Under the Net, Page 3

  It was certainly something of a problem to know where to go next. I wondered if Dave Gellman would harbour us. I fondled the idea, though I suspected it was no good. Dave is an old friend, but he’s a philosopher, not the kind that tells you about your horoscope and the number of the beast, but a real one like Kant and Plato, so of course he has no money. I felt perhaps I oughtn’t to make demands on Dave. Also he’s a Jew, a real dyed-in-the-wool Jew, who fasts and believes that sin is unredeemable and is shocked at the story about the woman who broke the alabaster vase of very precious ointment and at a lot of other stories in the New Testament. It’s not this I mind, but the way he argues interminably with Finn about the Trinity and the unimportance of sentiments and the notion of charity. There’s no concept Dave hates so much as the concept of charity, which seems to him equivalent to a sort of spiritual cheating. According to Dave, this notion simply makes for indirectness and the idea that one can get away with anything. Human beings have to live by clear practical rules, he says, and not by the vague illumination of lofty notions which may seem to condone all kinds of extravagance. Dave is one of the few people with whom Finn talks at length. I should explain that Finn is a lapsed Catholic, but Methodist by temperament, or so it seems to me, and he testifies passionately to Dave. Finn is always saying he will go back to Ireland to be in a country which really has religion, but he never goes. So I thought it might not be very restful chez Dave. I prefer it when Finn doesn’t talk too much. I used to talk a lot with Dave myself about abstract things. I was pleased when I first got to know him to hear that he was a philosopher, and I thought that he might tell me some important truths. At that time I used to read Hegel and Spinoza, though I confess I never understood them much, and I hoped to be able to discuss them with Dave. But somehow we never seemed to get anywhere, and most of our conversations consisted of my saying something and Dave saying he didn’t understand what I meant and I saying it again and Dave getting very impatient. It took me some time to realize that when Dave said he didn’t understand, what he meant was that what I said was nonsense. Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word; so finally I gave up. However, I am very fond of Dave and we have plenty of other things to talk about, so I didn’t dismiss the idea of going to live with him. It was the only idea I had. When I had at last come to this conclusion I unpacked some of my books and left them together with the parcel of manuscripts under Mrs Tickham’s counter. Then I left the shop and went to Lyons‘.

  Two

  THERE are some parts of London which are necessary and others which are contingent. Everywhere west of Earls Court is contingent, except for a few places along the river. I hate contingency. I want everything in my life to have a sufficient reason. Dave lived west of Earls Court, and this was another thing I had against him. He lived off the Goldhawk Road, in one of those reddish black buildings which for some reason are called mansions. It was in such contexts, in my dark London childhood, that I first learnt the word, and it has ruined many pieces of prose for me since, including some Biblical ones. I think that Dave doesn’t mind much about his surroundings. Being a philosopher, he is professionally concerned with the central knot of being (though he would hate to hear me use this phrase), and not with the loose ends that most of us have to play with. Also, since he is Jewish he can feel himself to be a part of History without making any special effort. I envy him that. For myself, I find I have to work harder and harder every year to keep in with History. So Dave can afford to have a contingent address. I wasn’t sure that I could.

  Dave’s mansions are tall, but they are overhung by a huge modem hospital, with white walls, which stands next to them. A place of simplicity and justification, which I pass with a frisson. Now as I came up the dark stained-glass staircase to Dave’s flat I heard a hum of voices. This displeased me. Dave knows far too many people. His life is a continual tour de force of intimacy. I myself would think it immoral to be intimate with more than four people at any given time. But Dave seems to be on intimate terms with more than a hundred. He has a large and clinging acquaintance among artists and intellectuals, and he knows many left-wing political people too, including oddities such as Lefty Todd, the leader of the New Independent Socialist Party, and others of even greater eccentricity. Then there are his pupils, and the friends of his pupils, and the ever-growing horde of his ex-pupils. No one whom Dave has taught seems ever to lose touch with him. I find this, in a way, hard to understand, since as I have indicated Dave was never able to communicate anything to me when we talked about philosophy. But perhaps I am too much the incorrigible artist, as he once exclaimed. This reminds me to add that Dave disapproves of the way I live, and is always urging me to take a regular job.

  Dave does extra-mural work for the University, and collects about him many youths who have a part-time interest in truth. Dave’s pupils adore him, but there is a permanent fight on between him and them. They aspire like sunflowers. They are all natural metaphysicians, or so Dave says in a tone of disgust. This seems to me a wonderful thing to be, but it inspires in Dave a passion of opposition. To Dave’s pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. The key would be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave’s pupils feel sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding University vacations, should suffice to find it. They do not conceive that the matter should be either more simple or more complex than that. They are prepared within certain limits to alter their views. Many of them arrive as theosophists and depart as Critical Realists or Bradleians. It is remarkable how Dave’s criticism seems so often to be purely catalytic in its action. He blazes upon them with the destructive fury of the sun, but instead of shrivelling up their metaphysical pretensions, achieves merely their metamorphosis from one rich stage into another. This curious fact makes me think that perhaps after all Dave is, in spite of himself, a good teacher. Occasionally he succeeds in converting some peculiarly receptive youth to his own brand of linguistic analysis; after which as often as not the youth loses interest in philosophy altogether. To watch Dave at work on these young men is like watching someone prune a rose bush. It is all the strongest and most luxuriant shoots which have to come off. Then later perhaps there will be blossoms; but not philosophical ones, Dave trusts. His great aim is to dissuade the young from philosophy. He always warns me off it with particular earnestness.

  I hesitated at the door. I hate entering a crowded room and feeling a whole gallery of faces focused upon me. I felt tempted to go away again; but at last, making an inward gesture of detachment, I went in. The room was full of young men, all talking at once and drinking cups of tea, but I needn’t have troubled about the faces, as no one paid any attention to my entry except Dave himself. He was sitting in a corner a little apart from the mêlée, and raised his hand when he saw me with the dignified gesture of a patriarch greeting the appearance of an expected sign. Not that Dave is a patriarchal Hebrew to look at. He is fattish and baldish with merry brown eyes and podgy hands, a slightly guttural voice and an imperfect command of English. Finn was sitting near him on the floor with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out like the victim of an accident.

  I made my way past several beardless youths, stepped over Finn, and shook hands with Dave. I gave Finn a friendly kick and seated myself on the edge of the table. A youth handed me a cup of tea automatically, talking back over his shoulder as he did so. Ought brings you back to is in the end. Yes, but what sort of is?

  ‘I see it still goes on,’ I said.

  ‘A natural human activity,’ said Dave with a slight frown. Then he looked at me amiably.

  ‘I hear you are in a kettle of fish,’ he said, raising his voice somewhat above the din.

  ‘Might call it so,’ I said cautiously, sipping my tea. I never overdo my troubles to Dave, for
he is so often sarcastic and unsympathetic about them.

  ‘If I would be you,’ said Dave, ‘I would take a proper job.’ He pointed to the white wall of the hospital which loomed very close outside the window.

  ‘There they want always orderlies,’ he said. ‘You might even be a nurse. Or you could do something for part time.’

  Dave was constantly making this suggestion ; I can’t think why, as there were few pieces of advice which, on the face of it, I was less likely to follow. I think he did it partly to annoy me. At other times he would press upon me the desirability of being a probation officer or a factory inspector or a teacher in an elementary school.

  I looked at the wall of the hospital. ‘To save my soul,’ I said.

  ‘Not therefore!’ said Dave scornfully. ‘Always you are thinking of your soul. Precisely it is not to think of your soul, but to think of other people.’

  I could see that there was something in this, though I didn’t need Dave to point it out, and I couldn’t see that there was anything to be done about it at the moment. Finn threw me a cigarette. In a mild way he always tried to protect me from Dave. The immediate problem was to find a sympathetic place to live, and until this was fixed nothing else mattered. I have to keep on writing if I’m to make ends meet, and when I am homeless I can settle down to nothing.

  When I’d finished my tea I set off on a quiet tour of Dave’s flat. Living-room, Dave’s bedroom, spare room, bathroom, and kitchen. I inspected the spare room with care. It also looked out on to the wall of the hospital, which at this point seemed to stand even closer. The room was painted a sickly golden brown and was spartan in its appointments. At the moment it was strewn with Finn’s belongings. It could be worse. As I was examining the wardrobe, Dave came in. He knew very well what was in my mind.

  ‘No, Jake,’ he said. ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We must not be two nervous wrecks living together.’

  ‘You old python!’ I said. Dave is not a nervous wreck, but as tough as an old boot. I didn’t argue though, because I was a little off the idea myself because of Jehovah and the Trinity. ‘Since you’re turning me out,’ I said, ‘you are in duty bound to make a constructive suggestion.’

  ‘You were never in, Jake,’ said Dave, ‘but I will try to think.’ Dave knows my requirements. We went back to the other room and the din broke over us again.

  ‘You should try the ladies, not?’

  ‘Not,’ I said. ‘I’ve had the ladies.’

  ‘Sometimes you make me sick, Jake.’

  ‘I can’t help my psychology. After all, freedom is only an idea.’

  ‘It’s in the third Critique,’ Dave shouted to someone across the room.

  ‘Which ladies, anyway?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know your women,’ said Dave, ‘but if you paid a few visits someone might give you an idea.’

  I felt that Dave would be more pleased to see me when I had established myself elsewhere. Finn, who was lying with his head under the table, suddenly said, ‘Try Anna Quentin.’ Finn sometimes has the most extraordinary intuitions.

  This name stuck into me like a dart. ‘How can I?’ I said. ‘Nothing could be more impossible,’ I added.

  ‘Ah, you are still so,’ said Dave.

  ‘I am not so at all,’ I said. ‘Anyway I have no notion where she is.’ And I turned away from them towards the window. I don’t like people reading things in my face.

  ‘He’s off!’ said Dave, who knows me well.

  ‘Suggest something else,’ I said.

  ‘I suggest you are a big fool,’ said Dave. ‘Society should take you by the neck and shake you and make you do a sensible job. Then in your evenings you would have the possibility to write a great book.’

  I could see that Dave was in one of his bad moods. The noise was mounting. With my foot I pushed my suitcase under the table beside Finn.

  ‘Can I leave this here?’

  How do you know which is your real self anyway? someone was asking.

  ‘You can leave them both here,’ said Dave.

  ‘I’ll ring up later,’ I said. And I left them.

  I was still in some pain from the name that Finn had uttered. But in the midst of the pain a queer melody had been set going; a little flute that piped me to be away. It was not of course that I had the slightest intention of looking for Anna, but I wanted to be alone with the thought of her. I am not a mystic about women. I like the women in novels by James and Conrad who are so peculiarly flower-like and who are described as ‘guileless, profound, confident, and trustful’. That ‘profound’ is good; fluttering white hands and as deep as the sea. But I have never met any of these women in real life. I like to read about them, but then I like to read about Pegasus and Chrysaor. The women that I know are often inexperienced, inarticulate, credulous, and simple; but I see no reason to call them deep because they manifest qualities which would make us call men self-absorbed. Or if they are cunning they deceive themselves and others in much the same way as men do. It is the same deception that we are all involved in; except in so far as women are always a little more unbalanced by the part they have to act. Like high-heeled shoes which shift the inward organs in the course of time. Few things disgust me more than these pretended profundities.

  Yet I had found Anna deep. I cannot think what it is about her that would justify me in calling her mysterious, and yet she always seemed to me to be an unfathomable being. Dave once said to me that to find a person inexhaustible is simply the definition of love, so perhaps I loved Anna. She has a husky-speaking voice and a tenderly moulded face which is constantly lit by a warm intent glow from within. It is a face full of yearning, yet poised upon itself without any trace of discontent. She has heavy brown hair which is piled up in curving archaic coils, or was when I knew her first. All that was a long time ago. Anna is six years older than I am, and when I first met her she did a singing act with her sister Sadie. Anna provided the voice and Sadie provided the flash. Anna has a contralto voice that would break your heart even over the radio; and she makes little gestures while she sings which make her quite irresistible face to face. She seems to throw the song into your heart, at least this was what she did to me the first time I heard her, and I never got over it.

  Anna is about as like her sister as a sweet blackbird is like some sort of rather dangerous tropical fish, and later on the act broke up. This was partly I think because they couldn’t stand each other, and partly because their ambitions diverged. About this period, if you remember, British films were passing through a critical phase. The Bounty Belfounder Company had just been set up, and old Phantasifilms Ltd had come into new hands. But neither company seemed able to discover any new stars, although there were the usual old faithfuls, and time and again some young ster would receive the routine press fanfare and then pass away in the course of one picture with the noise and the brevity of a firework. Phantasifilms evidently decided that human beings were bad box office and started on their series of animal pictures, and they did make one or two discoveries in the animal kingdom: notably of course the Alsatian, Mister Mars, whose sentimental escapes probably saved them from bankruptcy. Bounty Belfounder was from the start a much more successful concern, and it was in this region that Sadie soon set about selling her talents; and Sadie, as you know, did turn out to be a star.

  A star is a curious phenomenon. It is not at all the same thing as a good screen actress; it is not even a matter of charm or beauty. What makes the star is some quality of surface and éclat. Sadie had éclat; or so the public thought, though personally I still prefer the word ‘flash’. You will have gathered that I am not keen on Sadie. Sadie is glossy and dazzling. She is younger than Anna and has Anna’s features, only smaller and tighter, as if someone had started to shrink her head but had never got beyond the first stage. She has a speaking voice not unlike Anna’s, only with the husky note made more metallic. Not chestnut husks but rusty iron. Some people find this very fascinat
ing too. She can’t sing.

  Anna never tried to get into films. I don’t know why; she always seemed to me to have much greater potentialities than Sadie. But perhaps her façade had a certain superficial lack of definiteness. You need to be a vessel with a sharp prow to get into the film world. After she parted from Sadie, Anna did a certain amount of more serious singing; but she lacked the training necessary to take her far in the world. When I last heard of her she was singing folksongs in a night club, and that sort of combination expressed her very well.

  Anna used to live in a tiny service flat off the Bayswater Road, very much overlooked by other houses, and I would go there often to see her. I was greatly attached to her, but I could see even then that her character was not all that it should be. Anna is one of those women who cannot bear to reject any offer of love. It is not exactly that it flatters her. She has a talent for personal relations, and she yearns for love as a poet yearns for an audience. To anyone who will take the trouble to become attached to her she will immediately give a devoted, generous, imaginative, and completely uncapricious attention, which is still a calculated avoidance of self-surrender. This is no doubt another reason why she never went into films; her private life must be an almost full-time activity. This has the sad result too that her existence is one long act of disloyalty; and when I knew her she was constantly involved in secrecy and lying in order to conceal from each of her friends the fact that she was so closely bound to all the others. Or sometimes she would try another technique, that of deadening, by small and steady shocks, the sharpness of jealousy, until in the end the victim became resigned to the liberal scope of her affections, while remaining just as much her slave as ever. I don’t care for this; and I saw through Anna very rapidly. Yet my interpretation of her never robbed her of her mystery, nor did her emotional promiscuity ever turn me against her. Perhaps this was because I so constantly felt, like the warm breeze that blows from a longed-for island bringing to the seafarer the scent of flowers and fruit, the strength and reality of her tenderness for me. I knew that it was very possible that it was with exactly this charm that she held all her admirers. But it made no difference.