Ghosts Read online

  Felix she does not mention.

  I tell her about the painter Vaublin, what little is known of him. She listens, large-eyed, nodding faintly now and then, taking it all in or thinking of something else, I do not know which. Perhaps I am talking to myself, telling myself the same story all over again. Listen –

  Who does not know, if only from postcards or the lids of superior chocolates boxes, these scenes suffused with tenderness and melancholy that yet have something harsh in them, something almost inhuman? Le monde d’or is one of those handful of timeless images that seem to have been hanging forever in the gallery of the mind. There is something mysterious here beyond the inherent mysteriousness of art itself. I look at this picture, I cannot help it, in a spirit of shamefaced interrogation, asking, What does it mean, what are they doing, these engimatic figures frozen forever on the point of departure, what is this atmosphere of portentousness without apparent portent? There is no meaning, of course, only a profound and inexplicable significance; why is that not enough for me? Art imitates nature not by mimesis but by achieving for itself a natural objectivity, I of all people should know that. Yet in this picture there seems to be a kind of valour in operation, a kind of tight-lipped, admirable fortitude, as if the painter knows something that he will not divulge, whether to deprive us or to spare us is uncertain. Such stillness; though the scene moves there is no movement; in this twilit glade the helpless tumbling of things through time has come to a halt: what other painter before or after has managed to illustrate this fundamental paradox of art with such profound yet playful artistry? These creatures will not die, even if they have never lived. They are wonderfully detailed figurines, animate yet frozen in immobility: I think of the little manikins on a music-box, or in one of those old town-hall clocks, poised, waiting for the miniature music that will never start up, for the bronze bell that will not peal. It is the very stillness of their world that permits them to endure; if they stir they will die, will crumble into dust and leave nothing behind save a few scraps of brittle lace, a satin bow, a shoe buckle, a broken mandolin.

  I admire the faint but ever-present air of concupiscence that pervades all of this artist’s work. Viewed from a certain angle these polite arcadian scenes can seem a riotous bacchanal. How lewdly his ladies look out at us, their ardent eyes shiny as marbles, their cheeks pinkly aglow as if from a gentle smacking. Even the props have something tumescent about them, these smooth pillars and thick, tall trees, these pendulous and smoothly rounded clouds, these mossy arbours from within which there seem to issue the sighs and soft laughter of breathless lovers. Even in Le monde d’or, apparently so chaste, so ethereal, a certain hectic air of expectancy bespeaks excesses remembered or to come. The figure of Pierrot is suggestively androgynous, the blonde woman walking away on the arm of the old man – who himself has a touch of the roué – wears a wearily knowing air, while the two boys, those pallid, slightly ravaged putti, seem to have seen more things than they should. Even the little girl with the braided hair who leads the lady by the hand has the aura of a fledgling Justine or Juliette, a potential victim in whom old men might repose dark dreams of tender abuse. And then there is that smirking Harlequin astride his anthropomorphic donkey: what sights he seems to have seen, what things he knows!

  I pause to record an infestation of flies, minute, glittering black creatures with disproportionately large yet impossibly delicate wings shaped like sycamore seeds. I think they must be newly hatched. What is a blow-fly? That is what I thought when I saw them: blow-flies. Is there something dead around here that has not yet begun to stink? I cannot discover where they are coming from; they just appear in the light of the lamp, attracted by the warmth, I suppose, and fly up against the bulb and then drop stunned on the table and flop about groggily until I sweep them away with my sleeve. They have got into my papers, too, I lift a page and find them squashed flat there, tiny black and crimson bursts of blossom stuck with wing-petals. It is eerie, even a bit alarming, yet I am almost charmed. It is like something out of the Bible. What does it portend? I have become superstitious, the result no doubt of living for so long with ghosts. Down here in the underworld things give the uncanny impression of being other things, all these Pierrots and Colombines in their black masks, and even flies, looked at in a certain light, can seem celestial messengers. When they first began to appear I did not feel repugnance, only a sort of pleased surprise. I sat for a long time watching them, head on hand, lost to myself and inanely smiling, like one of those bewhiskered dreamers fluttered about by fairies in a Victorian engraving. I know that the reality they inhabit is different from mine, that for them this world they have blundered into is all struggle and pain and sudden, inexplicable fire – they are only flies after all, and I am only I – yet as they rise and fall, fluttering in the light, they might be a host of shining seraphim come to comfort me.

  Today in my reading I chanced upon another jewel: Hard beside the woe of the world, and often upon its volcanic soil, man has laid out his little garden of happiness. Yes, you have guessed it, I have taken up gardening, even in the shadow of my ruins. It is a relaxation from the rigours of scholarship. (Scholarship!) But no, no, it is more than that. Out here among these greens, in this clement weather, I have the irresistible sensation of being in touch with something, some authentic, fundamental thing, to which a part of me I had thought atrophied responds as if to a healing and invigorating balm. So many things I have missed in my life; there are moments, rare and brief, when I think it might not be too late after all to experience at least some of them. My needs are modest; a spell of husbandry will do, for now. (Later will there come the tree of knowledge, Eve, the fatal apple, and all the rest of it, Cain included?) Perhaps I shall make a little statue of myself and grind it up and mix it with the clay, as the philosopher so charmingly recommends, and that way come to live again through these growing things.

  I found down at the side of the house the remains of what must once have been a kitchen garden. Everything was choked with weeds and scutch grass, but the outlines of bed and drill were still there. I cleared the ground and found good black soil and put in vegetables – runner beans, mainly, I’m afraid, for I love their scarlet flowers. Already the first fruits have appeared (shall I hear the voice of the turtle, too?). I cannot express the excitement I felt when these tender seedlings began to come up. They were so fragile and yet so tenacious, so – so valiant. I have a great fondness for the stunted things, the runts, the ones that fail to flower and yet refuse to die, or are beaten down by the wind and still put out blossoms on the fallen stems. I have the notion, foolish, I know, that it is because of me that they cling on, that my ministrations, no, simply my presence gives them heart somehow, and makes them live. Who or what would there be to notice their struggles if I did not come out and walk among them every day? It must mean something, being here. I am the agent of individuation: in me they find their singularity. I planted them in neat rows, just so, and gave each one its space; without me only the madness of mere growth. Not a sparrow shall fall but I … how does it go? I have forgotten the quotation, the misquotation. Just as well, I am getting carried away; next thing I shall be hearing voices. It is just that there are days when, like Rameau’s nephew, I have to reflect: it is an affliction that must run its course.

  Where was I? My garden, yes. I entertain high hopes of a bumper crop. What shall I do with such abundance, though? Perhaps Mr Tighe will take some of it to sell in his shop? If not, what matter. Let it all go to waste. Life, growth, this tender green fighting its way up through the dirt, that’s all that interests me. Obvious, of course, but what do I care about that? The obvious is fine, for me. Sometimes, anyway.

  And then there are the weeds; I know that if I were a real gardener I would do merciless and unrelenting battle against weeds, but the fact is I cherish them. They seem to me even more fiercely alive than the planted things they flourish among. Cut them down today and tomorrow they will be back; tear them out of their holes and leave
the merest thread of root behind and they will come shouldering their way up again, stronger than ever. Compared to these ruffians even my hardiest cabbages are namby-pambies. How cunning they are, too, how cleverly they choose their spot, growing up slyly beside those cultivated plants they most resemble. Against whom are they adopting this camouflage? Pests do not seem to eat them, having my more tender produce to gorge upon, and birds leave them alone. Is it me they fear? Do they see me coming, with my boots and blade? I wonder if they feel pain, experience terror, if they weep and bleed, in their damp, vermiculate world, just as we do, up here in the light? I look at the little sprigs of chickweed trembling among the bean shoots and I am strangely moved. Such steadfastness, such yearning! They want to live too. That is all they ask: to have their little moment in the world.

  A robin comes to forage where I dig, a tough-looking type. It watches me with a glint and darts under my feet after its prey. Seagulls swoop and blackbirds fly up at a low angle, fluting shrilly. This morning when I was hoeing between the potato beds a rat appeared, nosing along under the whitewashed wall that separates my garden from the yard. It must have been sick: when it saw me it did not run away, only sat up on its hunkers and looked at me in weary surprise. (Where is that dog?) I thought of Alba Longa, of course, of Carthage in flames, all that. What a mind I have, stuffed with lofty trivia! After a moment or two the thing turned and made off, going at a sort of sideways wallow and dragging its fat pink tail over the clay. Trust me: the quick all around and I find myself face to face with a rat dying of decrepitude. I suppose I should have killed it. I am not so good at killing things, any more. Will it come back? In dreams, perhaps.

  All this, the garden and so on, why does it remind me so strongly of boyhood days? God knows, I was never a tow-haired child of nature, ensnared with flowers and romping on the grass. Cigarettes and dirty girls were my strongest interests. Yet when I trail out here with my hoe I feel the chime of an immemorial happiness. Is it that the past has become pastoral, as much a fancy as in my mind this garden is, perpetually vernal, aglow with a stylised, prelapsarian sunlight such as that which shines with melancholy radiance over Vaublin’s pleasure parks? That is what I am digging for, I suppose, that is what I am trying to uncover: the forfeited, impossible, never to be found again state of simple innocence.

  So picture me there in this still-springlike early summer weather, in my peasant’s blouse and cracked brogues, delving among the burdocks, an unlikely Silvius, striving by harmless industry to do a repair job on what remains of my rotten soul. The early rain has ceased and the quicksilver air is full of flash and chill fire; a surprise, really, this drenched brilliance. There is a sort of ringing everywhere and everything is damp and silky under a pale, nude sky. We had a wet winter, summer has made a late start, and the clay is sodden still, a rich, dark stuff that heaves and slurps when I plunge my blade into it. All moves slowly, calmly, at a mysteriously ordained, uniform pace; I have the sense of a vast clock marking off the slow strokes, one by one by one. I pause and lean on the handle of the hoe with my face lifted to the light, ankles crossed and feet in the clay (which is their true medium, after all) and think of nothing. There is a tree at the corner of the garden, I am not sure what it is, a beech, I believe, I shall call it a beech – who is to know the difference? – a wonderful thing, like a great delicate patient animal. It seems to look away, upwards, carefully, at something only it can see. It makes a restless, sibilant sound, and the sunlight trapped like bright water among its branches shivers and sways. I am convinced it is aware of me; more foolishness, I know. Yet I have a sense, however illusory, of living among lives: a sense, that is, of the significance, the ravelled complexity of things. They speak to me, these lives, these things, of matters I do not fully understand. They speak of the past and, more compellingly, of the future. They are urgent at times, at times so weary and faded I can scarcely hear them.

  I have discovered the source of those flies: a bunch of flowers that lovelorn Licht left standing for too long on the window-sill above the sink. Another attempt to brighten the place; that is his great theme these days, the need to ‘brighten up the place’. Chrysanthemums, they were, blossoms of the golden world. Among the petals there must have been eggs that hatched in the sun. The water they were standing in has left behind a sort of greeny, fleshy smell. But imagine that: flies from flowers! Ah Charles, Charles – wait, let me strike an attitude: there – Ah, Charles, mon frère mélancholique! You held that genius consists in the ability to summon up childhood at will, or something like that, I can’t remember exactly. I have lost mine, lost it completely. Childhood, I mean. Versions of it are all I can manage. Well, what did I expect? Something had to be forfeited, for the sake of the future; that is where I am pinning my hopes now. The future! Ah.

  Flora is sleeping on her side with one glossy knee exposed and an arm thrown out awkwardly, her hand dangling over the side of the bed. See the parted lips and delicately shadowed eyelids, that strand of damp hair stuck to her forehead. A zed-shaped line of sunlight is working its imperceptible way towards her over the crumpled sheet. She murmurs something and frowns.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Alice says softly and touches her lolling arm.

  ‘What?’ Flora sits up straight and stares about her blankly with wide eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ People waking up frighten Alice, they look so wild and strange. ‘They sent me up to see if you were better.’

  Flora closed her eyes and plunged her hands into her hair. She was hot and damp and her hair was hot and damp and heavy. She took a deep breath and held it for a moment and then sighed.

  ‘I’m not better,’ she said. ‘I feel shivery still. I must have got a chill. Will you bring me a drink of water?’

  She flopped back on the bed and stared vexedly at the ceiling, her dark hair strewn on the pillow and her arms flung up at either side of her face. The undersides of her wrists are bluish white.

  ‘It was raining but it’s lovely now,’ Alice said.

  ‘Is it?’ Flora answered from the depths. She was trying to remember her dream. Something about that picture: she was in that picture. ‘Yes,’ she said, staring at the print pinned on the wall beside her, that strange-looking clown with his arms hanging and the one at the left who looked like Felix, grinning at her.

  Alice had the feeling she often had, that she was made of glass, and that anyone who looked at her would see straight through and not notice her at all. She is in love with Flora; in her presence she has a sense of something vague and large and bright, a sort of painful rapture that is all the time about to blossom yet never does. She wished now she could think of something to say to her, something that would make her start up in excitement and dismay. She could hear the wind thrumming in the chimneys and the gulls crying like babies. She thought of her mother. A cloud switched off the sunlight. In the sudden gloom she began to fidget.

  ‘That man made sausages for us,’ she said.

  A faint smell of frying lingered.

  ‘Who?’ Flora said. Not that she cared. She lifted her knees under the blanket and hugged them; she reclined there, coiled around the purring little engine of herself, with the restless and faintly aggrieved self-absorption of a cat. Suddenly she sat up and laughed. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Did he cook – Felix?’

  Alice put her hands behind her back and swivelled slowly on one heel.

  ‘No,’ she said witheringly. ‘The one that lives here. That little man.’

  The sunlight came on again and everywhere there was a sense of running, silent and fleet. Flora pulled the coarse sheet over her breast and snuggled down in the furry hollow of the mattress, inhaling her own warm, chocolatey smells. She no longer cared whose bed it was, what big body had slept here before her. Blood beat along her veins sluggishly like oil.

  ‘Tell them I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Tell them I’m asleep.’ The soft light in the window and the textured whiteness of the pillow calmed her heart. She was sick and
yet wonderfully at ease. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the day around her, birdsong and far calls and the wind’s unceasing vain attempt to speak. She was a child again, adrift in summer. She saw the sun on the convent wall and the idiot boy on the hill road making faces at her, and below her the roofs shimmering, the harbour beyond, and then the sea, and then piled clouds like coils of dirty silver lying low on the hot horizon. ‘Tell them I … ’

  *

  Outside the door Alice paused. Through the little window above the landing she could see the shadows of clouds skimming over the distant sea and the whitecaps that from here looked as if they were not moving at all. Outside the window on the next landing there was a big tree that shed a greenish light on the stairs. She glanced down through the shifting leaves and thought she saw someone in the garden looking up at her and she turned hot with fright. Hatch had said this place was surely haunted. She hurried on.