Guerrillas (30 page)

THEY HAD dinner at the white table in the kitchen. Adela was in her room.

Roche said, “I didn’t say anything bad. Nothing that wasn’t true or I didn’t feel. In fact, nothing I said would have been bad last week, when publicly everybody was on Jimmy’s side. It would have been good publicity. Jimmy would have regarded it as good publicity: controversial figure and so on. But with Meredith today I should have acknowledged that Jimmy was washed up. That would have given the whole thing a different slant. But I didn’t. And that was the trouble. When Meredith picked me up outside Sablich’s I just felt I didn’t want to refer to anything that had happened since Sunday. I didn’t even talk to him about being a minister. And so in the studio I was still pretending that Jimmy hadn’t fallen. You do get these ideas in your head on these occasions, and you never let them go.”

Jane said, “Perhaps Jimmy won’t hear the broadcast.”

“Meredith will make sure that he does. But I didn’t say anything bad. I said that Jimmy was easily bored and that you had to bring him down to earth. It’s the kind of thing I’ve said to him on many occasions. I said I didn’t think the commune was a good idea. I suppose I shouldn’t have said that. And of course Meredith made it all much worse. He made us out to be frauds.”

“Which is what he is. Did he talk about the woman in Wimbledon?”

“He brought her in.”

“Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Do you know what I think you’ve done? You’ve left Jimmy out there for Meredith and those other people to kill.”

“Yes, it will get to that. I don’t think those people know how
close they’re getting to that situation. It’s so frightening when you begin to feel the sands shifting under you and there’s nothing to cling to. There’s no law.”

“You’re getting out, though. That man’s got to stay in that house and wait for them to do whatever they’re going to do.”

“Yes. One day there’s going to be an accident. I hope it doesn’t get to that. It’s so odd. When you’re out in the country, in the old estates, and you see the country people walking to church or rocking in their hammocks or drinking in their little bars, you don’t think it’s that kind of country. But every country is that kind of country. People would be frightened if they know how easily it comes. Meredith wanted to know about torture. I should have told him. You only have to start. It’s the first kick in the groin that matters. It takes a lot to do that. After that you can do anything. You can find yourself kicking a man in the groin until he bleeds. Then you find you’ve stopped tormenting. You’ve destroyed a human being. You can’t put him together again, and all you can do is throw the bleeding meat out of the window. At that stage it’s so easy.”

Jane said, “But you’re getting out.”

Roche said, with irony, “Yes. I suppose I will just go back to London and forget it all.”

The mood in which he had left the porch, the mood in which he had sat down at the kitchen table, had vanished. For some time they said nothing.

Then he spoke again. His face was drawn and strained. He said, “I used to go to Lisbon sometimes. It was a nice place to be in. Dangerous, full of agents, full of South Africans. But it was out of Africa. I used to go to the bullfights. They told me that in the Portuguese bullfight they didn’t kill the bull. I believed them. I went a lot. And then I heard that the bulls were killed afterwards, after the fight. There was nothing else you could do with them. I’d somehow believed that the spears or barbs would just be taken out and the wounds would heal. Oh my God, why is any of us allowed to live at all? That’s the miracle, the sheer charity of man to man.”

He was alarming her. But he didn’t notice.

“When I eat food and enjoy it, I wonder why I am allowed to do so. When I lie down in my bed at night and make myself comfortable, I wonder why I am allowed to do so. It would be so easy to take it away from me. Every night I think about that. It would be so easy to torment me. Once you tie a man’s hands you can do anything to him.”

Jane said, “This is too morbid. I don’t want to hear any more. No one’s going to do anything to you here, and you know it.”

It wasn’t what he had been expecting. He had been half hoping for the comfort, the mood of the earlier part of the evening, the glimpse of the other side of her.

When she left the table, he remained in the kitchen; he heard Adela’s radio, turned low. Then he went out to the porch. It was cold, but he sat on one of the metal chairs, listening to the roar, the reggae beat, of the city down below.

Later, after he had closed up, brushed his teeth, and changed into his pajamas, he went to Jane’s room. Her door, as always when she had closed the redwood louvers for the night, had been left ajar, for the air. He went in without knocking.

She was in bed, reading a paperback of
The Woodlanders
, no sheet over her, and she seemed very big in a plain white cotton nightdress. Her arms were exposed; he could see her breasts. He sat at the end of the bed. A door of the fitted wardrobe was open: he could see signs that she had been packing. She hadn’t brought many clothes. He looked at the wardrobe clutter, and she continued to read. It was how, in spite of everything, they still occasionally came together: sex as physical comfort and mutual service, changing nothing.

He said, in a tone that was consciously calm, as though he was listening to himself, “You know, what happened today reminded me of something that happened in London. You’ve probably forgotten. Perhaps you didn’t even take it in at the time. You weren’t the keenest of publicity managers.”

She looked up from her book.

He said, smiling, “You sent a man to see me. You gave him my address and he came to see me. Oh, you telephoned me about it. You said he wanted to do a profile or an interview.”

“There were so many people like that.”

“Not for my book. Well, he came. I was very pleased to be interviewed. It was like being a writer, you know. Well, he came. He was an enormous man. He was wearing a black leather jacket and rimless glasses. A really enormous man. He was wearing three-quarter-length boots. Swinging London. Gear, you call it, don’t you? I remember the boots—pretend-cowboy, pretend-Nazi. He was very polite. He knew a lot. He was very well informed. Then something strange happened, and it happened very quickly. So quickly I couldn’t even work out in my own mind how it happened. From being someone who was asking me for my views, he became someone who was giving me his views. And those boots began to change their character. It wasn’t swinging London and pretend-Nazi. It was the real thing. The accent changed too. And my room changed character too. I was pleased to have a reporter in it—it seemed the kind of thing an interviewer or reporter would find of interest. But then it became another kind of room. This man had a message for me. If I didn’t shut up or, better, get out of England, I was going to be killed. He used the word. He rather enjoyed using the word.”

“But that was London. You could have told the publisher. There were all kinds of things you could have done.”

“Your England is different from mine. This man was very big. I keep on talking about his size. It isn’t only because I’m small. You know I’m not afraid of people. I’ve a good idea of what the odds are in any given situation, and I can be cautious. But I’m not afraid. It’s the way I am. It probably has to do with the school I went to. I suppose if you accept authority and believe in the rules, you aren’t afraid of any particular individual. But I was afraid of this man. I could see that he was enjoying himself, acting out the role a little. People in that kind of situation always put on a little style. Perhaps it was a hoax. But I didn’t think so. I took him seriously. I believed what he said.”

“Was that why you came here?”

Roche smiled. “It was a powerful incentive.”

“You didn’t come to do the job you told me you wanted to do? I thought that was why you left in such a rush.”

“Oh yes, the job. You had your own ideas of the job I was coming out to do. Meredith wanted to know about the job too.”

“But he’s right to want to know. You talked about working with what there is. So there is something in what they say about you here. You are a refugee.”

“The job offered itself. And it seemed the kind of thing I could do.”

“And now you’ll just leave Jimmy out there for those people to kill. Who’s going to give him a job? So Jimmy’s right. You’ve all turned him into a ‘playboy.’ A plaything. And now you’re throwing him to Meredith.”

“It’s what Jimmy’s turned himself into.”

“Well, I’ve news for you. I’ve news for both of you. He’s been my lover.”

The book had been resting on her breasts. She took it up again. Her face was as flushed as her arms.

Roche turned to face her. He said, “I don’t believe you’re lying.”

“Why should I lie to you?”

He stood up. “But I don’t think it would be news to Meredith.”

He went out of the room, closing the door behind him, remembering too late that she left it ajar, for the air.

Some time later he went and opened the door. She was still reading. He stood in the doorway. She looked and saw the satyr’s face.

He said, “Has he taken a picture of you naked? Did you pose for him with your legs open?”

A half-smile, of puzzlement and nervousness, settled on her face.

He said, “Isn’t that what they do with the women they’ve degraded? Keep them in their wallet to show the others? Or did he do the other thing? The other act of contempt.”

She didn’t reply. He left the door ajar and went back to his room.

HELLO MARJORIE, Well this will be a surprise to you I bet, I can see you holding this between your slender well-manicured fingers, you wouldn’t believe you use toilet paper and do other things (joke) and snorting, Is it Jimmy, what does he want this time, he’s had all he’s going to get from me. That is my Marge these days I know, different from the old days, older and wiser as you say, but I understand all that, sweetheart, and I don’t want anger to come between us anymore
.

Sweetheart, I sit in the peace and stillness of this tropical night to pen these words to you, because I want to clear my heart, you are the only person I can write to, and I want you to know that you were right, what you prophesied is all coming true, I am dying alone and unloved and I will die in anger, no other way is possible now. That is a bad way to die, and Marjorie I feel death is close to me tonight, I can hear it in the tropical stillness, fitfully broken by the occasional hoot of an owl, and to tell you the truth sweetheart I feel relieved, I feel I should go now. When we were children and you heard an owl at night you stuck pins in the wick of the lamp to keep death away from the house, but I don’t think it stopped the coffins coming
.

Will this letter get to you or will they clear it away with the rest of my possessions saying this is another piece of his junk, that is all he’s left, junk. No Marge don’t snort, I am not appealing for
your sympathy or crying wolf as you may think. You can’t help me now, I know that at least, at least give me that, nobody can help me, and this letter may never get to you
.

I will tell you Marjorie when I was a boy I used to think that childhood was just a time of disguise and that it was something I had to go through before I came into my own and that it was going to be all right when I became a man, what a laugh Marjorie what a laugh
.

It is very black outside, in England you don’t know how black night can be here, I forgot myself when I was in London, and when I think of London and those places I cannot work out how I got here, so far from human habitation, and I cannot understand why I should end here like a ghost, this is my part of the world, I was born here, this is not London, it’s like a bad dream, but I know I’m not waking up
.

I feel tonight, sitting here among my books and letters and other dead things, like the last man on the earth. I wish I was the last man, but in the darkness outside there is someone I love, someone who would frighten you, Bryant a young boy, I gave him so much Jove, now he’s gone mad with grief, a young boy mad think of it, think of what’s going on in his head and heart, I can feel it, and he wants to take it out on me. He blames me for everything, but I know that he is only sick of his life and of what he is, I understand him though we are so different, and he is waiting to kill me. I can go out and break his neck anytime, it would be easy, a slum boy’s neck. I can go out and challenge him and make him run, but then I think of the two of us alone here, and how the others would laugh if they could see us, two billy goats fighting it out for nothing at all, just amusing the crowd, it is what they would like, the last laugh. They mustn’t have that, and I am thinking now I will just walk out into the night and wait for him and turn my back and let him do what he wants to do. That would be the best way out, I’m tired
.

I know that in life a man has always to keep on picking himself up when the count reaches nine. That is the test of a man, not when he’s on his feet but when he’s down, but I’ve picked myself up too often and I’ve nothing to show for it. The corridor of time
is now a room of mirrors, it just shows me forever picking myself up, and this time I want them to count me out
.