Wild Geese Overhead (23 page)

Mac looked sideways at him with a sarcastic grin as they came together on the stairs. “How's the farm?”

“Good lambing season—without snow, for a wonder,” replied Will gravely; “and the spring ploughing is practically done.”

Mac grunted his derision as they stepped downstairs, and at the door said: “You don't feel like having one, I suppose?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I don't mind,” Will answered lightly.

The deep enmity between them might never be resolved, but it had its attraction. Will realized he could make a myth about Mac, but about no other of his male friends—except, perhaps, about Joe. But then Joe had not so much the potency of myth as the individual appeal, the apartness, of religion. That sight of Mac going down the arches of the streets was in the very nature of myth. The city itself became a dark mythological city; a city of tall dark walls, a prison-city, wherein man wandered, seeking escape and yet not seeking escape, desiring it and yet afraid of it, appearing for a moment and then disappearing in the shadows of the dark walls, entrapped by the dark walls, trapped and for ever committed. Without even any conscious effort of the imagination, Will could see Mac striding down the arches of the poet's poem with the intolerance, sardonic and bitter, of the damned. Myth is a potent power when it deals with the gargantuan forces of frustration, generating in shadow and darkness.

“Our viewpoints are simply irreconcilable,” said Will, when they had finished their snack and were starting to drink. “Granted our civilization is not much of a show, but civilization is a vague word.”

“You think so? You think that the office, the sensational dope, the scare-mongering and war-mongering, the round-round-round day by bloody day, is all vague, in the air, a product of our imaginations?”

“No. It happens.”

“Don't be rash—or the pretty dream you wrap around your precious self will bust.” Some of the hairs on Mac's neck were turning grey. His face, with its ruddy skin, sandy eyebrows and ice-blue, rather small, penetrating eyes, was becoming fleshy, and, at the same time, more impatiently intolerant in its mass effect.

“We all probably wrap dreams about ourselves. And yours, after all, is the dream of frustration,” replied Will. “Now the important thing in frustration——”

“I never used the word frustration. That's the worst of fellows like you: you jump to conclusions, you manufacture evidence to suit your own theories, your own pretty little philosophies at two a penny; in your case, sheer escapism.”

“You can't head me off like that. Your description of our lives, in sensational dope and so on, implied the existence, if not of a better way of living, at least of a standard of judgement that condemns the way we do live. You must have that standard within yourself, otherwise there would be no point in your spitting.”

“And to the extent I cannot realize that standard—I am frustrated?”

“Exactly.”

Mac laughed. “God, you're an innocent!”

Will smiled. “Possibly. And very very young. Haven't you noticed that the country is giving me a lamb-like grace? However, it's logic with me or nothing. So let us take it a step further. After all, roughly, you and I work an eight-hour day. We get paid to that point, where, if all was divided out in pure socialism, we wouldn't get much more. Apart from the fact that the work may not be work we'd like ideally to be engaged upon, still, humanity will always have to work, in a great measure uncongenially, producing what we, as animals, need. There's no getting away from that general scheme. Tell me, then, precisely, what is your grouse?”

“Who said I had a grouse?”

“Why, then, the criticism?”

“It wasn't criticism: it was description.”

“True, but your description implied——”

“Jumping to conclusions again! My description described things as they are. It was realist.”

“But, by implication, it condemned——”

“Implication be damned! Stick to reality. The office, the sensational dope, the war-mongering, the humanity that feed on the dope, all that is the reality; there it is, and you can't escape from it—unless, of course, you deliberately escape. But I'm based on the reality; I stick to it, even if I stick in its bloody mud. I refuse to blind myself, to hoodwink myself. And all your talk about implications and condemning is just theoretic fluff.”

“Curious how you're haunted by this idea of escape. I carry on the same day's work as you do, but just because I change my lodgings, I escape. If I sat in the mud and drank whisky and guzzled and jeered at the whole fantastic show, I'd be a realist. Seems easy. Anyway, it's not much use to me.”

“No, because you want to escape to save your soul. I happen to think that my soul, if I may use so august a word, is not worth saving; I think that the totality of souls is not worth saving. I consider that one cow will produce more manure in a night than all the souls of the world smashed to pulp would. Souls!” He ordered another round.

“Souls and escape and salvation—you can't leave the religious stuff alone! You'll be getting psycho-analysed next. However, if you like sitting in the mud, why not? But in heaven's name why delude yourself into believing you're doing something sensible—particularly when, in actual fact, you prefer to rest your backside on a dry chair, preferably upholstered?”

Mac laughed. “Now you're coming on! That's more like talk. Let us stick to our backsides and we can't go far wrong.”

“I'm agreeable,” said Will. “But don't introduce terms like dope, escape, freedom, the soul, and so on, and then dodge facing up to them. I don't mind sinking with you into the deepest mud you can find, but I'm not going to hoodwink myself about what's happening.”

“So you think I hoodwink myself?”

“More than that. You would like to take these words, like escape and freedom and the soul, and draw them down into the mud, too, and smother the dam' things.”

“Are they, as poisonous illusions, fit for anything else?”

“I do not judge: I merely describe.”

“Hmff!” The hairs in Mac's nostrils quivered in the gust of expelled air.

“Even your conception of the mud”, said Will, “is singularly unfertile.”

“Really! Singularly unfertile? You will now doubtless proceed to describe the miracles that emanate from the mud?”

“Yes.” Will nodded, “Wheat, barley, oats, grass, sheep, cows, trees (out of which orchestras are made), birds and all living things, Francis Thompson, Mary Queen of Scots, Shakespeare, Newton, aeroplanes, the universes, Helen of Troy, Beethoven, and Christ.”

It was a long argument, direct enough in expression but intricate in design, full of doublings and twistings, but however Will appeared to give in here, to ignore there, he was conscious all the time of a clear purpose, of searching out the design of Mac's mind, until it be finally pinned down and spread out and encompassed.

And a queer remorseless necessity compelled him to this. Occasionally he could not look at Mac directly, could not look at him dodging the profounder issues, using evasive expressions, with a jerk of the head, a fleshy twist of the lips, using a harsh blasting intolerance when he foresaw himself about to be cornered. At moments Will's insight became almost intolerable to himself.

From the brooding half-nightmare of frustration to at least consideration of the conception of freedom, freedom for the individual in social relations; and freedom—let it be agreed—was a myth, an abstraction, a piece of damned rubbish—agreed, agreed—unless it was a path, a street, an alleyway leading to a plane, a state of mind, where integration of all the parts took place, where harmony was achieved.… Harmony? Good God!… Well, there was the harmony of music, the harmony of natural law, the harmony of revolving planets and swinging suns.…

Pinning down Mac in the pub, in the office, on Mars, on Venus, throughout space, through life and death and blasphemy, and generations, and light years, following him visibly, invisibly, remorselessly…until he nodded, silent at last, over the full design on the table.

“You see, you can't answer!” cried Mac harshly. “I have got you at last, you b——r!”

“You have,” said Will. “I am rootless.”

The barman shouted: “Time, gentlemen! Time! Time!”

“That”, said Mac, “is what time means. Listen to it! By God, listen to it!”

“Time, gentleman! Time! Time!”

Mac laughed. The lights were flicked warningly off and on. “And that's what light means. All that light will ever mean to you and to me and to the rest of the crawling horde of humanity!” His voice was thick with the lust of triumph.

Mac's design would never now be altered. He was committed to destruction. He desired destruction. In the very thought of “the whole show” being sucked into destruction was a profound satisfaction, as bitter-sweet as a personal revenge. For that's what it was—a personal revenge against the pursuing God. He knew Mac's uneasiness whenever he encountered something that he could not pull within his design. His uneasiness over Will's independence of him, for example. And his secret desire to draw Will into his orbit, to dominate him, to make him submit to the mud.

“Please, gentlemen. The police.…”

“We know the police,” said Mac. “Come on, Will. You're not going home. I know a place.”

“I'm going home.”

“Not you. Come on.”

There was no particular hurry for a little while. But he was going home.

“Well, let's get some fresh air,” he said. “Let's walk about for a bit. I've had too much blasted drink.”

Mac laughed. “I'll make a real man of you yet!”

And as Will walked along, he had a second and extraordinarily clear apprehension that night, cool and clear as night air and sky above the chasm of the street.

Out of humanity in the reaches of time appear figures like Christ the saviour, Nero the destroyer. But they could never have appeared, or would have had no significance, no meaning, unless in his own little circle walked Joe the saviour and Mac the destroyer. In every little circle, in every village, town, country walked the individual saviour, the individual destroyer.

Helen of Troy…Felicity!

Perhaps not only in every circle but in every heart; and there finally and irreducibly.

He took his hat off and cooled his forehead.

“We've had enough of this. Come on!” cried Mac.

“I'm going home.”

They walked on, disputing. They got mixed up in a crowd coming out of a theatre. And suddenly, quite close, the glaring entrance lights on their faces, Will saw Jenny.

It was a moment of such complete unexpectedness that he stared at her as at a figure he had known for an eternity and now met on this strange shore. There was the leap of the spirit in his eyes and the astonished cry of his silent white face, before she followed Philip to the kerbstone, having forgotten in that moment to do anything but stare back herself.

“Who is she?” asked Mac.

“She is Primavera,” said Will, “the Lady Spring who comes with the flowers.”

At this grave humour, Mac burst into rich laughter.

“It's this way,” he said, guiding Will, for Mac generally knew of some obscure club up a side-street.

As they went on, Mac half a pace in front, Will suddenly had the feeling of following him, of being led. The last bus was going home without him. He glanced sideways at Mac's figure, assured of itself, lit up, committed to its kingdom. And all at once he saw Mac steering life into the darkest core of night with a pleasure that was voluptuous.

Neither of them spoke until Mac pulled up in a quiet cobbled street. “Here's our howff.” He looked at Will. “Things encroach on you and eat you up like lice.”

Involuntarily Will spat.

Mac swayed with laughter, then went up the three steps to the discreet door.

The following afternoon was Will's half day off and he made straight for the farm and a bath. He luxuriated in the bath, gargled his throat with disinfectant, and washed his head. Then he came downstairs, picked up the deck-chair that Mrs. Armstrong had hunted out, and went round into the lee of the house, gripping the book that had so long been left unread. He had no sooner stretched himself out than Mrs. Armstrong appeared with a heavy check plaid and cushion.

“Up!” she said, and then she spread the plaid over the canvas and fixed the cushion. “There's a treacherous damp in the ground,” she explained, “and it rises up.” Her bustling motherly manner was very friendly and he thanked her gratefully. “Now!” she said. “You can put the plaid up over your legs if you feel cold, though it's sheltered here, isn't it?”

“I think the sun is divine.”

“That's because you need it,” she said, with a minatory nod. He laughed as she withdrew. She was a grand woman!

And oh! the sun was divine. As he sank down into the chair it sank into him. He felt it pressing on his skin, passing in through the pores, through the flesh to the bone and the marrow in the bone, through his lungs and his kidneys, through all the patient internal organs he so badly abused, through the mind. And his mind needed it most of all!… What a night! Known colloquially to members as the Blue Club.

Supposedly the place where bawdy stories and vile language could be worked out of the system. Worked out? Worked in, they meant. He would have to be split open and sluiced with sunlight out of a hose, before the stuff could be “worked out”. He smiled, closing his eyes, and felt the sun on his eyelids.

Lovely divine sun. Dear God, how lovely! His heart was filled with a gratitude light as laughter, filled with tender worship; filled with a slow abandon as if his body were sinking into an unimagined paradise. He felt sleep coming upon him with a noiseless surge as of waves on a remote shore; faintly, infinitely distant.…