In the Time of Greenbloom (56 page)

“Do not try to stop it. You have left it too late.”

In the aftermath of his sudden warmth John shivered.

“How do you mean, ‘too late'?” he asked.

“Four years—five? It is too late! You should have killed yourself within three months; as it is you have delayed too long; you have left yourself with a most powerful
raison d'être
and I begin to think that it looks as though my services may not be required tomorrow night.”

“You mean you think I'll want to go on living
because
I am so unhappy?”

“Of course.”

“You don't think I
will
commit suicide?”

“
Never
! You have no disinterest. Very early in life you have suffered by attachment, by a supreme attachment, that detachment which it is the object of all developed men to achieve.” He looked up and smiled briefly. “You must meet my friend Sartre. You might conceivably interest him and
he
would most certainly interest you. More than that, he would help you I am sure.”

“But he lives in Paris doesn't he?”

“All writers if they are good live imaginatively in Paris. Sartre lives there physically as well. One day you may live there yourself. It occurs to me that perhaps in five or ten years when you start to write the story of your Victoria and how she was strangled you
will
live there.”

“Do you think I'm going to be a writer then?”

“I do.”

“Oh. Do you really?”

“
Mais certainement
!”

“Why?”

“If one thinks enough, sooner or later one
must
write. Already you have been made by your life to think more than enough, more profoundly perhaps than the majority of your contemporaries; and as I told you before, you are fortunate.”

Silently Greenbloom handed him the cap of his brandy flask and John drank from it.

“It is a pity that your great little mother can never be told about this,” said Greenbloom. “This afternoon I gave her an undertaking—.”

They both turned as someone emerged from behind the boathouse. They saw her standing there hesitant, looking over towards them, marked with the white lacunae of the moonlight as it fell through the freckling leaves and branches of the taller trees behind her.

“My God!” Greenbloom quickly screwed on the cap and pocketed his flask. “Another of them, and at a moment like this! The Irish girl, presumably the one who fainted on the train. I am afraid I shall have to go.”

“But wait a minute! Please don't go for a minute. Please just tell me one thing—
Greenbloom
.”

“Well?”

His smile this time was natural. John saw the white flash of his teeth, the rise of the puffy lids beneath the long eyes.

“You don't think I'm mad, do you? You obviously don't,
do you? You don't think I'm a fool or backward or anything like that?”

“Your sisters are—banal. Your Mother, as I said before, has greatness, your brother Michael—constant possibilities; your Father I do not know very well because he is the sort of man who does not want to be known very well, but he seems to me to be a good man. Certainly he has sat out your Mother for many years and he is not a fool. As for yourself I can assure you that I shall continue to interest myself in your life for many years to come. Very possibly I shall be one of the first, if not
the
first, to publish you when you come to fruition.”

He held out his hand and John shook it automatically. From the tail of his eye he saw that the girl, tall, paler than the statues surrounding the pool, was approaching them quickly.

“Tomorrow,” went on Greenbloom, “we must discuss this again. But now I really must go. I do not like schoolgirls, I detest Irish school-girls and I abominate in particular the sort of girl who faints on railways trains.”

“Did she? How do you know?”

“Some unpleasant people from Birmingham mentioned it over the—
cucumber sandwiches
,” he made the words sound like blasphemies.

“Oh, the Merryweathers.”

John laughed; surprisingly he heard the sound fall out of him into the strange circle of the lake and its concentric balustrades.

“Yes,” said Greenbloom wearily. “The Merryweathers. Forgive me, there is not a moment to be lost.”

He turned and with great dexterity bobbed across the flagstones to the Southern entrance just as the girl reached the top flight of the steps beneath which they had been standing.

John looked up at her. Her white dress hung limply from the thin shoulders, her hair, parted like his own on the left, bobbed and short, curled smokily about her ears and round
her young forehead as she stood there listlessly, one hand on the balustrade, watching Greenbloom, following him with shadowed eyes as he hurried away beside his silent reflection in the lake.

John spoke.

“Hello!”

She turned. “Hello!”

Her smile was very quick; quite artless. He noticed that at the right-hand corner of her mouth just beside the cheek she had one mole, a tiny spidery naevus clinging just outside the cheekline.

“Who was that? The man you were talking to?”

“Greenbloom.”

“What a strange name.”

“No stranger than Uprichard,” he said.

She started. “Who told you my name?”

“One of the girls in the house—an Irish one who plays the piano.”

“Oh, Brigid! Was she looking for me?”

“I don't think so. She was just waiting.”

The girl sat down on the balustrade and he walked quickly up the steps.

“Do you smoke?”

“Only for fun.”

He held out his packet of Woodbines.

“I'm afraid they're only small ones,” he said. “I'm economising.”

She took one and he lighted it for her; she held it badly and seeing his face in the extra light of the match she laughed; a breathy sound with very little voice in it.

“We're not allowed to really; but its part of the holidays to have one or two.”

“Yes.”

They said nothing for a moment and he noticed that she shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“Bit.”

“A bit?”

“Yes.”

He took off his coat and before she could move draped it round her shoulders as she sat there a little hunched, concentrating on her cigarette.

“Thank you.” She looked up suddenly and he saw the display of her wide-apart childish teeth between lips that were magenta-coloured in the moonlight.

“What were you talking about just now to that man?”

“To Greenbloom?”

“Yes.”

“Oh—” he hesitated; from somewhere small clouds were collecting, slowly thickening, gleaming like the insides of mussel-shells against the dark blue of the night sky.

“It sounded awfully odd,” she went on filling in his pause. He sensed that she was not attempting to justify herself in face of what might have been an intrusion but that she really was interested. “He's got a very queer voice hasn't he? Like—”

“Rusty,” he said, “like old iron.”

“Yes. I could hear
him
but I couldn't hear you. It sounded most strange—like a one-way telephone conversation.”

“Where were you then?”

“Behind the boathouse. There's a seat thing there.”

“That's not a seat! It's a torpedo!”

“Is
that
what it is?” She laughed. “I thought it might be. Anyway it makes a jolly good seat—like a rocking horse.”

He was astonished by her lack of surprise. Women never seemed to have any respect for machines.

“Did you really sit on it?” he asked.

“Of course I did—” she sounded a little bored. “But you haven't told me what you were talking about to that writer person.”

“Just things,” he said, “or rather a thing, something that happened once.”

“Oh—” She sucked at her cigarette inexpertly. “
Is
he a writer?”

“Not exactly. He's a publisher.”

“Are
you
going to be a writer?”

“Yes.” His affirmation surprised him; it was out before he could stop it and with sudden self-confidence he expanded it. “At least I'm going to be a doctor really but I think I'll probably go in for psychology and write books too.”

“Which one are you then?”

“How do you mean, ‘Which one am I?'”

“Well, Lady Geraldine told us that there were four of you coming tonight. Someone who writes, and then two brothers—she didn't say what they did—and a Frenchman as well.”

“Greenbloom isn't French. He lives in Paris nowadays but he's Jewish.”

“He sounded like a Frenchman.”

“Oh yes, that's just because he's very suggestible. He's always changing. When I first met him in Oxford four years ago he was the most English of people with an absolutely flawless accent—very Mayfair. But since he went to live in Paris he's become awfully French in every way.”

“How sweet! I think I rather like suggestible people.” She fluttered away from it and he wondered if perhaps she were insincere.

“Which one
are
you? One of the brothers?”

“Which would you like me to be?”

She looked surprised, caught his smile and suddenly laughed again; long enough this time for him to be sure that she laughed almost entirely with her breath, using her voice hardly at all.

“I don't know! I hadn't thought.” Her expression changed. “As a matter of fact I wasn't particularly interested—that's why I came out here, at least it's partly why.”

“Partly? Ah, I remember.
You
fainted on the train today didn't you?”

“No, I didn't faint—I felt ill.” She got up suddenly. “Something happened. It was a silly thing I suppose but it was horrible. It upset me dreadfully. Do you mind if we walk round the lake?”

“No. I'd like to.”

He fell into step beside her. She took long steps like his own and with unanalysed pleasure he noticed that they were the same height.

“What happened?” he prompted.

“It was the sort of thing you read about. A man on a train.
You
know!”

“Yes?”

“He got into my carriage—I didn't arrive till today, the others got here yesterday. I had to go to my doctor in London about—something. This man got in at Chester.” She stood still as though arrested by the vividness of the memory. “After the first few stations—I was reading magazines and things—I began to feel uncomfortable. At first I didn't know why and then I found that he was looking at me all the time,
watching
me: everything I did, my hands, my feet, my legs.” She coughed over her cigarette. “Silly really, but he seemed to be almost
touching
me with his eyes.”

“Horrible!” he said, “how
horrible
!”

She looked up at him quickly, her eyebrows, slender as charcoal, drawn together in surprise at his vehemence.

“It
was
horrible,” she said. “I tried to explain to Brigid when I got back but she thought I'd added to it. I'm moody you see and sometimes I get worked up and—frighten myself. But this time I wasn't. I didn't imagine or add anything to it. It was quite real. He started trying to get into conversation with me.”

“What did he say?”

She moved on and he followed her and caught up with her.

“He asked me if I was feeling all right. I suppose I looked a bit pale because I hate trains and in any case I always feel ill when I've been to a doctor—”

She shivered again and he glanced at her. His coat hung heavily from her shoulders and above it the centres of her white cheeks were smudged with shadow.

“Let's sit in the boathouse,” he said. “It will be warm in there. It's got a thatched roof and that's always warm.”

With the easy acquiscence she had shown from the moment of their meeting, she followed him in through the door at the back and took her place beside him on a swing seat with a canopy which was stored by a side wall. It was thickly piled with old punt cushions. They sat down in opposite corners.

“What did
you
say?”

“Nothing! I froze. Do you know what I mean? I felt all my muscles go stiff. For a moment I couldn't even turn a page of the magazine I was supposed to be reading. I think I was praying for the train to stop, wondering if I dared to pull the communication cord, and trying to look as though I hadn't heard anything.”

“Go on.”

“He laughed then and said that he was a doctor and that I must forgive him for interfering but that I didn't look well. I still said nothing and after a moment he laughed again and said, ‘You don't believe me, do you?'”

She threw away her cigarette and it fell with a splutter into the water beside the long shape of the Admiral's punt.

“That was the awful part,” she went on, “the fact that I didn't answer him or look at him or show in any way that I knew he was there didn't seem to matter to him in the least. It was as though he were talking to himself, inventing something as he went along, making it up and using me in it just because I was there and happened to be alone with him. I began to feel as though I'd got into his life or his head. That he had more control over me than I had over myself.” She drew breath, “I suppose you think it's stupid don't you?”

“No,” he said, “not stupid.”

“Or neurotic! I'm rather interested in psychology, it's all the rage at the Abbey just now, Have you read Freud's
Psychopathology of Everyday Life
?”

“What did he say after you'd said that you didn't believe him?”

“That's what I was coming to. He said it again, ‘You don't believe me, do you?' and when I wouldn't reply, he went on ‘You're quite right, I'm not a doctor but nobody
can say I'm not trying, can they? How else is a man to get to know the sort of girl a man wants to get to know if she won't admit she wants him to get to know her?' He went on like that for quite a long time, about me reminding him of someone he'd once known and—lost. The awful thing was that after a time I began to get interested. I knew it couldn't be long before we stopped at a station as there was a map of the coast with all the stations marked, on the opposite side of the carriage, and it was a slow train. I was sure I would be safe then; but as he went on talking, watching me all the time with his head back against the cushions, I found myself hoping that the train
wouldn't
stop before he'd come to the end of whatever it was he was trying to say, the story he was making up. I felt that everything depended on him reaching the end of it, that he might go mad if he didn't and that in some way it would be my fault. I don't think he meant me any harm just then; or if he did, he hadn't quite decided about it, he was just using me to help him in trying to solve something very—secret or private, what the psychology magazines call a fantasy.”