Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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Vous, mon ange et ma passion!
Alors, ô ma beauté, dites à la vermine
Qui vous mangera de baisers …”’
‘My dear Spandrell!’ Lucy held up her hand protestingly.
‘Really too necrophilous!’ said Willie Weaver.
‘Always the same hatred of life,’ Rampion was thinking. ‘Different kinds of death – the only alternatives.’ He looked observantly into Spandrell’s face.
‘And when you come to think of it,’ Illidge was saying, ‘the time it took to form the coal measures divided by the length of a human life isn’t so hugely different from the life of a sequoia divided by a generation of decay bacteria.’
Cuthbert looked at his watch. ‘But good God!’ he shouted. ‘It’s twenty-five to one.’ He jumped up. ‘And I promised we’d put in an appearance at Widdicombe’s party. Peter, Willie! Quick march.’
‘But you can’t go,’ protested Lucy. ‘Not so absurdly early.’
‘The call of duty,’ Willie Weaver explained. ‘Stern Daughter of the Voice of God.’ He uttered his little cough of self-approbation.
‘But it’s ridiculous, it’s not permissible.’ She looked from one to another with a kind of angry anxiety. The dread of solitude was chronic with her. And it was always possible, if one sat up another five minutes, that something really amusing might happen. Besides, it was insufferable that people should do things she didn’t want them to do.
‘And we too, I’m afraid,’ said Mary Rampion rising.
Thank heaven, thought Walter. He hoped that Spandrell would follow the general example.
‘But this is impossible!’ cried Lucy. ‘Rampion, I simply cannot allow it.’
Mark Rampion only laughed. These professional sirens! he thought. She left him entirely cold, she repelled him. In desperation Lucy even appealed to the woman of the party.
‘Mrs Rampion, you must stay. Five minutes more. Only five minutes,’ she coaxed.
In vain. The waiter opened the side door. Furtively they slipped out into the darkness.
‘Why will they insist on going?’ asked Lucy, plaintively.
‘Why will we insist on staying?’ echoed Spandrell. Walter’s heart sank; that meant the man didn’t intend to go. ‘Surely, that’s much more incomprehensible.’
Utterly incomprehensible! On Walter the heat and alcohol were having their usual effects. He was feeling ill as well as miserable. What was the point of sitting on, hopelessly, in this poisonous air? Why not go home at once. Marjorie would be pleased.
‘You, at least, are faithful, Walter.’ Lucy gave him a smile. He decided to postpone his departure. There was a silence.
Cuthbert and his companions had taken a cab. Refusing all invitations, the Rampions had preferred to walk.
‘Thank heaven!’ said Mary as the taxi drove away. ‘That dreadful Arkwright!’
‘Ah, but that woman’s worse,’ said Rampion. ‘She gives me the creeps. That poor silly little Bidlake boy. Like a rabbit in front of a weasel.’
‘That’s male trade unionism. I rather like her for making you men squirm a bit. Serves you right.’
‘You might as well like cobras.’ Rampion’s zoology was wholly symbolical.
‘But if it’s a matter of creeps, what about Spandrell? He’s like a gargoyle, a demon.’
‘He’s like a silly schoolboy,’ said Rampion emphatically. ‘He’s never grown up. Can’t you see that? He’s a permanent adolescent. Bothering his head about all the things that preoccupy adolescents. Not being able to live, because he’s too busy thinking about death and God and truth and mysticism and all the rest of it; too busy thinking about sins and trying to commit them and being disappointed because he’s not succeeding. It’s deplorable. The man’s a sort of Peter Pan – much worse even than Barrie’s disgusting little abortion, because he’s got stuck at a sillier age. He’s Peter Pan à la D ostoevsky-cum-de Musset-cum-the-Nineties-cum-Bunyan-cum-Byron and the Marquis de Sade. Really deplorable. The more so as he’s potentially a very decent human being.’
Mary laughed. ‘I suppose I shall have to take your word for it.’
‘By the way,’ said Lucy, turning to Spandrell. ‘I had a message from your mother.’ She gave it. Spandrell nodded, but made no comment.
‘And the General?’ he enquired as soon as she had finished speaking. He wanted no more said about his mother.
‘Oh, the General!’ Lucy made a grimace. ‘I had at least half an hour of Military Intelligence this evening. Really, he oughtn’t to be allowed. What about a Society for the Prevention of Generals?’
‘I’m an honorary and original member.’
‘Or why not for the Prevention of the Old, while one was about it?’ Lucy went on. ‘The old really aren’t possible. Except your father, Walter. He’s perfect. Really perfect. The only possible old man.’
‘One of the few completely impossible, if you only knew.’ Among the Bidlakes of Walter’s generation the impossibility of old John was almost axiomatic. ‘You wouldn’t find him quite so perfect if you’d been his wife or his daughter.’ As he uttered the words, Walter suddenly remembered Marjorie. The blood rushed to his cheeks.
‘Oh, of course, if you will go and choose him as a husband or a father,’ said Lucy, ‘what can you expect? He’s a possible old man just because he’s been such an impossible husband and father. Most old people have had the life crushed out of them by their responsibilities. Your father never allowed himself to be squashed. He’s had wives and children and all the rest. He’s always lived as though he were a boy on the spree. Not very pleasant for the wives and children, I grant. But how delightful for the rest of us!’
‘I suppose so,’ said Walter. He had always thought of himself as so utterly unlike his father. But he was acting just as his father had acted.
‘Think of him unfilially.’
‘I’ll try.’ How should he think of himself?
‘Do, and you’ll see that I’m right. One of the few possible old men. Compare him with the others.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s no good; you can’t have any dealings with them.’
Spandrell laughed. ‘You speak of the old as though they were Kaffirs or Eskimos.’
‘Well, isn’t that just about what they are? Hearts of gold, and all that. And wonderfully intelligent – in their way, and all things considered. But they don’t happen to belong to our civilization. They’re aliens. I shall always remember the time I went to tea with some Arab ladies in Tunis. So kind they were, so hospitable. But they would make me eat such uneatable cakes, and they talked French so badly, and there was nothing whatever to say to them, and they were so horrified by my short skirts and my lack of children. Old people always remind me of an Arab tea party. Do you suppose we shall be an Arab tea party when we’re old?’
‘Yes, and probably a death’s head into the bargain,’ said Spandrell. ‘It’s a question of thickening arteries.’
‘But what makes the old such an Arab tea party is their ideas. I simply cannot believe that thick arteries will ever make me believe in God and morals and all the rest of it. I came out of the chrysalis during the War, when the bottom had been knocked out of everything. I don’t see how our grandchildren could possibly knock it out any more thoroughly than it was knocked then. So where would the misunderstanding come in?’
‘They might have put the bottom in again,’ suggested Spandrell.
She was silent for a moment. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘Or else you might have put it in yourself. Putting the bottom in again is one of the traditional occupations of the aged.’
The clock struck one and, like the cuckoo released by the bell, Simmons popped into the library, carrying a tray. Simmons was middle-aged and had that statesman-like dignity of demeanour which the necessity of holding the tongue and keeping the temper, of never speaking one’s real mind and preserving appearances tends always to produce in diplomats, royal personages, high government officials and butlers. Noiselessly, he laid the t
able for two, and, announcing that his lordship’s supper was served, retired. The day had been Wednesday; two grilled mutton chops were revealed when Lord Edward lifted the silver cover. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were chop days. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there was steak with chips. On Saturdays, as a treat, Simmons prepared a mixed grill. On Sundays he went out; Lord Edward had to be content with cold ham and tongue, and a salad.
‘Curious,’ said Lord Edward, as he handed Illidge his chop, ‘curious that the sheep population doesn’t rise. Not at the same rate as the human population. One would have expected … seeing that the symbiosis is such a close …’ He chewed in silence.
‘Mutton must be going out of fashion,’ said Illidge. ‘Like God,’ he added provocatively, ‘and the immortal soul.’ Lord Edward was not to be baited. ‘Not to mention the Victorian novelists,’ Illidge went on. He had slipped on the stairs; and the only literature Lord Edward ever read was Dickens and Thackeray. But the Old Man calmly masticated. ‘And innocent young girls.’ Lord Edward took a scientific interest in the sexual activities of axolotls and chickens, guinea-pigs and frogs; but any reference to the corresponding activities of humans made him painfully uncomfortable. ‘And purity,’ Illidge continued, looking sharply into the Old Man’s face, ‘and virginities, and …’ He was interrupted and Lord Edward saved from further persecution by the ringing of the telephone bell.
‘I’ll deal with it,’ said Illidge jumping up from his place.
He put the receiver to his ear. ‘Hullo!’
‘Edward, is that you?’ said a deep voice, not unlike Lord Edward’s own. ‘This is me. Edward, I’ve just this moment discovered a most extraordinary mathematical proof of the existence of God, or rather of …’
‘But this isn’t Lord Edward,’ shouted Illidge. ‘Wait. I’ll ask him to come.’ He turned back to the Old Man. ‘It’s Lord Gattenden,’ he said. ‘He’s just discovered a new proof of the existence of God.’ He did not smile, his tone was grave. Gravity in the circumstances was the wildest derision. The statement made fun of itself. Laughing comment made it less, not more, ridiculous. Marvellous old imbecile! Illidge felt himself revenged for all the evening’s humiliations. ‘A mathematical proof,’ he added, more seriously than ever.
‘Oh dear!’ exclaimed Lord Edward, as though something deplorable had happened. Telephoning always made him nervous. He hurried to the instrument. ‘Charles, is that …’
‘Ah, Edward,’ cried the disembodied voice of the head of the family from forty miles away at Gattenden. ‘Such a really remarkable discovery. I wanted your opinion on it. About God. You know the formula, m over nought equals infinity, m being any positive number? Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by nought? In which case you have m equals infinity times nought. That is to say that a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn’t that demonstrate the creation of the universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn’t it?’ The diaphragm of the telephone receiver was infected by Lord Gattenden’s excitement, forty miles away. It talked with breathless speed; its questions were earnest and insistent. ‘Doesn’t it, Edward?’ All his life the fifth marquess had been looking for the absolute. It was the only sort of hunting possible to a cripple. For fifty years he had trundled in his wheeled chair at the heels of the elusive quarry. Could it be that he had now caught it, so easily, and in such an unlikely place as an elementary school-book on the theory of limits? It was something that justified excitement. ‘What’s your opinion, Edward?’
‘Well,’ began Lord Edward, and at the other end of the electrified wire, forty miles away, his brother knew, from the tone in which that single word was spoken, that it was no good. The Absolute’s tail was still unsalted.
‘Talking about elders,’ said Lucy, ‘did I ever tell either of you that really marvellous story about my father?’
‘Which story?’
‘The one about the conservatories.’ The mere thought of the story made her smile.
‘No, I never remember hearing about the conservatories,’ said Spandrell, and Walter also shook his head.
‘It was during the War,’ Lucy began. ‘I was getting on for eighteen, I suppose. Just launched. And by the way, somebody did almost literally break a bottle of champagne over me. Parties were rather feverish in those days, if you remember.’
Spandrell nodded and, though as a matter of fact he had been at school during the War, Walter also nodded, knowingly.
‘One day,’ Lucy continued, ‘I got a message: Would I go upstairs and see his Lordship? It was unprecedented. I was rather alarmed. You know how the old imagine one lives. And how upset they are when they discover they’ve been wrong. The usual Arab tea party.’ She laughed and, for Walter, her laughter laid waste to all the years before he had known her. To elaborate the history of their young and innocent loves had been one of his standing consolations. She had laughed; and now not even fancy could take pleasure in that comforting romance.
Spandrell nodded. ‘So you went upstairs, feeling as though you were climbing a scaffold …’
‘And found my father in his library, pretending to read. My arrival really terrified him. Poor man! I never saw anyone so horribly embarrassed and distressed. You can imagine how his terrors increased mine. Such strong feelings must surely have an adequate cause. What could it be? Meanwhile, he suffered agonies. If his sense of duty hadn’t been so strong, I believe he would have told me to go away again at once. You should have seen his face!’ The comic memories were too much for her. She laughed.
His elbow on the table, his head in his hand, Walter stared into his wine-glass. The bright little bubbles came rushing to the surface one by one, purposively, as though determined at all costs to be free and happy. He did not dare to raise his eyes. The sight of Lucy’s laughter-distorted face, he was afraid, might make him do something stupid – cry aloud, or burst into tears.
‘Poor man!’ repeated Lucy, and the words came out on a puff of explosive mirth. ‘He could hardly speak for terror.’ Suddenly changing her tone, she mimicked Lord Edward’s deep blurred voice bidding her sit down, telling her (stammeringly and with painful hesitations) that he had something to talk to her about. The mimicry was admirable. Lord Edward’s embarrassed phantom was sitting at their table.
‘Admirable!’ Spandrell applauded. And even Walter had to laugh; but the depths of his unhappiness remained undisturbed.
‘It must have taken him a good five minutes,’ Lucy went on, ‘to screw himself up to the talking point. I was in an agony, as you can imagine. But guess what it was he wanted to say.’
‘What?’
‘Guess.’ And all at once Lucy began to laugh again, uncontrollably. She covered her face with her hands, her whole body shook, as though she were passionately weeping. ‘It’s too good,’ she gasped, dropping her hands and leaning back in her chair. Her face still worked with laughter; there were tears on her cheeks. ‘Too good.’ She opened the little beaded bag that lay on the table in front of her and taking out a handkerchief, began to wipe her eyes. A gust of perfume came out with the handkerchief, reinforcing those faint memories of gardenias that surrounded her, that moved with her wherever she went like a second ghostly personality. Walter looked up; the strong gardenia perfume was in his nostrils; he was breathing what was for him the very essence of her being, the symbol of her power, of his own insane desires. He looked at her with a kind of terror.
‘He told me,’ Lucy went on, still laughing spasmodically, still dabbing at her eyes, ‘he told me that he had heard that I sometimes allowed young men to kiss me at dances, in conservatories. Conservatories!’ she repeated. ‘What a wonderful touch! So marvellously in period. The ‘eighties. The old Prince of Wales. Zola’s novels. Conservatories! Poor dear man! He said he hoped I wouldn’t let it happen again. My mother’d be so dreadfully distressed if she knew. Oh dear, oh dear!’ She drew a deep breath. The laughter finally died down.
Walter looked at her and breath
ed her perfume, breathed his own desires and the terrible power of her attraction. And it seemed to him that he was seeing her for the first time. Now for the first time – with the half-emptied glass in front of her, the bottle, the dirty ashtray; now, as she leaned back in her chair, exhausted with laughter, and wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes.
‘Conservatories,’ Spandrell was repeating. ‘Conservatories. Yes, that’s very good. That’s very good indeed.’
‘Marvellous,’ said Lucy. ‘The old are really marvellous. But hardly possible, you must admit. Except, of course, Walter’s father.’
John Bidlake climbed slowly up the stairs. He was very tired. ‘These awful parties,’ he was thinking. He turned on the light in his bedroom. Over the mantelpiece one of Degas’s realistically unlovely women sat in her round tin bath trying to scrub her back. On the opposite wall a little girl by Renoir played the piano between a landscape of his own and one of Walter Sickert’s visions of Dieppe. Above the bed hung two caricatures of himself by Max Beerbohm and another by Rouveyre. There was a decanter of brandy on the table, with a siphon and glass. Two letters were propped conspicuously against the edge of the tray. He opened them. The first contained press cuttings about his latest show. The Daily Mail called him ‘the veteran of British Art’ and assured its readers that ‘his hand has lost nothing of its cunning’. He crumpled up the cutting and threw it angrily into the fireplace. The next was from one of the superior weeklies. The tone was almost contemptuous. He was judged by his own earlier performance and condemned. ‘It is difficult to believe that works so cheap and flashy – ineffectively flashy, at that – as those collected in the present exhibition should have been produced by the painter of the Tate Gallery “Haymakers” and the still more magnificent “Bathers,” now at Tantamount House. In these empty and trivial pictures we look in vain for those qualities of harmonious balance, of rhythmic calligraphy, of three-dimensional plasticity which …’ What a rigmarole! What tripe! He threw the whole bunch of cuttings after the first. But his contempt for the critics could not completely neutralize the effects of their criticism. ‘Veteran of British Art’ – it was the equivalent of ‘poor old Bidlake’. And when they complimented him on his hand having lost none of its cunning, they were patronizingly assuring him that he still painted wonderfully well for an old dotard in his second childhood. The only difference between the hostile and the favourable critic was that one said brutally in so many words what the other implied in his patronizing compliment. He almost wished that he had never painted those Bathers.