Accident, page 12
Laura said “Sorry, what?”
I thought—We are all too clever. We will soon be on our own, with our eyes shut. The brain in the frigidaire.
Laura said “Oh how is Rosalind?”
A child came out of the house and ran towards Charlie.
His little girl in a white frock and jet black hair. She climbed up on Charlie’s back. Charlie began giving her a ride around the flower beds.
I thought—Now we are happy in the summer again.
I said “I seem to pass my time driving between here and Oxford and my mother-in-law’s.”
24.
Rosalind in bed among her flowers and pink pillows. The children hanging on to the bedclothes and occasionally pushing outwards on the floor with their feet like Sisyphus. Watching and waiting for some sign: from the goddess who dreamed them.
I said ‘‘My love, my darling.”
Clarissa had kohl black eyes. I lifted her on to my knee. She put a finger up and touched my mouth, my chin. In a haze of sunlight. A lily. Courtesan.
I said “My girl, my baby beauty.”
Alexander with his profile so kind and knowledgeable. He drifted round his memories of jealousy, incest. Beloved of the gods. On whose thin shoulders the world rests.
I said “And how have you been, Ah?”
I said—“I had to drop in on Charlie and Laura.”
Clarissa rolled, pressed her head against my shoulder. Stroked her thigh. She pulled her knees up.
I said “I still can’t make much sense.”
Alexander leaned against me. He said “Daddy—”
“Yes my Ah?”
“When’s mummy having the baby?”
Soon.
“I felt it today. It kicked. It must have hurt terribly.”
I held them and rocked them backwards and forwards.
I said “Charlie’s not going to leave or anything like that.” Clarissa said “I see a river.”
I said “What’s in it?”
She said “Fishes.”
I said “What else?”
She said “The fishes eat you!”
The room rich, upholstered. Rosalind in bed. A ditch and a palisade.
I said “How have you been my love?”
I had not been sleeping well. I had sinus from the summer.
I said “Anna says she’s going to marry William.”
I was facing away, holding the children on my knees.
When Rosalind and I had been in love, in that hot summer.
I had to have a change; to keep moving.
I said “I must go out for a bit. I’ve been rushing about all day.”
In the garden, in the summer, this hot green thing, stifling. Thin silver hairs on stalks and white butterflies. At my mother-in-law’s there was an orchard where if you lay down you disappeared. A forest of tall green knives. My head was like a singer transfixed on a pin. Above in the huge sky aeroplanes crawled. The ache in my head, chest, going out, flies and atoms. A dead mole with its feet in the air. The smell of metal. A knife swishing dust.
I lay on one arm in the position of the statue with holes in it. Through me the light looked into heart, guts. There was a cliff with strong sharp flowers and the sea roaring. Blowing spray about. My body on one arm soft as a landslide. At the bottom rubbish, old tins, the flywheel of an engine. Nettles through the rotting iron. Tougher than death, pale silver spikes. Old body that had worked as a piston.
In youth there had been the green time, in the grass letting insects crawl over me. Narcissus on his back with his reflection and the sting of bees. Around him white spittle in sick of energy. Now this waist, sack, seam. A lorry with its stuffing hanging out. Behind the dead driving wheel knobs, levers.
Around the world the starving, crippled, dung, milk, tears. The mother with her tadpole baby. The face wrinkled into wrapping for grease. The torture out of uniform, cat with fine teeth, rabbit hopping blind through twigs and brambles. The cat at the rabbit’s neck finding pus, thin, a string of old bones, bladder. The cat looking up with one paw on its neck. A white tail. Girl in satin.
If you listened you heard suffering. The blood in veins and the rush of things growing. Flowers and the screech of trees. Like water draining off a glass, bps moving, head on a spike. The miraculous madonna.
This rushing upwards in a sort of song, a panic. I lay in the grass and had these dreams, spirits, bombers. These dusty roads and refugees. Looking up from the earth I saw this thing coming closer. The flowing gown and cap and silver hair floating up the steps of a crumbling building. I thought—I must go back now. Or else it would be too late. I would be inside that hall of flags and kings and mirrors, their arms parallel along the sides of chairs, waiting for electrocution. Smiling. Those beautiful creatures in museums. Outside the sort of rush, like the passover, splashing blood on doors. I tried to shake myself. From water. The smell of graveyards, I went back into the house to Rosalind. I said—
“I’m so sorry, my love, I’m not very well. I’ve not been sleeping. This is a difficult time. Me being alone, you know, you pregnant; me going backwards and forwards always travelling. Also I’ve been working quite hard. Perhaps it’s the summer, too, and this sort of age, I’m suddenly forty. We’ve been married ten years. Then there’s all this thing with Charlie and Anna and Laura. I feel you disapprove. Perhaps you’re right. But what can I do? What was I telling you? I went to see Charlie and Laura, you know, everything is all right. We had quite a good day. Charlie was doing one of his funny turns on the lawn with Laura pushing him. Acting it out, you know. Then I had seen Anna, just earlier, who said she was going to marry William. Well she was doing this to make Charlie jealous. She wanted me to tell Charlie, and I said I wouldn’t. I was quite tough with her. I know I’m not to be trusted in this, but I think it was right. Earlier I’d had lunch with Charlie and he had been very good, really, but I’ve told you about this. I was underplaying it, listening. I think that was right. Then I had to work rather hard those few days. But it’s no good taking a moral line, not because it isn’t true, but because it only makes things worse. You know. I know I’m to blame. This is a very strange time. I think I’ve got to stop being a philosopher soon. I may leave Oxford. But what else?
“The person we’ve forgotten about in all this of course is William. I really must try to have a talk with him. I don’t think Anna will marry him. But what can I say? I think he wanted me to be a sort of father-figure, but I can’t do this any more, it’s a deception. People have to be on their own nowadays. I don’t know why, they just do. I can tell him things; but there’s nothing to put into words any more. We don’t know. Except in work of course, but this doesn’t mean anything.
“This is what I think about, what I think is important. Either you turn into some sort of gutted thing, automaton, or you have to become involved with pain and birth again, the roots, and all that nonsense. I keep on saying this. But I do feel this sort of crack-up, everything exploding, we’re one person one moment and another person the next; no continuity because no illusion. I’m a different person with you than I am with Charlie or in college. I don’t know if this is good or bad—unless you’ve given in, unless you’re an automaton. I don’t mean this about you and me, we’re all right, we’re the same separate person. This is what marriage is, I think; it makes the rest of it possible.
“I know you’re having the baby, darling, and you don’t want to be listening to all this. But I feel such excitement sometimes! Such a change!
“Don’t be angry my love. Yes you are, I can see it. This is the real thing, that I’ll always be the same with you and the children. But I’ve got to have something outside to balance it—to discuss—this is part of the thing, that talking has suddenly become so difficult. Don’t we all feel this?— Everything has to be gone into round and round; with its opposite.
“Do bear with me. I sometimes feel that out of all this something is being born—born everywhere—something to do with us having the chance of being tougher now, not so haunted. We aren’t so afraid. When we make a mistake we don’t want to blame anyone, we don’t feel guilty. We want to ask—What can we do about it?
“I know I talk a lot of nonsense. I still rationalise, try to justify myself. How much am I now? But it’s a question of whether you trust, believe this; and then things go along with you; events, actions. Or whether you give in to a sort of death. I know this is asking for it! But what else is there my love? Do laugh! I do believe it!”
25.
On a cricket field like the Boer War, green and white, a promenade round a college cricket match. It was near the end of the term now, we were all tired, exams and parties. Young men and girls hung on like old boxers. Scattered about the grass like fallen statues. Tommy Parker and I were on the outside of the deckchairs, not looking at the couples in the long grass, watching them.
Tommy Parker said “Does the species ‘bird’ include the grasshopper warbler or cricket bird?”
Round the curve of a boundary a man in a boater, a bathchair, a sightscreen; then William and Anna in a group, approaching. Wearing masks; a street in Verona. In their black leather jackets and tights. One of my pupils with the red socks. All centred upon Anna with a white dress and parasol. Looking exhausted.
Tommy Parker said “Die Marschallin mit ihrem Zug.”
In a waltz where you turn and go back on the small stage I found myself opposite Anna. The bright music and thump of fifes. Bowing from the waist down with a hand at the back hiding something. A fish. William’s face seen through water. Waiting to speak.
“I tried to find you.”
“I’m so sorry I’ve been away. Did I put you off last week? When am I due to see you?”
Click of cricket bats. Cannon balls floating softly. Parents and grandparents. Red in the face and hairy.
William said “Can I come and see you?”
I said “Of course.”
Anna pretty and lined like a Comedie-Française actress. About to burst into song and then stop like a faulty radio. Wrinkles round her mouth. Golden or make-up.
William said “When?”
I could not look at William.
I said “Yes do come and see me. When?”
His head coming out of the scrum. His ancestors and horses.
Had I hurt him?
Tommy Parker said “When is the happy event?”
We all looked at the cricket match that was running down like clockwork.
William said “You’re not supposed to know.”
I said “Happy event refers to a baby.”
The young men pretended not to notice. Cut off from us by a membrane.
I stretched my mouth backwards and forwards.
William said “Will you be in this evening?”
I said “I’m going home. What about later?”
Tommy Parker said “In Los Angeles, U.S.A., they call it penial servitude, the insertion of the i referring of course to the more serious of the two conditions, unlike homoousian and homoiousian.”
I was in profile, one foot forwards, a cowboy.
I thought—I must see William.
I said “Come out this evening.”
He said “We’re going to this party.”
I looked at Anna. I said “The college party?”
Anna said “Aren’t you coming?”
Anna in her white dress with the sort of gauze stuff round the skirt.
William with his arm round her waist. Claiming his package.
I hummed a tune.
The cricket was going on in a sort of mist on a distant plateau.
Anna said “How is your wife?”
I said “Much better thanks.”
“Have you been doing a lot of driving to and fro?”
“I have.”
William said “You do approve don’t you?”
I said “Of course.”
“No but really.”
I looked at William.
“I’ll be in till half past six. After that come out to Palling.” A detective.
Anna said “We’ll have to change.”
I said “You change.”
William said “Your opinion means so much to her.”
Tommy Parker said “Honest, Iago.”
Tommy and I moved off again round the deckchairs. The cricket was a sort of no man’s land of green, a line of soldiers. I said to Tommy Parker “You know about Anna and William?” What had I said to William? William had said Do you approve? Tommy Parker said “An Oxford Abelard.” I had said to William—I’ll be in till half past six. I had meant I’d be in College till half past six. Tommy Parker said “And your friend Charles the honest broker.” I didn’t know anyone else knew about Charlie. I said “Heloise’s father.” I was being loyal to Charlie. Loyalty was what mattered. Tommy Parker had said—Honest, Iago. William had said—Your opinion means so much to her. The sun and the summer again. The trees like figures. The grass flailing.
Tommy Parker and I walked back through the hot streets. People on the comers wanting to fight. What happened when they couldn’t.
Tommy Parker said “A statistical analysis of sexual intercourse among students at Colenso University, Milwaukee, showed that seventy per cent did it in the evening, twenty nine point nine per cent between two and four in the afternoon, and a point one per cent during a lecture on Aristotle’s Analytics.”
In the common room we were behind our magazines again. Like matadors. The sand and the dead eyes in the afternoon. The Provost hooded; a cobra of unshed skins. Tommy Parker with his feet up. There were sounds of the party being prepared in the courtyard outside: a tent, floorboards, the clink of bottles. The end-of-term party. Tommy Parker was reading the evening paper.
He said “Bookmaker found in undergraduate’s bed.” The Provost said “Might it not be a misprint for book-maker?”
We laughed.
I wondered what I could do if I left Oxford. Get away to the south, to blue and gold. Save up. Write. Put money in trust for the children.
The Provost took out his holder, looked down it, blew. He said “I remember once Provost Jones—”
He bared his teeth. He was a kind of grass, for a bayonet to be put into him.
“—when faced with some peculiarly recondite scandal—”
How much did Tommy Parker know? The skin of his face was woven, filled. We would go somewhere away from the bomb. That excuse for everything. The world in fifteen minutes. The sofa on which I sat of old cloth, sagging. A white thread in the green worn out by an architect. The Provost was saying. ‘And black magic and the usual paraphernalia.” We had put down our magazines. We were plugs, slots, on the face of a computer. The Provost had a little laugh somewhere miles inside; his eyes flicked like pointers of a seismograph.
A bell rang an hour. Traffic outside shook.
An appeal for ten million pounds.
I was wearing a pale brown jersey with two holes in it.
We were bicycling along a country road, up a lane of primroses. The chain had gone: our hands were greasy. Rosalind and I. There was grime on the flesh: you wiped your hands. Hot. A finger was torn off. The inside opening. White. Which was never seen.
The Provost said “So Provost Jones said ‘Le coeur a ses raisins que la raison ne connaît point’.”
I said “What?”
Tommy Parker said “Le coeur a ses raisins.”
I thought—I ought to be seeing William. I had said— I will be in till half past six. Guilt. Responsibility. There was a tent in a courtyard. Summer with noises of corks popping. Someone hammered with a mallet. William might be waiting. I could get up: switch something in my brain, walk. The thing that moved the switch was myself. Sitting on a cliff with my legs over the edge. Currents flowing from the brain, nerves, muscles. A gap between the mind and the function. A man leaning on a high chair on wheels, reaching for the face of the computer. The fall of the cliff below him. Seagulls. Gorse growing out of the chalk face.
Tommy Parker said “Fourteen people killed in a football match in Panama.”
I said “Personal violence taking the place of communal violence.”
Tommy Parker said “Mayhem in cricket pavilion, Little Puddleton eleven wiped out.”
I could leave a message for William. It was so trivial. All the old stories were trivial. We had been standing by a sightscreen of slatted wood on rollers. There were boys and girls in the grass. William’s face had come out of the scrum with his neck stretched. Perhaps I had wanted to destroy him. Or he wanted to destroy me. Evil is compulsion. I was getting old. Too old for this sort of thing. The seed in my head of a giant marrow. The summer buzzed with ants, cathedrals. I was lifted out into cotton wool. A free act. I need move my legs only if I wanted to. Or did not want to. Sitting on the edge of the cliff. Waiting.
Rosalind and I could go to where there were trees with long legs marching. A huge plain with tractors and com-coloured hair. Time was too big, too cosmic. Sandwiches and wine behind a haystack. Anna in com-coloured trousers striding with her shoulders back. The history of peoples moved across plains, across continents. Their cattle and oil wells. No future to it.
I had been sleeping. I was alone in the common room. I saw that it was after half past six. There was not long before supper.
VII
26.
Anna with one shoe off, her leg turned inwards. The cold around her (bitter on the tongue) in a room where murder might be committed. The four-poster, tasselled canopy, fireplace with tongs and shovel. We had to think very carefully. Anna was on her back like water-lilies; her skirt (green and white) above her knees. Lines of gold earth on dark stone. Charlie would be arriving within an hour. The road past the railway bridge, the firing range, the plastic cow. Man was a rat being experimented on for behaviour patterns. A passage, a bell, and a door which opened to warmth and food. Then the electric shock. The mind begins to shake. Anna’s long legs inside her skirt like a bell. We throw away our chances.
William had been lying at the bottom of the car. He could have fallen from behind the steering wheel. Anna, falling on top of him, would not have made any mark. She would not have left anything. But if William had been driving it didn’t matter if Anna was in the car. An unpleasant experience. Anna with her white bodice down at the front and triangle of white tapes, gold and wrinkles. I made a tutorial face with two furrows down my brow. William’s face had been against the broken window at the bottom. The steering wheel was in the top half of the car. If his face had scraped against the ground there would be marks on the left side. He might have been thrown forwards and hit the windscreen or the driving mirror. Anna had trod on his face. The shock made you jump. Open to pure pain. I would give up. I would say—I just carried the girl, Anna—what should I call her?—to my house. I was tired. I would say this to the police.
