Titus found himself on the inside of the pavement and had no choice but to turn towards the partly open front door as the two strangers turned inevitably in the same direction. The man was small and aggressive and the woman, a head taller, held his arm, seemingly more to protect him from his own aggressiveness than herself against the butts of others. Titus now saw that she held a wreath in her other hand, as they pushed open the door and entered the house.
There was a strong smell of incense and a low murmur, the drone of people at prayer. The hall was narrow and dark, and to the left was a closed door, but passing this, Titus was slowly propelled to a second door at the farther end of the narrow passage. All three entered the room, which retained an atmosphere of a bygone age. It was cluttered with the past. The walls and the tables and the chairs were sepia. There were gas jets and a flounce over the fireplace.
As the incongruous companions were shown to some upright chairs, an elderly lady took their hands in turn. She was dressed in unrelieved black. Her severe hair was black, and drawn tightly behind her ears into a bun at the nape of her neck. Jet earrings and a high jet collar must have all but choked her. Her eyes were like two beads from the collar, and the only thing which was not black were the red rims of her eyes.
‘You would like to see her, of course, before you take tea.’
People were sitting in rows of chairs facing a sliding door, which separated the back room from the front, and as it slid slowly open, those in the front row moved forward, and everyone else moved, as in some game for children, so that there was an all change, but done with no laughter, and no sound apart from a sigh and a sob and a sniff of stifled tears from one or other of the women present.
As some departed, others came in to take their places, and soon Titus found himself in the front row. He was the only person with no offering, but the absorption of sorrow precluded any kind of censure. He had at least come to pay his respects.
It was now his turn to go behind the door, into the front room. He had no wish to encounter death again. He entered the room he had seen from the outside, lit by two candles. Incense, and the flowers that were laid in banks all around the room, nearly felled Titus by their power, and his hunger pangs turned to nausea and a longing to run away from the raised open coffin he was to look into.
The tall lady gave a sob, as she leaned over and touched the cheek of the mourned. Titus closed his eyes as he passed, but with the native curiosity of human beings he was unable to prevent himself from opening them as he himself came near.
He looked, and was filled once more with the unexplained mystery of death. Although he neither knew nor cared about the being that was laid out so carefully in its solid coffin, what lay there surely bore little relation to what it had been. He remembered the deaths of people he had known and loved, known and hated, known and cared little about. But in them all was the common denominator. The enigma. Where were they? They did not all look peaceful. In some it seemed their torments were not all over. They did not look like real people, but they did not look like wax people either. They were not there, in that body left behind, to be disposed of in such a variety of ways, yet the idea of any kind of physical desecration or insult was unthinkable, like deliberately pulling the wings off a butterfly, or destroying a flower for the sake of it. The dead must be handled with care.
So, in this ordinary little house, the death of one of its former inmates had bestowed on everyone living the magic wand of mystery. As Titus left the room of the dead, he was shown out of the door and pointed to a room at the end of the narrow passage. On a table in the middle were plates of sandwiches and numerous cups. This whole room gleamed with cleanliness, and another lady with black hair and eyes and earrings and dress poured tea into the small delicate cups from a very large silver teapot.
No one spoke as they stood around the table, passing plates to each other. An occasional murmur of ‘a wonderful woman. We shall not see her like again’ brought hankies out to gather up the tears such words inevitably cause to flow.
Titus ate and longed to escape from this strange little interlude. As he turned to leave, the elderly second dark lady turned to him and quietly thanked him for coming. An old overfed dog looked at him, with eyes that seemed to gut him. He moved along the passage and to the front door. Two old ladies, and an old man, were on their way out. They turned to Titus as they stood on the pavement and said, ‘You must be the great-nephew. How sad you came too late. She was a fine woman.’
As they turned and walked away, the old man on the arm of each old lady, Titus had a strong feeling that he would for ever be an onlooker in life and death.
31
Under the Masks
TITUS MIGHT HAVE been numbered amongst the dispossessed by a bureaucratic mind, but this would have greatly underestimated him. He was dispossessed by his own act of will. He possessed nothing except himself. He took no care, but did he ever long for an anchorage? Was there no harbour that he craved? Did he not sometimes think with longing for the cover of a retreat from the anarchic shapelessness of his life? If not material possessions then did he yearn for one love, so that he could belong somewhere? So that he could have a label? So that he could be identified as so-and-so, who was such-and-such, who came from here, and was going there?
If he had been asked such questions, he would have skidded around them. If he answered them to himself, he would probably have found no answer, as to why he wanted none of those things. But what he wanted in their stead was even more mysterious. He gathered experience, as a child might pick daisies, yet his daisy-chain was destined for no one’s necklace or crown, but did the discarded little flowers wither within him as fresher daisies were picked? No, as time went by, his chain grew, and at appropriate moments he garlanded his chance encounters, and then, leaving them behind him, he could not stop himself from moving on.
People would say to him, ‘You could write a book,’ and he would answer, ‘Yes, I could.’
Women whom he met wished to pin him down. He was elusive to them. A gentle imaginative lover who, when they thought he would share their life and love – if not for ever then for a mutually convenient length of time – would disappear as suddenly as he had arrived in their lives.
No one could exactly describe him. Either physically or mentally. He was not handsome in any accepted way. In company he was withdrawn, and yet he was not in the least shy. He had a certain sardonic wit, a quick response to the quirks of human beings. He laughed readily. He liked women. He was quiet. He was courteous, but upon discussion between themselves, those who knew him well would all reach the conclusion that despite all these things, he was not there.
He looked strong. In the years of wandering he had supported himself in every kind of physical pursuit which could be imagined, and lived and shared his being mainly with the rough, and the tough, whilst retaining his own persona. He was generous to the needy. He ate and drank robustly. He slept well. There was a normality about him which was a source of wonder to acquaintances. But still, they only saw the shell. What lay inside in heart or head, they never discovered. In whatever company he found himself, he adapted to it, but he was no chameleon, and he remained an outsider. He had seen cruelty, injustice and bigotry. He was not a reformer or a zealot, but whenever he came across these vices, he fought against them.