The Revolt of Aphrodite (49 page)

“It’s awkward, isn’t it, when the flippant, the effortlessly
inconsequent,
becomes a tic. We have come a long way together haven’t we old man? Without being very much together either; from time to time, like model railways our paths cross at a critical junction. Ting-a-ling!

“Pia says: ‘What matter? One day my teeth will fall out like rocks out of a hillside. Only the dignity of the mouth—its outline—which once haunted men might linger a little in certain postures.
Musculature
giving in like an old banjo. Then I shall die—but I
have;
while you are reading this I
am.
The process has started. Let’s imagine Pia in a state of infinite dispersion, infinite extension, inhabiting every nook in imaginable space. It will be hard to part with all my jewellery and clothes—even the
toc.
And what of that family of little homeless shoes? How could I do it to them? But I must, I
have.
Yet I cannot bring myself to leave them to anyone, for death is only apparent and mostly by scheming. I would have liked to embrace you once, good and warm—but you would decipher my intention from my kiss. I dare not risk it. Only Jocas knows the date, the time, the minute; I am taking him with me in a funny sort of way, as a fellow-passenger. He will still be on earth of course, and quite unchanged in the physical sense; but in a special sense not. The not-part will have been expropriated. I am trying not to punish him too much. He did
me one inestimable service in love—taught me to “listen with the clitoris” as he called it.’

“Well, and then it gets mixed up with my obligatory reading. Listen, ‘Love, then, as both teleological and biological trigger’. The weight of these massive ponderations illustrated by Pia’s dead gnome’s face. Damn them all, the philosophic cut-throats.
Mumbo-jumbo,
cant and twaddle. In a book on esoteric something or other she has underlined a passage which goes: ‘Nothing is hidden, there are no secrets. But you can tell people only what they already know. That is the infuriating thing. And while they may know it, they may not be conscious that they know. Hence the jolt provided by the dry-cell batteries of art. In such a thing all that has been done is to create an area of self-recognition. The reflected light plays upon the observer, he sees, becomes a see-er, a self-seer.’ The wisdom of other lands and other time, my lad. What avails it all?

I stifled a cry of amused amaze, but my involuntary start must have jolted her out of sleep. She lay with eyes closed, but awake and drowsy. “My goodness” she said at last in a luxurious whisper settling that slender body warmly against mine, revising its posture so that it fitted as nearly as possible into the hollows of my own. “You have begun to believe in me as a possibility at last.” It was only our sleepy minds making love, or recovering the part of it which had been so long left unmade. Kiss.

“Caradoc may be alive, do you hear?”

“Of course.”

“Did you know it?”

“Not for certain; I sort of felt it in my bones.”

“We must try and find out.” In my enthusiasm I all but forgot the equivocal nature of the “freedom” Nash had so heartily
conferred
on this patient. Free, yes. To walk along the lakeside at
twilight, hand in hand with B. if need be; but always following on behind us after a discreet interval came the small white ambulance, keeping its exact distance. This was just in case I should become overtired. Once I amused myself by entering a cinema and leaving at once by another entrance, but it was not long before they caught up with me. The town is small, the streets short. Besides I was, I am, tired; moreover I have no projects, nothing to look forward to,
nowhere
I would rather be than in this clinical paradise. A philosopher out of work. Benedicta must have been following my thoughts with great accuracy for she said: “No, you won’t be followed any more. Let’s go and try and find him, if you wish. I know because Julian is here. He telephoned about a meeting. He said so, and you know he never lies.” So we sat down to eat together and plan. It was unnerving in its unfamiliarity—I mean the simple act of eating off the same tray. (In the age of chivalry, husband and wife, knight and lady, ate off the same trencher, he feeding her.) Well, I want to keep an exact record of all this; I still don’t trust anyone, except sporadically
Benedicta
herself.

T
he offices of the
Informateur
were easy to find; in an old building smelling of drains and printer’s ink. The editor a tiny mollusc in powerful spectacles. The cuttings rather startled him, and he went to files to assure himself that they had indeed appeared in his august journal. It was unusual, it was bizarre. He was a little troubled on the grounds of good taste.

At any rate the offices which handled the advertising were at Geneva, and he thought that current practice would prevent them giving me the address of an advertiser. It was a private matter, after all. I would have to write. This was disheartening; but since the project itself might well prove hopelessly chimerical it wasn’t worth being too cast down about it. We sent a couple of telegrams to the box numbers, one from some young flesh signed by Benedicta and one from an “enculable nonne” signed by myself, offering every enticement we could. Then we wandered for a while in the streets, chafing ourselves upon the windows with all their finery, admiring everything. “Buy me something” said Benedicta suddenly. “I want to be given something, anything small and cheap. In bad taste if you like.” But I had forgotten my wallet and while she had plenty of money on her it “wouldn’t do”, for some reason or other, it
wouldn
’
t
do
!
For some esoteric reason this made me suddenly happy. I felt an absurd disposition to tears almost. She stood me coffee and cream buns in a deserted café with plush seats and barely any light; and suddenly I felt a desire to rid myself of my cocoon of bandages which I did in the lavatory. “Good” she said. “Good. Don’t look rueful even if the hair hasn’t covered the scars as yet. The move is in the right direction.”

“Loving” I said, sinking back into my seat with a sigh, though the word had a strange translated ring to it; it was as if I were trying it out, like a shoe. Benedicta nodded, her blue eyes bright.

“Loving” she said, as if she too were trying it out.

Then she added as we rose to walk back up the hill to the
Paulhaus:
“No more of it for us. We’ve done it. We’ve committed it, and need never think of it again. Unless…. How sure do you feel of yourself?”

“I don’t know. Remember a piece of my brain is missing; suppose it’s the piece (like in the old phrenology skulls) which had the fatal word written on it? Then what?”

“Nothing. I’ve done it, I’ve had it, I am it.”

“My God, is happiness so simple then?”

“When you are committed; when it’s a fact.”

“Benedicta, what are you planning, what are you dreaming about?”

“For the first time nothing. I’m just content to be, to have escaped Julian, to have persuaded you to try and rediscover me. Let’s just let go, shall we, until we see Julian?”

The long walk, the long silence, the plenitude of it, refreshed instead of tiring me.

“This is very absurd.”

“I know.”

In some vague and unspecified way the wind of destiny seemed to have shifted. A mild sun fumed upon the fir-clad slopes, filling the valleys with a ghostly mist; but now all benign. Even the winding paths, the firmly shuttered look of the buildings, the cars parked in rows along the concrete drive-ins—they had all participated in this subtle shift of emphasis. It only takes a little thing like an outing when you are a loony…. No, but there was substance to it. “Come and spend tonight with me up at the chalet. It’s all right. Just tell them.” Just tell them! I wondered where she discovered this fund of easy insouciant optimism. Nevertheless I returned for a bath and a change of the small dressings and with nervous sang-froid did as I was bid. No objections were raised—though when I think of it what objections could have been raised? It just shows the state of mind I had got myself into.

It was ten minutes’ walk over the hill to the chalet with its little chaplet of firs; there were lights on inside, but soft lights suggesting candles. I kicked off my snow and slush and tapped. She was in the little hall already changed into a long dress cut like an abba and made
of some heavy damascened material; she was in the act of combing out the new head of curly blonde hair. “It all fell out during the course of my troubles and I inherited a new head from who knows where? My mother perhaps. There’s a lot of white in it, Felix.” It was quite simply beautiful, much silkier and lightly curling. The face I had so often seen lined with suffering, sulky, anaemic—it had also renewed itself; the so often lacklustre eyes (turning towards grey in candle-light) had a recaptured vivacity. She could tell I liked her this way, better than ever. Someone was moving about the little studio with its warm smells of polished wood, its crude peasant curtains. Baynes was setting a small table for us before the throbbing log fire. It was too much. I reached towards a forbidden whisky, saying, “My God Baynes, is it really you? I thought I dreamed you up.” Baynes smiled his wooden smile and said: “I came in once or twice to see you were all right, sir.” So he was really here. No dream was old sobersides Baynes, but our very own reality. “Here let me touch you to prove it.” It was partly that, and partly an excuse to embrace Baynes without causing him an attack of blushes. Baynes submitted to these proofs of his existence like an elder churchman, modestly benign.

I walked around the little place which had been her self-imposed prison for so long with all the curiosity of a visitor suddenly entering the imperial apartments on St. Helena. The disposition of
everything
suggested some far-reaching shift of values. The old litter of half-empty medicine bottles, uncut French novels, widowed
slippers,
clothes tossed in corners—there was no trace of all this. Even with a dozen maids to clear up after her the old Benedicta could leave her thumb-prints on her quarters after half an hour in
residence.
The telephone rang, but it seemed to be a wrong number. “O I forgot all about it,” said Baynes penitently “but a gentleman rang up and left a message for Madam. I wrote it down.” Sitting by the fire she took it and read it with a chuckle. “There’s your answer” she said. “I told you so.”

Baynes had laboriously transcribed it with a few spelling errors, but in sum it said: “Amiable yogi will meet green fruit at Manwick’s English Tearoom Geneva Saturday for crumpet and butter. Only place in Europe for crumpet.”

I felt the blood rush to my heart. “He’s alive.” And
characteristically
the feeling was succeeded by one of vexation for all the amount of missing him I had done. “Damn the old fool” I said. And now a different set of preoccupations raised their heads. Benedicta was putting a disc on the record player. “What is it Felix?”

“I don’t want to prejudice him—to make a
gaffe
and lead Julian to him. That’s what I was thinking.”

“I think Julian has seen him” she said. “So that isn’t a problem. In fact I bet you he has been trying to get Julian to take him back into the firm.”

“What?”

“Yes. I bet you. And now probably Julian will refuse to do so!”

“Caradoc!”

It was an unheard-of departure after all this elaborate
disappearance
and fictitious immortality. “How much do you know about it?” Benedicta lit a cigarette and said softly: “Only what I surmise. Julian said nothing when he spoke to me; but once before he puzzled me because he himself seemed not to be quite sure whether it
was
Caradoc or not. Perhaps Caradoc has changed very much; but I was amazed when Julian said something like ‘either our own Caradoc or whoever might be impersonating him so perfectly’….
Perhaps
it was just one of those things which slip out in conversation and mean nothing. Come, let’s meet him.”

“He can’t live without making a mystery of something” I said angrily. “It’s his ruling monomania.” Benedicta smiled and took my hand pressing me down beside her before the burning logs. “I know” she said. “And yet he has nothing really to hide—not more nor less than any man.” What made me angry, I think, was this
sudden
questioning of Caradoc’s reality almost before he had been
reclaimed
from the grave. Yes, that was it.

“And Geneva!”

“It’s not far, just a short drive.”

“Do you think we can go?”

“Of course.”

She seemed so certain of everything as if something had happened to reassure her; what the basis of this new confidence could be I did not try to imagine. It was good to be here in this way, relaxed within
the boundaries of a new understanding that had lost the old fearful vigilance. Outlines of a new maturity of vision? One hardly dared to hope for so much. And yet there we were, effigies of our old selves, sitting in front of the fire and gazing at each other with a curious sense of renewal. “Tonight I want to sleep alone. Can I?” There was no need to ask me, was there? “I want to collect myself a little bit. Count out my loose change, so to speak.”

Baynes came and solemnised a little after dinner as was his way before he said goodnight and set up the little silver thermos of coffee which was practically the only relic I could recognise from past habits. “Do you still sleepwalk?” Benedicta smiled. “Not for ages now, perhaps never again. Let’s hope, shall we?” I stood up to take my leave but she went on with a restraining hand laid upon mine. “Stay just a second. I want to do something with you here; will you?”

She went into the inner room and emerged with an armful of the little leather postiche-boxes which had been such a feature of her ancient wardrobe. Opening them she tumbled out upon the floor in precious confusion all her wigs—the fine hair of nuns, of Swedish corpses, of Indonesian and Japanese geisha girls, of silk and thrilling nylon. All tumbled together in a heap. Then one by one, combing each softly with her long fingers, disentangling it, she began to put them on the fire. Black smoke and flame rose from this pyre. I did not question, did not exclaim, did not speak. “From now on nothing that isn’t my own” she said. “But I wanted to do it with you, somehow. Just to prove.”

* * * * *

I
t was not a long run, and it was a comfortable one, for Benedicta had unearthed a black sports car with good heating and a turn of rampant speed wherever the surfaces had been cleared. A heavy thaw had set in, the lakeside swam and wallowed in warm mist. The attentive white snarls of white mountain came out and retired again endlessly, like actors taking innumerable curtain calls. She drove with dash, but immaculately. The whole thing was as easy as breathing, or so it seemed to me. Even old Geneva looked its best with its snug Viennese flavoured architecture and its melancholy lake views; thawing ice was chinking along the river where the dark arterial thrust of the waters carved their way towards the southern issues—waters which would soon see Arles and Avignon.

We had lunch at the Quatorze, but were both too excited to eat very much. We walked silently by the water until it was time to turn our steps towards Manwick’s Tea Rooms—a relic which had been washed up at the end of the Victorian era and had remained as
authentic
as any Doge’s palace, unchanged, unblushing, uncorrupted…. It was the headquarters of the Nannies of Geneva (like Bonington’s in Rome). Very old ladies clad in home-weave smocks wielded cake slices. The tables were as heavy as William Morris, so was the cutlery; the walls were papered in something indeterminate which Ruskin would have admired. There was even a complete set of
Sherlock
Holmes in a yellowed Tauchnitz edition which lined one
window
embrasure. O the simplicity of everything was momentous. I mean that we saw him directly we entered, sitting at the far end, with his face buried in a book. It was not very crowded. But we were both suffocated with a sort of weird apprehension—we tiptoed
towards
him as one might toward some rare butterfly, trying to get a closer view without disturbing the rare specimen.

The fact of the matter is that we sat down at his table like a couple
of gun-dogs in a point. It seemed to last ages, this little tableau, but it could have been only a second or two before he closed his book and said in his familiar deep voice: “So there you are at last.” He must already have caught sight of us entering the place. “Caradoc!” He gave a raucous chuckle and threw back his head in a gesture which was familiarity itself. And yet … and yet. There was no doubt that he had changed. To begin with his hair, as plentiful as ever, was now no longer tabby, particoloured; it was white and as fine as the thread of silk. His mouth was mantled by an equally soft and sparse moustache of a mandarin kind. Beard there was none, and his pink rubicund face shone out upon the world like a winter sun. “It’s only old age,” he said as if to explain “only old age, look you.” Yet in another way he had never looked—I was going to say “
younger
”—but it might be more accurate to say something like “
healthier
”. His skin was firm and unwrinkled, his eyes glittering with amiable malice and hardly crowsfooted. Yes, one did have a moment of doubt about his real identity; but the voice clinched it. “The death and the resurrection” he boomed, ordering crumpets with a capacious gesture, yet taking a precautionary look into a little leather purse while doing so. An aged lady, all politeness, took his order with an approving smile. She had caught his last phrase and
doubtless
thought he was some friendly religious maniac—Geneva is full of them. The old darned plaid had been replaced with something of much the same style—a sort of evangelical overcoat with heavy cabman collars. He looked like a rather smart music-hall
coachman
.

“My God, Caradoc! You owe it to us to tell us all, everything.” He nodded briskly, as if he had every intention of so doing. But as a preliminary he took a small silver flask of something which looked suspiciously like whisky and tipped a modicum into his teacup; then he produced a tiny tortoiseshell snuffbox and tapped it with a fingernail before whiffing up a grain or two from his extended thumb. “Julian that old bodysnatcher wouldn’t believe it was me” he said with a certain pride. “That is what it does for you, escaping. I had three lots of twins straight off in Polynesia—bang off like that, without a moment’s effort. The little woman was only a child but she had read the stud-book, she knew racing form. More’s the pity,
I’ve had to leave them all behind because of funds. They would have looked damn rococo in London, I can swear.”