something beautiful? And if I had stayed to check might it not have gone; was it not safer in my mind, whatever it was — something secret, even sacred. Or perhaps, after all, I had just imagined it! Who wants the responsibility, after all, to have brought to birth something new, something beautifuclass="underline" what a lifetime would be needed to look after it! How much easier to have done what was expected: to have gone back to school. Certainly no one else seemed to want to know, let alone to nurture them — my hopeful monsters!
Perhaps they and their offspring lived: perhaps they all went into the dustbin.
Now, I would wish to have the chance to look after something like them.
But what would this mean?
In those days I had at least loved enough to have brought an offspring into existence: though in reality, of course, the birth could have had quite natural genetic causes. But still, what a miracle!
Here our equipment has not yet arrived. So I have time to sit at my window and let my thoughts go on journeys.
Donald is playing croquet with some of the men from Cambridge on the lawn.
I am thinking -
If it is radioactivity that at random causes a mutation — and this has become part of the definition both of a mutation and of what is called 'random' -
— And if it is consciousness that brings into existence a particular activity out of potentialities that I suppose could be called 'random' -
— Then why should not a state of consciousness be the environment that might favour a mutation?
This lives: that dies — I loved my salamanders.
And I can write this stuff to you, my angel, because for reasons of what is called 'security' it may never be posted. Testing. Testing. I shall go for a walk in this aesthetic landscape.
September ist 1939 There is a track that goes down from the house through the park and over a hill and then on and on through this strange landscape until it reaches a cluster of houses, a miniature village, all uninhabited: this is where people who worked on the estate must once have
lived; they were moved out, I suppose, in preparation for the area becoming a playground for soldiers; or perhaps they had left earlier, such has been the state of farming recently in England. I had not walked as far as this before. I found the place faintly alarming. The impression from ruined houses is of the impermanence of humans; of the way in which humans play with fire, burn themselves, blow themselves up; of the way in which humans will one day be no more.
I also had the impression that I had been in this place before, or perhaps that I would come here again: there is a theory that this is to do with some split in the memory system of the brain. But what sparks this off in the outside world? We understand very little about memory systems; and indeed what do we understand of the outside world except what comes in through the brain. And there are those areas of the brain for which we seem to have no present use: well, might they not be waiting for some understanding of- what does it mean, the question 'Have I not been here before?' the pattern 'Might I not come here again?'
There was a path going down from this derelict village into a small dell with trees. The path was overgrown with nettles but a way had been made recently by someone trampling through. Now it is true that on a previous occasion I had noticed from my window in the house the girl with fair hair walking this way over the hilclass="underline" it had seemed that she might be on her way to some rendezvous — with a lover? But was she not too young? Or she might simply have wanted, as I had done years ago in the ruined boathouse, to be alone. But then — had there not also been those intimations of death, of self-destruction, in the ruined boathouse! And had not this girl seemed to be as I had felt myself to be then, an exile in a foreign country? And was not this deserted village now heavy with an air of the impermanence of humans; of death.
The path through the nettles led down into the dell. I went down this path and into an area of trees; in the middle of this there was a clearing. In the clearing there was a very small and low thatched cottage: it was, yes, like something in a fairy story. Across the roof of the cottage had fallen a large branch of a tree; the cottage was like an animal in a trap with its back broken. The path through nettles went from the edge of the clearing to the door of the cottage. The door was half open and half off its hinges. It seemed that there might be someone inside. I stood underneath a tree at the edge of
the clearing. It was as if I might be waiting for — what? — something from the past? The future?
The girl came out from the cottage. She carried a saw in her hand. The saw was one of those that are shaped like a bow. She went to the end of the large branch that had fallen across the cottage, to where the lesser branches of the tree rested on the ground. She began to climb up into the branches. She wore a dress with a short yellow skirt. I had the impression that she might have seen me where I was standing at the edge of the clearing. She climbed till she reached the main branch of the tree then crawled along this and sat astride the ridge of the roof of the cottage. Then she began to saw at the thick branch. After a time her saw got stuck. She pulled, but failed to get it loose. Then she looked at me.
I said 'Can I help you?'
She said 'Can you?'
I walked across the glade. I said 'You may have to saw from underneath, since the pressure from the branches on the ground is such that if you saw from the top the saw may always get stuck.'
She said 'How can I saw from underneath when the saw is now stuck and, anyway, the tree is resting on the roof?'
I said 'That's true.'
When I got close I saw that there was a second saw stuck in the main trunk of the tree close to the first.
The girl said 'What I should have done, I see now, after the first saw had got stuck, was to saw further away from the roof from underneath with the second, but I did not see this at the time.'
I said'Yes.'
She said 'So what shall we do now?'
I looked round on the ground. I thought — She said 'we'. I said 'What we can do is to look for a suitable lever which we can put under the branch where it's on the roof, then I can raise the tree so that the pressure will be taken off the saws and you can free them, and then we can use them to cut the branches which are on the ground and the pressure will be such that we may not even have to cut the main branch from underneath.'
She said 'But can you find a suitable lever?'
I said 'I don't know.' Then — 'And anyway, the lever might go through the roof.'
She said 'So what are you going to do?'
I climbed up the branches of the tree. I pulled at the saws but they would not come out. I sat facing the girl on the ridge of the roof. I
510
thought — It is as if we are on the back of an elephant, which is on the back of a tortoise, which is on the back of the sea.
I said 'What I will do is to try to get my back underneath the tree and raise it so that like this the pressure is taken off and then you can free the saws.'
She said 'Like Atlas.'
I said'Yes, like Atlas.'
She said 'But what if you go through the roof?'
I said 'That is the sort of risk you have to take in this business.'
I got my back underneath the main branch of the tree. I was on my hands and knees on the sloping roof; I was like some strange female animal. I thought — You see, perhaps I am giving birth.
— To what? At least, to some sort of language like that of those people who were building a tower to heaven?
I said 'Now!'
She said 'There!'
I said 'And now the other saw.'
She said 'Got it!'
I lowered the branch of the tree and crawled backwards. We sat side by side, the girl and I, facing the same way, on the ridge of the roof, our legs hanging down.