Hilda Doolittle - Asphodel

There was death and they had died a certain death and Jerrold hadn’t. Had Merry absolutely died? She seemed in a state of just not-understanding, for so little she would understand, what was it that was lacking? The story was all right. The story had body, continuity, unity, all the things the right sort of impossible story would have. All the stories now were of a low level of art but they made good stories. Life is, isn’t it, damn bad art, but who had said that? It was the sort of thing Darrington used to say but didn’t any more say. Darrington with his “to the chaste all things are unchaste” and Darrington to the rescue and his Theseus like a sea-rock with the weeds still clinging and his Astraea like a star, a child. . where was that Darrington? There was a chasm, a split, the volcano had so split them and across the other side candles were flaring up and George was reading and it was George saying, “almost thou persuadest me to be a heathen.” People didn’t say things like that, anyway they were silly things to say, but why should they? Why be démodé, it wasn’t à la mode any more to be witty, it was Fritz and Fritz and such vile repetition and his breath breathed into her lungs was that curious death and that curious emanation. He had been in a gas attack for his breath breathed into her lungs bit and burned and she coughed violently after he had gone, thank God that time, he had been hurried up north again, up north, his commission and a little pat from somebody though he was only 171892 for all he was a navvy with the navvies, Jerry, a navvy but rather nice coming back rather brown, rather nice if his breath hadn’t been filled with gas, making her cough, making her cough. Cough. Across a chasm there were candles and daffodils and the hydrangeas that had lifted porcelain blue and wedgwood blue and delft blue and porcelain white and porcelain Sèvres china, Dresden china pink. There is always a tulip on Dresden and sometimes an iris. Flowers on china. Merry was like that, French rather, the Irish were when you came to think of it, after you had had your full dose of England. Merry was like that. Merry already looked different, it took her no time at all to recover. The jasmine had faded from her lips. There was the old pre-chasm red and fox-red though now it had faded to the burnt pale hectic colour of fire swept leaves. She was burnt out, pale in her burning. But there was no jasmine. She was not yet ghost. Merry was sitting there and talking quite naturally. These stories were so natural. “They met us at the corner and Ned said I was to leave him. I don’t know where they took him.” This had happened before. It was always happening. Plain clothes men like some odd, old pre-chasm detective story. Sherlock Holmes. Doctor Watson. All, all those incredible, impossible things had come into life. Life had found its level and those things were on its level. “He asked me to come here. He said Hermione will understand.” Hermione looked at Merry. She did understand. Merry was no ghost jasmine. Colour came back, blue eyes, that looked blue, blue, blue, the delft-blue, the porcelain blue of conservatory hydrangeas. She was not a real flower, not an orchid though her mauve and gold gave her quality, gave her frailty. Was she frail? Didn’t she burn simply where life burned? Didn’t she cultivate Hermione for the life that burned about her? What did Merry see in Hermione? “What are you staring at, seeing?” Merry was staring, her eyes staring. Blue. Blue. “You look — odd.” “I feel odd rather. Nothing the matter. Odd simply.” Hermione was odd. She wasn’t in it, wasn’t out of it. She didn’t love Merry Dalton, didn’t hate her. She couldn’t condemn poor Trent, though she couldn’t wholesale admire him. It was stupid and the guns had stopped. There was something in the uncanny odd quiet of it, the streets quiet, no (however distant) rumble, no whistles nor rumbles, things you don’t think, in London, you are hearing but which (in London) you miss when they stop. As if a heart stopped simply. “Somethings stopped.” “It’s the guns.” “Yes. It must be.” Darrington was pulling the other couch out from behind the screen that shut their enormous room into sections. The other big couch would do for two of them. Which two? What was this? What was her mind doing? People thought like that those days. Thoughts came from outside like swallows suddenly appearing, wheeling, appearing, wheeling, turning. Spring and the swallows of her freedom. Birds. “O Merry. Yes do stay.” Darrington was already beginning to remove bits of himself, a belt, bits of things, a belt. The leather belt lay where he flung it among the ring of glasses. Ring. A ring. Ring around a rosy. A ring. A ring. A ring. Brides of God. What kind of a bride? Of God. What kind of a God? O yes, pretend. Don’t think. You are so tired, take Merry into your bed. They can arrange it after you have gone to sleep. Swallows were dipping and wheeling and this world was not real and she had left her husband on the rocks at Capri. . swallows had reeled and Odysseus had turned that corner for the Syren voices. . voices. . voices. . almost (not quite) Hermione could hear voices for the food wasn’t worth eating when you got it and “O do stay Merry. O of course, it’s too late. You can’t go home now and you can’t sleep in the kitchen. There’s an extra munition worker in the little old room we used to have at the back. Stay here.” “How wonderful. How beautiful.” Darrington went on undressing. “O yes. If you want one.” Merry didn’t want a night dress. She pulled off the mauve and old gold and she was gold and mauve underneath. “I don’t take up much room.” “I don’t take up much room either and the couch is wide. Are you all right Jerrold?” Jerrold out of delicacy seemed to have removed bits only, rolled in his great coat. He was simply “rolling in” as people did nowadays. People didn’t sleep, pulled off bits of things and Hermione pulled off bits of things. Darrington seemed to be asleep. “Who’ll blow out the last candle? But it must be almost day. Goodnight.”

As in a dream she could hear them the other side of the room, but why wake? Mary was a slut, a little fox-coloured wench out of some restoration comedy. Hermione had always known Merry was like that. Or wasn’t she? Delia had asked Merry to see her, Merry then being wistful (when wasn’t she?) and saying, “poor Mary Dalton wants friends, new life, that terrible contretemps with” (whoever it at the moment was) “and all her frail spirituality threatened.” American women were like that, so good that they couldn’t, wouldn’t see. Delia was like that and Hermione was half like that but she wasn’t going to let her sterilized New English-ness do her out of the show. It was, all told, a damn good show. A very good damn show. Sleep with her arm above her head and listen if she wants to for what she hears is nothing, a sort of sweep of swallow wings, the swallows of her redemption, the swallows of her freedom. Of course if Darrington (she called him Darrington so often in her thoughts) knows I’m awake it will be a little awkward. Swallows sweeping, sweeping but what god had sent her this, this clue of her redemption? It was better than being dead. Death was a freeing but this was better, this death in life, this ghost in life, this life in death. O Delia, delicious Delia you have only a half-knowledge, this is the true knowledge, the white-half of my knowledge reaches up, up to the sun of its attainment and my roots rooted fast here, here in the present, here in this mire. My husband wasn’t like yours (or like pre-war Captain Trent) an officer and a gentleman but I’m glad for that for if he had been he would have gone off at once and my life would have been so clearly on the rails, a poor unhappy and good woman. I’m now none of those things. I had that child. . no. I will talk of it. You Delia never had a sign of one. O delicious and beautiful sterile lovely goddess, beautiful in your goodness as I might have been if God hadn’t given me this mystic knowledge that I’m already O so comfortably out of it, dead simply like the boy who looked at the books, whom I couldn’t, didn’t dare to comfort. Florient. Perhaps she’d do next. People, faces, people, ghosts. They’re lying in the mud in France, in Flanders and I’m in a warm bed. Warm bed. I know you all. I feel the wind over your faces and I know the mud about your feet and Jeanne d’Arc was the same, white lilies, white lilies are growing from the trenches, there are lines and lines of lilies across France. Lilies are flowering across France and some few (some very few) in London. We see our death. We take it. We find our grave, O trench wide grave, O bed here narrow enough grave and this other whose smile was for a moment almost the jasmine-white of the redeemed, changed and crept from her bed, crept from her redemption, crept from her fate. Could thou not watch with me one night? Or was it one hour? Anyhow, anyway it worked either way for they had only just “got” poor Trent. Who was he anyhow with his own fiery and self-chosen crown. Trent’s crown dripped red roses, bombs, the English. All wrong but it wasn’t the deed it was the motive and his roses were red roses dropping, dripping over her, over her. He had sent Merry back to Hermione saying Hermione would be kind, “I like that woman.” He said he liked her, a woman, he said he liked her, told her she was beautiful, not with the charm of Merry but staring at her and now they had him. A tight place in London. There were tight places, it seemed, in London and lilies grew up and up and the room was full of their glamour. Across the room, there was a mud bog but filled with nothing, seeds fallen by the roadside. Some fell by the roadside. Some fell upon good earth. Trenches were good earth and the seed fell there and grew and grew and grew. Some brought forth sixty, some thirty, some hundred. A hundred. 1900. Hundred. 1800. Hundred. 1700. Hundred. What was hundred? 500. But you thought of 500 as B.C. Numbers held charm, power, you could think in numbers. 500 B.C. wasn’t so far away. She might have lived it yesterday, it was nearer than to-morrow. All this means that I’m still listening. .