The Avignon Quintet (178 page)

On this genial note the lunch party embarked on the dishes that Constance had prepared. “I shall see to it that your name is on the list of shareholders,” the Prince told her, “if only because of the excellence of this
boeuf gardien.
”

The Prince had spent the previous afternoon visiting the half-yearly fair of the city, some aspects of which had filled him with misgivings, such as the bold red inscriptions on the walls of the churchyard talking of alien matters. The first American tourists had arrived in Avignon!

Skinheads Rule!

Yes! Yes!

Madness Reigns!

Yes!

Kill everyone!

Yes! Yes!

It was the new world they had hatched beginning to stake out its claims on the future. The Prince permitted himself a premonitory shudder or two and allowed a chill to trickle down his spinal column as he visualised this hallowed countryside being invaded by representatives of the American industrial ethos. Nearer home, too, and hardly less disturbing was a British representative of Tyneside who at least had some redeeming touches of Golgotha humour to salt his act. This was a young man, Suckathumbo Smith by name, who sat in front of a curtain on which was depicted a scene from circus life – a dentist in frock coat extracting a tooth against the will of a young woman in a crinoline. Smith was a chunky young man and his eyes had been completely circled in mascara like the spectacles on the hood of a cobra. He looked tear-stained, as if he had cried all night, and when not using his voice kept himself corked up so to speak, thumb in mouth. He would suddenly remove the thumb and let forth a shriek of song, and then as suddenly plunge his thumb back into the aperture, sinking as he did so into a posture of despair and gloom. Blanford delighted in him as a curiosity, and would not leave his booth until the whole performance was at an end. The last act was a spirited rendering of the old Cockney classic:

Uncle Fred and Auntie Mabel

Fainted at the breakfast table

They forgot the gipsy’s warning

Not to do it in the morning!

This at least had the hallmarks of true music hall on it and was as true to its tradition as Shakespeare would have been. But such manifestations made uncomfortable bedfellows for the folklore subsidised by tourist organisations in the hope of making foreign visitors feel at home. And indeed the first foreign visitors had hardly begun to show their faces as yet. The post-war city was a sort of limbo for the moment, quite uncertain of its possibilities, urged on only by the prestige of its past.

But spring was at hand, the sunny days not too far off, and this gave them the opportunity to transfer their morning therapies of massage and yoga to a more suitable spot, namely the flat rocks around the weir with its grave menhirs and abandoned threshing floor. Here the river swept by in a sudden convulsion of pleasure among the water lilies. Here one could lie and drowse or read, lulled by the water-music of the Roman weir. Constance was very businesslike about the work and Blanford grumbled but obeyed her, allowing the doctor full rights over her patient, though the feel of her capable brown hands settling on his back and beginning to manipulate the muscle schemes thrilled him sexually until he felt shy to feel the incipient half-erection which the therapy caused him, and wondered if she was aware of the fact. She was, and the thought gave her a twinge of irritated self-reproach. But it would pass – so she opined – familiarity would breed contempt! She need only persevere. And talk about other things. “I must say, Aubrey, they have done you a superb job of renovation.” He grunted his assent and added: “All done up like an expensive tennis racquet with the best gut and steel wires. I am unbelievably lucky. And now to continue the massage with you …” Part of it, too, was the swimming. They took off side by side and paddled slowly up river among the lilies, talking, or else in a companionable silence betimes. A new kind of intimacy was hatching itself between them which, for the moment, they could not identify or classify. She spoke to him now quite wordlessly, while she was working on his back. “How strange that you should be my first love, my worst love,” she told him. “The only one with whom I could make no progress whatsoever. And of course I yours – I would have been an idiot not to recognise the fact. What went wrong? I found you frigid, autistic and quite self-obsessed – but now, looking back on it, I wonder whether it wasn’t simply timidity? Those English schools drive one back into oneself and remove all spirit of enterprise where girls are concerned.” Blanford had fallen asleep like a cat under the effect of the massage. She frowned, for it was obvious that his psyche was reacting to the massage as if to caresses – and this was not what the doctor in her approved or had in mind.

“Aubrey! Wake up!” she said, “And let’s go for a swim up to the point. The sun is westering.” He grumbled but complied. “I dreamed we made love,” he said grimly, “and that at last it worked between us. You were after all my first love.” She frowned and acquiesced reluctantly. “And I yours?” After a pause, “Yes. Very much so!”

There was a long silence.

Then he said, “Christ! What on earth went wrong, do you think? And is it redeemable?” She laughed and spread out her arms in a rueful gesture. “Of course not!” she said, but gaily, “look at us both, so battered from the wars and the whole blessed attrition of time passing … We’ve overshot the mark!” It was depressing, nay, intolerable to believe that she might be right. It made him suddenly realise how permanent the image of her had been – even when she herself was not present, even when he had not been conscious of the fact, she had been overwhelmingly present in his mind, his heart. “You have always been so very much part of the décor; I don’t think I have made any decisions or thought any thoughts without mentally referring to you – I mean, even when you were with Affad you were still a sort of lodestar to me! It’s queer! In anyone else it would be accounted for by the word ‘love’. But I don’t dare! I am afraid you would protest!

“I can’t flirt any more. But I can still dare, so in a sort of way I am still open to adventure. But so much has changed in my outlook. After he died I realised, but quite slowly, that I could not love again in the old way, in the literary way, as if from a dialectical frenzy. Yet paradoxically the new freedom which came to me from his death freed me to love more truly, more correctly, while at the same time remaining my own master. It was deeper and chaster despite its freedom. Yes, I could not any more enter into the great engagement and surrender myself wholly. I’m on the threshold of middle age, I suppose that is it.”

He listened to her with the silence of misgivings, for what is more hopeless than for a woman to try and analyse the nature of love and its thousand forms and dispositions? He said, “I have been watching his wonderful little son to whom you have managed to bring so much that you have really succeeded in being a mother to him. In him I get a wonderful feeling of self-sufficiency, of estrangement from all formal joy. I feel sure he is going to be an artist. He looks about him with the disabused eye of one – the feeling of being able to see through things, to discern their coarse primal roots, their quiddity, and hence their boredom with God! It’s only a manner of speaking, but how to convey his marvellous detachment? I was like he is, an autist, a complete virgin, which unluckily you could not possess – to my eternal loss. Had you managed to wake me from my death-sleep I would have blessed you for the rest of my life! But no, it was not to be, I had to sleep my way forward by years in order to catch up with you here, on this rock, after a long and miserable war. How strangely life arranges things!”

Another comic paradox of fate was the drift of Blanford’s notes which he had so carefully emptied to the four winds; a large section had blown about the city until the curious gipsy children had started to amass them and show them to their parents. From there to the consultation of a bookseller was but a step, and it was not long before Toby was offered a bundle of scraps for sale, which he had at once recognised from the handwriting as belonging to Blanford who expressed himself prepared to buy them back, presuming that the mere fact that they had escaped destruction was a portent concerning their value for his forthcoming book whose presence had begun to loom up strangely over his future life. Now that he was more or less physically restored to daily life the question of an occupation had begun to nag at him. He was glad that his tiny income did not prevent him from addressing himself to literature as a possible means of making money. It would have been bad for him, he thought, if private means had freed him from the onus of thinking coldly and professionally of the novel as a wage-earner. And then there was another thing – for how long could he support a brother-to-sister relationship with Constance? Their relationship could not forever stay like this, in solution so to speak, without any sort of physical development: or could it? His breasts ached when he thought about her! How stupid people were! He lay softly breathing under the determined thoughtful fingers which prowled his back and shoulders while he riffled the latest bundle of scraps to have emerged from the hands of the gipsies. A novelist forced to buy back his own notes – what a farce!

Is meditation an art or a science? Discuss.

Strawberries are neither classical nor romantic. Discuss!

By simple oxygen and silence slip

Into the Higher Harmlessness!

To this Sutcliffe had added a rider, which went: “But the Hindu is as high-minded as he is long-winded. Heaven preserve us from such a cataplasm, however much he may be right theologically.”

He added: “What a curse self-importance is! If we would only shut up and give nature a chance to talk we would certainly learn that Happiness, nay,
Bliss
is innate!”

But circumstances do not always show themselves as cooperative to human designs and they were soon thrown together without equivocation by a simple incident which grew out of their habit of night-swimming. Despite the relative earliness of the season they had enjoyed almost a fortnight of hot weather, real summer weather, and this had pushed them to revert once more to the once popular habit of swimming at night off the stone, using as light the one hissing gas-light of which the house boasted. This they propped on the rock. Its rather ghostly yellow light which flapped and flared outlined a small central circle of water among the lilies sufficient to constitute virtually a round shining pool of water. They tried to keep within its limits in the interests of good order and indeed safety, but it was not always possible, so strong was the tug of the water round the rock. Nevertheless that was the scheme, and they were sufficiently practised and confident, both of them, to embark for a swim even if alone. This is what had happened on the night in question – Constance had gone on ahead; crossing the dark garden with his slow swaying walk he could see the flap and flare of the light standing on the stone plinth above the water. He heard the sound of her plunge and then the noise of paddling and treading water – all perfectly in order. It would be difficult to say just what it was that alerted him to the fact that all was
not
in order; perhaps he overheard her gasp of dismay as she turned on her back – dismay to feel a sudden rogue cramp attack her thighs and legs, a reaction from the cold of the water. But with a current so formidable there was little time to be lost if the situation was to be redressed – and there was no shore to speak of, for the lilies were anchored in three metres of silt. “Are you all right?” he called anxiously, for he had sensed that something had gone wrong. “Yes! No!” she cried in her disarray. It was a double deception, for Aubrey in his present situation was not at the peak of his powers as a swimmer, and it would be unfair to call him into the water … Nevertheless her distress conveyed itself to him rapidly enough and he saw that the only thing to do was to throw himself in after her and try to help her master the tugging current which was trying to pull her downstream. In still water there would have been no problem – she could have floated for ever; but the current created a possible hazard. She heard him plunge after her and her heart misgave her – they might both be in trouble because of this rashness. But he was stronger than he himself had quite supposed and seizing her under the arms he turned doggedly back up-current, determined to put them both within finger-reach of the stone plinth, their point of entry into the water. At first, and for a long moment, the issue hung in the balance even though he put forth his utmost endeavour, stroke on slow stroke. Then with infinite slowness he began to gain against the water. It was a matter of a mere two or three metres but the issue was a critical one, for the water was trying its best to sweep them down river to where the Roman ford created a sort of small but vertiginous waterfall. Here the current might be strong enough to create an accident of sorts – a knock on the head, a broken wrist, something of that order. But his slow and concentrated stroke was sufficiently masterful to begin to gain on the current, and at last he had a satisfaction and relief of pushing his fellow swimmer to a point where her fingers could grasp the serrated edges of rock and haul herself clear of the current, but at the same time holding fast to his hand with the other arm. Thus with infinite slowness and infinite labour they at last managed to clear the water and crawl ashore to the safety of the rock – there to tumble in an exhausted heap. “I have never had a cramp before,” she said, among her apologies for having dragged him after her, “I had no idea one could just freeze up, like that.” And of course concern for his back now seized her – he might have sprained or dragged a muscle by his efforts, and nothing would satisfy her but to see for herself. But here something radical had changed – the whole cloud of inhibitions which had paralysed him in his dealings with her suddenly seemed to have lifted. Was it perhaps the fleeting terror of losing her for ever to the river that had purged him? A classical boldness now beset him, he took her in his arms unerringly, as if he were completely sure of her response. They stood like that, enlaced and in silence for what seemed an eternity. Outside in the tall trees the owls screeched and hunted; the lamp which usually stood beside them on the kitchen table gave forth its buzzing commentary – like the noise at the centre of the chambered nautilus. “How marvellous,” he whispered, “not to be afraid any longer of making a mess of you! You gave me such a fright with your cramp that it shocked me back into sense. Fear of losing you for ever! I realise everything now. You have learned the most important thing a woman can learn from a man – not from me but from Affad: the art of surrender which assures everything. How grateful I am to him as well!” Nor was this mere verbiage for it translated itself into caresses later that night which were as generous as they were famished. He could still make love then, still generate the power and the glory of the complete sexual encounter. Where the devil had it all come from? He was at a loss to tell.