The Nice and the Good (44 page)

The two boats floated near to the cliff. There had been every confusion, appeals, suggestions, plans. The villagers, thrilled by the mishap, had produced innumerable theories about the cave, but no facts. The police had been told, the coastguards had been told, the navy had been told. The lifeboat had offered to stand by. Frogmen were to come to take in aqualung equipment. Telephone calls passed along the coast. Time passed. The frogmen were needed for an accident elsewhere. Time passed on to the consummation of the high tide. After that there was a kind of lull.

“Now we can’t do anything but wait,” people said to each other, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Mary was sitting in the stern of the boat. There had been other craft earlier, sightseers in motor boats, journalists with cameras, until the police launch told them to go away. There was silence now. Mary sat shuddering with cold in the warm air. She was wearing Theo’s overcoat which at some point he had forced her to put on. The coat collar was turned up and inside the big sleeves her hidden hands had met and crawled up to clutch the opposing arms. She sat full, silent, remote, her chin tilted upward a little, her big unseeing eyes staring at the moon. She had shed no tears, but she felt her face as something which had been dissolved, destroyed, wiped into blankness by grief and terror. Now her last enemy was hope. She sat like somebody who tries hard to sleep, driving thoughts away, driving hopes away.

Near to her in the boat, and clearly visible to her although
she was not looking at them, were Willy and Theo. Perhaps she could perceive them so sharply because their image had occurred so often during the terrible confusions and indecisions of the afternoon and evening. Willy and Theo, among the people from whom her grief had cut her off so utterly, the least cut off. Theo sat closest to her now in the boat, occasionally reaching out without looking at her to stroke the sleeve of the overcoat. Casie had wept. Kate had wept. Octavian had rushed to and fro organising things and telephoning. She supposed she must have talked to them all, she could not remember. It was silence now.

Mary’s thoughts, since she had got into the coastguards’ boat, now more than half an hour ago, had become strangely remote and still. Perhaps it was for some scarcely conscious protection from the dreadful agony of hope that she was thinking about Alistair, and about what Ducane had said about him,
Tel qu’en lui-même enfin l’éternité le change
. She formed the words in her mind: What is it like being dead, my Alistair? As she said to herself, my Alistair, she felt a stirring of something, a sort of sad impersonal love. How did she know that this something in her heart, in her mind, where nothing lived but these almost senseless words, was love at all? Yet she knew. Can one love them there in the great ranks of the dead? The dead, she thought, the dead, and formed abstractly, emptily, namelessly the idea of her son.

Death happens, love happens, and all human life is compact of accident and chance. If one loves what is so frail and mortal, if one loves and holds on, like a terrier holding on, must not one’s love become changed? There is only one absolute imperative, the imperative to love: yet how can one endure to go on loving what must die, what indeed is dead?
O death, rock me asleep, bring me to quiet rest. Let pass my weary guilty ghost out of my careful breast
. One is oneself this piece of earth, this concoction of frailty, a momentary shadow upon the chaos of the accidental world. Since death and chance are the material of all there is, if love is to be love of something it must be love of death and chance. This changed love moves upon the ocean of accident, over the forms of the dead, a love so impersonal and so cold it can scarcely be recognised, a love devoid of beauty, of which one knows no more than the name, so little is it
like an experience. This love Mary felt now for her dead husband and for the faceless wraith of her perhaps drowned son.

The police launch had come back and suddenly shone a very bright searchlight on to the cliff. Everyone started. The warm purple air darkened about them. The illuminated semicircle of the cliff glowed a powdery flaky red streaked with grey, glistening faintly where the tide had just receded. Above the line of the dark brown seaweed the white daisies hung in feathery bunches, ornamental and unreal in the brilliant light.

“Look.”

A faint dark streak had appeared at the waterline. Mary shuddered. The sharp hopes twisted violently within her. Drowned, drowned, drowned, her dulling consciousness repeated.

“The roof slopes down, you know,” one of the coastguards said.

“What?”

“The roof slopes down. It’s highest at the opening. It’ll be another five minutes at least before they can swim out.”

I wish he wouldn’t say things like that, thought Mary. Twenty minutes from now, half an hour from now, how would her life be then? Could she endure it, the long vigil of death made visible? When would she begin to scream and cry? Would she still exist, conscious, untattered, compact in half an hour’s time from now?

Octavian and Kate were in the other coastguards’ boat. She could see Kate staring at the dark shadow in the water. Minutes passed. People in the other boat had begun to whisper. Drowned, Mary thought, drowned. The boats had closed in. The waters still sank. The opening of the cave became larger and larger. Nothing happened. Drowned.

There was a loud cry. Something was splashing in the dark hole, moving out into the light. Mary held her heart, contracted into a point of agony.

“It’s Mingo.”

“What?”

“It’s only the dog.”

Mary stared at the black hole. Tears of pain flowed upon her face.

There was another movement, a splashing, a swimming head seen clearly in the light, a louder cry, an answering cry.

“It’s Pierce,” someone said into her ear. Theo perhaps.

She could see her son’s head plainly now. The other boat was nearer. Someone had jumped into the sea. He was being held, hoisted. “I’m all right,” he was shouting “I’m all right.”

Theo was holding her awkwardly as if she needed support, but she was stiff.
He’s all right
. Now John, John.

“There he is!” It was Kate’s voice.

Mary’s boat had nosed to the front, the bow of it almost touching the cliff. Several people were in the water now, splashing about at the mouth of the cave. Mary saw the head of Ducane among them. Then he was bobbing close just at the side of the boat. He was being pushed up, pulled up, raised from the water. He rose up limp and straight out of the sea, the thin white heavy form of a naked man. He flopped into the bottom of the boat with a groan. Mary had taken off her overcoat and wrapped it around him. She gripped and held him fast.

“I
UNDERSTAND
you had an unpleasant experience at the weekend,” said Biranne. “What happened exactly?”

“Oh nothing much. I was cut off by the tide.”

“None the worse, I hope?”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

“Well, you wanted to see me. Have you decided my fate?”

“Yes,” said Ducane. “Have a drink.”

It was early evening. Ducane, who had been in bed until half an hour ago, was wearing his black silk dressing gown with the red asterisks over his pyjamas. A fire was burning in the grate which he had laid and lit himself, since Fivey was unaccountably absent. He still felt deeply chilled, as if there were a long frozen pellet buried in the centre of his body. However, the doctor had been reassuring. Mingo had probably saved both him and Pierce from dying of exposure. By the decree of fate and chance the water had abated within feet of them.

Ducane was still simply enjoying being alive. Existing, breathing, waking up and finding oneself still there, were positive joys. Here I am, he kept saying to himself, here I am. Oh good!

“Thanks,” said Biranne. “I’ll have some gin. Well?”

Ducane moved over to close the drawing-room window. The noise of the rush hour in Earls Court Road became fainter. The evening sunlight made the little street glow with colour. Oh beautiful painted front doors, thought Ducane, beautiful shiny motor cars. Bless you, things.

“Well, Ducane?”

Ducane moved dreamily back toward the fire. He went to the drawer of the desk and took out Radeechy’s confession which he laid on a nearby chair, and also a copy which he had made on a large piece of paper of the cryptogram which Radeechy had written on the wall of the black chapel.

“
Sit down
, Biranne.”

Biranne sat down opposite to him. Still standing,
Ducane handed him the sheet of paper with the cryptogram. “Can you make anything of that?”

Biranne stared at it. “No. What is it?”

“Radeechy wrote it on the wall of the place where he performed his—experiments.”

“Means nothing to me.” Biranne tossed it impatiently on to the marble table beside his drink.

“Nor me. I thought you might have an inspiration.”

“What’s this, a sort of spiritual test?
Satori
—that’s Japanese, isn’t it? What does it matter anyway?”

“Radeechy matters,” said Ducane. “Claudia matters. Aren’t you interested?” He was staring down at Biranne.

Biranne shifted uneasily. Then he stood up and moved back, putting the chair between them. “Look here,” he said, “I know what I’ve done. I don’t need to be told by you.
I know
.”

“Good. I just wanted to be sure.”

They stared intently at each other.

“Well? Go on.”

“That, for a start.” Ducane turned away, and with a long sigh poured himself out some gin. Then he poured a little dry vermouth into the glass, measuring it judiciously. Then he began to inspect Biranne again, looking at him with a sort of grave curiosity.

“Get it over with,” said Biranne. “You’re turning me in. Don’t cat and mouse me as well.”

“Cat and mouse,” said Ducane. “Yes. Well, you may have to put up with being a little bit, as you charmingly put it, cat and moused. I want to ask you a few questions.”

“So you haven’t decided? Or do you want me on my knees?
Oro supplex et acclinis
. Yes, you
do
think you’re God!”

“Just a few questions, my dear Biranne.”

“Ask, ask.”

“Where’s Judy?”

“I don’t know,” said Biranne, surprised. “You told me to drop Judy.” He gave a snarl of a laugh.

“And did you?”

“No. She dropped me. She just disappeared. I imagined she was with you. I must say I was rather relieved.”

“She’s not with me,” said Ducane. “But never mind about Judy. Forget Judy.”

“What’s this all about, Ducane? I wish you’d get on with it.”

“Listen, listen—”

“I am listening, confound you.”

“Biranne,” said Ducane, “do you still love your wife?”

Biranne put his glass down sharply on the table and turned away. He moved a little along the room. “What’s the relevance of this to—anything?”

“Answer me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think about it. We’ve got plenty of time.” Ducane sat down in one of the easy chairs, waving his glass gently about in a figure of eight. He took a sip.

“It’s my affair.”

Ducane was silent. He gazed into his glass, breathing slowly and deeply. It seemed to him that he still smelt of the sea. Perhaps he would smell of the sea now until the end of his days.

“All right,” said Biranne. “Yes, I do still love my wife. One doesn’t recover from a woman like Paula. And now that I’ve satisfied your rather quaint curiosity perhaps we can get back to the matter in hand.”

“But this is by no means irrelevant to the matter in hand,” said Ducane. “Do you ever think of returning to Paula?”

“No, of course not.”

“Paula and the twins—”

“There isn’t any road back to Paula and the twins.”

“Why back? Why not on? They haven’t been standing still in the past.”

“Precisely, Paula’s written me off long ago. She’s got a life of her own. May I now ask the reason for these impertinent enquiries?”

“Pertinent, pertinent. Don’t hustle me. I’m feeling very tired. Give yourself another drink.”

Ducane pulled his chair closer to the fire and sipped the vermouth-fragrant gin. He did in fact feel very tired and curiously dreamy.

Biranne, who had been pacing the room, had stopped behind the chair opposite and was leaning on it, staring at Ducane with puzzlement.

“You were in the Commandos,” said Ducane. He looked
up at Biranne’s lean figure, his contracted slightly twisted clever face, under the dry fuzzy crest of hair.

“Your mind’s rather straying around the place today,” said Biranne.

“That business with Eric Sears. Is it specially because of that you feel you couldn’t possibly return to Paula?”

“Good God! Who told you about Eric Sears?”

“Paula did.”

“Oh she did, did she. Interesting. Well, it’s a bit of a barrier. When one has deprived somebody’s lover of his foot—”

“It becomes an obsession, a nightmare—?”

“I wouldn’t say quite that. But it’s certainly one of those events that
do
things, psychological things.”

“I know. Paula felt this too.”

“Besides, Paula detests me.”

“No she doesn’t. She still loves you.”

“Did she tell you that too?”

“Yes.”

“Christ. Why are you meddling here, Ducane?”

“Can’t you see?”

“No, I can’t.”

“You said it was mine to command and that I could make any conditions. Well, this is my decision. I’ll keep quiet about everything if you will at least try out the possibility of returning to Paula.”

Biranne turned away and went to the window.

Ducane began to talk excitedly and fast, rather apologetically. “I remember your saying damn my duty, and I think now you were quite right, or rather there is another sort of duty. I don’t want to wreck your life, why should I? It wouldn’t help poor Claudia or poor Radeechy. And as for the processes of law, human law is only a very rough approximation to justice, and it’s far too clumsy an instrument to deal with the situation that you’re in. It isn’t that I want to play God, I’ve just had this business forced upon me and I’ve got to do something about it. I really want to get right out without doing any damage. As for the enquiry, I’m certain about the answer to the question and I shall say so without the details. The thing about Paula just came as an inspiration, an extra, a felicitous conjecture. She certainly
loves you, so why not try it? I’m not sentencing you to succeed, I’m sentencing you to try.” Ducane stood up and banged his glass on to the mantelpiece.