Holy Disorders Read online

  ‘Disgraceful!’ said the woman with the baby. She bumped it up and down even more furiously than before, and cooed at it, adding to its noises with her own.

  The net was by now secured at either end, and more or less conveniently placed, except that anyone rising incautiously or coming into the compartment was liable to bang his head on it. Geoffrey profusely thanked his assistants, who sat down again looking hot but pleased. He turned back to transfer the remainder of his belongings from the seat on to the rack. They were now topped by a letter not his own, but plainly addressed to him. The paper and typing looked uncomfortably familiar. He opened it and read:

  There’s still time to get off the train. We have our setbacks, but we can’t go on failing indefinitely.

  Ignoring Fielding’s curious glance, he put it thoughtfully in his pocket and heaved the remainder of his things out of the way. In the confusion of a moment before, anyone in the compartment could have dropped that note, and for that matter – since the window was wide open – anyone could have flicked it in from outside. He tried to remember the dispositions of the various persons in the compartment, and failed. He sat down feeling somewhat alarmed.

  ‘Another?’ said Fielding; he raised his right eyebrow in elaborate query.

  Geoffrey nodded dumbly and handed him the note.

  He whistled with noisy astonishment as he read it. ‘But who—?’

  Geoffrey shook his head, still refusing to utter a sound. He hoped to convey by this means his suspicion of one of the occupants of the compartment. Any open discussion of the matter might, he obscurely felt, convey information of value to the enemy. The others were eyeing unenthusiastically this gnomic interchange.

  But Fielding was for the moment oblivious of such innuendoes.

  ‘Quick work,’ he said. ‘They must have had a second line of defence ready in case the business in the store failed. Simply a matter of phoning someone here while we were on our way. They’re certainly taking no chances.’

  ‘I wish you’d remember,’ said Geoffrey a trifle peevishly, ‘that I’m the object of all this. It’s no pleasure to me to have you sitting there gloating over the excellence of their arrangements.’

  No notice was taken of this. ‘And that means,’ Fielding continued impassively, ‘that the typewriter they used is somewhere in this neighbourhood – damn it, no it doesn’t, though. The wording of that second note is so vague it could easily have been got ready beforehand.’ The failure of his calculation threw him into a profound despondency; he stared dejectedly at his feet.

  Geoffrey meanwhile was carrying out an inventory of the other persons in the compartment. The man opposite, who had been so helpful over Fen’s butterfly-net, had a well-to-do professional air. Geoffrey was inclined to put him down as a doctor, or a prosperous broker. His face was amiable, with that underlying shyness and melancholy which seems always to be beneath the surface in fat men; he had sparse straight hair, pale grey eyes with heavy lids like thick shutters of flesh, and very long lashes, like a girl’s. The material of his suit was expensive, and it was competently tailored. He held a thick black book, one of the four volumes, Geoffrey observed with surprise, of Pareto’s monumental The Mind and Society. Did doctors or brokers read such things on railway journeys? Covertly, he regarded his vis-à-vis with renewed interest.

  Next door was the woman with the baby. Repeated jogging had now shaken the infant into a state of bemused incomprehension, and it emitted only faint and isolated shrieks. By compensation, it had begun to dribble. Its mother, a small woman vaguely and unanalysably slatternly in appearance, periodically wiped a grubby handkerchief with great force and determination across its face, so that its head almost fell off backwards; while not occupied in this way, she gazed at her companions with great dislike. Probably, Geoffrey reflected, she could be omitted from the list of suspects. The same could not be said for the clergyman sitting in the corner on her right, however. It was true that he looked reedy, young, and ineffectual, but these were too much the characteristics of the stage curate not to be at once suspicious. He was glancing occasionally, with anxious inquiry, at the woman with the rug. She, meanwhile, was engaged in that unnerving examination of the other persons in the compartment which most people seem to regard as necessary at the beginning of a long railway journey. Eventually, feeling apparently that this had now been brought to the point where embarrassment was likely to become active discomfort, she said to the clergyman, looking sternly at a small wrist-watch:

  ‘What time do we get into Tolnbridge?’

  This query aroused some interest in other quarters. Both Geoffrey and Fielding started slightly, with well-drilled uniformity, and shot swift glances at the speaker, while in the Pareto-addict opposite Geoffrey some stirrings of attention were also discernible. All things considered, it was not very surprising that someone else in the compartment should be going to Tolnbridge, even though compared with Taunton and Exeter it was an unimportant stop; but Geoffrey at all events was too alarmed and uneasy to make such a simple deduction.

  The clergyman seemed at a loss for an answer. He looked helplessly about him and said:

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not sure, Mrs Garbin. I could perhaps find out—?’ He half-rose from his seat. The man opposite Geoffrey leaned forward.

  ‘Five-forty-three,’ he said with decision. ‘But I’m afraid we’re likely to lose time on the way.’ He took a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘We’re ten minutes late in starting already.’

  The woman with the rug nodded briskly. ‘In wartime we must resign ourselves to that sort of thing,’ she said, her tone loaded with stoic resignation. ‘You are getting off there yourself?’ she asked after a moment.

  The fat man bowed his head. The reluctant and self- conscious democracy of the railway compartment was set into creaking motion. ‘Have you far to go?’ he inquired of Geoffrey.

  Geoffrey started. ‘I am going to Tolnbridge, too,’ he replied a trifle stiffly. ‘The trains are almost always late nowadays,’ he added, feeling his previous remark to be by itself an insufficient contribution to the general entertainment.

  ‘Inevitably,’ said the clergyman, contributing his mite. ‘We are fortunate in being able to travel at all.’ He turned to the woman with the baby. ‘Have you a long journey, madam? It must be very tiring travelling with a child.’

  ‘I’m going further west than the rest of you,’ said the mother. ‘Much further west,’ she added. Her tone expressed a determination to remain in her seat as far west as possible, even if the train should be driven over Land’s End and into the sea.

  ‘Such a good boy,’ said the clergyman, gazing at the child with distaste. It spat ferociously at him.

  ‘Now, Sally, you mustn’t do that to the gentleman,’ said the mother. She glowered at him with unconcealed malevolence. He smiled unhappily. The fat man returned to his book. Fielding sat morose and silent, scanning an evening paper.

  It was at this moment, amidst a shrieking of whistles which advertised immediate departure, that the irruption occurred. A man appeared in the corridor outside, carrying a heavy portmanteau, and peered through the window, bobbing up and down like a marionette in order to see what lay within. He then thrust the door aside and stepped aggressively over the threshold. He wore a shiny black suit with a bedraggled carnation in the buttonhole, bright brown shoes, a pearl tie-pin, a dirty grey trilby hat, and a lemon-coloured handkerchief in his breast-pocket; his hands were nicotine-stained and his nails filthy; his complexion was sanguine, almost apoplectic, and he wiped his nose on the back of his hand as he trampled in over the clergyman’s feet, hauling his case like a reluctant dog after him. It swung forward and struck the woman with the rug a resounding blow on the knee.

  ‘No room!’ she said as if at a signal. A confused murmur of admonition and discouragement went up in support of this remark. The man stared aggrievedly about him.

  ‘Wadjer mean, no room?’ he said loudly. ‘Djer think I’m goin-ta stand aht in the b
loody corridor the ’ole journey? Because if yer do, yer bloody well wrong, see?’ He warmed to his theme. ‘Just because yer travelling bloody first-clarse, yer needn’t think yer got a right to occupy the ’ole train, see? People like me aren’t goin’ ter stand the ’ole way just so you plutocrats can stretch yer legs in comfort, see?’ He became indignant. ‘I paid for a seat same as you ’ave, ’aven’t I? ’Ere’ – he shot out a finger towards the fat man, who jumped visibly with fright. ‘You put that there arm up, an’ we’ll all ’ave a chance ter sit down, see?’ The fat man hastily put the arm up, and the intruder, with expressions of noisy satisfaction, inserted himself into the gap thus created between the fat man and the mother and child.

  ‘You mind your language when there are ladies present!’ said the mother indignantly. The baby began to bellow again. ‘There – see what you’ve done to the child!’

  The intruder ignored her. He produced a Mirror and Herald, and, after slapping the former down on his knee, opened the latter at full spread, so that his elbows waved within an inch of the noses of those on either side. The woman with the rug, after her first sortie, had recognized defeat in the monotonous stream of blasphemy and become silent. Geoffrey, Fielding, and the clergyman, afflicted by a bourgeois terror of offending this unruly manifestation of the lower classes, sat impotent and disapproving. Only the mother, who maintained her intransigence with scornful glances, and the fat man, whose position was more desperate, still showed resistance.

  ‘I suppose,’ said the fat man, abandoning his Pareto, ‘that you’ve got a first-class ticket?’

  A deathly silence followed this question. The intruder jerked himself slowly up from his paper, like a pugilist who has been unfairly smitten in the belly and is gathering forces ponderously together for retaliation. The others looked on aghast. Even the fat man quailed, unnerved by the ominous delay in answering his query.

  ‘What’s it got ter do with you?’ asked the intruder at last, slapping his Herald shut. A dramatic hush ensued. ‘Not the bloody ticket-collector, are yer?’ The fat man remained dumb. ‘Just ’cos I ain’t as rich and idle as you, ain’t I got a right ter sit in comfort, eh?’

  ‘Comfort!’ said the woman with the baby meaningly.

  The intruder ignored her, continuing to apostrophize the fat man. ‘Snob, aren’t yer? Too ’igh-and-mighty to ’ave the likes o’ me in the same compartment with yer, are yer? Let me tell you’ – he tapped the fat man abruptly on the waistcoat – ‘one o’ ther things we’re fightin’ this war for is ter get rid o’ the likes o’ you, an’ give the likes er me a chance to spread ourselves a bit.’

  He spread himself, illustratively, kicking Fielding on the shin in the process. The baby wailed like a banshee. ‘Caliban,’ said the mother.

  ‘Nonsense!’ the fat man protested feebly. ‘That’s got nothing to do with whether you’ve got a first-class ticket or not.’

  The intruder twisted himself bodily round and thrust his face into that of the fat man. ‘Oh, it ain’t, ain’t it?’ He began to speak very rapidly. ‘When we get socialism, see, which is what we’re fighting for, see, you and yer like’ll ’ave ter show some respect ter me, see, instead of treating me like a lot o’ dirt, see?’ Finding this line of thought exhausted, he transferred his attention to the fat man’s book, removing it, despite faint protests, from his hands. He then inspected it slowly and with care, as a surgeon might some peculiarly loathsome cancer after removal.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Vilfreedo Pareeto,’ he announced to the compartment at large. ‘Ther Mind and Society,’ he read. ‘Oo’s that – some bloody Wop, is it? ’Ere, you,’ he addressed Geoffrey. ‘You ever ’eard of ’im – Vilfreedo Pareeto?’

  The fat man looked at Geoffrey appealingly. Treacherously and mendaciously, Geoffrey shook his head. Worlds would not have induced him to admit acquaintance with that sociologist.

  The intruder nodded triumphantly, and turned to Fielding. ‘What abaht you?’ he said, waving the volume. ‘You ever ’eard of this?’ As treacherously, but with more truth, Fielding denied it. The fat man turned pale. So solemn were the proceedings, he might have been awaiting sentence from the Inquisition, the only two witnesses for the defence having been suborned against him.

  The intruder breathed heavily with satisfaction. Portentously he turned the pages of the book. ‘Listen ter this,’ he commanded. ‘“The principal nu-cle-us in a de-riv-a-tive (a non- log-ico-ex-per-i-ment-al the-ory) is a res-i-due, or a number of res-i-dues, and around it other sec-ond-ar-y res-i-dues cluster.” Does that make sense, I arst yer? Does that make sense?’ He glared at Geoffrey, who feebly shook his head. ‘Sec-ond-ar-y res-i-dues,’ repeated the intruder with scorn. ‘Lot o’ nonsense, if yer arst me. ’Ere’ – he turned back to the fat man again, hurling the book on to his knee – ‘you oughter ’ave something better ter do with yer time than read ’ighbrow books by Wops. And if yer ’aven’t, see, you just mind yer own business, see, and don’t go poking yer nose into other people’s affairs, see?’

  He turned back aggressively to the other occupants of the compartment. ‘Anybody got any objection ter my sitting ’ere, first-class or no?’

  So successful had been the process of intimidation that no one uttered a sound.

  Presently the train started.

  All afternoon the train rattled and jolted through the English countryside, towards the red clay of Devon and the slow, immense surge of the Atlantic against the Cornish shore. Geoffrey dozed, gazed automatically out of the window, thought about his fugue, or meditated with growing dismay on the events of the day. The possibility – almost, he decided, the certainty – that he had an enemy within a foot or two of him made Fielding’s company very welcome. Of the why and wherefore of the whole business he thought but briefly; strictly there was nothing to think about. The occurrences which had followed his arriving down to breakfast that morning, in a perfectly normal and peaceable manner, seemed a nightmare phantasmagoria devoid of reason. Almost, he began to wonder if they had taken place at all. The human mind properly assimilates only those things it has become accustomed to; anything out-of-the-way affects it only in a purely superficial and objective sense. Geoffrey contemplated the attack on himself without a shred of real belief.

  Fielding and the woman with the rug slept, shaking and jolting like inanimate beings as the train clattered over points. The young clergyman gazed vacantly into the corridor, and the mother rocked her baby, which had fallen into a fitful slumber, beset in all probability with nightmares. The intruder also had gone to sleep, and was snoring, his chin resting painfully on his tie-pin. The fat man eyed Geoffrey warily, and put down the Daily Mirror, which had been forced on him in a spirit of scornful condescension by the intruder, and which he had been reading unhappily ever since the train left Paddington. He grinned conspiratorially.

  ‘Devil of a journey,’ he said.

  Geoffrey grinned back. ‘I’m afraid you’re worse off than I am. But it’s bad enough in any case.’

  The fat man appeared to be considering deeply. When he again spoke, it was with some hesitation. ‘You, sir, are obviously an educated man – I wonder if you can help me out of a difficulty?’

  Geoffrey looked at him in surprise. ‘If I can.’

  ‘An intellectual difficulty merely,’ said the fat man hastily. He seemed to think Geoffrey would imagine he was trying to borrow money. ‘However, I ought to introduce myself first. My name is Peace – Justinian Peace.’

  ‘Delighted to know you,’ said Geoffrey, and murmured his own name.

  ‘Ah, the composer,’ said Peace amiably. ‘This is a great pleasure. Well now, Mr Vintner – my whole problem can be summed up in three words: I have doubts.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Not like Mr Prendergast?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘In Decline and Fall.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve never read Gibbon,’ said the other. The admission appeared to irritate him in some obscure way.
‘The fact is that by profession I’m a psycho-analyst – quite a successful one, I suppose; successful certainly as far as money goes. The amount of money,’ he said confidentially, ‘which some people will pay for information which they could get from three hours’ intelligent reading in any public library…However’ – he became conscious that he was getting off the point – ‘there it is. I suppose in London I’m pretty well at the top of my profession. You may think we’re all charlatans, of course – a lot of people do’ – Geoffrey hurriedly shook his head – ‘but as far as I’m concerned, at least, I have tried to go about the business methodically and scientifically, and to do the best for my patients. Well, then—’ He paused and mopped his brow to emphasize the fact that he was now coming to the crux of the matter; Geoffrey nodded encouragingly.

  ‘As you know, the whole of modern psychology – and psycho-analysis in particular – is based on the idea of the unconscious; the conception that there is a section of the mind in some sense separate from the conscious mind, and which is responsible for our dreams, certain of our impulses, and all the complex manifestations of the irrational in human life.’ His phraseology, Geoffrey thought, was taking on the aspect of a popular text-book. ‘From this concept all the conclusions of analytical psychology are derived. Unfortunately, about a month ago it occurred to me to investigate the origins and rationale of this basic conception. A terrible thing happened, Mr Vintner.’ He leaned forward and tapped Geoffrey impressively on the knee. ‘I could not find one shred of experimental or rational proof that the unconscious existed at all.’