The Game (31 page)

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I see. I see.’

She saw also that he had reached some limit of his self-control; she felt, and then saw, his wrists dance on his knees.

‘It’s a bloody funny fate. Oh, horribly funny. Guts and cock and all, Cassandra, do you hear, every little bit except the hair and teeth, it’s the sort of macabre joke I knew you’d appreciate …’

‘Stop it,’ said Cassandra. She could find only her old authoritative bark to speak to him in. ‘I’ve got no sense of humour. None at all. I know what you are saying.’

He watched his hands tremble.

‘I’m wet. I’m as wet as anything.’

‘You will dry off.’

‘Listen – I wanted to tell you – extremity was always your business.… I want to explain, Cassandra. It’s not as though I wasn’t prepared. I – I thought I – could take anything like that, I’d allowed for it. Or why was I out there at all? Cassandra, Cassandra. I was taking it, I was over it. Only I didn’t know. I – I’m alive, I was over it, I was over it,’ he repeated. ‘And now it’s taken me over. Oh, can you see? Must I go through and through it? Like an expanding nightmare – literally, I mean – and who knows where it will end?
I’m not out there any more.
But there’s no – there’s no – Cassandra?’ He looked at her. ‘Lately I really don’t know whether I’m here or there. That’s not a way of putting it, it’s the truth. I thought
you might —’ He repeated, ‘I didn’t know,’ as though he were offended as well as shocked.

Cassandra knew what he was saying. She said, ‘Listen, I don’t know much about this. But so few things happen to us that we have to undergo. Most of the time we’re double, we can stand outside and see an event – hope, fear, anticipate, judge. And then something happens where – where we have no room for thought or imagining – where what happens is real and all that is real. We talk a lot about living fully, but the last thing we want to do is live anything through. We think that sort of single-minded grief is insanity, but it’s only an acknowledgement of a factual truth. An intolerable truth.’

‘You have thoughts about everything. Is that how you see it? We can’t afford – but sometimes we have to —’ He said, ‘I thought you might know. You take everything so seriously.’

‘Platitudes.’

He acknowledged this with a weary shake of the head. ‘I’m tired,’ he said plaintively. His mouth hung slightly open. ‘It’s the nightmares. I don’t know why I have to live with it, I’m here, after all. Do you think I could come to where you live, Cassandra, I’ve got to dry off?’

Cassandra passed her tongue round her dry mouth, nodded, and gathered up her satchel. She thought he had not noticed her own fear.

She had not taken in her room as a whole for a long time. It seemed crowded; most of the chairs were stacked with paintings and the desk was piled across with drawings and manuscripts. She stood in the doorway and looked; Simon came past her, peeling off raincoat and jacket. He stood, dangling them; Cassandra approached nervously, took them, and carried them into the bedroom where she hung them over a towel stand. When she came back he had closed not only the door but the outer oak, so that they were locked in. He was propped in her crimson chair, head back, eyes closed; life
seemed to run visibly out of his flesh, and he was shuddering. Cassandra laid on his chair-arm a lavender-coloured, lavender-scented maidenly guest-towel, one of a kind of trousseau provided by her mother many years ago and now never used. His teeth chattered.

‘I’d better light the fire?’ she said. He did not answer. Cassandra felt entirely at a loss; neither entertaining, nor caring for Simon had ever entered her thoughts and plans for him; her thoughts did not run that way. She felt gawky; she did not know what her acceptance of his confidence had committed her to; her own small, social terror increased. ‘I could make you some coffee.’

He opened his eyes. ‘Haven’t you got a drink?’

‘No, that is, yes, a bottle of brandy.’

She went down on her knees and, with a trembling hand, set a match to the gas fire, which made a small explosion, followed by a high, blaring sound.

‘I think I’d like some brandy. Can I?’ Cassandra poured him a glass, taking time over it; he swallowed it in large mouthfuls, listening to the hiss and roar of the fire. She had always known that one day he would sit there, and had always known that he would never sit there. He held out his glass for more. When this, too, was drunk, he said, ‘You live a sheltered life. At first sight.’

‘At first sight, yes.’

‘Padded in with paper. I’d imagined it all rather like this. I shan’t ask if you’re happy. The more I thought, the more there was only you I could – tell. You don’t mind, do you? I know so few people, I — Can I have some more, is there any? Such small glasses. There was never any room, with you, for things not being at the worst. I – I didn’t like that about you. But now, things look different. And you look different. I don’t know why you should let me go on like this. Do you understand?’

Cassandra poured more brandy, and said, ‘Yes, I understand.’

‘You haven’t changed. Or have you?’

‘No, I don’t change much.’

Simon was drinking brandy almost absently, as though gulping water. She was not sure that this was good for him; shock and terror she could recognize, and to these, in him, she responded; but she had no idea what effect brandy would have on these states. It was also surprisingly painful to be in a position to consider what was good for him; she trod on shifting sands.

‘Simon,’ she said, using his name, for the first time, awkwardly. ‘Simon, do you think you ought —’

He looked at her with a kind of shy cunning.

‘Yes, I do. I’m all right. I know what I’m doing, don’t worry.’ He did not look as though he knew anything of the sort. His face wavered.

‘You are shocked,’ said Cassandra. ‘You should rest.’

‘Yes. Yes, I should. You’re right. Is there anywhere I could lie down?’

‘Only the bed.’

‘I think I’ve got to. Where is it?’

Cassandra led him into her bedroom. Simon supported himself on the bed-foot, and circumnavigated it. Then he sat down on the edge. Cassandra stood over him. At any moment, she thought, he might discover her real poverty and helplessness.

‘I’ve really got to lie down, Cassandra, I’m sorry about this.’ He unlaced his shoes, shivering, and took them off. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘No. No.’ She leaned across him, tugged out her nightdress from under the pillow, and pushed it under a cushion in a chair. Then she turned back the covers.

‘Do you mind if I get right in?’

‘You ought to keep warm,’ said Cassandra. She looked away whilst he undressed further; he slipped, in shirt-tails, under the blankets, drew them up to his chin, and shut his eyes. Cassandra moved.

‘No, don’t go. Don’t go. I shall start thinking again. I shall start going over, that is. Stay here. Sit down, why don’t you?
I’ll feel better in a moment, I feel better already, lying down. Then we’ll have a talk.’

Cassandra perched carefully on the very edge of her own bed, and considered the sprawling features on her pillow. They were not unfamiliar; she would have been hard put to it to describe the differences between what she saw and what she had imagined. She could hear, however, his stomach churning.

‘I wish I was sure you didn’t mind this intrusion. There’s no reason why you should welcome me or want me, I do see. It was a bit melodramatic, but I thought I’d risk – I thought you’d let me talk. I know you wouldn’t once, but we were so much younger.’

‘It’s good for you to talk.’ Cassandra was producing all kinds of opinions she had not known she held. ‘If you want to talk to me I – I’m grateful.’

‘Really?’ He put out his hand; Cassandra laid her own on it; his thumb travelled over her rings.

‘I liked what you said about having to undergo things. It’s funny how long it takes one to recognize these things – the things one can’t get out of, the things that really happen to one.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s surprising how rarely it happens, maybe. Most people can digest almost anything.’

‘Oh, digest, yes. Even – even unpalatable truths. But what do you do – what do you do Cassandra – when something happens – that you’re seriously afraid you might not – survive?’

Cassandra played with the metaphor; you reject it, or it poisons you, she thought.

‘You can only keep still and concentrate on surviving. Better to let yourself know what’s happened.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘In your case.’

‘I thought I was past that point. I’ve been thinking out why I went out there. Why did I – why should a man like I was go out there?’

‘Out of fear,’ Cassandra offered.

‘That’s something you know about, don’t you? You always did, it didn’t make you easy company.’

‘Explorers,’ Cassandra pursued her point, ‘are statistically unusually accident-prone. Some of us invite what we are afraid of.’

Simon flattened his hand against hers, interlaced their fingers, and gripped. He muttered something indistinguishable; then his voice came clearly.

‘That religious phase we both went through. That was out of fear. Wasn’t it? I lost that, I lost any faith. But I was afraid of – of meaninglessness. Shapelessness, formlessness. Things like my father’s trench stories. The – the Amazon – I had a mystical feeling about it, it was the worst place. ‘I care for nothing, all must go,’ I’ve had that poem on the brain for weeks, for obvious reasons. So when I saw I believed in it after all – and when I saw I’d got to face it – I – I thought well, the only thing was to go and
live
with it. If – if one was afraid that life was only accidental survival – then one had better become familiar with the processes.’

‘I know.’

‘I thought you did. It worked in its way, you know, that’s what I’ve got to make you understand. I – I was religious about that, too. I had little tasks. Used to live off grubs and fungus – you’ve no idea, Cassandra, how little food one can come to need. I – I tried to neutralize it in me. I mean, facts were facts. You survived because you expected them. Or went under if you expected wrong. I used to try it on. At first. Impossible treks. Sort of endurance tests. I only got little breaks, at one stage two broken fingers and a broken toe. Then a series of scalds. I kept pouring kettles down my front, I don’t know why.’

Cassandra had known about the fingers; she nodded.

‘It did get familiar. Oh, and neutral, almost nothing disgusts me now. I used not to be like that, I told you about my prissy childhood.’

‘No.’

‘It must have been Julia I told. Sorry. And fear – it changes. It becomes – perpetual and nagging. But less vast. Less urgent,
too. I was happy enough. I never went over the edge into loving what’s disgusting. Not like some medical missionaries. I’ve seen nuns touching running sores with a kind of sensual pleasure. In another day they’d have kissed them. To mortify the flesh. Well, I only wanted my flesh indifferent, not mortified. One told me once they’d made such strides with one really loathsome eating disease that soon there’d be no sufferers left. With a look of aimless regret. I said, oh well, something worse will probably crop up. It will, of course.’

‘Why must it?’

‘Balance of nature.’

‘We seem to proliferate, despite the balance.’

‘Oh, as far as nature as they used to understand it goes, humanity is the disease. Like a cancer. I see that’s a useless thought. You’d say precious, wouldn’t you? But it’s a thought I have.’

‘And the fish?’ said Cassandra. ‘Speaking of Nature?’

‘Ah yes, the fish. Do you remember Merton saying that we must not get unduly attached to anything? Out of the subdued lusts of his own flesh, I’ve no doubt, though he had the sense to indulge the smaller ones. There’s the root of it.’

Cassandra was silent. His fingers moved restlessly over hers. Then she said, ‘Yes, but the fish?’

‘You used to lecture me about fish. Order, intention, patterns in the nervous system, planets, natural selection, movements of shoals of fishes. Shoals of bloody fishes.’

‘Simon, who was he?’

‘I thought you knew. He made the films. His name was Antony Miller. Well, I say he made the films. He did some of the photography, and I did some. He put it all together. He did most of the talking.’

‘It didn’t seem like that.’

‘No, it wouldn’t, I see. I mean, he teased thoughts out of me. He was a fearful talker. Brought all sorts of things to life I was used to living with dumbly. I knew he was dangerous,’ said Simon, ‘and then I forgot.’

‘What was he like?’

‘I told you. A talker. Sort of man I take an instant dislike to. Imposed himself on me. I was living quite quietly on my own, just outside a village – I was mapping creeks. Painstaking and useless – they kept disappearing overnight. And the people from the Health Institute brought him up the river and just dumped him off in my village. He’s a book-maker – a glorified reporter – he’d been digging dinosaurs in New Mexico with a mad American who had some crack-brained theory about why
they
all disappeared overnight as you might say –
Obsolete Monsters
, that book was called, I remember.’ Simon settled more comfortably into the pillow. ‘Live reptiles was the logical next step. Climbing the evolutionary ladder. Only he never got further than savage fish.’ Simon gave a hysterical snort of laughter.

Cassandra kept silent; she could not find another question; her imagination reached for Antony Miller.

‘He had a huge mouth. Always smiling. He was unsystematic. But curious, you know, genuinely curious. Followed me about with the camera, opening his mouth like a beak, and shouting, ‘And then? And then?’ when you thought you’d summed up. Quite indiscriminate. Always roaring ‘Oh, look!’ Things you’d seen a thousand times before. But not the way he saw them, I suppose,’ said Simon, gripping Cassandra’s hand painfully. ‘Everything was so real and important to him, he had so much spare power and spare attention. He was no fool, either, though it took me time to find that out. You thought he was a sort of fraud but after a bit you saw you could really rely on knowing where you were with him. I mean, if he liked you, he liked you, that was all there was to it.’