‘I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it. When shall I come?’ Miles had risen too.
‘Of course he may change his mind when he knows you’re coming. He may funk it.’
‘You mean he’s nervous too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny,’ said Miles. ‘I hadn’t really thought of him having any feelings about it, now at all,’ and he smiled. Miles’s teeth were sharp and jumbled, too numerous for his jaw and crowded together at the front of his mouth, giving him a wolfish sweet-savage smile which Danby had quite forgotten. Danby usually despised men with uneven teeth, but Miles’s were rather impressive.
‘Anyway I’ll let you know,’ said Danby. ‘I’ll ring up.’ He stood awkwardly. He was taller than Miles. He had somehow forgotten that too. It was the moment for the blessed glass of gin. He thought, if Bruno decides not to see Miles, I won’t see Miles again, except at the funeral. Danby pushed his chair a little further back, which might have been a preliminary to departing or to sitting down again. As he did so he saw a little ball of blue tucked into the depression between the seat and the back. It was a woman’s handkerchief.
‘I’ve never met your wife,’ said Danby.
Miles gave him a preoccupied look and put his hand on the door.
Danby thought, I must stop him, I want to talk to him about Gwen. If only I could think of something quickly now to say about her. He could think of nothing. He said, ‘Bruno wants to meet your wife.’ Bruno had expressed no such wish.
‘Emotions,’ said Miles. ‘Emotions. It’s all fruitless, fruitless.’ He led the way down the stairs.
‘So you talked about me?’ said Bruno suspiciously, looking up at Danby.
‘Yes’, said Danby in an exasperated voice, ‘of course we did!’ Danby had been extremely irritable on his return from Miles’s house, Bruno could not make out why.
Danby was standing at the window looking out through the undrawn curtains at the lurid darkness of the London night. Bruno was well propped up on pillows. They were both sipping champagne. The whitish scrawled counterpane was covered with stamps and with the dismembered pages of the Evening Standard on top of which lay the first volume of Soviet Spiders open at the chapter on Liphistiid Spiders of the Baltic Coastline.
‘What did you say about me?’
‘He asked how you were and I told him and I said you were longing to meet him and–’
‘You shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Oh my God–’
‘I’m not sure that I am longing to meet him,’ said Bruno judiciously.
‘Well, make up your mind for heaven’s sake.’
‘I can’t see why you’re so upset.’
‘I’m not upset, damn you.’
Since the notion of seeing Miles, or at any rate of sending Danby on an embassy to Miles had become a real plan, Bruno had experienced a complexity of feelings. Partly he felt a kind of animal fright at the real possibility of confronting his son. Partly he was afraid of what he might feel if Miles refused to come. There was a possible madness there. Danby had reassured him at the first moment of his return. Partly too Bruno felt a quite immediate and lively sense of annoyance at the idea of Miles and Danby discussing him, perhaps making common cause against him. He imagined, ‘The old fool wants to see you. Must humour him I suppose.’ ‘How gaga is he?’ And ‘How long will he last?’ Would they speak of him like that? They were young and uncaged, in the legions of the healthy. He also felt an excited touched surprise that such a complex of emotions could still exist in such an old man. ‘Such an old man,’ he thought to himself until the tears came. He was pleased at these moments when he felt that he had not been simplified by age and illness. He was the complicated spread-out thing that he had always been, in fact more so, much more so. He had drawn the web of his emotions back inside himself with not a thread lost. Well, he would see Miles. It was unpredictable though, and that was scaring.
‘Of course I do want to see him,’ said Bruno judiciously, ‘but I feel quite detached about it. You shouldn’t have implied I was frantic.’
‘I didn’t imply it. We had a very plain talk.’
‘How do you mean plain? What’s Miles like now?’
‘He’s going bald.’
‘You never liked him, Danby.’
‘He never liked me. I liked him all right. He was horribly like Gwen. He still is.’
‘That’s why you’re upset.’
‘Yes. More champagne?’
‘Thanks. But what’s he like?’
‘Rather brutal and preoccupied. But he’ll be nice to you.’
‘I can’t think what on earth we’ll talk about,’ said Bruno.
His left hand strayed vaguely over things on the counterpane while the right conveyed the trembling glass to his lips. Champagne still cheered.
‘You’d better see him some morning. You’re best in the mornings.’
‘Yes. It’ll have to be Saturday or Sunday then. Will you let him know?’
‘Yes. May I leave you now, Bruno? There’s a man waiting in a pub. Here’s Nigel the Nurse to take over.’
Soft-footed Nigel pads in and Danby leaves. Nigel’s lank dark hair sweeps round his pale lopsided face and projects in a limp arc beneath his chin. His dark eyes are dreamy and he is many-handed, gentle, as he tidies Bruno up for supper-time. The stamps are put away, the Evening Standard neatly folded, Bruno’s glass of speckled golden champagne filled again to the brim. Some of it spills upon the white turned-down sheet as the crippled spotted hand trembles and shakes. Such an old old thing that hand is.
‘Want to go to the lav?’
‘No thanks, Nigel, I’m all right.’
‘Not got cramp again?’
‘No cramp.’
Nigel flutters like a moth. A pyjama button is done up, a firm support between the shoulder blades while a pillow is plumped, the lamp and telephone moved a little farther off, Soviet Spiders closed and put away. The back of Nigel’s hand brushes Bruno’s cheek. The tenderness is incredible. Tears are again in Bruno’s eyes.
‘I am going to see my son, Nigel.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Do you think forgiveness is something, Nigel? Does something happen? Or is it just a word? I feel sleepy now. Can I have my supper soon?’
Too much champagne. Nigel is drinking out of Danby’s glass. Nigel flutters like a moth, filling the room with a soft powdery susurrous of great wings.
8
DANBY STRAIGHTENED HIS tie and rang the bell.
The door was opened by a large-browed woman with very faded sand-coloured hair tucked well back behind her ears.
The image of Miles vanished.
‘I say–Hello–I–’
‘You’re Danby.’
‘Yes. You’re Diana.’
‘Yes. Oh good. I’ve been longing to meet you. Come in. I’m afraid Miles is out.’
There was some faint music playing in the background.
Danby followed her through the dark hall into a room into which the last evening sun was palely shining. Outside, through French windows, there was a pavement wet with recent rain, interspersed with bushy clumps of grey and bluish herbs. A very faint steam was rising from the sun-warmed pavement. But Danby had not taken his eyes off the woman.
The music, Danby now became aware, was dance music, old fashioned dance music, a foxtrot, something dating from Danby’s youth and stirring up a shadowy physical schema of memories. A slow foxtrot. Diana turned it down to a background murmur.
‘How nice of you to call.’
‘Well, I could have telephoned, but I was passing by and thought I’d drop in.’ Danby in fact had found himself much troubled by a craving to see Miles again.
‘It’s about Miles seeing Bruno? I’m so glad he’s going to, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I wonder would Saturday morning be all right? Miles doesn’t work on Saturdays?’
‘Sometimes he does, but he can always not if he wants to.’
??
?About eleven then.’
‘You know, you’re not a bit like what I expected.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘Oh something–well, it’s hard to say–’
‘Miles’s description of me was unflattering?’
‘No, no, no, it wasn’t that. I thought you’d be older, and not so–’
‘Handsome?’
They both laughed.
The room was a variegated brightly coloured room, full of plump little rounded armchairs covered in chintz. There was a tall white art nouveau mantelpiece scattered with glistening china. The yellow and white striped walls were covered with a miscellany of small late-Victorian oil paintings and silhouettes and miniatures. It was a self-conscious eclectic room, a made-up room, a room which might have existed in Cambridge in nineteen hundred, full of cold light from the fens and an atmosphere of rather severe hedonism.
The girl, for so he immediately thought of her, was wearing a blue woollen dress without a belt, very short. She was plump inside the sheath of the dress, rounds of breasts, stomach, buttocks, well suggested and smoothed over. Her eyes were a rich unflecked brown, and her longish straight hair, now the sun was shining on it, gleamed a metallic silvery gold. She had a straight decisive nose and an intent faintly hungry enigmatic expression. Danby apprehended at once a certain sense of drama, a sense of her initiative. A nervy magnetic girl such as he did not often meet now. A rather severe hedonist.
‘And am I like how you expected?’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t really think much about you at all. But I shall think about you now.’
‘You are polite.’
They both laughed again.
‘Have a drink,’ said Diana. ‘Miles has given up. Isn’t it awful?’ She took bottles of gin and vermouth and sherry and small cut glass tumblers out of a white cupboard.
Danby took the drink gratefully. The ritual of drinking, the time of day, the incapsulated moment of the first evening drink, always produced for him a rush of pure happiness along the veins. This occasion seemed, with its element of surprise, peculiarly perfect.
‘I like a drink at this time of day, but I don’t like drinking alone.’
‘Then I’m glad I called to provide you with a drinking companion!’
‘I’m glad you called! Miles is so clammed up about his family.’
‘Family, yes, I suppose I count as a family connection.’
‘I think family ties are so important.’
‘Depends on the family rather. What do you do, Diana?’
‘What do you mean what do I do? I’m a housewife. I know what you do.’
‘I’m a business man I suppose. Or a printer. I never really think what I am.’
‘I never really think what I am either. But I imagine that’s because I’m not anything.’
‘You don’t go out to work?’
‘Good heavens no. I’m unemployable.’
‘You dust?’
‘The char dusts. I garden, I cook, I rearrange the ornaments.’
‘Creative.’
‘Don’t be silly. Have another drink.’
‘When’s Miles coming?’
‘Not till late. He’s at some office gathering he couldn’t get out of. He hates it.’
‘I don’t imagine Miles is very social.’
‘He isn’t. He hates people.’
‘You obviously rather like them.’
‘Well, I’m a good deal matier than Miles is. Can I come and see Bruno too?’
‘Of course. He’s longing to meet you.’
‘Is he? I didn’t imagine he conceived of my existence.’
‘Of course he does. He’s all agog.’
‘You make me feel quite nervous. I’ll let Miles have first go. I’ve always so much wanted to meet you and Bruno. Is Bruno very ill?’
‘Yes and no. He’s not in pain and he’s quite rational. He’ll like you.’
‘I’ll like him.’
How stupid of me, thought Danby. It never occurred to me that there might be, like this, a girl. And what luck for Bruno. She would know how to deal with the old man. Girls had so much more sense. He looked about the room again. A girl who did nothing. Who sat in plump chintzy chairs and read. He saw a book on one of the chairs. Jane Austen. A woman who was perhaps a little bored. Who waited.
‘I’m so very glad we’ve met at last,’ he said.
Then, oh God, he thought, what awfully sexy music. What is it? It was something familiar. ‘What is that thing on the gramophone?’
She turned it up. It was a slow foxtrot, formal, dignified, intensely sweet, bringing with it again that precise and yet unplaceable sense of the past. Danby’s feet sketched a movement, sliding, catching, upon the close-woven carpeted floor.
Then the next moment he had sidled forward, slid his arm around her waist, and they were dancing in silence, advancing, retreating, circling, their slow precise feet patterning the floor and their mingled shadow climbing over the furniture after them.
The music stopped and they moved apart. Blue eyes stared at brown eyes and brown eyes dropped their gaze.
‘You dance beautifully, Diana.’
‘So do you.’
‘I think the slow foxtrot is the best of all dances.’
‘Yes. And the most difficult.’
‘I haven’t danced in years.’
‘Nor I. Miles hates dancing.’
‘I won a dancing competition once.’
‘So did I.’
‘Diana, will you come and dance with me, some afternoon, at one of those dance halls, you know, one can dance there in the afternoons.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Miles wouldn’t mind would he?’
‘Danby, don’t be silly.’
‘Diana, slow foxtrot?’
‘No.’
‘Slow foxtrot?’
‘No.’
‘Slow fox?’
‘No.’
9
BAREFOOTED NIGEL SQUATS beside a railing looking down. His feet are muddied, his hands red with rust. A man passes by him on the pavement in the darkness, turns and pauses, stares. Nigel smiles without moving, flashing his white teeth in the half dark, catching a ray of light from a distant lamp post. The man hesitates, retreats, flees. Nigel still smiling returns to gaze. He sees through a divided curtain a man going to bed in a basement flat. The man is stepping out of his trousers. He leaves his trousers in a coiled mound upon the floor and goes to urinate into the washbasin. The tail of his shirt is ragged. He pulls off his shirt and scratches under his arms for some time, each hand busy scratching inside the opposite armpit. He stops and with intentness smells his fingers. Still wearing his cosy dirty vest he puts on crumpled pyjamas and crawls heavily into bed. He lies a while vacant, scratching, staring up at the ceiling, then switches out the light. Nigel rises.
These are the glories of his night city, a place of pilgrimage, a place of sin, a place of shriving. Nigel glides barefoot, taking long paces, touching each lamp post as he passes. He has seen men prostrated, writhing, cursing, praying. He has seen a man lay down a pillow to kneel upon and close his eyes and join his two hands palm to palm. All through the holy city in the human-boxes the people utter prayers of love and hate. Unpersonned Nigel strides among them with long silent feet and the prayers rise up about him hissing faintly, like steam. Up any religion a man may climb. Along the darkened alleyways the dusky white-clad worshippers are silently carrying the white fragrant garlands to lay upon the greasy lingam of Great Shiva.
Nigel strides noiselessly, crossing the roadways at a step, his bare feet not touching ground, a looker-on at inward scenes. He has reached the sacred river. It rolls on at his feet black and full, a river of tears bearing away the corpses of men. There is weeping but he is not the weeper. The wide river flows onward, immense and black beneath the old cracked voices of the temple bells which flit like bats throughout the lurid black air. The river is thick, ribbed, curled, convex, heaped up above
its banks. Nigel makes offerings. Flowers. Where was the night garden where he gathered them? He throws the flowers down upon the humped river, then throws after them all the objects which he finds in his pockets, a knife, a handkerchief, a handful of money. The river takes and sighs and the flowers and the white handkerchief slide slowly away into the tunnel of the night. Nigel, a god, a slave, stands erect, a sufferer in his body for the sins of the sick city.
He reclines upon the pavement where the rising waters have lifted up the window of a houseboat near to his telescopic eye. A man and a woman are sitting on a bed, the man fully clothed, the woman naked. He speaks angrily to her and brings his fist up to her eyes. She shakes her head, moving it uneasily away, her face made ugly by evasiveness and fear. The man begins to take his clothes off, tearing them off, stripping himself bare with curses. He drags back the blankets of the bed and the woman darts inside like an animal into its burrow and hides, peering, with the blankets up to her eyes. The man pulls the blankets off her and turns out the light. Nigel lies on the damp pavement and sighs for the sins of the world.
He lifts himself a little to see over a sill through an uncurtained window. Beside a cluttered kitchen table Will and Adelaide are arguing. He takes her hand which she tries stiffly to withdraw. He hurls her hand back at her. Auntie is knitting an orange cardigan. ‘So there is a Cape Triangular stamp?’ ‘Yes, there’s several.’ ‘You must get the right one, I’ll show you a picture.’ ‘I’m not going to get any one.’ ‘Oh yes you are, Ad.’ ‘Oh no I’m not.’ ‘Sometimes I could murder you, Adelaide.’ ‘Let go my arm, that hurts.’ ‘It’s meant to hurt.’ ‘I think you’re hateful.’ ‘Why do you come here to torment me.’ ‘Let go.’ ‘You enjoy tormenting me.’ ‘Let go.’ Auntie who has noticed, not for the first time, Nigel’s face risen like the moon above the window sill, smiles mysteriously and goes on knitting.
Altogether elsewhere beside a glass door he prostrates himself among feathery grey herbs. Here there is only a chink in the curtains through which he can see a thin-faced sallow man with narrow eyes and a heavy fall of dense dark hair disputing with a thin woman with stick-like arms and a gaunt ardent face. Her brown hair is wild, formless as a dark cloud about her thrusting face.