The Honeyed Peace (11 page)

'All right,' Hendricks said, 'I'll talk.'

This did not seem to interest the doctor; whether Hendricks talked or not was his own affair. He might not have heard. He went on observing Hendricks and the empty unnatural city garden, because they were there to be looked at. That's a really mean character, Hendricks thought; he despises without caring. If you despise, you've got to know what you think is respectable; you can't despise and let it lie and not demand or hope for something better.

'Do you just want to share this bench or do you want to talk?' Hendricks asked.

It seemed to him that the doctor shrugged, slightly; he took this as a sign that the doctor agreed to listen. I'll make him answer me, Hendricks thought, I'll force him to commit himself one way or another. He can't get away with following me around and sneering and not explaining himself.

'I am afraid of time,' Hendricks announced. 'You're pleased, aren't you? You knew I was afraid of something; all your patients have to be afraid of something. You wouldn't be in business unless people were scared silly and wanted to talk about it. Okay, put that in your goddamned notebook; I'm scared of time.'

The doctor did not move, wrote down nothing; it was necessary for Hendricks to turn so he could see the doctor's face.

'If you are not amused,' Hendricks said, 'just get up and go. I'm not trying to hold your attention, Doc old boy. I was sitting here first. I can talk to any number of people without paying them, you know. Besides, I'm busy.'

At this, the quickest faintest smile passed over the doctor's eyes.

'I have managed my life very well,' said Hendricks, with dignity, ignoring the doctor's mirth, 'and I am almost forty-seven, which is a lot of time to have gone through, believe me. Now, for no reason that I can see, it's out of my hands. If I knew why, I'd be perfectly all right. Don't think I'm worried about money. If I never write another line there'll be enough money. I've made plenty, it's been put away, invested, there'd be a decent income from now on. June might leave me; she likes having a lot of money and a lot of people and she likes to think I'm important so she can think she's important. I don't care a damn if June leaves; I'm used to her but I can live without her. Also don't go off on that routine stuff about sex, my sex is fine. I've been a writer a long time and it's the only work I know how to do, but it's just work. I haven't got any mission to express myself or tell people something they ought to know or make beautiful sentences. I'm a professional; I write because I know how to and that's the way I make money. It's only time, time is the thing.'

Time, he thought, the years of it behind, day after day, and the years ahead; time is anguish.

Dr Raumwitz was not concerned, sat still, comfortable in his starch, with his bright frozen eyes. Hendricks felt he had been tricked into talking, so he could be insulted by this indifference. Nobody could be as indifferent as Dr Raumwitz unless doing it on purpose, as an act, to prove power.

'Stuff you,' Hendricks said furiously. 'Get the hell off this bench. You smug bastard, you think time is easy, don't you? You think I don't want to admit I was in love with my mother or my father or whoever the hell you're supposed to be in love with, or I was happy in the womb or I've got a yen for little boys with curly eyelashes. You ignorant condescending son of a bitch. I deserve it for talking to you in the first place.'

Without haste, as if he were alone on the bench, Dr Raumwitz rose and vanished. Matthew Hendricks rubbed his rain-damp hand over his eyes; he had the hollow breathless feeling of having fallen miles, in an elevator, in an aeroplane, he was afraid he would be sick. He sat very still and breathed slowly until the emptiness and the cold and the nausea were under control. I've got to do something about this, he told himself, now, quick; find people, talk, drink; I'll tell June to invite friends, to get theatre tickets, I'll fill up the time. What difference does it make if I don't work for a month? Probably I've worked too long. I could get a thorough check-up from Dr Dupré, see an oculist, if there's sun in Tangier we might go there with the Boyds.

The afternoon dark had rolled in, smoke-soft and close; he walked along the rue de Rivoli making plans, listing all the things there were to do: tailors, art galleries, squash, golf, movies, bars, gambling, learn a new language maybe Russian or Arabic, something long and difficult, dinner-parties, riding, concerts.

'Chéri,' said a scratching voice and a hand touched his arm.

He looked down into a face all run into a point, a damp little rat's face. Light came from a cheap jewellery store under the arcades; her high-heeled slippers were soaked; her hair had never been set or the rain had returned it to its primitive frizz.

'
Non merci, je regrette
,' Hendricks said with absent-minded politeness, but she had given him an idea. He walked faster in the protection of the arcades to the Crillon.

Madame Jarvis was in, would Monsieur go up to number 307? In the elevator, Hendricks hoped that she would be alone, not surrounded by her usual languid gang all drawling from the front of their mouths. Madge had been resting, with astringent pads on her eyes. This year, for some reason, the fitters seemed incredibly clumsy, she was killing herself to get the few little things she needed; if it kept up like this one would have to shop in New York and the weather was disgusting beyond words and she could not make up her mind about Johnny Fitch. It seemed a vast amount of trouble to start something new for such a short time, she would be going back to New York in less than three weeks; it did mean you could not look after your skin properly at night, was it worth it? She was delighted that Matthew had dropped in, Matthew was less effort than a new beau and remarkably good-looking still.

'My dear, you're drenched,' Madge said. 'Come and dry out by the fire.'

Even given over to eye-pads, she was dressed in black velvet slacks and embroidered velvet slippers and a high-necked black sweater which was becoming to her spectacular breasts.

'You are a treat, Madge.'

'Darling, I was thinking of you, I know I made you happen in, by thinking. You know what depresses me?' Madge asked, ringing for the floor waiter. 'It's the way men don't last. I cannot think what has happened to men. There used to be so many of them, anywhere one went, and suddenly there are absolutely none, or they sag and bulge and look too ghastly. Like that awful Toulouse Lautrec, you know the one with the fat bald man at the restaurant table, sticking out his lips at the tart. I cannot understand it. You're the only man I know who doesn't make me feel we're all falling apart.'

'You,' Hendricks said, 'have no trouble with time. You look the same as you ever did.'

'But of course. That's what makes me so angry with men.'

The waiter brought four champagne cocktails at once, with an order to repeat; mild drunkenness, Hendricks thought, was excellent for making time pass.

'Time,' he said after the second cocktail, 'what do you think about time, Madge?'

'Oh, my dear, always late, that's what I think; or else ... what do you mean, time?'

'Maybe that's it. Always too late, whatever year it is, it's too late. Still there's so much of it ahead, more than one can stand to think about, too late to use it, you only have to wait through it. I can't bear this idea,' -Hendricks said in desperation, 'of life being nothing except using up time.'

'Oh, Matthew
darling
, have another drink, for God's sake. Since when does one talk about what life is? Heavens! I'm always so busy I can't find enough time in the day —'

'I know. Fittings.'

'You cannot believe what fools those women have become. I'm about ready to give up on Paris.'

'Madge.'

'Yes.'

'We're wasting time.'

'Darling. Idiot.'

'There's been no one like you. I've missed you.' These were the most banal of lies but served their purpose. Madge, anyhow, was glad to settle the question of Johnny Fitch.

Comfortable on the wide sofa before the fire, Hendricks thought only of the feel of the silken, glossily filled sweater, of the slender not hard not soft velvet-covered thigh. Madge enjoyed, as remembered, the authority of his hands. Her breath came a little faster, she felt cat-sleepy, ready to purr. They were in no hurry. She moved, in delicious ease, and happened to see the clock on the mantel. Not really so late. Oh, damn, she thought; it meant rushing to dress for dinner, afterwards, when one wanted to rest. Not today, she thought; better another day, earlier. Hendricks, bemused in this perfect and satisfying use of present time, had just told himself: I'll be fine here until at least seven-thirty, and thus returned, shocked, to his oppressive calculations. What shall I do tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day? He had to remind himself of what his hands knew. The perishable game was spoiled; tactfully, slowly, by mutual consent, they gave it up. He praised her beauty; she kissed him cosily; they felt amiable together and rather bored. He suggested lunch tomorrow.

Walking home along the Champs Élysées, he looked at the shining black road and the passing cars, heard the trees drip, and thought it might be a street anywhere. He was so little surprised by places that he had stopped seeing them; he felt nothing but the hour, he was pushing against walls of time. Past time was tragically light and empty behind him, not used up in any way but forever gone. The reason people can manage, Hendricks decided, is that they have no time to notice; perhaps I could find a job with office hours. But he knew he could not; who would hire him and to do what? He went home because it was less effort than to go anywhere else.

June had planned to dine quietly and play canasta with Matthew and then lead him into talk. It was her duty to keep Matthew to his productive routine. Instead Matthew read now with offensive concentration; during dinner he had been listless.

'Dr Raumwitz,' Hendricks suddenly observed, 'thinks it's something to do with you and me, or my writing. A frustrated writer, a frustrated husband, a conventional explanation like that. He's a stupid German who only knows what he's read.'

'You've been seeing a doctor, Matty? Is anything the matter with you?'

'Obviously.'

'Who is Dr Raumwitz?'

'A man,' Hendricks said slyly, and returned to his book.

He took his book to bed but could not read; he had little passing shaking giggles, as he saw what fools he had made of both Raumwitz and June, by bringing the doctor into the conversation. Raumwitz now became a useful private joke, to tease June with. He was no longer frightened but instead quite proud; it was not everybody who had hallucinations. He imagined the wide possibilities of an hallucination and waited hopefully for Dr Raumwitz to appear, so he could brag to him and also include the doctor in the merriment. The doctor did not appear. The harder Hendricks waited the emptier the room became. Perhaps, Hendricks decided, while his pleasure and confidence wilted, he had made a mistake; perhaps you exorcised yourself by talking and above all by being pleased. He felt lonely, to his surprise, and went to sleep; and woke in the night thinking very clearly, The man has no professional morals, he cannot abandon me this way. Then his mind teetered in a racing cloudy void. No, no, he told himself, urgently anchoring to fact, an hallucination can do whatever it likes. He determined not to talk to June any more, not to play with this mysterious business, and took luminal out of anxiety. Just before the sudden sleep, he wished he could remember the dreams he was sure to have, so as to discuss them with Dr Raumwitz.

In the morning, Hendricks did not hear Dr Raumwitz' voice: the lack of that insufferable daily question upset him. What had happened now; where was Raumwitz gone; what would come next? He locked his workroom door and hid the key under a pile of socks; he was done with that novel and that room, he was not going to torment himself. He began then a long walk through Paris which lasted for almost three weeks. He walked all day slowly and without effort; when he was tired he stopped for coffee or a drink; he ate his meals at whatever restaurant appeared in the moment of feeling hunger. Time was measured in giant periods, each day endured like a month, but he was not unhappy.

A fog seemed to shroud Paris so that he saw it in outline, never noticing exactly the streets or the buildings. Occasionally a face would drift towards him and catch his attention and remind Hendricks how little he liked the French. They were an inadmissibly ugly race; they all looked as if they had some peculiar individual repellent smell. Why did they always talk as if they were in a rage or coming out of or going into a rage? It was a tedious anti-human pose. Late at night, when most of the French had gone to bed, he observed their city and sometimes found it good; not much, he thought; this is an over-advertised town. He liked the Lion de Belfort, it was a self-respecting beast; he liked the Parc Monceau because it was so hopelessly dreary and surrounded by unromantic streets; he liked the perfect closed rectangle of the Palais Royal, inside there it was calm and apart as if one were in a ship; he grew fond of the Eiffel Tower, treating it as a monstrous architectural joke the French had played on Paris; he would clamber up the stairs until he was breathless and look at this city which meant nothing to him, for which he felt neither love nor curiosity.

He thought all day long in sleepy comfortable sequence, sliding from a vision of a pin-striped suit into memories of women he had slept with, focusing briefly on an idea, the beginning or the middle of a story, two men talking beside a taxi with the meter clicking, what were they talking of, something special, something final; where had they come from, where were they going; no, it was too much trouble, he wanted to follow no one through the planned deviousness of a story. He would look in a shop window and wonder who could ever buy that gilded bronze standing lamp encrusted with metal flowers and ivy leaves, who would eat from that garish china; he recalled sensations of pure physical pleasure, swimming naked in the warm green Caribbean, riding in Montana; sometimes he hummed tunes he could not finish; imagined jewels; wished he owned a Breughel; foresaw a journey he did not want to make to Petra la Rose, wherever it was, in the desert. He looked for Dr Raumwitz, expecting that any minute the doctor would appear and stare at him with mute disdain. For a time Hendricks searched carefully, by newspaper kiosks, at the tables of cafés, waiting now and again beside the iron-girdled trees of the city. He would find himself in unlikely parts of Paris, at the rubbishy Porte de St Cloud, among the soiled white tiles of the Poissoniers Métro, and think: Raumwitz will be here or why did I come? Raumwitz, he concluded, has left town or is haunting someone else. He laughed out loud and people turned in the street to see him and hurried on.