Op. 17
SUBLIMATED RELATIONS
OR
THE
Long Prose
Copyright © 1981-2009 John O'Loughlin
____________
CONTENTS
Chapters 1-12
__________
CHAPTER ONE
He gently closed the front door of his parents' house behind him and,
pulling his scarf more tightly round his neck, set off at a brisk pace for
home. It was a rather cold night and, as
he hurried along, great plumes of escaping breath were
quickly dispersed into the chill air. He
was somewhat relieved that the once-yearly obligation to visit his parents for
Christmas had been successfully dispatched and that he was once more a free man
- free, that is, to please himself.
Not that their company
unduly oppressed him! On the contrary,
they did their best to make his stay a merry one, having provided a copious
roast lunch and a sufficiency of wine and/or sherry. But, even so, it was a relief that the social
pressure to be on one's best behaviour had if not entirely vanished then, at
any rate, been temporarily relaxed, and he was accordingly free to be his usual
informal self.
One's
best behaviour? No, that wasn't
entirely true! More accurately, the pressure to tune-in, as it were, to one's parents' standard
of Christmas and behave in a manner which suggested that no alternative
standard was either possible or indeed desirable. Yes, that was it! He was escaping from the pressure of that, as
also, if the truth were known, from the even worse pressure of having been in
close proximity to his stepfather's wretched cold and of having had to pretend
that it didn't really inconvenience him in any way. But, really, what a gross inconvenience it had been! It was quite a stinker the man was suffering
from, a most objectionable stinker!
For a moment Timothy
Byrne was on the verge of cursing his stepfather for having had the untimely
misfortune to catch a rotten cold at Christmas, but, mindful of the festive
spirit, he stifled the thought as best he could and replaced it with a
charitable commiseration towards Richard Briley for
the rotten luck he'd had ... to fall victim to such a sordid fate at so
inopportune a time. In fact, he forced
himself to feel sorry for the man and to offer him, in retrospect, what private
sympathy he could. Yet even then it
wasn't possible for Timothy to ignore the self-pity which suddenly welled up,
like flood waters, inside him at the recollection of his having had to sit in
uncomfortably close proximity to Mr Briley on a
number of occasions over Christmas and not only risk being infected with the
stinker himself, but, no less distastefully, listen to the incessant snivelling
which issued from the old man's snot-laden nose. Really, it was enough to make one weep!
Crossing over one of the
busy main roads which prominently divided his part of Haringey from theirs, he
hurried his steps along the north London streets still faster, as much, in
effect, to escape the memory of his stepfather's threatening germs ... as to
get back to his flat as quickly as possible, lest additional threats from
unseen quarters lay in sordid wait for him!
Poor Mr Briley, it was really most unkind of
nature to have inflicted such a bad cold on him during that brief period in the
year when, birthdays notwithstanding, one least wished to suffer germs. Most unkind!
Yet, unfortunately, that was generally the way with nature, which was
unconcerned with human wishes and the sporadic attempts man might make to
approximate to a heavenly condition.
Mindful, one might almost say, of its own wayward interests. Ignorant of Christmas.
For what was Christmas,
after all, but a concerted attempt by man to approximate to Heaven in the face,
if needs be, of natural opposition? A
time when one remembered the birth of Christ and gave thanks for the spiritual
example He was to set. A time when one endeavoured to live more closely in Christ's light
and refrain from sin. But what
did nature care about that? Not a
frigging jot! It made no specific effort
to emulate man and call a truce for a few days.
On the contrary, one was just as likely to catch a cold on Christmas
day, if germs were in the air, as at any other time. And if the weather had been particularly
inclement before Christmas, it wasn't likely to improve just to suit men. It could even get worse!
Fortunately that had not
been the case this year, and, as he continued on his brooding way, Timothy felt
gratitude for the fact that the weather had remained comparatively dry and mild
these past few days, thus discouraging the rapid spread of harmful germs. Yet the fact of Mr Briley's
cold was still bad enough, and even if he, Timothy John Byrne, hadn't caught
it, nevertheless he had suffered from it in a certain sense, both
psychologically and physically, and that was no joke! His Christmas hadn't exactly proved to be the
most congenial of experiences, even if it could have been a damn sight
worse. Still, his parents had generally
been kind to him, and together, in spite of their temperamental differences,
they had endeavoured to maintain an atmosphere of peace and joy whilst in
one-another's persevering company.
Yes, a kind of crude
approximation to the heavenly Beyond had been achieved, in spite of whatever
opposition the temporal world had contrived to place in their way. Even with Mr Briley's
constant snivelling and the consequent risk of infection, these past few days
had retained a seasonal quality which, on the whole, was fairly pleasant, if a
little lacking in excitement. For there
could be no question that Timothy had eaten well and, despite his customary
abstinence, imbibed a bottle or two of quality sherry, not to mention sat in
front of some interesting films on television and spent an hour or so
profitably reading philosophy in one of his parents' spare rooms. And, of course, there had been some
conversation with his mother - Mr Briley being a
rather laconic bloke who preferred not to enter into conversation with him even
when he wasn't ill - which had proved more the exception than the rule, and
passed the time quite pleasantly.
Yet even as he hurried
across another busy road, Timothy reflected that this Christmas could have been
a lot better, a much finer approximation to Heaven than theirs had been, and
not only on account of his stepfather's cold, by any means! No, on a number of counts. But, alas, his parents had prevented it from
being such by their emphasis on traditional, or sensual, approximations to the
Beyond, and had thus made it virtually obligatory for him to follow suit. The ideas which were now welling-up in his
conscious mind, like molten lava, would hardly appeal to them, well-meaning
though they undoubtedly were. No, they
couldn't be expected to appreciate what he now considered a higher way of
celebrating Christmas, a way which, instead of emphasizing downward
self-transcendence, put the emphasis firmly on upward self-transcendence and
was accordingly closer to Heaven, to what Timothy liked to think of as the
spiritual climax to human evolution in the not-too-distant future.
However, being average
sensual people, his mother and stepfather could only celebrate Christmas in a
fashion commensurate with their average sensuality, not in a fashion which he
now regarded as of a higher and altogether more agreeable order. Yet what was true of them was no less true of
the great majority of people, who were likewise indisposed to change their
habits and celebrate Christmas in any but a sensual way. And as he neared his flat, a poignant truth
suddenly dawned on him. Like it or not,
the majority of people's attempts to approximate to a heavenly condition at
Christmas only resulted in their ending-up in a condition closer to Hell, in
which their customary sensual habits were intensified to a point of gluttony
and drunkenness, if not lechery as well!
Yes, that was the ironic
truth of the matter! For the average
sensual man Christmas was simply an intensification of his average sensual
habits, and thus, in certain respects, an approximation not to Heaven but to
its beastly antithesis. Society hadn't
yet evolved to a stage where the great majority of people were disposed to
approximate, no matter how humbly or tentatively, to the heavenly Beyond
through upward self-transcendence.
Consequently the only reasonable alternative to average day-to-day
consciousness for a relatively short period of time lay, for them, in downward
self-transcendence, in the gratification of the senses rather than of the
spirit, and thus immersion in the subconscious instead of the superconscious. For
which, as Timothy well knew, food and drink were eminently suitable!
And so, by a curious
paradox, the Devil was arguably given more acknowledgement,
by a majority of people at Christmas, than God, and a kind of sensuous
approximation to Hell triumphed over the Christian world during that time. Only in a minority of cases was it likely
that the godly in man would be given its due and duly acknowledged, and as
Timothy drew closer to his small flat he realized, with some regret, that he
hadn't been among that minority of higher types this Christmas but, on the
contrary, had consumed more than his customary amounts of food and drink!
Maybe next year -
assuming he wasn't living in the same place and had the means to be more
independent of his parents for Christmas - he would be able to celebrate
Christ's birth in a manner more suited to his tastes, and thus become a part of
that tiny minority who acknowledged the superiority of the spirit over the
senses at Christmas, thereby upward self-transcending. He hoped so anyway, since he had become
somewhat dissatisfied, no thanks to his parents, with the traditional way of
celebrating it!
But what, exactly, would
this alternative to sensual indulgence be?
He had arrived at the front door to his ground-floor flat and duly let
himself in. Yes, what exactly? Quickly, almost impatiently, he removed his
black leather zipper and matching scarf and hung them on the metal clothes pegs
just inside the door. Then he hurried
into his small living-room and immediately switched on the electric fire there. Its two coiled filaments were aglow in no
time, and he gratefully sat in front of it and rubbed the cold from his frozen
hands. Yes, well, to approximate more to
Heaven than to Hell at Christmas meant that one would have to reduce one's
consumption of food and drink for a start, and thus avoid the temptation to
become both a glutton and a drunkard.
Whether one went as far as limiting oneself to bread and water instead
of, say, roast and wine was another thing.
But one could at least make do with a less sensual fare than one was
ordinarily accustomed to, and certainly avoid alcohol, that leading enemy of
the spiritual life! Milk, tea, coffee,
or some fruit juice was morally preferable to booze, though not perhaps as good
as cola.
Timothy smiled slightly
at the thought of it and continued to gently rub his hands together in front of
the electric fire. He was still feeling
quite bloated from the turkey-sandwich supper his mother had provided for him,
and not a little conscious of the soporific effects which the last glass of
sherry was having on his mind. He was
still thinking of heavenly approximations from the disadvantage-point, as it
were, of hellish approximations, or so it seemed. But he hadn't imbibed that much sherry in
all, and was accordingly still capable of lucid thought, thanks in part to the
sobering influence of the cold weather during his brisk walk home. So, as a step in the right direction of
upward self-transcendence, it would be necessary to minimize the part played by
downward self-transcendence by curtailing one's sensual intake. That much was obvious.
But
what else? What about the actual
feeding of the spirit? Would reading a
paperback throughout the Christmas holiday suffice to take care of that? An image of a painting by Daniele
Crespi entitled The Meal of St. Charles Borromeo, in which the Saint was depicted reading the
Bible whilst eating a frugal meal of bread and water,
came soaring into his mind's eye and to some extent answered that vexing
question. Yes, reading would serve
the needs of the spirit and contribute towards establishing an approximation to
the heavenly Beyond, or Omega Point, as Teilhard de Chardin had called the projected culmination of spiritual
evolution. But a rather crude
approximation to it, one had to admit, insofar as only the lower reaches of the
spirit would be acknowledged and served - those reaches in which the intellect
had its throne. The greater and higher
part of the spirit, the soul, would languish unfed, undernourished, and
ignored.
Thus while reading would
be better than dozing, one could approximate more closely to the heavenly
Beyond by meditating throughout the Christmas holiday, thereby allowing one's
spirit to expand on a wave of blessed peace.
Stillness, quietness, alert passivity, joy ... all these consequences of
Transcendental Meditation would bring one closer to heavenly salvation than
ever reading could, even when the book in one's hands was of an elevated order,
and so result in a finer Christmas. Yet
if a few days given-up to meditating still seemed too much ... well then, one
could always divide one's time between reading and meditating, or meditating
and watching some ennobling film or listening to some inspiring music. As long as the spirit rather than the body
was being acknowledged, no matter how imperfectly, one would be in alliance
with that tiny minority of higher types.
Yet
what else? Was there anything
besides culture and meditation that could be indulged in over Christmas in
order to approximate as closely as possible to Heaven? Undoubtedly meditation was the best thing for
any length of time. But if, by any
chance, one felt one had to have recourse to some kind of concrete substitute
for alcohol or tobacco, what was there?
Ah, there was indeed something that could be indulged in but which
wasn't legal at present, and that was mind-expanding hallucinogens like LSD,
the acronym for lysergic acid diethylamide.
Whether LSD, for example, would be legalized in the near or distant
future ... remained to be seen. But,
whatever its ultimate fate, there could be no denying that its synthetic
constitution distinguished it from natural drugs, or drugs which either grew
naturally or were less than fully synthetic, like tobacco, alcohol, opium, and
morphine, rendering it an altogether different proposition from them.
For all the 'natural'
drugs - in short, everything that grew from or owed their origins to the earth
- were inevitably stamped with nature's imprint and were thus of a sensual
essence. Whenever one had recourse to them,
in whatever doses, the result was an intensification of sensual indulgence and
therefore a downward self-transcendence.
According to their strength and the amounts imbibed, they imposed
varying degrees of subconscious stupor, ranging from the shallow in tobacco to
the deep in opium or morphine. Being of
natural origin, they could only appeal to the senses, not the spirit, and thus
were aligned with Hell rather than Heaven.
The deeper the level of subconscious stupor imposed by them, the more
evil, it seemed to Timothy, they were, so it wasn't altogether surprising that
society had sought to protect itself from the most potent natural drugs by
making them illegal and punishing those who trafficked in them. Only the relatively less evil ones, including
tobacco and alcohol, were officially sanctioned and accorded a degree of social
respectability, even though they were by no means without extremely serious
consequences, as lung cancer and sclerosis of the liver made more than
adequately clear! Hopefully, a day would
come when even tobacco and alcohol would be officially discountenanced, and all
degrees of downward self-transcendence through natural drugs duly proscribed
or, at the very least, discouraged. But,
at present, we were still living in an age when such evils were to a certain
extent inevitable and somehow relevant to the times.
However, perhaps there
would also come a time when hallucinogens like LSD would be legalized, and
those who wanted to use it could do so without fearing prosecution? At which thought Timothy clicked his tongue
and, ceasing to rub his hands together, sat back comfortably in his
armchair. Yes, for LSD was a synthetic
drug, and therefore it acted on the superconscious
rather than the subconscious. It
resulted, as a rule, in visionary experiences of a transcendent, translucent,
and altogether mystical order, opening the door to the Beyond and thus giving
rise to upward self-transcendence. It
was divine rather than diabolic, uplifting rather than degrading, enlightening
rather than depressing.
Yes, if sanity was to
prevail in the world and evolution continue on its upward curve, then LSD would certainly have a role to play in the future
as probably the drug of transcendental man.
The centuries of tobacco and alcohol consumption, not to mention the
illicit consumption of dope and the harder natural drugs, would have to be
supplanted by the centuries of LSD consumption, in which man aspired towards
God, through expanded consciousness, rather than regressed towards the Devil in
varying degrees of subconscious stupor.
Then perhaps Christmas, or some such equivalent festival, would be
celebrated with LSD instead of alcohol or tobacco. Then Christmas would approximate more closely
to the heavenly Beyond for the great majority of people, and so be a much
superior occasion to what it was at present.
For at present it was all too under nature's sensuous
influence. Only by overcoming
nature, Timothy believed, would man eventually attain to God, since the mundane
and the transcendent were ever different, if not antithetical,
propositions.
But, in the meantime -
no, one couldn't expect overnight miracles.
The majority of people were simply not ready for LSD and, consequently,
it had to remain illegal. Only a comparatively
small number of people would be capable of using it profitably and sensibly,
whereas, for the average sensual man, it would probably prove either a blank or
a danger. And not only to himself! One shuddered at the thought of what might
happen if a crowd of football thugs or other hooligans were to get their coarse
hands on the divine hallucinogen! Why,
they were bad enough under the influence of lager!
No, it was pretty
obvious that the one drug seriously capable of effecting an upward
self-transcendence would have to wait a while yet for official approval. There was no sense in casting pearls before
swine! When society as a whole had
progressed to a higher stage of evolution, a stage transcending anything we now
knew, then perhaps an official change-of-heart would be possible. But, in the meantime ... ah! one would just have to make do, in a majority of cases, with
alcohol for Christmas. And if one found that infra dignum?
Well, one could always meditate or read a book - which was exactly what
Timothy Byrne intended to do next Christmas, all being well!
Getting up from his
armchair, he ambled over to the windows and pulled their floral-patterned
curtains across. He had quite overlooked
them when first entering the room, but it didn't really matter too much. Few people would have been interested in
staring-in at him and, besides, the low wall and front-garden hedge provided
his room with a certain amount of seclusion anyway. Yet he was reminded, by the sight of a large
Christmas card standing on the small table just to one side of the windows,
that he had been invited out to dinner on New Year's Eve, so he hastened to
pick it up and re-read its contents.
Yes, this late card,
only received on Christmas Eve, had come as quite a surprise to him,
particularly since he had met its sender but once, and then rather
briefly. Yet the man had shown what
seemed like genuine interest in his philosophy, and suggested the possibility
of their dining together some time. So
it looked as though he had meant what he said.
Here, however, is what he had written:-
Dear Timothy Byrne,
Just a
brief note to wish you a Merry Christmas and invite you down to Rothermore House for dinner on New Year's Eve. You will recall that we discussed your most
recent publication together, earlier this month, and that I was quite impressed
by it. Perhaps you would like to offer
me some further enlightenment on its difficult subject-matter in due
course? If so, then come down by early
afternoon train to Crowborough in
Yours sincerely
Joseph Handon (Viscount)
Timothy re-read the
invitation through twice and then replaced the rather picturesque card on the
table. He was really quite baffled by
it, not having received any such invitation before. And the fact that Handon
was a viscount came as something of a surprise to him. He hadn't realized, at the time of their
first encounter, that he was dealing with a peer of
the realm. Maybe that explained why the
invitation made mention of a dinner rather than a party? It seemed to him quite posh really, not what
he would have expected at all. But,
still, what was he to make of it? Should
he accept?
He returned to his
single armchair and involuntarily began to warm his hands in front of the
electric fire again. Crowborough? No, not a place he had ever been to
before? And Rothermore House?
He smiled at the thought of his arriving from the station by taxi at a
large country house with fluted pilasters surmounted by Ionic or Corinthian
capitals on the façade, and a large central pediment, with or without relief
sculpture, over the architrave. Maybe,
on the other hand, it would be less classical, more baroque or even gothic? He hadn't the faintest idea. Nevertheless, it was almost bound to be
large, imposing, spacious, and surrounded on all sides by plenty of open land. Country houses were usually like that, after
all.
Again he smiled to
himself and sat back in his armchair. He
wasn't sure whether or not to accept the invitation, especially since he didn't
know much about Joseph Handon and had absolutely no
idea who the other guests would be. It
wasn't as if he were exactly enamoured of country houses either, though he had
retained a certain rather narrow aesthetic interest in one or two of them,
compliments of some informal architectural studies in the reference division of
his local library, several years before.
Yet, all things considered, perhaps the experience would prove
rewarding, confirming him in his suppositions and further enlightening him
where aristocratic lifestyles like Viscount Handon's
were concerned. Yes, maybe he would
learn a thing or two from first-hand experience, as it were, of country houses
and their inhabitants that contact with reference books had denied him? It was certainly worth considering anyway.
Still smiling, he
vacated his old armchair again and proceeded to slot an audio cassette into the
tape-deck of his modest midi sound-system.
Boxing Day still had an hour to run and he was determined to pass the
remaining time in as cultural a fashion as possible. Some synth-based
modern jazz would, he supposed, enable him to do just that!
CHAPTER TWO
At length the train arrived at Crowborough
station and a rather bored Timothy Byrne alighted from the empty second-class
compartment, in which he had sat cross-legged for most of the journey, and
slowly made his way towards the ticket barrier.
Only a handful of other people had got off the train with him and he
wondered, as he passed through the exit, whether there might not be another person bound for Rothermore
House among their number.
Once outside the station
he quickly engaged the services of a waiting taxi, and presently found himself
being driven through a series of narrow country lanes in the general direction
of Rothermore House.
It was almost four o'clock and he hoped that his arrival there wouldn't
be too early; though he had no way of telling from the invitation at exactly
what time the viscount would be expecting his other guests to arrive. Perhaps most of them were already there? He mentally shuddered at the thought of it
and sought distraction from that prospect by scanning the surrounding
fauna-and-flora of the passing countryside.
He never liked being the last or nearly last guest to arrive anywhere.
"Been out this way before, mate?" the cabby asked,
addressing his passenger via the driving mirror.
"No," Timothy
replied, a bit startled by this unexpected intrusion into his sordid
reflections.
"Nearly there
now," said the cabby, who speedily steered the taxi round a couple of
sharp bends and then brought it to a gradual halt a hundred or so yards along a
relatively straight road, which appeared to lead nowhere. On one side, a view of
trees and hills. On the other
side, a tall gateway presented its black steel bars to their attention. It was slightly ajar, and stood between high
brick walls lined with trees and bushes.
"I'll take you up
the driveway if you'd like," the cabby offered, half-turning round in his
seat.
"Is it a long
one?" Timothy asked.
"At least a coupla hundred yards," the cabby informed him.
"Right,
thanks."
Having got out of the
taxi to push the gate open, the cabby returned to his seat and restarted the
engine, which had in the meantime spluttered out. "You're the second geezer I've driven up
here today," he revealed, as they got under way again.
"Oh, really?"
responded Timothy, who hadn't expected to be informed of that fact! "Perhaps I won't be the last," he
commented.
"Perhaps not, mate."
The taxi reached the end
of the driveway and there, suddenly, the expanse of Rothermore
House loomed menacingly ahead, no more than seventy yards away. One had the feeling, curiously, of coming out
of a jungle and into the open again.
"I'm afraid this is
as far as I can go, mate," the cabby informed him on a slightly apologetic
note, as unexpected as it was strange.
Timothy felt like
saying: "That's quite far enough," since he had no wish to be driven
right up to the large front doors of such an imposing house in a bright red Cortina, but simply nodded his head and got out. Then he paid the driver and, reciprocating
his New Year wishes, stood back to allow the taxi to turn around in the narrow
space provided and speed back down the driveway.
So this was it! He stood a moment stock-still, staring across
the wide expanse of front garden which framed the large house. He hadn't been far wrong in his conjectures
as to what the place would look like, for it did indeed possess fluted
pilasters surmounted by Corinthian capitals.
But where he had imagined a central pediment there was a balustrade,
upon which a couple of weighty-looking sculptural urns were standing, and this
balustrade extended along the entire length of the façade, reminding one, in a
way, of crenellated battlements. Thus a two-storey house, with twelve
vertically-elongated windows on each story - six to either side of the aediculated entrance.
Where had he seen a building like this before? Yes, of course! A book on English architecture in the local
library's reference division had shown him a photograph of
Realizing that he
couldn't very well continue to stand out in the cold and gaze up at the
building as though he had nothing better to do, he forced himself on towards
his objective. The crunching of his
steps on the gravel path which led through the English garden made him feel
rather self-conscious and exposed to view as he neared the large front
entrance, and he carefully avoided looking at the windows from fear of seeing
someone behind them. The house seemed to
tower above him like some fearful monster the nearer he got to it, making him
feel rather dwarfed as well as self-conscious.
He was almost wishing he hadn't accepted Joseph Handon's
invitation, as he climbed the steps leading to the framed entrance. Almost, but not quite! For he was determined to
brave this experience out until the end and learn what he could from it. And he was learning fast, because now, halted
just in front of the door, he realized that there was a world of difference
between looking at photos of country houses and actually standing in front of
one! The former he could tolerate, the
latter.... He shuddered with apprehension and pressed the bell. Now he was irrevocably committed.
In less than a minute it
was answered by a manservant, who, on receiving his name,
politely ushered him inside. Once there,
he took off his leather jacket and handed it, together with woollen scarf, to
the man. He hoped that his sartorial
appearance would pass muster here, since he wasn't in the habit of dressing
more conservatively, having burnt his last bridges, so to speak, of
conventional attire several years before.
His black denims and green sweatshirt were presentable enough, he
thought, and his new white leather sneakers with black stripes sufficiently
clean, in spite of the dust kicked up while crossing the gravel path. All in all, pretty typical of him these days,
and not something he had any desire to change, given his long-standing aversion
to suits and ties and other sartorial manifestations of a more conventional,
not to say bourgeois, lifestyle.
"Now, sir, if you'd
just care to follow me," said the elderly servant, once he had deposited
Timothy's jacket and scarf in a cloakroom to one side of the entrance
hall. Smilingly, he led the way across
the intervening space to a pair of double doors which, on reaching, he threw
open with a polished gesture, to reveal one of the longest and largest rooms
Timothy had ever beheld. Having
announced his name for the benefit of its occupants, the manservant ushered him
in with formal politeness and then gently but firmly closed the doors behind
him, leaving the young writer to his fate.
Never before had he felt as self-conscious as now, what with the sight
of those already gathered there. He
might as well have been standing in the nude before a roomful of nubile
females, as standing in his usual informal clothes just inside the doors of
this immense room!
But help was at hand in
the form of Lord Handon himself, who beamed an
encouraging smile at him while swiftly approaching across the bright blue
carpet which covered the greater part of the floor. "So glad you could come," he
announced, extending a welcoming hand; though the six or seven yards he had to
walk seemed to take an eternity for Timothy, who gratefully clasped the
outstretched hand when it finally arrived.
"I trust you had a pleasant journey?"
"Yes, quite
pleasant," the writer responded, blushing slightly.
"I'm a bit
out-of-the-way here, and wouldn't like to think that you'd got lost en route
from the station," Lord Handon remarked.
"Oh, no trouble in
that respect," Timothy averred.
"Good! Well, allow me to introduce you to the
others," said the viscount and, taking his latest guest in tow, he led the
way towards the centre of the room, where a small group of people were seated
in a semicircle in front of a roaring open fire. There was hardly time for Timothy to get more
than an inkling of the extent and variety of his surroundings, as he bashfully
accompanied the grey-haired peer back across the carpet. Besides, he couldn't very well begin
investigating the room's contents as though he were in a museum. It was obligatory to ignore them, as though
stepping into such an ornately-furnished and expensively-decorated room was a
commonplace affair, unworthy of more than a passing curiosity. The only thing that mattered was the series
of introductions which were about to befall him. It was impossible to concentrate on anything
else. "Allow me first of all to
present you to my wife, Pamela," the host obliged, extending his arm in
the direction of a medium-built lady with high cheekbones and a long nose who
was seated nearest the fire. She at once
rose from her amply-cushioned armchair and held out a dainty hand for Timothy
to shake.
"Delighted to meet
you, Mr Byrne," she said, smiling primly.
"And here is my
youngest daughter, Geraldine," rejoined Lord Handon,
leading his new guest's attention to the occupant of the next armchair, who
duly stood up and offered him a similar hand, albeit in a more tentative
manner. She was wearing a straight
purple dress with black stockings, and had fine dark-brown hair which was
tied-up in a bun on the crown of her head.
She couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen.
"Unfortunately, my
eldest daughter is celebrating New Year's Eve elsewhere," Lord Handon explained, for the benefit of his guest, "so
you'll have to forego the pleasure of meeting her."
Scarcely
had the writer shaken hands with Geraldine than he was whisked-on to the
occupant of the third armchair from the fire, who happened to be an artist by
name of
"And here,"
Lord Handon announced, leading the way past an empty
armchair to one occupied by a coloured girl of slender build, "is a
highly-talented young opera singer by name of Sarah Field, whom you may well
have heard of or even heard sing."
"Indeed I
have," Timothy admitted, extending a nervous hand for its sixth shaking.
"Pleased to meet
you," said the singer, with a polite smile in due attendance. Her brown eyes sparkled gaily from the
reflection, in part, of the electric lights which issued from an overhead
chandelier. She was tastefully attired
in a dark-green minidress with pale stockings, and
wore her smooth dark hair combed back into a single plait which stretched a
third of the way down her back. Her lips
were enhanced with pink lipstick, and pink was the preferred colour of her eye
make-up. She was about the same height
as Timothy - a little short of tall.
"And, finally,
before the strain of encountering so many new faces proves too much for you,
here's Miss Sheila Johnston, that excellent concert pianist of Scotch origin,
whose graceful tone and touch gladden the heart," Lord Handon
smilingly revealed.
Miss Johnston held out a
firm muscular-looking hand for Timothy to shake and lowered her large blue eyes
while he shook it. She was blushing from
the compliments of her host and smiled involuntary appreciation of his
flattery. Timothy she hardly seemed
conscious of and the handshake was uncomfortably one-sided.
"Good, that just
about takes care of everyone," Lord Handon
commented, simultaneously giving the writer a congratulatory slap on the back,
or so it seemed to the latter. "But
for a couple of people yet to arrive, we're all
here," he added, before drawing Timothy's flagging attention to the
vacant armchair in between Nigel Townley and Sarah
Field, and motioning him to sit down, which he thankfully did, though not
without a certain self-consciousness at actually taking his place there amongst
the other guests. "Since we've all
had a glass or two of port this afternoon, I should be delighted if you'd join
us in that respect," the host declared, beaming brightly.
"Very well,"
said Timothy, politely putting aside his natural aversion to such drinks.
"One
port here!" Lord Handon requested in an
extraordinarily loud tone-of-voice, bringing his butler, who stood at a
discreet remove from the armchairs, into action.
To his astonishment,
Timothy found the port being served up to him on a silver platter by the
officiating servant - a slight, balding man with long grey whiskers and a sober
mien, who bent down to facilitate service.
"Would anyone else
care for another?" the host asked, casting around the arc of his
guests. "No? Very well. That's all thank you, Madley."
The old servant
straightened up and withdrew to the drinks cabinet across the far side of the
room, where he noisily deposited the platter before taking up his customary
stance, like a sentry on duty, unobtrusive and remote. It appeared that he would have to stay there,
attentive and waiting, until his next summons, which, to Timothy's way of thinking,
seemed rather strange.
Hardly had the young
newcomer got over the experience of being served port on a silver platter than
he found himself being questioned by Lady Handon as
to the nature of his work. "My
husband tells me you're a religious writer," she remarked, fixing a pair
of beady eyes directly upon him.
"Yes, that's
basically so," he admitted.
"And quite a
revolutionary one too, I hear?" Lady Handon
added.
"Yes, I suppose
so," Timothy confirmed, nodding vaguely.
Lord Handon
smiled acquiescently and confessed to only having read one of Timothy's books
so far, and that the latest. Yet it had
made quite an impression on him, and he was now interested to discover whether
its author had made any progress beyond that point in the meantime.
"Yes, do tell us
what you're currently writing," Lady Handon
seconded. "Are you a deist, a
theist, an atheist, or what?"
"Well, as a matter
of fact, I'm an atheist, insofar as I reject the assumption of an existent
deity in the Universe and the attendant concept of Divine Creation,"
Timothy blushingly confessed.
"You do?" Lady
Handon responded, on a note of subdued alarm. "And, pray tell me, why's that?"
"Because I believe
that the Universe is fundamentally of diabolic origin and that evolution is essentially
a struggle, as it were, from the Devil to God," the writer averred.
One or two brows were
raised in tacit incredulity with the reception of this unconventional
statement. Young Geraldine even found it
slightly amusing and smiled faintly.
"In
what way diabolic?" Lady Handon wanted to
know.
"Diabolic insofar
as it was brought about by the formation of stars and their myriad
explosions," Timothy answered her.
"To my mind, there's nothing more infernal and hypernegative
than the stars, and, taken together, they signify the Devil for me, purely and
simply."
"This is certainly
beyond what you wrote in 'Religious Evolution'," Lord Handon
observed, before his wife could say anything further. "You never mentioned that there."
"No, and I believe
I've made more progress in my religious thinking these past three or four
months, since its publication, than in the whole of the preceding twelve
months," Timothy confessed.
There came a murmur or
two from some of the other guests and, once again, Lady Handon
interposed with further curiosity. "You say the stars should be equated
with the Devil, but what, pray, do you equate with God?" she asked. "After all, you've just told us that you
don't believe in Him."
"Quite so, I
don't." At which point Timothy sighed
softly and took a sip of the port which, until then, had remained
untouched. "What I do believe,
however, is that man is entrusted with the responsibility of creating God, that
human evolution is essentially nothing less than a development for bringing God
to fruition in the Universe, and thus of establishing God as the climax to
it."
Lady Handon
raised her brows and cast her husband a correspondingly puzzled look. She had never heard anything of the sort and
couldn't very well disguise the fact. "But
how?" she asked, in an almost petulant sort of way.
"Increasingly, in
the future, through the widespread practice of Transcendental Meditation and
the cultivation, in consequence, of superconscious
mind - in other words, the spirit," Timothy revealed.
"Transcendental Meditation?"
Geraldine repeated, still vaguely amused.
"Yes, though not in
a passive sense, reminiscent of Buddhist practices, but in a dynamically
post-Christian sense which stresses the difference between God and the world,
between, for want of a better term, the Holy Spirit and human spirit. One mustn't think that because one is
meditating one is tuning-in, as it were, to God, since, as I've just contended,
God is in the making, not already there.
All one would be doing, in reality, is tuning-in to one's own
spirit. But one's own spirit shouldn't
be confused with the Holy Spirit, with God per se, since it's
contaminated by the flesh, the senses, and therefore isn't transcendent. It is simply human spirit. Therefore Brahman and Atman are not, strictly
speaking, one and the same. There is no tat
tvam asi,
or 'thou art that', contrary to Oriental assumptions. Rather, the Holy Spirit is that which, as
God, will arise out of man in due course, when he has evolved to a point where
his spirit has expanded and developed to such an extent ... that it becomes
transcendent, and thereupon abandons the flesh to literally establish God in
the Universe. And once God has
been established there, He will shine inwardly for ever - eternally. So man is the medium through which the future
culmination of the Universe strives to realize itself and attain to its
blissful goal. Man is the maker of God,
not vice versa. For the maker of men,
animals, plants, etc., would appear to have been the Devil, or stars, and so
one would be quite mistaken, in my view, to speak of a divine origin to life or
to equate God with the world. 'Out of
evil cometh good', and out of the world will come God ... as pure spirit."
Lady Handon
had become well-nigh flabbergasted and now turned somewhat pale in the
face. "Do you seriously mean to
suggest that nature is evil?" she exclaimed, her beady eyes more
concentrated, seemingly, than ever.
"I most certainly
do, insofar as it's under sensual dominion in subconscious stupor,"
Timothy retorted. "Quite
the opposite of the Holy Spirit, which would be a completely spiritual essence
in superconscious bliss."
Lawrence Gowling, who had listened patiently to the conversation
thus far, suddenly felt a need to challenge Timothy on the nature of God. After all, hadn't Pascal stressed the
impossibility of our having absolute knowledge of Him, and wasn't it therefore
presumptuous of Timothy Byrne to presume he knew better?
The young writer smiled
sympathetically and took another sip of port.
"One should beware of taking everything thought by great men of the
past too seriously," he remarked.
"For their views are often proved fallacious in the course of
time. But no, I'm not presuming absolute
knowledge of God and, in that respect, I'm in complete
accordance with Pascal. However, the
fact that God is a spirit would be hard to refute, since, by definition, God is
the highest we can conceive of, and there's nothing higher than pure spirit. But that's only relative knowledge. I can say, for instance, that God will emerge
in the Universe following transcendence, but I cannot tell you for certain what
His exact scale will be, nor how brightly He will shine, nor how intense will
be the bliss that results from His spiritual constitution. I cannot tell you what it would be like to
actually be in the holy light of pure spirit, for the simple reason that I'm a
man, with a body and impure spirit, not God.
I can only speculate and say, rather theoretically, that the experience
of ultimate being would be higher and greater than anything one could ever hope
to know in the becoming ... as man. I
cannot have any absolute, eternal knowledge of it. Only, at best, a diluted, temporal, transient
knowledge, such as is compatible with my earthly condition."
"Yet, presumably,
this holy light of pure spirit, or whatever, would be a pretty large
entity," Lord Handon commented, turning a mildly
inquisitive face towards his religious guest.
"Quite possibly, though we cannot have any idea of exactly
how large," Timothy rejoined.
"We can, however, speculate that it would be compounded of the
transcendent spirit of the entire population at the climax of evolution, and
quite probably the entire population of human-equivalent life forms throughout
the Universe, so that the sum total of superconscious
mind gathered together there in absolute unity would be way beyond our
comprehension. A
phenomenal cohesion of pure spirit."
"What a staggering
thought!" cried Nigel Townley, offering his
fellow first-time guest an expression of bewilderment.
"Yes,
and this phenomenal cohesion of pure spirit would presumably constitute the One
which has arisen from the Many," Sarah Field suggested, warming to
Timothy's thesis.
"Precisely,"
the writer confirmed. "Thus the
converging universe to the Omega Point, which Teilhard
de Chardin often speaks about in his fascinating
books, would indeed be a fact of spiritual evolution. Willy-nilly, the Diabolic Many are giving way
to the Divine One."
Lady Handon
frowned bitterly and snorted defiantly.
"I really cannot reconcile myself to your attitude towards the
stars and nature," she said.
"Why, is one to see the Devil in the sun every time one looks up at
it on a fine day?"
Geraldine tittered in
frivolous response to this sceptical if not rhetorical question,
and that prompted an otherwise circumspect Sheila Johnston to do likewise. Even Lord Handon
permitted an indulgent smile to cross his formerly impassive face.
"You might find it
less picturesque if you were transported to Venus, where the surface
temperature is reputed to be somewhere in the region of eight-hundred degrees
Fahrenheit (800°F) and you'd be in for an extremely roasting time,"
Timothy replied, endeavouring not to flinch before Lady Handon's
stern gaze. "And, of course, the
closer you went to the sun, the hotter the temperature would get, so that you'd
have a less complacent notion of it.
Even here on earth there are places, like the
Lord Handon
smiled defensively. "One would
think that the Universe is still quite an imperfect place, judging by the vast
numbers of primal stars currently in existence," he said.
"Indeed,"
Timothy agreed, nodding. "And it
will continue to know imperfection until such time as the last star collapses
and fades away in so many thousands-of-millions-of-years' time. Only when the Universe is solely the Holy
Spirit will it be perfect. In the
meantime, it will remain under the Devil's influence to some extent, even with
the initial emergence of transcendent spirit."
"You mean, with the
climax of human evolution?" Gowling suggested.
"Either that or with
the climax of human-equivalent evolution on some other planet or planets
elsewhere in the Universe," Timothy smilingly rejoined. "After all, we can't be sure that we're
the only relatively-advanced species of life in the Universe, can we? And if there are others, then they must be a
part of a converging universe to the Omega Point as well."
"What makes you so
sure that some other species, more advanced than us, hasn't already established
transcendent spirit somewhere in the Universe?" Lady Handon
asked, offering fresh opposition to the young writer.
"Well, frankly, I
just can't believe that any other civilization elsewhere in the Universe could
possibly have evolved to that level when we still have such a deplorably long
way to go here," Timothy replied.
"It's too fantastic. The
theory of a converging universe would seem to suggest that, willy-nilly, all
its higher life forms must converge together en masse and roughly
apace, rather than at great evolutionary intervals. Now the fact, moreover, that we haven't yet
encountered any alien civilizations, not having explored too deeply into space,
suggests that evolution still has a long way to go before an extensive
convergence becomes manifest in the Universe.
Consequently, judging from the absence of any superior alien visitors to
earth thus far, we needn't expect other civilizations to be greatly ahead of
us. In all probability they'll either be
a little behind us, approximately on our own level, or a little ahead -
assuming, for the sake of argument, that any such alien civilizations, and
hence alternative life-forms, do actually exist. Yet I'd be extremely surprised to learn of an
alien civilization which had already established the beginnings of God, so to speak,
in the Universe, when it would seem that we on earth still have such a
deplorably long way to go. Somehow I
can't help but assume that any truly-advanced, superior 'people' would already
have made themselves extensively known throughout the Universe by dint of
their spiritual sophistication. Accordingly, I remain unflinchingly an
atheist, but an atheist with this difference: I'm all in favour of our doing
what we can either to establish God as the Holy Spirit in the Universe in the
future or, if some other civilization beats us to it, at least contribute to
its growth by linking our spirit with the sum total of transcendent spirit
already there. Thus I'm in the quite
unique position of being an atheist who's in favour of God. No small distinction!"
Lady Handon
snorted contemptuously and sought distraction in the flickering flames of the
large open fire to her left. She wasn't
at all resigned to the writer's beliefs, nor to his
apparent facetiousness concerning them!
But Lord Handon had a different response.
"Yes, you're
probably onto something there," he at length opined, a reflective
expression on his darkly clean-shaven face.
"The notion of a diabolic origin and of a divine consummation to
the Universe does, I must say, possess a certain logical appeal. After all, when one recalls that this planet
was once populated by fearsome dinosaurs and other loathsome monsters, and that
volcanoes were erupting all over the damn place, it would seem more logical to
ascribe such a creation to the Devil than to God. Life on earth must have been a real hell for
the earliest men, mustn't it?"
"To be sure, and only very gradually did it become less so, as man
evolved away from nature and thus grew less evil himself," Timothy
averred. "For a long time man was
little better than the beasts, since more given, like them, to sensual
indulgences. But gradually, with the
development of civilization, he became less sensual and more spiritual, grew
closer to God. Yet even the most
spiritual men are partly of diabolic origin, insofar as they're of the flesh. All they can do is aspire towards God, not
actually be God. For God and
nature, which includes the flesh, are two very different things, and should
never be equated!"
Lady Handon
frowned sullenly at Timothy, while Geraldine drew attention to the difference
between his standpoint and those who equated God with nature. Apparently, the pantheists were quite
mistaken, then?
"To my mind they're
really unconscious devil-worshippers," the writer asserted
confidently. "Anyone who equates
God with creation rather than consummation must inevitably make the same
mistake. For nature is an entirely
sensual phenomenon, and anyone who thinks he sees God in it must be imagining
things. If, on rare occasions, it
appears transfigured, shines, as it were, with a spiritual glow - as it
apparently did for Wordsworth on occasion - one can assume that the mind of the
beholder has experienced an inrush of spirit and projected this internal
transformation onto nature, thus giving rise to the delusion that it's nature itself
which shines with 'something far more deeply interfused',
or whatever the quotation is. For, in
reality, nature can never be anything other than its own subconscious
self."
"Accordingly,
writers like Aldous Huxley were somewhat mistaken to
equate it with God?" Lord Handon suggested.
"Indeed,"
Timothy opined. "Although
unquestionably a brilliant man, Huxley fell too much under the influence of
Oriental mysticism, with its complacency in nature. He couldn't properly distinguish between the
One and the Many, but was all-too-disposed to see the Many in the One rather
than as the basis out of which the One would eventually emerge. He could never have equated the stars with
the Devil, still less regarded nature as the Devil's creation. To him, it was all part of the One, and the
One was compounded of the creative force behind nature, or the Ground, the
natural realm itself, including the human, and the Clear Light of the
Void."
"Which, presumably,
is approximately equivalent to the Holy Trinity?" Lord Handon
conjectured.
"To be sure,"
Timothy conceded. "But this, I
believe, is where traditional religion, both Eastern and Western, slips
up. For, in reality, there's no such
unity but, rather, a continuum of evolution from the Diabolic Alpha to the
Divine Omega via man. The One is the
consummation of this evolution, not a combination of 'Three in One', like the
Christian cynosure of the Holy Trinity.
To my mind, the Creator, or the Ground, is symbolic of the Many, whereas
the Holy Spirit, or Clear Light, symbolizes of the One. And, in between, we have Jesus Christ, or
some such Eastern equivalent like the Buddha, who represents the human
aspiration towards God, towards Oneness.
He is a son of the Many, as it were, aspiring towards the One."
"A
son of the Devil?" Lord Handon queried,
on a note of slightly scandalized concern.
"Inasmuch as we're all sons or daughters of nature and are
thus fleshy, worldly, natural," Timothy calmly responded.
"Yet Christ is
represented as a supernatural being in scripture," Lady Handon objected.
"From a theological
standpoint, that is absolutely correct," the writer admitted, blushing
slightly under pressure of her fierce gaze.
"But, not being an orthodox Christian, I don't personally take Christ's
divinity too seriously. To me, there's
only one true divinity, and that is the pure spirit which should emerge out of
man's spirit at the culmination of evolution.
I reject all other concepts of the supernatural, including the
ghostly. And that's why I'm an atheist,
not a believer in divinities which are presumed to exist already."
"Then what, pray,
of the resurrection of Christ?" Lady Handon
imperiously pressed him.
"I regard that as
an excellent symbol, or metaphor, for man's future destiny in spiritual
transcendence," Timothy declared.
"Don't think I'm knocking Christianity, I'm not. If you must know, I regard it as the greatest
of the traditional, or 'axial', faiths ... to cite a term coined, I believe, by
the philosopher Lewis Mumford. But I also believe that, so far as the more
advanced industrial nations are concerned, it has seen its best days and is
gradually being superseded by a transcendental attitude to God, an attitude
which should constitute the final stage of our religious evolution. Christianity has brought us to
transcendentalism, but transcendentalism will take us to God - of that I have
no doubt!"
"Let's hope you're
right," said Nigel Townley sympathetically.
"Yes," agreed
Geraldine, to the consternation of her mother, who briefly cast her a sharp look of reproof.
"And presumably this transcendentalism to which you allude, Mr Byrne, should not be confounded with Oriental
mysticism, but is largely a Western affair?"
"It stems from the
artificial influence of the modern city, which, in cutting us off from nature
to a greater extent than ever before, has made the cultivation of a
predominantly spiritual approach to God possible." No sooner had Timothy said this, however,
than he realized that he was speaking to a person who, together with her
parents, spent most of her time in the country and therefore wasn't in a
position to appreciate it properly. But,
since he had already spoken at some length about his religious beliefs anyway,
there seemed little point in his refusing to continue just because Geraldine
wasn't likely to appreciate it. And so,
with fresh resolve, he went on: "One might say that it's post-Christian,
insofar as we're led to concentrate our religious devotion on the Third rather
than Second so-called 'Person' of the Trinity, and so work towards actually
bringing about the birth of the Holy Spirit in the Universe. Accordingly we're not indulging in Buddhism
or Hinduism or Mohammedanism or any other traditional religion, but in
something which is the logical outcome of them all, since a further instance of
the converging universe from the Many to the One. Instead, therefore, of a number of so-called
world religions, the future will contain just one, a true world, or global,
religion, and, being transcendental, it will prove acceptable to everyone. Indeed, religion is hardly the word! For we won't be dealing
with creeds or dogmas or rites or prayers or any of the other formulae of
traditional religious observance.
Yet inasmuch as religion has to do with the cultivation of spirit, then
a religion of sorts is what it will assuredly be, and meditation, as a method
of directly cultivating the spirit, will apply to it. But its objective will be to establish God,
whereas traditional religion assumes that God already exists, which, in my opinion,
just isn't true. All that actually
exists is the Devil, viz. the stars, and the Devil's creations, viz. nature,
the beasts, and man. For me, the
Creator, which traditional religion upholds, is symbolic of the stars and is
thus diabolic, not divine! 'Our Father Who art in Heaven'.... No, rather 'Our Father Who art in Hell' ..."
Lady Handon
huffed indignantly and cast her guest another withering look. "Really, Mr Byrne, how can you say such
a scandalous thing!" she exclaimed.
"Because I believe
it's true," the latter explained. "After all, we're living in an age
which is in the process of transvaluating all values,
to cite Nietzsche, and this is simply a further instance of such a transvaluation, whereby the Father becomes synonymous with
the Devil, in order that the term 'God' may solely be applied to the Holy
Spirit, and all ambivalence and open-society relativity accordingly be
overcome. In reality, the concept of the
Blessed Trinity is a myth. For the
Father is decidedly cursed, whereas Christ, like all men who have attained to a
civilized stage of evolution, is somewhere in-between - in other words both cursed and blessed, as his dual role as
banisher and redeemer at the Last Judgement adequately attests, whether or not
one actually believes in such a judgement.
So the Father is really the Devil in disguise, an anthropomorphic
metaphor for the creative-and-sustaining force behind the world. Now what is that if not the sun and other
such stars in the Universe? As I've said
before, if evolution is a journey from the Diabolic Alpha to the Divine Omega,
from the Devil to God, then one can hardly regard the creative and sustaining
force as God. On the contrary, God is,
only the Devil does."
"All this is indeed
rather revolutionary, isn't it?" Lady Handon
observed disapprovingly. "And also
rather blasphemous, I might add."
"Blasphemous?"
Timothy queried.
"Well, you do speak
of the Father as cursed, don't you?" Lady Handon
rejoined. "And your interpretation
of the Lord's Prayer would suggest that you identify 'Our Father' with the Father
instead of with Christ, even granted the rather ambivalent terminology
involved, which may well lead some people to unthinkingly identify the Lord's
Prayer with the Creator, and thus with anything but the god of Christian
humanity."
"That's all too
true, and one has to accept that Western civilization is anything but clear-cut
in its allegiance to Christ," averred Timothy, who was pleasantly
surprised to find himself at last agreeing with Lady Handon
on something. "Yet my use of the
word 'cursed' in relation to the Father is only on the understanding that the
Father, or the Creator, stands as a symbol for the sum-total of flaming stars
in the Universe.... Besides, as an atheist, I would be incapable of
blasphemy. For God is something I regard
as in the making, not an already-existent fact.
We have to develop our spirit until, by transcending the flesh, it becomes pure spirit and thereby establishes the
light of God in the Universe. At present,
the Holy Spirit simply isn't there to be blasphemed, only the Devil. And I don't see how one can be accused of
blaspheming that!"
"I wasn't accusing
you of blaspheming the Devil," the hostess sternly countered. "Simply of blaspheming
God by regarding Him as cursed."
"Correction,"
said Timothy. "I was regarding the
Father as cursed, since He is symbolic of the stars for me. And the stars ... well, I could hardly be
expected to regard them, in all their infernal heat, as blessed, could I? Quite the reverse. Only the Holy Spirit will be truly blessed,
and I can assure you that I'd be the last person on earth to blaspheme that -
assuming one could. No, the age of
blasphemy, so to speak, is by and large a thing of the past, and let's be
sincerely grateful for the fact! For we
are gradually coming to realize that the Universe, or at least the world, is
becoming increasingly peopled by men who, having turned their backs on the
Diabolic Alpha in light of a more evolved status, aspire towards the Divine
Omega, not by men who imagine they can come into direct contact with the Divine
Omega, or that alpha and omega are really one and the same! One can of course come into a more profound,
expansive contact with one's spirit if one bothers to cultivate it. But that's quite a different proposition, I
should think, from actually being in the Holy Spirit as pure
transcendence. One's own spirit is, at
the best of times, only potentially divine.
For it's all the time surrounded by the flesh or, rather, the brain. Only those whose spirits develop to a point,
in the distant future, of literally becoming transcendent ... will know what it
means to have direct contact with the Divine Omega. For they will actually be God."
Lady Handon
permitted herself a sharply cynical laugh, in spite of the gravity of the
subject. "Are we therefore to
suppose, dear boy, that the spirits of these future people of your perverse
imaginings will somehow break out of the body, or wherever it is that spirit
reposes, and soar heavenwards, like comets or rockets?" she cried, casting
Timothy an equally sharp look of quizzical scepticism.
In spite of his
convictions her guest was unable to prevent himself from blushing at what
seemed like a cynically rhetorical question, especially since Geraldine and one
or two of the others were manifestly amused by it. "It may seem odd," he admitted,
after due deliberation, "but you could well be right in supposing
something of the kind. After all, how
else could spirit become transcendent if not by breaking free of the brain and
gravitating towards some point in the Universe congenial to itself?"
Lady Handon
huffed disdainfully. "And from
whereabouts in the brain would this ... transcendent spirit emerge?" she
wanted to know.
"Presumably from
that part of the psyche known as the superconscious,
in which it had been cultivated," Timothy averred.
"What, leaving a
hole in the skull behind?" Lady Handon
conjectured cynically.
Lord Handon
flashed his wife a reproving glance, but said nothing.
"Not
necessarily," Timothy responded, remaining calm. "Though it might cause the brain to blow
apart, since it would be an incredibly powerful globe of spirit - more powerful
than virtually anything of which we can now conceive."
Lady Handon
smiled self-indulgently. She was
endeavouring to imagine what thousands of small globes of spirit simultaneously
converging upon a central axis in the Universe would look like. Some kind of vast fireworks display in
reverse was the nearest she could get to it.
"And, presumably, when all the transcendent spirit in the Universe
had converged upon a central axis, God would be complete, would He?" she
frowningly concluded.
Timothy nodded his head
in wary confirmation. "But not
until then," he opined. "Which
is another reason why one can assume that, properly speaking, God doesn't at
present exist. For even if, by some
remote chance, an alien civilization much more advanced than ours had
established transcendent spirit somewhere in the Universe, such spirit would
only amount to a tiny fraction of the potential sum-total of pure transcendence
which the evolving Universe was capable of producing. In other words, it would merely constitute
the beginnings of God, not the Divine Omega in its entirety, grown to full
maturity, so to speak, through the spiritual assimilation of the total
transcendence of every advanced civilization.
However, I incline to doubt that even one alien
civilization elsewhere in the Universe has already attained to definitive
salvation, and thus entered the heavenly Beyond."
Lady Handon
coughed superciliously and turned her beady eyes back towards the fire, as
though to seek refuge in a more congenial element - one necessarily closer to
the Diabolic Alpha.
"But what happens
to our spirit when we die?" the host asked, taking over the reins of
sceptical interrogation from his fire-struck wife. "I mean if, as you would doubtless
agree, transcendent spirit is eternal, why shouldn't our mundane spirit also be eternal and thus, as has been traditionally believed,
capable of surviving bodily death?
Surely if spirit is eternal, it must continue to exist following
death?"
"I rather doubt
that," answered Timothy in an almost commiserating tone-of-voice. "For it seems to me that spirit only has
a right to eternity if it has been extensively cultivated and is thereby able
to escape the body, not otherwise being strong enough to survive it. Now since we haven't yet evolved to a stage
of extensively cultivating the spirit, having too many bodily obligations to
attend to, it would seem that it is destined to perish - mine, yours,
everyone's. We none of us seem to have
got to a point where spirit is strong enough for eternity."
"Not even the
saints and spiritually elect?" Lord Handon
queried, his eyebrows slightly arched in sceptical response.
"I doubt it,"
Timothy opined. "After all, they
mostly lived in an age which was at a lower stage of evolution than ours, an
age in which men were closer to nature and had more contact with natural things
generally. And, as far as I know, they
all died - like everyone else. Now it
has been assumed that, at death, the spirit passes into the heavenly
Beyond. But I incline to the view that,
even in the case of the more spiritually earnest individuals, it simply expires
and thereby succumbs to that nothingness the other side of life. For if the spirit ever were to leave for the
Beyond, it seems to me that the point of death would be the last time at which
it could do so, since it's weaker then than at any other time and therefore
unlikely to gather sufficient energy together to be able to precipitate itself
into Eternity. No, I incline to the view
that, at death, the spirit simply expires.
If one is ever qualified to transcend the body, it would be at a point
in time when the spirit was most energetic, not when it was on the point of
languishing irrevocably into death. One
would, I imagine, be in one's spiritual prime, fully conscious and determined
to attain to the Beyond, which isn't, however, the narrow personalized heaven of
Christian man but, rather, the climax of evolution in which, by completely
transcending the body, man ceases to be human and becomes divine. That is my belief anyway, and you can accept
or reject it, as you please. I'm not
trying to convert anyone here to my religious position, simply endeavouring to
offer what I consider to be a valid reinterpretation and extension of Christian
belief in suitably contemporary terms.
For we've now got to the stage, as a society, where it's possible to
look upon spiritual evolution not with the eyes of faith, like our Christian
forebears, but with the eyes of scientific knowledge. The age of faith is, fortunately or
unfortunately, a thing of the past, rendered necessary in its time by the
egocentric stage of evolution to which dualistic man had progressed. Now that we're in the post-egocentric or
transcendental stage of evolution, however, we can regard spiritual issues with
a transpersonally factual eye and thereby aspire to
objective truth. We needn't consider
ourselves particularly unfortunate on that account."
There was a rustle of
clothing and a few embarrassed coughs from amongst the
recipients of Timothy's informal lecture, followed by an uneasy silence in
which baffled or sceptical looks were exchanged. Only Nigel Townley
on the writer's left and Sarah Field on his right conveyed an impression of
having been impressed by it, since they gently smiled in his direction and
regarded him with respectful eyes.
However, the host and hostess appeared somewhat disconcerted, especially
the latter, whose eyes smouldered with resentment in the shadow of the
flickering flames. But nothing further
was said or asked to provoke Timothy into continuing an exposition of his
current religious freethinking. And so,
before long, the conversation turned elsewhere, giving some of the other guests
an opportunity to reveal their deeper selves, however right or wrong those
selves might happen to be!
CHAPTER THREE
Later that afternoon Lord Handon,
desiring as much to show off his house as to entertain his guests in a
relatively educative manner, took those of them who hadn't set foot in it
before on a brief tour of inspection, starting with the ground floor and
working up to the bedrooms in which each of them had been allocated a bed for
the night. Sarah Field expressed her
delight in and amazement at what the host had in store for them, whereas
Timothy Byrne, though intrigued by the scale of everything, remained somewhat
cooler and more objectively detached than the others, as though in an effort
not to be too impressed by anything, least of all by its scale or amount.
It was in the library,
for instance, that he acquired his first real glimpse of an aristocratic norm
where books were concerned - a glimpse, alas, which did little but confirm him
in his low opinion of aristocratic libraries generally! Stretching some thirty yards along the length
of an entire wall and reaching to a height of about ten feet from the floor,
the shelves of this particular library were crammed full of rather
cumbersome-looking leather-backed tomes of ancient lineage, which had doubtless
been handed down from generation to generation of the Handon
family line. There must have been
upwards of 20,000 books there, most of which had probably never been read, at
least not by the present owner, the 4th Viscount Handon. They had probably just stood there for
centuries, gathering dust. Only a tiny
fraction of them, at best, would have had their pages turned and perused in a
thoroughly curious manner.... Though quite a number may well
have served a brief reference purpose which the owner felt it incumbent upon
himself to engage in from time to time.
Indeed, many of them were so large, so weighty and lengthy, that it was
inconceivable they could possibly serve any other purpose than one of
reference, since, even with all the time in the world, such tomes would have
taken months, if not years, to peruse individually. For the most part, they were simply
decorative possessions which the viscount had considered it expedient to
hold-on to for family honour and to satisfy the scholarly traditions of his
class - extremely expensive possessions which would fetch a tidy sum from any
prospective buyer, if ever he or any of his descendants decided to sell.
Oh, yes! And as Timothy scanned the tightly packed
shelves of cumbersome tomes, he realized that their purchase could run into
hundreds-of-thousands of pounds. But
that wasn't something by which he intended to be unduly impressed. On the contrary, he needed to keep his
customary attitude to the existence of such collections in mind - an attitude
which, rather than being impressed by them, tended towards their condemnation
on grounds of excessive materialism. As
the Biblical proverb had it: 'Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter the
No, it was perfectly
obvious that they were not the ears for his mouth, to paraphrase Nietzsche,
but, given their stately circumstances, would either be offended by what he
said, as in the case of Lady Pamela, or somewhat perplexed by it, as in the
case of the more benign Lord Handon, who nevertheless
endeavoured, in his capacity of host, to remain as receptive as possible. Still, one could understand the human
aspirations in the face of nature which had led to the building of large
country houses like Rothermore. Rather than risk being dwarfed by the
surrounding countryside, the aristocracy had sought to tame and dominate it as
best they could, and the erection of the largest possible houses had gone some
way towards satisfying that end. After
all, even the ancient aristocracy were human beings, not animals, and
consequently they reflected human aspirations towards the Divine Omega, no
matter how crudely or materialistically.
Even the viscount's great-great-great-grandfather would have had a
spirit of sorts and found it desirable to cultivate that spirit to at least
some extent, even if only to the rather limited extent of collecting thousands
of cumbersome books and filling his house with Greek or Roman statuary. For, as the library amply
demonstrated, there was no shortage of classical sculpture on display, though
most of it was undoubtedly derivative.
In fact, it was difficult not to stumble against various of the statues,
statuettes, and busts, as one gingerly wound one's way between the tables and
chairs liberally scattered along the length of Lord Handon's
library, as though in anticipation of a whole tribe of avid readers. Doubtless a certain horror vacui had possessed the original furnisher of this room,
which duly resulted in its becoming virtually crammed with possessions, both
aesthetic and utilitarian. And the
current owner had not rebelled against the fashion of his ancestors but, if the
comparative newness of one or two of the chairs and tables was any indication,
had succumbed to it with a few materialistic additions of his own! Well, judging by the amount of furniture
already in the room, it was pretty obvious that Lord Handon
wouldn't be able to add much else to it in future, not unless he either sold
off most of what was already there or set about filling up the interior space
of certain other rooms - assuming, of course, that they still had any such
space left to fill. As yet, Timothy had
only seen a couple of the downstairs rooms, so he wasn't really in a position
to judge. But what he had seen was more
than enough to make him pessimistic about the rest of the house, bathrooms and
toilets not excepted!
Yet, by an ironic
paradox, it could also be claimed that this urge to collect and fill one's
rooms with expensive possessions was a further indication of aristocratic man's
desire not to be dwarfed or smothered by nature, but to extend civilization to
the extent he could. The regrettable
thing, however, was that he could only extend it, for the most part, in
materialistic terms, not in terms, significant of the spiritual, which stood at
the furthest remove from sensuous nature.
With him, it was more a case of endeavouring to protect oneself against
a greater evil with the aid of a lesser good.
Whereas it was increasingly becoming the tendency of modern man to
protect himself against a lesser good with the aid of a greater good, which is
to say, to bring forward the direct cultivation of the spirit through
meditation at the expense of its indirect cultivation through culture. No small distinction! But aristocratic man, reflected Timothy,
hadn't really been in a position to do any such thing, and so the indirect
cultivation of the spirit through culture was, as a rule, the best that could
be done.
And not generally the
most elevated culture either, if Lord Handon's
library was anything by which to judge!
One searched in vain, among the numerous sculptures on display, for
anything with a direct bearing on Christianity.
Not a single statue, statuette, or bust of a senior Church dignitary,
not even of a pope or an archbishop, and no reproductions of saints or
evangelists either. Except for some
busts dedicated to the memory of various members of the Handon
line, the entire collection revolved around classical antiquity, with
reproductions of Roman emperors, Graeco-Roman deities,
and one or two Greek heroes, like Hercules and
Yet neither, it
appeared, would the writings of the great Christian mystics have appealed to
this family. For the
bookshelves were mainly dedicated to the pagan authors of classical antiquity,
especially the Romans, who figured prominently on the lower shelves. Possibly everything ever written and
preserved for posterity by Sulla, Cicero, Tetullian,
Caesar, Scipio, Horace, Senneca, Juvenal, Catullus, Virgil, Terence, and Pliny was to be found there,
both in the original Latin and in subsequent English, French, and German
translations, reminiscent of the sort of library favoured by that great
sixteenth-century humanist, Michel de Montaigne. By craning one's neck up to the top two
shelves at the far end of the library, it was just possible to discern a few
large depressing-looking bibles, again in various tongues, but the eye soon
encountered the beginnings of a series of books written not by the Church
Fathers, as one might vaguely have expected, but by medieval scholastics of a
classical turn-of-mind, whose interest in contemporary scientific endeavour
extended to a commentary on the Greek philosophers, and whose works now
sedately reposed beside the major philosophical achievements of Plato and
Aristotle. Farther along that same shelf
the subject of Greek philosophy was superseded by a series of large tomes on
alchemy, among them a number by Paracelsus, and beneath these the eye discerned
the complete plays of Shakespeare, Racine, Corneille,
and Molière in rather old but evidently valuable
editions - probably the first or very nearly.
Apart from a number of important literary figures such as Chaucer,
Dante, Montaigne, Boccaccio,
Rabelais, Petrach, Cevantes,
Milton, Byron, and Goethe, the greater part of the remaining shelves was
taken-up with histories, memoirs, biographies, letters, philosophies, and books
on painting, architecture, graphics, landscape gardening, and sculpture. In fact, apart from a little modern history,
the only contribution the twentieth century seemed to make to Lord Handon's library was in the realm of aesthetics, notably
through art books dealing with classical antiquity and the Renaissance. Judging by the nature of the house itself,
one might have thought the Baroque would figure prominently. But, try as he might, Timothy could discern
no more than three works dedicated to that stage of aesthetic evolution, and
they were decidedly pre-war, suggesting acquisition by the viscount's father or
grandfather rather than by the current owner himself. Thus apart from the aforementioned histories
and studies in classical and renaissance aesthetics, the crisp spines and
bright titles of which betrayed comparatively recent purchase, the great
majority of the books on display appeared to have been inherited and retained
in aristocratic tradition. Unless by
some chance Lord Handon had a second library
elsewhere, it looked as though this collection was broadly representative of
his intellectual tastes - tastes which completely excluded the modern! For even the newer books in it had been
written in the twentieth century about
pre-twentieth century activity, like the studies in classical art. As regards modern art, a
complete blank. And as regards
modern literature, the nearest one came to it appeared to be half-a-dozen
novels by Disraeli and a couple by Lytton! Really, Timothy could hardly believe his
eyes, as he frantically scanned the shelves in search of twentieth-century
life. Not even a Proust
or a Gide or a Mann.
Nothing! So far as this library
went, the twentieth century didn't exist.
Evidently, Lord Handon had little use for
it. Or would it be nearer the mark to
say that it had little use for him?
It wasn't exactly a
question one could ask there and then, not, anyway, while the man in question
was so fervently engaged in explaining to both Sarah Field and Nigel Townley how his great-grandfather had acquired the Venus
statuette in imitation of Phidias by an unknown Roman
sculptor whilst serving as English ambassador to Italy at the time of its
discovery. A quite shapely statuette it
was too, but terribly nude and pagan! It
would have been of more interest to Timothy, just then, had someone inquired
how the family had come by the worn edition of the Marquis de Sade's 120 Jours de Sodom,
which reposed, beside a number of the master's other novels, on a shelf just to
the left of where he was now standing, slightly apart from the small group of
admiring statuette-gazers. At least de Sade, for all his moral faults, had the virtue of seeing
the criminality in nature at close range, so to speak, and in not pretending
that it was really something else. There
was even a dash of the saint about him, albeit in a paradoxically negative kind
of way. For rather than turning towards
God and the spiritual with love, like a genuine saint, de Sade
had elected to turn against nature and the sensual with contempt, and thereby
set about denigrating it in the manner best known to posterity. Hardly surprising, therefore, that he was
condemned as a criminal and regarded as an eccentric in an age of Rousseauesque fervour for nature and Wordsworthian complacency in nature. His hatred of nature, and the rather extreme
manifestation it was increasingly to take, could hardly be described, under the
prevailing circumstances, as trendy. Yet
it served as an example of sorts to such negatively inclined 'saints', or
anti-saints, as Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Huysmans, who were to bring the anti-natural tradition of
decadent writings to a much more refined pass later in the century. But de Sade, it
appeared, was the only anti-saint Lord Handon's
library contained, whether or not its current owner appreciated the fact. In all probability, thought Timothy, as he
followed his fellow-guests past the Venus statuette and on towards the exit, the
novels by that notorious French nobleman had mouldered on their shelf since
virtually the time of their purchase.
The current viscount had probably not even opened them. Or, if perchance he had, he probably shut
them again pretty quickly, fearing contamination!
They passed out of the
library and were, in due course, introduced to most of the other rooms,
including a large billiards room in which a couple of lush green felt-topped
tables, one full-size and the other small, stood naked but for a cue resting on
each. Apparently billiards and snooker
were among the host's favourite pastimes, which he sometimes played with
himself, but more often with friends of the family who came-in from nearby
country houses to do noble battle with him.
Neither of the two male
guests accompanying him on this particular tour of inspection, however, could
admit to being regular practitioners of either game, though Townley
confessed to having played a great deal of snooker in his youth - a confession
which appeared to endow him with a certain temporary distinction over the
others in Lord Handon's eyes.
Yet, for Timothy, the
most interesting aspect of the billiards room was the arrangement of Ionic
pilasters which stretched the length of the walls at wide though regular intervals,
endowing the setting with a restrained classical elegance. Being fluted, they took on a symbolically
feminine character that sharply contrasted with the masculinity of the bare,
white Doric columns which stood at salient points in the room, more suggestive
of the interior of a Greek temple than of anything recreational. In fact, there was even space here for a few
statues of Greek athletes, and the wall nearest the full-size table had two
curved niches in it, at a distance of some four yards apart, each of which
contained a brightly-painted Greek vase of the type which Timothy must have
seen hundreds of photos of, during his pictorial investigations in the local
library, but had only once before beheld in the flesh, so to speak, and then in
the British Museum. Was this spectacle
any better or worse, he wondered?
Curiously, he thought worse. For
he had grown so accustomed to photographic reproductions of works of art ...
that he had come to value the reproduction above the original production. Lord Handon was
perfectly entitled to his vases, as to his sculptures, but he, Timothy Byrne,
wouldn't have wanted them, not even if he they were offered to him
free-of-charge. He preferred the
spiritualization of the material object to the material object itself, and was
therefore more at home with photos.
These Greek vases were of course beautiful, but they were even more
beautiful, to Timothy's way of thinking, as colour reproductions in some choice
book on the arts. The actual object was
somehow disappointing, all too palpably there. He preferred his culture at a Platonic
remove, as it were, from real culture, raised above materialism through
spiritual sublimation. All these
sculptures and ceramics which Lord Handon possessed
and evidently had need of, to fill his immense house, would have been raised to
a higher level, it seemed to him, in photographic reproduction. Rather than floundering about amidst bodies,
as one did here, one would be contemplating their abstracted spirit, at a safe
remove from their physical presence. And
one would be experiencing a higher level of culture - a level made possible
thanks to the existence of photography.
Yes, how logical
evolution was! The further one evolved,
the more spiritual one became.
Eventually one would even dispense with photographic reproductions. But not for a while yet,
least of all within the foreseeable future. The twenty-first century would doubtless
continue to amass reproductions of the materialistic culture appertaining to an
earlier stage of civilized evolution, thereby indirectly furthering the cause
of its own spiritual culture. And
Timothy would continue to derive more pleasure from the latter than from the
former - of that he assured himself. In
fact, so much so that his facial expression, as he stood no more than a few
feet from the nearest Greek vase, must have communicated something of the
disdain he was feeling for the object to its owner, who casually remarked, by
way of apology, that it was a rather second-rate, first-century item purchased
for a modest sum by his grandfather, some decades ago. Slightly taken aback by the host's unexpected
intervention, and a little ashamed of himself for
having unwittingly betrayed his feelings on the matter, Timothy blushed faintly
and then burst into a forgiving smile.
He could hardly reveal to the viscount what had really been on his mind!
And so, following their
brief but passably educative tour of Rothermore
House, the three first-time guests were led back to the large drawing-room,
where the rest of the gathering was still assembled, and thereupon encouraged
to have another drink, with the aged butler duly officiating. Dinner, they were informed, would commence at
seven-thirty sharp, whether or not the remaining two invitees had arrived. In the meantime, they were to relax and simply
get to know one another better. Which is
what now proceeded to happen ... in spite of their differences. Even the drawing-room had certain lessons to
teach, and Timothy, not least, was avid to learn what he could from it!
CHAPTER FOUR
To Timothy's subsequent satisfaction, the long dinner table
accommodated the seven guests and three members of the Handon
family quite comfortably, leaving ample elbow-room to either side. At the head of it sat Lord Handon, whilst on either side of him, to
left and right along the table's length, sat Sarah and Timothy, the one
directly opposite the other. Next to
Timothy was Sheila Johnston, the Scotch pianist, whilst opposite her the
architect Nigel Townley eagerly spooned into his
helping of duck soup. Beside him sat
young Geraldine Handon, who looked directly across,
whenever she lifted her bright-blue eyes, at the moustached face of
"And how are things
getting along at the museum?" Lady Handon
inquired of the portly gentleman to her right.
"Oh, quite well on
the whole, I'm delighted to report," O'Donnell replied. "We're getting more visitors by the
day."
His hostess seemed
pleased by this response and cast her husband, who happened to have an eye
cocked in their direction, a complacent glance.
"Young or old?" she asked.
"Oh, mostly schoolkids," O'Donnell obliged, momentarily desisting
from the avid consumption of his duck soup.
"Really? And are they very noisy?"
The portly gentleman
chuckled softly. "Not as a rule,
thank goodness," he confessed.
"We try to discourage speaking as much as possible, which, in the
circumstances, is rather ironic really."
Lady Handon
smiled knowingly and cast her husband a matching glance, to which he duly
responded with a short, sharp laugh.
"Perhaps we ought to enlighten those of our guests who haven't
heard about Mr O'Donnell's museum," he suggested, preparatory to imbibing
a steady spoonful of soup.
"Yes, do please
tell us what all this is about," Sheila Johnston politely requested of
him.
The portly gentleman cleared
his throat with a soft though evidently ironic cough and smiled esoterically
upon the host, who duly said: "Well, as you will no doubt be surprised and
delighted to hear, Mr O'Donnell is principal director of the world's first
voice museum."
"Voice museum?"
Sheila echoed, visibly startled by this unusual information.
"Quite,"
confirmed the principal director with a gentle nod. "It is a rather novel concept, I'll
admit. But one which, in my opinion, was
long overdue."
"As would seem to
be borne out by the growing curiosity it is apparently exciting from the
public," Lady Handon commented.
"But what exactly is
this voice museum?" Sheila pursued, showing Scotch determination to get to
the bottom of the matter. She looked
searchingly at Mr O'Donnell, but it was Lord Handon
who elected to reply with: "Simply an institution in
"Though some people
like to re-enter the booth a number of times in order to listen to the same
voice over and over again," O'Donnell remarked, a touch petulantly.
"And then in spite
of the fact that they'll only hear the same recording as before," Lord Handon rejoined sympathetically.
The principal director
nodded his curly-haired head.
"Quite," he confirmed.
"Though, in the case of voices like Marilyn Monroe's and Greta Garbo's, you can quite understand it."
General amusement
prevailed amongst the other guests, with the reception of this remark.
"You mean to say
you preserve the voices of famous film stars there?" exclaimed Sarah on a
note of gratified incredulity.
"Not only of film
stars but of the famous in general," O'Donnell declared, before noisily
swallowing his last spoonful of soup.
"We have quite a large room also dedicated to the voices of famous
writers, composers, artists, politicians, sportsmen, war heroes, and so
on. And we shall shortly be opening a
smaller room upstairs exclusively dedicated to the voices of infamous persons,
including the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin."
"Something
to rival the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Toussaud's,"
Gowling suggested, smirking ironically.
"Quite
possibly," O'Donnell conceded.
"But such specific voices, for which the young queue like rush-hour
commuters, are only a single aspect of the museum's facilities or, rather, exhibits. There are
other rooms in which anonymous voices may be heard remarking on some particular
thing - one on the ground floor, for instance, exclusively dedicated to
regional dialects of the British people, where the visitor can sample examples
of the thickest Geordie, the highest Highland, the softest Scouse,
the strongest Swansea, the broadest Mancunian, or
what have you. Then appended to this
room is another, smaller one in which the emphasis is on class rather than
simply regional differences, and where the visitor can sample anything from the
most plebeian cockney to the most patrician Oxbridge. An ear-opener if ever there was one! For you're made comprehensively aware, if you
take full advantage of our facilities, as to just how wide the range of speech
variation actually is between the various classes, and of how many classes
there in fact are throughout the length and breadth of the country. Yet that room is merely an appendage to the
dialect room, which covers a much wider range of tone."
At this point there
issued from the assembled guests a mixture of surprise and amusement,
astonishment and incredulity. Timothy
Byrne, in particular, was quite astonished by these revelations,
and inquired of the man responsible for them why it was necessary to collect
and exhibit such voices?
"My dear
chap," Lord Handon interposed, deputizing for
the hard-pressed O'Donnell, "it's simply the function of a museum to
preserve a record of a given aspect of life, culture, society, or whatever, and
our museum is no exception. Here, for future
generations no less than contemporary ones, is a record, well-stocked and
equally well-preserved, of the twentieth-century human voice in all or most of
its several manifestations. For
virtually the first time in history, we are enabled, by our technology, to
preserve a record of that most elusive of things, the human voice, and that's
precisely what the museum does."
"Yes, and not only
with regard to the British voice," O'Donnell confirmed, "but also
with regard to just about every other national voice in the world, not to
mention, in a majority of cases, the dialect and class divisions thereof."
Timothy was virtually
thunderstruck, and so, too, were most of the other guests, despite the
distraction of dinner - the servants meanwhile having removed the empty soup
dishes and brought in the main course, which included roast chicken and
assorted vegetables, these latter being brought up to the table separately in
Sevres china and deposited at regular intervals along its ample length.
"For not only does
the museum possess a British room," O'Donnell continued, ignoring the toing-and-froing of the busy servants, "but it also
possesses European, Asian, North American, South American, African, and
Australasian rooms, in which examples of the greatest diversity are to be
found."
"Especially in the
European and Asian rooms, where the entire gamut of major national languages is
represented," Lady Handon remarked, putting
aside, for the moment, her preoccupation with food. "In the European room one can listen to
anything from Portuguese and Spanish to Greek and Russian, whilst in the Asian
room one can go from Bengali to Cantonese or from Hindustani to Japanese all
within the space of a few minutes."
"Provided, of
course, that the booths aren't in excessive demand," O'Donnell
pedantically rejoined, helping himself to a generous portion of Brussels
sprouts from a dish passed to him by the hostess. "Otherwise one may have to stand in the
queue for several minutes."
Nigel Townley proffered his most understanding smile and
admitted, in a light-hearted vein, that it all sounded rather fun. Indeed, he was surprised, he confessed, that
this voice museum thing was a British and not an American invention, since the
Americans were usually quick, not to say keen, to exploit new possibilities,
and already possessed more than a few museums of a decidedly unique character,
including, he recalled, a museum dedicated exclusively to nuts.
"Well, as a matter
of fact, my father was American,” O’Donnell admitted with a wry smile. "Though my mother was Asian and I was
born and raised here. So perhaps there's
a degree of American initiative behind the
Timothy smiled
esoterically upon the reception of this eulogistic information and cast their
host a deferential glance, before commenting: "So now, should we ever be
invaded by aliens from outer space, we're in possession of a building where an
investigation of the extraordinary variety of human languages and accents can
be carried out on-the-spot, and presumably free-of-charge - not that aliens
would care to pay, of course."
Fifty pence for old-age pensioners
and schoolkids," the principal director
revealed, "but £3.50p for everyone else, with the possible exception of,
ah, aliens from outer space, who may not have the
correct change," he added facetiously, for Timothy's benefit. "Nevertheless, any visitors to our
planet would certainly learn a thing or two about the human voice from our
museum, assuming they weren't smart enough to go straight back from where they
had come! Though I
need hardly remind you that it wasn't specifically designed to satisfy the
anthropological curiosity of aliens, stupid or otherwise, but the vocal
curiosity of human beings, both now and in the future."
"Indeed," Lady
Handon confirmed, waving away the servant who was
about to pour some red wine into her glass and motioning for sherry
instead. "And one can quite imagine
a time, you know, when people will be as interested to learn how mankind spoke
in the twentieth century ... as we're now interested to discover how they wrote
or built or dressed or whatever in the fifteenth century. Time will add a new dimension, a certain
historical charm, to the recordings currently on track there. And, of course, the coming centuries should
provide us with fresh recordings - possibly even a room dedicated to the voices
of aliens, Mr Byrne. After all, there's
no reason why we should freeze the museum's exhibits at the present stage of
lingual evolution or reality, is there?
We can always add new floors to the top one."
"Quite,"
O'Donnell agreed, while crushing a delicious piece of roast chicken between his
gold-plated molars. "Or even extend
the museum down deeper into the earth," he added, as an afterthought.
"Is the visitor
told anything about what he's likely to hear in whichever soundproofed booth he
happens to enter?" asked Irene Myers, fixing an inquisitive gaze on the
face opposite.
"Oh yes,"
O'Donnell replied with alacrity, a piece of tender chicken transfixed on the
sharp prongs of his silver-plated fork.
"There's a large white plastic plaque on each of the booths bearing,
in crisp black print, information about the voice recording inside. But most people don't bother to read them,
partly, I suspect, through laziness, though also because quite a lot can be
spoken within two minutes and, since a majority of the recordings last that
long, the plaque can become rather prolix and tedious to read. So most people, especially the slow readers,
tend to studiously ignore it, so to speak, and take pot-luck with whatever the
recordings contain. However, largely as
an ethical gesture, we find it expedient to provide details of the recordings
in order to nominally preclude criticism from those who might otherwise be in
some doubt as to their moral integrity
and consequently inclined to suppose they contained scurrilous or obscene language,
which, of course, they most certainly don't do!"
Lord Handon
found O'Donnell's explanation highly amusing and duly infected the rest of the
table and even the elderly butler, who was still officiating with the drinks
and generally pottering about the diners in his rather genteel and overly
deferential manner, as though dealing with hot-house plants. It was now, as he received an extra drop of Cockburns port from the old bugger's unsteady hands, that
Timothy realized he was at least partly deaf.
For he wore a tiny hearing-aid clipped to his left ear, and this in some
measure sufficed to explain the rather strange proceedings in the drawing-room
earlier, both in terms of Lord Handon's loud commands
and of the butler's rather close proximity to them all in the region of the
wine cabinet. Presumably, if the old man
was going deaf, he couldn't be allowed to stray very far from the scene of
alcohol consumption, but had to remain permanently on duty there, like the proverbial
sentry at his post. There seemed little
risk, to judge by the loudness of the viscount's orders, of his overhearing
much anyway, and this further realization came as a slight relief to Timothy,
who was unused to talking in the proximity of servants.
"Unfortunately
we've received a number of critical, not to say abusive, letters from various
elderly members of the public who considered what they heard, in certain
booths, to be of dubious propriety," continued the principal director, as
soon as things had quietened down again.
"However, you can't please everyone, and I'm fairly convinced that
such people would find something else to grumble about if not that."
"Like, presumably,
the brevity of each of the recordings, or the volume at which they're played,
or the size of the booths, or the length of the queue, or something of that
order, I should imagine," Geraldine suggested, before looking across her
shoulder at the portly figure on her left.
"Quite so,"
O'Donnell confirmed, with an abrupt and evidently peeved nod of his
curly-haired head thrown-in for good measure.
"Yet I've no cause to endorse the criticism of dubious propriety
myself, which, not altogether surprisingly, has mostly been levelled at the
booths of the famous, particularly the writers and film stars, while those of
the anonymous French, Italian, and Greek voices exhibited in the European room
have borne the brunt of the remainder of such criticisms. These latter recordings would appear to be
obscene to some people simply because they're foreign and seemingly unintelligible,
whereas with the former recordings ... well, perhaps it's just the
tone-of-voice adopted or the way the words are handled ... that aggravates the
ageing sensibilities of my foremost critics.
Still, one can hardly expect Marilyn Monroe or Greta Garbo
to sound like sexless machines, can one?
And as for Henry Miller ... well, his mere inclusion in the museum is
evidently sufficient grounds for hostility from some visitors, even though what
he says is entirely restricted to himself and
completely devoid of sexual epithets."
There was a faint ripple
of laughter around the table at this remark, and Geraldine, although by no
means the most prudish of young females, saw fit to blush. Lady Handon merely
nodded her head and then sipped daintily at the sherry in her bony hand. She was one of those who, albeit secretly,
opposed the inclusion of Henry Miller herself.
Timothy, by contrast, was quite delighted with the mention of it, and
inquired of the director what other writers' voices were to be heard there.
"Oh, quite a
number," came his confident reply.
"For example, Aldous Huxley, Ezra Pound,
G.B. Shaw, Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Robert
Graves, Lawrence Durrell, Anthony Burgess - a few
more of that sort. We only exhibit the
voices of those who are dead, as a rule, though we have recordings of various
important authors who are still alive in stock, so to speak, for future
use. Also several
tapes of authors - as, indeed, of other artists and famous people in general -
who, although dead, are kept in reserve, pending a rise in their reputations. Rather than being a 'dead' museum, where the
same exhibits are on display year after dreary year, the Metropolitan Voice
Museum, as it's officially called, is very much a 'living' one, with regular
changes or variations in the exhibition material. So you're not guaranteed of hearing T.S.
Eliot again, assuming you went back to the museum after a couple of years
expecting to do so. And even if his
voice was still there, you're not guaranteed of hearing it say exactly the same
thing as before. I like to ensure that
there's sufficient recorded material in stock to enable us to vary the
programme from time to time. That way
nobody gets bored, and there's always some fresh bait, as it were, to entice
people back to the museum.... In point of fact, I'm seriously considering
having the recorded programme we currently have of Aldous
Huxley on exhibition replaced by a less philosophical and possibly more
autobiographical one, since I recently received a highly critical letter from a
senior churchman accusing the museum of propagating certain orientally-inspired
mystical views prejudicial to the Christian faith. It seems the good man was less than happy
with, amongst other things, the term 'Clear Light of the Void', and would have
preferred Huxley to speak in terms closer to the Western soul, such as the Holy
Ghost."
Timothy smiled
appreciatively at O'Donnell before swallowing the thoroughly chewed remains of
his last piece of roast chicken. "I
think he may well have a point there," he opined, when his throat was
clear again.
"Yes, well, I may
replace the current orientally-biased recording with
a less 'prejudicial' one in due course," O'Donnell sighed, "and
thereupon run the risk of adverse criticism from someone who would prefer
Huxley to be represented by his mystical views." At which point the principal director of the
world's only voice museum heartily cleared his throat and gulped down a welcome
mouthful of sherry. It appeared that he
was resigned to anything and everything the public might throw at him!
"Presumably in
changing the current recording, you would have to change the information plaque
on the outside of the booth as well?" Nigel Townley
pedantically conjectured.
"Naturally,"
O'Donnell confirmed. "We could
hardly allow those visitors who bother to read them to be misled. It would therefore be necessary to have a new
plaque printed."
To everyone's surprise,
Sheila Johnston's voice suddenly exploded into a sharp burst of high-pitched
laughter. "I must confess to
finding it rather difficult to visualize these transparent booths, with their
buttons and plaques and all the rest of it," she declared in her soft
Scotch accent. "Are they all
arranged like soldiers on parade, or what?"
"Mostly grouped
together in rows of about 10-20 at a time," O'Donnell rejoined over the
intervening arm of a servant, who was busily removing empty vegetable dishes
from the table. "But, really, you'd
have to see the museum for yourself, to get a proper impression of things and
..."
"A thing that we
hope you'll all do quite soon, in any case," Lord Handon
interposed. "And
not only as visitors. Part of the
reason for my having you here is to invite you to participate in the museum
indirectly, that's to say, through the medium of a
voice recording. As you're all
highly-distinguished young members of your respective professions, it seems not
unlikely that one day you'll be eligible for inclusion in the museum's catalogue
of famous people. So a recording or two
of each of you now, at this stage in your respective careers, would not be
inappropriate, in my opinion."
"And later on, we
may wish to record you again," said O'Donnell, his sherry-wet lips curved
into a gentle smile.
There issued a number of
gasps and raised brows from the other guests, who were completely astounded by
the prospect of being included in the museum's arsenal of tapes.
"How come you
didn't mention this the last time we were here, Lord Joe," complained
Lawrence Gowling, speaking principally for himself and Miss Johnston.
"Oh, partly because
I hadn't then discussed the possibility with Mr O'Donnell and felt that it was
safer to wait until he agreed to your inclusion before putting the invitation
to you," the viscount revealed, smiling.
"He won't allow just anyone with a name in the arts to record for
him, you know. Only the best are chosen,
and after long and arduous discussion, we came to the conclusion that you're
all eminently qualified for the honour, if I may so term it, of indirectly
participating in the museum's catalogue of illustrious names."
"How
flattering!" cried Sarah, clapping her hands together in childish delight. "And do
you intend us all to record here, there, or what?"
"Preferably in the
recording-room on the top floor of our Piccadilly headquarters," the
director answered, craning his neck round to the right, in order to address the
opera singer in person. "We would
require less than an hour of your time to get your voice on tape in a
suitably-polished and correct manner.
All you need do is to speak slowly and distinctly about either yourself
or your professional activity for about fifteen-twenty minutes, so as to give
us sufficient material for several short exhibits ... should we wish to vary
the subject-matter from time to time.
And in about ten or twelve years' time, you can all come back to the
recording-room again to advertise your more mature voices for an alternative
airing." He smiled benignly on the
talented occupants of the table, before helping himself to another mouthful of
sherry.
"Well, do we have
your consent?" Lord Handon asked, throwing his
head back the better to scan the Voice Museum's potential prey.
"Frankly, it all
sounds a trifle bananas to me," Townley
averred. "But since you appear so
serious about it, I shall have to consent."
"Me too,"
Sheila agreed half-heartedly.
And one by one the
others - Irene, Gowling, Sarah, and Timothy - each
volunteered to offer their voices, so to speak, to the museum. There wasn't really any valid reason not to,
especially in light of its appeal to one's professional vanity.
"Excellent!"
declared Lord Handon, with the facial
self-satisfaction of one who has just pulled off some lucrative business deal
clearly in evidence. "I knew we
could count on you all! And, by the way,
Mr O'Donnell will amply remunerate you for your services."
"To the sum of
£1,000 each," the director confirmed with his customary alacrity.
Sheila Johnston raised
her dark eyebrows in a show of horrified surprise. "Oh, but you needn't do that!" she
objected, speaking on her own behalf, but unconsciously including the others as
well.
"I insist,"
the director quite firmly rejoined.
"It's our policy. And,
besides, it will cover your travelling expenses."
Clearly, Miss Johnston,
despite O'Donnell's little joke, had no option but to accept whatever payment
her services were due. And the same
applied to the rest of Lord Handon's guests, who sat
in a kind of dream while the servants cleared away the dinner plates,
preparatory to bringing in the third course, which, to everyone's delight, took
the impressive form of apple crumble with Devonshire cream. It was at this more advanced stage in the
proceedings, curiously, that the viscount requested the substitution of candle
light for electric light by summoning the services of a tall servant, who, with
cigarette-lighter in hand, lit the six tapers on the two candelabra before
switching off the light of the chandelier.
Not surprisingly, the
sudden transformation in the room's lighting caused quite a stir among the
guests who, with the exceptions of Gowling and
Sheila, had never experienced any such arrangement before. Sarah regarded it as a transformation for the
better, whereas Timothy found himself reflecting on his preference for electric
light. Indeed, he always made a point of
preferring the artificial to the natural on principle these days, regarding it
as indicative of a higher and therefore less evil stage of evolution. The spectacle of the six candle flames
flickering in front of his port-drowsed eyes had a slightly depressing effect
on him, making him conscious of what he took to be the close proximity of the
Infernal, even if it was controlled and limited to a given, rather innocuous
sphere of influence. Somehow he couldn't
avoid the connotation of flame with evil, or of the diabolic with the sun. It was as if a tiny piece of the sun had been
transported to the dining-room and placed on the wicks of each of the burning
candles, so that the spectacle in front of his eyes was less candle flame than
six miniature hells, six fragments of the Devil, burning in splendid
isolation. He shuddered with
disgust! But then, remembering where he
was, simply pretended to feel cold and proceeded to gently rub his hands
together under the table. However,
nobody appeared to be paying him any attention.
For, at that moment, Irene Myers was heard asking the man opposite her
when he would like them all to turn-up for their voice recordings?
"Oh, no
hurry," O'Donnell replied, momentarily looking-up from his dessert, which
now contained an especially large helping of cream. "Of course, I'd be more than willing to
open the recording studio to anyone who wanted to offer his or her services
next week. I don't require you all to
turn-up at once however, but simply when it's convenient to you. I shall be available on the premises from
approximately
"In which
language?" the young opera star wanted to know.
"English
unfortunately," O'Donnell confessed.
"For I haven't as yet dared to include foreign
languages in the room of the famous.
Though we're intending to open a separate room for the
relatively or absolutely non-English speaking famous in due course ... possibly
later next year. That would
enable us to include such illustrious names as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Hermann Hesse, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Pablo Picasso in the museum,
thereby enhancing its growing reputation.
After all, it's still in its infancy, not by any means grown to full
maturity, and, as such, there's certainly scope for improvement. Yet that isn't to say the Callas recording is
bad. Au contraire, she handles
her English very well, on the whole."
"I have in fact
heard her speak before," Sarah revealed, slightly to the director's
disappointment.
"Oh well, I'm sure
you'll be delighted all the same, particularly since she talks about her social
background rather than her work," he rejoined.
There followed a short
lull in the conversation, before Gowling inquired of
O'Donnell whether his funny little museum happened to have a recording by Piet Mondrian on offer?
"Alas, no!"
the latter sighed. "We're not aware
that he ever made one and, besides, he died in the 1940s, so even if he had, it
would more than likely be of poor sound-quality and therefore unworthy of
continuous exhibition. As a rule, we
studiously avoid anything recorded before 1950."
"A shame in one
sense," Lady Handon opined. "For it means that a
lot of very important famous people are automatically excluded from public
attention."
"Quite so,"
O'Donnell conceded. "But one has to
begin somewhere, and voices from the second-half of the twentieth century, or
at least from the 1940s, provide an excellent foundation upon which to build
our future repertoire, so to speak. No,
we cannot lay claim to a comprehensive collection of famous twentieth-century
voices because we're obliged to exclude those from early in the first-half of
the century, which, as you say, is a shame, especially where the most famous
and important artists are concerned! But
we're certainly doing our best to record everyone of any consequence who is
currently alive, if that's any consolation to you?"
"A little,"
the hostess drily granted. "Although being, like my husband, a
member of the older generation, there are one or two pre-war voices that I'd
personally prefer to hear, in contrast to much of what is currently on offer,
irrespective of the comparatively poor sound-quality. Of course, I fully realize that the modern
and, on the whole, more youthful public of today wouldn't share my
preference. But the museum might still
profit, you know, from an extension of the existing range of recordings back
into the early decades of the current century.
A kind of historical room of early recordings. And I'm quite convinced that, in spite of
gaps or omissions, there would be no shortage of material from which to
choose. However, this is only a
suggestion, Girish, not an order! I quite understand your reluctance to expand
too rapidly. Yet suggestions of this
kind may prove useful, particularly if you should one day run into competition
from foreign voice museums." At
which point she cast him a mildly quizzical glance, and then resumed eating her
dessert.
Having in the meantime
ordered more drink for the table, Lord Handon nodded
in agreement and began to expatiate on a rumour he had heard, only the previous
week, that the French were seriously contemplating the establishment of a
national voice museum, which would inevitably focus more exclusively on their
own language and, in all probability, the regional dialects and class
differences thereof, thus bringing the disparate accents of their loquacious
nation firmly under one roof. "And
before long," he continued, "I shouldn't be at all surprised to see
the Germans and, ahem, Italians following suit, and perhaps even the Americans
- assuming they can get over the shock that someone else thought up the damned
idea before themselves!"
"So any aliens from
outer space who wished to find out more about the human voice wouldn't
necessarily have to go to London in the future, but could depend on the
inhabitants of just about any major country in which they happened to land to
provide them with the relevant information," Geraldine declared
facetiously.
"Indeed, they might
even prefer to hear French or German voices to British ones," her father
joked.
"Yes, well, as yet
no alternative voice museums actually exist," O'Donnell remarked, bringing
a serious note back into the discussion, "so we needn't fear immediate
competition. I will of course bear your
suggestion in mind, Pamela, and should we subsequently decide to expand in that
rather retrograde fashion, I shall give you full credit for it ... as indeed
for the suggestion you made, last time I was here, concerning the possibility
of extending our range of vocal sound to include singing, shouting, laughing,
whistling, crying, coughing, or whatever it was ..."
"I would hardly
have suggested crying or coughing!" Lady Handon
protested, with a look of ironic reproof in her beady eyes. "Although they might
serve the curious purposes of an alien with no knowledge or experience of such
things! No, I was thinking, more
specifically, of the human voice in various of its
myriad occupational roles - you know, the opera singer, pop singer, regimental
sergeant-major, schoolmaster, priest, and so on. For I am convinced that a
room dedicated to the immense variety of occupational contexts would further
enhance the museum's growing reputation."
"And prevent its
future competitors from forcing it into an imitative role," her husband
added, as he came to the end of his dessert.
"However, let's not burden our guests with any more talk of
that. I'm sure they're dying for a
change of subject."
"On the contrary, I
find it a most fascinating one," Sheila blandly confessed.
"Me too,"
Sarah seconded, her pretty face bursting into a reassuring smile.
The other guests,
however, remained verbally noncommittal.
"Oh well, you'll
all be able to sate your curiosity when you actually visit the museum,"
Lord Handon averred.
"In the meantime, and this evening in particular, I'd like you to
feel free to enjoy yourselves in a less educative fashion ... principally by
joining my wife and I in the small ballroom next-door
for a spot of dancing. After all, this
is New Year's Eve, so we ought to celebrate it in style. I trust you have no objections, ladies and
gentlemen?"
There were certainly
more than a few slight qualms and alarms at the mention of this, but, since
no-one seemed to mind, or to express verbal reservations if they did, the
viscount took it that everyone was agreed on the suitability of his suggestion,
and clapped his hands together in apparent satisfaction. "Good!" he cried. "Then as soon as you're all ready, we
shall proceed to the ballroom." And
that, curiously enough, is what duly happened.
CHAPTER FIVE
The room Lord Handon spoke of was not as
small as one might have supposed, but it was still smaller than the
drawing-room in which his guests had sat prior to dinner. There was certainly ample space for ten
people to exercise their legs, and, at a guess, one would have said it could
accommodate at least fifty people in that regard.
Situated on the south
wing of Rothermore House, one entered a rectangular
room brightly lit by three cut-glass chandeliers and warmly heated by a large
open fire which blazed fiercely from its hearth in seeming anticipation of the
dance. Doubtless the servants had just
prepared the room. For it also contained
a copiously-stocked wine cabinet, similar to the one in the drawing-room, on top
of which stood a variety of wine bottles de-corked and ready for use. Yet 'ballroom' was hardly the word one would
have applied to the room on first entering it.
For not only was the floor covered by a bright-red carpet of seemingly
immaculate condition, but there were also a number of armchairs and a couple of
large settees spread along the length of its cream-coloured walls at various
points, thereby giving the overall impression of a lounge or even a
sitting-room. And the walls were not
adorned with mirrors, as one might have expected, but with various-sized glossy
paintings, mostly by minor Italian or French artists of the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, which were of a decidedly romantic cast. Added to which, the familiar spectacle of
fluted pilasters spaced in solitude at regular distances apart, plus a few
statuette-prone niches and one more or less had the 'ballroom' in a
nutshell. Yet there was still some
exquisitely carved stucco on the ceiling, reminiscent of Robert Adam, and more
than a hint of rococo panelling along the lower section of one of the walls,
thus endowing the room with a stylistic eclecticism as charming as it was
unusual.
However, all this detail had relatively little significance for
Timothy Byrne, as he followed the other guests across the threshold in a
somewhat perplexed state-of-mind. For he was more concerned with the ominous prospect of having to
dance than with the stylistic nature of the ballroom itself, and hardly noticed
his surroundings. Who-on-earth
would he be expected to dance with, he wondered? And what dance to - the Foxtrot,
But this vague and
slightly dishonourable hope was quickly dashed, as Lord Handon
cried out, with a certain roguish gusto it seemed to Timothy: "Choose your
partners!" and then proceeded to advance towards the centre of the room,
where his wife was already waiting, impatient, no doubt, for the dancing to
begin.
"Oh hell!"
sighed Timothy, as he heard the first strains of a gentle Two-Step descend on
his ears from high up in opposite corners of the room, and realized that the
challenge was on.
“Well, my dear young
lady," said
For a moment Timothy
almost envied Gowling his choice, but was soon
distracted from that as he heard Girish O'Donnell
saying: "I think it's about time you and I put feet together, Irene,"
and the ample figure of the sculptress duly rose from her seat, to accompany
the director of the world's first and, to-date, only voice museum unsteadily
across the carpet.
"Two down, two to go," sighed
Timothy, as he was left face-to-face with his own blank irresolution. Perhaps the choice would be made simpler if
Nigel...?
At that very moment Townley did in fact
feel it incumbent upon himself to offer an arm to the nearest solitary female,
who, to Timothy's manifest relief, accepted it without demur and set off with
Scotch gusto towards the centre of the room.
So that left only one, and she, still dressed in a dark-green tapering minidress and matt stockings, happened to be the opera
singer Sarah Field, who smiled encouragingly at Timothy while he extended a
tentative arm and stammered a gratuitous invitation.
So there they were - ten
pairs of legs shuffling about the centre of the carpet as the music set the
pace in rather quaintly old-fashioned terms.
At first Timothy's legs seemed unwilling to work, but persisted in an
awkward stiffness, which brought more than a gentle frown to his ordinarily
impassive brow! For he had quite
forgotten how to dance a Two-Step and was afraid of stepping on Sarah's
vulnerably-exposed toes and not only causing her physical discomfort, but
making a thorough fool of himself, to boot!
He shuffled about the carpet begrudgingly, as though incapable of
spontaneous movement, and, to be sure, an impartial observer might have
supposed him dancing on stilts or wooden legs, so stiff would his technique
have appeared! Fortunately for him,
however, there was no-one to fit that description in the room at present, since
those there were all on their feet and endeavouring, as best they could, to
keep time with the music and avoid bumping into one another. It wasn't even possible to fear that the
servants might be secretly enjoying themselves at one's expense. For they had apparently
been forbidden entry to the room and were thus on duty elsewhere - presumably
in the region of the kitchens and dining-room. Well, that was a relief too, and a sufficient
incentive for one to loosen up a bit.
Which, to his surprise, Timothy gradually found himself doing, as the
music began to get the better of his self-consciousness and to instil a certain
complacency, partly born of reduced sensibility, into his mind.
Not
that he didn't have to struggle against himself in the process. But, somehow, Sarah's self-confidence began
to make an impression on him and encouraged him to take that redemptive plunge
with her, when their two bodies would unite in a single movement and flow into
each other, like two streams meeting in a single river. As yet, he was just on the brink, still
stiffly apart and uncertain. But the
temptation to merge with her was pressing upon him with greater insistence,
becoming impossible to ignore. His steps
were less tentative now, more assured of their placings,
and he had ceased to frown with virtually every move. He felt her body press against him with
greater frequency and ease now, whereas previously they had been almost afraid
to touch each other. She was smiling
with a fresh candour, and the sweet scent of her perfume was insinuating itself
into his slightly-dilated nostrils, causing his head to swim with aromatic
pleasure. Was this really what he had
been afraid of before the dance started, this subtle
pleasure in sensual gratification? He
smiled his incredulity at the thought of it and, suddenly, as though by the
wave of a magic wand, the old world of distinctions had slipped away and he was
at one with Sarah in the rhythm of the dance, had lost his self-consciousness
and passed over into a world of transpersonal unity. All in a flash, like that 'click' which
descends upon people who are socially and sexually right for each other,
heralding the start of a compatible relationship. He was all of a sudden in that other
world and Sarah's smile seemed more endearing to him than ever, her perfume
still sweeter. He had little time or inclination
to notice what stage everybody else was at, though if he had bothered to look
around him, he would have seen that all but Gowling
and Geraldine had left their self-consciousness behind and were lifted up in
the swirling movement of the dance, transported, as it were, to another
realm. They would follow suit later, but
at present both of them were still struggling with their egos - particularly
Geraldine, who danced rather primly with the taller figure of Gowling.
And so the music
continued as the couples circled around one another with greater facility,
becoming increasingly part of one large twenty-legged creature with ten
heads. But then, almost without their
expecting it, the old record reached the end of its scratchy duration, and
suddenly a chilling silence descended upon the room, disrupting the orgy of
blissful self-forgetfulness. There were
a few appropriate sighs of disappointment from the more ardent dancers and
then, as if in gratitude for what they had
experienced, a number of smiles, hand claps, and tersely eulogistic
comments. Their faces had already become
quite flushed, especially Lord Handon's, whose high
blood-pressure and age undoubtedly had something to do with it. But he had no intention of allowing things to
flag and duly hurried across to the record-player, where he proceeded to turn
the disc over and set its other side in motion.
"Well," said
Sarah to her dancing partner, "it looks as though we're going to be kept
busy tonight, doesn't it?"
"It does
indeed!" Timothy agreed, and, once more, he put his arm round the opera
singer's waist and set her in graceful motion.
To his delight, she smiled more endearingly than ever as their bodies
drew gently together, making him feel newly confident. He wanted, if possible, to draw still closer
to her, but realized that the propriety of the dance precluded it. Besides, he couldn't very well allow himself
to become too ardent in the company of the others, particularly Lord and Lady Handon, who now danced, it seemed to him, with a certain
measure of constraint, as though they were approaching the end of their quota
of energy or were secretly more intent upon surveying the proceedings around
them.
"Oh, so
sorry!" cried Townley above the music, as he
collided with Timothy and well-nigh sent his slender body sprawling across the
carpet. "I'm not used to this sort
of thing," he added by way of excuse.
"Neither am I,
actually," the writer confessed, before the swirling throng engulfed him
afresh.
And so it went on, with Lord
Handon taking sole charge of the stereo and, until
his retirement through fatigue about an hour-and-a-half later, effectively
leading the dance. Thereafter the host
and hostess sat watching the younger people amuse themselves in the centre of
the room, not more than a few yards from the blazing open fire which Lord Handon judiciously topped-up, from time to time, with a
small log or two from the pile of chopped logs that lay conveniently close
to-hand in the spacious hearth. And
every time the prevailing record reached the last of its tiny grooves, up he
would get to initiate a change of melody and sometimes even a change of dance,
thereby throwing his guests into fresh confusion. Thus Timothy found himself obliged to
improvise a variety of ballroom dances on-the-spot, including the
But, still, the
proceedings were generally fun, and everybody had imbibed too much alcohol to
care unduly about the quality of their performance. Even the host, who had drained more glasses
than anybody else, appeared not to take much interest in it after a while, but
slumped into his armchair with bowed head, as if in response to an overpowering
tiredness, quite oblivious of his surroundings.
In the next armchair, his wife stared ruefully at the fire or cast a
beady and rather abstracted gaze round the room, occasionally bringing her
attention to rest on one of the small romantic paintings which were intended
both to avoid the usual ballroom cliché of mirrors and to serve a mildly
aphrodisiac role. She appeared not to
want to see the dancers, as though their presence was an inconvenience, a reminder
of her long-past youth and current lack of stamina. Yet youth and stamina were not exactly the
leading attributes of Girish O'Donnell and his plump
dancing partner either, and before long, at Irene's prompting, they also
dropped out of the limelight, leaving the floor to the less bulky individuals.
So now there were only three couples in motion, who danced on
oblivious of everyone else, or seemingly so.
For Timothy, especially, had not quite regained that self-confidence of
the preceding hour and was beginning to weary a little, despite the
ever-enchanting proximity of Sarah Field, whom he resolutely clung to from fear
that, if someone else were to intervene, he would be irrevocably plunged back
into his old self-consciousness again.
Better this than that, even if, with all that
alcohol swirling round in his head, he was now the victim of a downward
self-transcendence, a transcendence such as his logical reasoning mind would
ordinarily have deemed inferior to upward self-transcendence. Unfortunately this was neither the time nor
the place for the hallucinogenic trip of divine illumination! Like it or not, one had to persist in the
folly of Lord Handon's tastes and give way to the
Diabolic to a greater or lesser extent.
Such was the situation. Such it
had been for centuries. And such, in all
probability, it would continue to be for ... centuries to come? Perhaps and perhaps not. Who could say for sure?
So they danced on, and
now it was Geraldine who led them, the very same person who, when the dancing
had first begun, was the least willing to part with her
self-consciousness. Strange
in a sense, but more indicative of her adolescent shyness in the imposing
company of
Indeed, the more
abandoned Geraldine became the less abandoned he appeared to be, so that he was
now dancing with a degree of constraint which, in contrast to his partner's
freedom, assumed an incongruous and semi-humorous aspect. He had gone noticeably stiff and become
somewhat self-conscious, occasionally bumping into the other couples,
and this in spite of the fact that they now had more room in which to manoeuvre
than before. He must have cursed Lord Handon's eccentricity, at such moments, for depriving the
dancers of mirrors and thereby increasing their chances of colliding, despite
the limited utilitarian value of mirrors in a crowded ballroom, the difficulty
of gauging perspective not rendered any easier by alcoholic somnolence in
relation to the speed of the dance and the number of couples involved. Doubtless the old devil had private motivations
of his own for doing so!
But the dancing wasn't
to last much longer now. For as Nigel Townley and Sheila Johnston dropped out, more through
fatigue than lack of ability, a sudden self-consciousness descended on the two
remaining couples, who feared that they would become the cynosure of too many
pairs of critical or envious eyes. The
smooth bright carpet on which they slid and twisted suddenly seemed naked, and
the dancing area itself stretched away on every side, causing them to feel
somewhat isolated in the centre of it.
Still they danced, however, more out of pride than enjoyment, and when,
a few minutes later, Timothy and Sarah simultaneously pulled out of the fray,
even Geraldine had to admit defeat and relinquish her hold on Gowling, to the latter's evident relief.
There was perfunctory
clapping all round, as the last couple abandoned their feet for the enticing
comfort of the nearest vacant armchairs, slumping into them with a well-earned
sigh apiece.
"Well done!" cried Lord Handon,
raising himself a little in his seat the better to survey the couple in
question. "You managed to bring the
beast out of my daughter, Lawrence," he added, with a roguish
chuckle. It was a comment, however, that
his wife didn't appear to appreciate.
For, at that moment, she frowned sullenly and shook her head - more, it
seemed, for her own benefit than anyone else's.
But this gesture generally passed unnoticed.
It was now quite late,
however, and most of the guests were feeling the lure of sleep, particularly
those who had danced the longest. Their
bedrooms awaited them on the first floor where, after
"This is the last
drink you'll get this year," their host facetiously declared, as he
returned the empty champagne bottle to the wine cabinet, "so you'd better make the most of it!" And that, ironically, was what they all
endeavoured to do, Timothy almost literally so.
For he half-feared that the viscount would go
back on his word and fish out another bottle from the wine cabinet's far from
empty interior.
Mercifully, that was not to be the case. For no sooner had he quaffed back his share
of the champagne and stubbed-out the smouldering remains of an
expensive-looking cigar, than Lord Handon staggered
over to the stereo in order to hunt out, from among the dozens of displaced
records there, a recorded version of Auld Lang Syne
with which to facilitate their own rendering of it in due course. By the time he actually found the disc,
however, midnight was already striking, and not only in the ballroom but in
virtually every other downstairs room throughout the great house as well,
creating a furious uproar which quite precluded any attempt at simultaneous
singing.
"Better late than
never, I suppose," Lord Handon averred, as he
fumbled the record onto the turntable and, with evident difficulty, strove to
align the stylus with the first of its worn grooves. After one or two false starts, during which
one heard snatches of the music prematurely, he succeeded in his objective and,
staggering to his feet again, gestured with outstretched arms that he wanted
everyone to join him in the centre of the room for the traditional
singing. Such was the peremptory nature
of his gesture that drinks were left unconsumed as everyone, including Lady Handon, converged on the chosen spot like vultures upon a
rotting carcass. They had scarcely
arrived there and formed themselves into an approximate circle, however, when
the music started-up, obliging them to join-in regardless. To everyone's dismay, Lord Handon lost his footing and fell forwards into the centre
of the ring, dragging his long-suffering wife down with him. Thereafter a general confusion reigned during
which, whilst endeavouring to sing Auld Lang Syne,
efforts were made by one or two of the male guests to get the drunken peer and
his startled wife back on their unsteady feet again. Eventually success ensued in this regard, but
not before the record had virtually run its course and brought proceedings to
an embarrassing halt. Nevertheless, Lord
Handon defiantly rallied his forces about him for a
final onslaught on the vocal cords and initiated a belated though rousing performance
of the song once more, largely, it seemed, for the servants' benefit. Then, as though following the roar of a loud
explosion, the room fell into a deathly quiet, broken only be the intermittent
sound of laughter, sighs, snivels, and coughs.
The party was over and, almost to a man, the revellers quietly dispersed
to the fringes of the room, to finish off their drinks or wipe their brows or
slump into a welcome armchair. Now at
last they were in the New Year, and it was as though the significance of this
fact had only just begun to dawn on them, necessitating a slight readjustment
of psychological perspective.
CHAPTER SIX
Yes, it was New Year's Day, and as he mounted the red-carpeted
stairs, a few minutes later, Timothy Byrne wondered whether the New Year would
prove kinder to him than the old one had, and, if so, in what ways. Indeed, he was so engrossed in speculation on
this point that it quite startled him to hear Sarah inquiring over his
shoulder, as he reached the door to his bedroom on the guest wing, what kind of
accommodation he had been allocated for the night. He turned abruptly in the thickly-carpeted
corridor and confronted his questioner with a blank face. "Oh, forgive me!" he cried,
blushing as he recognized her. "I
hadn't realized you were following me."
His voice sounded quite leaden with drink and he almost lost his
physical balance as he turned fully towards her. "Have they put you in this part of the
house as well?" he foolishly asked.
Sarah returned him one
of her characteristically-endearing smiles.
"Just a little farther along the corridor," she replied,
pointing with her index finger.
"I see," he
responded, vaguely turning his head in the direction indicated. He seemed indecisive as to his next move or
remark and was on the verge of saying goodnight ... when the opera singer
requested to see the interior of his room.
"Certainly,"
he impulsively replied, and, just as impulsively, opened the door and pushed
his way in, flicking on the light switch as he went.
"Ah, how
pretty!" exclaimed Sarah, following him inside. "It's more cheerful than mine," she
added, with a look at the light-blue wallpaper which clothed the walls of the
brightly-lit, box-like room. "And the curtains!" She advanced a pace towards the maroon velvet
curtains, which hung down to within a few inches of the floor, and clapped her
hands in admiration of the harmony they formed with the wallpaper. "Let's swap rooms," she playfully
suggested.
For a moment Timothy
thought she was being serious. "What's wrong with yours?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing really," giggled Sarah. "Or, rather, it's just that the colours
aren't quite so much to my taste."
She turned towards him and smiled briefly, before adding: "Come on,
I'll show you it, if you're interested."
It wouldn't have been
very polite of him to say he wasn't, so he obligingly followed her out through
the half-open door, automatically switching off the light, and made his way,
with some difficulty, along the corridor to the room next-door. He felt a trifle guilty and foolish about
this, and was almost afraid that someone would see him. But ahead of him the corridor was deserted,
while behind ... he glanced back over his shoulder and saw no-one - at least
not at that moment. For just as he
reached Sarah's door the distinctive voice of Girish
O'Donnell was sounding at the top of the stairs, and, before he could disappear
into her room, the portly figure of the Voice Museum's principal director had
appeared in the corridor and was advancing towards them, accompanied by Irene
Myers. There was a faint hint of
recognition from O'Donnell but, rather than acknowledging it, Timothy hurried
into Sarah's room as fast as he could, under the circumstances of his
inebriation, and shut the door behind him in a panic, fearing they might have
seen Sarah going in as well. Not that
any such thing was guaranteed. For she had been in front of him, after all, and was in the process
of opening her door when they rounded the corner. And, anyway, even if they
had, so what? Did that
necessarily mean ...?
He cast the thought from his mind and advanced unsteadily towards the
centre of her room, newly reminded of the purpose of his visit, which, on the
surface at least, seemed perfectly innocent.
For her part Sarah had
sensed nothing of his panic and now stood to one side, pointing out the colours
she apparently found less cheerful than those in her neighbour's room. "You see?" she sighed, with a
slight air of constraint.
He looked about him,
like a connoisseur of fine art, and nodded his head in apparent sympathy. Though, in reality, he couldn't see anything
amiss, since the dark-blue wallpaper and silver-grey velvet curtains were quite
to his taste. If anything, he preferred
this combination to the one in his own room, which was suggestive of some
football team, and would have said so, had not
discretion or something analogous prevailed upon him to hold his tongue. Finally he decided on a compromise by
conceding that, although her room was probably a shade less cheerful, it was
nonetheless just as brightly lit and no less spacious. "Not really that bad at all," he
concluded, involuntarily including the silver-quilted double bed which stood a
few feet to his right. "At least
you won't have to sleep in it longer than tonight."
She smiled in
acknowledgement of this obvious fact and sat down on the corner of the bed,
nearest to where Timothy was standing.
"No," she agreed, "that's one good thing." Then, abruptly changing track, she asked him
what he thought of the dance earlier?
"Oh, quite amusing
on the whole," he remarked, grinning.
"Not that I'm a particularly accomplished dancer, as you doubtless
realized. I hope you'll forgive me for
having trodden on your toes so often."
She glanced down at her
pale-stockinged toes and confessed that, but for a
little wear, they had survived quite well, considering that her dancing partner
had been wearing some kind of newfangled boots.
"Besides," she added, smiling anew, "I must have
committed more than a few choreographic indiscretions myself, not being used to
that kind of dancing. So perhaps it's I
who ought to be apologizing to you."
He blushed slightly in
spite of himself, wondering what she could be referring to, and sought
distraction in a small stucco carving of a cherub which graced the top of a
circular table just in front of where he was still standing, hands bashfully
tucked inside front pockets. Yet she was
looking at him with a curious interest when next he dared face her, much as
though he were a work of art worthy of a certain critical appraisal. What could be on her mind, he wondered?
However, before he could
wonder anything else, he heard her say: "I quite liked what you were
saying about your latest religious beliefs, before dinner."
"Oh, really?"
he responded, somewhat surprised and not a little ashamed of his current
wine-intoxicated condition. Or was it
the fact of his religious beliefs?
"Yes, I think there
must be some truth in it," Sarah declared.
"Quite a lot of truth in fact, in spite of your predilection for
sweeping generalizations of the debunking sort, which are doubtless more
expedient than pedantic, suggesting a degree of literary licence which, though
arguably objectionable from a more objectively philosophic standpoint, at least
has the merit of simplifying things and of obliging one to rethink accepted
positions."
A smile of gratitude
overcame him with the mention of this.
"I'm glad you think so," he admitted, though he didn't fully
understand the latter part of her remark.
"However, I'm aware that Lady Handon
wouldn't agree with such an opinion."
"No, she appears to
be something of a religious conservative," Sarah confirmed, wrinkling-up
her brows in evident disdain.
"Still, one can't win them all.
What she believes in is obviously right for her."
"Indeed,"
Timothy conceded with a hint of weariness in his voice. "Nevertheless, for people like you and
I, such traditional criteria as she apparently subscribes to are far from
right. They would simply keep one moored
to the Diabolic Alpha at the expense of the Divine Omega, binding one to the
Creator in worshipful subjection to theocratic authoritarianism, and thus
preventing the achievement of religious freedom in self-realization. For without freethinking, there is only
enslavement, and the freer and more advanced the thinking, the more will the
Alpha appear diabolic and only the Omega divine." He turned round and was on the point of
returning to his room, when Sarah's voice halted him in his tracks.
"Do you like
opera?" she asked.
"Some of it,"
he replied, smiling faintly.
"French opera, in particular."
A look of gratified
surprise came into the opera singer's large eyes. "And have you ever heard me sing?"
"Yes,
once, in Manon
at
Her look of gratified surprise
blossomed handsomely into a smile of relief.
"And did you like it?" she wanted to know, her dark-brown eyes
sparkling gaily in the reflection of the light from the small chandelier
overhead.
"I did
indeed," he admitted, blushing slightly in spite of his semi-drunken
predicament. "As it happens, you
reminded me quite a lot of Beverly Sills, not only as regards the way you sang
but also with regard to your appearance.
It was through a recording of Manon by Sills
and Gedda that I first got to know of the opera,
actually."
"Yes, one of the
classic recordings," Sarah opined in a tone of undisguised enthusiasm.
"I guess it would
have to be, what with Gedda in it," Timothy
rejoined, smiling appreciatively.
"He's still my favourite tenor.
However, I was keenly appreciative of Souzay
as 'Lescaut' and Castel as
'Gillot', too.
Not to mention Bacquier as 'Le Compt de Grieux', for that
matter. His voice is unforgettable! But the bass part which has given me most
pleasure to-date is undoubtedly Boris Christoff's
rendering of 'Mephistopheles' in a recording of Gounoud's
Faust. What power! What brilliance of execution! There are times when one's hair virtually
stands on-end!"
"I quite
agree," Sarah responded. "He
is one of the great masters. And he was
with Gedda in the recording you allude to, wasn't
he?"
"Indeed he
was!" Timothy smilingly confirmed. "Gedda and
"You forgot to
mention
"Yes, and then the
libretto is very good, which is more than can be said, in my opinion, for Pelléas et Mélisande, especially where the tedious reiteration of 'petit
père' is concerned! That just about drained my patience, I'm
afraid."
Sarah graciously
admitted to finding that part of the opera a bit trying herself. Then, realizing that Timothy was still
standing in the centre of the room with hands in pockets, she invited him to
sit beside her, so that they could discuss opera in comfort. There was no reason, she said, why he should
tire his legs standing there when a soft bed was conveniently close to-hand.
Although he was somewhat
mentally fatigued and mindful, at this juncture, of the lateness of the hour,
he complied with her invitation - more from a relief to be off his feet at last
than from anything else.
So they sat side-by-side
and discussed opera, Timothy relating his experiences of a variety of
recordings, Sarah, for her part, merely content to comment upon them and offer
a professional opinion from time to time.
She confessed to having sung in all the major French operas and to
preferring her role as 'Carmen' to either that of 'Margueritta'
or 'Manon', though each of these she found preferable
to 'Melisande', which was less inspiring.
"And Werther?" asked Timothy, becoming doubly
inebriated by the sweetness of her perfume and the graceful flow of her
conversation.
"Yes, I was '
"As
a singer or as a person?" Timothy queried.
"As a person,"
Sarah confessed.
The writer chuckled
softly and offered her a gentle look of commiseration. "My only experience of Werther came via Nicolai Gedda and
"You seem to prefer
listening to records than actually visiting the opera," Sarah deduced.
"In point of fact,
I do," Timothy admitted, "though that's partly because what I'd like
to hear isn't always available when I want it, and partly, too, because I'm
able to borrow records from the local library and thus sate my musical
curiosity free-of-charge, in the privacy of my flat." Here he felt like adding a word or two about
his preference for the spiritualization of art through reproductions or
recordings, but decided not to risk either offending Sarah by or burdening
himself with the corollary of a detailed explication of his philosophical
position - a position which Lord Handon's guided tour
of the library, billiards room, etc., had earlier made him freshly conscious
of, and with a vengeance! For, as a
rule, he preferred the elimination of the material factor in opera, which
recordings provided, to the actual live performance itself. Just as he preferred a
colour photograph, or photographic reproduction, of a statue to the statue
itself. It was all part of his
transcendentalism and the modern trend towards a greater spiritualization of
art and life generally. The disembodied
voices which assailed or charmed the ear were spiritual presences merely,
abstractions of real people - like, for that matter, the actors and actresses
who graced the cinema screen. Nothing tangible or material about them - ghostly presences,
rather, which attested to the higher spiritual culture of contemporary man.
If one went to the
cinema it wasn't to see real bodies moving about on screen but, on the
contrary, the cinematic reproduction of such bodies. It was analogous to looking through glossy
art books at the photographic reproductions of paintings, sculptures, ceramics,
and the like. At its best, cinema was
undoubtedly a higher and more spiritual art-form than, say, theatre, which, by
contrast, dealt in real presences, no less tangible than material. Admittedly drama could be spiritualized
through the medium of film, and so, too, could opera, as had occurred in a
number of memorable productions, including Tosca. Perhaps this was the best way to experience
drama or opera in-the-round these days - simply by sitting in front of a colour
television with good quality hi-fi?
Although if one valued the music and singing above the stage scenery,
costumes, lighting, singers, and action, then a good quality stereo would
doubtless serve one's purposes better.
The primary ingredients of opera, viz. music and singing, would be
catered for on a superior level than what they would receive from a televised
performance in-the-round, where the sound reproduction was likely, as a rule,
to be less good. Yet whatever one's
bias, it seemed not improbable that cultural progress was being manifested
through these electronic media, which transformed an initially dualistic
material/spiritual performance into one of spiritual one-sidedness. The closer men drew to the Omega Point, the
more spiritual their art would become.
Film projector, television, video recorder, cassette recorder, stereo,
camera - these were the kinds of media through which Timothy believed culture
could be experienced in the highest way, detached from the physical, the
natural, the sensual.
Yes, he would rather
watch opera on film or listen to it on disc than experience an actual
performance of it in public, and, confessing as much to Sarah, he smiled to
himself, reminded of his reasons for doing so.... Not that he was completely
consistent in this respect, since he had of course visited the opera on
occasion, when the need for a little materialistic reassurance presented
itself. In an age of transition from the
mundane to the transcendent, the natural to the artificial, one couldn't be
blamed, after all, for the occasional backsliding into traditional
criteria. Unless one had been blessed
with a consistently progressive or spiritually-advanced mentality, it wasn't
expedient to be too transcendental. One
could risk or even succumb to a serious brain injury somewhere along the
over-idealistic line.
Be that as it may, Sarah
seemed a twinge saddened by his preference for recorded performances and
asserted, with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, that while discs, tapes, etc.,
were wonderful inventions, it was still good to get a taste of the real thing
from time to time, in order to be brought into closer contact with what
actually prompted the singing.
"After all, a disembodied voice isn't the best key to the lock of
love in which the principal characters are trapped," she said, with
another of those subtly-endearing smiles on her lips.
"No, I guess
not," conceded Timothy, who was conscious, as never before, of the
extremely close proximity of the opera singer to him at this moment. "One must see it in the flesh as
well," he found himself saying, half-hypnotized by her stare.
"And, if possible,
touch it," she murmured.
"As well as smell
it," he rejoined, mindful of her scent and the complementary freshness of
her skin, a mere couple of inches from the tip of his nose.
"And thereby
experience it personally," she concluded, gently closing her eyes against
the kiss which, at that moment, Timothy felt impelled to bestow upon her lips
in response to the brazen cue just offered him.
Amazingly, a single kiss
was sufficient to precipitate them into each other's arms and initiate a series
of more ardent kisses, which duly led to Sarah firmly closing her eyes against
Timothy's carnal onslaught and meekly submitting to his physical objectives -
objectives which were to encompass far more than her lips ... as he gently
pushed her down on the bed and climbed over her reclining form, the better to
achieve them. Now he wanted to get more
closely involved with her than he had done in the ballroom before midnight; to
get so closely involved with her, in fact, as to make the rhythmic posturings of their dancing routines appear comparatively
superficial. Now there would be no
clothes or fellow-dancers between him and his movements. It would be a direct communion of flesh to
flesh, a return to the primeval life-urge, a fitting
climax to the New Year's Eve festivities.
He had been so well-juiced for it, this ultimate sensual communion, that it didn't really matter to him now whether
or not he subsequently got back to his own room again. If sleep overtook him he would stay where he
was, wrapped in the tight embrace of Sarah's arms - submerged in sensual
abandon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The following morning was pleasantly bright and as, one by one,
the guests came down to breakfast, they were greeted by the full-face of the
sun as it shone in shamelessly through the tall windows of the breakfast room,
on the west wing of Rothermore House. Timothy, however, contrived to turn his back
on it, as he arrived at the large round table at which everyone was invited to
sit; for he rather disliked a direct confrontation with the Diabolic Alpha at
this time of day, and trusted that it would be less harmful to his back than to
his face. He didn't of course mention
this to anyone, lest they thought him crazy.... Although Lady Handon half-divined what was on his mind by the eagerness
and determination with which he had acquired himself this particular seat. She smiled ironically to herself and
proceeded to sip the Chinese tea which the ageing butler had just poured into
her dainty cup. Behind her, and
therefore in front of Timothy, an open fire crackled forcefully in its
hearth. The writer, for his part,
preferred not to notice it.
"Well, I trust you
all had a comfortable night," said Lord Handon,
as he took his place at table and briefly scanned the assembled faces, all but
one of which had a noticeably pallid look.
"Very comfortable
thanks," admitted Sarah, whose candour caused Timothy a slight embarrassment
at what seemed to him like an oblique allusion to his own contribution to it.
"Good!" said
Lord Handon in a business-like manner. "As long as you all managed to get some
rest after yesterday evening's physical exertions and don't find the first
morning of January 1981 unduly oppressive ..."
"Unfortunately I
had a nightmare," Irene Myers interposed, slightly to everyone's horror.
"Hardly the most
auspicious start to the new year for you then!" Lady Handon
declared over the rim of her steaming cup.
"I trust you didn't suffer a similar fate, Mr Byrne," she
added, focusing her beady attention upon the rather washed-out face opposite,
which, to her surprise, blushed perceptibly and shook its head.
"Fortunately
not!" he replied, all too conscious that he probably suffered a worse one
in not getting any sleep at all. For it
was so late by the time Sarah let him go ... that he had quite passed the point
of sleep and could do no better than to doze fitfully in his solitary room,
tortured by the incessant twittering of sparrows in some nearby trees. Now his head had something of the vacuity of
an exploded shell about it, as though his brain had been removed and a dull
void left in its place. He smiled with a
kind of cadaverous leer which the hostess appeared not to like very much; for
she sharply turned her face away.
"And how about you,
sir?" she inquired of Girish O'Donnell, noting
the speed with which the Voice Museum's principal director was draining his cup
of black coffee.
"Oh, just a slight
hangover," he drawled, falling victim to one of the most palpably obvious
of understatements. "Nothing
to grumble about, really!"
"You danced
exceedingly well last night, Girish," opined
Lord Handon, countering palpable understatement with
no-less palpable overstatement.
"Indeed, you all danced very well, including you, Geraldine."
His daughter couldn't
prevent herself blushing at this remark, and cast Gowling
an optimistic glance, as though expecting him to confirm it. However, the artist was preoccupied with the
piled-up flaky contents of his cereal bowl and therefore didn't respond to her
in any noticeable way. But she wasn't to
be rebuffed by this fact and declared that she had probably danced better last
night than ever before - a declaration which caused Gowling
a comparable degree of embarrassment.
"Really?"
cried Lord Handon on a note of ironic surprise. "That's putting it rather strongly, I
must say!"
Not surprisingly his
wife preferred to say nothing about that, but tactfully switched the
conversation to her guests' impending departures, now that their New Year's Eve
celebrations were a thing of the past.
"I take it you'll all be able to return to your various
destinations today, bearing in mind the reduced public transport," she
said.
All but two of them were
destined to return to
"Yes, I don't
suppose there'll be any trains running," Lord Handon
remarked, endeavouring to qualify his wife's almost contradictory question.
"Don't worry, I can
take the others back in my car," O'Donnell declared. "I have enough space in the old banger
for at least half-a-dozen people."
He was of course alluding to his Mercedes, which was parked in front of
the house beside Irene's Porsche and Lord Handon's
Rolls. It would be far better travelling
back to town in that than waiting around for taxis or buses, and the relevant
guests thanked O'Donnell for his offer and accepted without a qualm -
especially Timothy, who hadn't much enjoyed the solitary journey down by train
in any case.
"Good, then that
takes care of that problem," Lady Handon
concluded with an air of finality, and she accordingly relapsed into a welcome
silence.
Following breakfast, the
guests retired to the drawing-room for a spate of informal conversation prior
to their impending departures, Lord Handon
encouraging those of them who could stand the sight of alcohol to sample a
fresh glass as a leave-taking tribute.
But most of them seemed in need of fresh air, and, perceiving this, the
viscount offered to take everyone on a guided tour of his grounds, including
the stables, gardens, and parkland. As
the weather was so sunny that morning, most of the guests accepted with alacrity,
and, before long, a little party of warmly-clad individuals had assembled in
the spacious vestibule behind the north door, eager for exercise.
Geraldine, however, was
of the opinion that it would be better for them to divide into two groups
rather than set off en masse across the lawns, like a herd of cattle. She accordingly offered, by way of example,
to take a few of their guests round the west wing of the house and through the
stables, while her father took the rest of them in the opposite direction, in
order to meet-up with her group at some point to the south. The idea seemed a good one and consequently,
with minimum deliberation, the party divided accordingly and set off in their
respective directions.
To his relief, Timothy
found himself in Geraldine's group, which included
"Ah!"
exclaimed Gowling, as he deeply inhaled and exhaled
the crisp morning air. "How refreshing to be out at this time of day! Just the way to clear away
a hangover, what?"
Geraldine smiled her
acknowledgement of him, but made no comment.
She had changed into a pair of pale-pink cords and was wearing a
navy-blue anorak over a woolly jumper.
Her hair was still pinned up, but less formerly now than the day
before. Instead of forming a bun on the
crown of her head, it rested in a loose rectangle at the back, making her look,
if anything, slightly more attractive.
There was a faint hint of make-up on her face, but nothing overtly
seductive. Her eyes shone with pleasure
as she led the men across the English garden and around to the West Front. No doubt, she was relieved to be free of her
parents' restrictive company.
"Let's take a look at the goldfish," she said, pointing out a
small artificial pond which stood in front of the front in question. "My mother is rather keen on goldfish
and I seem to have inherited an aptitude for them myself. A case of acquired characteristics, wouldn't
you say, Mr Byrne?"
The writer automatically
raised wary brows, but graciously conceded her the benefit of the doubt.
"My God, there must
be hundreds of them in it!" Gowling observed, as
they reached the goldfish pond.
"They're literally crawling over one another!"
"Yes, it is rather
a cramped environment," Geraldine admitted. "Although we usually sell off a number
of them every year and thereby maintain a fairly stable population. We're intending, anyway, to extend the size
of our ponds soon - there's one like this, incidentally, in front of each wing
of the house - so as to provide our little darlings with more privacy."
"Privacy?"
Townley repeated, with an ironic expression on his
face.
But Geraldine was more
interested in staring at Gowling's reflection in the
shallow water than justifying her use of words, while the artist, for his part,
was too engrossed in the pond's contents to notice that he was being secretly
admired.
"Well, let's
proceed, shall we?" Geraldine at length suggested, and, together, they
continued in the direction they had been taking, on past the West Front. Here, too, Timothy couldn't help noticing
that the Baroque features of the North Front were in ample evidence,
particularly as regards the equidistant placing of Corinthian pilasters, and he
noticed, moreover, that Townley was taking more
interest in the general exterior of the house itself than in the surrounding
grounds, which, for an architect, was only to be expected, or so he
supposed. But this was only in passing. For soon they came upon the stables, no
farther than a hundred-and-fifty yards away, and heard the sounds of horses
neighing and champing - sounds which Townley couldn't
help commenting upon as they drew near.
"Our approach has evidently excited them," he observed,
raising his nostrils to inhale the smell of freshly-deposited manure. "How many do you have?"
"Just four
nowadays," Geraldine replied, with a hint of regret in her voice. "We used to have six, but, since my
older sister went to live elsewhere and my younger brother got killed in a plane
crash, we decided to part with theirs.... This one's called Smoky," she
revealed, patting a large grey stallion on the nose. "It's the favourite of my father, who
owns the stallion on the right, too. But
this one's mine." His name was
Badger, and he was a dark-brown horse of slightly less than average
height. He seemed to like having his
mane fondled and Geraldine was keen to oblige.
"The remaining horse belongs to my mother," she continued,
drawing attention to a black mare to Badger's left, "and her name's
Stella. But since mother doesn't ride
very often these days, she's mostly entrusted to our groom, who is a reliable
horseman."
"So what's the name
of your father's other horse?" asked Timothy, who happened to be standing
directly in front of it.
"Dapper," said
Geraldine. "Because he is, see?"
There was an uprush of amusement among the three men, who eyed the
dapper-brown stallion in question with admiring looks. For his part, Dapper neighed gently and
stared back at them with a nonchalance bordering on contempt - or so it
seemed. Inscrutability was, after all, a
hallmark of the horse!
"Do you ride
regularly?" Gowling asked Geraldine, following a
short pause in their conversation.
"Whenever I'm here
I do, which is mostly during the vacations," she replied, smiling. "Unfortunately, being
away at college means that I don't now ride as often as before. But I shall probably come down here for the
occasional weekend, during the months ahead, and wrench my horse away from our
groom for a few hours. What about you -
do any of you ride?"
Gowling
admitted to an occasional tendency in that august direction, while both Timothy
and Townley shook their respective heads, the
architect adding that he would welcome an opportunity to do so - a sentiment
not shared, however, by the writer, who had never ridden a horse in his life
and had no desire to, largely because he found the idea of intimate contact
with a large beast repugnant.... To be sitting on a horse somewhere in the
country - no, that was definitely not for him!
He almost shuddered at the thought of it. On principle, he could never have given-in to
complacency on a beast in the country.
He simply wanted to aspire towards God by expanding his spirit. But how could one possibly do that seated on
a horse, with nature airing its mundane prejudices all around one? Impossible!
No, horses were definitely not for him!
However, Townley was interested and Gowling
fairly proud of the fact that he occasionally rented a horse for the day. After all, horses were the most noble of
beasts and not at all bad company. Yet
when Geraldine said she would like to see him ride, poor Gowling
quite blushed with shame at the connotation with sex to which the word gave
rise in his vulnerable imagination! For
it seemed to him that the young lady was deliberately provoking him. He could have sworn he detected a mischievous
gleam in her eyes. "You don't mean
now, do you?" he gasped, in his perplexity.
"No, of course not,
silly!" she retorted. "Some other time."
He mentally sighed his relief and wiped some imaginary sweat from his
brow.
"Well, now that
you've all seen the horses, let's explore a bit farther afield,
shall we?" suggested Geraldine, leading the way out of the stables and on
across the open parkland to the left of the South Front, in the general
direction of a thick wood beyond.
"No sign of the
other group from here," Gowling observed,
looking across to his right, where he had vaguely expected to sight Lord Handon's four followers.
The others cast a glance
in the same direction and Geraldine explained how that was probably because her
father had turned into the wood on the far side of the house, in order to
explore the river which ran through it.
"He's recently had a few fancy wooden bridges installed, which he's
probably keen to inspect and show off," she went on. "But don't worry, we'll doubtless bump
into them before long."
The parkland stretched
on quite some distance to either side of them and had the appearance of being
well-kept, despite the ugly proximity, every now and then, of copious weeds,
which had sprouted in the otherwise bare flower-beds, and of overgrown hedges,
bent forward under the oppressive weight of their evergreen foliage. A number of saplings were propped-up on
wooden supports against the inclemency of winter, intended, no doubt, to form a
new avenue of trees in due course. For
it was apparent, from a brief inspection of the area, that Lord Handon liked to have his saplings planted in rows, like
soldiers or, rather, cadets on parade.
Less ordered, however, was the wood towards which Geraldine was now
leading them. It had a rough path
through it but no sign of any intentional cultivation, and the prospect of his
having to traverse this intensification of nature wasn't at all to Timothy's
liking! Indeed, he wasn't particularly
happy to be exploring the parkland anyway, even its most cultivated parts,
which still struck his transcendental mentality as evil, if relatively less so
than the patently uncultivated parts.
But it was into the wood that Geraldine led them, and he just didn't
have the nerve to back out or object. Gowling and Townley would
probably have thought him mad were he to do so, not being on his spiritual
wavelength. All he could reasonably do
was to brave it, and this he endeavoured to do as they came upon the beaten
path at the entrance to the wood and passed over into raw nature.
"If we're in luck,
we might get a glimpse of some of the deer that roam about in here," said
Geraldine.
"How many deer are
there?" asked Townley.
"About fifty at the
last count," the young lady revealed.
"Mostly deeper into the wood of course, and more
over to the far side. You can see
quite a lot of wildlife in here though, including foxes. Look, there's a squirrel scampering up a tree
over there! Can you see it?"
Halted, the men followed
her finger in the direction indicated, and for a moment Timothy had a
recollection of Sarah doing the same thing in the passageway outside his room
the previous night. "Quite clearly,"
Gowling admitted, as the squirrel came to a sudden
halt half-way up the tree trunk, as though in suspended animation. "One can see how this wood must be
something of a naturalist's paradise, during certain times of the year and
under the right conditions."
Geraldine smiled warmly
before trudging on again. Only Timothy
refrained from showing signs of pleasure here.
For the fact of this wood being a naturalist's paradise could only mean
it was a transcendentalist's hell, and he needed no reminding.... Not that it
was the worst of earthly hells, since a tropical jungle would have been far
worse, to his way of thinking. And even
this place would, in his opinion, have been worse in the middle of summer than
at present, deprived of all but its bare bones, so to speak, in the heart of
winter. Still, even in this depleted
context, it was a place he would have preferred to avoid.
"We used to have
hunts here at one time," Geraldine was saying, principally for the benefit
of the others, as they continued along the path, Timothy at the rear.
"What, deer
hunts?" Townley surmised.
"Sometimes deer and
sometimes foxes," Geraldine confessed.
"At any rate, my grandfather was keen on hunting and used to run
with the pack, as they say, across the park and into this wood at various
points, usually to emerge again on the far side and continue the chase across
open country. But my father preferred
shooting grouse to hunting animals, so I never got to see more than an
occasional deer or fox hunt."
"Does he still
shoot?" Timothy asked, over Townley's shoulder.
"Oh yes, quite
often," Geraldine replied. "Mostly pheasants, of course. Why, do you object to blood sports?"
"Yes and no."
"What do you mean
by 'yes and no', you ambivalent man?"
"Well, 'yes', because
I'd rather people spent their time doing better things than chasing about after
wild animals or birds," Timothy informed her, "and 'no' because I'd
rather men made war on beasts than worshipped them. In the final analysis, I don't object to
people preventing the lower creatures from becoming too populous. Though I suppose it would be better if
society was arranged in such a fashion that either the State or some other
authority could take greater responsibility for keeping their numbers in check,
by having trained professionals do the job of culling them, in order to make
the business less a sport than a moral and ecological obligation."
"Ah, I see,"
said Geraldine. "Well, you won't
find the lower creatures too populous around here, I can assure you! Not unless you're also alluding to ants,
beetles, worms, sparrows, and other such lowly creatures?"
Timothy made no comment,
but contented himself, instead, with a private reflection on the sad fact that
the lowest of all creations, viz. raw nature, was far too populous or, at any
rate, abundant here, even in the heart of winter.
Yet if Geraldine
half-divined his thoughts she didn't let-on, nor draw attention to the
impracticality of greater state responsibility in the matter of culling wild
animals professionally while land was still in private ownership, but continued
to lead the way and talk about her father's shooting abilities, which were of
quite a high standard apparently.
"I'd love to have a
crack at shooting grouse myself one day," Gowling
revealed, in due course.
"Well, perhaps we
can arrange that for you," Geraldine commented, and, as she briefly turned
towards him, the artist found himself becoming embarrassed again for no
apparent reason or, rather, for reasons best known to himself. "That would be most kind of you,"
he averred, slightly to Timothy's distaste.
The path wound on into
the distance but, mercifully for Timothy,
didn't stray too far into the wood, so that it was possible, every now
and then, to glimpse part of the South Front of Rothermore
House away in the distance, as one came upon a small clearing between the trees
and bushes to one's right. Glimpsed from
this distance, the house seemed quite small.
But it was still a vaguely reassuring spectacle for anyone who preferred
civilization to nature, and provided Timothy with a brief reprieve from the
gloomy thoughts which surged through his nature-stricken consciousness, like
doom-besotted ghosts. Overhead, the
regular flapping of wings attested to an abundance of bird life here, and Gowling must have looked-up at the startled creatures, from
time to time, with more than a vague desire to pull the trigger of a gun and
send one or two of them crashing beak-foremost to earth. Geraldine, however, had other things on her
mind.
"Look!" she
cried, bringing the men to a sudden halt again.
"There's a fallow deer over there.
D'you see it?"
The pale-brown deer, a
doe, had certainly seen them and now kept a watchful eye on the intruding
humans from where it stood, some seventy or so yards to their left.
"How pretty she is!" Townley
observed, instinctively dropping his voice to almost a whisper. "And so small
really!" But the doe had
seen enough of them by now, and suddenly made off deeper into the wood.
"Perhaps she has a
mate waiting for her somewhere," joked Gowling as they got under way again.
"She might
have," Geraldine responded, smiling slyly, "although we're not
exactly in the heart of the rutting season at present and, as such, the bucks
tend to be somewhat aloof ... like certain men at this time of year," she
added, a shade ironically.
Gowling
experienced a painful recrudescence of his former embarrassment and endeavoured
to hide his face from Geraldine by looking in the opposite direction ... across
towards Rothermore House. It was evident that she was teasing him
again! Timothy, on the other hand,
smiled faintly and offered no comment.
Recalling to mind his intimacy with Sarah the previous night, he felt
confident that Geraldine couldn't very well have been alluding to him - at
least not as far as he was concerned. For he had seen more than enough female flesh
to last him a good few nights to come!
To be sure, the
recollection of his pulling down Sarah's little white nylon panties and placing
an exploratory kiss on her pubic hair caused his smile to expand slightly, in
spite of the uncongenial environment in which he still found himself. Because he was walking just behind the
others, however, this smile went unnoticed and he didn't have to justify
it. No doubt, Geraldine, in particular,
would have been intrigued! Anyway, he
was relieved that it was
"Do you get many
fish here?" Townley asked, as they stared down
into the gently-flowing stream which glistened with myriad patches of sunlight,
like some kind of kaleidoscope.
"Not in the stream
itself," Geraldine replied.
"For, as you can see, it's rather shallow and stony. But certainly in the river. My father has caught more than a few salmon
there over the years. Quite
large ones, too. After grouse
shooting, it's his next favourite sport."
"Oh,
really?" Townley responded, his face
aglow with polite interest. "I used
to do a spot of fishing myself at one time.
On the Wey, in
"How lovely!" Geraldine
exclaimed. "They tell me there are
some ideal spots for fishing, along the Wey."
"Ideal if you discount the counter-productive influence of
passing rowing boats," Townley retorted, with a
faint good-natured chuckle. "They
often scare the fish away. And sometimes
the less-accomplished rowers have a fatal tendency to get their oars entangled
in one's line, which can be pretty frustrating, I can tell you!"
A chorus of sympathetic
humour erupted from his listeners, before Geraldine assured him that there
weren't any boats on their river, so one could fish in
peace. "My brother used to catch tiddlers in this stream," she remarked nostalgically,
as they continued to skirt its edge.
"Tiddlers?" echoed Timothy and, smiling inwardly, he
recalled his own rather frustrating efforts, as a small boy, to catch either tiddlers, tadpoles, or aquatic insects in his fishing net
at Bagshot Ponds or off the tiny wooden bridge in the
park at Farnham. Mostly he just caught
weeds and stones. It was enough to put
him off fishing for good (long before mature reflection, as an adult, led him
to conclude that fishing for pleasure was on a par with blood sports and
therefore no less reprehensible from a moral standpoint). However, disillusioned as much by the nature
of his catch as by the humble means employed, he later gravitated to feeding
monkeys on the Hogs Back. It was a slightly
more rewarding occupation than waiting for non-existent or extremely recalcitrant
tiddlers! But the Wey? He smarted with repressed indignation at the
indirect insult just received from the unsuspecting Nigel Townley,
who, it seemed, objected to boating there.
Had not he, Timothy Byrne, spent many a pleasant afternoon rowing down
the Wey without disturbing a single fishing
enthusiast or noticing a single fish, except the occasional dead one floating
on the water's surface, compliments, in all probability, of the rod
fraternity? And had he not been inconvenienced
himself, on a number of occasions, by fishing lines cast too far out and
necessitating an abrupt change of direction, which usually resulted in one's
colliding with the nearest bank? God
knows, there were so many sharp bends and unexpected twists-and-turns in the Wey, that it was difficult enough to avoid clashing with
one or other of its banks at the best of times!
But for this bloke to complain about the inconvenience caused by
rowers!
However, Timothy had no
real desire to drag up his childhood or youth by the banks of this little
stream, even though, in the circumstances, it wasn't entirely irrelevant. As a child one was always, after all,
something of a savage, and thus more partial to the barbarous influence of
nature's predatory instincts. A miniature pagan, at the furthest possible moral remove from God,
or very nearly so. For it was
probably truer to say that the very earliest children, in the childhood of the
human race, so to speak, had been at a still-further remove from the Holy
Spirit than were their latter-day counterparts - bad enough as they generally
were!
By now, however,
Geraldine's group had come upon sight of Lord Handon's
in the distance, and, together, they quickened their pace to approach
them. Yet if the former had spotted the
latter, it was hardly the case that a reciprocal spotting had taken place with
the other group. For
they stood with their backs to the approaching quartet and were staring down
into the water which ran beneath the sturdy wooden parapet upon which they all
leant. Or so it appeared for an
instant. For as Geraldine's group got a
slightly better view of the bridge, thanks to a narrow clearing beyond the
path, it soon became apparent that only Girish
O'Donnell and Irene Myers were actually leaning on the parapet, since, much to
Timothy's surprise, the remaining two guests were leaning against Lord Handon, one on either side of him, while he held a
supporting arm round their respective waists.
Yet this, too, was an optical illusion or, at any rate, only a very
transient posture. For, on closer
inspection, it soon became evident that Lord Handon’s
hands weren't exactly static, but actively roaming backwards and forwards over
their respective behinds.
"Shush!"
hissed Geraldine, bringing them to a sudden standstill, the better to spy on
the proceedings farther afield. Then, following the inevitably excited pause,
she whispered: "Can you see what I can?"
"Plainly,"
Timothy admitted on a note of disgust.
Townley
sniggered softly and shook his head in amazement. "It seems that you were perfectly right
to say this place must be a naturalist's paradise,
Geraldine had put her
hand on Gowling's arm in involuntary response to her
father's actions and was causing him to blush anew, despite his manifest
interest in the occupants of the bridge.
"Gosh, we could certainly do with some binoculars now!" he
managed to say.
In point of fact,
binoculars would not have taught them much they didn't already know. For, from where they now stood, they could
even see the smiling faces of Sheila and Sarah frequently turning up towards
the viscount, as he whispered or murmured something evidently endearing into
their eager ears. A
smile, and then another little bout of hand roaming on Lord Handon's
part. Another
smile, followed by more of the same.
And then, quite unexpectedly, a spurt of more adventurous caressing in
relation to Sarah, as the hand nearest to her caught the rim of her minidress and gently lifted it up, thereby exposing the
greater part of her pale-stockinged legs to the rapt
attention of Geraldine's group - an action which precipitated a fresh wave of
amazement, not to say amusement, among them.
"My goodness, what
will the old sod do next?" Geraldine was asking
in a patently rhetorical fashion.
"Are you sure that
wasn't the wind which blew it up?" queried Gowling,
who was slightly myopic in any case.
"Positively,"
Geraldine assured him. "I always
knew my father was a lecher, but really...!" She cast him a sort of reassuring glance,
before adding: "I don't think I ought to watch this any longer."
"Frankly, I don't
think there'll be much more to watch," said Timothy, conscious, now he had
got over his initial shock, of a feeling of jealousy in relation to Lord Handon's liberties.
"Maybe that's what
you prefer to believe," Geraldine retorted, an ironic smile on her lips.
He shot her a withering
look, but almost immediately regretted it, and relapsed, instead, into a morose
silence.
"I'm surprised that
Girish and Irene aren't more intrigued by their
guide's familiarities with the others," Gowling
declared to no-one in particular.
"They appear to be
more interested in themselves," Townley
observed. "Arm-in-arm
and talking quite volubly, by the look of it."
"A pity we can't
hear what they're saying from here," Geraldine murmured. "But if we go any closer, they're bound
to see us."
Timothy was beginning to
feel the cold. "In all probability,
they've only got their arms about each other to keep warm," he opined.
"It's not that
cold!" Geraldine objected.
"Yet even if that
applies to Girish and Irene," conceded Townley, "it hardly explains or justifies the posture,
as it were, of the others."
"Quite," both
Geraldine and Gowling confirmed simultaneously.
"Unless, of course,
your father is endeavouring to keep his right hand warm by using Sarah's dress
as a glove," Townley rejoined, in an attempt to
elucidate his objections.
"I must say, she
does have a nice pair of legs," Gowling declared
half-humorously.
"So does Sheila,
incidentally," the architect revealed.
"Oh? And just when
did you discover that fact?" Geraldine asked.
For Sheila's legs were still modestly hidden beneath her outer garments
at that moment.
"Whilst I was
dancing with her last night, if you must know," Townley
replied, divulging only a part of the truth.
"I see,"
sighed Geraldine, and a slightly-pained expression crossed her face. For she had hoped that
Meanwhile, however, it was her father who appeared to be getting
what he wanted from the two young women on either side of him. Evidently his wants were not as exigent as
Geraldine's but, nonetheless, they were of a sufficiently sensuous nature to be
of some concern to Timothy, who watched, with growing resentment, the liberal
caresses Lord Handon was permitting himself at Sarah's
expense. For his right hand had now
slipped under her dress and was more intimately exploring the opera singer's
rear, gliding backwards and forwards across what appeared to be the very same
pair of panties which Timothy had had the privilege of removing only the night
before. However, to the latter's relief,
Sarah must have realized that Lord Handon was taking
extra liberties with her, and decided there and then to put a stop to it. For the hand that wasn't wrapped round his
waist suddenly came to the rescue of her modesty and set about restoring the
dress to its former, more orthodox position, thereby obliging her assailant to
adopt a less intimate caress again. In
fact, Timothy almost heaved a sigh of relief at this point, but, realizing that
Geraldine's attention was partly on him, he checked the impulse to do so at the
last moment and endeavoured to fake a light-hearted smile instead, as though
the proceedings farther afield were only of humorous
interest. If Geraldine saw through him,
too bad!
"It looks as if our
little peep-show is about to come to an end," Townley
remarked, a shade disappointedly.
"So it does,"
Geraldine confirmed. For the arms of the
two young women on the bridge had now dropped to their sides, as Lord Handon turned away from the parapet and began to walk
towards the couple to his left.
"They'll be coming
in our direction now, won't they?" Gowling
surmised at the top of his whispering voice.
And, sure enough, the
other group was leaving the bridge and heading towards the beaten path on which
they were still standing, as though locked in suspended animation.
"I feel like
turning back," Timothy confessed, in the throes of a momentary panic.
"Don't be such a
bloody fool!" cried Geraldine.
"They'll be expecting us to bump into them shortly in any case, so
we must go on. But when we do meet them,
try not to look guilty or amused.
Otherwise they're bound to realize that we've been spying on them. Try, if anything, to look surprised."
"What, you
here?" joked Townley, smiling.
"Yes, something of
the sort," Geraldine smilingly agreed, as they continued along the path
and thence out into the less thickly-populated stretch of wood beyond.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The drive back to
Their conversation
became more desultory, however, as the drive wore on,
and had virtually petered-out by the time they reached the outskirts of
Arrived home, Timothy
immediately set about preparing himself some supper. He hadn't eaten since lunch and, as it was
nearly
Timothy ate supper in
the kitchen of his four-roomed flat. He
was both pleased and relieved to be back from what, for him, had been an
unprecedented experience. But, by God,
how small everything seemed! The kitchen
looked ten times smaller than usual - more a cupboard than a room. And what applied to the kitchen would
doubtless apply to each of his other rooms as well - all cupboards! To be sure, the difference in scale from the
rooms at Rothermore House was indeed tremendous, more
tremendous than he would have been capable of contemplating had he never set
foot in the place. It was almost a
comedown being back home again. A comedown? How quickly the aristocratic criteria of Lord
Handon's stuffy old baroque mansion had made their
mark on him, influencing his soul in a way he would ordinarily have considered
pernicious or misguided! No, not so much
a comedown, the rational part of his mind now told him, as a radical
change-of-scale. But isn't that more to
your liking?
Ah yes, there at last
was the philosophical part of his psyche reasserting itself again, reminding
him of who he was and what he believed in as a person. It was coming to his rescue, coming to combat
the pernicious influence of his recent misguided experiences. That old Nietzschean
'transvaluation of all values' was making its voice
heard above the babble of contradictory feelings and impressions once
more. He could hear it quite clearly
now, as he sat in front of his mug of steaming coffee and plate of cheese-and-tomato
sandwiches. Calm, reassuring,
methodical, a reassertion of his customary values.... No, it wasn't a comedown
to be sitting back here in one's tiny kitchen after the materialistic opulence
and expansiveness of Rothermore House. On the contrary, one had simply returned to
one's own more evolved level, a level in which materialism was scaled-down, as
it were, to a bare minimum. One had
returned to the late-twentieth century again, to a world of flats and small
city houses. It was a very different
world from the old aristocratic one of large country mansions. And faced with a choice between living in a
small flat or a large mansion, one could hardly be blamed for coming down
heavily in favour of the former. One
simply followed one's logic until it attained to a realization of the fact that
one was closer to the Holy Ghost by living in a flat or small-city house than
ever one would be in a large country mansion.
Not a great deal closer perhaps. But still, on a higher level of evolution than the person
surrounded by nature on some country estate. One was morally better off, and that was
worth knowing. Such was the way, at any
rate, that Timothy Byrne looked at life, and he was confident that there were
plenty of others who would be just as capable of looking at it from a similarly
objective viewpoint - objective, that is, in terms of the Holy Ghost and the
struggle for inner truth.
He smiled to himself as he swallowed the last mouthful of
sandwich. In his mind's eye he saw the
stern, rather embittered face of Lady Handon, as she
disagreed with his concept of the Diabolic, saying: 'I really cannot reconcile
myself to your attitude towards the stars and nature.' Ah well, too bad, Lady Pamela, too bad! We don't all live on the same evolutionary
level, after all. Some of us virtually
live in the Middle Ages, some in pagan times, others
even aspire, if that's the right word, to the primeval, and yet others live in
a mixture or combination of them all.
But then, of course, some live more up-to-date - in fact as far
up-to-date as the last quarter of the twentieth century. A few are effectively spiritual leaders and
consequently expressive of viewpoints which may well sound strange to those who
lag behind. And the further they lag
behind, the stranger these viewpoints are likely to sound. A genuine pagan would have been even less
disposed to accept Timothy's views of the stars and nature than Lady Handon. Fortunately,
however, genuine pagans were few-and-far-between these days. Evolution was against them. It disliked laggards.
Yet what of the spiritual leaders? Was evolution encouraging them as much as it
could, and, if so, had Timothy Byrne a right to consider himself
blessed with the privilege of such leadership?
Yes, he liked to think so - at least as far as his thinking, his
theories, were concerned. Naturally
there would be those who, when once they read his latest published work, would
be only too ready to consider him mad or bad, or both. But so what?
Did that prove he really was? In
all probability their thinking - assuming they thought anything at all - was
simply at a lower stage of evolution and therefore indisposed them to relate to
him. It was nothing to be surprised
at. There were millions of Lady Handons in the world, and what they thought was usually little
more than what others had thought for them, and not generally the most
up-to-date or progressive people either!
Let them have their little grumble, if that was all they wanted. He would not be thrown off course by that,
but would stick to his intellectual guns and fire away at the body of outmoded
tradition, of entrenched reaction and dogmatic denial. And if, after all, he was wrong and
could be proved so? Well, damn it, he
would still fire away for all he was worth and assert his thinking over everyone
else's. It was his own life to do with
as he saw fit. And if he saw fit to
regard human evolution as a sort of struggle from diabolic alpha points to a
divine omega point, from the stars to the Holy Spirit - well then, that was his
affair and nothing could take it away from him, not even the combined efforts
of all the Lady Handons in the world put
together. As long as he lived, his truth
lived with him. It was germane to him
and a reflection of his degree of evolutionary sophistication. He had a right to think of the Alpha in
diabolic terms, for he had gone so far in the contrary direction ... that there
was no other reasonable possibility.
Willy-nilly, the Alpha is entitled to the respect accorded to divinity
until the coming of the Omega shows it up and puts it in an immoral light. For alpha and omega are
incommensurate, and if there is to be an omega point, there can be no
continuing allegiance to the Alpha.
Self-realization necessarily excludes worship.
He finished off his last
cheese-and-tomato sandwich and gulped down the rest of his coffee. His new book was bound to cause some
disagreement or disapproval among people.
Good, let it impinge on the cobwebs of their conservative thinking and
rouse their feelings a bit! God knows,
some of them needed to have their feelings roused, to be shocked out of their
smug complacency! And if it stirred them
into writing him abusive or threatening letters, so be it! He would bear his cross as best he could,
regardless. He wouldn't go along with
those who thought 'God's in His Heaven and all's right with the world.' The Devil was in its Hell all right, but, so
far as he was concerned, God had yet to be established in His or, rather, its Heaven. Only with
the climax of evolution would man attain to God, in his opinion. Only with the transformation of spirit into holy spirit, transcendent and pure, would God actually
become manifest in the Universe.
Thus Timothy saw himself
in the unique position of being a spiritual leader who was yet an atheist, a
man of God who disbelieved in God's actual existence, preferring to contend
that it was our duty, as evolving beings, to create ultimate
divinity in due course, to further the cause of divine truth in the Universe by
cultivating the spirit as much as possible.
God, then, was the
culmination of evolution, the divine flower at the end of the stem of human
progress, the climax of Eternal Life. By
cultivating the spirit Timothy believed that we were not so much getting into contact
with God, contrary to what most mystics had hitherto imagined, as simply with
that which, in pure consciousness, was potentially God - incipiently
divine. The spirit and the Holy Spirit
were not identical. For
the latter was destined to arise out of the former as it became transcendent. As yet, however, spirit was all too impure,
held back and down, as it were, by the flesh.
Some presumption, indeed, to equate this spirit with God!
With supper out of the way, Timothy decided to call a halt to these
rather radical reflections and do some meditating before going to bed. He was quite tired now and anxious to make
up, in due course, for any sleep missed the previous night. Ah, how Sarah had drained him of physical
energy, or such of it as he had still possessed after the fatiguing exertions
of their dancing match! A sexual
vampire, if ever there was one! But a
very beautiful woman, he had to admit. Too beautiful, in fact.
The kind of woman who could quickly drain one of spiritual energy, too!
He switched off the
kitchen light and ambled across the passageway to his study, which was where he
preferred to conduct his brief stints of Transcendental Meditation these
days. The light was somewhat brighter in
there and quite dazzled him as it came on, causing his
mostly paperback library to gleam back at him from the opposite wall. Ignoring that, he advanced towards his
dark-green notebook, which lay where he had left it on the desk beneath the
study's single window, and, opening it at the page where he had made his last
entry only a couple of days before, began to read:-
I like de Chardin's
phenomenology, or theory of cosmogenesis. In fact, it has had some influence on my own
work. But I'm rather sceptical about his
Christogenesis, especially with regard to a literal
resurrection of Christ and the consequent inference of an already-existent
Omega Point compounded, so to speak, of the spiritual presence of the Risen
Christ. This would suggest the existence
of God, and I am unable to reconcile myself to it. However, I do believe that, considered
figuratively, the Resurrection can be regarded as a symbolic illustration of
man's future destiny in spiritual transcendence. Hence the Universe could be said to entail a
literal Christogenesis insofar as it is man's destiny
to follow the symbolic example of the Risen Christ and ultimately attain to the
Omega Point, attain, in other words, to the Holy Spirit, the climax of
evolution - call it what you will. But
as for Christ Himself, no, I can't for one moment believe that He literally rose
from the dead and actually attained to the Omega Point two millennia ago -
particularly in light of the fact that, even in this day and age, we have such
a deplorably long way to go in developing our spiritual potential, and, as a
corollary to that, to pairing back and eventually transcending the natural,
ours no less than that pertaining to nature in general.
Timothy smiled to
himself in deference to the almost Nietzschean
implications of the latter part of the last sentence, before turning back the
page of his notebook to a note written earlier that same day. It read:-
Like Aldous Huxley, I am
opposed to downward self-transcendence but in favour of upward
self-transcendence. I believe the future
belongs to LSD or some such hallucinogenic alternative. Increasingly we shall avail ourselves of the
synthetic, turning away from the natural, as from a narcotic plague.
And above it another
note, reading:-
They say that, like art, literature is dead, but this
isn't really so! Literature is simply
undergoing a process of transformation into a higher stage of evolution,
becoming less a matter of illusion and more one of truth, like art. In this transitional age, the most advanced
literature is that which aspires most consistently and successfully towards
truth or fact at the expense of illusion and fiction. In this regard, the philosophical stands
above the autobiographical, the transpersonal above the personal. Hence novels like
He smiled to himself
once more, this time in response to a reflection on the shortcomings of the
above note, which, while doing relative justice to conventional bourgeois
literature, absolutely failed to embrace the extent to which computers would
revolutionize literature in terms of an artificial conceptualism that, in
relation to conceptual precedent, would be effectively superconceptual,
and proceeded to read the first note on the left-hand page, which was strictly
autobiographical:-
I am incapable of writing inconsequential works -
novels which revel in silly fictions and half-baked illusions. If I do not write philosophical bombshells,
pushing the pursuit of truth to greater heights, I don't write at all. My imagination dries-up before mere
story-telling. It requires a worthier
task!
Ah, how true that statement
was! He closed his notebook and stood a
moment staring blankly through the dark window, out into the night. He wasn't a petty man to waste valuable time
scribbling silly fictions! It was his
duty, he felt, to further the philosophically- and/or autobiographically-biased
literature of late-twentieth-century man.... Admittedly, it was still necessary
to commit a certain amount of illusion or fiction to paper, but one did so
begrudgingly and sparingly, always with a view to supporting one's
philosophical bias. For if one was
foolish enough to allow it to swamp one's work, to move from the plane of
foundations to that of the principal edifice, one simply produced poor
literature, that is to say, poor by late-twentieth-century standards -
reactionary or traditional, a literature seemingly in the service of the
perceptual rather than standing on its own conceptual terms in philosophical
opposition to the theatrical, whether anterior or, preferably, posterior to
it. For the perceptual and the
conceptual were two quite separate ways of approaching life, and there was no
sense in which the perceptual was inherently superior to the conceptual. On the contrary, it was a barbarous alpha,
not a civilized omega. The one stemmed
from dreams, the other could be said to presage meditation.
Absentmindedly, he
pulled the bright cotton curtains across the dark window and then turned
towards the centre of his study. He
normally meditated sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, but he
wasn't now sure that he really wanted to meditate, after all. Somehow the day had caught up with him,
making him too tired to adopt a positive attitude towards his spirit. He would run the risk of relapsing into a
kind of downward self-transcendence in trance-like stupor. He could end-up experiencing his subconscious
mind rather than his superconscious one, his
perceptual senses rather than his conceptual spirit. No, he could do without that,
especially after his experiences of the last two days! He'd had enough truck with the Diabolic Alpha
at Lord Handon's.
In a short while he would be sliding down into his subconscious anyway,
to dream the devil-knew-what, so he might as well save himself the
inconvenience of premature subconscious domination in the study. After all, it was the noblest of his four
rooms, the one most suited to the cultivation of spirit. It wouldn't do to fall asleep there! God knows, it was difficult enough to
cultivate spirit at the best of times, what with all the diurnal occupations
and obligations with which one had to contend.
Even more difficult when one lived in an environment, as Timothy used to
do, in which dogs were gruffly barking most of the time. Hellishly so!
Fortunately, however,
all he now had to contend with was tiredness, yet that was more than
enough! He decided, there and then, to
take himself off to bed and make-up for this spiritual lapse some other time -
perhaps the following day. Then he might
be in a better frame-of-mind to cultivate the godly and aspire towards
transcendent spirit.
And, sure enough, the
following evening he set aside half-an-hour for the objective in question. As a rule, he preferred the evening to the
day because, to him, it was a less evil time, the sun having its primary
influence on the opposite side of the globe.
The evening world was accordingly at the farthest physical remove from
the Diabolic Alpha, and thus it was easier, he believed, to aspire towards the
Divine Omega then than at any other time.
Aspire, yes! But not attain to
it! For there was an immense difference,
he felt obliged to remind himself, between spirit and holy spirit, between that
which was potentially God and the actual transcendent establishment of God in
due course. To underestimate this could
prove fatal. He had no intentions of
doing so!
Yet he got a surprise
that evening. For no sooner had he
completed his meditation routine and begun listening to some synth-based music than the telephone rang, and who should
it be but Sarah Field! He almost jumped
out of his skin at the clear sound of her voice, sweetly alluring as ever. Had he got over his visit to Rothermore House?
Yes, he had. Was he happy to be back home? Yes, he
was. Had he decided what he would say at
the
"I'll come and see
you, if you like," Sarah replied.
"I'd love to see your flat."
"Oh, you would,
would you?" (Gentle laughter at Sarah's end of the
line.) "Well, in that case, Tuesday will be fine."
CHAPTER NINE
Tuesday evening was in fact when Sarah arrived, looking like a beauty queen - or so it seemed to Timothy's
overwrought imagination - and bringing a recording of Massenet's
Werther, which she wanted him to hear because she was
on it.
"I know you're
familiar with the work itself," she stated, as he took the slender box-set
in his eager hands. "But since it's
the only recording I've so far made in French, it may prove of some fresh
interest to you."
"Decidèment," Timothy smilingly assured her. "We'll put it on straightaway."
"Please don't feel
under any obligation to," said Sarah, following him into his
sitting-room. "I mean, you needn't
play it just because I'm here." But
Timothy seemed resolved on playing it now, and so she was obliged to let
him. "Ah, what a nice room this
is!" she enthused, while taking off her coat. Underneath she wore a pale-green satin
miniskirt with black nylon stockings and matching high-heels. Her dark hair hung down her back in a plaited
ponytail.
"Yes," Timothy
agreed. "It's where I like to
relax." Although, with the
ravishing proximity of Sarah Field in front of him at that moment, he felt
anything but relaxed! In fact, her image
had played on his mind throughout the past few days, keying him up for the
present. He could hardly be blamed
therefore if, no sooner than he had set side one of Werther in motion, he took
her in his arms and lovingly applied his mouth to hers.
To his gratification,
she responded warmly, enabling him to unzip her skirt and run his hands over
her ample behind, as though to erase the imprint of Lord Handon's
liberties there the week before. It
seemed that she, too, was keen to explore the pleasures of the senses. For her hand took care of his zip shortly
afterwards.
"Are you going to
let me open your purse again?" he teasingly inquired of her.
Purse?" she
queried, wrinkling-up her brows in feigned puzzlement.
"You know," he
smiled, still teasing.
A knowing blush suffused
her cheeks. "Provided you put
something rich into it," she joked.
He needed no further encouragement on that score but lifted her off her fee