Cards of Identity (12 page)

‘That is quite right, Master Beaufort,’ said Jellicoe warmly.

‘Then for more than twenty-three years,’ continued the captain, ‘you have been investing in these Argentines, Jellicoe. I wonder if you
would like a change? A friend of mine in the City has a sound stock which pays 9½. Would you like to try it?’

At the mention of 9½ per cent a fierce light boiled in the butler’s tepid eyes, and he struggled with himself for some moments before answering: ‘I think I’ll keep to the old, safe ways, sir. Greed and adventurousness only lead to disaster. Those Argentines have been good friends to me for many a year: in my old age they will be my staff and comforter.’

‘Very well, Jellicoe. Under your nervous, hypochondriacal skin, there is a heart of old oak. I hope some of it will be visible when our friends arrive for the house-party.’

‘How many are expected, sir?’

‘About the same as in previous years. Perhaps a dozen more.’

‘Are there any special instructions, sir?’

‘Only the usual ones.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Jellicoe left, and Mrs Chirk came in.

‘Come and sit down here,’ said the captain. ‘I expect all this is quite new to you and makes you feel strange. We have only had you a few years, have we not?’

‘Not even that long, sir, I think.’

‘Well, well … Now, this is the day, every month, when you receive your wages, make any complaints that may have crossed your mind, ask permission to marry, give notice, and so on. But first, I think I must ask: what
is
your name? We have been very patient about it, you know, but if all the staff were as reticent as you we should find ourselves living in a state of suspended anonymity.’

‘If I knew my name, sir, I would feel more myself than I seem to feel.’

‘Surely it is written on your ration-book and identity-card?’

‘I’ve never thought to look, sir. What’s come my way, I’ve eaten and been grateful for, with no thought to spare for the name that’s brought it. Now, when I’d like to know, I can’t find the dratted books.’

‘It is not an edifying story, you know. You might just as well have put the food in the larder. Tell me, is there any name that would appeal to you particularly?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Can you think of anyone you would like to be known as? Some
famous character in history? Your older sister? The doctor’s wife?’

‘It’s all the same to me, sir. I only want to work and be at peace with the world. I don’t need no name for that.’

‘But you said you were puzzled without one?’

‘It’s the having of my attention distracted to it that puzzles me, sir. I do all right if people don’t keep nagging at me for a name.’

‘Then we shall have to call you Mrs Chirk. Master Beaufort will make you out a new ration-book and identity-card in that name … Now, Mrs Chirk – for that is your name – I want to talk to you very seriously. We have been taking a grave risk in continuing to employ a person who has no sense of nominal responsibility. Try and get into your head that though your friends and employers may find your name immaterial, the Government refuse to take such a lax view. They insist that everyone has an identity, however slight, and people who will not admit to themselves are often sent to prison. That is what will happen to you, if you continue to pursue this vague course. You must try and understand that the old days are over – the days when you could take your identity for granted. Nowadays, all the old means of self-recognition have been swept away, leaving even the best people in a state of personal dubiety. Even dispossession, the surest means of bringing home the naked identity, has disappeared. Very wisely, governments all over the world have sought to stop this rot before the entire human population has been reduced to anonymous grains. They give you cards, on which they inscribe in capital letters the name which your fading memory supplies before it is too late. It is their hope that by continually reading and re-reading your
name,
you will be able to keep your hold on a past that no longer exists, and thus bring an illusion of self into the present. As you see, the authorities have been obliged to reverse the normal procedure – which is, of course, first to create a world and
then
to name the things that inhabit it. Now, by doing the naming first, they hope creation will follow as a result of association and suggestion. This, as you know, is the method followed by women who want to have babies.

‘This method has its dangers, of course; we all know mothers who have dreamed-up an Agnes and, on being delivered of a Horace, have stubbornly brought him up as Agnes; and something of the same kind may result from the authorities’ efforts at present. But that is not my point at the moment. What I want to emphasize is: don’t lose your
name again, Mrs Chirk. Don’t, at least, lose the cards on which that name is written. Not only would you yourself be left nameless, but people have been known to pick up such lost cards, put them in a wallet with their own, and start a hopeless tangle of selves that spreads like a bush fire. Even people in very high places today, men whose names are being printed and spoken aloud repeatedly, are often so foreign to their selves that they become involved in the most extraordinary identical lapses. Here, for instance, in this morning’s paper, is a letter written by someone who believes himself to be named Sir Arthur Trotter. He is addressing the Minister of Mines and Places, and he writes as follows:

‘So you see, Mrs Chirk,’ said the captain, laying down the paper, ‘you can hardly be too careful. If two such highly-placed officials both appear, both to themselves and to one another, to be totally different persons, sharing no common recollections and enjoying no tenable identity – well, clearly, at least one of the two identities has been left in a cloakroom somewhere and never picked up again. This sort of thing is becoming so common nowadays that it would not surprise me to hear that both the letters I have just read were written by the same person, sincerely assuming in each letter an identity he hoped was his own. Is all this quite clear to you?’

‘Well, I understand it, sir, though I couldn’t say what it means.’

‘At least you recognize it as a warning?’

‘I’d rather not dwell on it too much, sir. My poor head is spinning as it is. I only ask for peace.’

‘As you please, Mrs Chirk. Here is your wage and your new ration-book and identity-card. You keep the wage and the card and give the book to Mrs Paradise. Kindly ask Tray and Towzer to come up, will you? Good morning, and try not to forget yourself again.’

‘Poor soul!’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘I wonder when she last knew herself?’

‘Probably never,’ said the captain. ‘She may vaguely have known her parents, but that’s always much easier. One would probably have to go back to her grandfather to find an identity that really made an impression on her.’

Mrs Mallet took Beaufort’s hand off her knee, made a fist of it, and measured the foot of the sock she was knitting him. ‘I don’t, of course, remember when I joined the Club,’ she said, ‘but it must have been ages ago. And yet, with all my experience, I still wonder what on earth
other
people
think when they come to see Mrs Chirk, or Tray, or Towzer and find the house empty, the old friend gone. What if I went to see their old neighbours, and asked to whom that empty place belonged, who had lived there, and so on?’

‘You know very well what would happen,’ said the captain. ‘You know as well as I do the haunted, hunted look that comes into people’s eyes when they try to urge their exhausted minds along a path they have long since abandoned. The first point they reach in such a struggle is, of course, the point when such a question made sense: thus, they would easily tell you who was living in the house in 1911. After a good deal of struggle, they would recall the name of some party who’d taken it in the 20s – “she had tulips in that corner,” they’d say. Then they would start following the departed tulips; a haze would come over their eyes; even if they spoke the name of Chirk it would be a hollow sound, too recent to have any significance, come too late to matter.’

‘It makes me want to cry. What terrible emptiness! Why do people so rebuff the present? Why, if one day Beau disappeared,
how
I would take on! I would search for him in every house in England; whenever I saw a man I would go up as close as possible to him and stare into his eyes, listen to his voice, study his walk and ways! I would sound alarms all through the country, and never rest until I found the man in whom Beau was hidden. Has Towzer no woman to do as much for him? Has Tray no lover who would die rather than think her lost forever?’

There was a knock at the door, and the captain cried: ‘Come in!’ adding: ‘Well, let us find the exact answer.’

Miss Tray entered, pretty in her breeches. ‘Ah, good morning,’ said the captain. ‘You are looking very well. Do sit down. Someone has been calling to see you, and telephoning. I was not able to catch the name. Do you know who it might be?’

‘I can’t think,’ said Miss Tray, a look of astonishment crossing her face. ‘Who would want to see me?’

‘Perhaps relatives or friends?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Did you not tell me that you had a gentleman friend?’

‘Well, there
have
been gentlemen friends sometimes, doctor, but not the kind that would make a fuss.’

‘Come, come, Miss Tray! Surely gentlemen friends
always
make a fuss!’

‘I’ve never encouraged
that
type, doctor.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘They get me disturbed. I want to live my own life, not to be reminded of the things that would upset me.’

‘What kind of things are those, Miss Tray?’

‘The things men like.’

‘Then you never intend to marry and have children, Miss Tray?’

‘Oh, yes. I would like a husband who goes to work every day. But a man is something quite different. Of course, I don’t mind the ones who just come and go, the ones who drop in casually. And I like sick ones.’

‘Very well, Miss Tray. If there are any more phone calls, I shall just say you are not here and we have no idea where you may be.’

‘Anything like that, doctor. It would seem the same as ever to them.’

‘Have you settled down all right?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s all become such a routine already, I’m hardly aware of myself at all.’

‘You rub along with Towzer, do you?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d hardly know he was there.’

‘You mustn’t become too isolated, you know.’

‘No fear, doctor. I’m too jolly and natural for that. And my dream life is full of excitement.’

‘Very well. Here are your wages. Will you ask Towzer to come in?’

‘He says he can’t be bothered. “People, people, people!” is all he says. He’s really very sweet. Only the soil matters to him. I love teasing him, because he never notices. So it’s like a dream.’

‘I advise you to be careful, Miss Tray. One day he
may
notice, and then your dream will suddenly come true. You won’t like that, I’m sure.’

‘Oh, there’s no danger of that, doctor. Whenever a dream threatens to come true, I change to a new one.’

‘One day when I have more time you must tell me about your dreams. Would you like to become a nurse?’

‘Oh, no. Too familiar.’

‘Then here are Towzer’s wages. Is he clean and healthy?’

‘I sometimes dream he is.’

‘Well, we won’t pursue that, Miss Tray. But I am glad to see your life is so full. Good morning.’

‘Dear me,’ said Beaufort, when Miss Tray had gone: ‘I must say she leaves me very puzzled.’

‘She lives in a state of chronic potentiality, that’s all,’ explained the captain. ‘The future is, to her, what the past is to Mrs Paradise. Every morning is a thrilling anticipation of what the following morning may bring. She builds the superstructure today in hope of laying the foundation-stone tomorrow.’

‘I have never really been well-up in the chronological side of identity,’ said Beaufort. ‘I can see the identity lost in relation to people, but when it is lost in time, I am easily confused.’

‘Well, here is a simple story that will amuse you. My old teacher, when I first joined the Club, used to tell me: “You must listen for the echo, and try to tell if it comes before or after the sound.” And one day, when I was studying the identity of judges, I realized what he meant. The judge in question, despite the fact that he was already buried in the past, invariably acted as if that past were some distant, future goal that he despaired of reaching, for all his loquacity. A summing-up by him would be hardly under way when court was adjourned for the day; when it resumed, he never went on from where he had left off, he recapitulated what he had said on the previous day, intending to go forward from there. But, as the recapitulation took him much further back than, in its original form, it had carried him forward, the business of the court advanced in a regular sequence of retreats, each of which overlapped, in backwardness, its predecessor of the day before. Thus as the days moved on, with the judge receding ever further into the previous weeks, one had the eerie feeling not that time was standing still – that would have been tolerable – but that it was growing younger in proportion as it became older, and that the judge, far from proceeding to a verdict, was struggling to revert to a prediction. I was young in those days, no older than you, and like you I was not really able to grasp the full implications of an identity whose sense of immediacy depends on a state of temporal abeyance. But I did grasp, of course, that where the basic character is moving in reverse, the minor characteristics are bound to follow. This judge, for instance, only knew who he was when he saw himself set among laws that had long ceased to exist; consequently, he never was able to sentence a man to death without remarking that at one time he would have had him drawn and quartered too: or if the sentence was ten years, he would point out that it would have been death a hundred years earlier, and so on. What made this habit even prettier was the fact that his language was likewise
a struggle to go backwards: he set the speech of his boyhood in the context of archaic dignity, as if this were the only way he could express his shock and disappointment at being alive at all today. “What a horrid thing was that to do!” he would say, or: “To call you a bad hat is not enough: rotter is better.” “Was this not a beastly way to behave?” he once exclaimed, of a man who had cracked a woman’s skull with a chopper; adding: “Most especially in view of the trust she had always reposed in him.” But I loved best to see him when he was behaving humbly – which was often the case, because judges are the only people nowadays who have the power, indeed, the duty, to slander and defame the characters of others. This tends to make them meek, as if they were thanking God for too great an honour, and they become increasingly apologetic as their brutality intensifies. This one used to say, with genuine distress: “I am really very sorry I cannot have you flogged. The law, unfortunately, no longer permits it. The best I can do is sentence you to five years at hard labour, and hope that you will find this adequate to your needs.” Oh, and those expressions! When he pursed his lips, the whole court was sucked in, and dragged down through time into Norman-English. And how the women loved him – for his hatred of men! Poor soul; he was weakened when corporal punishment went, but with the threat of abolition of the death penalty he lost his last grip on self and became a mere child again, toddling from place to place, lisping baby-talk. Well, it’s all long ago now, but I still feel that if the Club had got hold of him in time they could have transformed him into something useful and up-to-date.’