precious child, the horror of his sudden death, together with a sense of having been the victim of a wanton wickedness. The only balm for Titus’s death was hatred and the immediate transformation of misery into revengeful purposeful rage. As in a civil war, further killing was the only consolation; and, as it seemed to me then, to survive the murder of Titus I had to become a terrorist.
During the last days, as I allowed myself to be quietly watched by James and Lizzie, and as I played my part of simple mourning, I had filled out in imagination how terribly Ben, with his mad beliefs, must have hated me, and because of me, Titus, throughout the miserable years of Titus’s childhood. The connection between me and Titus in his mind must have become a dynamic obsessional pattern. The boy, continually before him, was (as he thought) the visible symbol of his wife’s inconstancy and of the jaunty unpunished escape of the hated rival, whose jeering image he so regularly saw in the newspapers and on the television screen. Ben was a naturally violent man, a destroyer, a killer. How he must have loathed me and my changeling brat, and torn his own entrails with that loathing. Punishing the wife and the boy could never be enough while the prime culprit ran scot free and laughing. Sheer hatred can be a commanding form of madness. Many and many a time, in all those years, Ben must have killed me in his imagination.
When we at last met he was soon to see that his own violence and anger were matched by equally fierce emotions in me. He knew perfectly well of my impulse to push him in, on that occasion when we faced each other on the rocky bridge. He knew that I wanted him out of my way, and may have conjectured how very far I might, in the end, be prepared to go. He could even argue that he had tried to kill me in self-defence. Then when I had so disobligingly failed to die and was still there, taunting him with my free existence and brazenly protecting as my ‘son’ the hated bratling, what could be more natural than that Ben’s mad rage should turn against me through the boy, bringing about perhaps an even more satisfying act of vengeance? I recalled Ben’s last words to me, wherein a curse on the ‘vile brat’ was joined with ‘I’ll kill you’.
Could I now walk away into the world and ‘get over’ this act, this fact? It was unthinkable. Act must match act. But how? In all these thoughts I was just sane enough to try to steady myself by the image of Hartley. I tried to see her face looking at me, wistful and calm, beautiful as it had once been and perhaps would be again. Later, I would move to her and embrace her and we would console each other at last. What I could not really get myself to see or feel however was just how the path through the destruction of Ben led to Hartley or what exactly the destruction of Ben would be like. Now that I felt free to destroy him I sometimes felt that I hated him even more obsessively than I loved her; at least I knew, watching my obsession, that I was not now wanting to remove him simply because of her. The removal had become an end in itself.
Concerning what I was actually going to do I had evolved a number of quite different plans, which were still more or less at the stage of being fantasies. When I was alone I would have the concentration necessary to convert one of these into a practical proposition. I thought of going to the police. Someone had attempted to kill me and an explanation of all the circumstances would point an unambiguous finger at Ben; and it would, I guessed, be in Ben’s character to answer a formal, or even hinted, accusation with a defiant avowal of guilt. This indeed might be the simplest easiest way to catch him: to open a big net and let him run straight into it. I saw Ben as a simple aggressive man who would be made uneasy by the subtleties of the law and would then scorn the refinements of lying. I played with this fantasy so much that the whole thing began to seem as good as done. On the other hand, if Ben did consistently deny the charge, I was certainly short of proof.
I also, and equally, considered various mixtures of guile and violence. If I could lure him to the house and push him into Minn’s cauldron that would be the justest thing of all, but of course he would be too cautious to come. I considered other ways of drowning him. None was easy. I was more attracted by some straightforward sort of violence, which however could not be too straightforward since Ben was a strong dangerous man, and if he were to do me a serious damage while I was trying to damage him I really would go mad with chagrin. An accomplice would help, but I had vowed to act without one. I had not forgotten what Hartley said about Ben having kept his army revolver. I had no doubt that he kept it oiled and polished but he might have no ammunition. I possessed, but in London, a beautiful replica automatic, property of the theatre. Suppose I were to hold him up with that, make him turn round, then hit him with a hammer! And then? Tell the whole story to the police? Get Hartley to testify that I did it in self-defence? As it was at every moment possible that Ben might make another attempt to kill me, my fantasy actions did in fact begin to look to me more and more like self-defence.
Those who are caught in mental cages can often picture freedom, it just has no attractive power. I also knew, in the midst of it all, that some unexamined guilt of my own was driving me further into hatred; but this was no moment to be confused by guilt. As I moved like a ghost, performing in the house and its environs a sort of ritual dance under the eyes of James and Lizzie and Perry, I thought about Hartley and I pictured peace with her, in that little house where we would hide forever after. Yet if I did what I so intensely desired and consoled myself by desiring, if I destroyed Ben, if I killed him or crippled him or damaged his mind or got him sent to prison, could I then walk away with Hartley in peace? What would that peace be like? What would the idea of justice be able to do for me afterwards? Was it not, under all these disguises, my own death that I was planning?
I said to James, pulling away my sleeve which he was still holding, ‘I am not going to do anything. I just feel all smashed up by misery.’
‘Come to London with me.’
‘No.’
‘I can see you’re scheming. Your eyes are full of awful visions.’
‘Sea serpents.’
‘Charles, tell me.’
These particular words brought back to me how extremely difficult I had found it to mislead James when I was a boy. He had a way of worming things out of one, as if the intended lie turned into truth on one’s very lips. I was not going to tell now however. How could I reveal to anyone the horrors that now crowded my mind? ‘James, go to London. I’ll come later, soon. I’ll come and sort out my flat. Don’t torment me now. I just want a day or two of peace here by myself, that’s all.’
‘You’ve got some awful idea.’
‘I have no idea, my mind is empty.’
‘You said something to me before about imagining that Ben pushed you into the cauldron.’
‘Yes.’
‘But of course you don’t really think that.’
‘I do, but it’s not important any more.’
James was looking at me in a calculating way. Lizzie called from the kitchen that breakfast was ready. The sun shone calm and bright on the grass, refreshed by the rain, on the border of pretty stones, on the sparkling yellow rocks. It was a caricature of a happy scene.
‘It is important,’ said James. ‘I don’t want to leave you behind here with that totally false notion in your head.’
‘Let’s have breakfast.’
‘It
‘You sound quite passionate! That’s your view, and I have mine. Come on.’
‘Wait, wait, it’s not just a view, I
I stared at him. ‘James, you can’t know. Did you see it happen?’
‘No, I didn’t, but-’
‘Did someone else see it?’
‘No-’
‘Then how can you know?’
‘I just do. Charles, please, will you trust me? Surely you can trust me. Just don’t ask any questions. Accept my statement that Ben didn’t do it. Ben did not do it.’
We stared at each other. The intensity of James’s tone, his eyes, his fierce face, carried conviction into my resisting mind. But I could not believe him. How could he
