John Banville - The Blue Guitar

It’s all confused, of course, all topsy-turvy. I’m thinking of calling a general meeting of interested parties — not Olive, perhaps, and certainly not Dodo, though I know they would be more than interested — to explain that a mistake has been made, that by rights I should not be the one at the receiving end of all this strife and torment. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t speak of rights. I don’t claim to be the sole injured party; we’re all in injury time, here. But I am the stealer — was the stealer — not the stolen from. Indeed, I want to make clear that the things that have been taken from me were not taken but forfeited. I am master of my own misfortune.

The old fellow came back from his questings, empty-handed, and sat himself down on the rock beside me, arranging the floppy legs of his trousers around his knees, like a woman demurely fixing her skirts. The rock was roomy enough to accommodate the two of us, so that we were both there but not together. I was glad we were outdoors, for he smelt remarkably bad, even for a tramp: rotted animal hide, with an undertone of domestic gas, and ripe cheese notes. “You were a butty of your man’s, were you?” he said. I was watching a small translucent orange cloud making its innocent way along the rim of one of those low hills and setting out across the estuary. I thought of Oliver, I mean Marcus, crouched at his work bench, the jeweller’s glass screwed into his eye socket, tinily tinkering with the innards of my father’s Elgin watch. “I seen him, that day, in that big car, going into the drink. Over there, it was.” He pointed with a filthy fingernail. “The skid marks are still in the grass, if you want to see them.” He gave himself a vigorous scratch, and sighed and shook his head and, for good measure, spat. “You wouldn’t want to be blaming yourself, now, for a thing like that,” he said. Or I think that’s what he said, unless my ears deceived me, which on occasion, on difficult occasion, it pleases them to do. The little cloud was leaving a reflected pinkish smear on the surface of the water far below.

Tick, tock.

Tick.

Tock.

—

Christmas and its bells and baubles done with at last. It was a particularly grisly one, this year; hardly surprising, in the circumstances. Gloria and I passed the day in tranquil solitude, from the world and for the most part from each other. We drank a glass of wine together at noon, then retired to our separate quarters, each with a tray, a bottle and a book. Very civilised. We await the new year with a formless sense of trepidation. What will become of us at all? Fateful events, more than one, are due. Gloria will stay here, that seems definite — there is no more mention of Aigues-Mortes — at least until the child arrives. I’m thinking of suggesting to her that we might try making a go of it, the three of us, Daddy, Mummy and Mummy’s Little Surprise. A bizarre fancy, I agree. The child will not be a girl, I think. I hope not, at any rate: our last one didn’t have much luck. No, I fancy it’s another Marcus the Watchmaker in there, biding his time.

I did a raid on my secret hiding places, here and at the gate-lodge — shivery experience, that visit, I felt like my own ghost — and threw out a goodly number of treasures from the bad old days. Chief among them was Miss Vandeleur’s green-gowned porcelain lady, retrieved from her still-fragrant cigar box and fondly dusted off; also there was a pearl-handled penknife pinched years ago from my beloved friend Oliver, he of the glass eye, and a little crystal dish purloined — sadly, this will be the last appearance of that lovely soft word, which has, for me, so much of Polly in it — from a Venetian palazzo, one day beyond memory, that still seemed to shimmer with reflected water-lights. All gone, in a bag in the bottom of the dustbin. So, you see, I am a reformed character. Hmm, do I hear you say?

How I savour these late days, the last of the year, all dense blue and charcoal and honey hues with long-shadowed backgrounds by de Chirico. The sun is still in turmoil and, thanks to its flares, our sham midwinter summer persists. A great silence reigns, as if the world were crouched in stillness, holding its breath. What is awaited? I feel sequestered, underground, poking out my snout now and then to take a measuring sniff of the air. Yes, see me there, old Brock in his den, waiting too and watching for he knows not what, his pelt prickling, sensing some fearful imminence.

One day recently Polly summoned me to meet her at the studio. And a summons it was: it had an imperious ring to it. Dutifully I climbed the steep and creaking stairway, and there she was, at the top, waiting for me outside the door, as so often, but so differently, now. She wore a long slim coat and high heels — high heels! — and her hair was cut in a new way, short, and with an elegant severity. A shaft of light falling on her from a small window high above the landing gave her a statuesque appearance, so that she seemed to represent some vaguely resolute quality, Womanly Endurance, or the Spirit of Widowhood, something in that line. She greeted me in a business-like fashion; she had a preoccupied air, as though she had stopped by here on the way to an altogether more pressing engagement; shades of Perry Percival. She did not take her hands out of the pockets of her stylish coat, as if she thought I might imagine she intended to embrace me. I reached past her to unlock the door, and on the instant saw myself, as if depicted identically on a set of cards that my memory was thumbing through, doing the same thing, leaning forwards in just the same way, a little awkwardly, a little off-balance, on countless occasions in the past.

Inside, the studio had the familiar-unfamiliar look that schoolrooms used to have on the first day back after the summer holidays. Everything seemed over-lit and much too emphatic. The smell, of course, was a jog to the memory, and to the heart; nothing quite does it like a smell. Polly cast an indifferent glance about her, her eye not even pausing as it glided over the sofa. “How have you been?” she asked. She leaned her head to one side and considered me; she might have been giving not me but my portrait a judicious once-over, and not much caring for what she saw. “You don’t look well.”

I said I was sure she was right, for certainly I didn’t feel well. I said that she, on the other hand, looked, looked — but I couldn’t think of the right word: such a complicated compound doesn’t exist.

She smiled faintly and arched an eyebrow, and for a second bore a shocking resemblance to my wife. In those heels she was half a head taller than I. She was standing under the light again where it fell from the big slanted window under which we had so often lain together, contentedly watching the sky’s slow changes, the stately processions of cloud, the milk-white gulls swooping and swirling. She unbuttoned her coat. Underneath, she wore a skirt and bodice affair that to my eye looked suspiciously like a dirndl, though probably this is the effect of hindsight. The skirt was fullish and reached to mid-calf, and the bodice seemed as forbiddingly impenetrable as a suit of mail, yet I suddenly found myself surging forwards with my arms held out to her, as if she might, as if I actually thought she might, fall into them. She drew herself back about an inch, her eyebrow making a sharper arch, and that was all it took to stop me in my tracks. I let my arms fall to my sides, and the two of us looked away from each other at the same instant. There was a clearing of throats. Polly moved aside, taking deliberate, slow paces, and stopped, inevitably, at the table, and inevitably picked up the little glass mouse with the tip broken off its tail and turned it in her fingers, frowning.

“It was here all the time,” I said.