“I’m on my way to you.”
“Good!”
I’ve been walking behind you for some minutes, wondering where you’d been, or where you were going.”
“I’ve been to see two men whom I visit every week. Like to hear about them?”
“Yes, tell me about them.”
“One is a fellow who was in a concentration camp and, although he’s been free for nearly two years, he still hides food—and hides it with extraordinary ingenuity. Which doesn’t make things any easier for his wife.”
“And the other?”
“He was invalided out of the army—a bad case of neurosis. If you were to visit him in his house, you’d think he was perfectly all right, but directly he goes more than a hundred yards from home, he becomes completely panic-stricken. That’s been going on for over a year.”
“What do you say to these fellows?”
“Just talk to them, about everything and anything—except the war. But, of course, it doesn’t help when a V 2 explodes, as it did this morning.”
Then, to my astonishment, I said:
“Do you see Mrs. Norton every week?”
“Twice a week as a rule. I ought to go to Hove this afternoon, although it’s extremely awkward. But here we are!”
We went up the steep stairs, then into the sitting-room, where every object seemed to await the return of its rightful owner. Antony pushed an arm-chair nearer the fire, then said:
“What about some coffee, Max?”
“I can always drink coffee.”
When he returned with a small tray, I was still standing, gazing at the fire.
“I haven’t come to give you the sequel to my confession, but I have something to tell you—something which you’ll find difficult to believe, and I don’t blame you. Anyhow, I could tell only you.”
I took the coffee he handed to me, then we both sat near the fire. After a silence, I went on:
“A man said to me yesterday that it’s damned difficult not to hate the woman who knows all the little things about you—all the little undignified things which no one else suspects.”
“Odd remark, don’t you think?”
“The man who said it is pretty odd—but it happens to be true. At least, it’s true about me. I loathed my relations with Carol because they made my pride wince. That’s why I wanted to break with her. And I did try to break with her—more than once. And I tried like hell just before she died.”
“Is that why you didn’t telephone her when you were ill—those weeks before she died?”
“Yes, that’s why.”
“Incidentally, you didn’t telephone me.”
One is always alone in a crisis. At least, I am. In the strangest way imaginable, others cease to exist. Anyhow, I’m telling you now that I tried to break with her just before her death, partly because it explains why I didn’t go to Mitre Street when I got her letter.”
Then, after a pause:
“I told you once that I was going to find out everything about Carol and—the last time I was here—I told you I had found out plenty to go on with. Since then, I’ve discovered something—something which obliterates everything else.”
He said nothing, but I felt his attention tauten.
“I shan’t be able to make this clear, because it’s complicated. I can’t make it straightforward. There will be some tangents. And here’s one to begin with:
“All my life I’ve been haunted by a possibility—a return to innocence. Not the fragile innocence of childhood which, inevitably, is shattered to fragments, but an innocence which stems from experience.”
After a pause, I went on:
“The supreme crisis of childhood is the event which ends it—the loss of innocence. You discover the essential nature of childhood only when it is over: you enter the jungle of experience only when innocence is lost. Most of us perish, inch by inch, in that jungle. But I sometimes dream that one’s life should be a detour from innocence lost to innocence regained—through ordeal by experience.”
Then I added:
“It’s impossible to explain, because you only feel the deepest things—you can’t formulate them.”
“All the same I know what you mean. After all, a full development seems to be, first, a lyrical innocence—then a descent into disillusionment—then a return to innocence, but an innocence derived, not from ignorance, but from wisdom.”
“Well, that’s the possibility which has haunted me. It’s why I loathe every kind of servitude. It’s why I tried to break with Carol—and you’ve no idea how I did try. I tell you, again, it is difficult not to hate the woman who knows all one’s weakness. It’s damned difficult! It’s—impossible! Carol knew a Max Arnold whose existence no one else suspected. That’s why I wanted her to die.”
“You did want her to die?”
“Yes. I thought I’d be free then—and only then.”
I rose and began to pace the room.
“But, as I’ve probably told you, her death increased my dependence on her. When she was alive, I had periods of relative freedom. I’ve had none since she died. I’m obsessed by her. If Mervyn hadn’t turned up, I doubt if I’d have stayed sane. I’m completely obsessed by her! Her presence is more real now than it ever was when she was alive. You’ll have to make what you can of that remark.”
“Go on!”
“Her presence is so real that I sometimes think that her spirit is ‘balancing’ mine. I have a sense of equilibrium, which is a very new sensation for me. I feel that her spirit is compelling me to recognise everything I ignored when we were together.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, apart from remembering countless trivialities which I’d have sworn I’d forgotten—and which don’t seem trivial in retrospect—I’ve had to recognise that I lied to myself about her when she was alive. I used to think my need for her was only sexual. It wasn’t. Then I keep remembering things she did for me—little human things—like mending a pair of socks, or washing out a shirt, when the damned laundry didn’t come.”
Then:
“Above all, I miss her when a mood of total depression seizes me as I wander through hideous mean dismal streets—when everything which defies monstrous monotony seems a lie—when the paralysis of inertia becomes petrifying—then I realise that Carol is dead. I’ll never see her again. I tell you it’s hell—naked hell! I could never have got through these hallucinating weeks without Mervyn.”
After a long silence, I said:
“I get the craziest ideas about her. Sometimes I think there’s a similarity between her life and mine. For very different reasons, she—like me—was isolated when she was young. I’ve even thought there’s a resemblance between my crude initiation into sex-knowledge—and her crude initiation into that knowledge. But don’t take any of this too seriously. You’re listening to a man who’s been damned nearly demented for weeks.”
“What you say is perfectly true.”
“It—is?”
“Perfectly true. You’d better come and sit down—and have some more coffee. It’s still hot.”
“All right. Thanks.”
I went back to my chair, then lit a cigarette. At last I said:
“By way of light relief. I’ll tell you one of Mervyn’s theories. I’ve no doubt you know that he is romantic about Carol. What you won’t know is that Mervyn has become a symbolist.”
“What?”
“A symbolist. Not only is he writing a symbolic novel about the Gadarene swine, but he sees Carol as a symbolic figure.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Perfectly serious.”
“I’ve certainly thought that he’s getting queerer every day, but I never expected to hear that he’d become a symbolist. By the way, can you imagine anything happening which would give Mervyn a sense of responsibility?”