The Philosopher's Pupil

WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARDS

The inquest brought in a verdict of ‘accidental death’ upon the decease of John Robert Rozanov, philosopher. George McCaffrey’s name was never mentioned or thought of in this connection. No one had seen him either enter or leave the Institute.

When Father Bernard got back there after leading George home to Druidsdale he found the whole matter of the ‘accident’ completely set up. What had happened was clear. Rozanov had been standing on the edge of the bath looking at his notebook and had slipped and stunned himself in falling. The circumstances of the death seemed to preclude suicide, and the only other theory which circulated (hushed up by the Director, Vernon Chalmers) was that the philosopher had been killed by a sudden inrush of scalding water which had rendered him unconscious. Father Bernard gave evidence at the inquest. He prayed for long hours to his inmost soul for guidance about whether or not he should produce the suicide note. In the end he was still uncertain about his duty but had become afraid of getting into trouble for concealing evidence. The inquest had been hustled on by Chalmers, who was afraid of talk and adverse publicity, and the funeral, a cremation in accordance with wishes expressed in the will, followed promptly. The national press had taken due notice of John Robert’s death, and various outsiders turned up at the brief ceremony (which was organized by Robin Osmore) including John Robert’s pupil Steve Glatz who happened to be in Oxford at the time, and a mysterious American woman who cried a lot.

George’s hysterical blindness left him after about a fortnight, and after that the priest took Rozanov’s letter round to show to him. George nodded his head, but did not utter any words after reading the note. Father Bernard brought it again on two occasions until he was satisfied that George had really understood it, although he still said nothing about it. Later on Father Bernard showed the note to me.

I think the priest’s intuition was probably right in guiding him not to reveal that Rozanov had intended to kill himself. Hattie Meynell, who felt enough guilt about it all in any case, was thereby spared the anguish of knowing that John Robert had proceeded almost directly from his conversation with her into the extremity of such an act. My own view is that John Robert had long been preparing his decision to die; this is certainly suggested by his possession of a specially compounded drug. And Hattie had perhaps not been mistaken in thinking that he was in a state of destructive despair about what he felt to be the failure of his philosophical work.

There are of course a number of factors in the case which must remain forever undecided. That John Robert should have chosen to die at the Institute is easily explained. He did not want to run the risk of being found by Hattie. But did Rozanov actually take the poisonous compound, did such a thing even exist? That it existed is, I think, given the man, simply proved by the letter, and equally I do not imagine Rozanov as one to delay or shirk, after writing the letter, the completion of the act. What caused his death? Was he, as is possible, already dead by the time George immersed him? And even if Rozanov did swallow a supposed lethal dose, would it necessarily have proved fatal? Supposing Father Bernard had arrived before George (as he might have done had he not gone first to Hare Lane)? Could the philosopher have been resuscitated? A confession by George together with the production of the suicide note would certainly have posed some interesting medical, legal and indeed philosophical problems. It is the sort of thing that would have interested John Robert, who might even have felt some odd ironical appreciation of George’s last-minute intervention in his life. That, at least, would have held his attention. What would the law have judged George to be guilty of? And what indeed, as things stand, is he guilty of? All these unanswered questions are likely to continue to disturb the minds of both George and Father Bernard. I had several talks with Father Bernard before his departure (of which I shall speak below). I have not yet been able to talk to George, but I hope that, with Stella’s help, this may prove possible in the near future.

Hattie suffered extreme grief and shock at her grandfather’s sudden death. Love is joy, even impeded love is joy while hope remains, and of course Hattie did indeed love her ‘newly found’ grandfather and did not really believe his ‘nevermore’. The instant frightful loss was hard to bear. She felt it moreover as ‘her fault’, because she had obeyed him and gone away, and had not, by staying, altered that accidental (as she thought) chain of events which led to that senseless fall on that slippery edge. Although she knew how unhappy John Robert was and why, I do not think that, given the circumstances, she has ever wondered whether that death was other than accidental. She has not, so far as I know, discussed John Robert’s final revelation with anybody, probably not even with Tom. She has decided (here I am guessing) that this secret of the old man whom she so suddenly and strangely and briefly came to know and love is hers and hers alone. (Remarks which she made to me when very upset would have been comparatively obscure had I not had access to other sources of information.) Herein, as in other ways, she has shown herself to be a strong character. As for Tom McCaffrey, if he ever wondered whether he were not really being recruited to protect Hattie against John Robert himself, he has probably by now dismissed these speculations or indeed, in the felicity of his happy nature, forgotten them.

When it was that Tom untied Hattie’s virgin knot is not known for certain. Perhaps it was during that first strange protected aeon of their love which lasted from Sunday morning to Monday evening, when they were told of John Robert’s death. (The news that Hattie Meynell and Tom McCaffrey were together at the Slipper House had circulated in Ennistone as early as noon on Sunday. No doubt I was not the only witness of that early morning flight.) However that may be, Tom and Hattie were married in the autumn following all these events. Perhaps a period of mourning is not a bad preparation for a marriage. The match gave universal satisfaction in the town, not dimmed by those who enjoyed asserting that he would have done much better to marry Anthea Eastcote who was now so fearfully rich. As for Hattie’s dowry, Tom did not do too badly. John Robert turned out to have saved quite a lot of money, even apart from his two houses in California, one at Palo Alto and one at Malibu.

The marriage took place according to the Quaker rite at the Meeting House, in the course of the usual meeting for worship, with only Friends present. Here, taking Hattie by the hand, Tom declared,

‘In the presence of this assembly, I take my friend Harriet Meynell to be my wife, promising, with God’s help, to be unto her a loving and faithful husband, so long as we both on earth shall live.’

After Hattie had made her answering declaration, Tom placed Feckless Fiona’s wedding-ring upon Hattie’s finger. A lot of people cried, not only Gabriel. There was a party afterwards at Belmont, instigated and, with remarkable success, organized by Gabriel who was suddenly able to put into practice a lot of her hitherto frustrated conceptions of what family life should be like. (Alex, who survived her fall, was at this time, as I shall explain later, in eclipse.) Brian walked about, saying with satisfaction, ‘What a waste of money, thank God we’re not paying.’ Pearl was present as unofficial ‘bridesmaid’ and Emma in the role of ‘best man’. Tom wanted him to sing but he refused. There were no speeches. The occasion, like that of many weddings, brought together a number of lively persons, who had not all hitherto met, and who all seemed very pleased with themselves. Milton Eastcote was present. So was Steve Glatz, who is now editing John Robert’s surviving notebooks which constitute the ‘great work’, of which so much is expected. Margot (née Meynell) Markowitz turned up with her Jewish lawyer husband, Albert (who had, Pearl and Hattie agreed, greatly improved her). Verity Smaldon, Hattie’s pretty school friend, made a refreshing dint in the grieving heart of Andrew Blackett. I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Stella’s father, Sir David Henriques, with whom, as she predicted, I got on extremely well. Hector Gaines, lately engaged to a well-known academic lady, came especially to show off his recovery to Anthea, but suffered, on seeing her, a regrettable relapse. (This may be the place to add that, in spite of all our various misfortunes, The Triumph of Aphrodite was successfully performed - the show must go on, as Hector said – and even attracted the favourable attention of London critics.) Joey Tanner made his first appearance as Anthea’s fiancé. He made a bad impression on the town gossips, but chiefly because they were determined to think he was marrying her for her money. Emma’s mother on the other hand, looking incredibly young, charmed everyone. Matchmakers, who abound at weddings, were certain that she and Sir David were made for each other. Gavin Oare was not invited, but Mike Seanu came under the wing of Nesta, Olivia and Valerie to ‘cover’ the event for the Gazette. Ruby, no longer employed at Belmont, came as a guest but helped Gabriel and Dorothy Osmore with the washing-up. Judy Osmore, to please Gabriel (for she was a kind-hearted girl), wore the dress which had been dyed with tea. (She did not know the details of its misadventure.) Zed, wearing a white ribbon and a red rose, was petted by many and stepped on by not a few. Adam, who in the intervening months had suddenly decided to grow considerably, wore a dark suit especially made for him by Dominic Wiggins. In this he hovered, hardly recognizable as a tall slim solemn youth with large eyes. George too was present for a while, watchfully piloted by Stella. He was generally and vaguely known to have been ‘rather ill’. A lot of people made a point of greeting him but retiring quickly.

I must now try to give some account of what happened to George. This is difficult because, as I say, I have not yet had the opportunity of talking with him, although I have talked at length with Stella; she remains puzzled about her husband and may even still harbour long-standing misconceptions about him. It is a feature of marriages, including happy ones, that two people who live together may have quite false ideas of each other. This does not at all necessarily lead to disaster or even inconvenience. Stella, to speak of her first, has suffered from feelings of guilt which may well be a good deal more rational than those of Hattie. Her image has remained in my mind of George hooked by a long invisible line by which she held him fast while letting him run: an image which she agreed to be terrible. More simply, Stella assumed that George would somehow be restored to her ‘in the fullness of time’, that she would at last, and satisfactorily, ‘get him back’. Meanwhile she was prepared to watch and wait because, as she had put it, George ‘interested her absolutely’. This could also be put as ‘because she loved him absolutely’, which indeed she did with her whole intense almost fanatical being. Some people thought Stella was simply afraid of George, others blamed her for ‘abandoning’ him. Rozanov’s death was counted as the event which brought her back and ‘sobered George up’, while visibly, in some sense which remained difficult to determine, changing him.

In retrospect of course Stella blamed herself for not having, and as a matter of course, returned to George soon after the episode of the car in the canal. Indeed shortly after she had (her phrase) ‘put herself under my protection’, I advised her to go back, but she would not. Once she had formally ‘run away’ it became harder and harder to return, her pride had become involved in the matter, speculation about him had become an activity and a pleasure, being in hiding had its charm, and the interval carried an imaginary sense of healing. It must be added to this picture that Stella’s undoubted love contained ingredients of anger and even cruelty and she could not help feeling that by staying mysteriously away she was inflicting some sort of punishment upon George. Ought Stella, as she herself later believed, to have been able to foresee the extremities of which George was capable? (I should say here that George told her everything, every detail of what he had done, and as far as he could why he had done it, during the period of his blindness.) With this question she came running to me. I told her sincerely that I thought the answer was no. Stella was of course, as she came to admit, fascinated by George’s ‘violent tendencies’. But it was part of her theory that these had run their course and that, however oddly George might in the interim behave, he would before long, and harmlessly, return to her to be ‘saved’. In this connection she attached an almost magical significance to the ‘attempted murder’ in the canal, which was supposed to be the significant final crisis or turning point. Herein Stella was perhaps misled by vanity, a simple and ubiquitous failing often overlooked by those who profess to explain the mysteries of human conduct. As for the prediction, I think that homicidal or suicidal acts often depend upon contingent elements too tiny and too sheerly accidental to be discernible by the eye of science. And I have to admit that I myself did not foresee or expect what ultimately happened.

Naturally Stella attaches great significance to the fact that George asked Father Bernard to lead him back to her after he had been struck down on the Common. Since that moment George has never once mentioned Diane. What happened to George’s brain cells in the curious episode of the flying saucer and the sunflower sun remains, in part, to be seen. The brain is a versatile organ and has an amazing capacity to repair damage. I do not, incidentally, hold Dr Roach’s epilepsy theory about George. I also take this opportunity to deny that George has had a lobotomy or any electric shock treatment since John Robert’s death. I also know for a fact that he has not, to use the rather melodramatic expression current in Ennistone, ‘been through the hands of Sir Ivor Sefton’. The mild drugs which he took in the early days of his ‘new life’ have now, according to Stella, been discontinued. Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that he is a changed, and still changing man. A stranger, meeting him now for the first time, would find him an ordinary, quiet person. (Not, as Stella put it, ‘weak and pale like a grub in an apple’.) Those who knew ‘the old George’ are amazed at his ‘reform’, though it is still true that none of his old acquaintances feels quite comfortable with him. He is gentle, polite, quietly humorous (though he smiles little), attentive to his wife, interested in the details of everyday existence. He even has a modest social life. What I cannot find out from Stella, perhaps because she is reluctant to find it out herself, is whether there are identifiable tracts of his mind, evidenced by memory or performance, which seem to have been ‘blotted out’. She insists that he seems ‘normal’. Sometimes, however, this unnatural ‘normality’ seems to her ‘too good to be true’ and she wonders if he will one day suddenly attack her with an axe. As the weeks and months go by, this idea occurs to her less and less often. George stays at home and reads a lot. He reads books on art history and even makes notes on them. One day Stella found him looking over his old plays which had evidently not been destroyed after all. He has also taken up bridge again, and goes out with Stella (who is a very good player) to bridge evenings at the Osmores’. He has not been over to Leafy Ridge to visit Brian and Gabriel, but he is polite and amiable to them if they visit Druidsdale, which they rarely do, as they think Stella is not too pleased to see them. Adam and Zed on the other hand are fairly frequent and welcome visitors. George seems to talk a lot to Adam when they are alone together, Stella is not quite sure what about. I lately expressed the hope to Stella that now that life has become (it seems) more predictable she should stop regarding George as a full-time occupation, and consider harnessing her excellent mind to some coherent and developing intellectual study. She says that no doubt she will, but ‘not yet’, that perhaps she will ‘write something’. I am afraid that at present she is more concerned about George’s mind than about her own. I also asked her, recalling a question which I put to her earlier, whether a quiet docile George continues to interest her. She says most emphatically that he does and that she loves him now in a new and better way. She was always possessively watchful, but now seems to me, when I see them together, to be more tender and ‘sentimental’, and in this sense, she is without doubt profitably ‘occupied’ with her husband. I have not inquired about their sex life. Perhaps she is right to see these developments as ‘new and better’, and it may even be that love, that old unpredictable force left out of account by natural science, will actually ‘save’, after all, not only him but her.

I have mentioned the departure of Father Bernard. With this, and in a bizarre way, is to be associated the fate of ‘our own Madame Diane’. As may be imagined, Diane was cast into the deepest grief and indeed despair by George’s sudden and total (and inexplicable) defection. The news that he ‘was ill’ and had definitely returned to his wife flashed quickly round Ennistone, and Diane heard it from several eager sources at the Institute. She had imagined in the extremest detail their new life in Spain. With extra money which he had given her she had bought herself every sort of garment which might be required for life in a hot country and appearances on the beach. She felt for the first time in many years, perhaps ever, almost happy. Now suddenly George had been taken from her as totally as if by death, and she entertained no hope of seeing him again. Her abandonment of hope was impressively rapid and complete. Had she ever really believed in Spain? No doubt like many of those who lead precarious lives she had a good deal of ‘instant desperation’ stored up for dealing promptly with catastrophe, when the worst pain is the continuation of fruitless hope. She considered suicide but turned instead to the priest.

People often take other people’s crises as a symbol for their own, and are guided as by a sign. Several unfortunates known to me decided, after they had become aware of George’s change of being, that it was time for them to change too. Father Bernard was one of these: one who had the additional impetus of extreme shock. With a most inconvenient and unbecoming haste, most disturbing to a hierarchy which had become more used to his eccentricities than he realized, he divested himself of his priestly power. He wrote to his bishop announcing his decision and asking to be immediately laicized, and from one day to the next abruptly ceased conducting church services. He moved out of the Clergy House into a lodging in Burkestown. In doing so he gave away most of his possessions. In this way Hector Gaines acquired a large number of books, some of them quite esoteric, on theological and religious matters, and I acquired the Gandhara Buddha, which is on my desk at this very moment. During this time, conspicuous in his shabby mufti, he went about a lot and talked a lot to the various people who visited him or invited him out of sympathy or curiosity, declaring frequently that he was going to Greece and would end his days as a servant in some remote monastery on Mount Athos. The next news was that he had actually gone and had taken Diane Sedleigh with him.

No one suggested, nor do I think, that there was any relation between them other than tender friendship. Diane had never made any secret, among those to whom she talked (and who of course talked to others), of her special affection for the priest whom she valued so much because he was ‘not like other men’. The idea of leaving not only Ennistone but England had become firmly fixed in Diane’s mind. She was maddened by jealousy of Stella, and everything she saw reminded her of George. But she had never been out of the country before and hardly ever farther afield than London. She needed a guide and escort, and the idea of ‘pairing up’ with the priest may well have been hers. Their objective was certainly Greece, though how they intended to live there was never clear perhaps even to them. The mirage was, in any case, never made trial of since, to use Father Bernard’s own words in a letter to me, he simply ‘lost her’ in Paris. After they had spent one night there at a cheap hotel near the Gare du Nord, while the priest (for so he undoubtedly and in spite of everything still thought of himself) was away buying their railway tickets Diane simply walked out and disappeared. Father Bernard waited several days and then went on to Greece by himself. He did not consider going to the police.

What happened to Diane was something which might have belonged to her own fantasy life. The excitement of being in Paris produced a sudden wild euphoria, the more intense by its contrast with the despairing lassitude in which she had recently been plunged. She went out, I think, simply to seek her fortune, to ‘live dangerously’ and ‘have an adventure’. She made her way to a hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and here she met Milton Eastcote. The meeting was accidental, and yet had also a perfectly comprehensible background. The hotel in question was one which William Eastcote had frequented in his student days (it is a good deal grander now, but still not very expensive) and George had learnt of it from William and had stayed there once or twice. He mentioned its name to Diane during one of their brief fantasies of flight together. Diane had noted the name of the hotel and used to meditate upon it as on an amorous mantra. She went there so as to set eyes on it at last, and because she thought it might bring her luck. It did. Milton Eastcote, who had also learnt of the hotel from his cousin, used it as his Paris base. Milton’s philanthropic activities were perfectly genuine, he did indeed help prostitutes and other outcasts, and his good works in the east end of London were justly esteemed. However, like many more people than you might imagine, he had a quite other and secret side to his character, and in the course of saving fallen women sometimes discreetly saved one for himself. Diane had been pointed out to him at William’s funeral, where she had attracted attention by appearing with George. He had liked her type. Now suddenly she materialized before him in Paris. He approached her courteously. Diane now lives in a pleasant airy apartment on the Quai aux Fleurs with a view of Notre Dame. I saw her there myself not long ago. Diane has invented a past for herself which is more in keeping with her present affluence, and has indeed done her very best to become a different person. She has learnt with creditable speed to speak passable French. Self- Interest can stimulate intelligence, and her wits have no doubt been sharpened by her sense of the urgency of at last grasping her future with both hands. She seems to feel quite secure. When I saw her, tea was brought in by a uniformed maid. She inquired, with an air of sympathetic concern, after ‘poor George’.

Emma and Pearl have also ‘done well’, although they failed to complete the romantic symmetry of our midsummer idyll by getting married. There has been, by mutual agreement between that estimable pair, no romance. They could not but be brought together again, after Rozanov’s death, by their concern and affection for Tom and Hattie. But it was soon clear to both that mutual sexual relations are not for them. They have instead become (and I predict will steadily remain) fast friends, bringing a lot of affection, happiness and wisdom into each other’s lives. Contrary to Emma’s expectations, Pearl gets on very well with his mother, especially on the basis of endlessly discussing him. Pearl (here I claim some credit) has been encouraged to think it is not too late to chase after some education, and does not lack advice about how to set about it. Fortunately too her considerable ‘watchdog’ savings can buy her time, which she spends passionately studying for exams in a flat in north London, where Emma, Tom and Hattie are frequent visitors. Meanwhile, one of Emma’s problems was solved by the sudden disappearance of Mr Hanway, who ran off to Italy with one of his pupils. Emma received his apologetic letter with relief. (It appeared from the letter that Mr Hanway imagined that Emma was deeply and inconsolably dependent on him; such are the misunderstandings which can exist between people who look into each other’s eyes.) With Mr Hanway gone, it seemed to Emma that perhaps he could just go on singing, without having to give it up because he could not dedicate his whole life to it. (He still worries about this question, however.) Emma gained the brilliant ‘first’ predicted for him and is now a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. On the whole he is happy, when he is not thinking about Ireland. And to return, a little further on in time, to our hero and heroine, Tom got himself a sound second-class degree and hopes to find a teaching job, while Hattie has taught herself Russian and is going to the School of Slavonic Studies. Tom continues to work on his poetry (he lately had a poem printed in The Times Literary Supplement) and has started a novel. Even though his university career failed of the hoped-for brilliance, the town remains convinced that he will turn out to be a great writer.

I shall now draw towards an end by inserting as a final document a letter which I received from Greece from Father Bernard.

My dear N,

Thank you for yours which I picked up at the Poste Restante on one of my rare visits to Athens. I was interested in all the news, though I must confess that Ennistone and all its folk seem very far away now and not a little (may I say it) provincial! So Diane has become a lady at last, or sort of! I wish her well. Her disappearance from my life was providential. Her presence would have given rise to misunderstandings and would have seriously impaired my single-mindedness. The essence of my news is ineffable, but I can list a few facts. Things went badly at Mount Athos (no one’s fault, the holy men are simply not very intelligent). After that there occurred an event at Delphi about which I will try to tell you if we ever meet again. I know you are open-minded about what you call paranormal phenomena and I call religious experience. About the latter I have indeed learnt something since I came to this numinous country. I have also been led at last to a clear understanding of my true vocation. I, and others (how many are we, I wonder?), are chosen to strive for the continuance of religion on this planet. Nothing else but true religion can save mankind from a lightless and irredeemable materialism, from a technocratic nightmare where determinism becomes true for all except an unimaginably depraved few, who are themselves the mystified slaves of a conspiracy of machines. The challenge has gone forth and in the deep catacombs the spirit has stirred to a new life. But can we be in time, can religion survive and not, with us, utterly perish? This has been revealed to me as the essential and only question of our age. What is necessary is the absolute denial of God. Even the word, the name, must go. What then remains? Everything, and Christ too, but entirely changed and broken down into the most final and absolutely naked simplicity, into atoms, into electrons, into protons. The inner is the outer, the outer is the inner: an old story, but who really understands it? It is vitally important that I live now in a cave. Well, it is a tiny abandoned chapel, a slit made in a rock. Do not ask me how I found it. I live in a solitary place beside the sea surrounded by white stones and brilliant green pine trees. I have made a wooden cross. Fireflies are my lamp at night. I lie at the bottom of the world, and I cannot express to you how brilliantly it shines upon me, the light of an untainted Good. My bread is as pure as the stones, I drink from a nearby spring. The Anglican Church has amazingly granted me a tiny pension, but I do not need it since some nearby villagers have adopted me (they think I am mad) and every day bring gifts of loaves and fishes. I have no doubt that when cold weather comes someone will bring me a brazier. So I live. I preach to my flock in New Testament Greek and by a miracle they understand me. (I am also learning their patois.) When no one comes I preach to the sea birds. What do I preach? That there is no God, that even the beauty of Christ is a snare and a lie. ‘Nothing exists except God and the soul’: and when one has understood that, one knows that there is no God. For what is real and true look at these stones, this bread, this spring of water, these sea waves, this horizon with its pure untroubled line. Only perceive purely and the spiritual and the material world vibrate as one. (This was revealed to me at Delphi.) The power that saves is infinitely simple and infinitely close at hand.

I cannot go on. It is sacrilege to utter words which are bound to be misunderstood. My simple peasants understand my Greek better than you will understand my English. When how and whether I shall be called to a larger ministry I know not. Perhaps I shall have to journey afar, perhaps in the end the world will come to me here, or perhaps I shall die obscurely and soon. Meanwhile I cast about me as I may the seeds of truth. May the clean wind of the spirit bear them to fruitful beds.

Now about what you had to say in your letter about John Robert: I believe that you are wrong. You are too interested, it is for you a spectacle. I have thought about him and prayed over him too, as I pray now. I was his last pupil and I failed the test. If I had known what I know now I could have saved both him and George. John Robert asked me not to speak of George and I agreed because I was afraid of him and because I was flattered by his attention. When I spoke of pastoral duty he said, ‘You don’t believe it’, and I bowed my head, and the cock crew thrice. So it is that I have witnessed three murders, two by George and one by that philosopher (perhaps there is a teaching in this). John Robert died because he saw at last, with horrified wide-open eyes, the futility of philosophy. Metaphysics and the human sciences are made impossible by the penetration of morality into the moment to moment conduct of ordinary life: the understanding of this fact is religion. This is what Rozanov distantly glimpsed when he was picking away at questions of good and evil, and he knew that it made nonsense of all his sophisms.

There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present. This too I tell my flock, demolishing their dreams of a supernatural elsewhere. So you see, I have abandoned every kind of magic and preach a charmless holiness. This and only this can be the religion of the future, this and only this can save the planet.

But I write in water. I shall give this letter to one of my people. I know not if it will ever be posted. Goodbye, my dear N, I raise my hand to bless you.

Yours, Bernard Jacoby

The local priest has just visited me. He seems displeased! Perhaps I am destined for martyrdom after all!

I read part of this letter (not all of it of course) to Brian and Gabriel. Gabriel stopped a tear. Brian said, ‘Everybody seems to be going batty these days.’

I should say that Brian and Gabriel are for the present, perhaps permanently, living at Belmont and looking after Alex, and Ruby has come back there too. While Alex was in hospital, Ruby fled to the gipsy camp where she seemed to assume that she would now spend the rest of her days. Mike Seanu brought her back to Brian and Gabriel at Como. Later (when Brian declared the house too small for him and Ruby) she went to stay with Pearl in London. It has appeared however that Ruby cannot exist outside Ennistone, and when Brian and Gabriel moved to Belmont, Gabriel insisted that she should come back. She has got her pension from Alex after all, arranged by Robin Osmore, and is rumoured to have considerable savings since she never spent any of her salary. I have forgotten to speak of Alex. She never fully recovered from that fall down the stairs. As Stella said, Alex’s fall prefigured George’s, and had a similar effect. Alex is a shadow of her old self, all that bossy curiosity, that bright restless power, has quite gone. She is (or seems) perfectly rational, but has become very quiet. She spends long times sitting at the big bow window in the drawing-room and looking out. (And what does she see when she does so? Foxes. Our worthy municipal officers, with what our citizens call their ‘usual efficiency’, certainly pumped in the lethal gas, but took a long time doing so and failed to block all the exits of the earth, so that the foxes were able to decamp in safety. The ‘fox menace’ has now, since the recent council elections, passed out of the public gaze.) Alex rarely goes visiting, but her old friends come to see her, and even her new acquaintances, whom Gabriel calls ‘tourists’, including Father Bernard’s successor, an elderly youth with a guitar. She likes to be given little presents, anything pleases her, flowers, chocolates, or model animals of which she is making a collection. She does not read much, or watch television, but listens constantly to the radio, including classical music programmes which never interested her before. When visited she initiates no conversation, but will talk readily about the topics proposed. Naturally, her visitors choose these with care. She and Ruby are back on their old silent terms except that of course Alex is less peremptory and (so at least Gabriel is pleased to think) Ruby is gentler and more affectionate. The only time Alex shows any emotion is when George comes to see her, as he sometimes does, accompanied always by Stella, who never leaves his side. At these meetings, one of which I witnessed, George makes a visible touching effort to make the conversation a success. He shows an unwonted animation and tries to make his mother respond, and sometimes it seems that some glimmer of the old Alex is about to appear. However, confusion ensues, the danger of tears, and Stella sees to it that these visits are suitably short. Dr Roach is pessimistic, but I am not. As I said, it is remarkable how ably old brain cells can learn new tricks, I have seen this happen many times. I shall certainly watch both these cases with the utmost interest.

Whenever I see Gabriel she always turns the conversation on to George, displaying an almost spiteful obsession with his disabilities. Of course she is jealous of Stella’s absolute possession of George, and the determined way in which she keeps Brian and Gabriel at a distance. The other day (we met at the Baths where the colder weather has again covered the water with a pall of steam) she described George as ‘spiritless, characterless and good’. And of Stella: ‘She always wanted him maimed, she’s his nurse now, she imagines her love-cure has saved him, but it’s just that he’s broken.’

Brian, coming up, added, ‘It’s just as well he’s broken. He was too bloody dangerous when he was in working order.’ And Gabriel, ‘It’s sad in a way. Both our monsters are quite tame now.’ She said it soberly but with a kind of natural satisfaction.

However, lest I should now seem to be spiteful, let me say that Gabriel is very kind and tirelessly attentive to Alex, and seems to be in general more reconciled to being a wife and mother. Perhaps, after witnessing the troubles of others, she feels how lucky she is to have a loyal decent husband, even if he is bad-tempered, and a fine tall growing-up son. She may at times be heard to murmur, ‘Of course, George would have been perfectly ordinary if only Rufus had lived.’ I doubt if she is right.

I find it difficult myself to leave the subject of George, whom I confess I enjoy discussing regularly with Stella. Stella says she thinks George has started to write poetry, though he always hides it when she comes in, and she takes this as a hopeful sign. She believes that although George had been daydreaming for some time about murdering his old teacher, he really decided to kill him after he received the philosopher’s final savage letter, only at first he concealed this decision from himself by imagining a final liberation from the relationship. ‘I felt I had really finished with him,’ George told Stella, ‘only he … provoked me so …’ This accords with what Tom has since told me of the extraordinary ‘radiance’ (he used this word), a sort of unnatural visionary calm which surrounded George when they met at Diane’s flat just after, it appears, George had received the letter. George’s reflections on his mental state, which he imparted to Stella during the period of his blindness, reveal indeed a considerable capacity for self-knowledge. He even tried to explain to her what it was like to feel that a murder is a duty. What it was that ‘moved’ George from liberated euphoria to effective murderous hate must however remain a missing link. To say that the radiant euphoria ‘was really’ the scarcely conscious foreknowledge of the final determination to act is merely a way of stating the problem. The motivation of terrible deeds tends to be extremely complex, full of apparent contradictions, and often in fact bottomlessly mysterious, although for legal, scientific and moral reasons we ‘have to’ theorize about it. I have never ventured to suggest to Stella that the peculiar shock of her return, with its reminder of an old jealousy, might have had some decisive effect upon her husband. I do not know whether she ever reflects upon this distressing idea. It would be a sad irony if her inopportune mention of the philosopher’s name should have prompted the violence which ended this tale as well as that which began it. Was the final ‘provocation’ hers after all, and not John Robert’s? Such are the chance ‘triggers’ which may determine our most fateful actions and yet remain opaque particulars with which science can do little.

Since his early outpourings George has not talked much about the past. It is hard to say how far his present mien is instinctive and how far it is a deliberate façade (the distinction can often be unclear). He seems like a much older man, his hair is turning grey and he treats people with a slow kindly dignified condescension. As I said earlier, and I based it on something Stella told me, George was fascinated by Nazi war criminals and identified himself in fantasy with these condemned and defeated monsters. Perhaps now he is enacting the part of one who after many years in prison emerges not exactly repentant but full of stoical wisdom, facing the truth, quiet and proud, acknowledging his acts as his own. George seems to have perceived his own ‘double-think’ about his false ‘liberation’ from John Robert. I wonder if he has also understood the part played in his mental stratagems by his old fantasy, derived so he thought from John Robert himself, of being ‘beyond good and evil’? More often than the ‘experts’ imagine, purely intellectual ideas and images can play ‘deep’ parts in human psychology. I do not despair of discussing these questions one day with George, indeed with Stella’s help this may now come about in the not too distant future. Some of the dedicated George-watchers in the town are of the opinion that George has ‘found Jesus’. Of course this is a nonsense, most vociferously denied by Stella. However, she reported something rather touching which George said lately. ‘Well, he said that Caliban must be saved too.’ About him Stella and I often talk. Steve Glatz has been questioning Stella about John Robert, and Stella tells me how prudently she has replied. Steve is writing a memoir about Rozanov, to be expanded later into a definitive ‘life’. He showed me a little of this piece, in which the philosopher has been metamorphosed into some kind of saint! He is also busy reconstituting the drowned notebook of the ‘great work’ from his own lecture notes. Meanwhile between ourselves Stella and I have been agreeing that perhaps John Robert was not really quite such a great man as we all imagined.

Steve Glatz is very much upon the Ennistone scene at present. Anthea Eastcote has broken off her engagement with Joey Tanner, thus satisfying those who held that ‘he was only after her money’. Anthea is now said to be ‘involved’ with Steve, and Tom and Hattie have lent them the little house at Malibu. Mr and Mrs Tom McCaffrey still live at the Slipper House, where Pearl and Emma often come to stay, putting up with Tom’s heavy humour at their expense. Tom and Emma maintain a steady amitié amoureuse, although neither of them would dream of using that expression, or indeed alluding to the matter in any way. Hattie and Pearl love each other with the deep love of childhood friends, tempered by the love of those who have been shipwrecked together. They often talk of John Robert, but not of the shipwreck. With an instinctive delicacy which is natural to both, Pearl never speaks of her secret love for the philosopher, nor has Hattie discussed with her those last terrible days at Hare Lane. I wonder (for of course I would never ask her this) whether she ever meditates upon the strange fact that it was John Robert and not Tom who first awakened her sexually. It is certainly fascinating to consider how successfully (and indeed how literally), in the end, the philosopher carried out his plan of thrusting her into Tom McCaffrey’s arms.

I share the general view that the marriage will be a happy one. I see Hattie as the leader. Tom and Hattie still sometimes discuss whether they would have come to love each other without being urged to do so by John Robert’s tremendous willpower. They agree that, even though he brought them together, this merely counts as one of those pieces of pure luck that bring about happy marriages. Hattie is determined not to let her university studies prevent her from starting a family. She feels sure that the first child will be a girl. Perhaps John Robert ought to have waited after all? Tom and Hattie intend to have a lot of children, so there will be plenty more McCaffreys available in the future for the inhabitants of Ennistone to gossip about.

The end of any tale is arbitrarily determined. As I now end this one, somebody may say: but how on earth do you know all these things about all these people? Well, where does one person end and another person begin? It is my role in life to listen to stories. I also had the assistance of a certain lady.