All Souls Page 18

  "No, you look good," said the young man's voice, "but it makes no difference, it's over, it can't go on. Anyway, Dayanand would be furious." "But it doesn't matter if I get furious I suppose." The cracked voice softened for a moment: "Yes, of course it matters to me but it's not such a big deal. Things being how they are." There was a pause of several seconds (perhaps a pause created by a kiss, for kisses do impose silence), and then the voice spoke again, raised in harsh protest now (sounding still younger and even less pleasant): "Let go of me! Stop it! You're hurting me!" "I'm sorry," said Cromer-Blake, and his tone reverted to that of the petitioner: "But please, I'm begging you, please, I swear it won't be dangerous, and there's no reason Dayanand should ever find out. I just want us to lie down for a bit and for me to hold you for a while, it's ages since anyone held me." "Well, get someone else to do it," the voice said acrimoniously (like the voice of a don refusing alms to a beggar and sending him packing). I felt my face flush crimson with a mixture of shame and indignation, it offended me that this young man, whoever he was, should mistreat and reject my friend Cromer-Blake at that moment pleading with him. But I still stayed where I was, by the door. The door had a gold handle, it was closed but certainly not bolted or locked, all it needed was for me to turn the handle and push the door open; Cromer-Blake rarely kept it locked when he was in, no bolts or keys, just the plaque I could see before me which said: "Dr P. E. Cromer-Blake". There was another pause, as if Cromer-Blake had been temporarily rendered speechless, deprived of his usual capacity for irony and anger. I heard the other door leading into the bedroom creak; Cromer-Blake had gone in there, whether alone or accompanied I couldn't tell. But then I heard the door creak again and he returned to the room. He said: "All right. But at least do the photographs for me, there's nothing too dangerous about that is there, no reason for anyone to get angry?" The ironic tone was there again although he was still begging (but not to be held this time). I wondered about his friend Bruce and about the tempting offers and superior methods of seduction he'd mentioned on a previous night. I wondered about the pretty faces and athletic bodies, which, according to him, were sometimes at his disposal in his bedroom. Cromer-Blake was a good-looking man, but, judging by what I could hear from my position beneath the eaves, his good looks were proving of little avail, and this was long before he was to become an old man, long before he was reduced to sifting through the memories he'd manufactured and stored up in the hope of providing a little variety for his old age, at a time when in the normal run of events, the manufacture and storing of memories for the future would still be in full swing. I thought it couldn't be because of his illness, whatever that was and assuming it wasn't yet cured; there are some things before which no danger seems too great. It was Cromer-Blake himself who was asking to be held although perhaps he really shouldn't have been overdoing things. I recalled that Dayanand, whose fiery gaze I had first encountered at that high table, was not a man to be trifled with. Dayanand must have been possessed of a stronger will and a greater ability to get what he wanted, more so at least than Cromer-Blake; his gaze was unveiled, a southern gaze like mine; the Indian doctor carried his demon within him, like Toby Rylands, who some said had originally been South African, or like Clare Bayes, who'd spent her childhood in far-off, southern lands, and possibly also like the dead Gawsworth, who'd been in Tunisia and Algeria, in Italy, Egypt and India (although never on the island of Redonda), and doubtless like myself, who always was, am and will be from Madrid (I know that now). My blood can be hot or lukewarm or cold. But as soon as the occasion arose, as soon as I was given the chance, it would be my turn to play the postulant. I'd already spent weeks playing that part from afar, with Clare, to whom I addressed my pleas.

  "All right," replied the young man whose voice was so late in breaking, "but let's be quick about it." "You'll take them?" said Cromer-Blake with sudden undisguised gratitude and relief. "Thank God for that, in the sort of relationships you get into through agencies, they always end up asking you for photographs. It's awfully good of you, without them I'd be really stuck, and if you don't take them, I don't know who else could. I can't ask Bruce." "Come on then, get ready, the sooner we start, the sooner it's over," said the cracked voice helpfully. Cromer-Blake, I deduced, must be having photographs of himself taken in order to send them to some sort of agency, or to someone with whom he'd been put in touch by an agency. During this break in the dialogue, interrupted only by the occasional remark and the unmistakable whirr of a Polaroid camera ("How does it look?" Cromer-Blake was saying. "Make sure you get a good shot of it." "Is this high enough?" "Whirr," said the Polaroid), I began to wonder exactly what they were taking photographs of, what kind of poses these were that they precluded Bruce the mechanic, or, for example, Clare or me from taking them for him. And as I thought that I felt my face grow even redder (as I stood there at the door), but this time it was with pure, unalloyed shame. And although there was no one there to see my blushes (the only thing looking at me was the shining plaque bearing Cromer-Blake's abbreviated name), they were provoked not by my imaginings but by my reaction or by that of my conscience (a remnant of it). For it was then that I felt ashamed of my eavesdropping.

  With immense stealth, with a stealth I hadn't required when I came up the stairs because at that point I'd not yet become indiscreet, secretive and furtive, I half-turned and started to tiptoe down the stairs, while one last phrase reached my ears (overheard this time, for I didn't want to hear any more): "It's important to get a view from above," Cromer-Blake was saying. "Whirr," said the Polaroid. All the same, when I'd gone down a few stairs, I couldn't help smiling a little, ironically (as if I were Cromer-Blake), at the imagined scene I hadn't witnessed. However, my smile soon disappeared with the sudden memory of why I'd gone there and the realisation that I would not now have the chance to ask Cromer-Blake's advice or try to lessen the pain of failure beforehand or hear from his lips the encouragement or the response I hoped to hear later, when I put the plan proper into action, because in the cracked voice and on the lips of a stranger, I'd already heard the discouraging tone and the response I didn't want to hear.

  ONCE THE CHILD ERIC had departed and Clare had agreed to see me again (alone) to listen to my proposals and to talk to me with time to spare, without undue haste and without alarm clocks going off or bells chiming the hour, the half hour and the quarter hour and inconsiderately pealing out again as evening fell (bells that I will not hear again, but which will continue pealing out until the end of time), she and I went to Brighton. We went down one Saturday (Eric was back in Bristol and Edward Bayes was travelling on the Continent) to spend the night there, the first and last that we were to spend together, for I'd never actually slept the night with her as I had with Muriel. Once there we scarcely left our hotel room, which was different from and less conventional than those in London and Reading and from whose opposing windows we could see, to one side, the minarets and onion domes of the celebrated Royal Pavilion in all its pseudo, grotesque Indian glory, and, to the other side, the beach (it was the only time that being together proved expensive: adultery is usually fairly cheap). It isn't in fact true that we didn't go out, but that's how it felt, as if Clare and I were always shut up in a room somewhere together, in Oxford and in London and in Reading and in Brighton. We went to Brighton not by train but in her car, and that also had something inaugural and new about it (although it was actually bringing something to a close): the two of us sitting in her car heading south, going on a journey, turning our backs on London and Reading for the first time, with me, seated on the left, under the false impression that I was driving and she with the same (correct) impression that it was she who was carrying me along. But it was all false, I think (as regards us, that is, but not as regards others, the person who had died thirty years before in a distant land, for example, and the person who did not die but should have died, there and then). The air was rank with the odour of farewell - always so intense, instantly identifiable — but we pretended that our
farewell and separation were not necessarily decided, even though they had been right from the start (I had after all set out to find "someone to love" during my time spent at this stopping-off point, to have "someone" to think about), we pretended, rather, that a final decision might hang entirely on that meeting, on that weekend, that our fate could be determined in a hotel room in Brighton. And I enjoyed the great consolation (or perhaps even the immense pleasure) of proposing the impossible and knowing that it would be rejected: for it is precisely the recognition that it is impossible and the certainty of rejection - a rejection that the person who proposes the impossible and takes the floor first in fact expects - that allows one to hold nothing back, to be vehement and more confident in expressing one's desires than if there were the slightest risk of their being satisfied. And Clare Bayes, I think, pretended to believe me, to take me seriously, and explained things to me as if that were really necessary and as if a simple "no" would not have sufficed, as if she had to be careful not to hurt me and as if it were important that I understood (she behaved with great delicacy). It's a procedure that must be gone through in order to give a false lustre to non-blood relationships, which are never fruitful or very interesting, and yet which nonetheless seem essential for the mind, for it to be able to fantasise about things still to come and not simply to languish, or fall into a decline. In order that the mind should not slide into despair.

  But we touched on none of that - with me saving up my little speech and she her generous response - until after supper and our walk along the endless beach, until after we'd returned to the hotel room knowing that the most arduous part - the representation and figuration - was still to come. That's why we'd saved our energies (verbal and valedictory) during the car journey and during our visit to the fake palace, the Royal Pavilion, with its crenellations and pinnacles and lattice screens, during our shopping trip in town (there was always a second-hand bookshop waiting for me wherever I went in England, always handbags for Clare and a present for the child Eric) and during supper, looking out over the beach and the incoming tide, and during the walk in bare feet, my feet bare too, my shoes dangling from two fingers, middle and index (with no need for gloves this time). And when we'd gone upstairs after that day of occasional remarks and long silences (not that it was late, for we knew there were still hours to go before we'd call it a day and try to sleep, but perhaps we wanted to avoid making it too tiring or too truthful), she, as was her custom, removed her shoes and I did not, despite the sand in my socks, and she lay down on the bed and her skirt rode up, as it was prescribed that it always would, to reveal her legs, not strong and slightly muscular as they were for others, but slender and almost boyish in their movements. That night we were free to eternalise the contents of our time, or enjoy the illusion that we did so, and that's why there was no hurry, not even to start talking, not even to kiss, not even for my cock to go to her mouth or her mouth to my cock, or for my cock to go anywhere. The spring night had an appropriately spring-like air to it and one of the windows — the one that allowed a glimpse of an occasional incongruous minaret or onion dome floodlit in the background - was open. I leaned my back against the window frame. From there, through the opposite window, I could see the beach and the water.

  I lit a cigarette and said: "I don't want to leave, Clare. I can't leave now," and I thought that those two remarkably similar sentences might be enough in themselves to prompt her to take the floor to give some answer (and I was immediately aware too that, although she did begin speaking I was still thinking, not resting). She spoke but didn't answer (not exactly, for she answered with a question).

  "You mean leave Oxford?"

  I said: "Yes, or rather, no. I suppose I do want to leave Oxford, and anyway I've no option, my contract runs out. But I don't want to leave you. I've missed you so much during these last interminable weeks, and I don't want to be separated from you for purely geographical reasons, that would be ridiculous," and I thought that in saying that I had been even more explicit, as earnest conversations between lovers demand, since they are obliged to flow over flat ground, through all that is diaphanous, all that is yet to be.

  "Geography can be a very powerful, not to say, implacable reason for people to part. You don't want to leave and you do want to leave, you don't really know what you want. I know that I can't and don't want to leave. But it doesn't matter whether you know what you want or not, because you have to leave anyway, and you will. There's no point in talking about something that's settled already."

  I said: "You could come with me," and thought, to my surprise, that in saying that I had said almost all that seemed necessary to say (given that I had to be explicit) on that Saturday night in June in Brighton (and I also knew that Clare would say it was impossible.)

  "Where? To Madrid? Don't be absurd. That's impossible."

  I said: "But would you come with me if it were possible?" and thought that I was thereby giving her an opportunity, too, of saying she would do something both of us knew was out of the question. But she let it pass, for that was my role, not hers.

  "Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know how you propose that should happen."

  I said: "I don't know how, we'd have to find a way; you can always find a way if you really want to. But first you have to want to find it, I need to know if you want to come with me, or if you're prepared to consider it; and that you won't let there be another four weeks like the last four. And if I see your son I don't want him to look at me oddly, I want him to get to know me and to live with us if we live together, I want him to be my son, or rather my stepson. I can't live without you, even if it is a bit late in the day to realise that, when I'm going to be obliged to live without you. But that's always the way things happen," and I was surprised to find myself daring to say (much too early in the conversation) things I hadn't even foreseen myself saying or was even sure I wanted to say, either at the beginning or perhaps even at the end (the word "together", the word "son", the word "stepson"), but I thought, too, that my last sentences, including the very last, had been acceptable within the narrow range of possible varieties of behaviour in non-blood relationships. Now it was Clare's turn to be surprised, at least a little, although, inevitably, her surprise was only a pretence. But her pretence took the form of not being surprised, which is one way of handing back the surprise (or its pretence) to the other side.

  "Whether it's late in the day or not is irrelevant," she said, and lit the first cigarette, the first threat to her tights, that she'd smoked since lying down on the bed: she'd scarcely smoked at all during supper or during the walk, as if she were saving it for the night and for the room. "It isn't a matter of timing, because there never was a set time for that. It was outside of time, there was never any question of it, and there still isn't, now even less so. You'll go back to Madrid soon and in a way it's better that we haven't seen each other over these last few weeks, that way we've got used to it, at least I have, quite a bit. You're all alone here; back in Madrid you won't miss me so much. With each day that passes I'll seem more distant and more diffuse. There's no point talking about it. Let's have as nice a weekend as possible and then say goodbye tomorrow. At least we've had some time alone together. That's enough."

  I said: "As easy as that," and thought that at last she'd taken charge of the conversation and that perhaps I would not even need to speak further, just listen and rest.

  "No, it isn't easy at all, don't imagine it's easy. I often thought about you while Eric was at home, and I'll often think about you when you've gone."

  I said: "But I'll think about you all the time, the way I have these last four weeks. If you don't want to come with me, then I'll have to find a way of staying here, even if it's in another job," and I thought that really I had no desire to stay in Oxford teaching Spanish in some language school, or in London working for the BBC (it was the only thing that occurred to me at that moment, nor to end up looking like a blue-eyed Chinaman, as perhaps she had, having spent her childhood far off,
in Delhi and in Cairo.

  "You wouldn't last much longer here; you miss your country more than you think. If you were to stay, I wouldn't be with you, or at least it wouldn't be any different from the way it has been up to now. We'd go on seeing each other like this, in hotels, or between classes at your house or mine. We've never talked about this, I suppose out of mutual courtesy and because it was taken as read somehow. There was no need to talk about it, there wasn't time; we didn't want to spoil our little holidays. We've never really talked about anything much. But I'll never leave Ted."