also to satisfy my curiosity when for once he was in a talkative mood, ‘you yourself have loved people, and after all why not, though God knows who they are, since you’re so damn secretive. You’ve never introduced me to any of your friends from the east.’
‘They never visit me.’
‘Yes, they do. There was that thin bearded chap I saw in your flat once, sitting in a back room.’
‘Oh him,’ said James, ‘he was just a tulpa.’
‘Some sort of inferior tribesman I suppose! And talking of tulpas, what about that sherpa that Toby Ellesmere said you were so keen on, the one that died on the mountain?’
James was silent for a while and I began to think that I had gone too far, but I let the silence continue. The sea was audible but quieter.
‘Oh well,’ he said at last, ‘oh well-’, and then was silent again, but was clearly going to tell something, so I waited.
‘There’s not much to that story,’ he said, rather disappointingly, ‘at any rate it’s soon told. You know that some Buddhists believe that any earthly attachment, if it persists until death, ties you to the Wheel and prevents you from attaining liberation.’
‘Oh yes, that wheel-’
‘Of spiritual causality. But that’s by the way.’
‘I remember I asked you if you believed in reincarnation and you said-’
‘The sherpa in question,’ said James, ‘was called Milarepa. Well, that wasn’t his real name, I called him that after a-after a poet I rather admire. He was my servant. We had to go on a journey together. It was winter and the high passes were full of snow, it was a pretty impossible journey really-’
‘Was it a military journey?’
‘We had to get through this pass. Now you know that in India and Tibet and such places there are tricks people can learn, almost anybody can learn them if they’re well taught and try hard enough-’
‘Tricks?’
‘Yes, you know, like-like the Indian rope trick-anything-’
‘Oh, just that sort of trick.’
‘Well, what is that sort of trick? As I say, all sorts of people can do them, they can be jolly tiring but-you know they have nothing to do with-with-’
‘With what?’
‘One of these tricks is raising one’s bodily warmth by mental concentration.’
‘How’s it done?’
‘It’s useful in a primitive country, like being able to go on walking for forty-eight hours at five miles an hour without eating or drinking or stopping.’
‘No one could do that.’
‘And to be able to keep oneself warm by mental power is obviously handy on a winter journey.’
‘Like good King Wenceslas!’
‘I had to cross this pass and I decided to take Milarepa with me. It would involve spending a night in the snow. I didn’t have to take him. But I reckoned I could generate enough heat to keep us both alive.’
‘Wait a minute! You mean
‘I told you it’s a
‘And then-?’
‘We got up to the top of the pass and got caught in a blizzard. I thought we’d be all right. But we weren’t. There wasn’t enough heat for two. Milarepa died in the night, he died in my arms.’
I said, ‘Oh God.’ I couldn’t think what further to say. My mind was confused and I was beginning to feel very drunk and sleepy. I heard James’s voice continuing to speak and it seemed to come from very far away. ‘He trusted me… It was my vanity that killed him… The payment for a fault is automatic… They can get to work on any flaw… I relaxed my hold on him… I lost my grip… The Wheel is just…’ By this time my head was down on the table and I was falling quietly asleep.
I awoke and it was day. A clear grey light of dawn, the sun not yet risen, illuminated the kitchen, showing the wine-stained table, the used dishes, the crumbled cheese. The wind had dropped and the sea was silent. James had gone.
I leapt up and called, running out onto the lawn. Then I ran back into the house, calling again, and then through and out of the front door onto the causeway. The blank grey silent light revealed the rocks, the road, and James just getting into his car. The car door closed. I called and waved. James saw me and lowered the window, he waved back but he had already started the engine and the car was moving.
‘Let me know when you’re back!’
‘Yes. Goodbye!’ He waved cheerily and the Bentley sped off and turned the corner and its sound fell into the silence. I returned slowly to the house.
I walked back over the causeway, aware now of a dreadful headache and a swinging sensation in the head: not surprising, since, as I established later, James and I had drunk between us nearly five litre bottles of wine. There was also a rapid sliding crowding curtain of spots before the eyes. I got inside, reached the kitchen and sat down again at the table, resting my head in my hands. I carefully worked out where I could find a glass of water and some aspirins and I got up and found them and sat down again and dozed. The sun came up.
I woke again, sitting at the table with my head lolling about and a violent pain in my neck. I recalled that I had had a curious dream about freezing to death in a snow-storm. Then I remembered that James had told me some very odd story about a journey in Tibet. And I half remembered a lot of other strange things that James had been saying. I got up, feeling horribly giddy and climbed upstairs and lay down on my bed and fell into a sort of sleep coma. I woke later on, not sure if it was morning or afternoon and feeling less giddy but rather mad. I went down to the kitchen and ate some cheese, then went back to bed again.
After that things became yet more confused. I must have stayed in bed quite a lot of that day. I remember waking during the night and seeing the moon shining. The next morning I came downstairs early and was suddenly persuaded, or perhaps I had had the idea in the night, that since I had given up swimming it was time that I had a bath. I did not fancy the labour of carrying hot water up to the bathroom. This time however I succeeded in lugging Mrs Chorney’s old hip bath out of its refuge under the stairs and started to boil saucepans of water on the gas stove. Halfway through this proceeding I felt a sharp pain in the chest and began to feel faint. I gave up the bath idea and made some tea, but could eat nothing. I felt a bit sick and decided to go back to bed. I was now sure that I had a temperature but possessed no thermometer. I stayed in bed. My bed felt rather like a hammock in a storm- tossed ship. I had coloured cloudy thoughts, or visions and was never sure if my eyes were shut or open. I wondered if I was seriously ill. Now I had a telephone but no doctor. I did not fancy summoning the one who had seen me at two a.m. after my ‘mishap’, anyway I never knew his name. I considered telephoning my London doctor and describing my symptoms, but decided not to since the symptoms would sound uninteresting and it was hard at the best of times to interest my London doctor. I comforted myself by reflecting that no doubt I had caught the ’flu or whatever it was that James had suffered from after I had survived my sea ordeal, and that James’s ailment had not lasted long.
Mine lasted I think longer. At any rate some days passed during which I remained prostrate, reluctant to move, unable to eat. No one called, no one telephoned. I crawled out to the dog kennel but no one had written either. Perhaps there was a prolonged bank holiday or a postal strike. I was not too worried at the lack of news. I was entirely occupied with my illness. For the time it absorbed me, as if it were something that I was working at. I even ceased to worry about it; and generally, as I had anticipated, it began to go away. I could walk downstairs once more without resting on every step, and I was comforted by sensations of hunger. I ate a few biscuits and enjoyed them.
That day, or perhaps the next day, as I remember I was feeling stronger and more normal, the telephone rang in the morning. I was now well aware what this strange sound was. I had been thinking urgently about Hartley and when I heard the shrill dreadful bell I said to myself at once,
