‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m not quite sure. What I witnessed wasn’t his first attack. We were coming out of some restaurant. It was very cold and he could not find a taxi. He got nervous and angry. He started .to run towards one that had drawn up a little way off. Then he stopped and said he was not feeling well. I remember he took a pill or something out of a little box and crushed it in his white silk scarf, sort of pressing it to his face as he did so. That must have been in twenty-seven or twenty-eight.’
I asked several more questions. She answered them all in the same conscientious fashion and went on with her dismal tale.
When she had gone, I wrote it all down – but it was dead, dead. I simply had to see Clare! One glance, one word, the mere sound of her voice would be sufficient (and necessary, absolutely necessary) to animate the past. Why it was thus I did not understand, just as I have never understood why on a certain unforgettable day some weeks earlier I had been so sure that if I could find a dying man alive and conscious I would learn something which no human being had yet learnt.
Then one Monday morning I made a call.
The maid showed me into a small sitting room. Clare was at home, this at least I learnt from that ruddy and rather raw young female. (Sebastian mentions somewhere that English novelists never’ depart from a certain fixed tone when describing housemaids.) On the other hand I knew from Miss Pratt that Mr Bishop was busy in the City on weekdays; queer – her having married a man with the same name, no relation either, just pure coincidence. Would she not see me? Fairly well off, I should say, but not very…. Probably an L-shaped drawing room on the first floor and over that a couple of bedrooms. The whole street consisted of just such close-pressed narrow houses. She was long in roaking up her mind…. Should I have risked telephoning first? Had Miss Pratt already told her about the letters? Suddenly I heard soft footfalls coming down the stairs and a huge man in a black dressing-gown with purple facings came bouncing into the room.
‘I apologize for my attire,’ he said, ‘but I am suffering from a severe cold. My name is Bishop and I gather you want to see my wife.’
Had he caught that cold, I thought in a curious flash of fancy, from the pink-nosed husky-voiced Clare I had seen twelve years ago?
‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘if she hasn’t forgotten me. We met once in Paris!
‘Oh, she remembered your name all right,’ said Mr Bishop, looking at me squarely, ‘but I am sorry to say she can’t see you,’
‘May I call later?’ I asked.
There was a slight silence, and then Mr Bishop asked. ‘Am I right in presuming that your visit is connected in some way with your brother’s death?’ There he stood before roe, hands thrust into his dressing-gown pockets, looking at roe, his fair hair brushed back with an angry brush – a good fellow, a decent fellow, and I hope he will not mind my saying so here. Quite recently, I may add, in very sad circumstances, letters have been exchanged between us, which have quite done away with any ill-feeling that might have crept into our first conversation.
‘Would that prevent her seeing me?’ I asked in my turn. It was a foolish phrase, I admit.
‘You are not going to see her in any case,’ said Mr Bishop. ‘Sorry,’ he added, relenting a little, as he felt I was safely drifting out. ‘I am sure that in other circumstances… but you see my wife is not overkeen to recall past friendships, and you will forgive me if I say quite frankly I do not think you should have come.’
I walked back feeling I had bungled it badly. I pictured to myself what I would have said to Clare had I found her alone. Somehow I managed to convince myself now that had she been alone, she would have seen me: so an unforeseen obstacle belittles those one had imagined. I would have said: ‘Let us not talk of Sebastian. Let us talk of Paris. Do you know it well? Do you remember those pigeons? Tell me what you have been reading lately…. And what about films? Do you still lose your gloves, parcels?’ Or else I might have resorted to a bolder method, a direct attack. ‘Yes, I know how you must feel about it, but please, please, talk to me about him. For the sake of his portrait. For the sake of little things which will wander away and perish if you refuse to let me have them for my book about him.’ Oh, I was sure she would never have refused.
And two days later with this last intention firm in my mind, I made still another attempt. This time I was resolved to be much more circumspect. It was a fine morning, quite early yet, and I was sure she would not stay indoors. I would unobtrusively take up my position at the corner of her street, wait for her husband’s departure to the city, wait for her to come out and then accost her. But things did not work out quite as I had expected.
I had still some little way to go when suddenly Clare Bishop appeared. She had just crossed from my side of the street to the opposite pavement. I knew her at once although I had seen her only once for a short half-hour years before. I knew her although her face was now pinched and her body strangely full. She walked slowly and heavily, and as I crossed towards her I realized that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Owing to the impetuous strain in my nature, which has often led me astray, I found myself walking towards her with a smile of welcome, but in those few instants I was already overwhelmed by the perfectly clear consciousness that I might neither talk to her nor greet her in any manner. It had nothing to do with Sebastian or my book, or my words with Mr Bishop, it was solely on account of her stately concentration. I knew I was forbidden even to make myself known to her, but as I say, my impetus had carried me across the street and in such a way that I nearly bumped into her upon reaching the pavement. She sidestepped heavily and lifted her near-sighted eyes. No, thank God, she did not recognize me. There was something heart-rending in the solemn expression of her pale sawdusty face. We had stopped short. With ridiculous presence of mind I brought out of my pocket the first thing my hand met with, and I said: ‘I beg your pardon, but have you dropped this?’
‘No,’ she said, with an impersonal smile. She held it for a moment close to her eyes, ‘no,’ she repeated, and giving it back to me went on her way. I stood with a key in my hand, as if I had just picked it up off the pavement. It was the latchkey of Sebastian’s flat, and with a queer pang I now realized that she had touched it with her innocent blind fingers….
9
Their relationship lasted six years. During that period Sebastian produced his two first novels: The Prismatic Bezel and Success. It took him some seven months to compose the first (April-October 1924) and twenty-two months to compose the second (July I925-April 1927). Between autumn 1927 and summer 1929 he wrote the three stories which later (1932) were republished together under the tide The Funny Mountain. In other words, Clare intimately witnessed the first three-fifths of his entire production (I skip the juvenilia – the Cambridge poems for instance – which he himself destroyed); and as in the intervals between the above-mentioned books Sebastian kept twisting and laying aside and re-twisting this or that imaginative scheme it may be safely assumed that during those six years he was continuously occupied. And Clare loved his occupation.
She entered his life without knocking, as one might step into the wrong room because of its vague resemblance to one’s own. She stayed there forgetting the way out and quietly getting used to the strange creatures she found there and petted despite their amazing shapes. She had no special intention of being happy or of making Sebastian happy, nor had she the slightest misgivings as to what might come next; it was merely a matter of naturally accepting life with Sebastian because life without him was less imaginable than a tellurian’s camping-tent on a mountain in the moon. Most probably, if she had borne him a child they would have slipped into marriage since that would have been the simplest way for all three; but that not being the case it did not enter their heads to submit to those white and wholesome formalities which very possibly both would have enjoyed had they given them necessary thought. There was nothing of your advanced prejudice-be-damned stuff about Sebastian. Well did he know that to flaunt one’s contempt for a moral code was but smuggled smugness and prejudice turned inside out. He usually chose the easiest ethical path (just as he chose the thorniest aesthetic one) merely because it happened to be the shortest cut to his chosen object; he was far too lazy in everyday
