Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“The irony of it,” Marius said.

“Oh Marius,” Peter said, “what a dreadful joke!”

The sea and Annabelle. Somebody laughed. “I saw Alice the other day,” I said to Marius.

“Oh did you? I wondered which one of us she would continue with.”

“Who is Alice?” Peter said.

“One of your enemies. . ”

“I have no enemies,” Peter said. “Perhaps she is in love with you, Marius.”

“Oh always love. . ” Annabelle began.

“I have only those whom I understand and those whom I don’t understand. Is Alice old?”

“Not very. She is someone who tries to keep one jump ahead of you like an electric hare.” Marius gave a short description of Alice.

“That is what I don’t understand. Isn’t it extraordinary how they behave?”

“This silly ‘they’,” Annabelle said.

“But it means something. ‘They’ are the one-jump-ahead people — the gay, the superficial, the successful. I envy them. They deal exclusively with ambition and seduction.”

“Alice is an oddity,” Marius said.

“I envy them. I understand no one except ourselves. Everyone else I have met belongs to ‘they.’ They think about power, bed, clothes, and servants. Why? One might as well collect matchboxes. They are the army of the great irreligious.”

“Are you religious?” Annabelle said.

“I think about it. I wish I didn’t. I tell you I like these electric hares. Life must be very pleasant for them. But they must be distinguished. It is not good pretending that someone who is obsessed with power and bed and clothes and servants is the same as someone who isn’t. Do you know, they often fly a hundred miles for a game of cards and a thousand for a horse-race?”

“Would you like that?” Annabelle said.

“I should like to enjoy it. I am afraid it would depress me terribly. But I should like to study them, perhaps to get one jump ahead of them. What do they think about in the aeroplane? I should like to ask them that.”

“It is too much of a battle,” Marius said. “A whole-time job.”

“That’s why they do it. They have no other whole-time job. I have never had a job in my life, but I should never have time to play cards.”

“Big battles,” Annabelle said, “and war.”

“Nobody has a whole-time job anymore. Only a few have a whole-time life. The rest have to kill time. Have you ever thought what a good phrase that is — killing time?”

“A frightening one,” Annabelle said.

“Yes. But I should like to meet this Alice. Why not ask her round?”

“She wants to meet you,” I said.

“She does? Perhaps we have a glamour for them too. We will have a battle. Is this the first jump?”

“And who’s the greyhound?” Annabelle said.

“I told you she was in love with Marius.”

“Perhaps she is in love with you,” Marius said.

“With me? How spectacular!”

“No.”

“Oh, well then, how spectacular for you,” Peter said to me.

“I feel quite fond of this Alice,” Annabelle said.

“Why, are you too?”

“No. . ”

“Well that’s a pity.”

“Well yes, but I mean. . ” Annabelle was suddenly blushing.

“Of course,” Peter said.

The people at the next table were watching us. There was a heavy blond woman with an enormous hat who sat very still so that it would not fall off, and two neat, reserved men with careful clothes who nevertheless looked shoddy. Every now and then they would raise a cigarette-stained finger to their faces to smooth some feature — a moustache, a lip, or an eyebrow — and then they would go on looking at us out of their musty, impassive eyes.

“Alice has much in common with the communists,” Marius said. “Do you remember what we were saying? They have the same obsessions. Opposites often resemble each other. If you want to pick sides you will not find many people on your own.”

“All the more space to jump,” Peter said.

“You will not even find the religious. Catholics and communists and social-conventionalists will all join hands to fight an individual. They all have a ready-made version of truth, and with this in common they can respect each other. The one thing they never respect is a person who has no truth, who is searching for it. This is the devil that is anathema to all of them.”

“You said that Alice was expecting something from our meeting,” I said.

“Yes, but on her terms, you see, and when it was not on her terms I suppose that she would have rather that we had not met at all. Alice at heart is such an idealist.”

“And now?” I said.

“Perhaps she wants it even on our terms, but I don’t think we’ve got any.”

“No terms?” Peter said.

“The trouble is,” I said, “that if one has no terms then this one-jump-ahead business is so bewildering one cannot even pretend to be a greyhound.”

“I’ve got plenty of terms,” Peter said.

“But do you want to be a greyhound?” Annabelle said.

“I am a greyhound,” Peter said.

“No,” I said. “But one has to be something. And Alice makes it difficult for one to be anything.”

“You might be one of those men who walk behind the greyhounds with a shovel,” Peter said.

“That’s the game,” Marius said. “That is how she is able to be something herself.”

“They wear bowler hats,” Peter said.

The people at the next table were listening to us. The woman had a hand up to the corner of her open mouth and was scratching it with a long scarlet finger-nail, and the two men had their elbows on the table, their hands clasped, discreetly.

“You see,” Marius said, “the greyhound never does catch the hare. If it did, the whole purpose of the game would be destroyed. And the hare would be destroyed too. So no one ever does catch Alice up.”

“No one ever loves her?”

“But love means something different to someone like Alice. It’s a part of the race.”

“Like a French novel,” Peter said. “The hero chases the heroine for the first half of the book, and then they find they have changed places and she is chasing him. And so on till they drop.”

“What happens when they pass each other?” Annabelle said.

“The usual,” Peter said.

“But I mean, that’s all right.”

“No, because the one who’s being chased is so dazed at being passed that she doesn’t get back into her stride again until she’s doing the chasing.”

“But then. . ”

“Then the boot’s on the other foot; or rather, the bowler hat is on the head of the man with the shovel. He’s behind you see.”

“What happens if the man with the bowler hat catches the hare?” Marius said.

“He’s electrocuted,” Peter said.

“Who is this man with the hat?” Annabelle said.

“Well, he has to go behind you see with a shovel in order to. . ”

“I know, but what is he to Alice?”

“As a matter of fact, she says there always is someone behind her,” I said.

“There you are then.”

“Where?”

“In the dung-cart,” Peter said.

I could see the people at the next table becoming annoyed with us. The two men were leaning towards each other nodding their heads and making derogatory noises in their throats, and the woman was looking rather forlorn like a lost baby.

“The point is,” Marius said, “that if the races ever stopped then several thousand people would have nothing to do in the evenings. So they go on, and time is killed, and a few other things are killed in the process.”

“The heart is killed,” Peter said.

“Yes, but you see, the heart of the hare would be killed anyway, so the hare dare not stop. That is what is frightening.”

“What has happened to the heart of the hare that it should ever have started running?” Annabelle said.