Bruno’s Dream

7

Danby straightened his tie and rang the bell.

Miles opened the door.

”I hope I’m not too early?”

”Come in.”

Miles turned round and walked upstairs leaving Danby to shut the door. After a moment’s uncertainty Danby shut the door and followed his host up the stairs. Miles had already disappeared into one of the rooms. Danby approached an open door and saw Miles standing over by the window with his back half turned. Danby entered the room and closed the door.

Danby had chosen the time of six-thirty in the evening for their interview on the assumption that Miles would be certain to offer him a drink, which would help him through the interview. He had not however omitted to drink two large gins at the Lord Clarence before turning into Kempsford Gardens. The room was dark. The sky outside was a glittering grey.

Viewed at close quarters, the idea of actually confronting Miles had alarmed Danby considerably. It was not that he was worrying about the stamps. Bruno’s seeing or not seeing Miles would probably make no difference to their destination. He had not really believed that Bruno was serious about seeing his son. Bruno had speculated about this before and nothing had come of it; he had speculated about it at earlier times when he was very much more enterprising and resolute than he was now. Danby had come to feel that Bruno had settled down peacefully into the last phase of his life, wanting simply to be left alone with his routine of stamps and telephone and evening papers, with his eyes fixed, if not upon eternity and the day of judgement, at least upon some great calm and imminent negation which would preclude surprises, demarches, and the unpredictable. He had underestimated Bruno, and when he suddenly perceived the strength of will that still remained inside that big head and shriveled body he had experienced a shock and had had rapidly to re-examine his own conception of Miles.

Miles had been filed away for years. Without reflection, Danby had assumed that he would not see Miles again. There could be no occasion except possibly Bruno’s funeral. Danby occasionally imagined Bruno’s funeral, how it would be. He imagined his own feelings of tenderness and regret and relief, the solemnity of the scene, the silent bow to Miles. Now suddenly there was this curiously naked and unnerving and quite unscripted encounter with a man who was a stranger and who yet was, as Danby had realized in the short while that had intervened since Bruno’s decision, somehow rather deeply involved in Danby’s life. He could only be indifferent to Miles at a distance. Close to, Miles was an interesting, disturbing, even menacing object.

Although Miles and Danby were about the same age Danby had always felt as if Miles were his senior. He had taken this attitude over from Gwen, who had revered her brother and regarded him as an oracle. Danby had early accepted the notion that Miles was something remarkable, and he had now to remind himself that really Miles was a very ordinary person, even by some standards a failure. Before he had ever met Miles he was already a bit afraid of him, and more rationally afraid of his power over Gwen. Miles had not concealed his opinion of Danby, and this had caused Danby considerable pain, even after he had made certain that Gwen was not going to allow her brother to forbid the banns. Danby, as he now realized, standing in the dark room looking at Miles’s back, as indeed he now knew he had simply forgotten, had genuinely admired Miles in the days gone by. And the shock of his presence brought to Danby again that old familiar humiliating sensation mixed of fear and admiration and bitter hurt resentment.

Miles turned and indicated an armchair beside the fireplace and Danby sat down.

”Look here,” said Miles. He sat down on an upright chair beside the window. “What is all this?”

”It’s fairly clear I should have thought,” said Danby. “Bruno wants to see you.”

”Does he really?”

”Well, he says he does and goes on saying it. I’m not a mind reader.”

Danby had thought a lot beforehand about this interview without being able to decide upon the tone of it. The tone would have to be settled impromptu. And here he was already becoming aggressive.

”It seems a bit pointless after all these years,” said Miles. He was folding a piece of paper, not looking at Danby. The room was getting darker.

”He’s dying,” said Danby. He felt a rush of emotion, an obscure feeling which connected together Bruno, Gwen, Miles’s profile seen against the glowing dark grey window.

”Yes, yes,” said Miles in an irritable voice. “But children and parents don’t necessarily have anything to say to each other. I’m not conventional about this and I shouldn’t have thought that Father was.”

His saying “Father” like that brought back Gwen, even the tones of her voice. Danby said, “He wants to see you. Any discussion is just frivolous.” Miles stiffened and threw the paper away, and Danby felt that it was rather strange and wonderful for him to be calling Miles frivolous. He noticed with satisfaction that Miles’s tossed hair was falling apart to reveal a bald patch.

”I’m afraid you are not being very clear-headed,” said Miles. “My point concerns my father’s welfare. An interview with me might upset him seriously. I mean, the situation has to be thought about. Does Father propose that we should see each other daily, or what?”

Christ, you cold-blooded bureaucrat, thought Danby. “I don’t think Bruno has thought it out beyond the idea of just seeing you once.”

”I see no point in our meeting once.”

”I mean, after meeting once you’d both just have to see how you felt.”

”I think this could be very agonizing indeed for my father, and I’m surprised you didn’t dissuade him. You must have control over him by now.”

Was that a reference to the stamps? “Bruno controls himself, I don’t run him.”

”If we meet once either to meet again or not to meet again may be equally dreadful.”

It occurred to Danby for the first time that there might indeed be a problem here. Like Bruno he had not thought be yond the first occasion. “You’re complicating the matter,” said Danby. “You are after all his only child and he is near death and wants to see you. It seems to me a matter of plain duty, whatever the consequences.”

”One cannot divorce duty from consequences.”

”Oh all right,” said Danby, standing up abruptly and pushing his chair back. “Shall I go back and tell him you won’t come?”

”Sit down, Danby.”

Danby hesitated, shuffled his feet, and sat down slowly.

”I’m sorry,” said Miles. “I probably sound rather hard hearted, but I want to see what’s involved. I think we might turn the light on.” He pulled the curtain and moved to the electric light switch. Danby gritted his teeth.

Miles was not really very like Gwen, and yet there were details of her face which memory and even photographs had retained for Danby only in a hazy generalized form which were now suddenly manifest in flesh-and-blood clarity: the sharply marked mouth with the deep runnel above it, the brow coming closely down over the intent eyes, the heavy quality of the dark hair.

Danby looked away and looked quickly about the room which was now revealed by two green-shaded lamps. It was a book-lined room, evidently a study. A table was half drawn up under the window, covered with neatly squared-off piles of paper and notebooks and an orderly row of ballpoint pens. The clean open fireplace contained a pyramid of fir cones and was surrounded by William Morris tiles which gleamed in a swirling profusion of blues and purples. Gwen would have liked those tiles. She would have enjoyed collecting the fir cones. There was a vase of daffodils on the white painted mantelshelf, and a small square gilt mirror above it. Here and there a shelf of books had been cleared to display glittering Chinese porcelain, ultramarine ducks, dogs, dragons. Everything looked formidably neat and clean. A donnish room: and yet the flowers and the ducks and the fir cones did not seem quite like Miles. Vaguely, and the thought somehow disturbed him, Danby remembered that Miles was married.

”Quite honestly,” Miles was going on. He had sat down again and was intent on folding pieces of paper and cutting them carefully with a sharp knife. “Quite honestly, I rather dread this operation not only because of what it might do to him, but also because of what it might do to me. I’m rather through with the emotions, that kind anyway, and I’ve got other things to do. Is it all about money?”

”Money?” said Danby. “Good Lord, no!” Or was it? Perhaps after all Bruno just wanted to decide the destiny of the stamps. Damn the stamps, they complicated everything.

”You see,” said Miles, concentrating upon a neat clean severance of a folded sheet. “You see, I don’t know whether you know this, but I’ve been writing to my father regularly for years, and I’ve never had any reply. I rather assumed he’d written me off. This desire to see me is a bit surprising. Is he senile?”

”No!” said Danby. “He has to take various drugs and some days he gets a bit vague and rambles a little, but on the whole he’s perfectly clear-headed. He’s certainly still a rational being.”

”Is he much-changed?”

”Physically, yes. Not in other ways. I suppose you know what’s wrong with him?”

”Oddly enough I do,” said Miles slowly, raising his brooding eyes in a significant way which was very reminiscent of Gwen. “Oddly enough I do. I wrote to his doctor about eighteen months ago. I suppose there’s no new development?”

”No. Just the progress of the-thing.”

They were silent, Danby watching Miles and Miles intently examining a piece of cut paper. “All right. I’ll come and see him. But I think it’s going to be awful. Awful.”

Danby stood up. He felt a strange defensive tenderness for Bruno combined with an acute wish that Miles would offer him a drink. He wanted to be asked to stay, given a drink, somehow comforted by Miles. He would like to have talked about the past. “Bruno has been very brave.”

”I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it. When shall I come?” Miles had risen too.

”Of course he may change his mind when he knows you’re coming. He may funk it.”

”You mean he’s nervous too?”

”Yes.”

”Funny,” said Miles. “I hadn’t really thought of him having any feelings about it, now at all,” and he smiled. Miles’s teeth were sharp and jumbled, too numerous for his jaw and crowded together at the front of his mouth, giving him a wolfish sweet-savage smile which Danby had quite forgot ten. Danby usually despised men with uneven teeth, but Miles’s were rather impressive.

”Anyway I’ll let you know,” said Danby. “I’ll ring up.”

He stood awkwardly. He was taller than Miles. He had somehow forgotten that too. It was the moment for the blessed glass of gin. He thought, if Bruno decides not to see Miles, I won’t see Miles again, except at the funeral. Danby pushed his chair a little further back, which might have been a preliminary to departing or to sitting down again. As he did so he saw a little ball of blue tucked into the depression between the seat and the back. It was a woman’s handkerchief.

”I’ve never met your wife,” said Danby.

Miles gave him a preoccupied look and put his hand on the door.

Danby thought, I must stop him, I want to talk to him about Gwen. If only I could think of something quickly now to say about her. He could think of nothing. He said, “Bruno wants to meet your wife.” Bruno had expressed no such wish.

”Emotions,” said Miles. “Emotions. It’s all fruitless, fruitless.” He led the way down the stairs.

”So you talked about me?” said Bruno suspiciously, looking up at Danby.

Yes,” said Danby in an exasperated voice. “Of course did!” Danby had been extremely irritable on his return from Miles’s house, Bruno could not make out why.

Danby was standing at the window looking out through the undrawn curtains at the lurid darkness of the London night. Bruno was well propped up on pillows. They were both sipping champagne. The whitish scrawled counterpane was covered with stamps and with the dismembered pages of the Evening Standard, on top of which lay the first volume of Soviet Spiders open at the chapter “Liphistiid Spiders of the Baltic Coastline.”

”What did you say about me?”

”He asked how you were and I told him and I said you were longing to meet him and-“

”You shouldn’t have said that.”

”Oh my God-“

”I’m not sure that I am longing to meet him,” said Bruno judiciously.

”Well, make up your mind for heaven’s sake.”

”I can’t see why you’re so upset.”

”I’m not upset, damn you.”

Since the notion of seeing Miles, or at any rate of sending Danby on an embassy to Miles had become a real plan, Bruno had experienced a complexity of feelings. Partly he felt a kind of animal fright at the real possibility of confronting his son. Partly he was afraid of what he might feel if Miles refused to come. There was a possible madness there. Danby had re assured him at the first moment of his return. Partly too Bruno felt a quite immediate and lively sense of annoyance at the idea of Miles and Danby discussing him, perhaps making common cause against him. He imagined, “The old fool wants to see you. Must humour him I suppose.”

”How gaga is he?” And, “How long will he last?” Would they speak of him like that? They were young and uncaged, in the legions of the healthy. He also felt an excited touched surprise that such a complex of emotions could still exist in such an old man. “Such an old man,” he thought to himself until the tears came. He was pleased at these moments when he felt that he had not been simplified by age and illness. He was the complicated spread-out thing that he had always been, in fact more so, much more so. He had drawn the web of his emotions back inside himself with not a thread lost. Well, he would see Miles. It was unpredictable though, and that was scaring.

”Of course I do want to see him,” said Bruno judiciously, “but I feel quite detached about it. You shouldn’t have implied I was frantic.”

”I didn’t imply it. We had a very plain talk.”

”How do you. mean plain? What’s Miles like now?”

”He’s going bald.”

”You never liked him, Danby.”

”He never liked me. I liked him all right. He was horribly like Gwen. He still is.”

”That’s why you’re upset.”

”Yes. More champagne?”

”Thanks. But what’s he like?”

”Rather brutal and preoccupied. But he’ll be nice to you.”

”I can’t think what on earth we’ll talk about,” said Bruno. His left hand strayed vaguely over things on the counterpane while the right conveyed the trembling glass to his lips. Champagne still cheered.

”You’d better see him some morning. You’re best in the mornings.”

”Yes. It’ll have to be Saturday or Sunday then. Will you let him know?”

”Yes. May I leave you now, Bruno? There’s a man waiting in a pub. Here’s Nigel the Nurse to take over.”

Soft-footed Nigel pads in and Danby leaves. Nigel’s lank dark hair sweeps round his pale lopsided face and projects in a limp arc beneath his chin. His dark eyes are dreamy and he is many-handed, gentle, as he tidies Bruno up for suppertime. The stamps are put away, the Evening Standard neatly folded, Bruno’s glass of speckled golden champagne filled. again to the brim. Some of it spills upon the white turned-down sheet as the crippled spotted hand trembles and shakes. Such an old old thing that hand is.

”Want to go to the lav?”

”No, thanks, Nigel, I’m all right.”

”Not got cramp again?”

”No cramp.”

Nigel flutters like a moth. A pajama button is done up, a firm support between the shoulderblades while a pillow is plumped, the lamp and telephone moved a little farther off, Soviet Spiders closed and put away. The back of Nigel’s hand brushes Bruno’s cheek. The tenderness is incredible. Tears are again in Bruno’s eyes.

”I am going to see my son, Nigel.”

”That’s good.”

”Do you think forgiveness is something, Nigel? Does something happen? Or is it just a word? I feel sleepy now. Can I have my supper soon?”

Too much champagne. Nigel is drinking out of Danby’s glass. Nigel flutters like a moth, filling the room with a soft powdery susurrus of great wings.