The Revolt of Aphrodite (25 page)

So the brightly etched days rolled by. Julian had apparently
returned
from his trip abroad, but still put in no appearance at the boards, though his comments upon our lucubrations were as prompt and cogent as ever. I gathered that he did much of his work at home and was hardly ever in his office. It seemed to me strange that he did not make personal contact, if only to shake my hand. In fact I rather looked forward to meeting him. I even suggested to Benedicta that she might ask him to dine with us, but she shook her head
doubtfully
and said: “You don’t know Julian. He is tremendously shy. He hides himself away. I’m sure he wouldn’t come. He’d just send a huge shelf of flowers with a last minute excuse. You know, Felix, hardly anyone in the office has so much as seen him. He prefers to speak to them on the phone.” It was intriguing to say the least, and at first I was inclined to think that she was exaggerating; but not so. Then one day he phoned me to discuss some point or other—but from the country. His voice had a thrilling icy sauvity. He spoke
slowly, gently, in a dreamy way which suggested more than a hint of world weariness—one imagined Disraeli dictating a state paper in just such a disenchanted tone. I expressed my eagerness to meet him and he thanked me, but added: “Yes, all in good time, Charlock. We certainly must meet, but at the moment I am simply worked off my feet; and you have so much other fish to fry—I refer to your marriage to Benedicta. I can’t tell you how happy that makes us all.”

There seemed nothing for it but to bow to his whim for the time being. But one morning my own phone rang at the office and I could tell from the timbre of his voice that the call was coming from
somewhere
inside the building. It was Julian all right—by now I was quite familiar with his voice, we had already spoken to each other
frequently
; moreover I knew that he had an office at the end of the corridor where Nathan, the general admin, sec. presided over his papers. Why, I had even recorded him once or twice for my
collection
. I thought in playful fashion that I might surprise him, meet him in the flesh. So while he still spoke I put down the receiver on my blotter and stalked down the long corridor to throw open the door of the office in question. But there at his desk sat Nathan only; a small dictaphone, attached to the telephone, was still playing. “Ah you’ve hung up, Mr. Charlock” said Nathan with mild reproach, cutting off. I felt something of a fool. Nathan switched over and said. “He was in very early this morning and recorded half a dozen conversations. He often does so.”

I recounted this incident somewhat ruefully to Benedicta; but she only smiled and shook her head. “You’ll never catch Julian on the hop” she said. “Until he decides.”

“What does he look like, Benedicta?” I asked. She gazed at me thoughtfully for a moment and then said, “There isn’t anything special about him. He’s just like anyone else I think.”

On a sudden impulse I asked: “Have you ever seen him?” The question was quite involuntary, and the moment it was out I knew it to be absurd. But Benedicta swallowed and answered: “Of course, quite definitely.” But the tone in which she said it struck me as curious. If I had had to “interpret” it in the manner of the inimitable Nash I should have taken it to mean: “I think that the person I have seen is Julian, but I am not absolutely sure.” The thought as it
crossed my mind however seemed to be ever so slightly disloyal, so I stifled it and changed the subject. “Ah well” I said “I expect we shall see him for the wedding at any rate.” But once again I was to find myself in error, for neither Julian nor anyone else came to the wedding though the house was bursting with presents and telegrams of congratulations.

The wedding! What could have been more singular? I had asked no questions, of course; but then on the other hand I had been asked none. The arrangements were not of my making, but it was to be presumed that Benedicta (if she were not herself responsible for them) had at least been consulted. I supposed that she had decided to get married in the strictest privacy, that was all. Only that and nothing more. Nor had I anyone that I wished to invite. No family. An uncle in America, some cousins in India, that was all.

But it was my first visit to “Cathay”, that preposterous, gloomy country house which was to be our home; moreover by night, for the marriage was arranged for midnight. “Cathay” forsooth! With its turrets and fishponds, great park, cloth-of-gold chamber, huge organ by Basset. At the end of a normal office day my fellow directors came in one by one to wish me luck and a happy honeymoon—cracking the usual awkward jokes about visiting the condemned man in his cell etc. After these so amiable pleasantries I took a taxi home to an early dinner, to find the hall full of luggage and the office car already outside the door. It was piquant, mysterious, rather exciting to be motored down into the depths of the country like this. It smelt of orange-blossom and elopements in the dark of the year. I visualised some great house-party with Julian and some of his collaborators, perhaps with a wife or two present to balance the forces of good and evil. Indeed I thought that Julian could hardly do less than witness for us. We did not speak much as the car nosed its way slowly through the slippery gromboolian suburbs towards Hampshire. Benedicta sat close beside me with her gloved hand in mine, looking pale and somewhat contrite. After the ceremony we were to drive on directly to Southampton to board the
Polaris
—a Merlin Line cruiser. But the wedding itself was of course to be a civil one. No church-bells for Charlock.

It was a long coldish drive with fine rain glittering in the white
beam of the headlights, prickling through the greenery of forest land and heath. My initial elation had given way to a certain tender solemnity. “Benedicta” I whispered, but she only pressed my hand tightly and said: “Sh! I’m thinking.” I wondered what her thoughts might be as she stared out across the darkling light. Of a past she had confided to nobody?

At last we crackled down the long avenues towards the bowl of golden light which gleamed at the end of the long green tunnels. The house was ablaze with light, and crammed with people all right. A telephone was insisting somewhere. But to my surprise “the people” were all servants. In the rococo musicians’ gallery with its mouldy Burne-Jones flavour a quintet played ghastly subdued music as if afraid to overhear itself. Butlers and maids moved everywhere with a kind of clinical deliberation—yet for all the world as if they were making preparations for a great ball. A staff like this could have mounted a wedding reception for four hundred people. But I could see no trace of any guests. But a mountain of telegrams lay unopened on the marble tables in the hall, and the preposterous Edwardian rooms leading with an air of ever greater futility into each other were bursting with presents—everything from a concert grand to silver crocks and gew-gaws of all sorts and sizes. The mixture of portentous emptiness and reckless prodigality staggered me.

But Benedicta moved about it all with a kind of fiery elation,
mothlight
of step, her face glowing with pleasure and pride. She held her head high against the forest of candle-branches and spectral Venetian lustres. It struck me then how foreign she was. I divined that this old house with its musty gawkish features offered a sort of mental
association
with Stamboul—those rotting palaces in
style
pompier
copied and recopied, criss-crossed with mirrors set in tarnished mouldings. Shades of Baden and Pau—yes, that is what made her feel so at home, so at one with it all. “But is there nobody except the servants?” I asked, and she turned her dancing eyes upon me for a second before shaking her blonde head. “I told you, silly. Only us.” Only us! But we had just passed an enormously long buffet prepared for a
midnight
supper: apparently the baked meats (I thought in muddled quotation) were destined to grace the servants’ hall. It was
marvellous
, it was macabre. I felt quite a wave of affection for poor Baynes
who now advanced towards us with a sheaf of telegrams—
congratulations
from Jocas, Julian, Caradoc, Hippolyta: his was a familiar face. These brief messages from the lost world of Athens and
Stamboul
gave me a little pang—they seemed almost brutally gay. Baynes said: “They are waiting for you in the library, madam.” Benedicta nodded regally and led the way. The noise of the quintet followed us apologetically. Everywhere there were flowers—but big banks of flowers professionally arranged: their heavy scent swung about in pools among the candle-shining shadows. And yet … it was all somehow like a cinema, I found myself thinking. Baynes marched before us and opened yet another door.

The library! Of course I did not discover the fact until later, but this huge and beautifully arranged room with its galleries and moulded squinches, its sea-green dome, its furnishings of globes, atlases, astrolabes, gazetteers, was a fake: all the books in it were empty dummies! Yet to browse among the titles one would have imagined the room to contain virtually the sum total of European culture. But the books were all playful make-believe, empty buckram and gilt. Descartes, Nietzsche, Leibniz…. Here, however, all was
candle-light
and firelight, discreet and perhaps a trifle funereal? No, not really. A large desk, covered with a green baize cloth, conveyed the mute suggestion of an altar, with its flowers, candles and open registers. Here sunning his shovel-shaped backside stood the
Shadbolt
, beside the registrar for the district; their clerks stood by to act as witnesses if need be—mouldy and dispossessed-looking figures. We greeted each other formally and with much false
cordiality
. Benedicta gave the signal while I groped in my pockets for the ring.

To my surprise she seemed quite moved by the grim routine of the civil ceremony. It did not last long. At a signal the tremulous Baynes appeared with champagne on a tray and we relaxed into a more
comprehensive
mood of relief. Shadbolt toasted us heartily; and
Benedicta
made her slow way through the house to touch glasses with the servants who had also been provided with a little spray with which to respond. It all seemed to happen in a flash. Within an hour we were on our way again, down the long roads to Southampton. It was raining. It was raining. I thought of the blue gourd of the
Mediter-ranean 
sky with longing. Benedicta had fallen asleep, her long aquiline nose pointing downwards along my sleeve. I cradled her preciously. She looked so sly. From time to time a tiny snore escaped her lips.

Dawn’s left hand was in the sky by the time we negotiated the sticky dockland with its palpitating yellow lights and climbed the long gangplank of the sleeping ship to seek out the bridal suite on A deck. Benedicta was speechless with fatigue and so was I; too tired to supervise the stacking of the luggage, too tired to think. We fell into our bunks and slept; and by the time I woke I felt the
heart-lifting
sensation of a ship sliding smoothly through water—the soft clear drub of powerful engines driving us steadily seaward. There was too the occasional lift, and hiss of spray on the deck around us. I had a bath and went on deck—a wind-snatched deck with a light grizzle of rain falling upon it. The land lay far behind now in the mists of morning, a grey smudge of cloud-capped nothingness. We were on our way round the world. England hull down in the sea-mist of dawn. It was so good to be alive.

Just time to return to my cabin and finish the study of the mantis which Marchant had lent me. “Another theory was constructed on the physiological experiments of Rabaud and others; in these it was found that the superior nerve-centres restrain or inhibit the reflexive system. The control is weakened by decapitation. The visible result is that the reflexive-genital activity of the headless male is made more vigorous and therefore biologically more effective.” Benedicta sighed in her sleep and turned to snuggle deeper into the soft pillows. The same goes for decapitated frogs, while any hangman will tell you that a broken spinal cord will produce an instant ejaculation. I put my book aside and smoked, lulled by the lilt of the ship as she manned the green sea. Then slept again to awake and find my breakfast beside me and Benedicta sitting opposite in a chair, naked and smiling. We were sliding back towards Polis, that was why perhaps—towards those first intimacies which seemed now to lie far back in the past. Did she suit her lovemaking to the country she found herself in? Now as she came to sit cross-legged on the end of my bed I thought back to those ancient kisses and little punishments—the water torture, the wax torture, the frenetic zealous kisses with their
wordless 
pieties—all of them making a part of the bright fabric of the past which must be carried forward into a future bright with promise. And here I was with the creature within arm’s reach. Moreover what could well be more delightful than the life of shipboard with its defined routines, its lack of demands upon one’s personal initiative? And with it isolation, being surrounded by water on every side. It seemed so soon when we found ourselves sliding past Gibraltar into calmer seas, cradled by light racing cloud and water far bluer than we deserved. She had flowered into a kinetic laziness which suited itself marvellously to the holiday mood. The only interruption was an occasional long cable from Julian about the minor details of some industrial operation; but even these dwindled away into silence.

Three months! But they passed in a slow-motion dream; already the lazy life of the ship had bemused us, sunk us into a tranced nescience. Talk of Calypso’s island—I forgot even to make notes, forgot to figure. I read like a convalescent. I was even able to find relief from those half-unconscious trains of reasoning which had always formed a sort of
leitmotiv
to my quotidian life—so much so that I could honestly say that there had not been a single moment until now when I was not fully occupied with my private thoughts. An invisible censor clad in gumboots strode up and down before Charlock’s subliminal threshold—O a far more competent fellow than the greybearded Freudian one. A primordial biological censor this, rather like a beefeater in the Tower of London.