It was getting late already, and she couldn’t think where the day had gone. Her panic had propelled it forward, this sense of culmination. The park was almost empty. She passed a flock of geese, and some grebes — the word came to her, though she wasn’t sure what they were — with white faces. For quite some time she sat on a bench, staring at a blank page, pen in hand. The ducks were dipping their heads in the water, spinning slowly around. Temp for Soph, she thought again, and wondered if that was what it meant. Or was it TEMP of SOPH? Then TEMP wasn’t time, it was temple. TEMPLE OF SOPHOS, she thought. TEMPLE OF WISDOM? All this running around and it was under the bridge, in the folds of the Westway, all along! The entrance to the meaning of things — she only had to find it. She only had to furnish herself with a few of the basics, and then the sign was there. Displayed vividly, hardly a cryptic clue at all! She was trying to convince herself, but something didn’t work. She couldn’t think clearly at all; her thoughts couldn’t alight on a single theme. Always there was the sense of the day drawing on. While you wait for Andreas to get home, write this article for Martin White. At least do that, do that now. So she stayed there with her pen and paper and after an hour she had made the startling discovery that she couldn’t write the article. The same old problem. She sat there, livid with frustration and then she wrote: I suppose I thought I should understand things better. I spent my time explaining things to other people. It seemed ridiculous, to trot out other people’s ideas while having none of my own, no sense of things at all. And I was concerned with strings of life, she wrote. In the universe, there is dark matter, they have little idea what it is. Imagine! No idea at all! This substance, quite beyond us all. That troubled me and I wanted to find out more. But I’ve realised that if you really want to do this — really want to strip yourself down and plunge into the depths — you have to be prepared to be Diogenes, or worse. Worse than him, even! You have to be prepared to become a real old tramp on a bridge. And she wondered if the toad-face was Diogenes; she wondered that while she tore up the piece of paper and scattered the pieces on the floor.
TEMP is the TEMP that means nothing at all, she thought. SOPH means the SOPH that is Stop Oh Please Help! Stop now! Temple of Wisdom. Something on the stones. There was a burst of music from inside a car, and she heard the sound of hooves on the riding track. Now is definitely the time, she thought. Surely now, you can think of something? She sat for a while longer, and then she wrote: Really, it’s the furniture that will save you. The rest you can try — Jess, Andreas, your father, but that furniture money is the only actual claim you have. It’s a just claim, and Liam has been inexplicably reluctant. It’s not as if the man lacks money! Just go and see him. Be very calm. Present a coherent petition. But the thought of that made her palms sweat and she lost her grip on the pen. Still it was a fine day. She looked across at the taut shapes of the trees and the water glinting like hammered steel. In the distance she saw the Albert memorial, newly repainted, bright with gilt. A man stood and stretched. He had been slumped on a bench, reading a paper. Now he shook out his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He had a small face, his features packed close together. He looked happy enough. Really it was impossible to tell. Blurred and in the distance she saw a woman coming along the path. As she approached, Rosa heard her shoes. She was tapping along like a bird. The sun was shining on the windows of the houses and she stared up at the patterned blue and white of the sky, clouds moving slowly. When she looked again the woman was still tapping towards her. The sound stopped Rosa’s thoughts. All she could hear was this rhythmic tapping and she noticed the woman was drawing a dog along with her, a small black and white mongrel which was snuffling into piles of leaves and litter. The dog snuffled under a rubbish bin, and the woman yanked it away. Then they came along again, each with their own sound, the dog panting and the woman murmuring to it in a low voice.
Hunched over her notebook, Rosa wrote: there’s a tendency — we all share it — to invent a false image of ourselves as an exceptional phenomenon in the world, not guilty as others are, but somehow justified in sinning because one is inherently good. Everyone else is damned and fallen but one — me, myself — is good. This is quite self-righteous, it leads to misunderstanding, not only of oneself but also of the nature of man and the cosmos. The goal is to disperse the need for such life ignorance, by reconciling the individual consciousness with the universal will. This is effected through a realisation of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time — you, this woman, her dog — to the imperishable life that lives and dies in us all.
Then she wrote, Dear Rosa, This won’t help you at all. Stop writing immediately, close your notebook and go and get some money. She saw a flock of geese honking on the path, aware of the approach of the dog. The dog was moving towards them, and though the woman tugged him backwards, the geese, honking violently, vituperative with panic, lifted themselves into the air and flew across the water. They settled on the other side. Governed by instinct alone, she thought. Their own imperative. Doing precisely what is expected, acting in accordance with their conditioning. When Tolstoy watched the peasants, and found faith, it was something like that he saw. He understood it as faith, but it was an assessment of the real bounds of life, of life lived without comforts, or illusions, rather than in the pampered reality-denying rooms of St Petersburg society. Because these peasants lived this life lacking in artifice, or the degree of artifice enjoyed by a Russian aristocrat, Tolstoy assumed that faith must be a natural condition of life. She saw his logic, though she couldn’t follow it. She felt there must be a way of living that was germane and inevitable, some natural mode she and the rest of the toads had forgotten. The woman walked past, tapping her heels along the concrete and dragging her dog behind her. ‘Come now,’ she said to her dog. ‘Come immediately, now.’
A rite, she thought. A culminating rite! And Rosa stood and walked away. She swung from optimism to foreboding as she walked, oscillating like a pendulum. Her gait was uneven as she went towards Bayswater. She passed the long lawn and saw it was scattered with a few people. They were walking on the paths, not saying much. At the road she emerged into a lingering cloud of car fumes. A bus rattled past her. A cyclist dashed past, almost hit a lorry, swerved around a car, and turned right suddenly. All the cars honked. She had hurt her back carrying her bag the previous day, and she found she was limping slightly. But the thought that Jess was eagerly awaiting her departure, that her father was worrying about her, even as he played a lento game of tennis, that Andreas was puzzling over her note, made her pick up speed. Rocking a little from side to side, hardly graceful but still going forwards. She trod steadily, engrossed in her thoughts. At Notting Hill station she found another payphone. She spent a while in the phone box, fending off all comers, the tourist with a map, the backpacker wanting a hotel, but gone were the days when countless dozens bawled each other out of phone boxes. She called Whitchurch and Kersti, but they weren’t answering their phones. She called Andreas a few times, and every time it switched to his cheerful message, optimism coursing along the line.He’ll think you’re mad if you call him again, she thought. One side of her brain was trying to persuade her to desist, but she was bi-cameral with desperation, and when she had been standing there in the phone box for a good few minutes thinking about pressing the numbers again she realised she was being a fool. Now she wanted to bawl, stand in the phone box weeping like a child. She gripped the phone and dialled half of Andreas’s number. She slapped down the receiver, then picked it up and dialled half of his number again. Then she stopped. She prised herself away, and walked onto the street.