Bruno’s Dream

4

“Our lodger’s such a nice young man, Such a nice young man is he”

Danby, singing, aimed a friendly smack at Nigel’s backside. Nigel tossed his long dark hair and lowered his eyes and left the room with a spiritual smile.

Bruno said, “Danby, I am going to summon Miles.”

”Oh Lord!”

Bruno was sitting propped up in bed. The whitish counter pane was covered with a polychrome scattering of stamps.

On top of these lay an open copy of Gerhardt’s Neue Untersuchungen zur Sexualbiologie der Spinnen. Bruno felt clearer in the head today. His legs ached and ached; but that sickening point of malaise in the middle of his being, that possibility of awful pain, had dimmed to nothing. He just felt almost agree ably limp and weak. He had had a long relaxing conversation on the telephone with the weather-report man, who had been reassuring about the possibility of the Thames flooding. These conversations with polite impersonal official voices soothed Bruno’s nerves. He felt he was a voice himself, a disembodied citizen. After that he had had some excellent wrong numbers. It was necessary to talk to Miles. He would talk to his son about ordinary indifferent things, about the printing works, about Miles’s job, about Danby’s kindness, about Nigel’s skill. They would talk and talk, and the room would grow dimmer, and then by some quiet scarcely notable transition they would be speaking the names of the women, Parvati, Janie, Maureen, in grave relaxed sadness together contemplating these conjured shades. Miles would be a little formal at first, but as he listened to Bruno’s voice, naming the women, speaking of them with humility and simplicity, he would bow his head and then look upon his father with great gentleness and the room would be filled with an aura of reconciliation and healing. Earlier and alone, repeating to himself the words “reconciliation and healing,” Bruno had found tears in his eyes. He wept so easily now. Any story in the newspaper about a lost dog or cat could bring tears to his eyes. Even something about the Royal Family could do it.

It all went back to the beginning. That was something which he would like to try to explain. “Bruno” his father had named him, but his mother, who could not get on with the name, had called him “Bruin,”

”Little Bear.” How had he become corrupted and lost the innocence which belonged to his mother’s only child, and how could the child of such a mother ever have become bad? Yet had he become so bad, and how bad had he become? Most men deceive their wives all the time, statistics say. He had only had Maureen. And his later excesses amounted to little more than holding hands in Notting Hill. He had lived a chaste life really. It was his accusers and not his crimes which troubled him.

It all seemed so accidental now. Yet could anything have been different on that night, when he proposed to Janie in St. James’s Theatre in an atmosphere of sugar and Shakespeare and the sweet craziness of the London season? He wrote Marry me, Janie on a page from his programme, folded the page into a paper dart, and threw it from the stalls into her box. She caught it in the air and read it with a faint smile as the lights dimmed after the interval. The play was Twelfth Night. After wards he searched for her frenziedly in the crowded foyer. Turning away with her party she tapped his arm with her fan. “I quite like your suggestion, Bruno. Come and discuss it tomorrow.”

It had gone on, the froufrou and the wit and the bright artificial lights, right on it seemed to him until that moment in crowded sale-time Harrods when Maureen had been struggling with the dress. It was the early days of zip fasteners. Bruno, who often bought her clothes, was standing just outside the curtain of the trying-on room. Maureen had got the dress half over her head, but because the zip had stuck she could get it no further. She came out to Bruno, masked by the dress, her arms helplessly waving, a foot of frilly petticoat showing. “Quick, Bruno, get it off, I can’t breathe.” Bruno laughed, pulled. Then there was suddenly a moment of panic. “Maureen, keep still, you won’t suffocate, you fool. You’re tearing the dress.” The dress came away. Bruno looked over Maureen’s bare shoulder into the eyes of Janie. Janie turned at once and disappeared among the shoppers. Bruno, for whom Maureen no longer existed, darted after her. He sought for her desperately in the slow crowds as he had sought her long ago in the foyer of the theatre. He glimpsed her ahead, hurrying, and then she was gone. He came back to the department and paid the assistant for the torn dress. Maureen had vanished too. You taught me how to love you. Now teach me to forget.

As he waited at home for Janie to come back he felt that the quality of time had altered, perhaps forever. She did not come until the late evening. Janie made him take her to see Maureen. How had she made him? That terrible sense of being punished. Thrusting in front of him she went into Maureen’s flat first and locked the door. He could hear Janie’s voice speaking on the other side of the door and then the sound of Maureen crying. He knocked on the door, calling to be let in. The other lodgers in the house came out of their rooms to watch. They mocked him. “His wife’s telling off his mistress!”

”Been found out, have you?”

”Hard luck, old man.” They laughed. Bruno went home. More waiting. He never saw Maureen again. But Janie visited her over a period of several months. “I want her to understand what she’s done.”

”I want her to know that we were happy together before this happened.”

”I want to help her.” Strong avenging Janie, weak defenseless Maureen. Years later, after Janie was dead, he put an advertisement in The Times. Maureen. At the parting of the ways. Please contact BG. Just to talk of long ago. There was no answer. He had not really expected one. It was an attempt to propitiate her shade. Years later still he saw a terrible news item in the paper. A Mrs. Maureen Jenkins, a widow living by herself in Cricklewood, had been found by neighbours lying dead in her home, suffocated by a dress which she had been unable to pull over her head. There was a picture of a tired stout elderly-looking woman. He could not decide if it was her or not. Danby had come to sit on the end of the bed. He pushed the stamps into a pile. “I do wish you’d be more careful with those stamps, Bruno. I found a Post Office Mauritius on the floor the other day.”

”Nothing can happen to them.”

”They could fall through chinks in the floor boards.”

”There are no chinks. The room is too dusty to have chinks. The chinks are full of dust.”

”There’s no point in your seeing Miles, I shouldn’t think.”

”You don’t understand. There are things I can only talk to Miles about.”

”You want to make a life confession?” Bruno was silent. He looked down at the stamps, caressing their gay innocent faces.

He looked up at Danby’s big healthy handsome face. How odd human faces were. They differed so much in size, apart from anything else. Danby was no fool. “Maybe.”

”Well, make it to me. Or better still to Nigel. He’s in touch with the transcendent.”

”Why are you against it?” said Bruno. He could hear his voice quavering. He had a little touch of the fear which he sometimes had now when he realized his utter helplessness. He was a prisoner in this house forever. If they wanted to keep him from Miles they could do so. They could fail to give messages. They could fail to post letters. There was the telephone. But they could cut the wire. Of course these thoughts were insane.

”You haven’t really imagined it,” said Danby. “You’d just embarrass each other horribly. You know how you brood as it is. Something unfortunate would be said and you’d just be utterly miserable.”

”I’ve got to talk to him,” said Bruno. He looked at his poor blotched hands crawling over the stamps. They looked like huge spiders.

”Why this fuss all of a sudden when you’ve managed without him for years? You never even answer his letters.”

”There’s not much-time left.” Bruno looked involuntarily at his dressing gown. “Miles might refuse to come,” said Danby. “Then you’d be terribly distressed. Have you thought of that?” Bruno had not thought of it. “I’ve thought of that of course. But I think he’ll come. I must see him. Please, Danby.”

Danby looked upset. He stood up and went to the window, smoothing his thick white hair down onto his neck.

”Look, Bruno, of course you can do anything you like. You don’t have to say ‘please’ to me. And I hope you don’t think-Naturally I assume-It’s not-I really am just thinking about you. You could be inventing a torment for yourself.”

”I’m already in torment. I want to try-anything.”

”Well, I don’t understand,” said Danby, “but okay, go ahead, no one’s stopping you.”

”Don’t be cross with me, Danby, I can’t bear your being cross.”

”I’m not cross, for heaven’s sake!”

”Would you go and see him?”

”Ate? Why me?”

”I think it would be wise to spy out the land,” said Bruno. The new thought that Miles might simply refuse to come was frightening him terribly. It had not occurred to him for a moment. Perhaps Danby was right that the risk was not worth taking. He lived so much in his mind now. Suppose he wrote and got no answer? Suppose the telephone were just replaced when he rang up? There were worse torments, other vistas, further galleries. All the rest and that as well.

”You mean find out if he would come? Perhaps argue him into coming?”

”Yes.”

Danby smiled. “Am I the right ambassador, dear Bruno? Miles and I never exactly hit it off. And I haven’t seen him for years. He thought I was unworthy of his sister.” Danby paused. “I was unworthy of his sister.”

”There’s no one else,” said Bruno. His voice was becoming hoarse. He cleared his throat. “You’re part of the family.”

”All right. When do you want me to go? Tomorrow?”

”Not tomorrow.” His heart was suddenly beating violently. What would it be like? Danby was looking at him closely. “The doctor won’t approve of this.”

”It doesn’t matter what the doctor thinks now. Perhaps you would write a letter.”

”To Miles? Saying what? Asking to come and see him?”

”Yes. Do everything very slowly. I mean, give Miles time to think. He might be hasty. If he has time to think he’ll come.

”Well, all right. Will you compose the letter? You know I’m hopeless at letters.”

”No, you compose it. But not today.” Adelaide came in and threw the Evening Standard onto the bed. A river of stamps cascaded to the floor. “I’ll bring your tea in ten minutes. Would you like muffins or anchovy toast?”

”Muffins, please, Adelaide.” The door closed. Danby was picking up the stamps and put ting them into the black wooden box. Bruno’s father had disapproved of stamp hinges, which he held were injurious to stamps, and had indeed spent a lifetime vainly trying to invent an alternative device. So although he believed strongly in the aesthetic aspect of his hobby, and had often preached to Bruno that a man who did not love looking at his stamps was a trades man and no true philatelist, he had never kept the stamps in books. He had constructed the large wooden box with a great many narrow drawers within which the stamps were supposed to lie between fitted cellophane covers, which could be fanned out when the drawers were opened. Bruno, however, whose attachment to the stamps was even more purely aesthetic than that of his father, had long ago started to jumble the carefully docketed system by which they were arranged. Of late he had started selecting out his special favourites, regardless of origin, and these were now kept heaped together in a spare drawer at the top. “Okay, Bruno,” said Danby. “I’ll do that small thing. Don’t worry. We’ll see. Can I help you to the lav?”

”No, thanks. I can manage.”

”Well, I’ll be off. I’ve got an appointment at the Balloon. Cheerio.”

He thinks I won’t do it, thought Bruno, gradually moving his legs towards the side of the bed, but I will. It was frightening though, the prospect of a change, something utterly new, the danger of being hurt in a new way. He got his legs over the side of the bed and rested. Suppose Miles wouldn’t come, suppose he sent back a hostile reply? Suppose he came and were unkind to Bruno? Suppose Bruno felt an irresistible impulse to tell about Janie’s death and Miles cursed him? Miles could curse him. He was a violent intense boy. He could hurt him now, terribly. Perhaps Danby was right. It was better to die in peace.

Bruno edged over and got his stockinged feet onto the ground. In between each trip his feet seemed to forget about walking altogether. They curled up into balls under the bedclothes and were reluctant to flatten out again into surfaces that could be stood upon. The process of their reeducation was painful. Bruno stood, stooping a little, supporting himself with one hand on the bed. Still holding onto the bed he began to shuffle towards the door. Once he got as far as the bed post he could reach out and get his dressing gown from the door without having to stand unsupported.

Of course it wasn’t absolutely necessary to put on the dressing gown now that it wasn’t winter any more, but it represented a challenge. It was quite easy, really. The left hand held the bed post while the right lifted down the dressing gown and with the same movement slid itself a little into the right sleeve. The right hand lifted on high, the sleeve runs down the arm. Then the right hand rests flat against the door a little above shoulder height, while the left leaves the bed post and darts into the left arm hole. If the left is not quick enough the dressing gown falls away towards the floor, hang ing from the right shoulder. It then has to be slowly relinquished and left lying. There was no getting anything up off the floor.

Bruno manages it, twitching the gown forward over his shoulders and drawing it together in front with the left hand. He is breathing deeply with the effort. He slides his right hand down slowly as far as the puckered brass door handle and begins to open the door, sidling slowly round it as he does so. His movement brings him round to face the room and he contemplates it for a moment, seeing his little prison box as an outsider might see it. The yellowish-white counterpane of threadbare Indian cotton is patterned with faded black scrolls which look like copperplate writing on a very old letter. The bed, between its four light-brown flat-headed wooden posts, looks coiled up and dirty, a disorderly lair. The sheets all seem to be knotted. It has the desolate incomplete look of an invalid’s bed, momentarily untenanted. The cold sunless evening light from the window shows the small square of thin brown carpet, with the ragged bit tucked under the bed, surrounded by dusty varnished boarding. The wallpaper, covered with a dim design of ivy leaves, is pallid and bleached and spotted with tea-coloured stains. The little bedroom was “the small spare room” for years. Bruno occupies it now because of its proximity to the lavatory. On Bruno’s right is a book case topped with cracked marble on top of which two detachments of empty champagne bottles frame Janie’s picture. The upper shelves contain paperback books of great antiquity. The lower shelves house Bruno’s microscope and four wooden frames containing test tubes of spiders in alcohol. On Bruno’s left, behind the door as it opens, is a rickety gate-leg table upon which the great wooden stamp box now rests. At night Danby usually takes it away to his own room, hoping perhaps that Bruno will forget to ask for it again, so that it can then be conveyed to the bank. The full bottles of champagne are under the table. On doctor’s orders Bruno does not drink his champagne chilled. Spider books, which are too big to go into the bookcase, fill much of the rest of the room, piled on the chest of drawers, on the two upright chairs, and on the little bedside table round about the lamp. The sash window shows a segment of wet slate roof, a coffee-coloured sky in slow unseizable tumultuous motion, and one of the trinity of towers of Lots Road power station looking black and two-dimensional in the sullen light.

Bruno levers himself round and begins the journey to the lavatory, his right hand moving along the wall. A dark continuous blur upon the wallpaper, the record of many such journeys, guides his moving hand. The lavatory door is open, thank heavens. The doorhandle is stiff. It was Nigel’s bright idea that it should always be left open when untenanted. Nigel is full of little ideas for Bruno’s comfort. Bruno’s hand moves on the wall. It was surely not Parvati who had made all that anger. It was Miles. Parvati must have under stood. Her own parents, who were Brahmins, had opposed the match too. They never consented to see Miles. If only he had met Parvati everything would have been all right, a real girl, not just an idea of an Indian girl. He hadn’t meant it anyway, it was just something he’d said once about not wanting a coloured daughter-in-law. He could not remember any feeling about it all now, any feeling that he had had. Miles said he had “bitterly opposed” the marriage. It was not true. All he could remember was the muddle, denying he’d said things, and Miles’s cold high-minded anger. It was so unfair.

Bruno was inside the lavatory leaning against the closed door. As he began to fiddle with his pajamas something dropped to the floor at his feet. He saw at once that it was a Pholcus phalangioides which he had dislodged from its place on the door, or perhaps in the corner of the wall, where it had woven its irregular almost invisible scaffolding, unmolested by Adelaide. The spider did not move. He wondered if he had damaged it with his sleeve. He touched it gently with his stockinged feet. The creature lay still, its long legs curled to its body. It might be shamming dead. Slowly stepping across it Bruno lowered the lavatory seat and sat down on it. He took a piece of lavatory paper and leaning forward introduced it carefully underneath the little curled-up thing. The spider slid onto the paper together with a good deal of dust and fluff. It stirred slightly. He must have damaged it somehow, but without the microscope, or at any rate a magnifying glass, he could not see how. He tried to look into the spider’s face but without his spectacles all was blurred. He had not kept captive spiders for a long time now. A year ago he had had a sudden yearning to see again a beautiful Micromatta vivescens and he had sent Nigel, armed with a photograph, to hunt in Battersea Park. Nigel came back without a Micromatta but with a jam jar full of assorted spiders, two of them already dead, a poor Ciniflo ferox and an Oonops pulcher, probably killed by the fierce Drassodes lapidosus with which they had been sharing their captivity. Bruno put his magnifying glass away and told Nigel to release them all in the yard straight away. He had never really been a scholar anyway.

The Pholcus phalangioides was showing no further signs of life. He must have half crushed it as he leaned against the wall. He dropped it onto the floor and put two more pieces of lavatory paper on top of it and brought his heel down hard onto the little resistant bundle.

Bruno felt the wretched tears near again. The women were all young while he aged like Tithonus. Supposing Janie had wanted to forgive him at the end after all? She held out her hands to him saying, “Bruno, I forgive you. Please forgive me. I love you, dear heart, I love you, I love you, I love you.” He would never never know. The most precious thing of all was lost to him forever.