Titus Awakes

20

An Unexpected Meeting

TITUS AND DOG found themselves on a narrow road in open countryside: downland, with clumps of bushes and neat fields; a huge expanse of sky, not blue, but grey-white, and convoluted clouds that changed their shapes at each blink.

Hunger, never at bay for long, began again to remind Titus that he was at the mercy of his own being. His ingenuity was once more called upon.

‘Come on, Dog, let’s see what we can find along the hedgerows – not that you will care for what nature provides there. Why don’t you burrow and chase, and kill and eat? I have a knife and you have your whole elemental being.’

As they walked down the narrow road, towards what seemed to be a meeting of four roads, the man and his dog for all their hunger were breathing the air of freedom.

At the crossroads Titus stood and looked in all directions. He saw space and time, but he did not see which way he should take. In the middle of the cross was a heart-shaped island of grassy stubble, and for some reason of symmetry he sat in the middle of it, to empty his mind and to make a decision, with no recourse to logic, on which way he should go.

They must have sat on the heart-shaped mound for twenty minutes when Dog pricked up his ears before Titus could find the reason why. In the distance there was if not a sound of human life, at least a sound that was controlled by human life; a slow advent on to the scene of an alien-to-nature sound; an internal combustion engine that seemed to be contending with age, so much did it hesitate, blow and bang, stop and start again, long before it could be seen.

Surprise was no longer part of Titus’s life. He had lived on the edge of it for so long. Curiosity he still possessed in abundance. Nothing was ever as it might be envisaged. Things were invariably more strange than the wildest imaginings.

‘Do I always let things happen to me, then, Dog? Am I an onlooker or am I a catalyst? Am I a man whose childhood is incomprehensible to all but those who turn their back on this world because they cannot bear what it offers? Who am I, and what, or who is about to enter our lives? Can it be someone that will pass us by? Can it be someone who will change the course of our lives? Shall I be master of my own fate, or should I leave it to fortune?’

This was not to be so easy: the spluttering car was upon him and almost annihilated him as it came to a stop in the middle of the heart-shaped island. He had just enough time to jump out of its way and as he landed face down on the road, he heard a sound of wheezing, together with a jumble of dry coughing and laughter. His first instinct was of anger, and his natural quick temper hastened his speed to turn, sit and stand up to whoever was the cause of his undignified collapse.

He had no idea what he might expect, but it was certainly not what he now saw. It was a woman of around thirty or thirty-five, small and thin, with short, dark hair so jagged it was seemingly cut with a razor. She had a little bony face, with smudged hazel eyes, a narrow, aquiline nose, and a small mouth with a half-smoked cigarette, which clung to her bottom lip like a limpet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, hacking and chuckling. ‘I think I dropped off to sleep – I’ve been driving all night, and only woke when the car stopped on the heart. A heartbeat, a car beat, be dat what it may, be-ware, be-troot, be good, be gone, bee-hive, b-awful . . . At least you’re not hurt.’

‘And I can see that you are not hurt either,’ said Titus. He felt unable to compete with the verbal play of the strange woman. But the very thought of a woman, after so long a time of thinking of nothing but survival, made him look at her less as a person than as a symbol, of something which he had so often sought, so often treated roughly, but felt an unholy need of.

He began ‘I’m not a wit . . .’

‘Not a wit too soon . . .’ and then followed another paroxysm of coughing and laughter, with cigarette smoke exhaling a delicate pale-grey blind between them.

‘Oh, to hell with you – I’m in no mood for wordplay – hardly in any mood at all – who in hell are you? I’m Titus Groan – that’s simple enough. I’ve had my fill of clever women. All I want, now that you’ve appeared from out of the blue, is to know where you are going, not where you have come from. I’m not interested. Can you help me, have you any food, have you a home, a house, a room, a bed, a floor? Just answer me quite simply, and if it’s at all possible without the frills of smokes and coughs and laughter . . .’

It was so long since Titus had given outward expression to any thought that he was insensitive to the brusqueness and the roughness of his voice, and what it said, and when he at last looked at the small woman to whom he was speaking, he was surprised to see her lower lip, to which the cigarette still clung, trembling, and all the vividness of her personality extinguished.

‘Now it is for me to say sorry. My harshness was not deliberate and I have no excuse. I am sorry. To blow out a candle that is shedding light in a dark room is thoughtless, unkind and stupid, and what’s more makes life a good deal less interesting. Now I’ve talked too much. You say something.’

‘Oh, that is the one thing that would really silence me, cough and all.’

‘Well, at least I have told you my name. Cannot you tell me yours?’

‘It’s Ruth Saxon – quite straightforward, really – and if you get to know me better, you’ll probably think it strange that there should be anything straightforward about me. Not that I’m crooked, but that I never seem to think or do things as other people do, or at least so my family tell me.’

‘Then we should get on rather well,’ said Titus in a conciliatory tone. ‘Perhaps the same could be said about me.’

As they talked, probing circuitously each other’s personalities, Titus had time to look at and into the car, which had so suddenly broken his solitude. It had a character to fit its owner. It was full of personality. Canvases lay in the back, piled one upon the other, stones and shells of all sizes were scattered on the seat behind the driver’s, and sitting regally disdainful of outside events was a clowder of cats of varying colours, peering from behind a large bunch of wayside flowers.

‘Yes, I’m a painter, and I love cats and I carry my heart on my sleeve. I love painting more than anything in the world. I love everything to do with it. The smell of turps, the materials I use, the brushes, the canvas, the silence, the solitude. When I’m painting I’m consciously serene. Perhaps it’s the only time when I’m not asking myself insoluble questions. The sole truth when I’m painting is the truth of paint. It doesn’t matter how old I become, it’ll always be there, and some of the world’s greatest painters reached their old age passionately living, their hearts, their eyes, their souls, their hands plying their trade. One old painter had an inscription on his grave: ‘‘Here lies an old man mad about painting.’’ There, that tells you about me. What about you, Titus?’

‘Perhaps I don’t feel passionate about anything. You are one of the lucky ones. If I learn to know you better I will tell you about my life, but you may not believe me. Let my life emerge slowly and you can judge me as it unfolds. Perhaps I am doomed to be an onlooker. But at any rate, before we probe too deeply, just tell me where you were going and perhaps our ways might take the same route, at least for a short time. I’m not one to stay too long in any place.’

‘Well, I’ve been down to the beach to pick up the stones you can see in the car, and I’m on my way back to my studio. Would you like to come with me and stay a while? I love my studio, but I’m afraid there’s not a great deal of comfort. I haven’t much money and I can’t cook, and I like being alone; and what’s more, you can bring your companion with you, who has been so patient while we’ve been exploring each other’s whims.’

‘What about the cats, though?’

‘Well, as you can see, very little can disturb their complete and utter self-absorption. What is his name?’

‘Dog.’

‘Dog?’

‘Yes, Dog.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, he’s not a cat.’

‘He’s not a giraffe either.’

‘If I don’t give him a name, I feel I’m not responsible for him.’

‘I don’t like that.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Don’t you, Titus?’

‘No.’

‘I have a name, you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Can’t you say it?’

‘I can say it.’

‘But won’t you?’

‘I will some time.’

‘You don’t have to be responsible for me if you use it, you know, Titus. It makes me feel as though I’m not here, and I’m all here, and there, and by and large, and to and fro, and my name is Ruth. Say it, please.’

‘Ruth.’

‘Now we can get on our way, Titus. Let’s clear a space in the car, so that poor Dog can get in on the seat, and you can sit in front. But can you wait a moment? We’ve got a longish drive ahead and perhaps we had all better go behind the bushes. You take Dog and I’ll be back in a minute.’

When they all met again, Titus had waited to clear the car, for he didn’t want to disturb the cats without their mistress being there.

It need not have worried him for apart from a lazy stretching and re-disposition of their bodies into more comfortable positions, their self-possession was not disturbed. Titus told Dog to get in, and even when his large frame clambered on to the back seat the cats did not display more than cursory interest. He was not an enemy. Dog had learned much patience and much tolerance since he had been with Titus.

* * * * *

SOMEHOW, ON EVEN such a short knowledge of Ruth, Titus could not imagine her behind the wheel of a car. The two seemed incompatible. This car was unlike Muzzlehatch’s, although he had also been incongruous, and so much bigger than life – his ape, his animals, the very essence of his being. This remembrance trembled on the edge of Titus’s consciousness before he returned to the present, and he became curious as to how Ruth and the car would come to terms with each other.

It was rather as he had imagined, as the door closed behind her and almost with a leap the car sprang into action, grunting and wheezing and jerking as though in the throes of an epileptic fit.

‘I don’t really like cars; in fact, I hate them. Treat ’em rough, as my father used to say about anything and everything that didn’t belong to him. I don’t understand them but I don’t want to either. So long as we get from one place to another in one piece, that’s all they’re for.’

Titus was well able to agree, for he had never owned a car or wanted one. His way of life had no need of possessions – he had renounced the shackles that posed a threat to his freedom, but now was not the time for him to turn over introspectively the whole of his past life; for the time being he gave himself up to the present, and the fact that he was with a woman, a woman quite unlike any he had met before. Not a feminine woman, too thin and wiry and unconscious of her sex to be a womanly woman. Not flirtatious, not filled with guile, she was companionable and humorous, but Titus felt she was vulnerable and quickly hurt.

They drove along the narrow country road with intermittent bursts of speed and sluggishness, but whether that was at the whim of the driver or the questionable ability of the engine Titus could not tell. They didn’t talk but there was no sense of embarrassment in the silence. Ruth seemed abstracted and thoughtful, and not thinking of what impression she might be making on the man who sat next to her.

The landscape was changing from the rural richness of downland and fields and hedgerows to a more urban morose greyness. They had turned into a wider road and there was now a continuous cavalcade of cars in each direction, and no mercy shown to the moody car, which did not belong to the stream of rapid sleek machines that continually passed them.

‘It’s about another half-hour’s drive,’ said Ruth. ‘I hope you’re not too hungry. We can’t stop even if we wanted to, even if there were any food, even, if, even, only, even, even, un-even, even-tide, even-song, songbird and so on, and on, and on, until we get there, and how I want to be there. My home. Close the door and shut out the world, but take parts that I like with me. Oh, come on, car, take us home – quick, quick.’

Little grey houses now hemmed in the cars. Unlovely and all alike, except for an occasional burst of personality, when the window frames and door had been painted mauve or yellow, or red or green.

‘It’s not far now,’ said Ruth. ‘Soon we turn off, and although the studio has no architectural beauty, as soon as the door is closed we enter a new world, or rather one where I feel safe. Whatever you think of ‘‘Home’’, that’s what I think, love and the things that I love, you’ll soon see. What do you think ‘‘Home’’ means, Titus?’

‘Well, that is too big for me to answer in a short time. If you allow me to stay for a little while, I will tell you about my childhood and my name.’

‘Why should I query your name? You didn’t query mine.’

Ruth turned the car from the mean and ugly road into a much wider road, which seemed to be a cul-de-sac. It was not a particularly beautiful road, except that at the end of it there stood, almost as sentinels, a group of chestnut trees. The large building by which the car stopped, as suddenly and jerkily as it had taken off, was gaunt, grey and windowless. About eight steps led up to a door, which appeared to be permanently ajar and as Ruth opened the car door the cats flew out, up the steps, through the door and into the darkness beyond.

Dog, being a guest like his master, waited to be told what to do, and as Titus followed Ruth out of the car, so too did he.

‘We’ll go in first, and then I wonder if you could help me, Titus, bring in the treasure trove I’ve got in the car.’

‘I’ll take some now.’

‘No, I’d rather show you my home first, then we can bring it in.’

As they ascended the steps and went through the doors there was very little light, but Titus sensed a long corridor, with doors at equal intervals along it, for from under one or two of them appeared a light, and some sounds of music or laughter or argument seeped out, and from behind one door a smell of cooking, which reminded Titus that his last meal and that of Dog had been in an empty house in a dark, unfriendly yew wood, and he had a pang of remorse as he thought of his guide and his unknown fate.

At the end of the long passage was another door facing them and Ruth said, ‘Well, here we are.’

‘Where are the cats?’ asked Titus.

‘They have their own special door,’ said Ruth, as she fumbled in what must have been a letterbox and drew forth a long length of string, with a key attached to the end of it, with which she opened the door to her domain.

She switched on a light, and as the room was drained of its darkness Titus’s heart thumped at what he saw.

His memory flew back to a series of attic rooms, where his sister had collected all that she loved best in life, and which she had guarded fiercely from intrusion.

The room he looked at now was a ferment of so many things that he could take in no detail, only the overpowering ‘feel’ of the place. One wall was a huge window, divided into large rectangular panes of glass, and the other three walls were covered with paintings, framed and unframed drawings, books, photographs cut from papers of animals, birds, mountains, people’s faces, clowns, masks and spears. A piece of seaweed hung from some kind of hook on the wall, and there were stuffed birds on shelves and tables. Tables, with paints and brushes, stood near two enormous easels and on the floor were stones and carvings of wood and stone. Leaves and half-dead flowers in poor arrangements stood incongruously on a table that must have served for eating on, for plates and teacups stood on sheets of paper with writing and drawings on them, and sitting on a mound of paper was one of the cats who had been a passenger with Titus in the car. Another had climbed and found a niche on a windowsill and sat looking out, with teeth chattering at the sight and sound of small birds, flying from branch to branch outside, but not within range of the sudden pounce.

The ceiling was cathedral high and in one corner of the studio stood a large black stove, with a thick black pipe that disappeared far above into the ceiling. It was unlit, but it had so much character that it was a personality in its own right, standing ominous and full of potential. In another corner, almost incidentally, was a bed, covered with a patchwork quilt, on which lay another ubiquitous cat.

‘Oh, dear,’ cried Ruth, cigarette dancing up and down as her lip quivered. ‘You are hungry – I am hungry – Dog is hungry – cats are hungry, but I’m so tired too. Which comes first?’

‘Well, at the risk of seeming vulgar, I am hungry, first and foremost, and then tired. What is there to eat? Can I help – have you any food, is there a stove – is there anywhere to cook anything?’ asked Titus.

‘You haven’t seen quite all yet,’ answered Ruth. ‘I will show you what there is, then we can make what we can of it. Come on outside and you will see the extent of my domain.’

Titus followed her as she opened the door of the studio and led him into the corridor, and on the opposite side to the door went up three or four dark stairs to another door, which opened on to a smallish room with a huge window, with no outlook, but a steep brick wall. There was what appeared to be a bath, covered by a large wooden board, and a black cooking stove. Ruth made for a green-painted cupboard, which she opened almost hesitatingly. Some apples, onions, bread, butter, a dark cake, eggs – not exactly haute cuisine – but enough to satisfy the hunger of two adults and one large dog. The cats, being cats, made sure that their needs had already been seen to.

Without finesse, both Ruth and Titus made use of what there was to hand, and fed themselves and Dog. When all three needs were satisfied, they went back to the studio and, without question, without coyness or sensuality, they threw off their clothes and dropped exhausted on to the low and rather lumpy bed.