«Oh, where? I could visit you. I'm quite free now because my school has measles.»
«I shall be travelling.»
«Oh Iliad, Divine Comedy, please. That's marvellous! That's just it! The big stuff!»
«And you don't mind poetry, prose-?»
«Oh no, not poetry. I can't read poetry very well. I'm keeping poetry for later on.»
«The Iliad and the Divine Comedy are poems.»
«Well, yes, of course they are, but I'd be reading them in a prose translation.»
«So that disposes of that difficulty.»
«You will write to me then, Bradley? I'm so terribly grateful. I'll say good-bye to you here because I must just look in this shop.»
We had stopped rather abruptly a little short of the station outside the illuminated window of a shoe shop. High summer boots of various colours made out of a sort of lace occupied the front of the window. Slightly put out by the brusqueness of my dismissal I could not think of anything suitable to say. I saluted vaguely and said, «Ta-ta,» an expression which I do not think I have ever used before or since.
«Ta-ta,» said Julian, as if this were a sort of code. Then she turned to face the lighted window and began examining the boots.
I crossed the road and reached the station entrance and looked back. She was leaning forward now with her hands on her knees, her thick hair and her brow and nose goldened by the bright light. I thought how aptly some painter, not Mr. Belling, could have used her as a model for an allegory of Vanity. I watched, as one might watch a fox, for some minutes, but she did not go away or even move.
Yes, it was time to move. I had felt, during recent months, sometimes boredom, sometimes despair, as I struggled with a nebulous work which seemed now a nouvelle, now a vast novel, wherein a hero not unlike myself pursued, amid ghostly incidents, a series of reflections about life and art. The trouble was that the dark blaze, whose absence I had deplored in Arnold's work, was absent here as well. I could not fire and fuse these thoughts, these people, into a whole thing. I wanted to produce a sort of statement which might be called my philosophy. But I also wanted to embody this in a story, perhaps in an allegory, something with a form as pliant and as hard as my cast-iron garland of roses. But I could not do it. My people were shadows, my thoughts were epigrams. However I felt, as we artists can feel, the proximity of enlightenment. And I was sure that if I went away now into loneliness, right away from the associations of tedium and failure, I would soon be rewarded. So it was in this mood that I decided to set forth, leaving my darling burrow for a countryside which I had never visited, and a cottage which I had never seen.
I also write to ask you, as briefly as possible, a favour. You were of course interested to meet Francis Marloe, who by the weirdest accident was with me when you telephoned. You spoke of meeting him again. Please do not do so. If you reflect you will see how hurtful to me any such association would be. I do not propose to have anything to do with my former wife and I do not want any connection to exist between her world, whatever that may turn out to be, and the things of my own which are dear to me. It would of course be characteristic of you to feel «interested» in probing in this region, but please be kind enough to an old friend not to do so.
Let me take this chance to say that in spite of all differences our friendship is very precious to me. As you will remember, I have made you my literary executor. Could there be a greater sign of trust? However, let us hope that talk of wills is premature. I am just now leaving London and will be away for some time. I hope I shall be able to write. I feel that a most crucial period in my life lies ahead. Give my fondest love to Rachel. I thank you both for your consistent cordiality to a solitary man; and I rely upon you absolutely in the matter of F. M.
Refilling my pen, I began to write another letter, which ran as follows: My dear Julian, it was kind of you to ask my advice about books and writing. I am afraid I cannot offer to teach you to write. I have not the time, and such teaching is, I surmise, impossible anyway. Let me just say a word about books. I think you should read the Iliad and the Odyssey in any unvarnished translation. (If pressed for time, omit the Odyssey.) These are the greatest literary works in the world, where huge conceptions are refined into simplicity. I think perhaps you should leave Dante until later. The Commedia presents many points of difficulty and needs, as Homer does not, a commentary. In fact, if not read in Italian, this great work seems not only incomprehensible, but repulsive. You should, I feel, relax your embargo upon poetry sufficiently to accommodate the better known plays of Shakespeare! How fortunate we are to have English as our native tongue! Familiarity and excitement should carry you easily through these works. Forget that they are «poetry» and just enjoy them. The rest of my reading list consists simply of the greatest English and Russian novels of the nineteenth century. (If you are not sure which these are, ask your father: I think he can be trusted to tell you!)
My very good wishes to you, and thank you for wanting to know what I thought!
Yours,
Bradley
After I had finished this letter and after some reflection and fumbling and excursions to the chimney piece and the display cabinet, I began a further letter which went thus: Dear Marloe, as I hope I made clear to you, your visit was not only unwelcome but entirely without point, since I do not propose under any circumstances to communicate with my former wife. Any further attempt at an approach, whether by letter or in person, will be met by absolute rejection. However, now that you appreciate my attitude I imagine that you will be kind and wise enough to leave me alone. I was grateful for your help chez Mr. and Mrs. Baffin. I should tell you, in case you had any thought of pursuing an acquaintance with them, that I have asked them not to receive you, and they will not receive you.
Yours sincerely,
Bradley Pearson
Francis had, on his departure on the previous evening, contrived to thrust into my pocket his address and telephone number written upon a slip of paper. I copied the address onto the envelope and threw the paper into the wastepaper basket.
I then sat and twiddled for a bit longer, watching the creeping line of sun turning the crusty surface of the wall opposite from brown to blond. Then I fell to writing again.
Yours sincerely,
Bradley Pearson
PS. I should add that I am today leaving London and tomorrow leaving England. I shall be staying away for some time and may even settle abroad.
When I had finished writing this letter I was not only sweating, I was trembling and panting and my heart was beating viciously. What emotion had so invaded me? Fear? It is sometimes curiously difficult to name the emotion from which one suffers. The naming of it is sometimes unimportant, sometimes crucial. Hatred?
I looked at my watch and found that in the composition of the letter a long time had passed. It was now too late to catch the morning train. No doubt the afternoon train would be better in any case. Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children.
I decided that I would send off the letter to Francis and postpone deciding what sort of communication, if any, to send to Christian. I also decided that it was now a matter of urgency to get out of the house and down to the station, where I could have lunch and await the afternoon train at leisure. It was just as well the earlier train had been safely missed. I have sometimes had the unpleasant experience, arriving very early for a train, of finding myself catching its predecessor with a minute to spare. Thrusting the letter to Christian into my pocket I found my fingers touching the review of Arnold's novel. Here was another unsolved problem. Although I was well able to consider refraining from doing so, I knew that I also felt very anxious to publish. Why? Yes, I must get away and think all these matters out.
My suitcases were in the hall where I had left them yesterday. I put on my macintosh. I went into the bathroom. This bathroom was of the kind which no amount of caring for could make other than sordid. Vari-coloured slivers of soap, such as I cannot normally bear to throw away, were lying about in the basin and in the bath. With a sudden act of will I collected them all and flushed them down the lavatory. As I stood there, dazed with this success, the front doorbell suddenly began to ring and ring. part one 45 1 At this point it is necessary for me to give some account of my sister, Priscilla, who is about to appear upon the scene.
Priscilla is six years younger than me. She left school early. So indeed did I. I am an educated and cultivated person through my own zeal, efforts and talents. Priscilla had no zeal and talents and made no efforts. She was spoilt by my mother whom she resembled. I think women, perhaps unconsciously, convey to female children a deep sense of their own discontent. My mother, though not too unhappily married, had a continued grudge against the world. This may have originated in, or been aggravated by, a sense of having married «beneath» her, though not exactly in a social sense. My mother had been a «beauty» and had had many suitors. I suspect she felt later in life, as she grew old behind the counter, that if she had played her cards otherwise she could have made a much better bargain in life. Priscilla, though she made in commercial and even in social terms a more advantageous buy, followed somewhat the same pattern. Priscilla, though not as pretty as my mother, had been a good-looking girl, and was admired in the circle of pert half-baked undereducated youths who constituted her «social life.» But Priscilla, egged on by her mother, had ambitions, and was in no hurry to settle with one of these unprepossessing candidates.
To cut a long story short, Priscilla really got quite «above herself,» dressing and behaving «grandly,» and did eventually satisfy her ambition of penetrating into some slightly «better» social circles than those which she had frequented at first. I suspect that she and my mother actually planned a «campaign» to better Priscilla's lot. Priscilla went to tennis parties, indulged in amateur dramatics, went to charity dances. She and my mother invented for her quite a little «season.» Only Priscilla's season went on and on. She could not make up her mind to marry. Or perhaps her present beaux, in spite of the bold face which Priscilla and my mother jointly presented to the world, felt that after all poor Priscilla was not a very good match. Perhaps there was after all a smell of shop. Then, doubtless as a result of working so hard on her season, she lost her job, and made no attempt to obtain another. She stayed at home, fell vaguely ill, and had what would now, I suppose, be called a nervous breakdown.
By the time she recovered she was getting on into her twenties and had lost some of her first good looks. She talked at that time of becoming a «model» (a «mannequin»), but so far as I know made no serious attempt to do so. What she did become, virtually, and not to put too fine a point upon it, was a tart. I do not mean that she stood around in the road, but she moved in a world of business men, golf-club bar proppers and night-club hounds, who certainly regarded her in this light. I did not want to know anything about this; possibly I ought to have been more concerned. I was upset and annoyed when my father once approached the subject, and although I could see that he had been made utterly miserable, I resolutely refused to discuss it. I never said anything to my mother, who always defended Priscilla and pretended, or deceived herself into believing, that all was well. I was by this time already involved with Christian, and I had other matters on my mind.
I will not attempt a lengthy description of Roger. He too will appear in the story in due course. I did not like Roger. Roger did not like me. He always referred to himself as a «public-school boy,» which I suppose he had been. He had a little education, and a great deal of «air,» a «plummy» voice and a misleadingly distinguished appearance. As his copious crown of hair became peppery and then grey he began to resemble a soldier. (He had once done some army service, I think in the Pay Corps.) He held himself like a military man and alleged that his friends nicknamed him «the brigadier.» He cultivated the crude joking manners of a junior officers' mess. He worked in fact in a bank, about which he made as much mystery as possible. He drank and laughed too much.
Married to such a man it was not likely that my sister would be very happy, nor was she. With a pathetic and touching loyalty, and even courage, she kept up appearances. She was house-proud: and there was eventually quite a handsome house, or «maisonette,» in the «better part» of Bristol, with fine cutlery and glasses and the things which women prize. There were «dinner parties» and a big car. It was a long way from Croydon. I suspected that they lived beyond their means and that Roger was often in financial difficulties, but Priscilla never actually said so. They both very much wanted children, but were unable to produce any. Once when drunk Roger hinted that Priscilla's «operation» had done some fatal damage. I did not want to know. I could see that Priscilla was unhappy, her life was boring and empty, and Roger was not a rewarding companion. I did not however want to know about this either. I rarely visited them. I occasionally gave Priscilla lunch in London. We talked of trivialities.
She was smartly dressed in a navy-blue «jersey» coat and skirt, looking pale and tense, unsmiling. She had retained her looks into middle age, though she had put on weight and looked a good deal less «glossy,» now resembling a «career woman»: the female counterpart perhaps of Roger's specious «military look.» Her well-cut un– gaudy clothes, deliberately «classic» and quite unlike the lurid plumage of her youth, looked a bit like uniform, the effect being counteracted however by the vulgar «costume jewellery» with which she always loaded herself. She dyed her hair a discreet gold and wore it kempt and wavy. Her face was not a weak one, somewhat resembling mine only without the «cagey» sensitive look. Her eyes were narrowed by short sight, and her thin lips were brightly painted.
She said nothing in reply to my surprised greeting, marched past me into the sitting-room, selected one of the lyre-back chairs, pulled it away from the wall, sat down upon it and dissolved into desperate tears.
«Priscilla, Priscilla, what is it, what's happened? Oh, you are upsetting me so!»
After a while the weeping subsided into a series of long sighing sobs. She sat inspecting the streaks of honey-brown make-up which had come off onto her paper handkerchief. ilT-> –111 –«
Priscilla, what is it?
«I've left Roger.»
I felt blank dismay, instant fear for myself. I did not want to be involved in any mess of Priscilla's. I did not even want to have to be sorry for Priscilla. Then I thought, Of course there is exaggeration, misconception.
«Don't be silly, Priscilla. Now do calm yourself, please. Of course you haven't left Roger. You've had a tiff-«Could I have some whisky?»
«I don't keep whisky. I think there's a little medium-sweet sherry.»
«Well, can I have some?»
I went to the walnut hanging cupboard and poured her a glass of brown sherry. «Here.»
«To bed?»
She got up abruptly, pushed out of the door, banging herself against the lintel, and went into the spare bedroom. She came out again, cannoning into me, when she saw that the bed was not made up. She went into my bedroom, sat on the bed, threw her handbag violently into a corner, kicked off her shoes and dragged off her jacket. Uttering a low moan she began to undo her skirt.