The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [450]
presented himself — like some Dostoievskian character beset by some nasty compulsion neurosis! It is really staggering what a petty and trivial soul he reveals there.’ This was an amazing ins ight into the tormented yet wholly complete being of the letters which I myself had just read!
‘Keats’ I said, ‘for goodness’ sake tell me. Are you writing a book about him?’
Keats drank slowly and thoughtfully and replaced his glass somewhat unsteadily before saying: ‘No.’ He stroked his chin and fell silent.
‘They say you are writing something’ I persisted. He shook his head obstinately and contemplated his glass with a blurred eye.
‘I wanted to’ he admitted at last, slow ly. ‘I did a long review of the novels once for a small mag. The next thing I got a letter from his wife. She wanted a book done. A big rawboned Irish girl, very hysterical and sluttish: handsome in a big way, I suppose. Always blowing her nose in an old envelope. Always in carpet slippers. I must say I felt for him. But I tumbled straight into a hornets’ nest there. She loathed him, and there seemed to be plenty to loathe, I must say. She gave me a great deal of infor-mation, and simply masses of letters and manuscripts. Treasure trove all right. But, my dear chap, I couldn’t use this sort of stuff. If for no other reason than that I respect his memory and his work. No. No. I fobbed her off. Told her she would never get such things published. She seemed to want to be publicly martyred in print just to get back at him — old Pursewarden! I couldn’t do such a thing. Besides the material was quite hair-raising! I don’t want to talk about it. Really, I would never repeat the truth to a soul.’
We sat looking thoughtfully, even watchfully at each other, for a long moment before I spoke again.
‘Have you ever met his sister, Liza?’
Keats shook his head slowly. ‘No. What was the point? I abandoned the project right away, so there was no need to try and hear her story. I know she has a lot of manuscript stuff, because the wife told me so. But…. She is here isn’t she?’ His lip curled with the faintest suggestion of disgust. ‘Truthfully I don’t want to meet her. The bitter truth of the matter seems to me that the person old Pursewarden most loved — I mean purely
spiritually — did not at all understand the state of his soul, so to speak, when he died: or even have the vaguest idea of the extent of his achievement. No, she was busy with a vulgar intrigue con-cerned with legalizing her relation s with Mountolive. I suppose she feared that her marriage to a diplomat might be imperilled by a possible scandal. I may be wrong, but that is the impression I gathered. I believe she was going to try and get a whitewashing book written. But now, in a sense, I have my own Pursewarden, my own copy of him, if you like. It’s enough for me. What do the details matter, and why should I meet his sister? It is his work and not his life which is necessary to us — which offers one of the many meanings of the word with four faces!’
I had an impulse to cry out ‘Unfair’, but I restrained it. It is impossible in this world to arrange for full justice to be done to everyone. Keats’s eyelids drooped. ‘Come’ I said, calling for the bill, ‘It’s time you went home and got some sleep.’
‘I do feel rather tired’ he mumbled.
‘Avanti.’
There was an old horse-drawn gharry in a side-street which we were glad to find. Keats protested that his feet were beginning to hurt and his arm to pain him. He was in a pleasantly exhausted frame of mind, and slightly tipsy after his potations. He lay back in the smelly old cab and closed his eyes. ‘D’you know, Darley’ he said indistinctly, ‘I meant to tell you but forgot. Don’t be angry with me, old fellow-bondsman,