As we walked home, I asked See-a-Bird: ‘What year are we in?’
‘The year before leap-year.’
‘Yes, but what’s the date?’
The Interpreter intervened. He explained to See-a-Bird that in my age we counted the years publicly and celebrated every first of January with a postmortem on the Old Year and speculations on the New.
‘Here we have no public date,’ See-a-Bird told me. ‘The Chief Recorder keeps a count of years in the archives, but it isn’t published and nobody but he and his assistants could calculate how many have elapsed since the foundation of New Crete. We also consider it highly improper to mention anyone’s age or to count the number of years that he has held office or been married. In the same way we make no record of hours and minutes, as I believe you do with clocks and watches. We observe the phases of the moon; we distinguish morning from afternoon and afternoon from evening; we keep the days of the week; we mark the passage of the seasons; and the two parts of our double year end with the first full moon after the longest day and the first full moon after the shortest day. But time in an absolute sense was abolished on the same occasion on which it was agreed to abolish money; for the poet Vives pleaded passionately:
Since Time is money,
Time must be destroyed:
His sickle and hour-glass
Are in pawn to evil.
Nimuë, save us with your bow again.’
‘Then at what time do children go to school in the morning?’
‘When the bell rings.’
‘And when does it ring?’
‘When the first three children have arrived.’
‘And how long do you boil an egg?’
‘Until the sand’s run out of the egg-glass.’
Chapter VI
Erica
That same day, which was a Sunday, an alarming and quite inexplicable event happened, just before I had lunch with See-a-Bird and Sally.
It was a vegetarian meal, by the way: I found to my chagrin that custom forbade magicians to eat either meat or fish – only fresh cheese and an occasional egg, and no spices or pickles or even onions. No wonder they were so clear-headed, clear-skinned and humourless! Their irreproachable diet went far to explain their fanciful theories of love and amatory sympathy. Also the facility with which they shed tears: I once had an operation for a fistula, followed by a week of nothing but tap-water and barley sugar, and by the time the doctor consented to put me on milk and mush I was so unlike my usual self that one evening I shed tears at a waifs-and-strays appeal on the radio, and then lay in bed, still sobbing uncontrollably, and watched an imaginary but most realistic battle being fought on the window-curtain between stags and swans. Not that I was on an insufficient diet now: the food was plentiful and probably contained all the vitamins and calories needed for perfect health, and the glass of lager – though they didn’t offer to fill my empty glass – was every bit as drinkable as the one I had been given before. But what my stomach expected was a real Sunday dinner with joint, Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes, introduced by a couple of dry Martinis; it did not get any of this, and I felt like someone who has gone to the wrong restaurant, and finds himself confronted with nut-cutlets and hoax-in-the-hole.
What had happened was this. I told Sally that I proposed to stroll out by myself in the park for a few minutes, if that was allowed. She made no objection, so I took the other direction from the one we had taken that morning, crossed the orchard and made for a low ridge about a hundred yards from the house, where I stopped to take my bearings.
‘Let me see,’ I thought. ‘That’s where the Coq d’Or used to be, and there’s the stream still running, and look, there’s a new mill exactly where ours was; so I must be standing on the site of the Mairie, which was on the crest of this ridge; and my house must have been over there in the hollow where that cow’s grazing.’ It gave me a rather nightmarish feeling to look at the smooth green turf and realize that somewhere underneath the cow, if I dug, I might come across the foundations of my house, and very likely the concrete floor of the cellar, but absolutely no other trace of my life in these parts. Unless perhaps a fragment survived of my own gravestone; yes, I would probably have died here and been buried in the English Cemetery which my father, a retired clergyman, had bought and consecrated himself. Or would I have left the village and gone to live in Oxfordshire, as Antonia always wanted us to do, and died there?
Another large building not far from the mill caught my eye. The two elderly recorders whom I had seen that morning were coming out of a side door and making for the bridge. That was where the Doctor’s house had stood and I sighed a little guiltily, remembering that Erica Turner used to stay there. Erica was a wild girl, the Doctor’s half-American niece. She and I had had a passionate love-affair, which was in its final stage when Antonia came with her two brothers to stay at the Coq d’Or. Antonia caught me on the rebound, and I married her almost at once. She knew all about Erica, of course, from village gossip and what I told her myself – or practically all, because there are certain things one does not repeat and, anyhow, they were over and done with and Antonia would not have enjoyed hearing about them. I had made up my mind to forget Erica. She had not only treated me foully but managed at the same time to put me in the wrong and make me feel a thorough heel, before suddenly breaking with me and going off with a man I detested and despised. She had also withdrawn all the money from our joint account at the Crédit Lyonnais and left me flat. No news of her for many years and then I heard from a friend, some months before the start of the Second World War, that she had been seen in Florence going about with an Italian count and looking a good deal older and thinner than when we had known her. No news since. As I walked towards the Doctor’s house, or so I called it to myself, I was surprised to find that it had been re-built on the original foundations. It stood in the same position, though of stone this time, not brick, with queerly curved gable windows and a very old vine trained up the south wall. There was even a descendant of the Doctor’s walnut-tree at the back of the house, shading the stable-yard. Just here, for the first time and quite unexpectedly, as I was going to the Doctor with a poisoned finger, and rounding the corner, I had run full tilt into –
‘Erica, good God! It can’t be true!’
‘Oh, hello, Teddy!’ she said casually. ‘I heard you were about. I meant to come along yesterday.’
‘But… but…’
‘But what?’
I stood gasping.
‘But what?’ she repeated with her habitual Sphinx smile. She looked much younger now, not older, and dangerously well and beautiful.
‘I thought I was the only person from our age whom they’d evoked. Are you real?’
‘Pinch me and see. Or pinch yourself. What’s on your mind, Teddy? You were looking as cross as hell when you came across the field.’
I automatically fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette.
‘Oh, it’s only that, is it? Have one of mine!’ She produced a case full of very normal-looking French cigarettes. ‘Contraband,’ she explained. ‘If you don’t mind breaking the rules, you’re perfectly safe. A light?’
She had a Ronson, too, in her handbag. ‘You do the talking, Erica,’ I said, ‘while I get the most out of my Gauloise Bleue. This situation is beyond me.’
‘Tell me first why you were feeling so cross, if it wasn’t just the cigarette shortage. It can’t have been that. You’re still scowling.’
‘I was thinking of you, of course.’
‘I see. So you want me to talk about old times? You know, Teddy, if it wasn’t so ridiculously long ago I don’t believe I’d have forgiven you for the way you let me down. I didn’t think you were that sort. The vulgar fuss you made about poor Emile, as though he meant anything to me.’
‘He meant enough for you to sneak off to Cannes with him one weekend, when you were supposed to be visiting your mother in Geneva.’
‘Your punishment for being so jealous.’
&nb
sp; ‘I knew nothing about Emile at the time.’
‘No, that’s correct. You were jealous of that tall black Irishman with the yacht. Captain Thing – I forget his name. Dumb, but a heavenly dancer.’
‘Henty was the name. And he wasn’t a captain, only a dude yachtsman. And he wasn’t in the least bit dumb; but a crook and personally disgusting and I told him so in a few well-chosen words.’
‘Yes, that was where you slipped up! If you’d only told me, it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad, but to make a scene in Harry’s Bar as if you were my husband…’
‘I was drunk. So was he. So were you!’
‘So what?’
‘O Lord, Erica, let’s forget it! Don’t let’s talk about Emile or Henty or the Cannes visit…’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more. Or about my Benevolence.’
‘I don’t quite get you. What benevolence did you show me?’
‘I thought you read History at Oxford? A Benevolence was how King Thing – how King Thing the What-th – used to describe a forced loan. Have you forgotten those hundred thousand francs I relieved you of? But I must say you never were mean about money. So don’t let’s talk about my Benevolence. And don’t let’s talk about Antonia either – you always were rather a bore about her – or about anything else except ourselves. All that happened ages ago: literally. You’re staying with the Nymph Sapphire now, I hear?’
‘I am.’
‘And you’ve fallen for her already, haven’t you? Cradle-snatching, I call it. She’s got a good figure, of course, as most of these girls have, but I can’t say I like her any better than I liked Antonia.’
‘Now who’s being a bore?’
‘Oh, all right, have another cigarette.’
‘I don’t in the least mind if I do. But look here, darling, I must know what you’re doing here.’
‘Me? Nothing especially. I live in this village, that’s all.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Oh, for years and years, off and on.
‘What’s your name now?’
‘Erica Yvonne Turner, of course; only I never use the Yvonne.’
‘Except as an alias in divorce cases.’
‘You beast! I didn’t know you’d followed my career with such attention. But they don’t have divorce courts here.’
‘No. I suppose not. Lucky you! What estate do you belong to?’
She glared at me. ‘Estate? Estate! Don’t ever again use that word in my hearing or I’ll scream.’
‘Why shouldn’t I? Surely, if you live here you’re bound to belong to one estate or another!’
She stuck out her chin and let out a long, piercing scream, like an express train coming out of a tunnel. I might have known she would.
‘Stop it, for God’s sake, stop it at once, you little fool! You’ll get us both into trouble.’ I put my hand roughly over her mouth. She stopped at once and began to laugh.
‘Teddy, do you remember that time at Ronda when I said I’d smash the gold wrist-watch you’d just given me if you ever laughed at another of your own jokes?’
‘I do. And I did laugh at one, and you did smash it. And that annoyed me so much I threw you on the bed and wrestled with you and banged your head against the wall, time after time.’
‘And I cut your wrist with a piece of watch glass and you nearly bled to death.’
‘I wouldn’t have cared if I had bled to death. Or if I’d brained you, either. I’ve never felt more furiously miserable in my life…’
‘Stop pitying yourself, idiot… Tell me, how do you like this place?’
‘I was liking it very much, on the whole, until you turned up and complicated things. The life here’s a little too good to be true, of course.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say that. What do you think of the men?’
‘They remind me vaguely of Jane Austen’s heroes. Something card-boardy about them. Or – I know – the bigger boys in a co-educational school.’
‘I don’t know whether you remember that I went to a co-ed school in Switzerland. I was the head-girl –’
‘Exactly, that’s what made me mention your victims. Wherever women have perfect liberty to drink men’s blood out of skull-goblets…’
‘As they do here, you mean?’
‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Ah, of course. This is a women’s world, and that’s why I’m here.’
‘Those poets – Starfish and Fig-bread – what sort of poems do they write?’
‘Punk. Even your stuff’s brilliant compared with theirs. But tell me, how do you get on with Sally?’
‘Not too well. She’s got something against me, I think.’
‘Has she asked you any awkward questions yet?’
‘Only one. She wanted to know with how many women I’d slept in my life.’
‘Did you mention Erica Turner, by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘That was very gentlemanly of you. But why not?’
‘I mentioned no names at all. I thought her question was in deplorable taste.’
‘You mean: because Sally’s in love with you and madly jealous of Sapphire?’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Erica, you know you are! Women here don’t get jealous, or if they do they don’t show it.’
‘Did I ever lie to you, Teddy?’
‘Often, but only by evasions and half-truths – I suppose you didn’t need to waste your real lies on me. But you’re not serious about Sally and Sapphire?’
‘Certainly. It’s a fact. Ask Sally if it isn’t.’
‘I shall do nothing of the sort. How do you know what her feelings are, anyway?’
‘Oh, my spies are everywhere and I get about a good deal myself. But look here, Teddy, there’s no time for any more talk now. You must go back at once – that’s the bell ringing for lunch. I’ll be seeing you. No, I won’t come over for a day or two, it might cramp your style. But you know where to find me.
She pulled my head down, gave me a brief kiss, turned and disappeared into the Doctor’s house.
I stood looking after her until the bell stopped ringing. Naturally, I said nothing to Sally or See-a-Bird when I got back; and made up my mind to say nothing to Sapphire either. But what a mess this was! Of all the people in the world – my world – that triple-faced, ash-blonde bitch Erica! It couldn’t have been worse; in the old days her savagery and recklessness had aroused a response in me of which I couldn’t have believed myself capable. I blushed to think of the things we had done together; and might do again if I wasn’t careful. I shouldn’t have called her ‘darling’ just now, even though she had given me a couple of cigarettes; or allowed her to kiss me; or discussed Sally and the brothers with her. Perhaps I ought to apply for revocation – if that was the word – and go home at once.
At table I was glad of the New Cretan custom that forbade people to talk while they ate. It gave me a little time to sort out my impressions. In a daze I swallowed a plateful of boiled dana, served with French beans and tomato sauce. I couldn’t yet face the problem, or the set of connected problems: how Erica had come here, what her status was, and why nobody had mentioned her to me, what my attitude to her ought to be, why she was so much younger now than before – she didn’t look a day over twenty-one, yet she was only two years younger than I was, which made her thirty-four, no, thirty-five. Instead, I set myself a minor task, which I somehow felt was relevant to these problems; and that was, to remember the right name of that long white-ribbed coat she was wearing. Walnut… wainscote… dovecote… some word like that. I’d think of it presently. It was a coarsely woven, yet oddly impressive garment mentioned in a Border ballad, or a Scottish folk tale, or something of that sort.
But, oh, for a plate of roast beef with horseradish sauce and a half-bottle of Pommard, with brandy and a long Havana cigar to follow!
Chapter VII
The Record House
The Interpreter asked Sally to excuse him that afternoon
: he had promised to report to his colleague Quant whatever discoveries about the English language he might have made in the course of the morning. ‘My head is full to bursting,’ he whimpered.
Sally gave him permission.
I was only too glad to see him go: I had begun to get the hang of the New Cretan language and hoped to talk it fairly fluently within two or three weeks, with Sapphire as my teacher. (‘There’s only one way to pick up a new dialect, old boy,’ Knut Jensen had told me, affectionately prodding me in the ribs, ‘and that’s to share a mat with the woman who has the greatest number of plaited bangles – of telegraph wire, you know – wound around her neck and the largest wooden saucer fitted into her lower lip. First, you must count her fingers and toes: that will teach you the numerals as far as twenty. Next, you must learn the names for the parts of the body – you’ll know from her giggles which are in polite use or not. Next, a few adjectives: hard, soft, warm, pleasant. Next…’ Knut was a coarse old man, and most of his advice could not apply to any lessons I was likely to get from Sapphire.)