The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [431]
spiritually — did not at all understand the state of his soul, so to speak, when he died: or even have the vaguest idea of the extent of his achievement. No, she was busy with a vulgar intrigue con-cerned with legalizing her relation s with Mountolive. I suppose she feared that her marriage to a diplomat might be imperilled by a possible scandal. I may be wrong, but that is the impression I gathered. I believe she was going to try and get a whitewashing book written. But now, in a sense, I have my own Pursewarden, my own copy of him, if you like. It’s enough for me. What do the details matter, and why should I meet his sister? It is his work and not his life which is necessary to us — which offers one of the many meanings of the word with four faces!’
I had an impulse to cry out ‘Unfair’, but I restrained it. It is impossible in this world to arrange for full justice to be done to everyone. Keats’s eyelids drooped. ‘Come’ I said, calling for the bill, ‘It’s time you went home and got some sleep.’
‘I do feel rather tired’ he mumbled.
‘Avanti.’
There was an old horse-drawn gharry in a side-street which we were glad to find. Keats protested that his feet were beginning to hurt and his arm to pain him. He was in a pleasantly exhausted frame of mind, and slightly tipsy after his potations. He lay back in the smelly old cab and closed his eyes. ‘D’you know, Darley’ he said indistinctly, ‘I meant to tell you but forgot. Don’t be angry with me, old fellow-bondsman, will you. I know that you and Clea,
… Yes, and I’m glad. But I have the most curious feeling that one day I am going to marry her. Really. Don’t be silly about it. Of course I would never breathe a word, and it would happen years after this silly old war. But somewhere along the line I feel I’m bound to hitch up with her.’
‘Now what do you expect me to say?’
‘Well, there are a hundred courses open. Myself I would start yelling and screaming at once if you said such a thing to me. I’d knock your block off, push you out of the cab, anything. I’d punch me in the eye.’
The gharry drew up with a jolt outside the house. ‘Here we are’
I said, and helped my companion down into the road. ‘I’m not as drunk as all that’ he cried cheerfully, shaking off my help, ‘ ’tis but fatigue, dear friend.’ And while I argued out the cost of the trip
with the driver he went round and held a long private confab-ulation with the horse, stroking its nose. ‘I was giving it some maxims to live by’ he explained as we wound our weary way up the staircase. ‘But the champagne had muddled up my quotation-box. What’s that thing of Shakespeare’s about the lover and the cuckold all compact, seeking the bubble reputation e’en in the cannon’s mouth.’ The last phrase he pronounced in the strange (man-sawing-wood) delivery of Churchill. ‘Or something about swimmers into cleanness leaping — a pre-fab in the eternal mind no less!’
‘You are murdering them both.’
‘Gosh I’m tired. And there seems to be no bombardment tonight.’
‘They are getting less frequent.’
He collapsed on his bed fully dressed, slowly untying his suede desert boots and wriggling with his toes until they slid slowly off and plopped to the floor. ‘Did you ever see Pursewarden’s little book called Select Prayers for English Intellectuals? It was funny.
“Dear Jesus, please keep me as eighteenth century as possible —
but without the c*******d….” ’ He gave a sleepy chuckle, put his arms behind his head and started drifting into smiling sleep. As I turned out the light he sighed deeply and said: ‘Even the dead are overwhelming us all the time with kindnesses.’
I had a sudden picture of him as a small boy walking upon the very brink of precipitous cliffs to gather seabirds’ eggs. One slip….
But I was never to see him again. Vale!
* * * * *
VI
Ten thirsty fingers of my blind Muse
Confer upon my face their sensual spelling