Judith Read online

  From time to time he would say ‘I really am going to fix up a room one day in London!’

  I have this need to try to understand Desmond. I think it is not so much a rage that women have against men, as a guilt about feeling that in many areas men have been made redundant.

  Desmond was one of the bright not-quite-so-young writers on Die Flamme magazine; his job was to take stories from gossip or newspapers and to spin elaborate fantasies from them. The point was deliberately that readers should not quite know what was a fantasy and what was not; in this style any wild story might purvey some thrill – it might be true, and if it were not, then indeed where was the reader’s sense of humour! I do not know how Desmond had started on this job; he had wanted to be a writer; but there was a part of him that seemed always to be saying – But don’t you see that life is venomous! And so Die Flamme magazine became a home for him; because there was something very practically, and powerfully, successful about its venom. Several people who worked for Die Flamme magazine called themselves Christians (Desmond was a Catholic) but it seemed to me they were more like Manichaeans – if you think the world is irredeemably evil then you have no responsibility for it; you can do what you like; you have some licence simply to amuse and to be amused.

  Or perhaps it was just that the Die Flamme people had been to English public schools; and their contacts with their own and other people’s bodies had been often to do with cruelty.

  Desmond would sometimes bring in to the pubs or restaurants where we met a bundle of newspaper cuttings which had been gathered for him by a secretary; he would read out items in funny voices and then would put the papers on the table and would draw lines round paragraphs with a red pencil as if he were marking out bombing areas for an attack.

  There was one story being run by Die Flamme at this time which was about a left-wing politician whom they called Dirty Lenin. Dirty Lenin had at one time been caught (or had he? but this uncertainty was the point) doing something in the City with what are called bonds; there had been an activity called washing bonds, which was improper. So when the Die Flamme people made this public, they called the bond-washer Dirty Lenin: do you see? Do you? Another of the points of this stuff is that a reader may feel himself in the know; one of an élite. For this, of course, it does not matter whether or not a story is true.

  When questioned, Desmond would puff his cheeks out and reach for his pipe. He would say – Well he’s an arrogant sod anyway.

  Oh, I might have felt some enmity against Desmond!

  There was an evening when Desmond did have to stay up in London for the night: he had a date with some television people early in the morning. We had dinner together; he frowned and blew his cheeks out: I wondered if he might say something like – I have a headache: what bad luck! I did see, of course, that he probably loved his wife. Up till recently I had still been staying in that house in Ruskin Square; this had been a suitable background for whatever strange business it was that Desmond and I were up to: I mean he could frown at me intently and say – Ah, it would be different, wouldn’t it, if we could go back to your place! And so he need not feel guilty – or too absurd. But just recently I had moved out of Ruskin Square and had gone to stay in a cheap hotel, or hostel, at the back of Victoria Station. I had not told Desmond about this (I have not told you! but this is another story). Perhaps I did not want to put burdens on to him. But then when he and I were having dinner that evening and he was frowning and blowing even more portentously than usual, eventually he said ‘But the terrible thing is I’m booked in to stay with friends!’ And I thought – But this is beyond even being ridiculous! At the same time, however, he also looked so miserable that I thought – Perhaps after all his burden is not that he thinks he might almost have to go to bed with me but that he has to go through all this rubbish every time; and might he not long to be liberated from this? So I said (what are the connections here, between good and evil!) ‘Well, we could go back to my place.’

  He said ‘To Ruskin Square?’

  I said ‘No, I’ve moved out.’

  He said ‘Where have you moved to?’

  He seemed genuinely both excited and alarmed. I thought – Is it some sort of childishness that I love about Desmond?

  I said ‘I’m in a sort of small hotel at the back of Victoria Station.’

  He did not, of course, ask how on earth I had got there. I thought – When he makes marks on the tablecloth with his fork it is, yes, his anxieties that he is defending or attacking.

  He said ‘We can go there?’

  I said ‘If you like.’

  He said ‘Of course I like!’

  I thought – He is like someone who has been told he will be the first passenger to the moon.

  What I did not tell him (well, there are these things that you wanted me to tell you) was that one of the reasons I had left Ruskin Square was that I had become friendly with an Indian boy who was some sort of revolutionary: he was also the receptionist, or doorkeeper, at this hotel or hostel at the back of Victoria Station. I mean he had a room in the basement and I had a room on the top floor: but there we were. There was no reason, really, why I should not go with anyone I liked to my room: but what have things in this area got to do with reason?

  Desmond said ‘How wonderful!’

  Outside the restaurant Desmond looked for a taxi; he stood with his arm raised like the Statue of Liberty. I thought – Whatever happens will not exactly be my fault; or is it true that women like men fighting duels? In the taxi Desmond and I carried on like the people in a 1940s film; I mean we sat rather bleakly holding hands. I thought – But those people often could only do it, didn’t it seem, if it was mixed up with going off to war? And so, might we not have to make our own war? And then – What if women do like men fighting duels?

  The Indian boy was waiting on the steps outside the hostel. I had thought he might be. He watched us as we got out of the taxi and came up the steps. I was still trying to work out – You mean, this is one of the things you can’t work out, the chances of good coming out of evil? At the top of the steps the Indian boy held out his arm and said ‘This man cannot come in here.’ The Indian boy was rather small and beautiful: he was called Krishna: he was like that person playing a flute. Desmond said ‘Why can I not come in here?’ Krishna said ‘Residents only after half-past ten.’ Desmond said ‘This lady and I wish to have coffee in the lounge.’ I thought – So how, after all, did those people in the 1940s ever get to bed? Krishna said ‘There is no lounge.’ I suppose I might have whispered to Krishna; to have tried to put things right; but the paralysis in such a context is that one does not know what is right. Desmond said This lady has paid for her room, has she not?’ Krishna said ‘You get moving.’ We were standing around on the top of the steps with nothing much happening. Then Krishna said ‘And don’t let me see your face around here again!’

  This was the sort of phrase, I suppose, that might have been shouted at one of Krishna’s ancestors by – whom? – one of Desmond’s ancestors, in the far-off days of the British Raj?

  Desmond said ‘Don’t you speak to me like that!’

  I thought – There might be something sparked off, even now, as a result of these echoes of the British Raj?

  Desmond tried to push past Krishna to go in at the door of the hotel. Krishna got hold of him. I had noticed before that when men start to fight they do not stand back and slog at one another as they do in American films; they take hold of each other by the elbows or shoulders and seem to dance; it is more like the sort of fighting they do in Thailand – they shuffle, and look down at their legs, and try to trip one another up. The Indian boy was much shorter than Desmond so that it was easier for him to get at Desmond’s feet; also he was probably more practised. Desmond was like someone in the process of moving heavy furniture. After a time he fell, and pulled Krishna down on top of him: there was a peculiar moment when it was as if they were making love. Then Krishna got a knee into Desmond’s groin and Desmond got a
hand free and punched Krishna in the face. Then Krishna got up and ran into the hallway of the hotel and came out carrying a knife. I began to shout obscenities at him: this was what I had been told was the thing to do in such circumstances by Miss Julie of Hong Kong. I don’t know why it works: except perhaps that what gives relief in these circumstances is any contact with what is obscene. Krishna stood with his arms hanging down. I thought – So what am I doing? it is with him, is it, now, that I want to go to bed? Desmond got up and went into the hall of the hotel and looked around as if for something to smash. He picked up a small wooden table; then he put it down, and came and rejoined me on the steps. He said ‘We can go to another hotel.’ I said ‘Yes.’ I wanted to say to Krishna – I’m so sorry! I only wanted to talk to this man! It won’t take long!

  The taxi was still waiting at the bottom of the steps. I thought – Taxi-drivers are people who expect these things to happen as if in a 1940s film?

  I said to Desmond ‘Where shall we go?’

  He said ‘To the Ritz.’

  I said ‘The Ritz!’

  I did admire Desmond then. I thought – He knows, does he, about those days when people like his ancestors fought duels?

  Desmond said ‘When it is the middle of the night, and you have no luggage, and you have been kicked in the balls – always go to the Ritz!’

  I said ‘I’m so sorry!’

  He said ‘Oh that’s all right.’

  Then – ‘It’s a wilful Indian that blows nobody any good.’

  On our way to the Ritz I did not know whether Desmond would be able to pull this off; but he did seem to be taking on a slightly different and older personality – older both historically and in himself – something blooded, I suppose, and thus more authoritative; some younger son of the aristocracy perhaps just back from the coast of Coromandel or the cataracts of the Upper Nile; his baggage shipwrecked on some quicksands en route; and so here he was now cast ashore with his young wife. Or this could be the story – it was only necessary, surely, to have a good story. I thought – If Desmond gets away with this it will be some achievement in the masculine world equivalent to the subtle expertise of Miss Julie from Hong Kong.

  At the Ritz there were two men behind a table who were impassive while Desmond spoke. I thought – A story is believed because of its style: if it is aesthetic, does this make it effective too?

  Desmond said ‘I’m so terribly sorry to be a nuisance like this, but we are in some sense in the position of King Lear in the storm.’

  One of the men behind the table pushed forward a card for Desmond to sign.

  We were taken up by a page-boy to a room which was of cream and blue and gold. Desmond gave the page-boy two pounds. I thought – He knows the right amount, two pounds?

  I said to Desmond ‘I think you are wonderful!’

  I thought – You mean, I really might mean this?

  There is the feeling of being alone in a hotel room with someone for the first time which is like that, I suppose, of being in a bullring: you walk round, looking for corners where you might be safe. I thought – How difficult, indeed, to be a man! to be like an old horse with all your insides having to hang out.

  Since Desmond had not wanted before to take me to a hotel room I had assumed that what he was scared of was – the usual.

  I thought – But he has done his stuff: now it is up to me, Miss Julie from Hong Kong! I said ‘Does it hurt?’ He said ‘A bit.’ I said ‘Let me see.’

  There was an old film – do you remember? – in which Brigitte Bardot had been making men impotent right and left and then two of them had a fight and one of them got kicked in the balls and it was this one, of course, with whom Brigitte Bardot eventually condescended to go to bed: and things then, of course, were supposed to be all right. But in fact, are there not more complex activities needed in the area between evil and good, if things are to be all right?

  I said ‘Here?’

  He said ‘Yes.’

  I said ‘It doesn’t look as if you’ve been hurt!’

  What you have to do, I think, is to become quite rapt, and yet dispassionate; rapt, and yet dispassionate; getting carried away, and letting things come together; playing a game, and getting a root down deep; so that what eventually, by skill, is tapped, is – oil, gas, fire. You have to breathe, so your breath has flames about it; this is the area that was once covered by smell. There comes a moment, yes, when reality takes over.

  I said ‘Good heavens, you better always be hurt!’

  Desmond said ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  I said ‘This? This? You were quite cruel, were you not, to that nice Indian boy!’

  For a short while you can make the game, which is in the mind, come out, work.

  Then once we got started, Desmond took on what is called the masculine role: he became like the figurehead of a ship. I thought – But then why is it women who are the figureheads of ships?

  After a time Desmond made a noise like a foghorn.

  I thought – So we have avoided the rocks: we have carried out cleverly the tasks of our journey: he will not now say, will he – Was that all right?

  He said ‘Why are you smiling?’ Then that thing in Latin that people say when you smile – ‘Post coitum omne animal triste est.’

  I thought – What would it be like really to be in love? You would not talk? You would have no language? It would be like being in a painting with just – a house, a snake, a tree?

  Then – But I have got what I have wanted, haven’t I? I am with one of the Die Flamme people: I am in bed at the Ritz Hotel.

  Then – You mean, people are sometimes sad just when they get what they want?

  Now there is something that I want to put in here (lying in my bath the next morning at the Ritz Hotel) which is that however much this is a story of someone on the make and even imagining they might have reached somewhere such as Holofernes’s tent (Desmond had gone off to his appointment with the television people) – however much this is true, and however much I was at the same time pleased because I had had fun and yet somewhat ashamed of this being true, the side of me that was ashamed (or is shame not the word? the side of me that always seemed to be waiting for something quite different round some corner), this is a story about this too. I had glimpses of what it might be every now and then: it was as if I were walking up a spiral staircase and there were here and there very narrow windows; I could not see much through; but it was as if there were opposite me another tower containing another spiral staircase with windows; and there might be a chance of my coinciding with someone else at a window; and we might at least (but this might be enough!) wave to each other and say – Coo-ee!

  I was reminded of one such moment in my bath at the Ritz Hotel.

  (You have a glimpse of me through a window of my staircase? a girl compact, did you not once call me, Bert – with light strong limbs and brown curly hair –)

  I had been at the university on the West Coast of America and there was a lecture one evening from a visiting English professor: he was called Professor Ackerman: I thought the lecture sounded interesting and decided to go. This Professor had written a book which had become something of a cult among the anti-academic academics of the Coast: the Professor had been a biologist and a physicist and was now something called a cyberneticist; his book (so far as I could make out: people were apt to be inarticulate about it) was to do with the different levels at which, or from which, one could look at consciousness or learning or experience – what appeared to be an impossibility or a contradiction at one level became reconciled with itself on or from another. I was told that when people attended the Professor’s lectures they were apt to have the impression that he was talking about something slightly different from what he was saying – as if he were using some code – people were hearing him on one level, but he seemed to be keeping something back on another. When he was challenged about this he would say – No, he was doing his best to say what he meant in the be
st way available to him; but of course all messages depended on the use and understanding of some code. This either irritated people or fascinated them according to – what? – temperament; choice; acquired taste? At the beginning of his book he had put the quotation from St Mark’s gospel in which Jesus explains why he speaks to people in parables – ‘that seeing they may see and not perceive and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should be converted and their sins should be forgiven them’.

  There was a large crowd for the Professor’s lecture: it was quiet and respectful. The Professor was a sturdy-looking man of, I supposed, well over sixty: he had a nut-brown head and hair in a sort of laurel-wreath. When he spoke I did not feel that he was playing any trick; he seemed to watch his words as they came out of him to see how they were doing, but this for him seemed natural. He did sometimes, as if hearing himself, seem to be on the point of shaking his head or laughing: perhaps it was this that made people imagine he was thinking of something else. He also moved his eyes over his audience while he was speaking: this was as if he were trying to see where his words might land; as if he were saying – Is it you? is it you?

  He talked about a dispute in the physical sciences that had been going on when he had been a student. There had been a dominant school of thought which had held (I may not get the words right: you know the code?) that when one talked about physical reality one found oneself inescapably involved in paradoxes: light was a matter of both particles and waves: one could measure either a particle’s position or its velocity but not both at the same time. This had to be accepted: it was impossible to observe objectivity without objectivity being affected by that by which it was observed. There was a phrase that had been fashionable in this school of thought (I wrote it down) – ‘Reality is a function of the experimental condition.’ But there was another school, the Professor said (and it seemed that this was the one which he had liked to align himself with), which held that this sort of limitation was not so much to do with one’s inability to know reality as with restrictions imposed on knowing by conceptual thought and language. What was necessary if one was to understand reality – to see it as a whole, that is, which it was – was to have a more developed idea than usual of what could and could not be done by thought and language: to gain some glimpse of what might lie somehow elsewhere.