On my way to the South Gate I saw the woman who’d been in the shop asking about turtle books. She was coming towards me, heading for the Aquarium I had no doubt. Damn you, I thought, surprised at the violence of my feelings. Damn her for what? I might as well damn myself as well, for not being young, for being middle-aged and nowhere and unhappy, for having turtle fantasies instead of living life. She had turtle business in mind, I was certain of it. And I knew she was going to ask me some kind of direct question and I was going to answer it and then we’d both be in it, it wouldn’t be just mine any more. It was the sort of situation that would be ever so charming and warmly human in a film with Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith but that sort of film is only charming because they leave out so many details, and real life is all the details they leave out.
She was looking at me and I couldn’t look away or pretend not to recognize her. Damn her, damn her I thought. We both stopped and I could see her turning the whole thing over in her mind. She has the kind of face that doesn’t hide anything, you can read it right off. Vulnerable, I suppose. Why hasn’t she learned not to be vulnerable, she’s old enough. She was certainly going to speak, was bound to speak, couldn’t help but speak but it was difficult for her, she felt shy. Suddenly I felt sorry for her. Maybe she’d been thinking about the turtles longer than I had, maybe I and not she was the one who was intruding. All right, I thought, I’m sorry. Go ahead, speak.
‘Hello,’ she said, and went on past me.
‘Hello,’ I said.
Why didn’t she speak?
14 Neaera H
Alas! What boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,
Were it not better don as other use
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?
Fathers are prone to name first daughters elaborately. I don’t mind so much being named after a nymph but I really don’t care to be associated with the pastoral tradition. An idyll based on illusion has no charm for me, but then of course idylls are almost by definition illusion. Even the lovely music of Acis and Galataea does not incline me favourably towards nymphs and swains. I think a shepherd ought to tend sheep and a poet ought to write poems. If I owned sheep I don’t think I’d send them out with a poetic shepherd. Although if one forgets the shepherds of Theocritus and thinks of David herding sheep while armed with a sling that’s quite different. David, yes indeed. A poet-shepherd with a strong right arm. I wonder why I never thought of him in that light before.
My hair is often tangled and no one withes it now. There are fashions in emotion as in other things. If I were twenty now and my fiance died in a car crash I think I should soon find another man. My generation was somewhat in between things, neither free nor much supported by whatever held us in. More of us were capable of being brought to a halt by something of that sort than young people now would be. Our songs were different, our dances and our choices. Rubbish. Even in the privacy of my own mind I can’t be entirely honest with myself.
The man from the bookshop, when I saw him at the Zoo I thought he was going to say something to me. I had the feeling that he was coming from the Aquarium, that he had turtles on his mind. All he said was ‘Hello,’ and we went our separate ways. It’s curious how the mind works. I see the world through turtle-coloured glasses now. Because of the turtles I expect a stranger to speak significantly, am prepared for signs and wonders, my terrors freshen, I feel a gathering-up in me as if I’m going to die soon, I await a Day of Judgement. Whose judgement? Mine, less merciful than God’s. It is not always a comfort to find a like-minded person, another fraction of being who shares one’s incompleteness. The bookshop man has many thoughts and feelings that I have, I sense that.
I went into the Aquarium but I didn’t see George Fairbairn and I was glad not to have the chance to talk further about the turtles. The Aquarium was intensely dark after the violent sunlight outside, I could scarcely see the benches down the middle of it. Young couples were black against the green-lit windows of the tanks. I sat on the bench nearest the turtles but I didn’t look directly at them. At one particular moment that part of the Aquarium was empty except for the turtles and the fish and me. Then a young man and a girl came out of the darkness and stood in front of the turtles. He murmured something that I couldn’t quite make out, and she said in a voice that was like a clear mirror, ‘No, it’s too late, it’s too late.’
I was surprised at the effect of her words on me. I didn’t burst into tears. I didn’t know what she was referring to — it might have been love or theatre tickets but it struck me at once that her observation was probably accurate. Very likely it was too late for whatever they were talking about. She sounded the sort of girl who sees things clearly, and young as she was there was something for which it was too late.
Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. It’s a relation of self to the moment. Too-lateness is potentially every moment. Or not, depending on the person and the moment. Perhaps there even comes a time when it’s no longer too late for anything. Perhaps, even, most times are too early for most things, and most of life has to go by before it’s time for almost anything and too late for almost nothing. Nothing to lose, the present moment to gain, the integration with long-delayed Now. Headlights staring out on sleeping streets. Sea-smelling turtles and the smell of wet hessian from the sacking. The tide in or out drawn by a moon seen or unseen.
The man from the bookshop, would he be willing to drive the van? I think he’s perhaps already thought of it, without me of course. Possibly it isn’t something he’d like to share with anyone, I might be intruding. But the turtles are after all public, so to speak. Perhaps they no longer want the ocean and I’m wrong to impose my feelings on them. But I believe they do want the ocean, that must be in them. No, it’s not always a comfort to find a like-minded person. If the bookshop man and I both have designs on the turtles we have got to muddle through it as decently as possible but there’s little to be said between us beyond that. We’ve too much in common for us to be comfortable in each other’s presence for very long.
15 William G
They won’t stop killing the whales. They make dog- and cat-food out of them, face creams, lipstick. They kill the whales to feed the dogs so the dogs can shit on the pavement and the people can walk in it. A kind of natural cycle. Whales can navigate, echo-locate, sing, talk to one another but they can’t get away from the harpoon guns. The International Whaling Commission is meeting here in London right now but they won’t stop the killing of whales.
The drinking fountain on the common is gone. It was there for years and years, probably ever since the footpaths and the playground and the paddling pool and the football pitch were made. The people next door have been here for twenty years and it was there when they moved in. Vandals pushed it over the other night, broke the pipes. Now it’s been taken away. There’s a little square hole full of water with a Coca-Cola tin in it and that’s all.
There’s something about the common at night, something about the dark open space facing the lighted houses that provokes savagery and terrorism. Youths on the common at night yell horribly as they pass the houses. They feel themselves to be part of the night outside and they want the people inside to be afraid. They get into the playground and scream and shout and hurl the swings about with a savage clashing of the chains as if they could destroy the world by pulling down the playground. In the morning the chains are all wound round the crossbar and the maintenance man has to come with a ladder to disentangle the swings.