and blood, bones, horns and claws, hovering outside the window, and a second floor window at that, of one of those concrete blocks for student accommodation they have at polytechnics.
Q: Didn’t that give him a nasty turn?
When Hugo Vansitart asked this question he bounced a little. He and his subject sat on a shiny sofa, black shantung with great red roses splodged across it. The springs were broken. When she moved, he moved. It was disconcerting.
A: You are laughing at me. You must try not to. Really, the world is not as you think it is. If these interviews are to be successful, you must try and be more open, less rigid. Giddier, in fact. The Devil did indeed put in an appearance, and very horrible and frightening it was. Bernard was not even in love at the time. But he was between belief structures, and into the vacuum left by both the Catholic and Marxist faiths, had rushed what the Russians used to refer to as ‘metaphysical intoxication’—under which heading they would lock up the socially and politically excitable for their own sake and that of society. Thought bounced round the inside of poor Bernard’s head like a ball in a squash court. It made him guilty and therefore vulnerable. Reason and ridicule can get rid of faith: but the guilt and the fear of punishment associated with free thinking remain. Besides, a curse had been put on him. Certain people he had offended were trying to frighten him. It was not all that surprising that the Devil materialized in front of his eyes. Yes, indeed, to answer your question, he was not expecting it and it gave him a nasty turn.
He noticed that there were grease spots on the sofa. Smeared butter, Hugo thought, left by the children of this household, this hell-hole of suburban domesticity. Already he had jam on his cuff, gained somehow in the walk from front door to sofa. Surely it was possible for Eleanor Darcy to receive him somewhere more suitable. This was not even, it appeared, her own house. It belonged to the mother of the four small children who racketed behind the thin plywood door.
Q: Your views on love are of course interesting, but not quite pertinent to the series of articles I envisage writing. I wonder if by any chance your husband left any of his unpublished work in your care? If so, could I see it?
A: How you try to divide the world up into sections! It won’t work, Mr Vansitart. We must deal with God and the Devil, love and sex, before we get on to economics, party politics, big business, education, crime and the rest. We must establish a framework for our house before we start putting up planks, or they’ll only fall down again. I have not yet finished with love. Hyper-inflationary monetarism will come in due course.
Q: But love is the proper province of women’s magazines, Mrs Darcy, surely?
A: Do you think so? If you think that, you will most certainly have to have your male consciousness raised!
She laughed, but he understood that she was angry. Her face paled. She was beautiful. She enchanted him. He did not know what was happening, what was about to happen. Someone came in with coffee, in mugs. ‘Thank you, Brenda,’ said Eleanor. He sipped: the coffee was bad. It had been made from powder and with tepid water. Dislike of it returned him to his senses.
Q: I’m sorry. Won’t you please go on?
A: Better to be in love than to be loved, but a state more difficult to attain. If in the seesaw of affections balance is attained, when each loves the other equally yet still desperately, why then there is the presence of God, and paradise: only then what happens is that we start longing for the snake to arrive and create a diversion, because we know this intensity of experience cannot be sustained: because we are, when it comes to it, on earth: and if this pitch of experience continues too long life itself will be worn away. The body, however empowered, entranced, in its delightfully sweaty transports, cannot support for long the trust placed in it by God. These things are meant for heaven, not earth. Young lovers, understanding this, will sometimes take themselves off to heaven by means of suicide pacts to escape the growing past, as much as a diminishing future. What is the point, having discovered what life on earth is all