Олдос Хаксли - Eyeless in Gaza

But Mr Beavis simply couldn’t understand. The idea of James surrounded by Jesuits, James bobbing up and down at Mass, James going to Lourdes with his inoperable tumour, James dying with all the consolations of religion—it filled him with horrified amazement.

‘And yet,’ said Anthony, ‘I admire the way they usher you out of life. Dying—it’s apt to be an animal process. More exclusively animal even than sea–sickness.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking of poor Uncle James’s last and most physiological hour. The heavy, snoring breath, the mouth cavernously gaping, the scrabbling of the hands.

‘How wise the Church has been to turn it into a ceremonial!’

‘Charades,’ said Mr Beavis contemptously.

‘But good charades,’ Anthony insisted. ‘A work of art. In itself, the event’s like a rough channel crossing—only rather worse. But they manage to turn it into something rather fine and significant. Chiefly for the spectator, of course. But perhaps also significant for the actor.’

There was a silence. The maid changed the plates and brought in the sweet. ‘Some apple tart?’ Pauline questioned, as she cut the crust.

‘Apple pie, my dear.’ Mr Beavis’s tone was severe. ‘When will you learn that a tart’s uncovered? A thing with a roof is a pie.’

They helped themselves to cream and sugar.

‘By the way,’ said Pauline suddenly, ‘had you heard about Mrs Foxe?’ Anthony and Mr Beavis shook their heads. ‘Maggie Clark told me yesterday. She’s had a stroke.’

‘Dear, dear,’ said Mr Beavis. Then, reflectively, ‘Curious the way people pass out of one’s life,’ he added. ‘After being very much in it. I don’t believe I’ve seen Mrs Foxe half a dozen times in the last twenty years. And yet before that … ’

‘She had no sense of humour,’ said Pauline, by the way of explanation.

Mr Beavis turned to Anthony. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve … well, “kept up” with her very closely, not since that poor boy of hers died.’

Anthony shook his head, without speaking. It was not agreeable to be reminded of all that he had done to avoid keeping up with Mrs Foxe. Those long affectionate letters she had written to him during the first year of the war—letters which he had answered more and more briefly, perfunctorily, conventionally; and at last hadn’t answered at all; hadn’t even read. Hadn’t even read, and yet—moved by some superstitious compunction—had never thrown away. At least a dozen of the blue envelopes, addressed in the large, clear, flowing writing, were still lying unopened in one of the drawers of his desk. Their presence there was, in some obscure, inexplicable way, a salve to his conscience. Not an entirely effective salve. His father’s question had made him feel uncomfortable; he hastened to change the subject.

‘And what have you been delving into recently?’ he asked, in the sort of playfully archaic language that his father himself might have used.

Mr Beavis chuckled and begun to describe his researches into modern American slang. Such savoury locutions! Such an Elizabethan wealth of new coinages and original metaphors! Horse feathers, dish the dope, button up your face—delicious! ‘And how would you like to be called a fever frau?’ he asked his younger daughter, Diana, who had sat in silence, severely aloof, throughout the meal. ‘Or worse, a cinch pushover, my dear? Or I might say that you had a dame complex, Anthony. Or refer regretfully to your habit of smooching the sex jobs.’ He twinkled with pleasure.

‘It’s like so much Chinese,’ said Pauline from the other end of the table. Across her round placid face mirth radiated out in concentric waves of soft pink flesh; the succession of her chins shook like jelly. ‘He thinks he’s the cat’s pyjamas, your father does.’ She reached out, helped herself to a couple of chocolate creams from the silver bowl on the table in front of her and popped one of them into her mouth. ‘The cat’s pyjamas,’ she repeated indistinctly and heaved with renewed laughter.

Mr Beavis, who had been working himself up to the necessary pitch of naughtiness, leaned forward and asked Anthony, in a confidential whisper, ‘What would you do if the fever frau had the misfortune to be storked?’

They were darlings, Diana was thinking; that went without saying. But how silly they could be, how inexpressibly silly ! All the same, Anthony had no right to criticize them; and under that excessive politeness of his he obviously was criticizing them, the wretch! She felt quite indignant. Nobody had a right to criticize them except herself and possibly her sister. She tried to think of something unpleasant to say to Anthony; but he had given her no opening and she had no gift for epigram. She had to be content with silently frowning. And anyhow it was time to go back to the lab.

Getting up, ‘I must go,’ she said in her curt, abrupt way. ‘I absolutely forbid you to eat all those sweets,’ she added, as she bent down to kiss her mother. ‘Doctor’s orders.’

‘You’re not a doctor yet, darling.’

‘No, but I shall be next year.’

Tranquilly Pauline poked the second chocolate cream into her mouth. ‘And next year, perhaps, I’ll stop eating sweets,’ she said.

Anthony left a few minutes later. Walking through South Kensington, he found his thoughts harking back to Mrs Foxe. Had the stroke, he wondered, been a bad one? Was she paralysed? He had been so anxious to prevent his father from talking about her, that there had been no time for Pauline to say. He pictured her lying helpless, half dead, and was horrified to find himself feeling, along with sympathy, a certain satisfaction, a certain sense of relief. For, after all, she was the chief witness for the prosecution, the person who could testify most damningly against him. Dead, or only half dead, she was out of court; and, in her absence, there was no longer any case against him. With part of his being he was glad of Pauline’s news. Shamefully glad. He tried to think of something else, and, meanwhile, boarded a bus so as to reach more quickly the haven of the London Library.

He spent nearly three hours there, looking up references to the history of the Anabaptists, then walked home to his rooms in Bloomsbury. He was expecting Gladys that evening before dinner. The girl had been a bit tiresome recently; but still … He smiled to himself with anticipatory pleasure.

She was due at six; but at a quarter past she had not yet come. Nor yet at half past. Nor yet at seven. Nor yet at half past seven. At eight, he was looking at those blue envelopes, postmarked in 1914 and 1915 and addressed in Mrs Foxe’s writing—looking at them and wondering, in self–questioning despondency that had succeeded his first impatience and rage, whether he should open them. He was still wondering, when the telephone bell rang, and there was Mark Staithes asking him if by any chance he was free for dinner. A little party had formed itself at the last moment. Pitchley would be there, and his wife, the psychologist, and that Indian politician, Sen, and Helen Ledwidge … Anthony put the letters back in their drawer and hurried out of the house.

IT was after two o’clock. Anthony lay on his back staring up into the darkness. Sleep, it seemed, deliberately refused to come, was being withheld by someone else, some malignant alien inhabiting his own body. Outside, in the pine trees the cicadas harped incessantly on the theme of their existence; and at long intervals a sound of cock–crowing would swell up out of the darkness, louder and nearer, until all the birds in the surrounding gardens were shouting defiance back and forth, peal answering peal. And then for no reason, first one, then another fell silent and the outburst died away fainter and fainter into the increasing distance—right across France, he fancied as he strained his ears after the receding sound, in a hurrying wave of ragged crowing. Hundreds of miles, perhaps. And then somewhere, the wave would turn and roll back again as swiftly as it had come. Back from the North Sea, perhaps; over the battlefields; round the fringes of Paris and from bird to distant bird through the forests; then across the plains of Beauce; up and down the hills of Burgundy and, like another aerial river of sound, headlong down the valley of the Rhone; past Valence, past Orange and Avignon, past Arles and Aix and across the bare hills of Provence; until here it was again, an hour after its previous passage, flowing tumultuously shrill across the cicadas’ loud, unremitting equivalent of silence.