Edward Aubyn - A Clue to the Exit

‘Do you think anybody lives in Didcot,’ said Patrick, ‘or is it just for getting stuck in?’

‘If you get stuck long enough, the distinction wears thin,’ said Crystal.

‘Exactly,’ said Patrick. ‘There are probably thousands of residents who just happen to live on trains.’

Jean-Paul had dropped out of the conversation, like a swimmer who breathes out and allows himself to sink to the bottom of a pool, resting a while in the peaceful interval between landing and needing to breathe again. Patrick’s muddled physicalist apology and his banter with Crystal reached him like the muffled sounds and distorted shapes of poolside action. And yet he knew exactly what was going on above the surface. He was not engaging with what was being said, but he was not ignoring it either. He was just resting. Not all the theories in the world could stop him from resting.

The slow metallic drumbeat of the tracks and the screech of braking wheels announced the arrival of another train. The fog swirled and scattered, and reassembled as the dark-blue carriages drew to a halt at the neighbouring platform.

‘Ah,’ said Patrick, ‘so that’s why we’ve been made to wait. It’s the royal train. Who knows which member of that legendary family is jumping the queue?’

‘But if we’ve stopped for them,’ said Crystal, ‘why have they stopped as well?’

‘This is a parliamentary democracy,’ said Patrick. ‘Even the royal family have to acknowledge the paralysing influence of Didcot Junction.’ And then, feeling the encroachment of another fit of simplicity, he started to argue again.

‘Why are we so astonished by consciousness? When my hand feels my leg, I’m not amazed that it feels itself at the same time. Why be amazed that the mind, while receiving sense data, also receives data about itself?’

‘The Buddhists treat the heart — mind as a sixth sense,’ said Crystal, ‘abolishing that little problem as well as a number of others.’

‘How sensible,’ said Patrick.

‘Exactly. Consciousness is in the senses — all six of them. Awareness is just the measure of how unobstructed a relationship we have with making sense.’

‘That is not the problem,’ Jean-Paul sighed, unable to go on enjoying his rest.

‘Oh, my God,’ said Crystal, ‘the professor has woken. Being aware is not the problem?’

‘Of course, of course, you know you have made me into a Being freak. But in order to define consciousness, we need to pause before we arrive at the enticing word “awareness”, this mermaid who appears to have human form until we embrace her and she takes us down into the luminous depths in which you are so beautifully at home.’

‘Well, gee,’ said Crystal.

‘For you the problem is how to keep your consciousness expanded — what facilitates and frustrates that task. What we must do, however much we sympathize with your mermaid’s progress towards awareness of awareness or the presence of absence, is to look at a very banal act of consciousness, the apprehension of sense data.’

‘Oh, let’s not look at a banal act,’ said Crystal.

‘Anyway, how banal is it?’ said Patrick. ‘We bring the whole history of our formation to what we see. If we’re lucky, after years of meticulous analysis we may be able to prise open a little gap and interrupt the glibness of the projection, but we’ll still be struggling with the fact that what we see is a selection made by how we feel.’

‘Stop!’ said Jean-Paul. ‘Let’s not stray down that route either. Let us leave aside the psychoanalytic, the Buddhistic, the question of scientific method, the paranormal, the linguistic…’ Jean-Paul started to smile at Crystal’s indignant face.

‘So what aren’t we setting aside?’

‘The fact that we have no idea how a single event could have physiological and phenomenal properties at the same time, no idea how consciousness results from irritated tissue or firing neurons. This mind — body problem is not trivial. A correlation is not a cause. Cerebral activity and consciousness may occur at the same time, but until we know how they interact they will lead parallel lives. I just ask you to appreciate their philosophical isolation.’

‘Of course we appreciate it,’ said Crystal sympathetically, as if she was talking to a child who had cut his finger.

Jean-Paul noticed the ‘we’ more keenly than he would have liked.

‘Oh, look, they’re off,’ said Patrick.

The dark-blue carriages of the royal train slipped into the fog, but still their own train remained immobile in the empty station.

I managed to write those last few pages since our lunch at Jean-Marc’s, but now I’ve been taken over by my circumstances and can’t carry on.

Yesterday was my last day with Angelique. I suggested we go to the Grand Large, where we first met, and although she agreed she could barely disguise her impatience with my sentimentality. The casino is only ten yards east of the Hôtel de Paris, where we usually have lunch, and it clearly irked her to be driven dozens of miles in the wrong direction by someone whose credit was about to run out. I was mortified that we were reduced to commenting listlessly on our food, like a couple of alienated pensioners in whom enthusiasm, even for mutual torment, has been entirely replaced by the congealing powers of resignation and habit. In other words, like the rest of the clientele. By the time my myrtilles Metternich arrived I was furious.

‘What makes you think that I’m going to give you my last million francs when all you can do is sit there sulking?’

‘We have a contract,’ she said.

‘Yes, but it’s based on passion. Without passion it’s shit.’

‘I know you’re under pressure with your health and everything,’ she said politely, ‘and it’s difficult for both of us that we’re separating tomorrow morning,’ she soldiered on, ‘but I think it’s unfair of you to start threatening me just because you feel bad. You know I have to gamble, so if you’re not going to give me the money I’m going to go to the bank right now before it closes. I’ll leave your bags with the hall porter.’

‘You “have to gamble”. You think you’re so wild and haunted, don’t you? But your life is as routine as a bank clerk’s, except that your mission is to throw away as much money as you can, which isn’t, in some cases, the aim of bank employees.’

‘Fuck you,’ she growled. ‘You have no idea what it means to take risks.’

‘Bullshit! You’re the one who’s playing safe. For you, danger is removed to a world of tokens and substitutes. Why gamble with chips and cards when you can play with your life and sanity? The answer is that you don’t dare.’

‘I know you’re unhappy because you’re going to die soon, but you don’t have to take it out on me,’ said Angelique. She picked her bag off the floor and slid her chair back from the table.

I suddenly felt the chasm of her departure. ‘Don’t go,’ I said, clasping her forearm. I took out my last two 500,000-franc tokens and put them on the table. ‘I’m upset, that’s all. I can’t bear the idea of our parting. It’s…’ I stopped, knowing that we couldn’t have that conversation again. ‘Listen, I’m going to go for a walk now. I’ll see you back home or in the Salle Privée.’