The Secret Places of the Heart [13]
But reality mocks it. Boats bump and lead to coarse ungracious quarrels; rowing can be curiously fatiguing; punting involves dreadful indignities. The romance here tarnishes very quickly. Romantic encounters fail to occur; in our impatience we resort to--accosting. Chilly mists arise from the water and the magic of distant singing is provided, even excessively, by boatloads of cads-- with collecting dishes. When the weather keeps warm there presently arises an extraordinary multitude of gnats, and when it does not there is a need for stimulants. That is why the dreamers who come here first for a light delicious brush with love, come down at last to the Thamesside barmaid with her array of spirits and cordials as the quintessence of all desire." "I say," said the doctor. "You tear the place to pieces." "The desires of the place," said Sir Richmond. "I'm using the place as a symbol." He held his sculls awash, rippling in the water. "The real force of life, the rage of life, isn't here," he said. "It's down underneath, sulking and smouldering. Every now and then it strains and cracks the surface. This stretch of the Thames, this pleasure stretch, has in fact a curiously quarrelsome atmosphere. People scold and insult one another for the most trivial things, for passing too close, for taking the wrong side, for tying up or floating loose. Most of these notice boards on the bank show a thoroughly nasty spirit. People on the banks jeer at anyone in the boats. You hear people quarrelling in boats, in the hotels, as they walk along the towing path. There is remarkably little happy laughter here. The RAGE, you see, is hostile to this place, the RAGE breaks through. . . . The people who drift from one pub to another, drinking, the people who fuddle in the riverside hotels, are the last fugitives of pleasure, trying to forget the rage. . . ." "Isn't it that there is some greater desire at the back of the human mind?" the doctor suggested. "Which refuses to be content with pleasure as an end?" "What greater desire?" asked Sir Richmond, disconcertingly. "Oh! . . . " The doctor cast about. "There is no such greater desire," said Sir Richmond. "You cannot name it. It is just blind drive. I admit its discontent with pleasure as an end--but has it any end of its own? At the most you can say that the rage in life is seeking its desire and hasn't found it." "Let us help in the search," said the doctor, with an afternoon smile under his green umbrella. "Go on." Section 2 "Since our first talk in Harley Street," said Sir Richmond, "I have been trying myself over in my mind. (We can drift down this backwater.) " "Big these trees are," said the doctor with infinite approval. "I am astonished to discover what a bundle of discordant motives I am. I do not seem to deserve to be called a personality. I cannot discover even a general direction. Much more am I like a taxi-cab in which all sorts of aims and desires have travelled to their destination and got out. Are we all like that?" "A bundle held together by a name and address and a certain thread of memory?" said the doctor and considered. "More than that. More than that. We have leading ideas, associations, possessions, liabilities." "We build ourselves a prison of circumstances that keeps us from complete dispersal." "Exactly," said the doctor. "And there is also something, a consistency, that we call character." "It changes." "Consistently with itself." "I have been trying to recall my sexual history," said Sir Richmond, going off at a tangent. "My sentimental education. I wonder if it differs very widely from yours or most men's." "Some men are more eventful in these matters than others," said the doctor,--it sounded--wistfully. "They have the same jumble of motives and traditions, I suspect, whether they are eventful or not. The brakes may be strong or weak but the drive is the same. I can't remember much of the beginnings of curiosity and knowledge in these matters. Can you?" "Not much," said the doctor. "No." "Your psychoanalysts tell a story of fears, suppressions, monstrous imaginations,