The Search (12 page)

Seventeen

O
N THE BUS
the following day Douglas was at first moodily silent while Trevor didn't know exactly how he himself felt. He was partly excited and partly afraid.

“How is your book going?” he asked Douglas at last.

“Fine. I'm almost finished. Another four weeks should do it.” Trevor thought he looked ill and indeed Douglas himself went on to say, “I feel claustrophobic on these buses. I feel as if I could smash the panes. Maybe I shouldn't have been as brutal as I was with you, when I phoned and told you your brother was dead. I had a bad headache at the time.”

“That's all right,” said Trevor.” I suppose I had it coming to me.”

“I couldn't stand the university,” Douglas continued. “One day I just packed it in. Then for years and years I had no money. It was a bad time: I used to sleep in parks. You've never done that, have you? I once fought in a pub with a man who was nearly mad, and who almost killed me. I suppose you think I'm a compulsive liar. Your brother actually doesn't read books, I don't know why I said that. He could have gone to university if he had wanted to. What will you do when you get back to Scotland?”

“I don't know. I suppose I shall carry on lecturing.”

“I think truth is good for people,” said Douglas abruptly. “I don't think people should live in an illusion. That man Browning you were speaking to doesn't understand anything. Not even my friend Tom does. They both have a literary consciousness. Neither of them has wakened up in the morning and not realized where his next meal was coming from. Have you ever read anything by Lawson? His hoboes set off into the blue humping their bluey. Do you know why I left the university? One day I looked at a question paper — I was doing English as well as Psychology — and it said, ‘Comment on Hardy's use of archaic language in his poems.' I looked and looked at that question and it came to me quite clearly that it had nothing to do with anything, even with Thomas Hardy. I walked out of the examination room and got drunk. I don't suppose you've ever done anything like that?”

“Not like that,” said Trevor. “How do you think my brother will react when he sees me?”

“I don't know. What if it isn't your brother I'm taking you to at all? What if it is someone else? What if I knock you out as that fellow did in Sydney? Have you thought of that?” And his eyes glittered dangerously. “Don't you realize the power I exert over you? You're dependent on me.”

Trevor, who didn't know what to say since he had actually thought these things, was silent. It seemed to him that Douglas was on the verge of madness, that he was entirely unpredictable.

Douglas became moody again, staring out at the monotonous landscape.

“I don't care about your brother. He was just a mate. We were ships that passed in the night. Deep down you don't care much about him either. You are going to meet him out of a sense of duty. We are all liars and hypocrites.”

He paused and then added, contemptuously,

“You want to come out here and save your brother. It gives you a sense of superiority. But what if he doesn't want to be saved? He stole food from me once, did I ever tell you that?”

“No, you didn't.”

“We had a fight. I can't remember who won. Yes, I do, I won. But the following morning we were mates again. Remember that child murderer I talked to you about. He didn't want to be a child murderer. But it is very easy to pick up a paper and say, “Oh a child murderer,” and leave it at that. He was in fact a man of over sixty with a low IQ. He was unshaven, he had a big nose and black teeth: he was human. When he was asked in court why he had killed these children he said he didn't know. You shouldn't go and see your brother at all. You should go home. People are so stupid. Go home, there's nothing for you here.”

Trevor was about to point out to him that it was he himself who had started him on this chase but he didn't say anything as he didn't want to irritate him.

“You see,” said Douglas, “I was actually a psychiatric nurse for a while and Norman was brought in to dry out. He had a hard time of it. He should have married.” And he looked closely at Trevor. “So should I. But then if you marry you enter another system. I wish to hell this bus would hurry up. I used to listen to your brother at night. He became delirious, you know. He would talk about you and your mother and about his girl friend. One day I mentioned this to him and he punched me. He had to be restrained. How do you think he will like it when you take him home and he is so clearly a failure. Have you considered that? Is he not going to be envious of you? Did you know that I write poetry as well as prose?”

“Oh?” said Trevor, politely.

“There you go again. You immediately think my poetry is no good. It probably isn't but that isn't the point. Why did you automatically think my poetry is no good? Because you have never heard of me before. And because you think that my personality is not the sort you associate with poetry. You don't really want to talk to me but you're too gentlemanly to say so.” He suddenly sat up in his seat as if a new thought had occurred to him. “What's so special about your brother anyway? Have you ever thought of helping me? No, of course not. Not that I need your help. I don't
want a damn thing from you. You are saying to yourself, ‘I wish I had never got myself into this box.' Aren't you? Tell me the truth. You're not a gentleman, you're a coward. You're like Grace and Browning, you're all poseurs. Do you think any of you are going to change the world? Of course not.” Trevor had the most intense desire to sleep. He felt as if he were under continual siege by an enemy on whom at the same time he depended, that his personality was cracking under this ceaseless tirade.

“Don't you like my brother?” he said at last.

“Well, it's like this. His personality isn't developed, he is at a low level of consciousness. Why did he run away to Australia? Have you ever thought of that? I bet he told you before he left that he didn't want to stand in your way. I would have hit you if I had been in his place. Tell me the truth. Was he the chivalrous gentleman?”

“He did say that he didn't want to stand in my way,” said Trevor.

“So he walked out into the snow, like Oates. Or perhaps he didn't wish to marry that girl after all. Couldn't he have done so before he had joined the Army? Perhaps he was jealous of you and couldn't stand you being in his light. Do you think he gave you his real reason for coming to Australia? What exactly did he say to you before he left?”

“Nothing much. He got drunk the previous night and said he hoped the two of us would be happy.”

“He should have punched you on the nose. You pity your brother. Perhaps he doesn't need your pity. You're staring at me all the time, did you know, as if I was Mephistopheles. And you were Faust or someone. Or perhaps even Gretchen. Tell me, do you think there is something devilish about me? I'm sure you do. You feel happier when you can make me literary, a demon from a book. But I'm not a character in a book you know, I'm a real person.” And his eyes glittered feverishly. “And a lot of the time I can't stand you. What Grace and Browning and people like you forget is what people are really like, real people. They don't themselves belong to the lower classes and so they think the lower classes are essentially decent, likeable, friendly. Well, some are and some are not. They're infected like everyone else. I belong to the lower classes and I'm infected. I wonder why you ran away from that demonstration. You were frightened, weren't you? Isn't that right? When are you ever going to see yourself as you really are, superfluous and hollow?” His face looked suddenly drawn and white and Trevor thought that perhaps he was ill, that perhaps he didn't eat, and hadn't had any breakfast. But he didn't wish to offer him food when the bus stopped at the restaurant it had stopped at the last time: he had already made the mistake of offering to pay his fare.

“Why can't you come straight out and say that you hated your brother and your brother hated you?” said Douglas. “There's nothing unusual about that, it's not even unnatural in my opinion. Did you know that most murders take place within families? Why don't you just follow your instincts and have nothing to do with me or your brother? Why don't you just ignore me? You know,” he said, “that your brother attacked me one night in hospital. He thought I was you.” He glanced at Trevor with the same mocking, saturnine smile. “It's true, you know. He got me by the throat. ‘Bastard' he was shouting. He nearly killed me. Well, have you nothing to say about that?”

“I'm listening,” said Trevor. “You're probably telling me the truth.”

“Of course I'm telling you the truth,” said Douglas angrily. “I told you that the Pole was a compulsive liar though. Maybe I am too. Only I say the lies out loud, you just think them. If you love your wife go home to her. Forget about Norman. I'm telling you, just go home. I'll be leaving you with him. I have to go back to Canberra.”

“I have to see him,” said Trevor. “I won't go back.”

“What if he's ill and delirious? What if he comes at you with a knife?”

“I have to see him,” Trevor repeated dully. “Anyway when I get back I might leave the university. Sheila won't like it but I may have to do it.”

“Perhaps she was a prize you wished to take from your brother?”

“No,” Trevor shouted and then more calmly after glancing at the rest of the passengers in the bus. “That's not true. That's a lie.”

“Think about it,” said Douglas. “Just think about it. I've been sent here to be your devil's advocate. Maybe I don't exist. You couldn't stay in Australia, I doubt if you could get a job here. How old are you?”

“Forty-one,” said Trevor.

“Well then you're too old. You can't stay here. You'll have to go back.”

“Yes,” said Trevor. “I'll have to go back. Some day you may come over to Scotland and see me.”

“Not a chance,” said Douglas. “I don't like you all that much and anyway I don't have any money.”

He shut his eyes and then opened them restlessly a few minutes later.

“Have you ever thought that I am your shadow, your other self, your
doppelgänger
?” he asked, his eyes shining. “I travel beside you and I speak the truth to you. I may be your Hyde which you hide.”

“You're a friend of Grace's,” said Trevor in a sudden panic. “He knows you.”

Hyde, hide, hide, said the voice in the wood as they travelled on. The Black Douglas.

Last night I dreamed a dreary dream

beyond the Isle of Skye

I dreamt a dead man won a fight

and that dead man was I… .

He shuddered and stared straight ahead of him. Douglas was moving his head restlessly against the back of the seat as if he were suffering a dreadful nightmare. The bus raced on through the blue perspex landscape.

Eighteen

W
HEN THEY ARRIVED
at the bus station Douglas said, “I don't want to do any more travelling. I'll have to go and room with a friend of mine. you'll have to go and see your brother on your own.”

“What do you mean?” said Trevor.

“What I just said. You'll have to go and see him on your own. I feel sick. I've got a bad headache.”

“You can't do that,” shouted Trevor.

“Why can't I? I'll give you the address.”

“You may give me the wrong address.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” said Douglas angrily.

“I'm just saying that I'm not going to be pushed around by you any more. You promised you would take me to him.”

“I didn't promise anything of the kind.” Out of the corner of his eye Trevor saw a big bus entering the bus station and looming towards him; he stepped aside.

“I'm fed up with being pushed around,” he said. “First of all you phone me out of the blue and tell me a lie and now you don't want to come with me.” He was almost inarticulate with anger, and it seemed to him at that moment that he was seeing Douglas for the first time. The eyes, he noticed, were almost jet black, as was the hair, and the cheeks were hollow.

“I'm fed up with it,” he shouted.

“What if you find your brother is a homosexual?” said Douglas mockingly. “What if he's living with another man? Morton told you that.”

“Morton was a liar,” Trevor shouted.

“You never know. Your brother might have been in that house. Why do you think he never married that girl?”

“Look,” said Trevor, “if you say that again I'll …”

“You'll what?”

“I'll bloody well punch you. I'll fight you. I'm tired of all this.”

Suddenly Douglas smiled at him, an open, winning, boyish smile, and said in a quiet voice, “It's okay. Here's the address. This time I'm telling you the truth. I found it out quite by chance. I've got it written down here.” And he took a piece of paper from his wallet.

“You're not a bad lad really. Take it.”

Trevor looked suspiciously at the paper as if it might explode in his face.

“Are you sure this is the right one at last?” he asked urgently.

“Yes, I'm sure,” said Douglas in the same quiet voice. “This is where he is staying. and now I'll have to go.”

“Are you sure you have to go? Can't you come with me?”

“I don't think you need me any more,” said Douglas in a low voice. “Look after yourself. But you'll be all right.” And he turned away.

“Look,” said Trevor, “I know it's not my business. But won't you take some money? I don't believe you're staying with a friend.”

Douglas stood and looked at him for a long time and then said, “all right then. If you've got ten dollars. I won't take any more. And I have a friend to stay with. Don't worry.”

“Goodbye then,” said Trevor handing over the money. “And if you're ever in Scotland …”

“I'll never be in Scotland,” said Douglas. “But thanks all the same.” He was about to say something else but decided against it.

“Goodbye,” he said. Trevor watched him go, and it was as if part of himself were leaving him, the agony was so great. He looked down at his clenched hands and then sat heavily on a seat. Douglas had disappeared and he would never see him again. He stared at the piece of paper on which was written, he was now sure, his brother's address. He rose slowly to his feet and went to the office and asked which bus he should take to get to the destination he had been assigned by Douglas. He bought a ticket and sat down again and waited.