Titus saw what seemed to be a clearing in the darkness of a yew wood, where tents were pitched. This was where the camp was and where the voices, the laughter, the music and the expletives had come from, which he had heard when he had been lying in his tent. He had not imagined a yew wood. The silence added to its malignant darkness. The boles of the trees were deep red, gnarled and ancient, and the foliage black with age. This wood, these trees had seen the fortunes and the misfortunes of men over a thousand years, fugitives, violent death, fear, but very little love.
In the clearing, apart from the tents, was a house, incongruously neat, wooden and shuttered.
As the man gestured him to follow, Titus caught sight of a movement in the wood, and as he looked to see what else moved on this uncanny day, he saw a rat larger than any he had ever seen run into the darkness, followed by what must have been a family of rats on the move. Their tails were longer, he thought, than the one he could never forget, long ago, in another dark and sinister world.
These memories flashed by and were gone; it was not a time for brooding. With speed-man, Titus and Dog made for the clearing, and the house, passing the hut of Rhino Eyes. It could not have been inhabited, as Titus had thought. As they neared it, he saw that the shutters were hanging from their hinges, the windows were broken and there was a smell of dankness overall. Around the house was a veranda, with three steps leading up to it. A door was open and they went in. Broken furniture lay around, a table upside down, with the look of a dead horse lying on its back when rigor mortis has set in, only the stomach flat and empty. But another table had the remains of a meal on it, seemingly recent, for there was no mildew or smell of decay. A few rugs were scattered on the dust-laden floorboards, and in a cupboard with its doors ajar there hung what appeared to be military coats.
At the sight of the food Titus felt a sickness of hunger for he had almost forgotten what it was like not to feel hunger. There was bread, there was some kind of partly cooked meat and a jug.
With a courtesy that might seem surprising in a man who physically now resembled an emaciated brigand (during the weeks or months of his confinement his hair had grown to shoulder length and his beard straggled on to his chest) Titus offered the man, who was either his jailer or his deliverer, the plate of food.
Titus motioned to Dog to come forward. He placed on a plate some of the meat and put it on the floor, together with water from the jug. Then he helped himself to what remained, but found that his capacity for food was dulled, and what should have been a joyous consummation brought very little comfort to him. Dog ate his with a restraint that belied his canine ancestry, and finished when he saw that his master was no longer eating.
Titus knew that he was the most dominant of the three, that it was for him to assume command, but he felt hampered by the lack of a communal language. Then he decided that he would speak in his own, and that by the very intonation of words he would make himself understood, if at the same time his words were accompanied by gesture. He remembered an old mischievous woman that he had met on one of his peregrinations, who had told him how she had mistaught a foreigner her own native language. To say ‘good morning’ she had taught her pupil to say ‘broom-handle’ – when she pointed to eyes, nose, mouth, feet, etc., she substituted the words salt, pepper, mustard, cabbage, and yet that teacher and that learner communicated with each other in a language they mutually understood, but no one else could.
But it was by intonation alone that Titus decided to speak.
‘Come quick, we must go, while the camp is empty. Shall we see what clothes there are in the cupboard? Come on Dog and Man – quick.’
Still speaking, he went to the cupboard where soldiers’ coats were hanging and the man, understanding, followed Titus, who gestured that he try on whatever he wanted, to ensure some kind of disguise. He felt that time was too precious to waste, but that it was vital to make some change in their appearance, despite the fact that there was no possibility of disguising Dog. He also knew that his hair and beard must be shorn, and that he must trust to the dexterity of his companion’s use of a large sharp knife. He gestured to his hair and beard, with a cutting motion, and said in his own language, ‘But that must wait. Come, let’s put on our coats and hats.’ So Titus pushed as much of his matted hair as possible into his woollen cap.
It was getting lighter – in fact, almost full daylight – as they left the empty house and silently went down the three steps from the veranda on to the mossy grass, before again plunging into the black gloom of the yew wood.
The man, whom Titus now thought of both as a friend and fellow captive, obviously had some knowledge of the woods. Left to himself, Titus would not have known which of the many paths to take. Although they were not paths as such, they were tracks, each one leading to a different future, all of them unknown. As he followed, with Dog close behind, he noticed the man rubbing each tree on the outside of the route they were taking. He gestured to know what was being done, and at the next tree the man pointed to an almost infinitesimally small white chalk arrow, to show them the way out of the forbidding wood, but whose obliteration would diminish the likelihood of anyone following.
The only sounds were the rustling of leaves above and the alarm calls of birds whose territory was being invaded, and the quick rush of a rat, as it ran from one hole to another.
Titus felt that the gloom of the yew wood would never lift – that there was no other world outside it. He could not envisage a time or place that did not surround him in darkness or where he could exchange conversation with people who understood not only what he was saying, but why and how.
They seemed to have walked for hours, but it was almost as though they had stayed in the same place, so little did the ambience change. Each tree, taken alone, was unique and thick with character, but one after another assumed the anonymous sameness of faces in a crowd, and he longed for a yew tree that betrayed its brothers by bright green foliage and silver bark.
As these thoughts passed inconsequentially through his mind, Titus was slowly growing aware of his head becoming lighter. But it was not his head, it was a glimpse of sky, penetrating the roof of yew, and as he looked ahead, he could see a doorway of emerald grass, and a chance to enter another world. Seeing such an invitation to throw off the gloom and the nothingness of his last months of grey inactivity, he felt his legs moving faster and faster towards the door of light, until he was running so fast that he almost tripped on the uneven criss-crossed path of ancient roots. Dog followed close, scenting his master’s exuberance.
Titus stopped running for a moment, to see where their guide-man was and found that he was standing still, almost a fly in amber, dried white in the darkness, trapped. The man stood motionless, as Titus returned to him. He lifted the sleeve of his robe, and once more showed the numbers cut into his arm. He drew an imaginary knife across his throat, he spread his arms in what might have been hope or hopelessness and he turned back and ran as fleetingly as a leveret, back into the darkness from which the three of them had just emerged.
It was a moment of truth. Should Titus follow? What conscience he had told him it was what he should do; what reason he had told him of the pointlessness of such an action. Reason prevailed and, with Dog and an absence of guilt, he ran until he was out of the wood and sitting panting on the sunlit verge, where he fell into a deep sleep of nothingness. He only awoke on hearing in the distance what sounded like the baying of hounds, a pistol shot and a cry of pain.
20
An Unexpected Meeting
Titus and Dog found themselves on a narrow road in open countryside: downland, with clumps of bushes and neat fields; a huge expanse of sky, not blue, but grey-white, and convoluted clouds that changed their shapes at each blink.
Hunger, never at bay for long, began again to remind Titus that he was at the mercy of his own being. His ingenuity was once more called upon.
‘Come on, Dog, let’s see what we can find along the hedgerows – not that you will ca
re for what nature provides there. Why don’t you burrow and chase, and kill and eat? I have a knife and you have your whole elemental being.’
As they walked down the narrow road, towards what seemed to be a meeting of four roads, the man and his dog for all their hunger were breathing the air of freedom.
At the crossroads Titus stood and looked in all directions. He saw space and time, but he did not see which way he should take. In the middle of the cross was a heart-shaped island of grassy stubble, and for some reason of symmetry he sat in the middle of it, to empty his mind and to make a decision, with no recourse to logic, on which way he should go.
They must have sat on the heart-shaped mound for twenty minutes when Dog pricked up his ears before Titus could find the reason why. In the distance there was if not a sound of human life, at least a sound that was controlled by human life; a slow advent on to the scene of an alien-to-nature sound; an internal combustion engine that seemed to be contending with age, so much did it hesitate, blow and bang, stop and start again, long before it could be seen.
Surprise was no longer part of Titus’s life. He had lived on the edge of it for so long. Curiosity he still possessed in abundance. Nothing was ever as it might be envisaged. Things were invariably more strange than the wildest imaginings.
‘Do I always let things happen to me, then, Dog? Am I an onlooker or am I a catalyst? Am I a man whose childhood is incomprehensible to all but those who turn their back on this world because they cannot bear what it offers? Who am I, and what, or who is about to enter our lives? Can it be someone that will pass us by? Can it be someone who will change the course of our lives? Shall I be master of my own fate, or should I leave it to fortune?’
This was not to be so easy: the spluttering car was upon him and almost annihilated him as it came to a stop in the middle of the heart-shaped island. He had just enough time to jump out of its way and as he landed face down on the road, he heard a sound of wheezing, together with a jumble of dry coughing and laughter. His first instinct was of anger, and his natural quick temper hastened his speed to turn, sit and stand up to whoever was the cause of his undignified collapse.
He had no idea what he might expect, but it was certainly not what he now saw. It was a woman of around thirty or thirty-five, small and thin, with short, dark hair so jagged it was seemingly cut with a razor. She had a little bony face, with smudged hazel eyes, a narrow, aquiline nose, and a small mouth with a half-smoked cigarette, which clung to her bottom lip like a limpet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, hacking and chuckling. ‘I think I dropped off to sleep – I’ve been driving all night, and only woke when the car stopped on the heart. A heartbeat, a car beat, be dat what it may, be-ware, be-troot, be good, be gone, bee-hive, b-awful . . . At least you’re not hurt.’
‘And I can see that you are not hurt either,’ said Titus. He felt unable to compete with the verbal play of the strange woman. But the very thought of a woman, after so long a time of thinking of nothing but survival, made him look at her less as a person than as a symbol, of something which he had so often sought, so often treated roughly, but felt an unholy need of.
He began ‘I’m not a wit . . .’
‘Not a wit too soon . . .’ and then followed another paroxysm of coughing and laughter, with cigarette smoke exhaling a delicate pale-grey blind between them.
‘Oh, to hell with you – I’m in no mood for wordplay – hardly in any mood at all – who in hell are you? I’m Titus Groan – that’s simple enough. I’ve had my fill of clever women. All I want, now that you’ve appeared from out of the blue, is to know where you are going, not where you have come from. I’m not interested. Can you help me, have you any food, have you a home, a house, a room, a bed, a floor? Just answer me quite simply, and if it’s at all possible without the frills of smokes and coughs and laughter . . .’
It was so long since Titus had given outward expression to any thought that he was insensitive to the brusqueness and the roughness of his voice, and what it said, and when he at last looked at the small woman to whom he was speaking, he was surprised to see her lower lip, to which the cigarette still clung, trembling, and all the vividness of her personality extinguished.
‘Now it is for me to say sorry. My harshness was not deliberate and I have no excuse. I am sorry. To blow out a candle that is shedding light in a dark room is thoughtless, unkind and stupid, and what’s more makes life a good deal less interesting. Now I’ve talked too much. You say something.’
‘Oh, that is the one thing that would really silence me, cough and all.’
‘Well, at least I have told you my name. Cannot you tell me yours?’
‘It’s Ruth Saxon – quite straightforward, really – and if you get to know me better, you’ll probably think it strange that there should be anything straightforward about me. Not that I’m crooked, but that I never seem to think or do things as other people do, or at least so my family tell me.’
‘Then we should get on rather well,’ said Titus in a conciliatory tone. ‘Perhaps the same could be said about me.’
As they talked, probing circuitously each other’s personalities, Titus had time to look at and into the car, which had so suddenly broken his solitude. It had a character to fit its owner. It was full of personality. Canvases lay in the back, piled one upon the other, stones and shells of all sizes were scattered on the seat behind the driver’s, and sitting regally disdainful of outside events was a clowder of cats of varying colours, peering from behind a large bunch of wayside flowers.
‘Yes, I’m a painter, and I love cats and I carry my heart on my sleeve. I love painting more than anything in the world. I love everything to do with it. The smell of turps, the materials I use, the brushes, the canvas, the silence, the solitude. When I’m painting I’m consciously serene. Perhaps it’s the only time when I’m not asking myself insoluble questions. The sole truth when I’m painting is the truth of paint. It doesn’t matter how old I become, it’ll always be there, and some of the world’s greatest painters reached their old age passionately living, their hearts, their eyes, their souls, their hands plying their trade. One old painter had an inscription on his grave: ‘‘Here lies an old man mad about painting.’’ There, that tells you about me. What about you, Titus?’
‘Perhaps I don’t feel passionate about anything. You are one of the lucky ones. If I learn to know you better I will tell you about my life, but you may not believe me. Let my life emerge slowly and you can judge me as it unfolds. Perhaps I am doomed to be an onlooker. But at any rate, before we probe too deeply, just tell me where you were going and perhaps our ways might take the same route, at least for a short time. I’m not one to stay too long in any place.’
‘Well, I’ve been down to the beach to pick up the stones you can see in the car, and I’m on my way back to my studio. Would you like to come with me and stay a while? I love my studio, but I’m afraid there’s not a great deal of comfort. I haven’t much money and I can’t cook, and I like being alone; and what’s more, you can bring your companion with you, who has been so patient while we’ve been exploring each other’s whims.’
‘What about the cats, though?’
‘Well, as you can see, very little can disturb their complete and utter self-absorption. What is his name?’
‘Dog.’
‘Dog?’
‘Yes, Dog.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, he’s not a cat.’
‘He’s not a giraffe either.’
‘If I don’t give him a name, I feel I’m not responsible for him.’
‘I don’t like that.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘Don’t you, Titus?’
‘No.’
‘I have a name, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Can’t you say it?’
‘I can say it.’
‘But won’t you?’
‘I will some time.’
‘You don’t have to be responsible for me if yo
u use it, you know, Titus. It makes me feel as though I’m not here, and I’m all here, and there, and by and large, and to and fro, and my name is Ruth. Say it, please.’
‘Ruth.’
‘Now we can get on our way, Titus. Let’s clear a space in the car, so that poor Dog can get in on the seat, and you can sit in front. But can you wait a moment? We’ve got a longish drive ahead and perhaps we had all better go behind the bushes. You take Dog and I’ll be back in a minute.’
When they all met again, Titus had waited to clear the car, for he didn’t want to disturb the cats without their mistress being there.
It need not have worried him for apart from a lazy stretching and re-disposition of their bodies into more comfortable positions, their self-possession was not disturbed. Titus told Dog to get in, and even when his large frame clambered on to the back seat the cats did not display more than cursory interest. He was not an enemy. Dog had learned much patience and much tolerance since he had been with Titus.
* * * * *
SOMEHOW, ON EVEN such a short knowledge of Ruth, Titus could not imagine her behind the wheel of a car. The two seemed incompatible. This car was unlike Muzzlehatch’s, although he had also been incongruous, and so much bigger than life – his ape, his animals, the very essence of his being. This remembrance trembled on the edge of Titus’s consciousness before he returned to the present, and he became curious as to how Ruth and the car would come to terms with each other.
It was rather as he had imagined, as the door closed behind her and almost with a leap the car sprang into action, grunting and wheezing and jerking as though in the throes of an epileptic fit.
‘I don’t really like cars; in fact, I hate them. Treat ’em rough, as my father used to say about anything and everything that didn’t belong to him. I don’t understand them but I don’t want to either. So long as we get from one place to another in one piece, that’s all they’re for.’
Titus was well able to agree, for he had never owned a car or wanted one. His way of life had no need of possessions – he had renounced the shackles that posed a threat to his freedom, but now was not the time for him to turn over introspectively the whole of his past life; for the time being he gave himself up to the present, and the fact that he was with a woman, a woman quite unlike any he had met before. Not a feminine woman, too thin and wiry and unconscious of her sex to be a womanly woman. Not flirtatious, not filled with guile, she was companionable and humorous, but Titus felt she was vulnerable and quickly hurt.