Accident, page 15
I sat in an armchair.
There were footsteps on bare wood, distant, legs, a women’s college. Blue skirts and tennis rackets, ankle socks and flour. Past the delphiniums.
Charlie was in the room.
I said “I keep on falling asleep.”
Charlie said “She’s getting a tremendous amount of sympathy.”
I said “Why?”
Charlie said “Well, they were supposed to be engaged.”
I said “Yes I see.”
Charlie said “Everyone rallying round. They’re sending her home by air.”
Charlie seemed very bright. Excited.
He said “Tickets. Taxis.”
There seemed to be a fly crawling up and down his face.
He said “I’m here for God’s sake to help her pack!”
I said “As an old friend of the family.”
Charlie said “An old friend of the family.”
It was hot. The sun came through square panes of glass. It fell on the carpet in rhomboids. Narrowing the angle to a point.
On a beach with wild palm trees. Cocoanuts. Anna in khaki trousers. A wooden boat. Silver sand. White cotton.
Charlie said “Wake up!”
I said “Give me a few minutes.”
I would have to ring up William’s father. Would have to see the Provost. I would resign. Would drive down and sleep by the river. Willows. A punt with a white dress in it. Houseboats. Their shutters closed.
Charlie and Anna were whispering. They had their backs to me. I thought if I stayed still I should hear what they were saying. They were putting things from a drawer into the suitcase.
Charlie said “How are you feeling?”
I stretched.
Charlie said “You must be jolly tired.”
I said “Hullo Anna.”
Anna said “Hullo.”
I said “Did you have a bit of sleep?”
“Yes thank you.”
She was carrying piles of clothes. Stately. A sort of coronation.
I began waving my fingers to attract Charlie’s attention. Charlie came and leaned on the arm of my chair and put his cheek close to mine. A threadbare carpet.
I shook my head.
Charlie went back and stood beside Anna.
I felt in my pocket for a piece of paper, found my diary, tore a page out, and wrote on it There’ll be an inquest. I waited for Charlie.
Charlie took the bit of paper.
I said “You’re going home, Anna?”
Anna said “Yes.” Stopped in the middle of the room carrying underclothes, a nightdress.
Charlie made his face with all the muscles of his neck standing out.
I pretended to go back to sleep again.
I thought—We’ve made ourselves irresponsible now. The heat like balm, golden.
Charlie said “Why don’t you go back to Palling?”
I said “I will.”
Life coursing along underground. A river through caverns and gorges.
I opened my eyes and saw Anna standing above me. Charlie was not there. I said “I keep on falling asleep.”
Anna said “I’m going now.”
I sat up. I moved my jaw round and round.
Anna said “I do hope your baby’s all right.”
I said “Thank you. How are you, Anna?”
She said “I’m all right.”
I said “Good.” I looked. That hard expression. I had been fond of her.
I said “We’ll get over it.”
I yawned. I made a little noise like a donkey. I said “Will you be coming back next term?”
She said “I don’t think so.”
I said “That’s a pity.”
She seemed to be waiting for something else. Her hair scraped back. A tight blue suit.
She said “Thank you for being so kind to me.”
I murmured.
Big blue eyes. Searching.
I said “That’s all right Anna.”
She said “Goodbye then.”
I said “Goodbye Anna.” I stood up. I put my hands on her shoulders. Full red lips. Rather flattened nose.
Put my arms round her. A clumsy gesture.
I said “I’m off.” I let her go. She stood in the middle of the room. A big girl. Rather beautiful.
36.
Now was the hardest time: man with his pretences, rationalisations gone: what is there to do, how is life possible.
I went to William’s house with the portraits in armour and wigs from Blenheim, the thin moustaches from Mons William’s father a quiet man gliding about in braided slippers. He took me by the arm so I knew everything was all right. Into his study, booklined, an insulation against heat: a grey man with a small head and face of a lizard. He said “I understand from the police—” Bronze statuettes, clock, leather blotter. Having lived through this ten thousand times before; at Agincourt, Hastings, Priam on the walls of Troy. He said “I know how much he valued your friendship.” Those gentle eyes not seeing anything, blinded by gas, softened by smoke and wire. Chairman of the bench, president of the waterways committee. I said “I only wish I had helped him.” An aristocrat. How much did he want to hear? He lived in a silent world like fishes. Cut flowers, decanters, photographs of royalty. We can help by deceiving: help ourselves by helping others. I had an ear to the ground. No trouble; no publicity.
I never saw William’s mother. She might have been in bed, a pink thing drugged, a royal bridesmaid. Or with her lover, some smooth torpedo. William had not talked about her much: had said he hated her. I could say to them—You killed him. Which would have been untrue. With their wigs and armour, in their house like caged reptiles. The sand and hot pools and the bright green smell. I was given a glass of sherry in a thick glass. I wanted to say—I loved him too. Which would have been untrue. I had been so tired all this summer, what with my wife having a baby. Our last before winter again. I looked out on to lawns and terraces and oak trees. William’s father said “His elder brother, you know, was killed in the war. His mother took that hard.” An understatement. I had to stay for twenty minutes. There was the sun outside and sound of mowing. The difficulties of youth today: the restlessness of the modern world. William’s father said “I hope you will not blame yourself.” I said—Nothing. We look through a slit in a turret towards fields and buildings and poplars. I was grateful to William’s father. I had nearly achieved it: that shadow against the wall. I was given a handshake. I moved along corridors and out on to gravel. William’s house lay in its park like a wounded animal; a carcase in the long green grass of the plain.
The Provost received me in his room, his green room lined with books; put his hand on my arm so I knew it was all right. This scene would be repeated for ever. We stood by the fireplace with the small marble statues with curved legs and decanters. He said “You’ll go to the inquest?” His kindly domed head and his hooded eyes. He was always walking away from me, turning, suddenly re-approaching. He said “Of course I understand your feelings.” Had been in the college for four hundred years; his name scratched on walls, grass, lavatories. I sat down. He gave me a glass of sherry. I was always sitting, watching, waiting for the enemy in their trenches. The Provost said “He was your friend as well as pupil.” But I was one of them now, not the enemy. Perhaps they had all done something. The guilty. In clubs; power. The Provost said “But I think it important not to overplay it.” The Provost and his daughter Francesca in the bath in Trinidad. Myself and Francesca in a room off Baker Street. We were in the net. Calm and quiet. Blue suits and stuff like cobwebs. The Provost said “That he was coming to see you was not unnatural.” Out of the window there was the thousand-year-old graveyard: Provost Jones with his tall hat among the tombstones. I said “I think I should resign.” The Provost said “I can see no reason whatever.” I knew all this. Inside these panelled walls, corridors, the portraits with crimson down their front. Judges. Blood. Their wigs making women of them. I said “I have a responsibility.” I thought I should show some concern. I leaped up and began pacing on the carpet.
The Provost said “Let me put it this way Stephen. You have a certain responsibility for the undergraduates that come to your house—” I could smash his room up: hit him and get arrested. “—but it is something in your favour that an undergraduate should come to you at all.” I paused by a leather chair and looked out on to the graves. There was the smell of roast lamb for lunch. “There is a risk in these friendships of course, that those in authority recognize. But it’s not as if he had been drinking at your house”. I said quickly “He had been previously.” The Provost said “There is a danger in this Stephen of a sort of neurotic self-blame: I hope you don’t mind my talking bluntly.” I frowned and turned away from the window. My hands were in my pockets; my toe in some pattern of the carpet. The Provost said “There would also be the extremely unfortunate result of any more publicity for his family or the college.” My toe moved along a Persian scroll. The Provost watched me. He said “I’m sorry to hear your wife has been ill, Stephen. How is the child getting along?” I said “They say it’s going to die.”
He was too old for this. A diplomat, bored, deadpan. If you did nothing long enough something happened. He came and stood close to me. He said “Anything I can do.” He meant it. I said “Thank you.” I wanted to stay here for a while: cool, civilised. Put my feet up. I said “Well there it is.” The Provost said “How’s the book going?” I said “I’ll be losing it soon at Didcot Station.” He smiled. We were fitting in again. Two old homosexuals in a jigsaw. He began “When Provost Jones was doing his Words and Objects—” I could hardly believe this. I looked round to make sure. The green walls, table-cloth, smell of dried skin and shaving. I finished my sherry. I thought—I might even gain prestige: through murder and adultery.
Outside again in the bright sun. Today I went to the hospital and they said there was no change. The baby lay on its white gauze waiting for it. Life or death. William with the marks on his face. Anna with her scarf out flying in the wind. The trees were like an army marching. I have always noticed trees. I have forgotten my rose-beds and my garden. There was not much more of summer now. A lot of people in summer, too many for the earth. An ache in my head and stomach. I had a memory. Perhaps if I grew up my memory would die. What had really happened? One thing I must not, cannot believe; that the death of William had to do with the death of my baby. This was superstition. Just the ache, knowledge of it. Something.
The courtroom was a miniature court of law. There were raised pews and boxes like unearthed foundations. I had to say—I suppose he was coming to see me. At the ceiling some plaster work, my long intelligent hair. But now. I had not thought enough about this now. Too frightened, nothing to be done about it. Law is the enemy. Or now there was no enemy. I kept on forgetting this. The old men with blood on their hair. I sat composed, waiting. I thought—I am not going to be able to do this. An earthquake, terror; the waves breaking. I will stand up and cry— From the dead! From the dead to the dead. They might not listen. They are amiable: you can’t beat them.
I was in a pew like a miniature chapel. Questions came out sideways not wanting to be considered. There was a solicitor from William’s family, a doctor, the police with papers under their arms. A man whispered “You represent his college?” Everyone whispered. I thought—I no longer know truth nor bravery. A man on a tumbril, watching the face of the crowd. Holding up one of the condemned; a collapsed thing. They drag him out with his feet behind him. Go through the motions.
When it was my turn, my turn, I had been waiting. I stepped up, that quiet thing, so polite, merciful. On a rostrum. I would cry—Citizens! to the millions below. Ordeal by fear. I bowed, put my hands on the ledge. I would do this to the end. “You are—” “Yes.” That is what I am. Discreet, two-faced. “And now—” A bunch of papers.
A long way away. I am doing this two years after. Looking back on it. It no longer haunts me. How to describe it then? We are all so much older: my children play in the garden. It happened. What else? The great distance of the sky, the universe. Things are important at the time. Life hangs on them. Then they are over.
“And when you came across the car—”. I could answer this. A man with grey hair and spectacles. The car had overturned. One wheel was up the bank. The engine was ticking. “And what was the position of the deceased?” I could answer this. At the bottom, at the left hand side, on the window. “Where he appeared to have fallen?” “Yes.” How accurate are words? I am a professional. Paradoxes. He was asking something else. “And what was his condition?” Condition? “He was dead.” “How do you know?” How do I know? “I felt him.” How inadequate! This was written down. Something was wrong. I said “There was nothing to do but telephone.”
I thought—I have been found guilty of something I did not commit. This is commonplace. I wanted to protest. How does one know when one is dead? Standing with my hands on the rail. The coroner was a large bald man in tweeds. There was about to be a miscarriage of justice.
The coroner said “Thank you Mr. Jervis.”
William’s face was hit on the left side. How could it have been hit on the left side?
I stepped down. Passing me was the doctor. A small dark man from the hospital. In the middle of the night he had been called from some bed. Where William had lain: Rosalind and my small dying baby. His name. The time. Was it so early? Charlie had started driving past the landscape. What was the cause: birth, corruption. The doctor was saying something technical. Which meant that the neck was broken. But how? I was thinking aloud. My face was composed, correct. Something had been wrenched by a blow at an angle. So he must have been looking out of the window. But the doctor did not say— He must have been looking out of the window. I had always known, knew, he had been looking out of the window. How else would his neck have been broken? Or Anna unhurt? Or Anna driving? I thought—I will stand up now and cry—.The coroner said “And was this consonant with the effects of the accident?” The doctor said “Yes.” My children and my children’s children. On the lawn, among the beech trees. I thought—I will get up and leave. “And what would have caused this blow?” Perhaps the roof as the car turned over. Or some such. He was in a hurry. The doctor. To get to his afternoon off. Golf. The law. That old facade. Thank God for it. What civilisation rests on.
Now what had happened? Now I could think about this. Thank God, you are so kind to me! I am free now: only guilty. I had reached down to William on his left side. I had propped myself with one hand on the windscreen. I had stepped in with one foot, I think, having kicked the door back with a scrunch of metal. I had felt his hand and his temples. I had looked up the empty road with the trees overhead marching. Anna had been staying with me perhaps because I had been having an affair with her. She had come down with me and had sat there on the bank. How difficult it was to remember. I had always cared for Anna. So I had walked up the empty road a lone and heroic figure. And had breathed upon his mouth. Giving life to her. When the police and the ambulance had come I had been standing beneath the stars like the last post above crosses. The good earth, the ploughland and hedgerow. A man in a mackintosh had lifted William by his shoulders and knees. The undertakers were a well-paid job from father to son; took care of everything. I had looked up the road after the ambulance and had said—I am finished. I was always good at acting things. A policeman had asked if he could have just a word with me. I had said—Certainly. We had walked up to the house. William had been on his own. Anna was in the house. I would look after the small crowd by the graveside; the emotions, handkerchiefs. Anna had been driving. My friend Charlie would be involved: he was running around after younger women. We would all be disgraced. Anna was not in the drawing room.
People in the courtroom were moving about, packing. The morning hot. The thing was over. The coroner had not said anything.
Anna would be at home now in her own country beside the lake, the fir trees.
It was true it was difficult to remember. What mercy! My children and my children’s children. Clarissa with her face like pearls: Alexander beautiful as a poet. Justice and mercy make equal demands on you. Are incompatible. Perhaps I may die now. There are walls behind my eyes. Which way should I have chosen?
I was going back to the college for the last meeting of term. Everything was cleared up now and accepted. There was that old doorway, gate, which I had passed through before. Gate within a gate, narrow, to the porter’s lodge. An entrance to those green lawns, gold stone, an organ playing. I stopped the car opposite it and watched. I put my hand to my forehead. There was no scar. Perhaps I would soon get used to it. Mankind has so little control; just puts one foot in front of the other. Slow; excitable. If someone were to ask me—a sudden rush of howls up the street, talons, the faces of bats. I got out of the car and walked towards the porter’s lodge. If someone were to ask me, I wouldn’t know. I arranged my coat to flow along the pavements, along the walls and up the face of crumbling buildings. I had nearly achieved it. Death. I would say to the porter— Any message? He would look on a notice board on a glassbox, his voice coming sideways, not wanting consideration. The man in the courtroom asking questions. The porter gave me a piece of paper, folded, with my name on it. I thanked him. I went on into the courtyard with my eyebrows raised and the two tortured furrows in my forehead. People passed me with hushed voices. Something had happened. I did not open the piece of paper. I crossed the lawn, the gravel, looking up and down between stone pinnacles. I bared my teeth. An eccentric. A late vision of hell. There was a bell going somewhere. I thought—Anna with her head on the pillow, having dropped her after I had carried her up the road. But I had not carried her up the road. We all lived for protection. I went on through gothic arches, cloisters, monks. Prayer had its efficacy. Anna had gone up to the room alone, slept alone, woken up alone. We had not much helped her. I began to open the message on the piece of paper. In the committee room there would be the other fellows of the college, my colleagues, on leather chairs. A molecule of disease or energy. I opened the paper and read—Mr. Jervis, your wife telephoned to say that the child is much better and will be all right. I thought—Well that is something. I was on some stone steps like Faust. I thought—How odd things are, their timing. I opened the door to the committee room and I saw them all there— Tommy Parker in his corduroy jacket, Arthurson dry as bacon, Hedge the mathematician with his small steel spectacles. They had not expected me. I nodded. The Provost said “Stephen! Shall we begin now?” I sat down. We had these meetings once a fortnight to discuss college business. We achieved there a communal mind, a sort of seance. I sat down and became one of them, my mind a wall, going out at right angles to me. The meeting began. The Provost made a speech. He had his arms in a V on the table. All of us would be dug up here in another six hundred years. Or would remain permanently in a fresco. I had wanted some sort of destruction out of boredom with my work, my personality. William had died. We were all now waiting. Men lounging, distrustful, showing off round the table. I was still holding the message from Rosalind. I would go to the hospital. I would run there. I would howl through the streets and say—. I raised my hand again to my forehead. I did not feel anything. Someone was talking of endowments, trusts, percentages. This was a hot summer. I would run to the hospital past the ashes, the lava, the skeletons with their knees drawn up. I would say—I am alive! At least I had done something: had risked, taken a chance on it. There were cries from the grass and the people running. My child was going to be all right! Through the window of the committee room, the leaves of the trees waved: there were edges of buildings moulded, carved against the sky. I felt myself still in a cage of narrow walls. I could say—I am feeling I have got to go now. This was what I was so often thinking. I would say—My child is all right! Get up and go back along those grey stone passages, walk to freedom. Black stuff, clothes, dust; round the room these things I was so frightened of. Eyeholes, devils. Through them that by which we had all been possessed; the dark thing, fear. The devils sat outside the rabbit holes gave us a stroke on the neck. Like quicksilver. I could not do this any more. I could move: run. To what? I was old enough now. Nothing. I thought—I am going to go to the hospital. There I will meet my child, who is alive. What joy! I began to arrange my papers. To the sun, to the silver sand and palm trees. What a marvel life was! The small thing sleeping with its breath, its heartbeat. How we loved,would love it! All of the past in its head, its heart. The air coming in.
