The Ebony Tower-Short Stories - John Fowles, Page 5

  He finished his wine in one contemptuous gulp, then reached for the bottle again. Its neck rattled against the rim of the glass and he poured too long, some spilled over. The Mouse lifted the glass and poured off a little into her own; then quietly wiped the spilt liquid from the table in front of the old man. David said nothing. He felt cool again now; but embarrassed.

  'Good wines, know what they do? Piss in them. Piss in the vat.' He rather shakily got the glass to his mouth, then set it down. The pauses grew longer between each burst of speech. 'Fit ten Englishmen into a Frenchman's little finger.' Another hiatus. 'Not oil. Pigment. All shit. If it's any good. Merde. Human excrement. Excrementum. That which grows out. That's your fundamental. Not your goddam prissy little bits of abstract good taste.' He paused again, as if he sought a way forward, and had finally to go back. 'Wouldn't even wipe my arse with them.'

  There was a heavy silence. Somewhere outside an owl quavered. The girl sat, her chair pushed back a little from the table, her hands folded on her lap, eyes down, apparently prepared to wait for eternity for the old man's ramblings to finish. David wondered how often she had to suffer this monstrous bohemian travesty that the alcohol had released. All those ancient battles that had to be refought; when the matter was so totally, both _de facto_ and _de jure_, decided, and long before David was born. All form was not natural; and colour had a nonrepresentational function... you could no more argue any longer about that than about Einstein's famous equation. Fission had taken place. One could dispute application, but not principle. So David thought; and some of it must have appeared on his face. He had also drunk more than usual.

  'Disappointing you, Williams? Think I'm pissed? In vino bollocks?'

  David shook his head. 'Just overstating your case.'

  More silence.

  'You really a painter, Williams? Or just a gutless bloody word-twister?'

  David did not answer. There was another silence. The old man drank more wine.

  'Say something.'

  'Hatred and anger are not luxuries we can afford any more. At any level.'

  'Then God help you.'

  David smiled faintly. 'He's also a non-option.'

  The Mouse reached forward and poured more wine.

  'Know what turning the cheek meant when I was young? Fellow who turned his cheek?'

  'No.'

  'Bumboy. You a bumboy, Wilson?'

  This time the Mouse did not bother to correct him; or David, to answer.

  'On your knees and trousers down. Solves all, does it?'

  'No. But then nor does fear.'

  'Does which?'

  'Being afraid of losing... what isn't in question.'

  The old man stared at him.

  'What the hell's he talking about?'

  The Mouse said quietly, 'He means your work and your views of art aren't in any danger, Henry. There's room for everyone.'

  She did not look at David, but shifted a little, forward and away from the old man; put an elbow on the table, then her hand to her chin. A finger rose momentarily to her lips. David was not to answer back any more. Outside, Macmillan suddenly began barking; wild paroxysms of suspicion. A voice, the housekeeper's husband's, shouted. Neither the old man nor the girl took any notice; to them it must have been a familiar night sound. To David it was intensely symbolic, fraught, echoing the tension inside the old man.

  'That's the line now, is it?'

  The girl looked across at David. There was a faint smile in her eyes.

  'Henry thinks one shouldn't show toleration for things one believes are bad.'

  'Same old story. Sit on the bloody English fence. Vote for Adolf.'

  There was more silence, but then suddenly she spoke.

  'Henry, you can't stop totalitarian ideas by totalitarian methods. That way you only help breed them.'

  Perhaps some dim realization percolated through that she was now taking David's side. The old man's eyes wandered away into the shadows at the end of the table. When she had last refilled his glass, she had put the bottle back to her left, out of his reach.

  He said slowly, 'Trying to tell you something.'

  It wasn't clear whether he meant, I didn't mean to insult you personally; or, I've forgotten what it was.

  David murmured, 'Yes, I realize.'

  The old man's stare came back to him. He had difficulty in focusing.

  'What's your name?'

  'Williams. David Williams.'

  The Mouse said, 'Finish your wine.'

  But he ignored her.

  'Not good with words. Never my line.'

  'I understand what you're saying.'

  'Don't hate, can't love. Can't love, can't paint.'

  'I understand.'

  'Bloody geometry. No good. Won't work. All tried it. Down the hole.' His staring at David now had a desperate concentration, almost a clinging. He seemed to lose all train.

  The Mouse prompted him. 'Making is speaking.'

  'Can't write without words. Lines.'

  The girl stared down the room. She spoke very quietly.

  'Art is a form of speech. Speech must be based on human needs, not abstract theories of grammar. Or anything but the spoken word. The real word.'

  'Other thing. Ideas. Can't care.'

  David nodded gravely.

  The Mouse went on. 'Ideas are inherently dangerous because they deny human facts. The only answer to fascism is the human fact.'

  'Machine. What's it, computer thing.'

  David said, 'I do understand.'

  'Tachiste. Fautrier. Wols fellow. Like frightened bloody sheep. Drip, drip.' He stopped, a silence. 'Yank, what's his name?'

  David and the girl said it together, and he missed it. The Mouse repeated the name.

  'Jackson Bollock.' Once again he stared off into the darkness. 'Better the bloody bomb than Jackson Bollock.'

  They said nothing. David stared at the ancient surface of the table in front of him; blackened oak, scarred and rubbed, the patina of centuries' use; centuries of aged voices, ordering back some threatening, remorseless tide. As if time knew ebb.

  Then the old man spoke, with a strange lucidity, as if he had only been pretending to be drunk, and now summarized with one final inconsequence.

  'Ebony tower. That's what I call it.'

  David glanced across at the girl, but she did not meet his look. Foreclosing had apparently become more important than interpreting. It was very clear that Breasley was not really pretending; David watched his eyes, how they searched hazily for the glass, or several glasses, in front of him. He reached, a last effort to seem positive and sober. The Mouse caught his hand and gently set the stem of the glass between the fingers. The old man had difficulty in getting it to his mouth, then tried to down the wine in one brave swallow. It dribbled down his chin, then splashed on his white shirt front. The Mouse leant forward and dabbed with her serviette.

  She said gently, 'Bed now.'

  'One more.'

  'No.' She took the half-empty bottle and put it beside her chair on the floor. 'All gone.'

  The old man's eyes found David.

  'Qu'est-ce qu'il fout ici?'

  The girl stood and put a hand under his elbow to urge him up. He said, 'Bed.'

  'Yes, Henry.'

  But still he sat, slightly bowed, a very old man in a stupor. The girl waited patiently. Her downward eyes met David's, a curious gravity, as if she were frightened she might see contempt in his for this role she had to play. He pointed at himself could he help? She nodded, but raised a finger; not yet. A moment later she bent and kissed the old man on the temple.

  'Come on. Try and stand.'

  And now, like an obedient but vaguely timid small boy, he pressed his hands on the table. He was unsteady as he came to his feet, and lurched forward against the tableedge. David went quickly to his other side. Suddenly he collapsed down again into the chair. This time they pulled him up. How drunk he really was did not become apparent until they started to walk him down the room
towards the stairs. He was in a seeming coma, his eyes closed; only his legs, by some ancient instinct, or long practice, managed to go through the motions of shuffling forward. The Mouse pulled at the bow-tie, then unbuttoned the top of the shirt. Somehow they got him up the stairs and into the large room at the west end of the house.

  David saw a double and a single bed, the Freak standing off the latter. She still wore the black dress, but now with a white jumper over it. He had a glimpse of more paintings and drawings on the walls, a table by the window that faced out west with jars of crayons and drawing pencils.

  'Oh Henry. You wicked old thing.'

  The Mouse spoke across the old man's bowed head to David. 'We can manage now.'

  'Are you sure?'

  Breasley muttered, 'Pee.'

  The two girls led him round the beds and to a door beyond. They got him in and all three disappeared. David stood Undecided, at a loss; and then suddenly he registered the painting over the bed. It was a Braque, one he knew he had seen somewhere in reproduction. It must have been listed as 'private collection', he had never associated it with Breasley. He thought wrily back: the jejune folly of throwing such a name, such a relationship, at the old man in his own self-defence. The Freak came out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. The additional irony of it struck him... that painting, a certain six figures at any auction--and the gewgawish, unreliable-looking little creature who stood facing him across the room. There was the sound of vomiting.

  'Is he like this every night?'

  'Just sometimes.' She had a thin smile. 'It's not you. Just other people.'

  'I can't help undress him?'

  She shook her head. 'Don't worry. Really. We're used to it.' He stood there in doubt. She said again, 'Really.'

  He wanted to say that he admired them both for what they were doing; and found himself at an unusual loss for words.

  'Well... say goodnight to... I don't actually know her real name.'

  'Di. Diana. Sleep well.'

  'And you.'

  She pressed her lips drily together and gave a little single nod. He left.

  Back in his room, in pyjamas, in bed, he lay propped on an elbow staring at a thriller he had brought. He felt he ought to stay at least potentially on hand for a while in case they did need further help; and though he felt tired, sleep was out of the question. He couldn't even read, the adrenalin had to calm down. It had been an extraordinary evening; and for the first time he was glad that Beth hadn't been there. She would have found it too much, flown off the handle probably; though the baiting had been so crude, so revealing of all the old man's weaknesses. Essentially one was dealing with a cantankerous child. And the Mouse, Diana, how staggeringly well she had handled him; quite a girl, quite a pair, there must be something better than was apparent in the other, a fidelity, a kind of courage. One took the Mouse's word now, the accuracy of her judgments; had needed her coolness; was curious to know if one had satisfied it. He recalled a certain amount of sceptical joking between Beth and himself: about the old man living up to his reputation, Beth's expecting to be groped at least twice or asking for her money back... that at least was taken care of. The stories to tell in private back home. He tried to settle to his thriller.

  Perhaps twenty minutes had passed since he had left the girls to their tyrant. The house had fallen silent. But now he heard someone come out of Breasley's bedroom, then light footsteps, the creak of a floorboard outside his room. There was a hesitation, then a gentle tap of his door.

  'Come in.'

  The Mouse's head appeared round the door.

  'I saw your light on. It's all right. He's asleep.'

  'I didn't realize how far gone he was.'

  'We have to let him do it sometimes. You did very well.'

  'I'm jolly glad you warned me.'

  'He'll be all contrite tomorrow. Meek as a lamb.' She smiled. 'Breakfast round nine? But you know. Sleep as long as you like.'

  She drew back to go, but he stopped her. 'What on earth did that last thing he said mean? The ebony tower?'

  'Oh.' She smiled. 'Nothing. Just one of the bats in his belfry.' She tilted her head. "What he thinks has taken the place of the ivory tower?'

  'Abstraction?'

  She shook her head. 'Anything he doesn't like about modern art. That he thinks is obscure because the artist is scared to be clear... you know. Somewhere you dump everything you're too old to dig? You mustn't take it personally. He can only explain what he thinks by insulting people.' She smiled again, her body still hidden by the door. 'Okay?'

  He smiled back, and nodded.

  And she was gone, not back to the old man's room, but further down the corridor. A door clicked quietly to. David would have liked to talk a little longer. The old teaching world, students you fancied, who fancied you a little, in some way the atmosphere of Coët reminded him of the days before Beth had entered his life; not that he had ever gone in much for having it off with students. He was a crypto-husband long before he married.

  He read a little, then switched out the light and sank, in his usual way, almost immediately into sleep.

  Once again the Mouse was proved right. Contrition was flagrant from the moment David appeared, punctually at nine, downstairs again. Breasley himself came in from the garden as David stood at the foot of the stairs uncertain of where breakfast took place. To one unversed in the recuperative powers of lifelong heavy drinkers, he seemed surprisingly spry, and newly dapper, in light trousers and a dark blue sports shirt.

  'My dear man. So unspeakably sorry about last night. Gels tell me most appallingly rude.'

  'Not at all. Honestly.'

  'Absolutely pissed. Very bad form.'

  David grinned. 'Forgotten.'

  'Curse of my life, don't you know. Never learnt when to stop.'

  'Please don't worry.'

  He took the abruptly extended hand.

  'Very white of you, dear boy.' The hand was retained, his eyes quizzed. 'Say I must call you David. Surnames terribly square these days. That right?'

  He used 'square' as if it were some daring new piece of slang.

  'Please do.'

  'Splendid. Well. I'm Henry then. Yes? Now come and have some breakfast. We pig it in the kitchen in the mornings.'

  On the way down the room, Breasley said, 'Gels suggest a little dejeuner sur l'herbe. Good idea, what? Picnic?' There was sunshine outside, a faint haze over the trees. 'Rather proud of my forest. Worth a dekko.'

  'I'd love to.'

  The two girls, it seemed, were already up and out--to Plélan, the nearest village, to shop for food... and incidentally, or so David guessed, to allow the old man time to prove his penitence. He was taken on a stroll round the domaine after breakfast. Breasley revealed a pride in his garden, a little vanity over what must have been a comparatively recently acquired knowledge of names and cultivation methods. They came on Jean-Pierre hoeing in the vegetable garden behind the east end of the house; and as he listened to the old man and the housekeeper's husband discussing an ailing young tulip-tree and what could be done for it, David had again that pleasing sense of a much more dominant key in Breasley's life than the previous night's 'recessive' exhibition of spleen. He had very evidently learnt to live in Coët and its seasons; and a little later, when they were out in the orchard beyond the vegetables, there was an old water-pear already ripe, David was to taste one, they must be eaten straight from the tree, the old man began to say as much--confess he was a fool to have spent so much of his life in a city; to have left himself so little time to enjoy this. Between bites at his pear David asked why it had taken so long to find that out. Breasley gave a little sniff of self-contempt, then poked at a windfall with the end of his walking-stick.

  'The bitch Paris, dear boy. Know that bit of rhyme? Earl of Rochester, isn't it? "Where man may live in direst need, but ne'er lack land to set his seed." Neat. Says it all.'

  David smiled. They strolled on.

  'Should have married. Damn' sigh
t less expensive.'

  'But you'd have missed a lot?'

  Another sniff of self-reproach. 'One's the same as fifty, what?'

  He seemed unaware of the irony: that he still had not managed to make do with one; and as if on cue a small white Renault came down the private lane from the outer world. The Mouse was driving. She waved through the window to where they stood, but did not stop. David and Breasley turned back towards the house. The old man pointed his stick after the car.

  'Envy you chaps. Weren't like that when I was young.'

  'I thought the girls of the 'twenties were rather dazzling.'

  The stick was raised in genially outraged contradiction.

  'Absolute piffle, my dear man. No idea. Spent half your life getting their legs open. Other half wishing you hadn't. Either that. Catching the clap off some tart. Dog's life. Don't know how we stood it.'

  But David was unconvinced, and knew he was meant to be. The old man regretted nothing at heart; or only the impossible, another life. Somehow something of the former sexual bantam clung physically round his old frame; he could never have been particularly good-looking, but there must have been an attack, a devil about him, a standing challenge to the monogamous. One could imagine him countlessly rebuffed, and indifferent to it; enormously selfish, both in bed and out; impossible, so one believed in him. And now even those many who must have refused to believe had been confounded: he had come through to this, reputation, wealth, the girls, freedom to be exactly as he always had been, a halo round his selfishness, a world at his every whim, every other world shut out, remote behind the arboreal sea. To someone like David, always inclined to see his own life (like his painting) in terms of logical process, its future advances dependent on intelligent present choices, it seemed not quite fair. Of course one knew that the way to the peak was never by the book, that hazard and all the rest must play its part, just as action and aleatory painting formed an at least theoretically important sector in the modern art spectrum. But some such mountaineering image drifted through his mind. One had acquired the best equipment one could afford--and one looked up. There on the summit stood a smirking old satyr in carpetslippers, delightedly damning all common sense and calculation.