The Comforters

He was instantly awake. ‘Yes?’

‘Don’t come. Only listen. Here’s that noise again. Keep quiet.’

It had already started its chanting. She switched on the light and grabbed her notebook and pencil. She missed the first bit, but she got:

… next day by car, though Laurence’s M.G. was due for repair, instead of going by train. This was owing to their getting up late and frittering the day in talk, first about poor Eleanor, as they agreed she was, then about themselves. Click. Click.

‘Did you hear that?’ Caroline then called out to Laurence.

‘No, my dear, I didn’t hear a thing.’

He had got out of bed and now came in, looking anxious. ‘Are you all right?’

She was sitting up, gazing at her shorthand notes.

‘I can’t make this out,’ she said. ‘I can’t make it out at all.’

She read it to him.

‘You’re thinking ahead. Don’t worry about tomorrow. We can sleep late and catch an afternoon train.’

‘I didn’t imagine these words. They were told me,’ she stated, but unprotesting factually.

‘Shall I come in beside you?’

‘Make some tea first.’

He did this, while Caroline continued gazing at the notebook. When he brought their tea, he said, ‘I’ll come in beside you.’ It was a three-quarter divan and so there was just room. Caroline considered the situation as she drank her tea, then she said, ‘I’ll be all right by myself, really I will.’

‘It’s cold in the kitchen,’ said Laurence.

He began to snuggle down.

‘I’ll put a pillow down the middle,’ Caroline said.

‘Wouldn’t a bread-knife and a prayer book do instead?’

‘Clear off,’ said Caroline.

‘All I want is a beautiful night’s sleep.’

‘Same here,’ she said.

Eventually they brought in the camp bed from the kitchen and settled down alongside. He reflected how strangely near impracticable sexual relations would be between them, now that Caroline thought them sinful. She was thinking the same thing.

It was past eleven when they woke next morning.

It was while they cooked their omelettes for lunch that she told Laurence, as if it were an undeniable fact, of her theory about the author making a book out of their lives.

Laurence knew that people with obsessions could usually find evidence to fit their craziest convictions. From the time he had learned about the voices, he had been debating within himself what this might mean to his relationship with Caroline. He had hoped that the failure of the tape-machine to record the sounds would prove her delusion to her. And when this failed to impress her he wondered whether it would be possible for him to humour her fantasy indefinitely, so that she could be the same Caroline except for this one difference in their notions of reality; or whether reality would force them apart, and the time arrive when he needs must break with, ‘Caroline, you are wrong, mistaken, mad. There are no voices; there is no typewriter; it is all a delusion. You must get mental treatment.’

It was on his tongue to tell her so when, standing in her dressing-gown cooking the eggs and bacon, she told him, ‘I’ve discovered the truth of the matter’; the truth of the matter being, it transpired, this fabulous idea of themselves and their friends being used as characters in a novel.

‘How do you know it’s a novel?’

‘“The characters in this novel are all fictitious,”‘ she quoted with a truly mad sort of laugh.

‘In fact,’ she continued, ‘I’ve begun to study the experience objectively. That’s a sign, isn’t it, that I’m well again?’

He thought not. He went so far to suggest, ‘Your work on the novel form — isn’t it possible that your mind —’

‘It’s convenient that I know something of the novel form,’ Caroline said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

He argued a little, questioned her. Was the author disembodied? —She didn’t know. If so, how could he use a typewriter? How could she overhear him? How could one author chant in chorus? — That she didn’t know, that she didn’t know. Was the author human or a spirit, and if so —’How can I answer these questions? I’ve only begun to ask them myself. The author obviously exists in a different dimension from ours. That will make the investigation difficult.’

He realized, then, that he was arguing madness upon madness, was up against a private revelation. He almost wished he were still a believer, so that he could the more forcefully use some Catholic polemic against her privacy.

‘From the Catholic point of view, I should have thought there were spiritual dangers in holding this conviction.’