The Revolt of Aphrodite (39 page)

“Well, this whole thing, sort of instant snapshot stuff, had a
strange sort of effect on me. It wasn’t just the unexpectedness, the fright and so on. I felt as if my mind had been, for one brief second, unfrozen; and even later when it went back into deep freeze again, the experience left something, a nagging something. I’m not much good at expressing these things. Later, of course, when I got very ill I had all sorts of feverish delusions about us all, about the firm. Julian had me flown back to Zürich where they could look after me. But God, the drugs were strong—I’m still woozy from them. And then that old fool, Caradoc or Robinson? Yes, but it
was
Caradoc. It is touching in a way—I saw how clumsily, how shakily he had tried to escape, to leave his body behind so to speak. Why on earth should he do it? The firm is everything to me; it’s a livelihood, and a creative way of
earning
one. And yet, Felix, and yet….”

He gazed at me with sallow concentration from the fireplace, fingering the bruises on his forehead and sucking his teeth. “Another thing I didn’t know I’d noticed until after we set sail was the sort of house he was living in there. It wasn’t like most of the architecture of the place—it was canted up on piles. You don’t remember, do you, how Caradoc used to talk about the theory of Sarasin that the
proportions
of the Parthenon corresponded in a way to the
pile-buildings
in Celebes? He used to go on quite a lot about it, and often drew it in the sand for us. No, you’ve forgotten? Well, anyway, it’s this sort of shape if I remember rightly.” He took out a coloured
pencil
and sketched in the following figure on the back of a newspaper.

No, I had never seen it before. “Ah well” said Pulley with
resignation
.
“That was what he had been building for himself. It would prove nothing to anyone else, but to someone who knew Caradoc it would be conclusive. You see, he just could not resist making mnemons and building houses. Try as he would. And he’ll always be found out because of it.” He paused for a while, finished his drink, and said “I don’t know whether I told them all this, I couldn’t judge. All that Julian said when he was thanking me was ‘Well, the case is closed, then.’ But did he mean it, that’s the point? Ah! That’s the point.”

The case is closed. “I don’t know” said Pulley. “Perhaps we should act out ourselves more.” He strolled about fiddling with things on the tables and mantelpiece. “But I could never dream of trying to get out” he said sadly. “But in your case, Felix, I——”

“Me?” I said with some indignation. “Why pick on me?”

“I wasn’t; but somehow I have always wondered about you—from way back at the beginning I mean. Whether you really belonged here, with us.”

“Well I’m damned” I said, and the surprise was genuine. It was suddenly borne in upon me that there must, after all, somewhere, be people who didn’t belong to the firm. Pulley showed his huge teeth in an infantile grin. “You are one of the few people” he said “one can honestly distrust in this outfit. I would confide anything in you, I think.”

“And you feel I should get out somehow?”

“O, I didn’t say that exactly. I don’t know quite what I feel about anything any more, I’m so damn tired after all this drugging. And I still occasionally get the weeps for nothing at all. So don’t ask me leading questions. Besides, Felix, is there really
time
to worry? One minute you are fretting over your income tax, and the next you are staring up from the bottom of a pinewood coffin. Heavens, stay put, old boy, stay put.”

“Stay put, you tell me now.”

“Well, unless you feel too hampered. Lots of us do. The weak usually resort to acts of senseless violence. I remember old Trabbe—he ran out with a fireman’s axe one day and buried it in Julian’s car. But they cured him and sent him abroad. And poor Mrs. Trabbe—after she died the servants started wearing her frocks and shoes,
surprising
everyone and giving pain. O well!” He yawned and stretched. “I must be getting along now. It’s been good to see you; we must meet again soon, eh? When things don’t feel so damned precarious.”

His eyes had a haunted look which somehow I misliked; his walk, too, was the walk of an old man. I accompanied him to the door and suggested that he might like to move in with me for a few weeks, but he shook his head slowly. “Ah thanks” he said. “But no. Cheerio.”

I stood at the door and watched him wander off down the street towards the nearest tube station. He did not turn round and wave on the corner as was once his wont.

* * * * *

I
had some difficulty in running Julian to earth—if that is the
expression
—but at last I found him week-ending somewhere in the country. My call caught him in mid yawn. “Ah good, it’s you
Charlock
” he said. “I was wondering who it might be.”

“Julian” I said “I’ve come to a decision which I want to discuss with you. In itself it may not seem very important, but it is extremly so to me.” Julian coughed and said: “Well you know you can always count on me.” It sounded not at all sententious. I took a breath and went on. “I have decided to give one of my inventions away to the public—to
give
it away, do you see? Simply, unequivocally donate it.” He said nothing, and after a pause I went on. “Recently in
playing
about with some chemistry work in the lab I tumbled upon
something
which one might really describe as a boon to the ordinary
housewife
. It costs nothing, or almost nothing to make. It will completely transform washing-up.”

“Well, for goodness sake take out a pat——”

“Ah but listen. This I propose to
give
away. I propose to write a letter to
The
Times
describing how anyone can, for the price of a pennyworth of common salt, make this….”

The timbre of Julian’s attention seemed to shift and deepen. He sighed, and I heard a match click, followed by a puff. “I’m glad you decided to discuss it with me first before doing anything” he said. “What is the point of it, after all? At a penny halfpenny it would still be a boon—as a Merlin patent. Do you think we are dealing hardly by the public? By comparison with other firms I should have thought….”

“That has nothing to do with it. I simply feel that for once in my life I must make this gesture,
give
something freely, you see;
something
which is the fruit of my thought, so to speak. Can’t you see?”

“I follow what you mean” he said coolly. “But nevertheless I can’t
quite see the motive. You have given the world so much through the firm, Charlock.”

“Not given, Julian. That’s the point. Sold.”

“There is a pleasing touch of religiosity about your idea” he said dryly. “I commend you.” He sounded serious but weary.

“I know it sounds trivial; but for me it represents something momentous, something I haven’t been able to imagine for years—an act.”

“The married man dreams of divorce” he said oracularly, and I recognised a Greek proverb in translation. “And the scientist thinks of science as a pretty girl with two cunts….” He was wandering, playing for time. Then a little more sharply came: “What am I
supposed
to do about this idea—agree? How can I, Charlock? Indeed I wonder why you consulted me. You know that you are raising much more than a personal question? It smells of precedent. Indeed
whatever
I said, I doubt if the firm would agree: and I am not the firm, as you know, only one of the camel-drivers, so to speak, in the general caravan. Anyway thanks for being honest enough to tell me what was in your mind.”

“I always felt I could talk to you as man to voice” I said.

“Irony was always your long suit, Charlock. Always.”

“Anyway, now you know what I’ve decided.”

Julian cleared his throat softly and let a pause intervene; when he came back to the charge he was dreamy, reflective, unincisive. “I wonder if you have really thought about it—no, it’s a pure impulse of generosity on your part.”

“On the contrary: the fruit of a long interior debate.”

“Hum. Have you considered, for example, your articles of
association
with the firm? This would cut across our agreement which is valid, if I remember, for some twenty years more at least.”

“Twenty years.” A shiver ran down my spine. Yes, I knew it all right—but uttered out loud like that it produced a chilling effect.

“It wouldn’t work” said Julian at last in a more wide-awake voice. “It would lead to some costly and tedious litigation, that’s all. And you’d lose, the firm would win. Contractually you are tied for
everything
.”

“We shall see” I said, but I felt my voice falter. Julian went on
suavely: “You know don’t you that there is a whole string of charities supported by us in part or in full? Merlin’s staff are encouraged to contribute to them—why don’t you? You could make over the whole of your salary to them if you wished. Ask Nathan to show you the bound volume with the lists.”

“I’ve seen it.” I had. There was a huge vellum tome the thickness of the Bible listing all the charities to which the firm contributed.

“Well” said Julian. “Wouldn’t that do?”

“No.”

“Why not?” He was almost peevish now.

“We get Income Tax relief on those—it’s a company ploy.”

“I see! My goodness, you are hard to please.”

He puffed away another long silence and then asked: “What is the source of all this unrest, Charlock; where does it come from?”

“I have simply come to a point where I must make a gesture, even the feeblest of free gestures, to continue breathing.”

“It must be due to some misconception about the nature of the firm. I feel in all you say a funny kind of moral bias—an implied criticism which cannot be wholly just. Are you just being pharisaical, holier-than-thouish?”

“No, I’m being holier-than-meish for a change.”

“What I’m trying to say is that the firm isn’t just an extension of moral qualities, a product of a wicked human will, of a greedy
mercantile
spirit. It goes deeper than that. I mean, it has always existed in one form or another. At least I suppose so.”

“What a sophistry! The firm is not the world.”

“I’m not so sure. I’m not saying it’s an easy thing or a gay thing; but it’s a fact of nature, man’s nature. One can’t blink the firm, Charlock.”

“Nature!”

“It must correspond to some deep unexpressed need of the human psyche—for it’s always been there. We should take it more coolly. It’s not in itself malefic, it is just neutral, a
repoussoir.
It’s what we make of it….”

“So the slave is born with his chains, is he?”

“Yes. Some can free themselves, but very few. I couldn’t. If you believe in free will or predestination, for example——”

“Cut out the homilies” I said.

“Well, who imposed the firm on you, then?”

“I did. Out of ignorance.”

“Not really; everything was clear from the beginning; your eyes were wide open.”

“Like a three-day kitten.”

“I don’t see how you can want to back down at this stage.”

“Even in prison they get remission for good behaviour.”

“But damn it, you might wake up one day and find yourself in charge of the firm, or most of it; Jocas and I won’t live for ever, you know.”

“God forbid!”

Julian said “Ach!” in an exasperated sort of way and then became mild again. “The firm isn’t inflexible” he said, with a faint tinge of reproach. “Despite its size it is a pretty fragile thing, a bundle of long wires stretching out around the world. But it is all based on one slender item—the spinal column of the matter: that is the sanctity of contractual obligation. If you abrogate that you begin to damage the essential fabric of the thing. Naturally it will try to protect itself like any other organism.”

“I
must
do this thing, I tell you.”

“You will end up by building up a delusional system about being persecuted by the firm—the poor thing does not merit it.”

I ground my teeth.

“Anyway,” he went on “there is no pressure the firm can bring upon you in the immediate sense; but it would certainly counter any such move as the one you have outlined. It’s strange, you still seem to think of it in terms of personalities; but it has long ago outgrown the personalities which created it—Merlin, Jocas, myself: we are already merely ancestors. The firm is self-subsisting now, rolling down its appointed path with a momentum which neither you nor I can alter. Of course he that is not with it is against it, and so on. In other epochs it might have taken other forms. But man rests, unchangeable,
unteachable
, and the firm is cast in his mould—
your
mould,
Charlock
!
Ask and it shall be answered! Prod the old sow with a stick and it grunts.” He paused and his voice sank softly into the tones of a twilit resignation. Under his breath, in a whisper which I could just catch,
I heard him say: “And Iolanthe is dying?” He sighed, he was talking to himself. A long silence fell.