The Haunted Storm Page 17

  “A psychiatric hospital?” That was clairvoyance; he knew the answer as he asked the question.

  “Yes.”

  “What was the matter with you?”

  “Obviously I was mad.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Nothing much. They gave me drugs and E.C.T. That’s electric shock. The drugs made me sleepy and the E.C.T. gave me a headache, but it was comfortable and free and I had plenty of time. It was enervating, though. I was getting lazy. So I discharged myself. And then I tried to join the Army, but they wouldn’t have me.”

  “Yes, yes… I forget who it was: someone said that nowadays it was possible to say to someone, yes, you have a job, you have a family, you live in such-and-such a place and do whatever it is for a living, but what do you do? Well, that’s missing in what you’ve said, too. What are you doing?”

  “That was H. G. Wells. And I’ll tell you what T. E. Hulme said: the world lives in order to develop the lines on its face. I’m not doing anything; it’s a meaningless question.”

  “I can’t think of another way to put it.”

  “Well, I’m answering it all the time.”

  There was an air of gentle courtesy about the way he spoke. Matthew felt that he was wasting Alan’s time, but that his brother was taking trouble with him, for some reason.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll try, yes, I see what you mean, I’ll try and get to it. But tell me, why are you bothering with me?”

  Alan considered this before he spoke, and put his hands in his pockets. They were walking slowly; the streets were quiet, and Matthew found himself sensing, like cool water on his bare flesh, the far-off delicate erotic movements of summer in the atmosphere and the countryside around the city. For a second he had the sensation of looking-two ways, at himself and at the world simultaneously. But what he saw was also the city and the country, the past and the present, the past and the future, Elizabeth and Alan, the desert and the brothels, Egypt and Tibet: pairs, but not contraries. It only lasted a second, and then it disappeared, and he was back with Alan.

  “Because,” said his brother, “I was curious. Elizabeth told me you were here. And if you wanted to know why I was curious, it’s not flattering; it’s quite simply that you’re my brother and I was interested to see how like me you were.”

  His manner – it was partly this which produced the double-vision in Matthew. He sounded infinitely weary: and screwed up to a pitch of enormous tension. He spoke harshly, coldly, indifferently: but there was still the disconcerting silky intimate timbre in his intonation, the effeminacy.

  “Yes,” said Matthew, “that’s why I came, I suppose… it’s the only reason I look at anyone, to see how like me they are.”

  “What if they are like you?”

  “Well, good! I don’t need them, in that case.”

  “And what if they’re not?”

  “Then they’re on the wrong track, and I needn’t take any notice of them.”

  Alan smiled. “Yes, that’s right,” he said.

  “And am I like you, then?”

  “No; you’re too nervous, just now. Don’t bother about it. If I hadn’t seen it was worth it, I’d have told you to fuck off ten minutes ago. It doesn’t matter if you talk or not. Look; there’s a museum here. Let’s go in there for a while.”

  Matthew scratched his head. “I’ll have to fall in with what he wants, I’ll have to go at his pace, or I’ll lose him,” he thought. And if this meant being silent, or walking about the streets for hours going nowhere, then let it.

  They each paid for a ticket and went into the museum. It consisted of a single large room with a gallery around the upper part of it. The roof was made of glass, and the light was dim and cool, like an aquarium. The floor was crowded with dusty glass cases containing fragments of Roman pottery, flint tools and weapons, models illustrating siege war fare in the middle ages, and so on. There was no one there but themselves.

  They wandered idly up one side of it, saying nothing, Matthew tried to restrain the numerous questions that surged up in his breast, and tapped his fingers on the glass cases or whistled softly in irritation. Alan seemed disposed to linger there all afternoon. He stared at each exhibit in turn, taking his time, going from ancient British sling-stones to medieval cooking utensils, staring for a long time at a book case containing the works of some long-dead local author and a facsimile of one of his manuscripts.

  At last Matthew’s frustration burst into words. He said the first thing that came into his head.

  “I went to the police the other day.”

  Alan turned round. “Did you? Why?”

  “It was – you know, this – this murder, in Barton, there was another one on Saturday – well, you must have heard about it – and I was there, you see, and so I went to the police on Sunday morning, and told them what I’d seen.”

  Alan nodded.

  “It was in case they – well, I was afraid that if I didn’t, you see, they’d come to me.”

  “Ah,” said Alan softly.

  It was on the tip of Matthew’s tongue to say “I went because I thought I did it –” but he held it back. Alan was looking at a plaster model of a hill-fort, with a cutaway section to show what the excavations had unearthed. “Have you been in here before?” he said instead.

  “Once or twice,” said Alan.

  “I didn’t even know it was here.”

  “Most cities have a museum somewhere.”

  He moved further on, down to the end of the gallery, and stood looking at a glass case containing photographs and drawings of Roman inscriptions.

  “You know what that means, do you?” he said, pointing at one of them.

  Matthew recognised it instantly, with a flutter of excitement.

  “Deo Invicto Mitrae – of course I do, yes, it means to Mithras, the invincible god. Why?”

  “And you know what ‘ignoto’ means?”

  “Ignotus – what’s that – unknown. Yes.”

  “Good,” said Alan, smiling.

  Matthew was baffled. “What’s it all about, then?”

  “This well,” Alan said quietly, so quietly in fact that Matthew could hardly hear him. But he didn’t think Alan was being secretive: the thought struck him suddenly that his brother was dazed for lack of sleep. Or drugged! That was it.

  “Do you use benzedrine, or something?” he said. “To keep you awake?”

  “I have done. I’m not using it now. There are too many…” he broke off for a moment and stroked his chin. “There are too many things to be controlled, at the moment. I’m moving slowly; I’m ticking over, if you like. Okay; let’s talk a little more, then. I’m not under the influence of anything now but myself. I haven’t been to sleep for two days or so.”

  “Where are you working now?”

  “In the Bell Hotel. I’m a porter.”

  “You’re not working today, then?”

  “It’s my day off. I work nights mostly. I’m hungry – let’s go and eat something… coming?”

  “Yes, all right.” Matthew took a last look at the photographs in the case and glanced at the handwritten card, in faded brown ink, that explained them.

  “The Mithraeum,” he read, “was more often than not situated underground, whether naturally, in a cave, or artificially, in a hollowed-out subterranean chamber. Some of these, notwithstanding the evident structural limitations in respect of size, were of elegant and even noble proportions, calculated to induce in the novice or aspirant to the mysteries an impression of awe and grandeur…”

  Alan was waiting patiently. Matthew joined him and they left the museum, blinking in the sunlight.

  “Tell me about this well, then,” said Matthew.

  “All right,” said Alan as they moved off down the street.

  Matthew waited, but he said no more.

  They came to a cafe near the railway station. Alan opened the door and went inside. The smell of fried food was overpowering. Most of the tables were empty,
but there was a group of workmen seated near the door, playing cards. One of them was black.

  Alan looked around, and without hesitation walked straight out again. Matthew followed him; he was beginning to acquiesce in Alan’s odd, dreamlike mood, and accepted the sudden decision without thinking.

  Past the station they found another place, and went in and sat down. It, too, was nearly empty. They sat next to the window, in the sunlight.

  “What d’you want to eat’?” said Alan.

  “I’m not hungry; I’1l have a cup of tea.”

  “Okay.” Alan got up and went to the counter to order his food. He came back with two cups of tea and sat down again.

  “What was wrong with the other place?” Matthew asked. “Was it because that guy was black?”

  Alan nodded.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It would have been the same if he was Jewish.” Alan spoke ironically again; he was quite well aware, to judge from the half-smile on his lips, that this was no answer at all.

  “So you’re a fascist,” said Matthew.

  “Be precise,” Alan answered. “What does fascist mean?”

  “All right; racist, then.”

  “That’s clearer. Yes, I’m a racist.”

  He stirred some sugar into his tea and looked out of the window. The sun fell full into his eyes, but instead of screwing them up against it he merely lowered his eyelids a little way.

  After a minute the woman at the counter called “Bacon, egg and chips.”

  Alan got up to collect it. Matthew watched the way he moved: it fascinated him. Alan was simply so conscious of every tiniest movement: he measured his footsteps as carefully as he measured his words. Maybe it was this that gave him the quality of power which was so apparent even when he sat still and said nothing. As an experiment, just for a second, while Alan was paying for his food, Matthew tried to become utterly conscious of himself and of the fact that he existed. He flung himself forward mentally against it, but his strength wasn’t equal to it, and he fell back. “Try again, you weakling,” he thought, “try again later.”

  Alan ate swiftly, and pushed the plate away.

  “So you want to know what racialism means?” he asked.

  “I want to know what everything means. I want to know how close you are to Canon Cole. And how close you are to Elizabeth; and how close you are to the world, and I want to know what the world is, because I have less idea of the world than a baby has of nuclear physics, Yes, what is it, for God’s sake? This stuff, this reality; that’s the question at the root of it all.” He tapped the table, and moved his hands about to indicate everything. “But start with racialism, if you want. What’s that all about? It sounds like filthy rubbish to me, but I know nothing at all… anyway, carry on.”

  Alan’s teacup stood in a pool of sunlight on the table top. The thick white glass it was made of gleamed and shone, and the dark tea glowed inside it. Alan put his hand out as if to lift it up and drink from it, but instead let his hand lie still on the table, the finger-tips just touching the saucer. Matthew watched it as his brother began to speak; occasionally the fingers would stir slightly, trembling, but otherwise it was absolutely motionless.

  “You mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that I do anything,” Alan said. “I refuse to do anything; that’s closer to it. If you set out to do something you split your will into separate pieces, you reduce your strength. It seems easier to have something to act on, something to engage you; yes, it does, but it’s false. Let your will feed on itself. There’s no need to look at the world. The world can break against you time and time again, and keep coming, and keep breaking. It’s as false as water. If it’s stormy, like water, you see nothing in it, and if you look at it when it’s still, you see nothing but yourself. Better to ignore it. And what happens then? The strange thing is, instead of decreasing, you increase. Your will does very well on a diet of nothing but itself; it gets firmer and stronger. Then you notice that the world, if you take any notice of it at all, you notice that it gets quieter, as if you’ve made it unsure of itself. It shivers with anger or fear, sometimes. But you don’t attack it, you don’t make any move at all in the direction of the world, you leave it be. It’s quite simple…”

  Matthew frowned. “But in some way I can’t describe I am the world. I’m bound up with the filth of it, the rag-and-bone shop of it, where all the ladders start. Like the poem. I asked him this, and I didn’t get a straight answer. So now I’ll ask you: what happens if this rock that you think you are suddenly gets swept away like a boat in the flood of things? What’s love, and what’s guilt, and why have they got such power over me?”

  “They haven’t got any power over you at all. They are nothing to you. You don’t realise it you sway like a snake to their music, because it’s insidious and charming, because it touches your heart. And if you were only heart, you’d be as powerless as you think you are. The heart’s a child’s toy; and it grieves you to part with it… but it’s nothing, nothing at all. Get rid of it.”

  “What about guilt? If you murdered someone – for whatever reason – and then you were haunted by grief for it, and if it kept you awake at night and made you dream about it with your eyes open in the daylight, if it got everywhere – in your clothes, in your eyes, in your teeth, like sand – what would you do? What does it mean? What is it? Now – oh Jesus, the thought sickens me, but listen: that first murder – did you read about it? Well, I was supposed to arrive at Harry’s the night it happened, but I had – I had a blinding headache – I get it sometimes – I had to go to bed, you see. Well, I don’t remember going to bed, that’s all! I woke up in the morning in a guest house bedroom – I suppose it was, but I couldn’t find anyone in the morning to pay, and so I just left – and when I went outside I found myself in the city here, but oh, I don’t remember a thing about the night before… And the same thing happened on Saturday, I fainted with the pain, and when I came to they found – it was in the playground; they found a girl, and she’d just been killed… so that’s why I went to the police. I told them I’d been there when it happened, that I was feeling ill and went out into the field to lie down, and that I didn’t see anything… That was the truth, too, but not the whole truth. I should have told them; it would help clear it up, at least, l suppose; but I was afraid. There was a sergeant there, and he took down what I’d said, and took my name and address… But tell me: where does guilt come into it?”

  “Feed on it,” said Alan. “It’s all grist to the will.” He laughed harshly.

  Well, that was true. He couldn’t get out of that. Then another thought struck him.

  “But what about you? What about your fascism; tell me about that.”

  “Fascism is mainly a theory of economics. Ours is mainly a theory of race. It gets nearer the heart of it. Our economics are fascist as far as they’re worked out. But as for race: the history of the world is a history of racial conflict. Some races prosper because they’re more highly gifted, others decay or never get started because their stock is poorer and thinner. The highest type of man is the white man, the lowest the blacks and the Jews. The white races have the duty of extending their mastery over the whole world, of dominating the other races, of promoting conflict… war is glory, and racial war is the clearest and noblest kind of war. That’s it.”

  Matthew listened carefully; he could not bring himself to think that Alan meant it. But he didn’t mean it! His voice had a tone of mockery in it, and his eyes seemed to indicate that he was smiling. What was he getting at? And where was he, where was the centre from which he was speaking, if he didn’t mean it? What did he really feel?

  “My case against that,” said Matthew, “is the same as Ivan Karamazov’s case against God and Sartre’s case for communism. And all it is, is: it’s worth nothing if people have to suffer. If you kill Jews, it cuts your right to claim superiority to them clean away. And if I – if I kill a little girl – then I cannot pretend to be unconnected with t
he world and set off to will myself into heaven. And that’s what I mean when I say that I am the world, that I’m bound up with it more closely than I know. The world’s inside me. Morality is objective and absolute. Why, I don’t know; but –” he shrugged, feeling desperate – “there it is.”

  “You think so?” said Alan.

  “Yes! You can’t cut out the world! I used to think you could, but… things are changing. The world is me. Or else… your emotions: yes, cut them out by all means, but do it when they’re functioning normally: when they’re healthy. “Don’t just jettison them because you can’t cope with them. Just because this guilt frightens me – I shouldn’t get rid of it just because of that, because it would be simple cowardice – you see? When everything’s functioning normally and ticking over by itself, then by all means step back, take a look at it, and cut it out if you want to. But now – what can I do about it now?”

  “I should have thought it was ideal, from your point of view,” said Alan. “For one thing, you’ve got a grandstand view of morality working. Everything’s clearer in a crisis. That’s my point about war. As I said, watch it closely, observe it, feed on it. But don’t get neurotic about it. Neurotic people are people who choose to be childish, and that’s contemptible. Observe it. The more anguishing it gets, the clearer it’ll become: excellent! And I don’t want to fling a spanner into your works, and spoil it all, but tell me this: what exactly are you guilty of? Did you murder those girls?”

  “I don’t know! But in any case that doesn’t alter what you’ve just said: because I think I am, and so I can still peer at this morality thing and the way it enmeshes with the world… and the real anguish comes from the fact that it does enmesh with the world, or seems to; so that I am the world… but I’m sick of that.”

  He stopped. Alan was looking at him steadily. Matthew felt a little foolish, and went on:

  “And of course that’s all my arse; and as soon as I’ve sorted out the truth of it, I’ll wave it good-bye and say thank God that’s done… but now, by Christ, I’ve got the bone of it between my teeth, and I’ll crack it to splinters before I’m through. So tell me this – because you didn’t answer when I asked you: how can you defend yourself against Ivan’s case? How does your theory of racial supremacy stand up against the suffering of one Jew in Auschwitz or one bombed church in Alabama?”