‘I’d better start from the beginning.’ The man sipped at whisky that the publican had put down without him even having to ask, suggesting that he was trying to drown his sorrows in drink now that his peculiar system had fallen apart at the seams.
The longer the rigmarole went on the more dismal it became, a catalogue of tricks and woes spun out in monotone, with a lack of art that Herbert found depressing, boredom only offset by pint after pint until both of them were blindoe and incoherent. It was a story no one either sane or drunk could make head or tail of, and the only happiness of the evening was when he reeled into the street at kicking-out time, finding the way back to his room as if radar had drawn him to it.
Sitting alone he realized the truth that Cecilia had walked out on him, and who could blame her? With another woman it might only have been a step to a more realistic relationship (albeit of unbearable cosiness) though with her it was final because he had so blatantly let it happen, had even been gentleman enough to engineer it in his own particular way.
Consoling himself, before getting out of his clothes and falling into a dreamless sleep, he thought of Aeneas leaving Dido at Carthage, and couldn’t imagine that Aeneas had felt very good about it either as he sailed away over the cerulean briny. Like Aeneas too he felt beckoned on to higher things, while not caring to ask himself what they might be.
Sixteen
He lit the Rippingill heater, and the bubble of paraffin going down into the reservoir under the wick was a comforting sound on cold nights. Though heavier curtains made a womb to sit in, both glass and cloth seemed merely conductors to let the freezing fog inside. He wore two pullovers as well as a jacket and a pair of mittens, less willing to shiver than in former days, when he had undressed and jumped naked into bed. Now on icy nights he undid belt and all buttons, braces and bootlaces, and had his pyjama top to hand as soon as shirt and vest came off, and the bottoms pulled on the moment he was out of his boots. Socks were left till the bedclothes were drawn back and he could get in to generate warmth. Every winter seemed closer to the one before, each useful for writing his novel over and over again in an effort to transmute people so that not only would they find it difficult to spot themselves, but would also get some feeling as to their relationship with earth and heaven.
Mrs Denman’s had been his refuge longer than any other place, and he occasionally felt, as at the climax of one of those penny-dreadful comic books sometimes read at school, that the walls of his room were closing in, and would crush him to death. The hero-victim inevitably found a way out, but Herbert saw no exit except by keeping a wary eye on the walls’ position — and endurance. The dulling sunflowers of the wallpaper urged him to write for them as his first audience, as if they monitored every sentence even before it came into his mind; and when he was out of the room they would put on flesh and blood, to check with big brown Cyclopean eyes what he had written.
He needed some other brain to imbibe what he had done, even if only to tell him he wasn’t on a slow boat to madness, or that the accumulating pages in the cardboard box under his bed weren’t merely the evidence of his splintered mind. Perhaps it didn’t much matter, for he had no fear of madness as long as he felt the anguish of uncertainty about what he was doing, but he needed to know whether the writing would engross others to the extent that he was mesmerized on reading it himself.
Cecilia had long since gone — been dumped, he now knew — which could be a pity, because she would have commented in some way, even though the collected works of Hawksworth clouded her paltry mind. He couldn’t show his secret writing to Archie, and that was a fact. If Mrs Denman took a look now and again she didn’t say, though even she must have lost interest because he could never find any disturbance to prove otherwise. The only person he could think of was Isaac; he put the typescript into a carrier bag, and walked with both burdens into town.
Isaac was thinner and more frail. Every few months showed a difference, eyes shining through the papery skin of his face as from a lantern, false teeth too big for his diminishing features. But the same gimlet light came into his eyes. ‘You haven’t called lately. I thought you were chasing the girls.’
‘I wasn’t sure I’d find you. I thought you might be in your council flat by now.’
‘That’s cold — as they say round here. Maybe I never will be. Old folks like me come last on the list. Still, times are a lot easier now that rationing’s a blight of the past. Not only that, but my daughter sends money every month, to bolster my pension.’
‘Maybe her conscience has started to bother her.’
‘I don’t mind what it is,’ Isaac said. ‘If you begin questioning people’s motives when they do good deeds there’d soon be no virtue left in the world.’
Herbert thought he might work such a statement into his novel — and laid the bag of typescript on the table. ‘There’s this to take your mind off things. Have a read, when you can find the time.’
‘I wondered when you were going to let me see what you’d been up to.’ Isaac washed his hands at the sink, then spread the papers to separate the first chapter. Over seventy, he moved slowly as he sat down to read. Herbert stood by the window, a rank smell rising from the narrow street. Even the pigeons in the opposite guttering looked drab and fed up as they nudged each other aside for a better view of the chimney pots. Noises of approval and understanding from Isaac caused him to sweat with embarrassment, and regret that he had given his underground work to the mercy of a man who hadn’t been young for fifty years.
Not knowing how long it would be before Isaac grew tired of the story, and came back to life saying what absolute rubbish, or maybe even how marvellous, or merely how interesting (since he wouldn’t know what else to say), Herbert pulled a book from the shelf called Guide for the Perplexed. The title seemed right for him, and his eyes fixed on:
If there were two Gods, they would necessarily have one element in common by virtue of which they were Gods, and another element by which they were distinguished from each other and existed as two Gods; the distinguishing element would either be in both different from the property common to both — in that case both of them would consist of different elements, and neither of them would be the First Cause, or have absolutely independent existence; but their existence would depend on certain causes, or the distinguishing element would only in one of them be different from the element common to both: then that being could not have absolute independence.
He went back and forth over the complex netting of words, played at interchanging God for Man — and even man — so that he understood that you could use the word God in any way you liked, because the concept had after all been invented by human beings, who must have known themselves as such, while hammering the idea out on stone, or scratching it on animal skin.
God was just as much split in two as Herbert most of the time felt. In the contest between nihilism and a code of morals he was most comfortable with the former, since it allowed him to enjoy doing more or less what he liked, or as much as he could get away with. While he had to control his actions his thoughts could go free, and the gulf between thought and action was a power house that fuelled his double life, and was vital to his writing.
Spanning both states, he acknowledged the need for morality or fair play in the world (he wasn’t a Thurgarton-Strang for nothing) while knowing he was a savage compared to Isaac. For Herbert to lead a good life would fetter his intuition and, even more, his imagination. Not only that, but a virtuous stance on everything might make his views more rigid and therefore less interesting. The fact that Isaac, being the epitome of rectitude as far as he could tell, lacked no human qualities, convinced Herbert of his unique spirit.