The Unicorn (28 page)

Effingham now called out in a quite different voice. ‘Hello there, hello! Help! Help!’ The answering cry, a long way off, came again. It was certainly a human voice. Effingham continued to call. The light increased, still within darkness, but he was able now to apprehend his own form, to see his arms dimly, to be aware of space about him. He went on calling and the other person went on answering though without seeming to move. Then after a short silence the voice called out, suddenly much nearer. ‘Mr Cooper!’ It was the voice of Denis Nolan.

‘Denis!’ cried Effingham. It was the happiest sound he had ever uttered in his life. ‘Denis, Denis, Denis!’ The tears started into his eyes. His old unregenerate being was with him again. He would live.

‘Are you stuck, sir?’

Effingham could still see nothing clearly. The darkness had become a light brownish-blueish haze. ‘Yes, dreadfully. I’m almost in it up to my waist. I can’t move any more. For heaven’s sake be careful what you do or you’ll fall in too. There’s a sort of pit here. Perhaps you’d better wait till there’s more light and fetch some people with a ladder. If you can find your way back to me. I think I’m good for some time yet’

Silence followed and then Effingham could see the figure of Denis approaching him. It was a marvel to see at last something upright, to see a man. Denis seemed to be walking lightly over the surface of the bog, his feet scarcely touching the ground. A small dark shape was following him which materialized a moment later as a donkey. Denis and the donkey stopped about thirty yards away. The light increased.

‘What in God’s name are you standing on, Denis?’

There are paths in the bog, old brushwood paths. Only one has to know them. This is as near as I can get to you on the path.’

Effingham groaned. ‘You’ll never reach me. There’s a morass all round. You’d better get helpers. Only for God’s sake be quick.’

‘I’ll reach you. It’s not too bad for a little way just here. I’m going to lay down brushwood on top of the bog. It won’t take long. Keep quite still and don’t struggle at all.’

Denis unloaded a bulky bundle from the back of the donkey. Swiftly and deftly be began to cast the lengths of brushwood on to the dark surface of the bog. He pressed it in a little and laid more on top. The dawn light now showed the flat un-featured land all around. The path lengthened toward Effingham.

Denis worked quickly padding to and fro. Effingham saw that the plimsoll-clad feet were scarcely muddied. He began cautiously to move his legs in the mud, preparatory to taking control of his body again, and with a gasp slipped a little farther. The bog clasped his waist. He was indeed not ‘good for some time yet’.

‘Keep still, I told you.’ Denis was now almost near enough to touch him. ‘Listen, when I reach you we’ll do it quickly. I’m going to take you under the arms and pull gently and you will swim with your legs as if you were in the water. Here I am now. Now move quietly and as I tell you. I’ve got you, there, I’ll kneel and you hold on to my shoulders. Now swim with your legs and come upward, upward.’

It seemed afterwards to Effingham as if Denis’s very words had given him a new power. He was not able to ‘swim’ with his legs, which seemed paralysed, but he agitated them a little and urged his body upward in unison with Denis’s steady pull.

‘Now stop. Now again. Stop. Again. Now I can pull you on to the brushwood. Yes, use your hands a little. Don’t try to get up, just lie. Rest now. And in a minute you’ll crawl along to the firmer place. Rest. Now crawl. Give me one hand. Just slither along. I’ll keep pulling you.’

Panting with exhaustion, Effingham managed to propel his sodden muddy body along the surface of the brushwood, which was already beginning to descend quietly into the bog. At last under his groping hand he felt a firmer surface and in a moment was sitting on the path. The sky was a cloudy blue and the sun was rising. ‘Denis, what can I say. Thank you.’

‘It’s nothing, sir. You’ll walk soon.’

‘Don’t call me “sir”. I think I can walk now. If you’ll help me up.’

‘No hurry. There. Try your legs a little. I’ll just undo the donkey. It’s a little wild one. We can leave it here.’

‘Won’t it fall into the bog?’

‘No, those creatures know the paths. It’ll follow us along a bit, you’ll see, and then it will go off to its own people.’

‘How beautiful the bog looks in the sun. So many colours, reds and blues and yellows. I never knew it had so many colours. I can walk now, Denis.’

‘We’ll go, then. The path is firm but quite narrow, and it’s hard to see. You’d better take my hand.’

They set off along the path in the first sunshine, Denis leading Effingham by the hand and the donkey following.

‘Lift your arm, Effie, into the sleeve, that’s right.’

‘Forward a bit, let me tuck your shirt in at the back.’

‘Feet up, while I put these slippers on.’

He was dressed in Gerald’s tweeds, fragrant with Hannah’s bath-salts, and alone with the three women. Their handsome faces, lit with tenderness and love, hovered over him angel-like.

‘In the eastern church,’ said Effingham, ‘the Holy Trinity is sometimes represented as three angels.’ He had drunk a great deal of whiskey since his return. Now he seemed to be being patted all over by three pairs of hands. He added, ‘Automatically, quite automatically.’

‘What do you mean, Effie? You’ve said that several times already. You were saying it when Denis brought you in.’

‘I’m trying to remember something -‘

‘It’s just as well Denis was here. None of the village people would have gone up at night. Had you been shouting for long when Denis heard you?’

‘Oh, I called out “Help” every now and then. I expected someone would turn up.’

‘You’re very brave. I should have just panicked. Wouldn’t you, Marian, Alice?’

That wasn’t quite right though, what he had just said, Effingham thought. He tried to focus his gaze upon the women, but they drew together into a single fuzzy golden orb. His body felt limp yet glorious, as if he had been reborn, as if he had crawled forth into a new element and lay yet upon the shore, weary but transfigured. He wished he could remember what he was trying to remember.

‘I’m sure I should have panicked. It was such a long time.

Whatever did you think about, Effingham, when you were just sinking in?’

‘I’d rather not know,’ he said. That was a nonsensical sort of answer. But he could scarcely yet bear to think of the recent past as real. It was a vague blackness rapidly receding like a nightmare which remains present to the waking mind as a terrible dissolving something.

‘Don’t worry him, Marian. Give him more whiskey, Alice.’

‘I want to help him to remember. I’m sure it’s better. What is it that happens “quite automatically”, Effingham?’

Effingham concentrated. The three angels were a radiant globe out of which light streamed forth. He had seen this before. The globe was the world, the universe. He said, ‘I think it is love which happens automatically when love is death.’

‘I think you’re sozzled, Effie.’

‘Sssh, Alice, let him talk.’

He sat up. He was still not sure, but he thought now that he could explain it to them. Perhaps after all he could recapture his vision, though he did not yet know its name and awaited his own words to tell him. He could not in memory determine how long the vision had lasted. It might have been only a minute or only a second; and it had faded utterly with the return of his will to live. Yet he felt that it was in some sense still there, hidden in the core of the nightmare object. He must fix his attention upon it before it was engulfed and darkened and made as black as the bog itself.

He ‘OhGod! And then?’looked up at Hannah and found himself suddenly able to see her quite clearly as if a light had been shone on her and as if the other two faces had been merged in hers leaving only one image. ‘You see,’ he said laboriously. If only he could play a little for time the vision might announce itself quite simply through his speech. ‘You see, it’s not a bit like what Freud and Wagner think.’

‘What do you mean, Effie darling? What about Freud and Wagner?’

He stared at Hannah. Her beautiful tired face was smiling down upon him. After all she was his guide, his Beatrice. It came to him that she must have been somehow connected with the revelation which was made to him in the bog. Perhaps this was the truth, this the very truth, which resided in her in a sort of sleeping state and which made round about her the perpetual sense of a spiritual disturbance. Surely she would understand him. ‘You see. You see. You see, death is not the consummation of oneself but just the end of oneself. It’s very simple. Before the self vanishes nothing really is, and that’s how it is most of the time. But as soon as the self vanishes everything is, and becomes automatically the object of love. Love holds the world together, and if we could forget ourselves everything in the world would fly into a perfect harmony, and when we see beautiful things that is what they remind us of.’

‘I think he’s delirious. That’s just a garbled version of something Father -‘

‘It can’t be quite as simple as that, Effingham -‘

‘I see what you mean, Effie, go on.’

Effingham looked up imploringly into the angelic face. No it couldn’t be as simple as that, and yet he was sure these were the right words. He felt that it was all fading and that he was going to forget it after all. He would be left with an empty description, the thing itself utterly gone from view. He tried to repeat the words again, like a prayer, like a charm. ‘It’s automatic, you see, that’s what’s so important. You just have to look in the other direction -‘ But he no longer believed what he was saying. And as he looked he saw the three heads sliding apart, unfolded, unwrapped, spread out in front of him. The big thing had gone; and yet perhaps something remained.

He loved Hannah. But did he not in loving her love the others too? How beautifully they were now drawn together in spiritual amity, in a lovely configuration by their joint concern for him, and what a perfect object of love they made, they-loving-him, together. So love, making an unchecked circuit, returned to himself. He contemplated them. This at least he could explain. It was not the big thing, but it was surely an exquisite little thing.

He began again. ‘Us four, for instance. With so much good will between us, why aren’t we perfect with each other? What stops us being? We can’t make the whole world into a republic of love, but one can make a little corner of our own here -‘

I’m sure we are ready to try, dearest Effie -‘

The trouble is, until the whole world -‘

‘Effie, I think you’d better come home -‘

‘You and Alice, for instance. You both love me. Well, you ought to love each other too. And, Marian, I love you of course. Love is so easy, it’s practically
necessary,
if only -‘

‘I’m sorry to break in on this metaphysical discussion, but I have some very grave news for all of you.’ The voice of Gerald Scottow spoke from the door.

Hannah, who had been sitting close to Effingham, rose at once, and the group drew apart, as Gerald closed the door and advanced upon them. He was a little breathless and plainly agitated or excited. For Effingham the scene was suddenly collected, focused, over-vivid in its precision, and dark. The golden glow had faded. He was aware of a rainy light at a murky window pane.

‘What is it, in God’s name?’ said Hannah, her hand going to her throat.

‘Peter is on his way back to Gaze.’

‘Peter?’ said Effingham stupidly.

‘Peter. Peter Crean-Smith. Hannah’s husband.’ Gerald raised his voice.