Briefing for a Descent into Hell Part 20

And if you were in my place, you'd have the electric shock treatment?

Yes I would. You'll probably come to that in the end. That's my view. It is also the view of Doctor X. You have had the drugs we use instead of shock. None has worked with you. Nothing has worked. You had lost your memory when you came in, and you still have no memory. So what shall we do?

But I have two weeks more here?

Yes.

Of course I might remember in that time.

Yes, you might. Would you like to try writing things down again? A tape-recorder?

My room in college looks out into a small court. The court is square and has white walls. There are various plants in tubs and pots. The wall opposite my door is the retaining wall of the garden above it. Honeysuckle dangles down over this wall from that garden. Last summer the honeysuckle let down two long tendrils side by side, but separated from each other by about a yard. The two green dangling sprays look attractive on the white wall. It is the nature of honeysuckle to look for a support, a wall or a trellis or another plant. There is nothing on that wall for it to fasten itself to. But there is a camellia in a pot in the corner. I noticed that the strand of honeysuckle nearer the camellia was swaying back and forth in wider sweeps than the strand further away. At first I thought that for some reason the wind or a breeze was reaching this strand to make it move more than the other-though this seemed unlikely because it was the strand on the outer side of the wall nearer the entrance which was more vulnerable to wind or air pa.s.sing. Or at least it would be reasonable to think so. But there was no doubt that it was the inner strand which moved faster and in wider sweeps, in its efforts to reach and fasten itself on to the camellia. I sat there last summer a good deal, watching. It was really a remarkable sight. After watching for a few minutes, the faster moving strand began to seem like an arm or a part of some sea animal, as it swayed back and forth, trying to reach the camellia. Day after day pa.s.sed, but no matter how hard the honeysuckle tendril tried, it could not reach the camellia. Then I moved the pot with the camellia in it inwards a few inches, and sat to watch how the honeysuckle finally managed to latch itself on, helped by a small breeze.

Then I moved the camellia back again, into its corner, though by now I was so involved with the efforts of the honeysuckle to find a support it was like taking away food from a creature. I marked the length of the honeysuckle on the wall with chalk. But it had become autumn, and the plant had stopped lengthening itself for that year.

One afternoon I looked up from my desk and saw that the honeysuckle had swung itself far enough to lay a tight tendril around a branch of the camellia. It had been a stormy night. And the tendril or arm of the honeysuckle that was farther away had been swung up by the wind past the camellia-loving tendril to lay hold of a trellis high on the wall. So now both tendrils were fastened and made pretty loops of green on the wall. But then in a few days there was another strong wind, and the outer tendril lost its hold on the trellis and fell down. Now, hanging down by itself, it began a slow determined swinging to reach its sister tendril that was hanging down on the wall, but curving away, since this inner one was fastened to the camellia. As I watched one afternoon, I saw how a small breeze took this outer strand to hook on to the inner one, but the combined weight of the two was too much for the still tentative clasp of the tendril on the camellia, and now both sprays fell back and dangled down the wall.

We were all back where we started.

Both again started their slow aspiring swinging back and forth, back and forth, more or less, according to whether there was a wind. But they were never entirely still. Even on a windless day, the sprays would be in perpetual light movement, the one closer to the camellia moving more than the other.

I used to sit and watch and I asked myself if the honeysuckle sprays "remembered" how one of them had been able to reach the high trellis on the night of the strong wind, and the other how it had found a host in the camellia. After all, the genus honeysuckle "remembers" that it must hold fast on to something or other, and it knows how it must swing back and forth inside the attraction of another plant which becomes its host. And what of the camellia? Does it lean over as far as it can to help the honeysuckle to reach it? Surely the camellia cannot be indifferent to the efforts of the honeysuckle?

By the time the autumn ended, the honeysuckle spray had several times reached the camellia, with the aid of light breezes, and had several times been pulled away again, either by too strong a breeze, or because of its sister strand adding its weight to it.

And all the times between, when the inner strand was not attached to the camellia, it hung there, lightly quivering, always in subtle movement, waiting as it swung for the wind, as a surfer adjusts the balance of his body for an expected wave.

Sometimes, watching, I could feel the process on that wall as a unity: the movement of the honeysuckle spray, the waiting camellia, and the breeze which was not visible at all, except as it lifted the honeysuckle spray up and close to the camellia.

It was not: The honeysuckle spray swings and reaches the camellia.

It was not: The wind blows the spray on to its host.

The two things are the same.

Not until the spring came, when the honeysuckle spray lengthened its growth, and achieved a wider swing, was it certain of a really solid grasp of the camellia.

Now I see a third part of the process.

Not only: The movement of the spray made it reach the camellia, Or: The wind blew it so it could reach the camellia, But: The further growth of the honeysuckle made it possible to reach the camellia.

But the element in which this process exists is-Time.

Time is the whole point. Timing.

The surfer on the wave. The plant swinging in the wind. And it's just the same with-well, everything, and that's what I have to say, Doctor. Why can't you see that?

It was ten at night in a ward or room shared by the Professor and three other men. The ward was cosy, with its pink curtains drawn. The Professor was reading that day's Times. Outside was a wild night, noisy with wind.

Of the other three patients, two were already asleep, their bedside lights off, and one was listening to the radio through headphones.

A girl came into the ward. She wore flowered little-girl pyjamas, and a white fluffy dressing gown. Her senorita's hair was now loosed from the formal bun, but she had pulled it back and tied it at the nape of her neck, making it a brown bush caught neatly by a pink ribbon bow. She was everything that was proper and right, but poor girl, she could not help herself and now the shock inherent in Miss Violet Stoke's presence was because the little girl had a sad, knowledgeable woman's face. She sat on the Professor's bed and lowered her voice to say furiously: "Is it true?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"But why? Don't. Please don't. Oh please please don't."

That day the whisper had gone around that Professor Charles Watkins had voluntarily agreed to have electric shock treatment. Some of the patients were indifferent, but not many. Most were agitated by the news. He had become a bit of a symbol. For the Professor, unlike most of them, had had a choice. He had not been given shock treatment when many would have had it, because Doctor Y opposed it, in his case. But now, when he was himself again (except for the fact that he still could not agree that his past was what they said it was) he had said to Doctor Y, and to Doctor X, that he would try it.

He was going to have his first shock the following morning.

Some of the patients reacted as if they were in a prison and one of their number had offered to be electrocuted.

The Professor, an agreeable, smiling, middle-aged man with distinguished greying hair and kindly blue eyes, took the girl's hand in his, and said: "I'm sorry if you are upset. But I do feel a bit at a loss. For one thing, they won't hear of our sharing a flat. But I suppose it was unrealistic."

"It was only unrealistic because we didn't insist on it. What am I going to do now? Where shall I go? I don't have anybody."

"Well, if as I hope I do remember, then I'll be well and you can come and stay a while with Felicity and myself and the children."

There was a furious silence.

Then he said: "I'm sorry. I know that that is dishonest. Or it could be. But I suppose if I am Professor Thingabob and I have a home then I can have people to stay?"

"You've settled for that. Why, why, why?"

The Professor examined the two sleeping men in the beds opposite him, and then the man on the same side of the room as himself who sat straight up in bed, smiling with pleasure, and sometimes laughing a little out loud, as he listened to the radio programme.

The Professor said: "There's only one thing they all seem to agree on. It is that the electric shock might jolt me into remembering."

"Yes and it might not. You know as well as I do what some of them get like. They're like shadows. They're like zombies. It isn't as if you haven't seen what happens."

"But some are perfectly all right and they improve."

"But you are taking the chance."

Feet were coming along the pa.s.sage to this room, and a cheerful voice was saying Goodnight, Goodnight, Goodnight, and lights were going out in the wards off the pa.s.sage.

"But supposing I remember what I want to remember? They take it for granted that I'll remember what they want me to remember. And it's desperately urgent that I should remember, I do know that. It's all timing, you see. I know that, too. It's the stars in their courses. The time and the place. I was thinking and thinking ... I lay awake last night and the night before that and the night before that ... I was working something out. Why do I have this sense of urgency? It's familiar. It's not something I've had only since I lost my memory. No. I had it before. Now I think I know what it is. And not only that. There are lots of things in our ordinary life that are-shadows. Like coincidences, or dreaming, the kinds of things that are an angle to ordinary life, do you follow me, Violet?"

She nodded. Her sad woman's eyes were looking towards the door, where the nurse would stand in a few moments. This was the last ward of this set of wards.

"The important thing is this-to remember that some things reach out to us from that level of living, to here. Anxiety is one. The sense of urgency. Oh, they make an illness of it, they charm it away with their magic drugs. But it isn't for nothing. It isn't unconnected. They say, "an anxiety state," as they say, paranoia, but all these things, they have a meaning, they are reflections from that other part of ourselves, and that part of ourselves knows things we don't know."

"Well now," said the nurse, arriving, and seeing the man and the girl in bedtime chat. "It's time you were in bed and asleep Miss Stoke."

"I'm just going," said Violet, instantly transformed into a sulking three-year-old.

The nurse was turning off the ward's central lights.

"My sense of urgency is very simple," said the Professor. "I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has to do with time running out. And that's what anxiety is, in a lot of people. They know they have to do something, they should be doing something else, not just living hand to mouth, putting paint on their faces and decorating their caves and playing nasty tricks on their rivals. No. They have to do something else before they die-and so the mental hospitals are full and the chemists flouris.h.i.+ng."

"Would you like a sleeping pill, Professor?"

"No thank you, Nurse."

"And I must remind you not to eat anything in the morning, please. You'll have your breakfast after your treatment."

"I'll turn out the light in just a minute. Can I?" demanded the girl peremptorily, all flas.h.i.+ng eyes and pouting lips, trying out her three-year-old powers.

"All right, Miss Stoke. But please, the Professor needs his sleep tonight, and so do you, dear."

She went out. "Dear yourself," muttered the girl.

The two now sat close, in a half dark. The man sitting up listening to the radio laughed out loud, held his breath in antic.i.p.ation of an expected joke, and laughed again.

"So that's why, you see, Violet. The shock might shock me into remembering what it is that I know is there, the shadow I can see out of the corner of my eye."

"But it might turn out to be just that-you are Professor Charles Watkins?"

"I know I am taking a chance. I know that very well. Perhaps the shock will make me forget what I already know. That I should be living quite differently."

"Yes, but how, we all say that, we do keep saying that, I know that is the point of everything, but how?"

"There's something I have to reach. I have to tell people. People don't know it but it is as if they are living in a poisoned air. They are not awake. They've been knocked on the head, long ago, and they don't know that is why they are living like zombies and killing each other."

"Like Eliza Frensham after a shock."

"Or like me, tomorrow, after mine. Yes I know."

"But how can we be different? How can we get out? If you find out, will you come and take me with you?"

"It's all timing, you see. Sometimes it is easier for us to get out than other times...."

"Miss Stoke!" said the nurse from the door.

"Coming," said the girl. "I said I was coming and I am. Right?"

She slipped off the bed and stood close to the elderly man's pillow.

"There are people in the world all the time who know," the Professor said. "But they keep quiet. They just move about quietly, saving the people who know they are in the trap. And then, for the ones who have got out, it's like coming around from chloroform. They realise that all their lives they've been asleep and dreaming. And then it's their turn to learn the rules and the timing. And they become the ones to live quietly in the world, just as human beings might if there were only a few human beings on a planet that had monkeys on it for inhabitants, but the monkeys had the possibility of learning to think like human beings. But in the poor sad monkeys' damaged brains there's a knowledge half buried. They sometimes think that if they only knew how, if only they could remember properly, then they could get out of the trap, they could stop being zombies. It's something like that Violet. And I've got to take the chance."

"I'll be thinking of you tomorrow morning."

"Goodnight my dear."

"Goodnight Charles."

"Goodnight Professor."

"Goodnight Nurse."

OH MY DEAR DEAR CHARLES,.

Doctor Y telephoned me to say you are yourself again. I'm coming up to fetch you on Thursday. Oh my dear dear dear dearest darling Charles. And the boys are so happy and so looking forward. I can't write ... this is just to say I'll be there on Thursday at four with the car.

FELICITY.

DEAR CHARLES,.

Felicity tells me you are restored to yourself. It goes without saying that I'm delighted. I had planned to give the series of lectures you had engaged for this term-as well as holding the fort for you in various other directions. But I'm only too delighted to hand back the responsibility to you. The first is The Homeric Epithet, Part I, The Iliad. It is on Monday week. If you don't feel up to it, never mind. Please let me know.

JEREMY.

DEAR JEREMY,.

Thank you for everything. I'm sorry I've been such a bore. I seem to be in full possession of my faculties again. I do remember all about the lecture series. I feel quite well enough to undertake them.

Yours,

CHARLES.

DEAR MILES,.

I have to thank you for your very kind interest while I was ill. But I am better again. Are you thinking of coming up to London at all this winter? If so we could have a meal? Do let me know if you are. Or a family weekend in Cambridge?

Yours,

CHARLES.

DEAR MISS BAINES,.

I am sure you will be pleased to hear that I am fully recovered again, and so expect not to be such a burden on your continuing kind interest. Incidentally, I have to thank you for your patience on the night when I inflicted myself on you in what was an unforgivable way. Please apologise on my behalf to Mr. Larson. As I shall be back in Cambridge and extremely busy I am afraid I shall not be able to accept your very kind invitation to dinner.

Yours sincerely, CHARLES WATKINS.

AFTERWORD, OR END-PAPER.