The Secret Places of the Heart (4 page)

The paroxysm was over. Ten seconds later this cataclysmal lunatic had
reverted to sanity—a rather sheepish sanity.

He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and turned his back on the
car. He remarked in a voice of melancholy detachment: "It was a mistake
to bring that coupe."

Dr. Martineau had assumed an attitude of trained observation on the side
path. His hands rested on his hips and his hat was a little on one
side. He was inclined to agree with Sir Richmond. "I don't know," he
considered. "You wanted some such blow-off as this."

"Did I?"

"The energy you have! That car must be somebody's whipping boy."

"The devil it is!" said Sir Richmond, turning round sharply and staring
at it as if he expected it to display some surprising and yet familiar
features. Then he looked questioningly and suspiciously at his
companion.

"These outbreaks do nothing to amend the originating grievance," said
the doctor. "No. And at times they are even costly. But they certainly
lift a burthen from the nervous system.... And now I suppose we have to
get that little ruin to Maidenhead."

"Little ruin!" repeated Sir Richmond. "No. There's lots of life in the
little beast yet."

He reflected. "She'll have to be towed." He felt in his breast pocket.
"Somewhere I have the R.A.C. order paper, the Badge that will Get
You Home. We shall have to hail some passing car to take it into
Maidenhead."

Dr. Martineau offered and Sir Richmond took and lit a cigarette.

For a little while conversation hung fire. Then for the first time Dr.
Martineau heard his patient laugh.

"Amazing savage," said Sir Richmond. "Amazing savage!"

He pointed to his handiwork. "The little car looks ruffled. Well it
may."

He became grave again. "I suppose I ought to apologize."

Dr. Martineau weighed the situation. "As between doctor and patient,"
he said. "No."

"Oh!" said Sir Richmond, turned to a new point of view. "But where the
patient ends and the host begins.... I'm really very sorry." He reverted
to his original train of thought which had not concerned Dr. Martineau
at all. "After all, the little car was only doing what she was made to
do."

The affair of the car effectively unsealed Sir Richmond's mind. Hitherto
Dr. Martineau had perceived the possibility and danger of a defensive
silence or of a still more defensive irony; but now that Sir Richmond
had once given himself away, he seemed prepared to give himself away to
an unlimited extent. He embarked upon an apologetic discussion of the
choleric temperament.

He began as they stood waiting for the relief car from the Maidenhead
garage. "You were talking of the ghosts of apes and monkeys that
suddenly come out from the darkness of the subconscious...."

"You mean—when we first met at Harley Street?"

"That last apparition of mine seems to have been a gorilla at least."

The doctor became precise. "Gorillaesque. We are not descended from
gorillas."

"Queer thing a fit of rage is!"

"It's one of nature's cruder expedients. Crude, but I doubt if it is
fundamental. There doesn't seem to be rage in the vegetable world, and
even among the animals—? No, it is not universal." He ran his mind over
classes and orders. "Wasps and bees certainly seem to rage, but if one
comes to think, most of the invertebrata show very few signs of it."

"I'm not so sure," said Sir Richmond. "I've never seen a snail in a
towering passion or an oyster slamming its shell behind it. But these
are sluggish things. Oysters sulk, which is after all a smouldering sort
of rage. And take any more active invertebrate. Take a spider. Not
a smashing and swearing sort of rage perhaps, but a disciplined,
cold-blooded malignity. Crabs fight. A conger eel in a boat will rage
dangerously."

"A vertebrate. Yes. But even among the vertebrata; who has ever seen a
furious rabbit?"

"Don't the bucks fight?" questioned Sir Richmond.

Dr. Martineau admitted the point.

"I've always had these fits of passion. As far back as I can remember.
I was a kicking, screaming child. I threw things. I once threw a fork
at my elder brother and it stuck in his forehead, doing no serious
damage—happily. There were whole days of wrath—days, as I remember
them. Perhaps they were only hours.... I've never thought before what
a peculiar thing all this raging is in the world. WHY do we rage? They
used to say it was the devil. If it isn't the devil, then what the devil
is it? After all," he went on as the doctor was about to answer his
question; "as you pointed out, it isn't the lowlier things that rage.
It's the HIGHER things and US."

"The devil nowadays," the doctor reflected after a pause, "so far as
man is concerned, is understood to be the ancestral ape. And more
particularly the old male ape."

But Sir Richmond was away on another line of thought. "Life itself,
flaring out. Brooking no contradiction." He came round suddenly to the
doctor's qualification. "Why male? Don't little girls smash things just
as much?"

"They don't," said Dr. Martineau. "Not nearly as much."

Sir Richmond went off at a tangent again. "I suppose you have watched
any number of babies?"'

"Not nearly as many as a general practitioner would do. There's a lot of
rage about most of them at first, male or female."

"Queer little eddies of fury.... Recently—it happens—I've been seeing
one. A spit of red wrath, clenching its fists and squalling threats at a
damned disobedient universe."

The doctor was struck by an idea and glanced quickly and questioningly
at his companion's profile.

"Blind driving force," said Sir Richmond, musing.

"Isn't that after all what we really are?" he asked the doctor.
"Essentially—Rage. A rage in dead matter, making it alive."

"Schopenhauer," footnoted the doctor. "Boehme."

"Plain fact," said Sir Richmond. "No Rage—no Go."

"But rage without discipline?"

"Discipline afterwards. The rage first."

"But rage against what? And FOR what?"

"Against the Universe. And for—? That's more difficult. What IS the
little beast squalling itself crimson for? Ultimately? ... What is it
clutching after? In the long run, what will it get?"

("Yours the car in distress what sent this?" asked an unheeded voice.)

"Of course, if you were to say 'desire'," said Dr. Martineau, "then you
would be in line with the psychoanalysts. They talk of LIBIDO, meaning
a sort of fundamental desire. Jung speaks of it at times almost as if it
were the universal driving force."

"No," said Sir Richmond, in love with his new idea. "Not desire. Desire
would have a definite direction, and that is just what this driving
force hasn't. It's rage."

"Yours the car in distress what sent this?" the voice repeated. It was
the voice of a mechanic in an Overland car. He was holding up the blue
request for assistance that Sir Richmond had recently filled in.

The two philosophers returned to practical matters.

For half an hour after the departure of the little Charmeuse car with
Sir Richmond and Dr. Martineau, the brass Mercury lay unheeded in the
dusty roadside grass. Then it caught the eye of a passing child.

He was a bright little boy of five. From the moment when he caught the
gleam of brass he knew that he had made the find of his life. But his
nurse was a timorous, foolish thing. "You did ought to of left it there,
Masterrarry," she said.

"Findings ain't keepings nowadays, not by no manner of means,
Masterrarry.

"Yew'd look silly if a policeman came along arsting people if they seen
a goldennimage.

"Arst yer 'ow you come by it and look pretty straight at you."

All of which grumblings Master Harry treated with an experienced
disregard. He knew definitely that he would never relinquish this bright
and lovely possession again. It was the first beautiful thing he had
ever possessed. He was the darling of fond and indulgent parents and his
nursery was crowded with hideous rag and sawdust dolls, golliwogs, comic
penguins, comic lions, comic elephants and comic policemen and every
variety of suchlike humorous idiocy and visual beastliness. This figure,
solid, delicate and gracious, was a thing of a different order.

There was to be much conflict and distress, tears and wrath, before
the affinity of that clean-limbed, shining figure and his small soul was
recognized. But he carried his point at last. The Mercury became his
inseparable darling, his symbol, his private god, the one dignified
and serious thing in a little life much congested by the quaint, the
burlesque, and all the smiling, dull condescensions of adult love.

The little Charmeuse was towed to hospital and the two psychiatrists
took up their quarters at the Radiant Hotel with its pleasant lawns and
graceful landing stage at the bend towards the bridge. Sir Richmond,
after some trying work at the telephone, got into touch with his own
proper car. A man would bring the car down in two days' time at latest,
and afterwards the detested coupe could go back to London. The day was
still young, and after lunch and coffee upon a sunny lawn a boat seemed
indicated. Sir Richmond astonished the doctor by going to his room,
reappearing dressed in tennis flannels and looking very well in them. It
occurred to the doctor as a thing hitherto unnoted that Sir Richmond was
not indifferent to his personal appearance. The doctor had no flannels,
but he had brought a brown holland umbrella lined with green that he had
acquired long ago in Algiers, and this served to give him something of
the riverside quality.

The day was full of sunshine and the river had a Maytime animation. Pink
geraniums, vivid green lawns, gay awnings, bright glass, white paint and
shining metal set the tone of Maidenhead life. At lunch there had been
five or six small tables with quietly affectionate couples who talked in
undertones, a tableful of bright-coloured Jews who talked in overtones,
and a family party from the Midlands, badly smitten with shyness, who
did not talk at all. "A resort, of honeymoon couples," said the doctor,
and then rather knowingly: "Temporary honeymoons, I fancy, in one or two
of the cases."

"Decidedly temporary," said Sir Richmond, considering the company—"in
most of the cases anyhow. The two in the corner might be married. You
never know nowadays."

He became reflective....

After lunch and coffee he rowed the doctor up the river towards
Cliveden.

"The last time I was here," he said, returning to the subject, "I was
here on a temporary honeymoon."

The doctor tried to look as though he had not thought that could be
possible.

"I know my Maidenhead fairly well," said Sir Richmond. "Aquatic
activities, such as rowing, punting, messing about with a boat-hook,
tying up, buzzing about in motor launches, fouling other people's boats,
are merely the stage business of the drama. The ruling interests of this
place are love—largely illicit—and persistent drinking.... Don't you
think the bridge charming from here?"

"I shouldn't have thought—drinking," said Dr. Martineau, after he had
done justice to the bridge over his shoulder.

"Yes, the place has a floating population of quiet industrious soakers.
The incurable river man and the river girl end at that."

Dr. Martineau encouraged Sir Richmond by an appreciative silence.

"If we are to explore the secret places of the heart," Sir Richmond went
on, "we shall have to give some attention to this Maidenhead side of
life. It is very material to my case. I have,—as I have said—BEEN
HERE. This place has beauty and charm; these piled-up woods behind which
my Lords Astor and Desborough keep their state, this shining mirror
of the water, brown and green and sky blue, this fringe of reeds and
scented rushes and forget-me-not and lilies, and these perpetually
posing white swans: they make a picture. A little artificial it is true;
one feels the presence of a Conservancy Board, planting the rushes and
industriously nicking the swans; but none the less delightful. And this
setting has appealed to a number of people as an invitation, as, in a
way, a promise. They come here, responsive to that promise of beauty
and happiness. They conceive of themselves here, rowing swiftly and
gracefully, punting beautifully, brandishing boat-hooks with ease and
charm. They look to meet, under pleasant or romantic circumstances,
other possessors and worshippers of grace and beauty here. There will
be glowing evenings, warm moonlight, distant voices singing....There is
your desire, doctor, the desire you say is the driving force of life.
But reality mocks it. Boats bump and lead to coarse ungracious
quarrels; rowing can be curiously fatiguing; punting involves dreadful
indignities. The romance here tarnishes very quickly. Romantic
encounters fail to occur; in our impatience we resort to—accosting.
Chilly mists arise from the water and the magic of distant singing
is provided, even excessively, by boatloads of cads—with collecting
dishes. When the weather keeps warm there presently arises an
extraordinary multitude of gnats, and when it does not there is a need
for stimulants. That is why the dreamers who come here first for a light
delicious brush with love, come down at last to the Thamesside barmaid
with her array of spirits and cordials as the quintessence of all
desire."

"I say," said the doctor. "You tear the place to pieces."

"The desires of the place," said Sir Richmond.

"I'm using the place as a symbol."

He held his sculls awash, rippling in the water.

"The real force of life, the rage of life, isn't here," he said. "It's
down underneath, sulking and smouldering. Every now and then it strains
and cracks the surface. This stretch of the Thames, this pleasure
stretch, has in fact a curiously quarrelsome atmosphere. People scold
and insult one another for the most trivial things, for passing too
close, for taking the wrong side, for tying up or floating loose. Most
of these notice boards on the bank show a thoroughly nasty spirit.
People on the banks jeer at anyone in the boats. You hear people
quarrelling in boats, in the hotels, as they walk along the towing path.
There is remarkably little happy laughter here. The RAGE, you see, is
hostile to this place, the RAGE breaks through.... The people who
drift from one pub to another, drinking, the people who fuddle in the
riverside hotels, are the last fugitives of pleasure, trying to forget
the rage...."