To the Dark Tower Page 18

  "Charming," a voice suddenly murmured.

  Shirley turned round to discover Mr. Petrel leaning on a walking-stick. His plump face had the shiny, rather rubbed, look of someone who has just shaved. Under his arm was Mr. Norris Changes Trains.

  "Hullo."

  "Hullo." He fingered his buttonhole in which was a red carnation.

  "Have you been there long?"

  "For a full five minutes." He stooped over to examine the picture. "Ah, yes. A talent—a decided talent. I had no idea you were so accomplished a young lady. But allow me—a suggestion..." He took the paint-brush from her unresisting fingers. "Those clouds. Wouldn’t it be more—more adventurous, if you took the brush this way—sharply? So." He demonstrated on a discarded piece of paper. Then seeing that she was not entirely satisfied: "Ah, yes," he continued. "I know what you think. The effect is ragged. But certainly it is. And isn’t that the very thing that you want? This is a ragged day. Look at those clouds once more. They are tattered surely; they are torn to pieces. If you will accept criticism from... I am no artist myself—no executant. But as a dilettante—I have given some time to the study of painting..."

  Clumsily she began to take his advice. But now that she knew that he was there, watching, everything began to go wrong. The colours ran into each other, she spilled her water. He smiled, in vanity, at these little accidents. It pleased him that he had the power to confuse her merely by his presence.

  "You must be more adventurous, Miss Forsdike. You must make the High Bid. But yes... I think that you are too afraid."

  "Perhaps I am."

  A little crossly she began to pack up her things.

  The invitation came as a surprise. Meeting her out, he said: "I am going up to town for a day—on Wednesday. There are one or two exhibitions—the National Gallery, the Tate... Knowing your interest in painting, I thought that perhaps... It seemed to me that if you saw what can be done with paint—the excitement of the thing—then... Well, you remember what I said about the need for boldness? I should like to show you Cézanne—Matisse—Picasso, perhaps..." Through all this she waited, nodding, for the invitation to be formulated in so many words. "The question is—would you like to accompany me?"

  "Oh, I should love to!"

  He frowned a little, as though to discourage so obvious a show of enthusiasm. "Good. That’s settled, then. Excellent. The only thing is..." He took her arm, confidentially. "I would rather... People talk so... Perhaps you had better not mention to your friends... A visit to the dentist, say... A sick relative. I leave it to you."

  She nodded sagaciously. He was, she realised, afraid of scandal.

  Shirley was accustomed to travel third-class. But on this occasion, without consulting her, he bought two first-class tickets. Putting one into her hand he said, "Thirteen-and-six". The hint was unmistakable. Apparently this was a ‘Dutch’ treat. She took the money from her bag and gave it to him.

  When they were settled in an empty carriage, and he had chosen his place and crossed his legs and turned the heater from medium to full, he opened the portfolio which was the only luggage he had brought and took out the Spectator and the New Statesman and Nation. As he spread them on his knee he murmured: "Twin guardians of the Faith. So beautifully complementary. The Statesman is perhaps a little too—too critical for my tastes. While the Spectator ... A certain dullness. But read together ..." He put his glasses on his nose.

  Shirley opened the Strand Magazine.

  "No, no!" he exclaimed at the restaurant. "That’s quite the wrong choice. You must have the Crêpe Suzette. Two Crêpe Suzette, waiter." Apparently he ignored the fact that Crêpe Suzette was three shillings more expensive.

  At the end of the meal he said: "let me see. Thirty-two shillings. That’s sixteen each. Plus two shillings in tips. You owe me seventeen shillings." Dutifully she paid, wondering how soon she would find her purse empty. She dreaded the moment of having to say: "I’m afraid I’ve run out of money."

  At the National Gallery he suddenly whispered to her, "Just run along for a minute." And because she looked at him in bewilderment he repeated, in a cross, high-pitched voice, "Oh, run along, do!" Then, as soon as she had left him, he turned smiling to a woman a few feet off: "My dear, what are you doing here?" Shirley stared, blushing, at an Old Master.

  A few minutes later he tapped her on the shoulder. "I’m sorry I had to shoo you off like that. A friend. A friend of my wife’s... It would have been rather embarrassing to make introductions." As though to console her he took her arm.

  After he had shown her all the things that he wanted to show her they sat down on a bench to rest. "You know," he said suddenly. "I don’t believe you really liked any of those pictures. Did you?" He sounded petulant.

  "Oh, but I did," she said, miserable at her failure. "But I did."

  "Be truthful."

  "I am being truthful."

  He shrugged his shoulders and got up. "Now for the Tate," he said, as though he were faced with an ordeal. "Afterwards, we can have tea."

  She had not been properly appreciative, she decided. From then on she exclaimed, "Oh, lovely!" at every picture that he made her stop at. She was determined to please him at any cost. But when he hurried her past a picture by Mancini she stopped dead, staring, saying nothing. "Oh, come on!" he protested. "You don’t want to waste time on old Mancini. Here—look at this Dentin." But she did not move.

  He came back irritably. "Do you really like it?" he asked.

  "Yes. Very much."

  "All right," he murmured, as though he were giving her permission to indulge in so curious a taste. "Well, why not? I used to like him once. Of course, it’s all rhetoric—bombast... Would you like to paint like that?" She did not answer, and he continued: "He might be rather a good antidote to your artistic timidity. He’s bold enough. The palette-knife being mightier than the brush..."

  In silence they stood before the canvas. Then she said, half-bemused: "But it would take so much paint."

  He laughed, not very pleasantly. "Good heavens! One doesn’t think of that."

  "I’ve had very little practice in oils. Water-colours are so much cheaper. But I should like to try—like that. Yes, I should like to try."

  "And so you shall," he exclaimed, hurrying her on to the Derain. Her whim had been indulged sufficiently he thought.

  After they had ‘done’ the whole Gallery he said: "I really wanted to go to Gunther’s for tea. But there are sure to be a number of people I know there. Perhaps we had better go to the Corner House. I don’t want to be seen..."

  In complete humility she replied: "If you like, you could go to Gunther’s and I could go somewhere else. Then we could meet afterwards."

  "Oh, no!" he protested, as though shocked. "I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. After all—"

  "But why not?" she pursued, at last seeing an opportunity for doing the right thing. "I have some shopping to do. I’ll meet you on the platform at Liverpool Street.

  "Oh. Very well." He acceded, as though he were making some concession to her. "If you like."

  Alone, she sipped lukewarm tea over a smeared marble-top table.

  Doris began to irritate her. She suddenly became aware that she was ungainly, and bit her nails, and showed absurd, childish enthusiasm. The sight of her in flannel pyjamas, sagging and cow-like, while her rump protruded and her ugly bare feet flopped as she walked, filled Shirley with a desire to hurt her at all costs. When she took Shirley’s arm, Shirley now pulled away with: "It’s far too hot." She became conscious of her foetid, animal smell and the purplish acne oh her chin.

  That afternoon they quarrelled. Shirley was painting a tray and Doris came and lent over her. Her hair tickled Shirley’s neck, so that she moved her chair forwards and bent over the work with even greater absorption. The contact made her feel black and rather sick with revulsion. Then Doris straightened and sat down on the edge of the table. "You are cleve
r," she said.

  "Am I?"

  "Let me help you." She leant towards Shirley, intending to hold the tray. But clumsily, her thumb went into a lacquer rose, smudging it.

  "Oh, look! Oh, look what you’ve done!"

  "I’m sorry."

  "You’ve spoiled the whole thing! Oh, really, Doris!"

  "Couldn’t you paint it in again? Couldn’t you?"

  She must control herself. With set lips she tried to mend the damage. But a moment later an arm rested on her shoulder, a cheek was pressed against hers. "I’m sorry, dear. Truly I am. I’m awfully clumsy, I know."

  "Do leave me alone!"

  "Shirley!"

  "I’m sick—"

  Suddenly they were wrangling acrimoniously. Until, in a spasm of rage, Shirley struck out at Doris. Tears followed. Mrs. Humber ran in. "What is the matter? ...Oh, Doris, do control yourself. Go into the tool-shed, or something. This noise gets on my nerves. Control yourself, do!"

  Choking, Doris went up to her bedroom. Shirley went out for a walk. She knew that she had been in the wrong.

  The house was said to be haunted. There was no reason why it should be so. Badly built at the end of the Victorian age, it had gradually begun to slip down the hill it had been intended to surmount; the walls cracked; parts of it fell in; until, in irritation, the owner had gone off to the South of France and left it to wind, rain, and the curiosity of visitors. Facing squarely on to a drive that was now so overgrown that garden and path were simply one, a jungle of dock and bramble and willow-herb, it was crossed diagonally by a single great fissure. The windows were out; locks had been removed by the thrifty villagers; people had broken in and scrawled childish obscenities on the walls. There was a yellow patch beside the fireplace where someone had urinated.

  Shirley passed the house, miserable at her behaviour towards Doris, and then turned back and went in. There were dry acrid smells; a beetle was ticking in the woodwork; she recoiled as a spider’s web stuck to her face, and then brushed it away with frantic hands. Although she had heard it was dangerous to do so, she began to climb the stairs, making them creak at each footfall. On the first landing someone had carved in the woodwork: "Abandon hope all ye that..." Then it broke off, and there was a heart with initials in it. Farther on her eye was caught by a picture which had somehow survived the owner’s removal and the depredations of visitors. It was the photograph of a Greek statue, a boy: the frame was smashed, and some wag had filled in dark patches of hair, making the whole thing seem somehow animal and depraved. For no reason Shirley thought: I shall take it away. But when she raised it on its nails a bat blundered out with a whirr of wings; there was a moist smear beneath. She started back, letting the frame clatter into place.

  Now the stairs became so dark that she had to fumble her way, lighting matches at intervals. She was terrified of falling into nothing. Her groping hand struck a door; the knuckles were bruised at the impact. Opening it, timidly, she recoiled from a blaze of light. It was here that the roof had fallen in, leaving a jagged crater through which poured the rich afternoon sun. It was wonderful, this high room, over-arched by the sky. Shirley stood in it for a long time, feeling, after the clammy touch of the passages, the warmth of the sunshine and the syrupy air. Looking out of one of the windows she could see far, far away the river curling through the flat Norfolk country; while nearer, to her right, was Ash Farm and Mrs. Humber’s and some children who were bowling an old tyre as a hoop. About her twittered larks, like fish swimming through an azure ocean. She sighed with pleasure and contentment.

  Then she began to walk round the room, feeling the mouldy woodwork of the fireplace, and the walls whose plaster had peeled, and the jagged edges of bricks with oddly sensitive fingers. For once, she was using her sense of touch. The different roughnesses, surfaces now dry, now moist, filled her with extraordinary pleasure. Her nails picked at some loose cement.

  In one corner of this room was a built-in cupboard, before which had fallen a girder and some bricks. She pushed them aside and opened it. Then she drew back with a brief shudder, a muffled "Oh!" Inside was a dead rat, lying on its belly, its eyes rheumy, its legs stuck out. She stared at it for a while, as her nostrils filled with the smells of putrefaction. Then, putting out a foot, she flicked it over with the point of her shoe. Disclosed, the belly was a mass of writhing maggots, crawling over each other. The smell became almost intolerable.

  At the sight she screamed and rushed for the door. In sudden, inexplicable panic she tore down the stairs, as though pursued. She did not cease running until she reached the gate. There she pulled up and leant on the post, feeling an overmastering need to retch. Perhaps she would have retched if a voice had not said: "You look as if you’d seen the ghost. Have you?" It was Mr. Petrel, with an empty sack on his back.

  "Oh, no," she said. "The house was just rather eerie. That’s all." For some reason she did not wish to tell him about her discovery. The carcase festering in that high, wonderful room seemed more obscene to her than the crude markings of the statue of the Greek boy or the yellow stain by the fireplace.

  "Do you believe in ghosts?"

  She thought of her father, and shook her head. "I don’t think so. Do you?"

  "Sometimes... But fancy your going into that place alone! That was rather brave of you."

  She moved off beside him as he continued on his way. "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "I’m going gleaning," he said. "Apparently, once a field is cut and raked, we have the right to go in and collect what we can. Extraordinarily Biblical, you know. Ruth and so forth... ‘Amid the alien corn...’ Why don’t you come too?"

  "I should love to."

  Later, they passed Doris, walking alone, her face puffy and disfigured with tears. Sometimes she lunged outwards with one hand to pull the tops off wayside flowers. She pretended not to notice them. But Shirley, suddenly contrite, said, "Hullo, Doris. We’re going gleaning. Why don’t you join us?"

  For a moment she was determined to sulk. "No, thank you," she snapped.

  "Oh, do!"

  Shirley’s pleading was sufficient to break her glum expression into smiles. "Very well," she concurred, falling in beside them. Soon she was laughing gaily.

  Claude arranged everything. "We must have a rota," he said. "We must do the thing methodically." So while one of them did the actual gleaning, another severed the heads from the stalks, and a third sat out. Every ten minutes they changed round. Claude also said: "Let’s see who can collect most heads in the ten minutes." He had a natural liking for competition.

  He was wearing a large straw hat which he had bought from a peasant in the south of France; it was one of the small eccentricities that he allowed himself. Over the field the sun blazed hotly; Doris had been bitten by harvest bugs and stopped at intervals to scratch herself. Soon she began to flag; after the scene with Shirley she had had a nervous headache, which the glare now revived. Eventually she said: "I think I’m going to give up now. This sun is so hot..." On her nose were minute bubbles of sweat, like small ulcers. There was straw in her hair. Under each arm spread great damp circles.

  Alone, Claude and Shirley worked on for nearly an hour more. He had taken off his shirt, and she noticed that he was no longer sunburned in raw patches but had turned a violet-brown. He was rather proud of this achievement, and of his physique as a whole—not unnaturally, considering his age.

  Then, when the early autumn evening began to draw around them, and bicycles passed along the lane bound for ‘cooked tea’ and Saturday variety, he said: "Let’s sit down for a bit". Together, they placed themselves on the coat he had taken off, in a corner of the field. For once, he was silent; until, suddenly, he murmured: "Shirley! Funny little Shirley!" He slipped an arm round her waist and drew her towards him: then they both lay back, their eyes fixed on the garlands of cloud above them. As he lay like this, with her so close to him, his stomach receded, falling inwards, so that in
the gap between it and his trousers she could look down and see, with curiosity, the place where his pubic hair touched his navel. He began to caress her, without much intimacy, her face pressed against his bare ribs. Then he got up, and again said, with a smile: "Shirley! Funny little Shirley!" She did not rise, but looked up at him with a hungry gaze.

  He put on his straw hat and threw the shirt that he had removed over his arm and the sack over his shoulder. Then he said: "Good-bye, Shirley", and she murmured, "Good-bye". At the end of the field he stopped to wave to her before he disappeared.

  It seemed, then, as she lay there, her heart pumping blood into her face and hands and feet until they tingled, that at last her father’s photograph had spoken and the sign had been given. She could not explain this. But she felt it to be so. And because for so long it had been withheld, and because she had despaired of it, the miracle brought tears to her eyes. She stretched out on the grass, and touched the earth, and thought, at that moment, that it was good.

  In the late evening how beautiful the countryside seemed! The sky, curving immeasurably like a chalice, was rinsed with amber light, while on the still air eddies of smoke swam upwards for it to cense. In the valley the leaves were turning, so that it seemed as if each tree had been gilded, as a benediction, by the great sun before it dipped beneath the horizon. From the river rose a pink flush of mist through which wandered lovers and noisy boys. There were rooks circling, and gulls from the estuary; and birds chattered and fluttered from bush to bush with a crepitation of wings, uncertain where to rest finally, before night-fall. In the fields that undulated downwards they had sown spring cabbages: in vertical lines of green, the small shoots marked the dun soil. Bicycles whirred past, and dogs barked in the distance, and from the cottages came sounds of voices. Smells there were too, priming the dying air, of elder and wild mint and wood-smoke.

  All this she apprehended with her five senses: and it filled her with exaltation. She discovered then what she had so long sought for and would never discover again. She realised at that moment that life was no more than this; that to live, as she had so longed to live, was not to be visited by special miracles; that it was no more than this recurring miracle ‘I exist’. The secret of life was in those two words, and not in her father or her religion or in General Weigh. ‘I exist’: for all things this should be sufficient.