Wild Geese Overhead (17 page)

The drunkenness that was not drunk; that was sober as the lidless stars—that winked at him!

Let the mole come and the owl, the weasel and the bat.…

The cool night air washed fantasy from his mind in a shiver of clarity.

For there was a tremendous difference between the abandon of the old drunken Dionysian revel and this strange exquisite abandon of his “vision”. True, there was kinship; up to a point, there was bodily warmth, fusion; but ah how profound, how unbridgeable, the essential difference! For in the Dionysian revel, the self, the ego, whirled unrestricted in its desires into a state of frenzy; but in the “vision” the ego was lost in the calm uprising of the second self, the deeper self, into conscious freedom.

Extraordinary to think there had been times that night when he had got not only an extreme detachment from his fellows but an affection for them, an understanding that had something akin to the understanding of saints! What possibilities of complacency are there! Shut up! he said, poked in the ribs by himself.

He sat down. What was time anyway?

For there was one happy circumstance, he felt, fixed now fairly securely in his mind, helping him at the difficult moment, giving him an odd resiliency and power. He knew he could not command this “vision”—what an appalling word for so simple a reality!—but it did induce its own aftermath; just as a body that has been sunbathing feels the sun-warmth on its skin—even along the bones, in the marrow—long after it has been dressed, so that it seems to walk in airy naked freedom under its clothes.

Presumably there must be the penalty of the old polarity: where there is height there is depth; where there is ecstasy there must be despair. And, by degree, despair that becomes that terrible “dark night of the soul”.…

Well, a fellow must pay all due penalties. That was adventure. Meantime he had not got quite that length, thank God!

He looked about him. Even Jenny and Philip were detached from him. He could admire their physical beauty and aptitude one for the other. More than that, he could feel an affection for them.

His thought stopped abruptly.

He took out his book, smoothed it with his palms, smiled, and laid it on the grass. Then very carefully he took out the clock, whose glass was broken, and felt for the hands with his finger-tips. Bare, but intact! He nodded. Only our glass face is broken.

Tik-tik-tik-tik
…it went. He listened to it as to a magic toy. Talk of overtones in meanings! and he glanced conspiratorially at the stars.

But this time the stars remained aloof and, embarrassed, he became a cheapjack at a fair. Now there is the book of the flowers, he said. See? There. Her book of the flowers. Very well, I will place it under the circle of eternal time and we'll see what happens. Watch!

Immediately he placed the short metal legs of the little clock on the hard cover of the book, the
tik-tik-tik-tik
…became much louder and firmer.

Now I wonder, he said, forgetting the people at the fair, what that means? He was prepared to challenge the stars, who had withdrawn from him at the moment of the abrupt stop in his thoughts. But there seemed a greater radiance in the heavens, coming surely from behind him. He turned his head. The moon had risen above the horizon, but now one side of it was half eaten away. The gibbous moon. He stared at it, then his head drooped.

After a time, the impatient little clock drew his eyes.

“Very well,” he said slowly, “let's all go home together.”

F
orenoon in the office and the telephone asking for him. It was Philip. “Are you engaged for to-morrow night?”

“Well, yes, I am. I have a meeting on. Why?”

“Listen. We're having a show—usual reunion family affair and all that. Quite a crowd. Dancing and what-not. There will be a particular old friend of yours there. You can put off your meeting, surely?”

“I don't know,” said Will. “I really feel——”

“What about a spot of lunch to-day?”

“Well—yes.”

“I'll be a bit rushed, for I'm in the throes—but the same place same time. Right?”

“Right.”

His meeting was the usual committee one and Will wanted to see Joe. He did not want to go to the family reunion affair—which was a collection of the Mansons' friends, a cross section of the influential business and professional life of the city. He remembered it from of old. Tails and all the rest and pleasant enough, but he would rather be with Joe many times over. Moreover, it was obvious that this invitation was very much an afterthought. Some late-comer—obviously a woman—had blown up unexpectedly.…

And this proved to be the case. Philip was quite frank about it. “I know you don't care for those things. But when this girl blew in, full of Paris and Communism, and asked for you, I thought you might enjoy the joke. You can guess?”

“No.”

“Felicity.”

Will laughed. “Félice,” he murmured, and his cheeks grew warm.

“Sounds French!”

“No, just Swinburne.”

“Like that, was it?”

“No, just poetry. Remarkable thing, poetry, Philip. It's a pity you didn't go in for poetry. Or no—it's just as well. It would have made your technique too overpowering. And it's pretty successful as it is.”

Philip gave his easy laugh. “Getting at anything?”

“No. Just remembering from of old. Though I did see you yesterday afternoon again, now that I think of it! It really was amusing, too. I had been walking behind the lady and thought to myself—Jove, there's a beauty. I was wondering whether her face was equal to the rest of her, when you both met.”

“And your conclusion?”

“Oh, more so. Trust Philip for that! I thought.”

He smiled. “She is pretty good, isn't she.” It was not a question, for on such a matter he never required an opinion. He looked pleased, all the same; a trifle too pleased, Will thought; for there is a male smile of certainty that in its suggestion of modesty almost achieves the unctuous.

“Official?” Will asked, deciding to add a flick of butter to his roll.

“No,” said Philip.

“Not that I'm curious or would wish to intrude. I suppose I'm really trying to find out if she'll be there to-morrow night.” He smiled as if unaware he had been too direct.

“Actually, she won't,” said Philip coolly.

“Pity,” said Will. “Not, of course,” he added, “that I could have hoped to—ah—have interfered with your eye.”

Then Philip smiled. “Would you have had a try?”

“I might, you know.”

Philip was lingeringly amused. “All the same, it's a subject we need not mention—there. By the way, of course we'll put you up. You'll have to bring your things from your country residence. You have the necessary gear?”

“If the moths haven't been at 'em.”

“Good.” And he settled time and place.

As Will walked back to the office, he knew that Philip had rather enjoyed the lunch. Dark blue suit to-day, perfectly cut, and pale blue shirt and tie, giving the cool air of the morning bath to his graceful form. Real man's man—men liked him—and yet with those little intimacies of manner that were so friendly. Almost feminine apprehension he had of the personal relationship; could take you into his confidence and flatter you with a glance, a careless remark. And almost at the same time was reserved and cool. His very best feature was his reserve over a girl like Jenny. It was his private affair—and no one else's. Will liked that in him. It was just one of those little interludes in his life: it would come and it would go. He would manage it perfectly—and would no more unnecessarily expose it than he would his own body.

Part of the enjoyment he got from lunch was talking to Will with a perfect equality, an extra careless friendliness, seeing him not so well dressed, not so well off, doing his unimportant job. That Will had fallen from the realm of social importance merely made it all the more interesting in a way.…

Therefore with Jenny, where the cleavage was so vast, with what perfection of “equality” the cavalier in him would act! How considerate he would be of her virgin innocence while he—well.…

One naturally helped the thought out with a shrug. And a small laugh for luck.

He managed to get Joe on the telephone.

“I'm sorry I can't come to the meeting, and I wondered if there was anything special on.”

“No, nothing special,” Joe replied. “So it doesn't matter.”

“All right,” said Will. Then after waiting in silence for a moment: “Doing anything in particular to-night?”

“Nothing much. There's an outdoor meeting on. I may look round.”

“Could you meet me in town?”

“Well—I'm afraid I'll have to go home for tea.”

“Oh, well, never mind.”

“If there is anything special——”

“No, nothing. So long!” He took the silent receiver slowly from his ear—and hung it up.

Joe must make up his mind a bit quicker than that! Something cool in Joe's tone had hurt him. If he continued to take things like that, well—let him!

It would be pleasant, anyhow, to have the evening all to himself in the country. He really had far too few evenings there. And the quiet of the country was a thing you had to get used to in order to enjoy it properly. Breaking it up too often left you restless, not at peace. For it happened to be a true saying that “peace comes dropping slow”.

He shut off the personal mind, his work getting his whole attention. This gave news an individual value, brought it to life more in the round—as the stereoscope did. Murder those days did not have the old selling value, because of the possibility of international mass murder, but women were born individualists and details of personal passion and violence held for them still a morbid fascination.… That slick word, morbid! Were the women instinctively right—as you would expect them to be? For women were grounded in the emotions, the individual, the personal—except the few who had intellectualized themselves into a half-neuter state, who had approached apprehension of the strange mad idealisms—now called ideologies—of men. For men were the mass murderers, the gargantuan theorists, the beehive builders, the robots: to make a perfect thing, an ideal state, they were prepared to kill and be killed, they were ready to put a match to the time fuse (what else were armaments?) that would blow up the world.

This undercurrent of comment, flowing like a deep stream under his sub-editor's craft, affected the use of his pencil. It trimmed the murder story to its essential course; it selected his headings and general display. Slowly the story itself took on a living reality. The character-types (through long use, all these murder stories consisted, for the office journalist, in varying mixtures of types) became human and the scene a real scene. It was set in the slums. As he worked, it came into focus, and the whole
crime passionnel
(he would risk the bourgeois dignity of the epithet) was enacted before him quite vividly. Out of the court evidence, the figures emerged and were cast back—as in the familiar trick of the movies—not to re-enact the scene but to perform the original scene itself. This scene had a familiarity that presently began vaguely to disturb him. Had he read about it before—or seen…? It was actually like something that he remembered…and then he understood. There was the prostitute, the unemployed man, the youth with the razor…he had seen them all against the given background, and the youth with the razor (though new) was the most vivid of the lot. To the journalist, and perhaps therefore to the sociologist, to the normal reader, that youth was the “vicious type”. As almost certainly he was. But the others.… The girl's name was not Ivy.…

He made a very attractive story of it. At moments, he was actually excited, inwardly. The murderer (the “vicious type”) was quite unrepentant. “As he stood in the dock,” the reporter wrote, “his face was grey, showing no emotion.” It was the only spot where Will stuck for a little, under the urge to shove in a sentence suggesting why he had shown none.

At the thought of committing so heinous a journalistic offence (for his paper had the sound “old tradition” in such matters), he smiled. And as he paused, staring before him for a moment, the whole scene took on a subtly different aspect. It was the same scene, enacted, however, not in the past but, somehow, in the future. Involuntary understanding of “the vicious type” had brought this about doubtless; the momentary substitution (of himself for the murderer) which must be at the basis of understanding, not to mention sympathy. Yet even the grey light of the scene was a
future
light, and it was not exactly the same scene.… He shut off the disturbing evocation abruptly, and an eyelid flickered down in a rather ironic humour. Those theories about the fourth dimension and being able to see a thing before it happened were getting rather popular. He drew a deep breath—and accepted the personal call to the telephone.

It was Joe.

“You must have cut me off. I was going to say that after having tea at home, I could be in town before seven.”

“Oh. Righto, Joe. Sorry if I cut you off—but I did not feel I had. You merely sounded as if the matter did not interest you! Actually, though, I don't know that there's anything much to discuss, as you said; and I thought of pushing off home to the farm.”

“Very well,” said Joe. “That's all right.”

But now there was a reluctant note in his voice and Will hesitated. “Unless there's anything you want to discuss yourself?”

“No—not particularly. Never mind. I'm sorry if I appeared——”

“Oh, come and have a lemon squash. Nothing like going the whole hog!”

There was a pause for a moment. “All right,” said Joe quietly.

And now we're for it! thought Will. He had a deep reluctance to undergo any sort of questioning, to explain himself or his actions to any one, an intolerance that was instinctive and aristocratic and he did not mind who knew it!

So he met Joe in the most agreeable humour and soon put him at his ease—though not entirely, for Joe's sheer bulk of body and mind and purpose could not be deflected lightly. It had a quietude, too, that was impressive.

The talk drifted through the reasons for his own social engagement. He smiled as he drew for Joe's benefit the crowd who would be there, the makers and defenders of capitalism, the real bourgeoisie.

“You'll enjoy it?” Joe asked, nodding his thanks to the barman.

“Most certainly I shall. That's where I belonged, and to me it is just as human and a good deal more pleasant than many another group of human beings. Wouldn't you enjoy it?” Will added water to his whisky.

“I doubt it,” said Joe. “However, that's merely a personal reaction. I might find it difficult to divorce from my mind what they stood for. But I realize that's beside the point of enjoying a social evening.”

“That's where I think you're wrong—deeply wrong.”

“Oh?” The broad face with its pale fair skin, clear forehead with light hair brushed neatly, and steady blue eyes, suggested force both in restraint and at peace.

“You make the mistake of mistrusting the personal.”

“In what respect?”

“Oh, it's more than in the matter of a social evening. It's a fundamental philosophic cleavage in you, since you have inevitably not only lost touch with the personal but—almost lost belief in it.”

“I am afraid that is beyond me,” Joe said, after the short thoughtful pause that was characteristic of him.

“You merely mean that I should be less general and more particular. But that implies the personal—and there it is.”

“That means nothing—unless it means you merely want to be personal,” said Joe. “If you do—go ahead. I think I'll be able to stand it.”

“I know you will. The more difficult point for me is will you be able to understand it?”

“That remains to be discovered, as always, in
praxis.
”

“Good!” said Will, enjoying the dry Marxian thrust. “Stating the case broadly, then, to begin with, so that we may get our principles—for personal application in due course—I'd say that you are obsessed with the importance of social relations to such an extent that the individual tends to become an element in those relations—a mere element rather than a free individual. In this way——”

“I must interrupt because I do not know what you mean by a free individual. No individual is free. He is a product of and is conditioned by his social relations. That is a fact—or is it not?”

“It is a fact. I admit that. We may take it for granted that we both know the accepted philosophic basis of our creed. It's the amount of acceptance, its application, and where it may land us, I'm concerned about. I am quite well aware that I am talking like this because I am a social product. Society has given me speech, learning, the arts, even whisky, bless it! Had I been cast at birth into the wilderness I should have been a jibbering savage. I grant all that. But at the end of the day, that's just obvious. It's like employer and employee, where the employer says, It is I who have given you work, and you should be grateful, for if I hadn't, where would you and your wife and children have been? Now the fact, as you and I know, is that the employee gives as much to the employer as he gets—and a bit over or there would be no profit. So, we get our stuff from society all right, but we give back as much as we get—and a bit over, or there would be no evolution. But we do that in the last analysis by individual personal contribution; by the individual freely developing, by being allowed freely to develop within himself, something that will be a personal contribution. Without that personal contribution, society, however perfectly you arrange it, will become static, and as we cannot by our very natures remain static but must either go forward or back, then society will go back.