The Revolt of Aphrodite (28 page)

The name swam out of the text with paralysing force, holding me to my chair with my untouched drink beside me.

Nash came downstairs once more to reclaim his drink and to stand beside me in sympathetic silence for a long moment. “Wretched bad luck for us all” he said at last. “I shall miss the old bastard.” Then he replenished his glass and turned back to the topic of the moment. “You know‚ Charlock, on reflection I think I did right; I told her as long as she felt like this she should go away quietly for a while;
recover
her good spirits in Zürich, say. Get away from you—what do you say? I’m not unduly alarmed, but she has after all a bit of a medical history—and as you know women often get strange and hysterical when they are going to have a child.”

“But it isn’t even absolutely certain is it?”

“No.”

“And besides she doesn’t need to keep the damned child if it’s going to unbalance her, need she? I don’t want to be responsible for her cracking up.”

“She wouldn’t dream of losing it.”

“Are you sure?”

Nash sat down and smiled his sad and wrinkled little smile which was always so unexpected, and gave him a sudden simian expression.

“Yes.”

“I am not so sure.”

“Anyway, humour her for a while.”

“Of course.”

No alternative line of action seemed to commend itself; listless and apathetic I walked the little man to his car and watched the
headlights
wander away down the long leaf tunnel. I walked back slowly into the house, still preoccupied by the image of Caradoc’s sudden disappearance from the land of the living. Suddenly the huge house seemed stuffy, confining. I took the paper and started upstairs to bed. On the turn of the second landing a sudden impulse made me look up. Benedicta was standing staring down at me with a queer feverish expression which made her pointed features look almost wolfish. She moistened her lips and said: “Has Nash gone?” I nodded. “And you don’t mind if I go away for a bit?” I shook my head. “Thank God” she said with relief. She turned away and disappeared on the instant and I heard the rattle of the key turning in the lock of her door.

By the time I returned the next evening she was already gone, though she had left me a few tender words on a postcard, ending with the phrase: “Believe me, it won’t be for long. And then
happiness
again.”

* * * * *

T
he new life, which displaced the old with such abruptness, had a somewhat hollow flavour coloured as it was by apprehension about Benedicta’s fate with its sudden reversal of values. But Nash was kind and kept me in touch; she was well, it seemed, and living in a small chalet in the grounds of the Paulhaus near Zürich. She was always most composed when she inhabited a snowscape—clouds, pines, snow—and by now she had made up her mind about having the child, indeed seemed to welcome the idea. I wrote to her every week, giving her an account of our doings, but the letters sounded ominously hollow to my ear; the old scaffolding of such common intimacies and confidences as we had been able to build was
summarily
removed. Subconsciously too I suppose I must have felt that the raw new building exposed, like an aborted piece of architecture, the slack and insubstantial nature of my loving. Yes, something of that order. Also it was somehow humiliating to feel myself replaced by a series of couriers who brought me news of her without ever having a direct message to retail. Julian too was kindness itself and phoned me regularly to demonstrate how close he was keeping in touch with events. The weeks deepened into months, and yet time appeared to have slowed up, to be almost standing still. I had left the country and moved back to the town house in order to be nearer to my work, but I went out very little. I knew hardly anyone in London; and during this period I saw most of Pulley, perhaps, for whom I had developed a great friendship—due in a queer sort of way to our joint misfortune in the loss of Caradoc. The Cham, far from being absent, seemed to go on growing as we sorted out his effects and grouped his papers into some sort of order against the forthcoming publication of whatever might be publishable in all this diverse mass. A great deal of scabrous verse, limericks and the like, were scattered about in his notebooks, and these we supposed would
hardly be found suitable—though they afforded us great amusement and pleasure: almost as if he himself were present. Strangely enough, too, the putative publisher of the essays on the history of architecture turned out to be—I would never have guessed it—Vibart of all people. One day he strolled into my office, fit and brown and smiling, to grip my hand and, sinking into an armchair, announced that he was “saved”. “Saved?” I echoed; the word had all the flavour of religious conversion. “And all due to you. Charlock Holmes” he said, waving his hat and lighting himself, sumptuously, a cigar. This was surprising indeed. “As they say in stories written for
house-maids
, I have
found
myself; I have left the F.O. thus avoiding a
posting
to Sofia and I am now—why here, let me give you my card.”

“A publisher!” I said, peering at it. “How is this?”

“Jocas Pehlevi” he said with his shy grin-frown. “Some while after you left he came to see me and said he knew all about my ambitions from you.”

“But I never mentioned you to him.”

“My dear chap, he could quote some of my conversations
verbatim
.” Perhaps, then, I had recorded Vibart at some stage? My memory held no record of the event, but it is true that I usually made samples of everyone for my voice library—the five vowels etc. (More of that anon.) Perhaps Jocas had helped himself? “Well I’ll be damned.”

“But he went further; he said that in his view I was no writer but that I would probably make a good publisher. Now as the firm owned half the Norwegian paper stock…”

“Does it? I didn’t know, but nothing surprises me nowadays.”

“It does. It does. He offered to set me up in business with a young Frenchman here in London. Presto! The first fifteen titles are on the stocks already—among them the stuff you are digging out by your friend whatsisname, Caradoc. Do you see?”

“With no strings attached?”

“The firm never attaches strings” said Vibart in a vibrant
histrionic
register. “Why should it?”

“You really surprise me. But I am glad.”

He became very serious now, putting on his most humble and
endearing
expression as he puffed his cigar. “So am I. Glad? O Lord,
it goes deeper than that. I really feel I am going to fulfil myself. It’s really saved everything—you know my marriage was going steadily on the rocks because of my incessant whining? And I was getting more and more costive instead of less. My life was terribly abortive; and now look at me! Aren’t I a wonderful figure of a man, a
publisher
? Large cigar, slight
embonpoint
?”
He rose and spread the wings of his coat, rotating slowly before me like a mannequin showing off a dress. We both laughed, and I ordered up some sherry to celebrate this surprising resurrection from the dead. “So you see” he said “I only dropped in to thank you, and to ask you in my official capacity when the manuscript will be ready for us.”

“But I have all the material at home and we are still working on it; listen, you must dine with Pulley and myself and help us sort it—after all, it’s your responsibility really, and there are decisions to be taken. Some of the stuff is characteristically comic, too.”

A change. This meeting led to at least one or two delightfully
congenial
evenings in the Mount Street house, reading, sorting and reminiscing over this huge bundle of papers and notebooks.
Moreover
I was able to supplement much of this material by a series of recordings made at different times—yes, many of indifferent quality, but sufficiently clear for transcript. It was Caradoc alive who
lumbered
into the circle of firelight before our very eyes, growling and grumbling and perorating. Pulley at times had tears in his eyes, as much from laughter as from tears. “Pulley standing there like a cow, with his udders swollen out, needing to be milked of this abstract transcendental love of humanity—his religion of service. Eh Pulley, damn you? Ethics not based on metaphysics—that’s what it is.” “Whee” answered the static.

This must have been the Nube at some point; criss-crossed with mandolin whirrs and tonic sol-fa and snicking of St. Foutain’s
painted penis. Then a sudden shift of venue, the noise of a tavern with its clanging cans against butts and the whistle of wind in the trees. Here, rather surprisingly, Koepgen’s voice raised angrily—one can well guess against whom. “But you become what you hate too much, you attract what you fear too much.” A series of piercing whistles drowned an altercation.

So we listened while the Cham roared on, and Vibart made notes on a pad; we would obviously need to have most of this set down on paper, but the only problem was to find a blushproof secretary
capable
of undertaking the task.

It was getting on for eleven when the doorbell rang; Baynes had gone to bed. On the doorstep stood the junior office messenger with a letter. It had come in that evening. I could recognise at once the handwriting of Benedicta—but it was mirror-writing; another hand had drawn a line through it and readdressed the envelope to me at the office. I tipped the boy, and excusing myself went upstairs to the bathroom where I opened the letter and unearthed a shaving mirror in which to decipher it. “My son” it opened shakily, with the words thrice repeated. “It is so dark here, down here. The darkest of the three nights and the train has not come in. It goes very slowly when you are waiting but the eyes will always be the same, watching. We will compare notes later, unless I am too bored to exist. In that case goodbye. Julian knows how I feel.”

I returned to the firelight, to the room from which all the gaiety seemed to have disappeared. “What is it?” said Pulley. “You look pale.” “Bad omens” I said. “Let’s have a drink.”

It was late when we parted—but for me all the pleasure had gone out of the evening; a massive anxiety had replaced it, anchored in frustration—for there was clearly nothing to be done, to be said, to be acted upon. I grabbed at the chance to walk Vibart across London to his new flat in Red Lion Square for the sake of his company; and when finally we parted I pursued my own walk, erratic and
unstudied
and frequently turning back upon itself. Vague notions of finding somewhere open which might provide a coffee to drink; but it was either too late, or not early enough. On a hoarding in Oxford Street the post-stickers had already begun to glue up the
announcements
of next week’s film. On one hoarding there was half a poster
already up, waiting for its twin to complete it, like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle; on it there was a girl dressed in black, but split neatly down the middle—half a face, one breast, one leg. It was Iolanthe—or rather so it seemed to me. I peered among the titles to see if her name was there among the credit lines. Yes, there it was, though it too was split in half; but its size indicated that she was a star of some consequence already. The dawn was swarming up now; wind-triggered, opalescent. A few people were out, walking with ghostly step and wearing cadaverous early-morning faces. A
policeman
eyed me speculatively as I stood, gaping at the poster; he was almost minded to move me on, but I saved him the trouble. I woke a sleeping taxi at the corner of Bond Street and made my torpid way home. The morning papers would bring the world the knowledge of her runaway marriage to the greatest box-office star in Hollywood. Reno. There was no such thing as a private life for her any more. In
The
Times
she looked radiant, but in the evening paper she was more suitably crying with emotion.

* * * * *

S
omedays later I received a phone-call from Marchant to tell me that his new gunsight was ready to be proven. “All things being equal day after tomorrow, early, Salisbury Plain. Can I ride down with you? We’d better take a thermos and something to chew. Oh, and you know what? Julian says he is coming, so at last you’ll see him in the flesh.” In the flesh! At last the promise of something to relieve the monotony of the passing days, something to pique my curiosity.

We set off together accordingly in the middle of the night—we were supposed to reach the proving grounds at seven. But as we neared our destination a thick fog began to settle over the world, and soon we were travelling at a snail’s pace inside a frosty bowl of yellow light from the dashboard panel. Here and there a corner would lift and the chauffeur broke away and made a dash along the highway to gain ground before the thick white curtain closed again, submerging our powerful headlights in pools of whirling snowflakes. It was lucky there was no traffic at all to intensify our difficulty. Nevertheless we nearly ran into the little cluster of jeeps and staff cars which were waiting at the point of rendezvous. It was eerie to see the bustle of shapes and figures moving about upon this damp screen; the
headlights
yawned in the obscurity. The chauffeur was anxious about the plain, fearing he would get stuck in the mud; but Marchant was delighted. “What could be blinder than this?” he repeated. “The conditions are perfect.” A tall figure emerged with startling
suddenness
from the veil around us; it was like a swimmer surfacing. “Brigadier Tanner?” called Marchant, and was relieved when the tall personage answered to the name. “I’m glad you’ve got here” he said. “I’ve detailed a staff car to guide. We’re all set up on the side of that hill….” He laughed in an exasperated way to find himself pointing into blankness. “The Minister is coming down I believe; God knows if he’ll ever get here with this muck. How far along did
you hit it?” We exchanged fog-information in a listless way. It had turned quite cold of a sudden. Marchant had unearthed an old sheepskin coat which gave him more than ever the air of an unbrushed collie dog. We did not dare to wander too far from our car in case we lost it altogether. “Julian is with the Minister” said Marchant. “But I don’t propose to hang about; we’ll get our shooting over and bugger off back to town after we’ve eaten, what do you say? They can come along any time and talk to the Army.”

At first the Brigadier seemed rather reluctant to comply with this view but, when Marchant pointed out that the fog might hold them a prisoner indefinitely and that they might never arrive, he took the point; he would leave a picket on the main road to guide them if they turned up. We were to follow his string of glow-worms across the plain; there was no danger of mud, it was perfectly dry and safe.

We moved off in formation, our engines whimpering in bottom gear; the journey seemed endless at this pace. The scout-cars had to stop frequently to reassure themselves that they were on the right path; the light carrier behind us was working on a compass bearing which did not square with that of the leading picket car. A conclave of shrouded figures exchanged grim pleasantries and grimmer oaths. “The bloody thing’s demagnetised” suggested a cockney voice. Shrouded up like this against the dawn-airs they looked like a group of Stone Age figures moving about in the whiteness, engaged on obscure tasks. Now and then a patch of curtain would lift, and the whole convoy would break into a canter, so to speak, for a hundred yards or so. It was getting lighter though; a kind of salmony tinge was beginning to run along the higher reaches of the whiteness—as if something were slowly bleeding to death in the upper sky. The variations in visibility gave human movements some of the quality to be seen in underwater swimming, or else in slow-motion film; the shifting depth of focus teased the eye and dazzled the mind. People seemed far away at one moment; the next they swam up in front of the car as if they had been fired by a cannon. The gradient had sharpened now and we were moving through patches of scrub; earth had changed to gravel on which our tyres sizzled agreeably. The chauffeur grunted with relief. He did not believe the Brigadier’s tales about there being no mud. “You can never trust the Army, sir” he
said to Marchant. “I was in it. I know.” Marchant giggled and stumped out his nauseating cigarette, filling the car with acrid smoke. “So was I” he said.