Carston and Clarence
Carston’s day had been a penance. A train had landed him some time in midmorning at a place called Chard. Picus had said that it was nearer Tollerdown than Starn, but no one there had heard of the place. The station lay in no immediate relation to the village. The inn was fusty and unsympathetic. The heat atrocious. A day for no sane man to tramp while the sun was high. Miles across another bend of the heath where Picus had lost him, the down-banks rose, aery turf walls, solid as flesh and blood. One of them was Tollerdown. He held up a passing motorist, who was kind. He gave him a lift down a white road sprung like an arrow across the moor that filled the lowlands like a dark dragon’s wing.
At the foot of the turf, he set Carston down. “Go up the track,” he said, “and make towards the sea. If it’s not this shoulder, it’s the one that follows it.” Carston mounted, into silence, on to height. He had never been so well in his life, could not have stood that if he had not been so well. Never had his heart been so touched. Could he stand that?
He mounted, past the trees, the copses, the gorse patches, on to the last crest of raw grass. The earth and the sea extended in a perfect circle round him. He had only to follow the hill’s spine, and drop halfway into the valley to strike the cottage before he walked over into the sea. Like a man who has been given a heavy treasure that he has not looked at and must carry home, he walked on.
Bear your burden in the heat of the day, he sang, who had been in great request at parties for his bawdy repertory. His track ran through five barrows. By one was a crook-backed angry thorn. A bad patch. He passed it, glad to have left them behind, keeping his face towards the sea. Interlude this day alone, in a train. On a hill. Find a cottage on a shelf. Console its inhabitant. Bring him a cup to pop down a well. Fetch him away. You could make a ballad about it. About a mile more to go. One more river to cross. The turf turned over in what was almost a cliff. He was not on Tollerdown. Picus and the man in the car had said two hills. This one dropped into a narrow neck. The great bank he could now see rising on the other side, that was Tollerdown. He cursed, slid down the breakneck path, over a wall of unmortared stone bound with bramble that ripped his clothes; across a field, ploughed and deserted, its furrows baked to iron. Over a gate crested with barbed wire, whose rusty thorns drew blood from his knee. Sprinted down a sparkling grit road, met cattle and an angry dog. Hurry, hurry, he did not know why. Get this over. Hanging about an eternity he’d been, up in the air. Now for people and the end of the cup. A baker’s cart passed him on the road, directed him, and he found himself mounting again by the way Scylla had come. Stopped at the open cottage door, knocked, waited, went in. He saw the bird. The torn papers. He went through.
He saw Clarence, slowly and awkwardly trying to restring the bow, and the lovely nightmare, Scylla hanging bound to the stake of her love. His reason had vanished. Returned, abnormally clear. A madman and the girl probably dead. No gun. Behind them a gulf to the sea. Was I made a man for this? Lighten our darkness.
Playact. He pulled out the cup. It had kept its jade-coolness. He showed it to Clarence.
“Just got here. Picus wants it put back in the well, and you to come to Tambourne. See? Sent me.” He took his arm: “Put it in yourself. He said you were to. Drop it in. Feel how cool it is. Wants to get back to where it came—into water. He’ll be wretched if you don’t.”
Clarence staggered a little, moving towards the well.
“My head’s not cool,” he said. “Hurts like hell. The boy wants it dropped in. I can’t see why I should attend to all his fancies.”
Carston tried not to look at Scylla, not let him turn. Clarence’s step shambled a little, his head dropped.
“I’m not to do it. Only you.”
“All right. Here goes.” Plop went a noise a very long way below them. Clarence covered his eyes with his hands.
“Dear man, it was decent of you to come. Such a way and the country strange to you. Hope you had a car. D’you mind if I go in for a bit and fix you up some tea?” Carston guided him carefully, back turned from what was out there in the sun, into the house-shadow, into the studio.
“I’ll make tea. You lie down a bit.” He was thinking how to lock him in, when the young man dropped, moaning that his head hurt, and that something was trying to get out through his eyes. Carston hoped it might be the tears he’d cry when he knew what he’d done. He had always liked Clarence, disliked that his affection should have turned to horror. He even put a cushion under his head. Then snatched up a knife in the kitchen, rushed out and cut Scylla free, and carried her on to the sitting-room couch. Then followed a time when time indefinitely suspended and extended itself. Attempts to withdraw the wood that pierced her, to stop the blood, to revive her, sustain her, dreading her consciousness and her unconsciousness alike. Listen to Clarence moaning, listen for him moving. He had not found a key to lock him in. Try to find a revolver without leaving Scylla, and later not to fall over the gun he had laid across the table at full cock. At one time he wondered if he should pitch Clarence over the cliff while he went for a doctor, and went nearly mad as the light failed, for he saw her coming back to her right mind alone, and the ghost of the man who had injured her crawling up the cliff-face to go on with his dream out of the flesh, and two ghosts, not one, would carry on, the torturing and the tortured.
An immensely long shadow flung back was travelling the hills. As the sun slipped incandescent into a crescent of far cliff, Carston heard outside whistling, liquid notes of everything that has wings. He remembered, Like Mozart. Thought it might be death, coming sweetly for Scylla, as Picus walked into the house.
He saw Carston glaring, feeling for the gun, heard him say:
“You sent her to this. You laid this trap for her. You drove him mad—”
He answered:
“If that were so, should I have sent you? Should I have come myself? Whisht man, let’s look.” Passing, he put the gun at safe, and Carston saw him lay Scylla’s body across his knees, open the chemise he had slit up and retied with a scarf.
“Scylla, you silly bitch, wake up. Man, I know all about wounds. Side glanced off a rib, the rest’s nothing.”
“All but our cruelty to her. I’ve not been that.”
“No, you’ve not. Less than us. Yes, call it my fault. I can be sane. Where’s Clarence?”
“In the studio, not quite conscious. I can’t find the key.”
“He’ll do. Scylla’s quite comfy here. Go and make her some tea. Stiff whisky for us. Clarence had a bad head wound. With that and the sun, and my bitchery—Where’s the cup?”
“In the well. I made him put it down. Said it was your orders. Then he collapsed.”
“Where did this happen?”
“At the back. Go and look.”
Picus went out into the quarry and looked at the statue of himself. Spots of Scylla’s blood, blackening in the dying light. None of his own. He took an axe from the woodpile and knocked the image of himself to a stump. Carston heard the dry pieces falling, the patter of dust.
Scylla stirred and sat up. Two cups of tea pressed to her lips met and clicked together.
“I can’t drink out of two cups at once.” Carston withdrew his. She drank.
“Is it Picus?” she said, feeling for their hands.
Carston said:
“Is there nowhere in this hell-forsaken country where we can get a doctor?”
“She doesn’t need one,” said Picus—“only us. No, love, I won’t go away. We’re going to sleep here. Hush, love. I’ve got to do magic and make you well. Better magic than at Gault.”
“What’s happened to Clarence?”
“We’ve put him in the studio. His head’s all wrong. Tomorrow he won’t remember about this.”
“He isn’t coming back? Picus, I don’t know how. Lydia wrote an idiot letter. I just came in. Not to be beastly, but to try—” She began to cry a great deal. Carston stayed with her. Picus went to the studio alone.
Soon he came back with an armful of bedding. He laid it on the floor.
“He’s asleep. He will sleep.”
“What are we going to do?” cried Carston, at exhaustion’s breaking point.
“Sleep. We shall all sleep. Where we are, round her. Cover her over. Put a drink for her in the night. Finish the whisky. So. We shall all sleep. You at the foot. I at the side. On this side, love, or you’ll lie on the cut in your hair.
“Shoes off, Carston. We shall need our feet tomorrow.
“Door open, and perhaps a rabbit will come in.
“Sleep, man, sleep. We must. Scylla, that’s a fat star winking. Clarence is locked in. Had a turn like this before, and thought he was a nun.”
Carston heard a giggle.
Of course, if Picus said a rabbit would come in. If Scylla wanted a rabbit to come in. …
The shepherd’s wife sat up on a heap of rag quilts. The thatch bore down over a window sunk in the rubble wall, the panes wood-squared, double-fastened with paint, the ledge filled by a tropical green geranium, flowerless, filtering the light. The shepherd snored.
“Get up!” she squealed, and kicked him. “I be going across to the house.”
A little later the old trollop left the rustic slum, and was crossing the hill’s dewy shoulder in the delicate light. The day before she had been afraid to go; but in the night, encouraged by a bottle of whisky, she had seen Mr. Ross in a dream.
Clarence had built the studio out into the quarry at the back. She looked in first at its window and saw him sleeping there. Always out and about early he was. Picus had left the key outside in the lock. She went in. Clarence woke. There was a pain in his brain that felt like a nut. Before there had been a worm in the nut, but that had gone to sleep. He had felt the nut before. In a day or so there would not even be a nut, certainly not what went before the nut, the worm boring and making a wild pain that made a wild dream, on the edge of whose memory he was living.
“You’re early,” he said—“Get some tea.” And I’m in my clothes. “And mind you put it in with the teaspoon.”
He went to the well to sluice himself and saw his statue in bits. Looked up for a rockfall from the quarry, which was impossible. Found bits of wood and feathers sticking in the clay and strode back to the kitchen. Heard her clacking that indeed she didn’t know, and that the living-room door was locked.
He went round to the front, to the open door, saw where a hare had made her form. Looked in and saw, still sleeping, Picus, Carston, Scylla. He shook his friend’s shoulder gently:
“Hi, boy, what’s happened?” Picus woke at a touch, pointed outside and rose silently.
“Who’s taken my statue outside and smashed it?”
“Come out with me. Out and down a bit. A boat’s in. Down at the Lobster Pot they’ll fry us fish.”
“But I’m not shaved. Can Carston fix up some breakfast for Scylla? Does he know the old woman can’t? What’s happened, lad? You look like a wet Sunday. Headache again?”
“No. Only you must come on.”
He dropped sharply down the hill, Clarence behind him. He felt his mouth twist into a sneer. Clarence the kindly host, the country-gentleman making the best of a cottage and lack of retainers. Then that contempt was unjust. The unfamiliar concept of justice and injustice stuck and was accepted.
Then that punishment was on him. He had to operate on Clarence, not prick and bewilder. Had to undo his arts, his graces, his wit. Clarence’s first protection would be to turn on him. A man of perverse and subtle mind, he would be quick to distort to save himself. Making me think.
Then at the Lobster Pot he acquired immediately tea, butter, bread, jam, and the first batch of the landlady’s personal fish.
“Damned hungry,” said Clarence, helping him to the one small real sole.
Ouf. Why did Clarence look so lovingly at him, when for the first time on record he threw it back on to his plate? He did not like being hurt. The others were more used to being hurt. Now that he had to hurt, he did not want to. (A reaction impossible to Carston, for whose race sadism is not fun but a serious expression.)
Ow. How much he cared for Clarence, for sport and adventure and work shared. More than them all. Except Scylla. Because that love was shot through with something like an arrow and the feather of a bird. The blood on her white shoulder, the rose feet and feather of a bird.
Ai. His breath came on different sighs. One more river to cross. To be sure that he did not act, in this, in any way like his father. That understood, he left his desperate network of light and dark and gave himself up: neither to Clarence, nor to fear: but to a space full of clear forms and veritable issues. What he must do in order not to be any way like his father. Was that to give himself to Scylla? He had met her on his path. So. The bird’s thought darted into a song:
So every way the wind blows this sweetie goes in the South.
While Clarence saw an assurance like maturity drawing itself in the set of the head and the subtle mouth.
Picus looked for a moment out to sea, and began:
“What have you been doing the last three days, since I went off to Tambourne?”
“Stayed on with Ross a bit. Walked over. Got the place shined up.”
“It must have been pretty hot?”
“The sun bored like worms into your head.”
“What happened then?”
“There was lots to do, but I found the nights, short as they are, damned long. When it isn’t dark and it’s going to get dark and you listen out. You know. But in places like this you can never tell what day which happened.”
“What was yesterday like?”
Clarence screwed round, ever so little equivocally.
“I sort of remember that something rather miserable happened in the morning. Might have been a letter.” And quickly—“But I can’t account at all for the statue being in bits. I know you’ll say it doesn’t matter what happens to my work, but Ross liked it. You said you liked it yourself—”
“Looksey,” said Picus, tenderly—“you’ve got to know, you know. You went off the deep-end again.”
“You mean I smashed it myself?”
“No. I did a bit. I mean I broke it. I felt I had to.”
Clarence listened gravely, his eyes still altering their angle.
“Well, if you thought it bad, that’s that. But you’ve taken so much of my life, do you think you should do in my work, also?”
“It wasn’t for that. You’ve forgotten about yesterday. You said something miserable happened, and it did.” (Now are his eyes shifting memory or madness?) “Remember when you thought you were a nun? This time you must have thought you were Apollo, or a Roman official with an early Christian. There was some story in town, and Lydia sent you a letter. And Scylla came down here on purpose to clear it up and fetch you along. She found you shooting at me, and you tied her up and shot her. Carston came over and probably saved her life. I followed, and by then you’d got through your fit and were asleep. She isn’t badly hurt. That’s what happened. Why I brought you down here. And you can kick me for my fantasies and tempers. Half the blame’s on me.” Is this going to release me? Have I been looking for that? This sweetie goes?
“It’s another of your stories,” Clarence said.
“Go up and see.”
“Excuse to put me in an asylum. I get you.”
“Balls, man. The old man at Tambourne, the vicar, I mean c’d explain. Tell us what we could do.”
“His orders aren’t even valid.”
“Don’t know what you mean. Go and see. You tied her with the lariat. You shot a gull to wing your arrows. There’s one struck her shoulder and her side. After Carston had cut her down, I smashed myself up with the axe. Sort of apology.”
“Did I really shoot a gull?”
“You shot her till she fainted.”
“Did I drag your statue out and shoot you?”
“Picked me out carefully.”
“It was the best thing I’ve done, but I haven’t hurt you, boy?”
“You threw Scylla. She cut her head on a stone. Carston took an arrow out below her left breast. She was pinned to me by her shoulder—”
“Getting kick out of it, aren’t you?”
“Go and see.”
“And face that dumb fool Carston.”
“Look at Scylla.”
“Where’s the cup?”
“You put it in the well.”
Silence, while Picus watched the bright, brown close-set eyes turn this way and that. Never into his eyes. Never out to sea. Over his shoulder, at the fish-bones, into his cup.
“It’s a clever way of breaking things up. You say that you came later?”
“An hour. You were lying in the studio. You were saying something about worms and time and cups. I think you know, that you actually did a dream.”
His simplicity amazed Clarence: made him thoughtful.
“I am sure that you’re letting Carston take you in. You’re simple sometimes, bless you. You weren’t there. He found me a bit off my head and I went in and fell asleep. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember yesterday.
“I’m going up. You might stay and see if that net we broke is mended and follow. I even think you believe this, but it is more likely to be some revenge of Carston’s—”
It was suggested to him, fretfully and quite unjustly, that Carston could neither improvise a bow and arrows, throw a leaded cord, or hit a sitting haystack. And it was painful on their present undertaking to see Clarence stride off to clear up the affair. Picus fidgeted about the beach and threw unsuccessful ducks and drakes. One suddenly skimmed out. So much for that.
And every way the wind blows this sweetie goes in the South.
Clarence followed him full of anger, full of breakfast up the hill. Then, as he climbed and felt the strengthening sun, of a kind of catchy fear. The nut was shrinking. How was he to persuade Carston that they had not been entertained by a sadist? The business faintly excited him. With each step he felt the sun’s menace. He wanted to be alone under the cool thatch and whittle at a mazer he was making to hold punch at parties. A present for Scylla.
The night before Carston had thrown out the half-plucked gull over the cliff. It had caught on a bush, and almost at the door Clarence saw the torn white rags. He stood a long time while the dew dried.
“I suppose I thought she was the bird.” The whole memory came back. The nut in his head dissolved like a drop of wax. His skull filled with pure memory.
The figure he had cut with his excuses. How save his reputation for sanity? With Picus. With all of them?
What does one do when one has done a thing like that?
How act a repentance unfelt as yet, only betrayal by time, chance, magic, interfering friends, offending gods?
The gull, held on a twig by a pinion-feather, loosened, balanced a second, and vanished over the cliff.
“I must follow,” he said, “now.”
The sun had thrown his shadow to the threshold. Carston saw it and said nothing, afraid, helping Scylla to splash in water smoky with most of her host’s scents, combing the blood out of her hair. Sweet to have her safe and look after her. Then he heard her say, “There’s Clarence.” She had seen him at the cliffs edge. Carston held that he waited to be seen, but in truth he had forgotten Carston and Scylla. Carefully looking not down but out to sea. Taking a last pull at memories there.
Of Picus. Of the band he had grown up with. Of war, whose issues he had found too simple. Of their spiritual adventure he had not been equal to. Of the fool he had made of himself. The revenge his death would be. Not stay to be called Judas. And bring our souls to His high city.
He took a step to the edge. Scylla jumped off the divan, and with her hand at her side, ran out to him.
“Clarence, come in.”
She had hold of him as he had held her.
“What’r’you doing out in your chemise?”
“You know. Come in.”
“Get me,” she said to Carston, “a wooden bowl in the studio, and a green baize roll of tools.” She lay down again. Clarence paced about once or twice, and sat down beside her.
“There’s going to be an awful party over at the house. Felix is bringing home a Russian.”
He said:
“I’m not mad. No need to go on like that. I remember. The bird made me.”
“Did you think I was it?”
“No. There was a letter, and the sun and you know my head.”
“Look,” she said, and pulled off the handkerchief that tied her shoulder—“and my head is cut and my side. It was partly my fault that Lydia wrote to you. Go on carving while we talk.”
He did as she told him. Carston watched them. Like an idyll: a young lover making a present for his sweetheart, sitting on her bed. A harrow of wild geese with their necks out at flight. A border of fish.
“It ought to be set. Can you work in silver, Clarence? We might melt down that atrocious salver—”
Insufferable to be hushed like this. He preferred Carston glaring at him, wondering if he should get the gun. Picus came in.
“D’you know now?”
“Yes. And I’m not fool enough to imagine that there’s any apology or excuse. Or forgiveness that isn’t from duty or impulse. You can have Scylla.”
“I knew you’d take it wrong,” said Picus. “We’re not talking about beds and we know who we’ll sleep with. What you ought to know is—”
“Look here,” said Carston. “You’ve had a touch of the sun. We’ll grant that. Scylla has a fool female friend in London, fool enough to be in love with you. Wrote you a spiteful letter you lap up. Scylla comes down to explain it and comfort your feelings, and you try to kill her by torture. I know you were mad. If you don’t pull yourself together and try and face it, everyone will know you were mad; for you’ll do it again outside your home circle. The world won’t make delicate excuses for you, you spoilt, hysterical, self-pitying, self-centred, uninventive, incompetent son of a bitch.”
“Not uninventive,” said Scylla, “but you’d better try something else.”
“I’m taking you over to Tambourne right away. We’ll start now, and you can wait at the inn while I get a car. The old parson there is the company you need. You can come back to Gault, if they want you, when you’ve got your senses back.”
Picus nodded. “We are all for you, Carston.”
“All of us,” said Scylla.
“Don’t say,” he answered, “that if I stay here much longer, I shall be one of you. Because I never shall, and I don’t want to be.”
“Our house is your house,” said Scylla.
“Besides,” said Picus, “did you ever enjoy a summer more?”
“Hasn’t it been better than a movie? Leave Clarence at Tambourne and come over and look at Felix’s find.”
In his heart he knew he would not. Though there was continuity in this adventure, a circle like the design on Clarence’s mazer, a ring near to a magic ring, he knew that nothing would induce him to go back to that poverty and pride, cant and candour, raw flesh and velvet; into that dateless, shiftless, shifting, stable and unstable Heartbreak House. Not for a bit. Off to Paris on his own folk-adventure. In his last moments with them, looking at Clarence’s bowl, he saw the changes in things.
There had been an apple once. There had been an apple tree. When it gave no more apples, it had made fire, and a slice of its trunk had become a bowl cut out into birds. The bowl unless it was turned into fire again, would stop growing and last forever. Things that came out of time, and were stopped; could be made over into another sort of time.
Clarence sat silent, a tear or so falling, shame and anger mounting. Once away, he would leave Carston; would not go to Tambourne. He would go to Tambourne because he must have somewhere to hide. The old parson might have comfort for him while Picus was with Scylla, and she enjoyed the reward of warriors. She and Picus alone together, playing at happy warriors.
If there was nothing for him at Tambourne, there would still be Picus’s father, a fine story to pick over together.
He said:
“Perhaps you’ll send my clothes. We must go before midday. I shouldn’t like Carston to have a repetition before he gets me to Tambourne.”
And bring our souls to His high city.
He took Scylla’s hand, remained a moment in her embrace. Carston followed him down the hill.
That afternoon cloud flecks flew over and the wind freshened. Ross and Nanna left the house scented with boiling sugar and took a walk down to the sea. He listened to a comparative history of her jam-making and a sketch of her intentions about the vegetable marrows with the interest he gave to each man on his subject alike. From the cliff above the fisherman’s hut they saw a ketch running before the south wind, straight for the bay.
“A French boat,” he said, “they’re running her in too close to the reef.” The old nurse shaded her eyes.
“It’s Mr. Felix steering. In a hurry he is as usual. It’s a nice way to bring his friend home.” Silence. A Russian brought over in a fishing-smack: in a hurry. The ketch made the channel (where the bluff hid it from the coastguards’ telescopes and the sooner the better), and Ross saw Felix and a sailor drop into a dinghy and pull fast for shore. In the stern sat another. They went down to the water’s edge to meet them. A few strokes out, Felix sprang thigh deep in the weed and dragged up the boat till her keel scraped the rocks. He embraced Ross, turned and gave the boy a hand to spring to shore.
“Ross, this is Boris.”
“But what made you come this way?”
He thought that he was looking at something at the same time old and young. A youth he understood. An age he did not. Also that it was worn and tired and sick. And that Felix’s eyes were like dark-blue coals, his step certain, his voice without petulance.
“I had no papers,” said Boris.
“We got into a row,” said Felix, “the police raided a café, and we did a bolt. We ran straight into two men up a back street and sent them spinning. One was hurt. Then I saw that it was no good, especially for Boris, and got a car to the coast. Paid up those chaps to bring us and cut back. There’s a third man below to replace Boris in case we were seen from the shore.”
Not bad for Felix. Ross looked again at what he had brought, standing on the tidemark, his back to the water, the ooze soaking his poor shoes. The sailors landed two suitcases.
“See here,” he said, “and excuse us. D’you mean you have no papers and no papers you can show—?”
“He’s a White,” cried Felix, “and he lost them.”
Boris said: “That is exactly so.”
“And you’re not running dope, or away from any crime worth mentioning?”
“On my honour, no—I need a holiday and your cousin was good enough—”
Ross saw that, so far as it went, this was true. The vistas opening were more oblique. He had only to look at that head in its sea-wide aureole, the high forehead and temple-thinned black hair, the slanted cheekbones, and observant green eyes. From the remote east. Out of the sea. Lovely, ugly, helpless, highborn thing. Whipcord and ice and worn out. Wangle him papers in London.
“Boris, our stranger,” he said. “Our nurse.”
Boris kissed her hand. They climbed the little cliff path. At the top he began to look around him.
Out at sea, it had been land, earth under his feet after a night and day’s pitching. Land: an interesting new place. Another people who might have no use for him. Why should they? No longer in doubt, soon there would be food and a bath and fresh linen and bed, he took a look at England. He saw a line of treeless hills, a puzzle of fields; under his feet a pattern of sweet herbs. An arrow of wood they entered, into a tunnel of light where birds broke cover, green even under the feet. A house where the windows were doors and stood open, in front of which a yucca, taller than a man, had opened its single flower-spike. Over the house, a hill turned wall. Into a room where air and bees whispered, honey smelt and the sea. And something he remembered: the smell of fruit bubbling in copper pans, in a kitchen—a child with his nurse—in a country-house, in Russia, in a pine forest.