black brassieres and French knickers—trap for John Thomas, Esquire—and finally cancer of the breast, from too much mauling. God, I am human bait, nothing more, for Klingfor’s purpose.

The telephone bell shocked, thrilled and sickened her. Not for me. Anyway, I don’t want him to ring, or anyone else. She ran down the seven treads to the landing below, half-covered in her wrap, and trailing a thin old towel.

“Yes?”

“Yes! It’s Phillip. It’s rather early, I’m afraid, but may I come round and take you as I find you?”

“That would be delicious.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“I think it’s because it’s suddenly such a beautiful morning. Isn’t it St. Martin’s Little Summer? I’ll get you some breakfast right away.” She put down the receiver, saying to herself, “O, my love—” Then, after waiting to prolong the vision, she leapt up the stairs to her room, and put on a record of
Parsifal.
O, I am Kundry, led back by your light to the Grail! I am all spirit
now, I am Ariel, my master is coming!

She threw off the towel of Bombay cotton pinched from the hospital in Calcutta, adjusted her wrap and prepared breakfast. Would something happen to prevent his coming? Suddenly, with a sick feeling, she heard the door-bell ringing below.

*

Through the letter-box slit Phillip saw a tousled old woman coming along the passage. She said grumpily that Miss
Wisselcraft’s
room was at the top, so ring the top bell next time.

He went up three flights of brown linoleum. Three attic doors. On one a label with the words—held by drawing pins—
Laura.
Hello.
He tapped and waited. The latch clicked, the door opened a few inches. He waited, tapped again, expecting word to enter. Hearing no movement he said, “Good morning.” Her voice said, “Come in.” He went inside, expecting to be greeted. She stood at the far side of a round mahogany table laid for two, about to put on a gramophone record. He felt blank.

“Parsifal—Klingfor’s Magic Garden,” she said softly, putting down the tone arm.

During waking hours of the night he had imagined her happy smiling face, her gaiety and frankness.

“I’m afraid I’m rather early.”

“I was in my bath when you telephoned. You came quickly.”

“I rang you from round the corner.”

“I thought so.”

Other visitors used that box, then. The gramophone became efflorescent with voices, love in hopeful bud. Klingfor’s Flower Maidens—

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Thank you.”

A portable Bijou typewriter stood on the table, a half-typed page under the roller. The room was heated by a gas-fire. On a cooking ring a tinned kettle steamed. In one corner the bed, covered by a flaccid counterpane.

When the record was ended she said, “I could see you
summing
it all up. Well, I rent this room furnished for thirty shillings a week, and I’m not a professional whore.”

“It’s a jolly nice room. High up. Faces south, too.”

She poured boiling water into two mugs. “It’s only sawdust, coloured by rust. I hope you can drink ersatz coffee.”

“I have it in my shepherd’s hut.”

“‘Buster’ was wondering where exactly it is.”

“North of the Lyn valley, rather high up on the map, near one of the so-called Hut Circles marked in Gothic letters.”

She gave him a mug of Kenyan coffee, and sat on a stool at one side of the gas fire, he on the other side in a lopsided wicker chair. He wondered if heavy men had sat in it.

“I bought it for half-a-crown in Soho market,” she said.

“You seem to read my thoughts, Laura.”

“Darling, I am
with
you.”

Stool, chair, bed and table were the only furniture, with a corner top from which was hung a curtain on rings.

“It’s enough for me,” she said. “How did you like living in that pill-box on your hill in South Devon—the ‘Gartenfeste’?”

“Melissa told you, I suppose.”

“Yes,” she said in her breathing voice.

“It’s blown up. That South Devon country was a
battle-practice
area. The Americans played hell with it. In some houses they slid down the stairs, using torn-out baths as toboggans. Then used them as latrines.”

“They must have been very unhappy. What made you think of Exmoor?”

“I walked all over it when I was a boy, just before the
outbreak
of the first war.”

“‘A la recherche du temps perdu’. Poor Phillip, must you always live in the past? That’s what Jane Williams wrote to Shelley, just before he was drowned. But
I
write in the idiom of the future —I leave out what most other writers put in. I get at the real, spasmodic thoughts of my characters, so that you can hear them
breathing
as they think words to themselves.” She moved across the shabby carpet and, kneeling, put her arms round him and hid her face against his chest. He stroked the dark hair, his fingers moving down the skull to the neck, then up again to touch with a finger the lobes of her small delicate ears. If eyes were the windows of the soul, ears revealed the perceptiveness of the spirit. She had ears like his mother’s, and his sister Elizabeth, that lost girl who had sought refuge in the Catholic Church.

Abruptly she stopped the music, saying, “I was brought up in a Catholic school. The nuns were like Gogol’s dead souls, festering.”

“I suppose we all live in the past, Laura.” He thought of Barley; and Laura became lifeless to him.

“Don’t you know your William Blake? He knew it all before Freud. ‘The genitals—beauty’.” She went away from him,
saying
, “O set me free! I must be free!”

“I’m sorry. I’m—I’m rather tired.”

“I don’t mean
that
! I’m not ready anyway. And I’m only good to sleep with anyone when I’m in love. You found that with Barley, didn’t you?’

“Yes. Head-devoted heart; Heart-devoted head. Tristan and Isolde. ‘True love is likeness of thought,’ wrote Jefferies. You see, Laura, wild animals’ bonds are natural. They work together, are devoted to one another, each has his or her job, and in season they love, to fulfil themselves, in service to their race or species.”

“‘We are born to die for Germany’—the motto of the Hitler Youth. Hitler and his mother-fixation, dreaming of the beauty of heroism and self-sacrifice. I have a photograph of Hitler, with the last of his faithful boys, outside the bunker in Berlin. He looks worn-out, but he is so gentle and kind to those twelve and thirteen-year-old boys.”

“Too gentle and kind, Laura. All that fell backwards in a rage of impotence upon himself, and so upon others. Now the faithful will be hanged.”

Laura said in a low voice, “‘Buster’ went to see the
Commander-in
-Chief, British Zone of Occupied Germany, Sholto Douglas. He told ‘Buster’ he’d been ordered by Bevin not to make any recommendations for mercy. Douglas is furious, and wants to chuck up his job.”

“Bevin threatened to bring down the Government in the autumn of nineteen forty three, when Churchill released Birkin from Brixton gaol, owing to Birkin’s illness! Bevin should have done his whack on the Western Front as a foot soldier.”

“It’s the politicians who start wars.”

“Or Geography. Geopolitics!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied shortly. Then, “‘Buster’ said he saw the Russian Generals when they called on Sholto Douglas—great square shoulders—granite faces —‘Buster’ said ‘God help us if they ever become our enemies’.”

“Don’t forget we’ve got the atom bomb Laura.”

“Oh, go to hell, you bloody Geopolitician!” She turned away her face; then slid to him and pulled down his head to hold to her breast. “No,” she whispered, “No, my master, no! ‘For, lo! The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land’.” She led him by the hand to a corner. “Lie you down on my bed, and I’ll play you something.
Do you know, in
Parsifal,
where the Grail music glows and throbs as the pilgrims are going through the forest?” She knelt by the bed, hands on his shoulders, cheek to chest. “I am Kundry, you are Parsifal. Don’t let me die alone at the end! You know, Phillip, that poor girl didn’t want to be bad. She had no one to love her. If she had, she would have seen God plain. No, no,
you
must not swim with your eyes!
You
must not be like me.” She covered him with a blanket, and going behind a curtain, dressed in her day clothes; while Phillip lay on the bed, wanting to relax, but depressed because he did not feel able to make love to her—or want to.

She came to the bed, and almost hopped beside him. The way to the genitals, Blake’s ‘beauty’, was through a woman’s hair. Clasp her head, stroke her hair, feeling her sweetness. Such
tenderness
. How different from his other meetings with her years ago. Then she who was locked fast; now, unlocked.

“Have you ever been in love, Laura? I mean apart from the Sikh soldier?”

“Of course I’ve had lovers! But each time something in me seems to repel men. When I first left home I used to sleep with any boy who wanted me. Sometimes I didn’t even know his Christian name. In the morning I’d leave him, and never want to see him again. The man I really loved was that Sikh from the Punjab, who mistook Melissa for me. He was sweet. But in the end he wanted to own me, as his possession. So I broke it off. Like you, my real life is my imagination.”

“So is everyone’s.”

“Men want to own a woman. They want to be supported. A blood transfusion to keep them alive in their activities, careers, ambitions. I suppose what I want is a wife, like you want one. I can be friends with women—one is free, then. I really love Melissa, she’s free, too. She understands that women are people. She loves you. I know, although she never said so. Phillip, when you see her, you won’t tell her what I said, will you?”

He shook his head. She curled herself beside him. “Oh, I do love you so. Let’s go to sleep, and then I’ll get some lunch and we’ll go for a walk to Kensington Gardens, shall we? I go there most days. It’s so lovely, to be able to walk on grass.”

She sighed deeply, put an arm round him, and snuggled up, murmuring, “Your Ariel feels safe, O my master. And Kundry need not die now,” she sighed.

“Do you, too, want to die sometimes?”

“Often. O my love, you are the air I breathe.” A few moments later, “What are you thinking now. I can feel you thinking. You have shut yourself away from me.”

He was thinking of Billy, who had loved him, and how he had alienated Billy’s love, and was Billy crying out to him when he fell from his aircraft returning from Eastern Europe and knew he would never see his home again? And from Billy he thought of Jewish boys and girls, white-faced and quiet, being herded into gas-chambers; and of German boys being shot or hanged as the soul of Germany entered upon its dark travail, and accepted that all had been in vain, in 1945 as in 1918. The old battalions now a scatter of brown bones upon the Steppes of Russia, and the sandy plains of North Germany, as once upon the chalk uplands of Somme; melting into the wet, the treeless, the grave-set plain of Flanders. He must write; the only thing left to live for: a dedication known and accepted, even though leading to spoliation and dereliction of life ever since the miracle of that Christmas day in no-man’s land in 1914.