The World in the Evening Read online

  ‘But the most embarrassing part of it all is,’ he finally told you, ‘that they want me to do something for the first number.’

  ‘Oh, Strines, what about?’

  ‘My dear, you’d never guess. The workings of their minds are positively inscrutable. I’m to write on Milton.’

  ‘Milton?’ you exclaimed, laughing. By this time, you were laughing at everything he said.

  ‘Yes—Milton! Isn’t that peculiarly depressing? One read him at School, of course … Why, this is providential! I’m sure Mr Monk can help us. Mr Monk, didn’t they make you learn Milton, for your sins?’

  ‘He’s one of my favourite poets,’ I lied, looking Strines coldly in the eye.

  It didn’t abash him in the least. ‘But how splendid!’ he said. ‘Then I’ll tell you my idea. I thought it might be vaguely amusing if one compared Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained; maintaining—with an air of deadly earnestness, of course—that Paradise Regained is infinitely superior. How does that strike you, Rydal?’

  ‘Oh, what fun!’ you said.

  ‘The only trouble is, that one will have to make one’s case in the most convincing detail. And I must confess that the prospect of studying Paradise Regained fills me with acute aversion. Mr Monk, I appeal to you. Do give me some hints. Where shall I base my defence? What are your favourite passages?’

  I felt myself getting hot in the face. ‘It’s a long time since I read it,’ I mumbled.

  Strines looked at me mockingly, with one eyebrow slightly raised. I knew he knew I was lying. ‘Oh, come now,’ he said. ‘Really, Mr Monk, it can’t have been such a very long time, can it?’

  Suddenly, I lost my head. I was wild with humiliation and rage. ‘And anyhow,’ I said, ‘it’s the stupidest idea I ever heard of. What’s so clever about writing things you don’t believe? They do that every day, in the newspapers. I’m sorry, Elizabeth, I have to be going.’ I got up and walked out of the room.

  That was the worst moment I’d ever experienced. Every step I took down those stairs was like a step out of your life. I knew I could never go back up them again. And yet I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t even want to. I felt dizzy and, in a strange way, exhilarated, as if I was drunk. My hand shook so much that I could hardly turn the doorknob to get into our flat. Sarah was out, thank Goodness. I went into my bedroom and lay down on the bed, without switching on the lights. I decided to leave London the next day, for ever.

  Then I heard footsteps coming down, and the front door opened and closed. I raised myself on my elbows and peeped through the window, in time to see Strines as he passed under the street-lamp, walking away. He looked pleased with himself, I thought. No doubt he was glad to have gotten rid of me so easily.

  After a minute or two, there were more footsteps and a knock on our door. I didn’t move. I lay tense, holding my breath. ‘Stephen,’ you called. I didn’t answer. I heard you try the handle. ‘Stephen, are you there?’ The door opened. You came into the sitting-room, crossed to my bedroom door. It was ajar, and you saw me. ‘May I come in, Stephen?’ When I didn’t answer, you came in and sat down on the foot of my bed.

  ‘Please tell me what’s the matter,’ you said.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ I told you. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Please tell me. I know you’re hurt, somehow. Was it my fault? If it was, forgive me.’

  I sat up. It was too dark to see your face, but your silhouette showed against the window. ‘I was very rude,’ I said. ‘I apologize. You can tell Strines I’m sorry—if that’ll make it less embarrassing for you.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen,’ you said, taking my hand. ‘Don’t be so formal, and hostile! You must explain. This is terribly important—to me, at any rate.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ I said, pulling my hand away.

  ‘Poor Strines was quite bewildered. He felt he must have offended you, in some way. It certainly wasn’t intentional.’

  ‘I don’t care if it was or not. And I know it’s none of my business—how you feel about him.’

  ‘Stephen, what on earth do you mean?’

  ‘You know damn’ well what I mean. I’ve seen how you look at him, when you’re together.’

  ‘You think Strines and I—? Oh, my Goodness!’ You began to laugh, and then stopped yourself abruptly. ‘But you can’t really believe that? It just isn’t possible. Not if he were the last person in the world … Stephen, this is too utterly absurd.’

  ‘I dare say it is—to you.’

  ‘But, my dear—what do you want me to say?’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything. After tonight, you won’t ever see me again.’

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘I don’t know why you pretend to be so surprised,’ I said. ‘This must keep happening to you all the time. You meet someone like me, and he amuses you as long as he behaves himself. Then he falls in love with you and gets jealous and tiresome, and has to be thrown out.’

  ‘Stephen,’ you asked, very quietly, ‘Do you honestly mean that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’re in love with me?’

  ‘I know, in your eyes, I’m practically a schoolboy. You think I’m too young to have any feelings—’

  ‘I don’t. Of course I don’t think that … But there’s such a thing as, well, infatuation. It can happen very easily. Just because I’m older, and seem to you—oh, something I’m really not … No, don’t misunderstand me. Even if it’s only that, I do respect it. I think it’s beautiful—’

  ‘Yes. I suppose it tickles your vanity.’

  ‘Stephen! How can you be so cruel? You sound as if you hated me.’

  ‘Oh, what the hell do you care if I hate you!’ I couldn’t help it. I started to cry like a baby. I threw myself down and buried my face in the pillow, sobbing.

  Then I felt your hand stroking my hair. You were bending over me. ‘Darling,’ you said, ‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that perhaps I might—’

  Something in the tone of your voice stopped me at once. It was different, and shaky. I couldn’t be sure if you were laughing, or about to cry, yourself.

  ‘That I might be in love with you, too?’

  My heart began to beat so hard that I could barely hear what you were saying.

  ‘Well, darling, I am. In the most desperate, idiotic, old-fashioned sort of way. I’d firmly made up my mind never to tell you. If you must know, I thought I’d better go away some where—because it all seemed so unsuitable and impossible. Only, I found I couldn’t. I just didn’t have the courage. I had to keep on seeing you—’

  ‘Elizabeth!’ I sat right up again. I was almost more astounded than happy. ‘Oh, God, it isn’t true! It can’t be!’

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ I grabbed you in my arms as though you were about to vanish.

  ‘Do you believe it now?’ you whispered, after a minute.

  ‘I’m beginning to.’

  ‘So am I … Oh, Stephen, Stephen, whatever is going to happen to us?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘But, Elizabeth—Do you mean you’ll actually—’

  ‘Actually what, darling?’

  ‘Marry me?’

  You gave a kind of gasp. ‘Stephen! You really are the most amazing angelic person I’ve ever met! You want to?’

  ‘Then you don’t?’

  ‘Of course—of course I want to. More than anything else in the world. Only—it seems such madness.’

  ‘What’s mad about it?’

  ‘Listen, darling. We must be sensible. I’ll go off with you, tomorrow, anywhere you like. And we can try it for a while, until we’re quite, quite sure.’

  ‘Aren’t you sure now?’

  ‘I am … But—suppose you got tired of me?’

  ‘Oh, Elizabeth darling. I’m scared to death that you’ll get tired of me! That’s why I’m going to marry you now, at once.’

  ‘Le
t’s not talk about it now,’ you said, kissing me. ‘Another time … Oh, my darling, we shall have to be very patient and gentle with each other. Much more than most people. Do you realize that—?’

  It was then that we heard the sound of a key in the front door.

  ‘My God,’ I said, ‘that’s Sarah!’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘I’ll put the light on.’ I jumped off the bed.

  ‘Don’t look at me!’

  By the time I’d turned the switch, you were at the mirror, ready to tidy your hair. ‘This is worse than Lady Windermere’s Fan,’ you said. We were both giggling. I dashed across the sitting-room and got the light on there, too, half a second before Sarah opened the door from the hallway.

  ‘Why, Stephen dear,’ Sarah exclaimed, ‘How you startled me! That’s strange—I fancied there was nobody home.’

  Then you came out of the bedroom, as calm as Mrs Erlynne. ‘Good evening, Sarah,’ you said. ‘I just looked in to find out if Stephen—’

  ‘Aunt Sarah,’ I interrupted, taking your hand. ‘I’ve asked Elizabeth to marry me. And she’s accepted. Haven’t you, Elizabeth?’

  ‘Well—yes. Apparently—’ you said, beginning to laugh.

  That was one of Sarah’s greatest moments. Pale and tired after her long day at the dockside settlement in the East End, and burdened with her heavy shopping-basket, she stood looking from the one to the other of us. I shall never know what she was thinking. But then her face lighted up. She put the basket down, came over and clasped you in her arms, and kissed you on the cheek.

  ‘Why, that’s wonderful, my dear,’ she said. ‘My lands, I am surprised! But it’s wonderful. Oh, I’m so glad for you both! I know you two children are going to be very happy.’

  3

  BY THE TIME Gerda came in to get me ready for breakfast, I’d usually been awake so long that her arrival seemed like the end of Act One of the morning, rather than the beginning of the day.

  When I woke up, the first thing I knew was the cast. Sometimes it had appeared in my dreams, disguised as a heavy garment, or the walls of a very small closet, or a vague feeling that I was forbidden to leave the place I was in. But when I woke, it was simply itself, and there. At that time of day, I didn’t hate it at all. My body had somehow become reconciled to it while I was asleep. It was part of my condition, and I accepted it as completely as I accepted my nose and ears.

  Lying there, in the almost mindless calm of first waking, I felt as if I could remember everything I’d ever done or said or thought since I was a baby. Only this wasn’t exactly remembering. Memory pieces things together gradually, making a chain; this was total, instantaneous awareness. The thousands of bits of my life seemed to be scattered around me, like the furniture of the room, all simultaneously present. I wasn’t young, I wasn’t old; I wasn’t any particular age or any particular I. Everything particular was on the outside; and what was aware of this was a simple consciousness that had no name, no face, no identity of any kind. Consciousness lay here, anonymous, and looked at the accumulated clutter of half a lifetime. If there was a Purgatory, or some kind of lucid post-mortem interval, it would probably be like this. You’d be set face to face, inescapably, with what you’d made of yourself, and you wouldn’t be able to ignore it or turn away. That evening at the Novotnys’. Those trips to London with Warren. The time I hit Sarah, when I was a boy. The scene with Elizabeth, in Orotava. The way I’d behaved to Michael Drummond. Cowardly, vile, disgusting, idiotic. And I could never wipe any of it out. I could never atone for it. I could never be sufficiently ashamed. But consciousness wasn’t ashamed, because consciousness wasn’t I. It refused to accept the least responsibility for what I’d done or been. It felt no relation to my acts. It knew no feelings, except the feelings of being itself; and that was the deepest, quietest, most mysterious kind of happiness.

  Within this happiness were absolute safety, entire peace. But the safety and peace never lasted for more than a few seconds or, at most, a minute at a time. Because, as soon as you said to yourself ‘if only this could go on for ever!’, as soon as you began to will them to continue, you automatically became I, Stephen. You identified yourself with what was outside, with the surrounding mess of your life. And, immediately, they were gone.

  (Once, I’d had the same sort of experience in connection with another person. There was a night during the summer of 1937, at St Luc, when I’d woken from heavy dreamless sleep after making love with Jane, and hadn’t known who or where I was. I’d seemed to be looking down, from some impersonal no-place, at our two bodies lying in each other’s arms on the bed. I could swear that I’d actually hesitated, then, like a guest at the end of a party who looks at two overcoats, not sure for a moment which is which, before I’d decided ‘that one’s mine’.)

  As I slipped back into being my individual self, Time was re-established. The light that paled the shadows on my bedroom ceiling was now the light of a particular, dated day; unlike all other days that had ever been or would be. I became aware of its first, unique sounds; of its special brand-new breeze stirring the window-curtains and filling the room with a smell of fruit-blossom that had the powerful, almost menacing richness of the oncoming summer. The house was carrying us, its three passengers, into the unknown future, at an enormous speed. Some mornings, my sense of the speed of Time was so acute that it became actually exhilarating. I lay there in a state of strange excitement, wondering where Sarah and Gerda and I were going.

  This was happiness of a different kind. I was no longer calm or safe, but I felt unreasoningly optimistic. I wasn’t afraid to look at the past. Yes, it was a filthy mess; and I had made it. I took full responsibility. Everything would have to be paid for. All right, I’d pay. But now this was a new day, a new start, and somehow or other—I felt certain of it—I was going to avoid the old mistakes and do better.

  Once, when I was in this mood, Gerda came in and found me grinning to myself.

  ‘You are happy?’ she said,

  ‘Am I? Yes, I guess I am.’

  ‘Why are you happy?’

  ‘No idea.’ I started to laugh. ‘Isn’t that stupid?’

  ‘No. Not stupid at all. It is good. It is best when one does not know.’

  ‘Does that happen to you sometimes, Gerda?’

  ‘Me? Oh, yes. Rather often. I think it is the only way one can be happy nowadays, perhaps.’

  When Gerda said things of this kind—she seldom did—I found myself up against that barrier which always separated us. Peter had become a real person to me, now. Gerda had shown me a lot of photographs of him: a fattish, nearly bald young man who got thinner in the later pictures but continued to look cheerful and gentle and amiably simple. (A peculiarly modern type of hero, I thought, who could jolly you through a battle by making danger seem funny. Quite the opposite of Michael, whom I imagined scowling furiously as the fascist bullets had whizzed around his head on the Madrid front, and muttering, ‘God damn the bloody idiots!’ Michael would make you brave by getting you to share his indignation that anyone should have the impudence to shoot at him.) Gerda and I talked about Peter every day, but it was an unnaturally cautious, restricted sort of conversation. I was consciously careful of my tenses, remembering always when to say ‘does’ and not ‘did’. ‘Does Peter like music?’ ‘What does Peter think of Thomas Mann?’ I was sure Gerda felt the unnaturalness too, and longed to relieve it; but we couldn’t. We didn’t dare. Sometimes, when I looked right into her eyes, the questions I really wanted to ask her seemed about to burst out of my mouth with the brutal frankness of pity. You don’t honestly think he’s still alive, do you? For God’s sake, admit it—admit you’re losing hope. How can you stand this? Wouldn’t anything be better? Wouldn’t you rather know he was dead?

  Gerda was always so neat and fresh-looking, at every hour of the day. After what she’d told me about washing at the internment-camp, I knew this was part of her self-discipline; and it made me so sorry for her that I found it almost exa
sperating. I used to wish she’d break down and pity herself, and come in with red eyes and her hair untidy. This neatness was part of the barrier between us. I couldn’t get through it and reach her. I couldn’t do anything for her at all.

  Before I ate my breakfast, she’d help me to wash. I disliked this. The parts of me that were inside the cast were starting to smell sweaty and sour. I didn’t like Gerda to come too close.

  ‘Do I smell very bad?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘You know I do. I stink like a pig.’

  ‘I do not mind.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so damned polite! Why not say so?’

  ‘You smell like a man, not a pig.’

  ‘That’s probably worse.’

  ‘Listen, Stephen. I am not an elegant young lady. I have lived with a man. I do not mind how men smell. I like it.’

  ‘You mean, Peter never washes?’

  ‘Idiot! You know I do not mean that. But, in the camp, there were many of us women who did not wash. Pfui! I can tell you, I would rather smell the most unwashed man than an unwashed woman … And now, do not be foolish, please. You cannot clean your back. I shall do it.’

  When Sarah came in to say Good Morning, I would have finished breakfast and be lying propped up on the pillows, washed and shaved and combed; the model aseptic invalid. I used to splash my face and neck with the strongest after-shave lotion Gerda had been able to find at the drugstore. It was advertised as ‘virile, tangy, bracing as an ocean breeze, masculine as a briar pipe’. The tang didn’t last very long; but, at its height, it would have killed the smell of a skunk.

  Sarah brought the newspapers with her and read me the headlines, adding her own comments. Lindbergh’s isolationist speech in New York: ‘Such an earnest, troubled boy; I’m sure he never does anything but what he feels is right.’ Churchill, after the fall of Greece, describing Mussolini as ‘this whipped jackal’: ‘Oh, Stephen, if only our testimony for peace had half his eloquence!’ Mr Matsuoka visiting Stalin: ‘I’m afraid it can’t bode anything good; oh dear, we must pray they’ll somehow be guided.’ The President’s illness: ‘Poor Eleanor Roosevelt—to have this on top of all her other concerns! It’s fortunate that she has such great spiritual strength.’ Hess’s flight to England: ‘Whatever his motives were, I do think that was rather fine.’