The Revolt of Aphrodite (50 page)

“But from the beginning, Caradoc. Why did you cause all this fuss and flurry, cause us such anguish and despair?”

“In one way I had to,” he said “to see how it felt. I had to. And the minute I’d done it I knew that it was the best, the most fruitful thing I had ever done. At the same time I knew just as certainly that it wasn’t necessary at all—it could have been done another way. But when someone wants jam on their bread it’s no good just describing it. They want to taste some. So you’ve got to provide some. But of course the firm was hard to persuade about this—particularly Julian. I bided my time. I thought in fact my chance would never come. Year after year, my boy, all the time getting more and more
successful
, piling up less and less reasons to leave my beautiful billet. But when the crash came I realised that I had to try. But aut Tunc aut Nunquam—it was then or never! And mighty successful it was, what I tasted of it, what I learned from it. All that coconut oil, you should feel my breasts. They are like a woman’s only prettier.” He poured some more tea, spliced it, and plunged into the crumpets until the butter was running off his chin. “After all,” he said indistinctly “what is it really to buzz off to a remote isle with a tropical Venus? Nothing very much. Time takes on a wonderful never-quite quality. Infinite extension, lad, causality pulling out like a rubber band. At first of course one misses doctors and dentists and Shakespeare and all that. Of course. I don’t deny it. One dreams of cod’s roe or roasted shad—many the night I’ve woken with tears in my voice at a New York restaurant. Waiters always whisked the shad away before I’d eaten it. But it didn’t last. Finally a sort of Prosperine feeling came over me. Exhausted by night and droopy by day, living on paw-paw and piggy-wiggy: I was in the lap of the local
lotus-eating
Gods I was. Never question it.”

“Then why come back?”

“That was another jolt from the blue. The whole group of those islands was scooped up by the Aussies. One morning I woke up and found coastguards all over my place and warships poking about. We were bought out for practically nothing. Expropriated! Then they started nosing into my papers because I cut up so very rough,
and I was on rather weak ground there. Apparently Robinson had quite a history behind him about which I knew nothing—he was bigamous to the core, old man, and the continent was studded with women crying out for vengeance and alimony. It was a terrible fix. I had to recover my own identity in order to escape from his wives. Then of course I had the inevitable note from Julian telling me not to be a fool. While I had no inclination to knuckle under I was in a squeeze and he knew it. I went through a long period of debate and finally I decided I would come back and rejoin the firm on the old terms. It cost me something to come to the decision, but I did it. And in a funny sort of way I felt relieved at having done it—as if I learned all I needed to learn from the experience out there with little Inky the wife and the funny ten-toed nippers. I bought them a
coconut
grove with my last cash—in another group—and said a tearful farewell. Landed in England dead broke, dead broke. And now….”

“Everything’s all right again” I cried.

“Far from it” said Caradoc ruefully. “Very far from it. I am living for the time being on the charity of old Banubula.”

“What?” said Benedicta incredulously.

He gave what in stage directions is sometimes called a “dark laugh” and snuffed once, with a pained hauteur. “I rang up Julian when I arrived but he was awfully evasive though kind: just off on a long trip, you know the sort of thing. I didn’t like to talk about reinstatement point blank and he didn’t mention it. And I knew that Delambert had been given all my appointments and charges. Well, the upshot of it was that he told me he would like to see me in Geneva to talk things over; and this he duly did a few days ago, but without any result.”

“But it’s scandalous” I said hotly. Caradoc shook his head quickly and put out a hand as if to intercept the charge in mid air. “O no” he said. “It’s not like that. Don’t get the impression Julian is out to punish me, to victimise me—nothing like that. He is far above any such considerations. No, it was as if, in a sense, I had missed a step on the ladder, on the moving staircase, and I would have to wait awhile until the turn came round again. It was all to do with the firm, and the destiny of the firm: of us all, I suppose, in a way. It was a most extraordinary interview.

“It took place in a suitably mysterious setting on the lake some way out beyond the United Nations buildings: (by the way, in the course of other matters he said nonchalantly that the firm was hoping to take the building over next year—and I wondered what about the inhabitants, all those people living in the woodwork?) Anyway I was summoned at dusk to meet a small motor-boat. Dead calm oily water, heavy thaw, almost like a late autumn night with a full moon and all those blasted mountains showing their teeth like wolves. It could have been eerie to some I suppose. Nor was it very far along. Just by a landing-stage amid a cluster of tall dark trees there was a rotunda of sorts with a rose arbour, and a table with cold marble chairs surrounding it. He was sitting alone there waiting for me with a great goblet of wine in front of him, opposite in front of what was obviously to be my chair was another equally heartening-looking one with brandy. It was warm; I feared I might get piles sitting on the marble but the sight of the brandy reassured me. ‘Well’ he said. ‘At last. I’m so glad it’s over.’ Quite a promising beginning wouldn’t you say? So thought I.

“I advanced to receive his hesitant cool handshake. Of course as always he was sitting with his back to the moon so that he was all outline, if you see what I mean. His face was in half-shadow. Once or twice I saw a moonflake alight on his crown—white hair or very blond, one couldn’t say which. And in a funny sort of way the optical illusion created by the watery moonlight gave the impression that he was altering shape all the time; not very conspicuously, you
understand.
But it could be seen; it was like a gentle breathing, systole and diastole. But his voice was just the same as always—the
pained-lamb
voice Pulley used to call it, remember? He questioned me very calmly and quietly about what I had been doing on my island; showed every mark of considerate attention. Also the brandy was excellent. I roughed in my little crusoe, as you might call it. Then he said: ‘And you expected to be taken back just like that? You expected the firm to grant you absolution and a hundred lines and take you back?’ I mumbled a bit and scraped the gravel with my toe. Then somewhat to my surprise he went on. ‘And of course it will. But you will have to wait until it can find a place for you, having abandoned your own so suddenly. The ranks have closed, you know.’”

Caradoc paused.

“Of course I wouldn’t want for a decent living outside the firm; I could get something good tomorrow. But … I don’t know how it is, yet the idea didn’t appeal to me very much. All my adult creative life has been spent with the firm. He said it really wasn’t a question of money but of order. If he took me back now, before waiting my turn, he could only offer me relatively menial things to do, things which might waste my grey matter and time and in the long run be bad for my credit and standing. ‘We have always treated you in the same way, and neither of us can change now’ he added, sadly, I thought. ‘We have offered you only things which
nobody
else
could
do,
nobody
living.
So we will have to wait for our reality-jolt as you waited so many years for yours.’ I suppose you will think it
nonsense
but it carried a queer kind of conviction for me. I drank my flowing bowl and gazed sleepily at him. Really, he is a marvellous character Julian, a strange one. I’d like to know him better, to know more about it. He seemed sort of hurt, as if he were nursing some sort of internal grievance against the order of things. I don’t know. He surprised me by saying: ‘Yes, we must wait for it—who knows till when? Perhaps one of these days you will be asked to build a tomb for Jocas out there in Turkey.”

Jocas! Nobody could have been further from my own thoughts at that moment. “And then what, Caradoc?”

Caradoc performed a rather clumsy mopping up operation with a spruce handkerchief. “Nothing” he said. “Or practically nothing. He spoke a bit about you, with great affection I must add. He said he still had hopes that you would understand the issues better—whatever that meant. Then he said the time was getting on. Right in the background, outside the large house shrouded in big trees, I had heard the continuous noise of car-tyres on gravel and seen the sweeping of headlights as limousine after limousine drew up and disgorged its occupants. There was a steady movement into the lighted hallway of the building; it looked like people going to an opera, for I saw women in evening dress. But Julian wasn’t
dinner-jacketed;
striped shirt and speckled bow tie and dark suit, as I could half guess. He caught the direction of my eye and said: ‘It’s
gambling
, Caradoc. For the first time I have started to gamble and lose,
a thing I have never done. It makes one most uncertain. I had
become
over-confident and always risked very large sums. I had got used you see, never to losing heavily. But now, I don’t know. I dare not reduce my habits of
play
for fear of altering my
luck,
the basic psychic predisposition to win which I enjoyed over so many years. I hope it doesn’t mean something serious. I have always avoided studying the matter of play because I believed in luck but lately I have been wondering if a computerised study might yield some ideas which would help me. And yet I feel such a thing would be fatal,
fatal.
’
He repeated the word with such emphasis that I felt a vague sort of sympathy and alarm for him. ‘I’m stuck in a way’ he said, and then abruptly stood up and said goodnight, keeping himself face forwards to me as I went down to the landing-stage where the little boat lay. The driver lit the dash and kicked the engine over. I turned and looked back across the inky water, just in time to see the dark indistinct figure of Julian moving away towards the house. He had his hands folded behind his back, his head bowed. I could see the glow of a cigar in his fingers. I don’t know what I felt—a sort of confused relief mixed with disappointment and doubt; and also a kind of confidence in him. I felt he’d have told me more if he could—if he had known any more than he did. It must sound preposterous I suppose, but then the simplest things come to sound
preposterous.
I don’t know. Also, he had not touched his wine. How typical of him to sit there, flower in buttonhole, with a bubble of blood in front of him.”

He lowered his massive head on his breast for a moment and seemed to brood, though in fact he was smiling a smile of resignation—or so it seemed, though perhaps I was misled by the new babyish contours of the familiar face. “So there it is, roughly speaking—that is the state of play for the moment. I am not unduly worried even though I realise that it may last for ever—I mean I might never get back. At my age, you see.” He snuffed slowly once more and sat back in his seat to smile upon us with an unguarded affection as he
supplied
us with other characteristic details of his earthly life, such as, for example, that owing to his domestic exuberance he had
developed
a weakness in the belly wall which forced him to wear a suspensory which he called a
soutien-Georges.

Then abruptly turning back to the original matter of his
conversation
he said: “You might say that not having freed myself
completely
from the firm and yet not having come back either I was in a sort of limbo. Not a ghost and yet still not quite a man.” I put out my hand to touch him—I must confess I went through a moment of doubt as to whether my fingers might not meet through his wrist. “Take my pulse” he said. I tried, but could find no trace of one; yet the flesh was solid flesh. “I suppose you don’t cast a shadow either like the traditional
Doppelgänger
?”
But he was humming a light air and gazing about him with happy abstraction. “The twentieth of every month is the day of Epicurus. I celebrate mildly, ever so mildly. With old
soutien-Georges
here I cannot go the whole hog.
Je
n
’
ai
plus
des
femmes
mais
j
’
ai
des
i
dées
maîtresses.
”
But he was not disconsolate or cast down by having to make the confession. He intoned to a fingerbeat.

This was apparently a free translation from some Epicurean proverb. Then next:

He paused, attempted to recover some more verses and failed in somewhat uncharacteristic fashion. Then he gave a simulacrum of his ancient roar and gestured at the door. “There he comes, Horatio the Magnificent”; and we saw with surprise and delight another familiar figure weaving its way towards us. It was Banubula.

Yes, it was Banubula all right, but in a somewhat advanced stage of what might have seemed intoxication. He wove towards us, all elegance, gesturing with the silver knob of his walking-stick. He was gloved and circumspectly hatted, not to mention spatted—for he sported his favourite grey spats. Radiant is hardly the word—he smirked his way over to us smiling with his loose lips and moving his eyebrows about. Our greetings were effusive and somewhat
confused
.
The Count turned on Caradoc and said somewhat
reproachfully,
“I suppose you have told them about me—I suppose they know? How vexatious, I would have liked to boast!” Caradoc shook his burly dogged head. “Not a word” he said gravely. “Not a blasted word. If they do know it’s not from me.”