The Pornographer (24 page)

I walked mechanically in, went up in the lift, trying to keep the ghostly, wonderful, horrible birth and death of night out of mind, the sea breeze that took it like a whisper from my fingers, and let it die there among the gulls. I wouldn’t meet her. If I met her I could always lie.

Getting out of the lift and walking towards my aunt became in spite of every effort the guilt of stealing towards her by the facing way of the meadow in moonlight and the garbage stairs, up the corridor from where I was walking towards, the blue
night-light on, and the solid green swing doors at the farthest end were the palest green. What had I learned from that clandestine night? The nothing that we always learn when we sink to learn something of ourselves or life from a poor other —our own shameful shallowness. We can no more learn from another than we can do their death for them or have them do ours. We have to go inland, in the solitude that is both pain and joy, and there make our own truth, and even if that proves nothing too, we have still that hard joy of having gone the hard and only way there is to go, we have not backed away or staggered to one side, but gone on and on and on even when there was nothing, knowing there was nothing on any other way. We had gone too deep inland to think that a different physique or climate would change anything. We were outside change because we were change. All the doctrines that we had learned by heart and could not understand and fretted over became laughingly clear. To find we had to lose: the road away became the road back. And what company we met with on the road, we who no longer sought company, at what fires and walls did we sit. Our wits were sharpened. All the time we had to change our ways. We listened to everything with attention, to others singing of their failures and their luck, for we now had our road. All, all were travelling. Nobody would arrive. The adventure would never be over even when we were over. It would go on and on, even as it had gone on before it had been passed on to us.

And the dark-haired girl, and the woman with child in London, the dying woman I was standing beside, propped upright on the pillow, lapsed into light and worried sleep, what of them? The answer was in the vulgarity of the question. What of yourself?

The sound of putting the bottles down on the locker top woke her.

“God bless you,” she rubbed her eyes. “I must have dozed off. It’s great to see you. I thought you might be in yesterday, but then I wasn’t sure when you’d get back from London.”

“I got back yesterday.”

“That black-haired one was in, to ask about you.”

“Did she say anything?”

“No. She’s too clever for that, but I can see she’s after you, bad luck to her.”

“Why?” that I was grateful for her tact of silence only increased the unease I felt.

“Because I know what women do, because I know she’s after you.”

“Everybody it seems must be after somebody. Look at yourself and Cyril.”

“Cyril’s all right. I had a letter from him,” she laughed. “Knowing him, putting the few words together, must have been worse than turning a potato pit. Though he said nothing, I can see himself and your uncle are managing poorly. The next thing you’ll find is that they’ve been fighting. I’ll have to go home.”

There were a few tests more, she told me, and no matter what the results were she was going home at the weekend. I promised that I’d come in in two days time. I was too afraid to linger and yet I found myself leaving with regret, walking slowly out past the reception desk, looking across the clean field towards the home—for what could be nothing but sight of her dark hair.

Maloney was alone when I handed him the stories at the Elbow. He wore dark glasses and the face looked heavy from alcohol or tiredness behind the darkness.

“That clears me, brings me up to date. There’s nothing experimental, just the usual,” he took the manuscripts and put them in his pocket without a word.

“No buffaloes? no rhinoceros? no tower of ivory? no fool’s gold?” he yawned.

“No. Nothing but the usual.”

“A pity.’ We are nothing if not advanced,’ Miss Florence Farr, the future Lady Brandon, said as far back as 1894. It should have caught on by now, don’t you think? The usual
appears to me as a diehard form of backsliding. Have you ever noticed that a person is perfectly tuned socially when tired to death?” he yawned as he changed.

“Sure. There’s less of you, so you’re easier for people to stand, more occupied staying alive than expressing yourself. Others don’t impinge on you as much then either. For your own safety you have to follow what’s going on, and because of your tiredness you make only the barest gestures. It works like a charm. You create room for people. You control everything, controlling nothing. You never make a mistake because you both exist and don’t exist. It’s quite perfect.”

“That sounds as if I should have said it.”

“What has you so tired?”

“Drink and girls or girls and drink. And youth ending. I could not get girls when I needed girls. Now I can get them when I’m no longer able for them. There must be a moral. You can’t thrash the tide back with mere sticks, not even with the pure spirit. And you’ve been to London?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’ve visited your responsibilities?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’ve comforted them in the traditional manner?” he attacked.

“It happened but I didn’t want it to happen.”

“Of course you didn’t but it still felt good, the finger in the butter dish, the heart doing its duty with the penis still in the right place.”

“What are you to do when someone crawls across a carpet to you on her hands and knees?” he had rattled me.

“Give her a sermon. Put your arms round her like a brother, and put them no lower than any proper brother. Tell her that you’ve both entertained Satan in the past, but now you’re both going to banish Satan together and join the Lord. Then take her to church. That’s what churches are for.”

“Well you’ve got your stories,” I changed for the last time.

“What’s she going to do?” he ignored what I’d said as he too rose.

“She’s going to have the baby in London.”

“What is she going to do then?”

“She’ll either keep it or have it adopted.”

“What do you think she’ll do?”

“Keep it.”

“What’ll you do?”

“I’m out of it.”

“That’s what you may think, but keep praying, and staying out. Tomorrow I’ll be a reformed character,” he tapped the manuscript. “I’ll read this and clear all cheques.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Good luck.”

“God bless,” he smiled, which exasperated me too late, for he’d disappeared when I turned around.

I had now visited my aunt so often and so regularly in the hospital that the visits had come to resemble those she was so well used to among relatives on Sundays in the country. Cars pull up outside. Apologies and cautious smiles ease themselves out of front seats. A child slams a back door. Having first discerned who has landed from the cover of the back of the living-room, smiles of surprise and delight are wreathed into shape on the doorstep of the porch. Little runs and thrills and pats and chortles go to answer one another, till all hesitant discordant notes are lost in the sweet medley of hypocrisy. Tea is made. After tea, with folded arms, outside on a good day, the men discuss their present plans for rebuilding Troy with suitably measured gestures. The visit ends as it began, relief breaking through the trills of thanks and promises and small playful scolds, “And now, be sure and don’t let it be as long until you come again. We’ll think bad of you. Now it’s your turn to visit us next time, you’ve been just promising for far too long.” And then each family settles down to a solid hour of criticism of the other, the boring visit ended. It is the way
we define and reassert ourselves, rejecting those foreign bodies as we sharpen and restore our sense of self.

That my visits were growing similarly tedious to my aunt I could tell by her elaborate greeting. As I left, I could tell by her eyes that there was much about my person and presence that earned her disfavour. She too was a crowd. I, too, would get scorched as soon as I left.

But when she said, “I’m going out of this old place tomorrow,” both of us could settle down to enjoy the visit, to renew pleasure that had gone stale because of the relief that it was ending. If we found it growing tedious we had only to glance beyond it towards our approaching freedom. We could be patient and virtuous because limits had been set.

My own ease in this luxury was soon cut short by noticing that the dark-haired girl was on duty at the far end of the ward. She was propping a woman’s back with pillows when I noticed her.

All my attention was now focused completely on her for what remained of the visit, each move she made between the beds, and to cover my agitation I tried to summon false energy to keep a line of prattle going with my aunt; but all my attention was on the dark hair above the uniform and I was constantly losing track of what I was meaning to say. My aunt did not even trouble to hide her amusement, and the source of my confusion was drawing closer, six beds away, five, four.

“I’ll be in to see you early tomorrow,” I said to my aunt, casting all dignity aside, trusting to instant flight, forgetting my aunt was going home first thing tmorrow morning, and she burst out laughing as I seized her hand before making my escape. “O my God,” she wiped tears away with her knuckles, laughter obviously cancelling any pain she may have been feeling. “Bad luck to these women. I thought I’d never live to see the day.”

My last glimpse as I left was dark hair, bent over a young girl’s pillow two beds away as I started to walk up the long corridor, the lift an awful long way off, so many steps for the
rigid mechanical doll-step of a walk, all I could muster. I had not gone far when the clear words rang out behind me, full of rage and hurt, “You never come in to see us now. You just come in to see Auntie.”

Appalled, I tried to continue walking.

“You never come in to see us now. You just come in to see Auntie.”

It was a long way to walk, to keep walking, she standing there behind me, my aunt’s laughter probably intercepted by this sudden violence, wondering with some trepidation how it would turn out. And then the natural fear, not to look back, to keep walking to the lift, to escape, to leave rage and mockery behind like a fired gun, suddenly went so far in flight that it stopped: this is absurd, this is ridiculous, if you don’t face it now it’ll rankle forever; and I turned and walked towards where she stood, her hands on her hips, rigid.

“I’m sorry. I’ll explain it. Can I meet you?”

“I suppose that’s possible, if you’d want that.”

“I do. When are you off work?”

“At eight”

“I’ll ring you at eight-thirty at the home.”

“If you want that,” she was close to tears.

“I do. I’ll ring. I hope we’ll be able to meet.”

The cool was all the more cool since it was just barely being held, a shiver of a cord could break it, but it carried me back to my aunt’s bed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was upset. I forgot you were going home tomorrow, but I’ll be down within a week.”

“O you’re a sly one,” she said laughing, for the whole muffled comedy was now so extreme that it didn’t matter what words were said. “O my God, bad luck to you anyway. I never thought I’d live to see the day. You’re a crowned pair. Bad luck to both of yez.”

When I got out of the hospital I felt myself trembling, feeling the whole naked humiliation of life that we mostly manage to keep at bay with all those weapons that can only be praised.

I rang at the exact time I said I would and she must have been waiting by the phones in the hallway for she picked it up on the second ring.

“Will you meet me?”

“For what?”

“Nothing. Just to meet. I can hardly blame you after today if you don’t want to.”

“You know you don’t have to meet me?”

“I know that. I’m asking if you’ll meet me.”

“When?”

“Tonight. In an hour’s time in O’Connell Street?”

“Where?”

“Under Clery’s clock at nine-thirty,” and she put the phone down without affirming whether she’d be there or not.

I would have waited until half-nine or so if she hadn’t come but she came into the space beneath the clock at ten past.

She wore a grey herring-bone suit with a plastic brooch on the collar, a brown butterfly. She was not, I suppose, what is generally called beautiful, but she looked beautiful to me, young and healthy and strong, the face open and uncomplicated beneath its crown of shining black hair, a young woman rooted in her only life.

“I’m sorry about today,” I said.

“I’m sorry too. I was ashamed I shouted after you,” she said but there was no plea as there was in my apology, just a plain admission.

“Would you like to come for a drink or go somewhere else?”

“I’d like to go to the pictures,” she said.

We went to the Carleton, where
The World of Harold
Lloyd
was showing. She sat stiffly by my side in the back seats, staring studiously at the screen, and not until the turkey got loose in the bus did she begin to laugh. When I risked my arm around her, she stiffened again, and I withdrew it. I had found an aggressive and unpleasant note in my own laughter, laughing in defiance of her silence rather than at anything on the screen. Once I was silent her laughter seemed to grow.

“Did you like it?” I asked as we went out into the unreality of the night street.

“It was great fun,” she said.

She said she didn’t want a drink or coffee because if we did we’d miss the bus, and the difference of the few minutes wasn’t worth the taxi fare. When I asked if I could come with her on the bus she answered, “If you want to.”

We walked in silence from the bus into the hospital grounds, past the hospital. The silence didn’t change when we went into the same lighted room with the TV set and couches and armchairs and sat on the same couch where she’d let me take away the white piece of cloth that had gone out among the gulls. When I moved towards her I felt both her hands against my chest.