Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [151]
‘That’s because you never think of it. Lots of my childhood is more real to me than Ludgate Hill here. But then I constantly think of it.’
‘That’s true,’ said Philip. ‘I don’t often try to remember. Hardly ever, in fact. I always seem to have too much to do and think about.’
‘You have no natural piety,’ said Elinor. ‘I wish you had.’
They drove along the Strand. The two little churches protested against Australia House, in vain. In the courtyard of King’s College a group of young men and women sat in the sun waiting for the Professor of Pastoral Theology. At the pit door of the Gaiety there was already a queue; the placards advertised the four hundredth performance of’ The Girl from Biarritz.’ Next door to the Savoy, Philip noticed, you could still buy a pair of boots for twelve-and-six. In Trafalgar Square the fountains were playing, Sir Edwin Landseer’s lions mildly glared, the lover of Lady Hamilton stood perched among the clouds, like St. Simeon the Stylite. And behind the grim colonnade of the National Gallery Uccello’s horsemen timelessly fought and Rubens raped his Sabines, Venus looked into her mirror and in the midst of Piero’s choiring angels Jesus was born into a magically lovely world.
The cab turned down Whitehall.
‘I like to think of all the bureaucrats.’
‘I don’t,’ said Elinor.
‘Scribbling away,’ he went on,’scribbling from morning till night in order that we may live in freedom and comfort. Scribble, scribble—the result is the British Empire. What a comfort,’ he added, ‘to live in a world where one can delegate everything tiresome, from governing to making sausages, to somebody else.’
At the Gate of the Horse Guards the mounted sentries looked as though they were stuffed. Near the Cenotaph a middleaged lady was standing with raised eyes, murmuring a prayer over the Kodak with which she proposed to take a snapshot of the souls of the nine hundred thousand dead. A Sikh with a black beard and a pale mauve turban emerged from Grindley’s as they passed. The time, according to Big Ben, was twenty-seven minutes past eleven. In the library of the House of Lords was there a dozing marquess? A charabanc disgorged Americans at the door of Westminster Abbey. Looking back through the little porthole in the hood they were able to see that the hospital was still urgently in need of funds.
John Bidlake’s house was in Grosvenor Road, overlooking the river.
‘Pimlico,’ said Philip meditatively, as they approached the house. He laughed. ‘Do you remember that absurd song your father used always to quote?’
‘“To Pimlico Then let us go,”’ Elinor chanted.
‘“One verse omitted here.” You mustn’t forget that.’ They both laughed, remembering John Bidlake’s comments.
‘“One verse omitted here.” It’s omitted in all the anthologies. I’ve never been able to discover what happened when they’d got to Pimlico. It’s kept me wondering for years, feverishly. Nothing like Bowdlerism for heating the imagination.’
‘Pimlico,’ Philip repeated. Old Bidlake, he was thinking, had made of Pimlico a sort of Rabelaisian Olympus. He liked the phrase. But ‘Gargantuan’ would be better for public use than ‘Rabelaisian.’ For those who had never read him, Rabelais connoted nothing but smut. Gargantuan Olympus, then. They had at least heard rumours that Gargantua was large.
But the John Bidlake they found sitting by the stove in his studio was not at all Olympian, seemed less instead of more than life size. He suffered himself to be kissed by his daughter, limply shook hands with Philip.
‘Good to see you again,’ he said. But there was no resonance in his voice; the undertone ofjovial thunders and jovial laughters was absent. He spoke without gusto. His eyes were without lustre, and bloodshot. He looked thin and grey.
‘How are you, father?’ Elinor was surprised and distressed. She had never seen her father like this before.
‘Not well,’ he answered, shaking his head, ‘not well. Something wrong with my insides.’ The old lion suddenly