Holding the traces of the water's flow
As it has done since time began, we say.
I see the Tree all rugged-thick with bulk
Of corky bark about its knotted base.
You see it like a silver pillar, straight
With breathing skin for bark, and graceful arms.
The place is at the centre of a maze
Where men have died in thorny culs-de-sac.
The place is in a desert where men die
From thirst in sight of it, nor know they see
The true place, who have stumbled through a glare
Of mirage upon mirage, vanishing
Like melting ice, in the hot sun, or foam
Breaking at tide's edge, on the sifting beach.
All these are true and none. The place is there
Is what we name it, and is not. It is.
-RANDOLPH HENRY ASH
from The Garden of Proserpina
As Roland was going down the area steps, a large woman in an apron leaned over the railings.
"There isn't nobody there any more, luv."
"I live here."
"Oh yes? And where was you when they took her off, after two days lying in pain under the letter-box too faint to squeak? It was me as noticed the milk-bottles and informed the Social Services. They took 'er off to Queen Mary's."
"I was staying with friends in Lincoln. You mean Mrs Irving?”
“Yah. 'Ad a stroke and broke 'er 'ip. I 'ope they 'aven't cut off the electric. They do sometimes."
"I'm only back-" Roland began, before Londoner's caution overtook him, and the thought of loitering burglars. "I'm only back until I can find another flat," he said carefully.
"Watch out for cats."
"Cats?"
"When they come to take 'er off, they all come spitting and hissing out and ran off into the street. They make a nuisance of themselves, messing in the area, thieving in the bins. I telephoned the RSPCA to come and put them down. They say they'll look into it. I don't think there's any shut in the house. They come out like bugs shaken out of a blanket. A dozen or more."
"Oh dear."
"You can smell them."
He could. It was the old smell of failure and sourness, with a fresh intensity to it.
Inside, it was, as always, dark. He turned on the hall light, which did work, and discovered he was standing on a heap of unopened letters, addressed to him, mostly limp and damp. He gathered them up, and moved through the flat, putting on lights. It was early evening; the area windows were dark periwinkle blue. Outside a cat mewed and another, further away, uttered a brief howl.
He said aloud, "Listen to the silence." The silence gathered thickly round his voice, so that he wondered, after all, if he had really spoken.
In the hall, in the light, the Manet portrait sprang out at him. The solid-shadowed head, the sharply thoughtful face, looking out, past him, with its expression eternally curious and composed. The light in Roland's hall caught the photographed painted light in the shiny thickness of the crystal ball. It illuminated the hints and traces of reflected light on the glass-contained jungle-ferns and watery sea-depth behind the head. Manet must have come close and peered at the light which made the life of those long-dead eyes.
Opposite, the print of the G. F. Watts's Ash rose silver-haired from its blackly shadowed trunk, the folded emptiness of the hinted frock-coat, and stared, prophetic perhaps, beautiful certainly, fiercely alert, like an ancient hawk at the solid and sensuous being opposite.
They were recognisably the same man and yet utterly different, years apart, visions apart. Yet recognisably the same.
Roland had once seen them as parts of himself. How much they had been that, to him, he only now understood, when he saw them as wholly distant and separate, not an angle, not a bone, not a white speck of illumination comprehensible by him or to do with him.
He put the stove on in the hall, and the gas-fire in the living-room, and sat down on the bed to read his letters. One was from Blackadder, which he put immediately at the bottom of the heap. Some were bills and some were postcards from holidaying friends. There were also what appeared to be answers to his last routine set of job-applications. They had foreign stamps. Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Barcelona.
Dear Dr Michell,
I am happy to tell you that the Board ofStudies in English has recommended that we offer you apost as lecturer in English in the University of Hong Kong. The post is tenable initiallyfor a period of two years after which a review will take place…
The salary is…
I hope very much that you will feel able to accept this offer. May I say how very much I admired your paper, "Line by Line, "on R. H. Ash, which you sent with your application. I hope to have the chance of discussing it withyou.
We should be glad ofan early reply, as there was very strong competition for thepost. We have tried to telephone, but there hasbeen no answer.
Dear Dr Michell,
We are happy to tell you thatyour applicationfor an assistant lectureship a t theFree University ofAmsterdamhasbeen successful. The appointment i s tobegin in OctoberIQ88: it is understood that you will learn Dutch within t wo years of taking up your post, though themajority of your teaching will b e in English.
A prompt reply would be appreciated. Professor de Groot hasasked me t o tell you that he thinks very highly of your paper, "Line byLine, " on R. H. Ash's vocabulary…
Dear Mr Michell,
It is with great pleasure that I write to inform you thatyour application for the post ofLecturer in the Autonomous University ofBarcelona has been successful,and that you are offered the position with effectfrom January IQ88. We areparticularly keen to strengthen ourteachingin the nineteenth century, and your paper on R. H. Ash was very much admired…
Roland was so used to the pervasive sense of failure that he was unprepared for the blood-rush of success. He breathed differently. The dingy little room humped around in his vision briefly and settled at a different distance, an object of interest, not of choking confinement. He reread his letters. The world opened. He imagined aeroplanes and a cabin on the ferry from Harwich to the Hook, the sleeper from the Gare d'Austerlitz to Madrid. He imagined canals and Rembrandt, Mediterranean oranges, Gaudi and Picasso, junks and skyscrapers, a glimpse of hidden China and the sun on the Pacific. He thought of "Line by Line" with a great rush of the first excitement with which he had first mapped it out. The gloomy self-disparagement inspired in him by Maud's theoretic certainties and sharpnesses vanished like smoke. Three professors had particularly admired it. How true it was that one needed to be seen by others to be sure of one's own existence. Nothing in what he had written had changed and everything had changed. Quickly, before his courage went, he opened Blackadder's letter.
Dear Roland,
I a m somewhat concerned to have heard nothing from you for some considerable time. I hope you will feel able to tell me about the Ash-LaMotte correspondence in due course. You may even care to know what steps have been taken to preserve it for "the Nation. " You may not; your proceedings in this matter are hard for me tounderstand.