Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

One of the first of my old acquaintances whom I met in London was Alice Kerr. I had known her for several years in an intermittent way, and we usually got on well together. She was older than me, divorced and childless, and she was said to be beautiful. I was glad to meet her because I thought that she at least would not be suffering from this strange bewilderment, and I remembered her encouraging ability to greet one after an absence as if one had never been away.

I met her buying cigarettes in Fulham Road. She was delving languidly into her bag and agreeing absentmindedly with the complaints of the tobacconist. When she saw me she said, “They’ve only got these small ones, isn’t it ridiculous?” Her eyes were tired, and her face had the pale transparent quality of wax.

“I’m so glad I’ve met you,” I said.

“I can’t bear these ghastly small ones,” she said.

She paid the tobacconist and took her Woodbines. When we were outside I said, “I should never have had the courage to come and see you on my own.”

“How ridiculous,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you have had the courage?”

“I’ve been away so long. I don’t seem to know anyone now.”

“How ridiculous,” she said. “You’re looking very well.” We walked up the street. She was wearing a huge coat with a stiff collar jutting up the back of her neck, like armour. This was fashionable. “Have you got one of those machines?” she asked.

“What machines?”

“Those sun-tan machines.”

“No,” I said.

“Everyone seems to have a machine,” she said.

Talking to her had always been like playing a game in which only she knew the rules, but now a tiredness gave the impression that even she was playing it more in boredom than for fun.

“I’ve been to the West Indies,” I said.

“How dreadful.”

“I’ve been trying to write a book,” I said.

“People are always writing books,” she said.

“And I wanted to be somewhere on my own.”

“Men always want to be on their own,” she said. “It’s so depressing.”

I followed her up the steps of her house. Formerly, when she had played the game of conversation as a game and nothing else, I had liked to watch her play it, although I could not play it myself. It had then seemed strange and amusing; and there had been none of this quick sliding off the subject in peremptory denial. Now she was like someone who is learning how to skate and is frightened of being spoken to in case she will fall down. The game seemed to have turned into a rather desperate attempt to keep one’s balance.

As she opened the front door she said, “I suppose you must come in, but I do think it’s dreadful of you to say that you hadn’t got the courage to come here on your own. I should be so ashamed.”

Inside the house my inability to play the game became, as always, oppressive. I had hoped, if it was to be at best a matter of keeping one’s balance, that we might give up playing altogether; but we had to have some sort of conversation and I think that this was the only sort of conversation that we knew. It was my fault that it failed. She went to make some tea and we talked through the open door in the kitchen.

“Now tell me what you’ve been doing,” she said.

“I’ve told you, I’ve been. . ”

“Now don’t start telling me about your book, for heaven’s sake.”

“No. Well I’ve been traveling. . ”

“Nor your travels. It’s dreadful that no one can talk of anything except their travels. As if places mattered.”

“What does matter?” I said.

“What a stupid question,” she said.

She brought the tea and we drank in silence. I wondered what this thin ice was upon which everybody was skating, this frightened unmanageable surface which forced the people in the streets into a useless pose of dignity, and Alice into a nervous refusal of any offered contact. As I drank my tea I thought that perhaps she was just bored with me, but then she said: “How nice it is to see you. You’re looking wonderfully well.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s such a relief to see people who are well. Most people are so dreary.” She had lit a cigarette even before she had finished eating, and she was trying to brush crumbs off her skirt.

“People in London seem to be frightened of something,” I said. “What is it?”

“Frightened?” she said. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that they seem to expect to be offended by something, and are trying terribly hard to appear at ease.”

“People are so tired of serious things,” she said.

“Then why are they serious?”

“They are not, it is only you who are serious.”

“It is as if they are always looking over their shoulders to see what is following them, and there always is something following them, because they drag it along.”

“Oh all this talk,” she said.

“But why are they frightened?”

“Well why shouldn’t they be frightened? Aren’t there enough things to be frightened of? God knows I don’t blame them.”

“What things?” I said.

“What things? You’ve only got to read the papers, and then you’ll see.”

I did not expect this. She was standing up and brushing her clothes with the hand that held her cigarette, and the ash was spilling on her shoes. I had not thought of Alice as a person who took much notice of the papers.

“Do you mean Russia and the Bomb and that sort of thing?”

“. . and the strikes and communists and food and everything, oh good heavens, don’t you use your eyes?”

“But people aren’t really afraid of all that, are they?”

“They’re crazy if they’re not,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“Well you’re a baby.”

I changed the conversation. I was thinking how it seemed impossible to talk to anyone now — first the Australian whom I liked but with whom I could not be at ease, then the people in the streets who were unapproachable behind their facades; and now Alice whose words seemed to rattle like skittles knocked down by every statement that I made. So I tried to talk to her of friends and acquaintances and gossip, which was familiar ground between us, but it was she who quickly returned to the conversation as if there were something in it that fascinated her in spite of her apparent distaste, as if the skittles had to be put up again and the game to continue because skittles was the only game that mattered. She had carried the tea things through to the kitchen, and she interrupted me to say: “You don’t understand people at all, or else you would not be surprised that they are worried.”

“I’m surprised because I didn’t think they thought about serious things,” I said.

“They don’t talk about them, thank God, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worried. You only notice things on the surface, which is why you are so stupid. People never show anything on the surface.”

“I agree with that,” I said.

“And you aren’t worried because you haven’t noticed what is going on at all, not at all, or else you have done and are fool enough not to admit it.”

“But all this is on the surface. . ” I began.

“Oh nonsense,” she said. “Absolute nonsense.”

I did not know quite what we were arguing about. She emerged from the kitchen and I watched her standing bleakly in front of the window. “But you,” I said, “you personally — are worried by it?”

“By what?” she said.

“Well, by the food and the strikes and the communists.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I am. It’s like always having someone behind you with a knife in your back.”

“Then why don’t you do something. . ” I began.

“Oh,” she said, “you’d never understand. I can’t explain it to you if you don’t understand.”