To the Dark Tower Read online

  June 16th, 1937

  A strange, rather disturbing, thing happened yesterday evening before Cauldwell left. I had gone up to his room to talk to him while he packed, but found him out. He was evidently in the garden. The room was littered with old newspapers, dirty collars, bus tickets, letters—and on the table three notebooks, small, soiled, at least one of which he always keeps with him.

  Is a moment of curiosity I opened the first of the notebooks and read at earldom: ‘Ravaged face, superb physique. Something curbed, controlled—I don’t know what. Reticent, frigid, then suddenly voluble. Introspective? In some ways, in others, not. There is power, certainly, but of a kind which frightens me. The way that face vibrates with personality even in a bad newspaper photograph—but vibrates is not quite the word. Burns perhaps. Strong, tranquil, steadfast...’

  At that moment there are footsteps and I close the book.

  It is of me that he writes.

  After this discovery I find that my hands are trembling, my mouth goes dry. When I talk to him I stumble over my words. It is as if I were drunk. Why? I cannot explain it.

  "Write to me, sometime," I say when I see him off.

  "Do you mean that?"

  "Certainly I do. I shall be interested to hear about the novel."

  "Oh—the novel!" He laughs. I do not think he has any suspicions of my discovery.

  The train jerks and then slides forward. Hands wave. "Good-bye," he shouts. "Good-bye. Thank you so much. Thank you."

  "Good-bye."

  That horrible moment when one watches a train disappear. Everything flat, rather hostile. Things relaxing savagely.

  So I am a figure in his novel. So that’s it.

  June 17th, 1937

  All to-day I have thought about Cauldwell—in spite of a letter which I must write to The Times, and two articles.

  Firstly: Will he ever be a good writer? It seems to me that he is too obsessed with the novelist’s rôle—with the outward manifestations. He loves to talk of how he creates: and this makes one feel that he is subtly imposing on one—and on himself. (As if to make up for some lack, some deficiency, he has to present himself as the typical artist—mildly eccentric, pacing his room at midnight, liable to sudden fits of inspiration. He is acting a part.)

  Secondly: Those words of his, "When I am faced with my subject... I try to depersonalise myself". Assuming from that entry in his notebook that I am a figure in the novel, does this explain that feeling I have of never being able to grasp the essential him? Like water in sunlight there are sudden flashes: his confidences, the time I struck him—and then the whole thing goes blank.

  Thirdly: How will I appear in the book? Will it be as a caricature Blimp? Or introduced for a few pages of comedy?

  These thoughts keep me awake to-night. I am sorry that he has gone.

  June 22nd, 1937

  I am in bed—in Croft’s flat. Last night I came here to dinner, feeling headachy and rather shivery. Then, during dessert, I suddenly felt the table rise up towards me; the light rocked; there was the sound of a plate breaking. I had fainted.

  An acute go of malaria. Croft insists on my staying here though I have suggested a nursing home. He is a wonderful nurse. I am too feverish to write more: my hand shakes.

  Yes. I should like to go with him to the Amazon.

  June 23rd, 1937

  Much better to-day. I want to get up—in fact, have been on to the balcony when no one was looking—but the doctor is obstinate. Croft has been talking to me; and then his fiancée comes in with some orange juice. I sense an antagonism, though she smiles and says "Good morning". She does not sit down, she does not go away. She looks at me, her face overpowdered. A necklace of large wooden beads gives her an air of barbarousness: but otherwise she is dull, neat, solid.

  Croft and I continue to talk about mountaineering, when suddenly she breaks in: "I can’t understand it. I can’t see the point. If one wants to risk one’s life, why not do something worthwhile—medical research, anything. This desire to break records is so selfish—so senseless. There are so many other dangerous jobs to be done." Again she repeats: "I can’t see the point."

  "Exactly!" I exclaim. "Exactly! There is no point. That’s the whole glory of it. That’s why one does it."

  She stares at me, bewildered.

  June 24th, 1937

  I suppose that if Croft is living with this woman my presence must be rather embarrassing for him. I can’t see why he isn’t more open about it. He always talks to me as if she went back to her room in Chelsea each evening. But I rather doubt it.

  At any rate they are certainly in love. The trouble with these flats is that the walls are so thin. I hear them next door in the sitting-room.

  "Darling."

  "Darling."

  "Do you love me, darling?"

  "Yes, darling."

  "Say ‘I love you’."

  "I love you, darling."

  "Darling."

  "Darling."

  As a commentary to their caresses lovers imagine this sort of thing to be inspired. But the feverish eavesdropper, propped in bed, finds it trite.

  June 25th, 1937

  This woman will make an ordinary, conventional figure out of Croft. Women do that. They hate a man to have anything inviolate—anything they cannot share. They want to drag everything out, like a trunk, ransack it, tidy it, label it, and then store it safely away.

  It is she who has made a prude of him. When she brought me a hot-water bottle, and I said something about "bed-pans" instead of "warming-pans"—a slip of the tongue—she blushed crossly and swept out.

  I think she is afraid of me. At any rate she will not stay with me if no one else is there. But perhaps she is one of those people who hate being left tête-à-tête. This is not uncommon among women. (An unconscious fear of seduction?)

  She is a pacifist. Yesterday, when we were discussing the news, she said: "I suppose you would welcome a war?"

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Well—wouldn’t you? After all, you have everything to gain—power, position, respect." (The aggressiveness of the non-combatant!)

  "I don’t know that I have. War destroys, as well as makes, military reputations. At the moment I am considered a good soldier—on the strength of two minor campaigns in the Great War and some buccaneering in South America. People admire me for that. But if war broke out I might simply make a fool of myself. Then where would my reputation be?"

  I don’t think she believes this.

  June 26th, 1937

  If Dennis had lived I should like him to have been like Croft. He cooks superbly, does housework, embroiders. It is only the bowler-hatted multitudes, afraid of being thought effeminate, who cry out: "That’s not a man’s job". The true, the virile, man usurps a woman’s household function without shame.

  S. N. G. comes to see me to-day. He is suffering from prostatitis, ‘old-man’s complaint’, and is due for an operation. He shows me his will. I see that bequests of five thousand pounds have been left to his chauffeur and to me. I am not sure that I like the conjunction!

  June 27th, 1937

  Illness makes one brood too much. Looking back upon the person that I was I cannot see the connection between then and now. I cannot believe that that young man has really become this old one, that his body has turned into my body, in this bed. It is as if my past self were a relative whom I no longer see—of whom I disapprove. Poor arrogant young relative!

  June 28th, 1937

  To-day I get up and sit on the balcony. Convalescence is even worse than illness—the weakness of the joints, the ache in one’s back after the slightest exertion, the giddiness, lack of appetite, dryness of the mouth, the tendency to break out into sweat. These are, strangely, the symptoms of love as well as of sickness.

  Croft and I begin a game of chess.
One of his legs is crossed over the other: he massages the ankle with his hand. Tobacco smoke, silence, peace. Then Cynthia appears. "Darling, have you forgotten? Have you?" She runs her fingers through his hair, walks round the table, hums.

  He looks up, his fingers still touching his queen. "What’s that? What? Oh, yes. Just a minute, dear."

  "But, darling, you said ten o’clock. It’s now a quarter past."

  He shifts uneasily. "Couldn’t you wait—just until we’ve finished this game?"

  "But I have waited. My appointment’s at eleven... Shall I go without you?"

  "No, no. I’ll come."

  "But I don’t want to spoil your game. Really—I can quite easily manage alone. No, really, darling..."

  But, of course, he goes. And I am left alone on the balcony. I watch them walk arm-in-arm, close, inseparably close, across the Heath. Her head is on his shoulder.

  To-morrow I must leave.

  June 29th, 1937

  Dinner last night—my last dinner at Croft’s flat—was a shocking affair. He opened a bottle of Hermitage in my honour: and Cynthia got tight on it. She did not have more than a couple of glasses, but soon she was giggling, caressing his hand, sitting on his lap. He seemed to be only amused by it all. "Darling—you’re just the teeniest-weeniest bit tipsy." "I’m not!" "Yes, you are." "I’m not!" Her arms encircled his neck, plump, braceleted, her fingers rubbing his cheeks. He grinned at me. "She is drunk, isn’t she?" He seemed to be proud of it, as though it were some accomplishment.

  "Kiss me, darling. Give me a nice big kiss."

  Again he grinned. "Not here, darling."

  "Why not? Why won’t you kiss me? Are you ashamed of me?"

  "Of course not." A brief peck on the forehead.

  "I don’t call that a kiss."

  "Don’t you?"

  "No. That wasn’t a nice kiss." She snuggles up to him. "You’re nice though, darling. You’ve a nice smell. You’re nice and warm."

  This embarrasses him; he draws away, passes me a agar. "Now you be a good girl. Go back to your chair. There’s a good girl."

  She lurches to her seat, giggles, collapses. For a second she is quiet. Then she begins on surreptitiously smutty stories. ("Definition of a gentleman: Someone who takes the weight on his elbows. Definition of a cad: Someone who gives a woman two halfpennies when she asks for a penny.") I stare before me, bored, disgusted, pulling at my cigar.

  But Croft is delighted. How amusing little Cynthia is! How clever! (She has done more than turn him into a prude; she has given him the prude’s delight in anything that is furtively shocking.) "No, really, darling," he protests. "No, really." But he loves her for it.

  This is what a woman can do to a man.

  July 1st, 1937

  The house seems lonely after my stay with Croft. I wonder what has become of Cauldwell and his novel.

  There is a new paper-boy whom I catch stealing nectarines off the south wall. In a moment of rage I thrash him. But he doesn’t seem to take any offence. I tell him to keep the fruit...

  July 4th, 1937

  To-morrow, S. N. G. comes for a week-end before going into hospital for his operation. I am re-reading his last book; and each time I am amazed at the note of frenzy. Is this S. N. G., dapper, shy, happy among tea-cups, writing The Effigy on the lawn of the Cheltenham house while his mother, the vast matriarch, played bézique with me over a fire in June? How can one explain the brutality of these poems? S. N. G. so cautiously amorous, inviting young writers to meet his mother or giving them dinner at his Club. It is difficult to reconcile the man and his work.

  Yet once he said in a letter: ‘The physically weak are obsessed with violence, the impotent with sex’. If S. N. G. had lived more adventurously, if he had been a libertine, would the poems have ever been written?

  July 5th, 1937

  S. N. G. arrives. He seems harassed, preoccupied, a case left by mistake in the train, his clothes somehow ill-assorted, ill-fitting. His hand is clammy, chill, the fingers relaxed. He breaks into nervous sweats while one talks to him.

  When I go up to his room it is already pervaded with a sweet exhalation—some sort of disinfectant. Medicine bottles, bound round with handkerchiefs in case they should break, now line the mantelpiece. A large roll of cotton-wool on the bed.

  "Hullo," he says wanly as I come in. Out of his suit-case he takes the Imitation and some sleeping-tablets. "I have something to ask you, H. W."

  "Yes?"

  He sits on the bed, slowly, carefully. "Will you be my literary executor—if anything happens? You know what I want preserved. Only the three volumes. The rest is to be burnt."

  "Certainly." I feel suddenly tender towards him—with the Imitation and the sleeping-tablets—religion and science—kept as analgesics against his fears of death, disease, discomfort. "But aren’t you taking this operation rather seriously? After all, it’s nothing very much, is it?"

  His forehead again pimples with sweat. He shakes his head. "Honestly, H. W., I don’t think I shall survive. I just feel it. My heart’s none too good... I—I may simply go under. So, naturally, I want to get my affairs in order——"

  "Of course, of course. But I don’t think you’ve much to worry about——"

  "I have a sort of foreboding. It’s not that I really mind dying. My work’s finished—I can’t add another word to it. And apart from my work—well, what is there? I have no one that I shall regret leaving very much—apart from you, of course—and I do believe in some sort of personal survival. I mean, there must be something—there must be: this can’t be all, can it?"

  I nod, not because I agree with him, but out of pity.

  "No. It’s not dying that terrifies me. It’s all the frightful preliminaries—the indignities. After all, the operation itself self..." He stops short.

  Yes: I can understand that Poor S. N. G., being shaved, being wheeled about like one of the carcases at Simpsons, being bandaged and examined and fitted with a urinal! It is easy enough to laugh at his dread of all this. But I myself remember how when I suspected infection in Aden I put off from week to week a visit to the doctor merely because I was ashamed of showing myself.

  "It’s been on my mind for weeks," he says. "I haven’t been able to sleep because of it. I can’t tell you how much I dread it all. I hate hospitals." His eyes fill with tears, as he speaks. "When I had my appendix out, there was an old blood-stain on the wall above my bed. It was horrible!"

  "Oh, nonsense. They don’t leave blood-stains about."

  "But there was," he reiterates. "There was."

  We go down to dinner.

  July 6th, 1937

  After dinner yesterday I showed S, N. G. the Forsdike letters. I had not meant to show them to anyone—I don’t know why: certainly not out of loyalty to her. Yet here I was handing them to him. Perhaps I accepted, subconsciously, his own belief that he would not survive the operation. Perhaps the thought crossed my mind: Dead men tell no tales. I do not know. All that is certain is that, suddenly, on an impulse, I had gone to the bureau, unlocked the box, and given them to him. There was still a faint scent on them as they passed through my hands. "What do you make of these?" I asked.

  He read them slowly, without comment, while I watched him, his gold signet ring flashing under the electric light, the shoulders of his dinner-jacket grey with scurf. Then, at the end, he folded them, and handed them back to me, still saying nothing, his gaze preoccupied.

  "Well? What do you think? Crazy, aren’t they?"

  "I shouldn’t have said crazy. I can understand it."

  "But, my dear man—"

  "I can see an otherwise quite rational person writing to you in that fashion. After all, my dear H. W., you are a personality. I’ve learnt that myself."

  "What do you mean?"

  "When I was a boy of eleven I went to private school—and you
were a leader of a gang. Do you remember? You were a horrid little savage—and your gang was horrid. But I joined it. Why? Simply because of this personality of yours. I loathed all the things you did—roasting new boys on the hot pipes in the changing-rooms, stealing from the tuck cupboard, tracking Mr. Bowley and the under-matron. But there it was. You had this fiendish personality."

  "Well?"

  "Now, as you know, H. W., I agree with very few of your opinions. We’ve hardly an opinion in common. But even now, to-day, if you wanted me to do something wholly disreputable—well, I think I should do it. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is. I wish such personalities didn’t exist: they’re dangerous. But the power is there—the magnetism—and I, for one, feel it. And not only me. How do you think that you, a European, succeeded in turning a handful of South American insurgents into a formidable fighting force? Your personality. One still hears of the love those men had for you. Well—is it such a step from that devotion to this? Imagine someone whose life has been aimless, dull— and then your picture, the story of the South American campaign, your books. Is it so hard to see it happen?"

  "But she worshipped me before we had even met—"

  "Why not? Your story was romantic enough. Someone once said that your face was ideal for a recruiting poster. And then there was this thing over and above—something supernatural, uncontrollable—an aura; if you like—your personality."

  I began to laugh, without humour, profoundly disturbed, but afraid of showing it; pretending that all that he said seemed ridiculous to me, when he continued: "Oh, yes; you have a personality, H. W. It is unique. I only thank God that you have never tried to use it to the full. You could do anything with it—anything... And that frightens me."

  So he too is in the conspiracy.

  July 7th, 1937

  The best love letters are written by those no longer in love. When I said good-bye to S. N. G. this morning we were both inarticulate.