An Essay in Doubt

An Easy Lesson in Philosophy With Special Reference to the Unfortunate Mr. Bulger

LOUIS GOLDING

IT is a tangled world. You would think one of the easiest things in it would be to pronounce off-hand whether you like a thing or dislike it. It is not. Take food. There is one article of food (I shall only mention its name if I am forced to) which, whenever I am at a satisfactory distance from it, I spend my time in reviling. I exhaust all my ingenuity in finding unpleasant names for it. I do indeed dislike it heartily. And then, by some undeliberated catenation of circumstances, 1 find myself faced by a steaming dish of it. Its odour conquers me more than poppy and mandragora. 1 fall for it. I realize I care for nothing else in the world so passionately. Next morning—next morning—I rise pale with shame. I shrug my shoulders at myself, 1 point at myself the finger of icy scorn.

It happened in Vicenza lately. It is always my habit to order from foreign menus the dish named more cryptically than all the others. 1 ordered something at Vicenza which ought to have baffled, so tortuous and polysyllabic it was, the sophisticated palate of a Petronius. It was tripe. (Yes, it was tripe. I am afraid the secret is out.) You cannot imagine, I repeat, how rude I am about that article of diet in its absence, how I jeer at the manner in which it simulates the limbs of a polypod, how it laminates, effoliates— what is the word?—into a cellular coral formation. You cannot imagine how disgustingly I behaved that night in Vicenza.

IT happens not only with food. Take mountain-climbing, for instance. What a glorious occupation you deem it, in your study armchair. to he climbing mountains. All that business about wind whistling in your hair and yourself and bathing you ardent brow in waterfalls, and cresting the peak of morning. The concept, mountain-climbing, may be said to appeal to you. You like it. Then, upon a dolorous day, you actually start climbing a mountain. The concept, mountain-climbing, may be said to bore you. You dislike it. You loathe it. You think mountains abominable protuberances in an else flat and amiable world. You grunt, you sweat. You, as I said, dislike mountains.

The same might be said about seafaring. I will not labour the point. I will, on the contrary, come to the point I am driving at. People, I mean. If it is difficult to determine whether, in absolute philosophic fact, you like or dislike tripe (forgive the ungarnished mention of the detestable commodity), whether you like or dislike mountain-climbing, the music of Poulenc, the paintings of Cirico— how much more difficult do you not find it to declare categorically: I like Smith; I can't stick Smith. Celia is a darling. Something should he done about Celia, something very drastic.

All of which brings me to Bulger, poor dear old Bulger. And, of course, Watkins. For the story does not exist without Watkins, poor dear old Watkins. Bulger liked Watkins; he thought him the most charming person in this or any world. He thought him so charming that he called him Wottles; it shows just how charming Watkins was that he endured it. I repeat, Bulger liked Watkins, worshipped Watkins.

Until they parted; then all of a sudden Bulger discovered he disliked Watkins more than anyone in this or any world. He loathed Watkins. Most rigidly he thought of him as Watkins. He could no more have thought of him as Wottles than he could have taken his eyes from their sockets and juggled with them. Watkins would send him notes asking him to go to dinner and the theatre with him. The note would be returned to Watkins, unopened, marked "Gone away, address unknown." Somebody might report to Watkins that Bulger had been seen somewhere in the neighbourhood of his usual address. Said Watkins to himself: "The dear fellow has come back. I must just run along and see how dear old Bulger is." Bulger would be standing, yellow as ivory, peeping through the drawing-room curtains. The curtains would be drawn and all the blinds down, as if there had been a triple death in the house. But that wouldn't be enough for Bulger. He'd draw the piano up against the door and reinforce it with a few armchairs and encyclopaedias. Then he'd lie back on bis couch quivering with dislike for Watkins. "Go away, go away!" he would grind out between bis teeth. "Go away! I don't like you!"

O no. It wouldn't occur to Watkins that Bulger didn't like him. Watkins was not that sort of person; he was far too full of the milk of human kindness for that.

DESIDES Bulger didYike him, Bulger simply worshipped his little Wottles. As soon, that is to say, as some accident brought the two gentlemen together again. Bulger would he in the presence of Watkins not more than a moment or two when the old spell would reassert itself with ten times, twenty times, its old potency. Such delightful manners had Wottles, such an unexhaustible flow of funny stories. He was the very quintessence of bonhomie, the perfect man about town. He belonged to all the best clubs, had the entrée to all the best houses, knew all the best vintages, offered you the best of all cigars. Nicest fellow in this or any other world was Wottles. Dear, dear Wottles.

So it went on. So his liking for Watkins and disliking of Watkins played battlecock and shuttledore with Bulger for years. Something, said Bulger with deep feeling, will have to he done about it. What shall it be? "0 confound it," he said (he was sometimes rather vigorous in his phraseology), "what shall be done about it? I can't stand it any more. Do I like him? Don't I like him? Do I? Don't I? I do! I don't! I do! I don't! 0 damn!" he said.

Then of a sudden it occurred to him. He jumped into the air, and landed so violently on the drawing-room carpet that he brought down two expensive Dresden rustics from the mantelpiece. He was not aware of it. 'I've got it!" he shouted. "I've got it! I'll get him out of town, I'll divorce him from his milieu. I'll get to the heart of the man, the essential man, the man as God knows him. I'll get him away from his clubs and from his cigars and his wines. I'll take him tramping over the hills with me, from sunrise to sunset. I ll get him face to face with the big things, the pure things, wind and sky and space. And by Heaven," he bellowed, "by Heaven, when the sun of that day has set I'll have my man! I'll know you, Watkins, I'll know you through and through! I'll know whether 1 like you or whether—or whether 1 don't like you! Whether I loathe you! Whether I abominate you! Where is that ordnance map? Where is that time-table?"

WATKINS was absolutely charmed by the idea. "Nothing could give me greater pleasure, Bulger,old man! Just like you! Glorious! Any jolly day you like! Bravo, old Bulger!"

They arrived at the village under the hills from which they were to set out, a little before dawn. They puffed and grunted their way up to the ridge. It was a little chilly at first, and they had to keep blowing at their fingers and swinging their arms about like windmills in order to keep themselves warm. When they got a little hit further, it started drizzling. It would have conquered anybody's good temper excepting Watkins's. It conquered Bulger's. From the way Watkins went rattling on, you would have thought that there was only one thing in the world lacking to make him really happy. A cold drizzle on the open hills had its points. But if you could only have provided him with a nice thick hailstorm, he would have shrieked with laughter. As the morning proceeded, the weather gradually improved. But a long time before the sky was really clear, Bulger found himself chuckling unrestrainedly at Watkins's jokes. He couldn't remember Wottles in better form. And the way the dear chap never repeated himself was nothing less than astonishing! That one about the duchess and the save-loys for instance . . .

Bulger stopped short. Bulger suddenly remembered what he'd organised the whole business for. He remembered what had induced him to get up at so fiendish an hour, to tolerate a breakfast a scavenger would have sneered at, to set off in the tallowy darkness into the cold, into the rain.

"I must take myself in hand," he swore inwardly. "This will never do! Bulger, I tell you this will never do. Take yourself in hand, Bulger!"

The idea had been, as I have said, to get Watkins face to face with the big things, the pure things, to see the picture he'd make in his stark nudity, as it were, with his metropolitan wrappings stripped from him. But that's where the paradox was. Watkins brought metropolis with him. He'd never been in happier form in his own special corner at the club near the fire, with all his own particular pals around him, and the smoke of the best Havanas circling the air. The very waiters, who prided themselves on the correctness of their demeanour, would he doubled up with laughter as sally followed sally. Ruthlessly strip the town from him, indeed! You might as well divorce him from his nose and ears.

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"Now or never!" muttered Bulger between his teeth. "I get to the bottom of it to-day or never. Do I like him? Don't I? Do I like him? Don't I? Do I? Do I?"

"What's that, old fellow?" inquired Watkins.

"Nothing, nothing at all! I was just humming a tune to myself!"

"Sorry, old fellow! My mistake!"

The fact was that, then and there, Bulger knew he liked Watkins as much as everybody else and rather more. But he was trying desperately hard, as he had never tried before in Watkins's presence, to keep clear in his mind just what would happen as soon as they parted. They munched their luncheon sandwiches. Bulger loathed sandwiches, they didn't agree with him. You would have thought that Watkins preferred lumpy beef sandwiches (they had left out the mustard) to caviare and roast quail and a bottle of Château Margaux to wash them down.

They set off again. Bulger really disliked walking. The heels of his stockings were chafing horribly. He became more and more preoccupied. "Do I hate him? Don't I? Do I? Don't I? Heaven help me! Don't I? Do I? Don't I? Do I?" This preoccupation made no difference to Watkins. Once Watkins had an audience, typhoons and earthquakes couldn't upset him. He just went on being charming. O, so ineffably, so unmitigatedly charming!

It was getting on towards dusk now. Soon they would have to descend into the valley to spend the night in some odious road-house between damp sheets. They would he awakened by foul cow's mooing, shameless cocks crowing. The question would not have been answered. Did he like him? Didn't he? Did he? Didn't he? 0 damn, did he?

No answer. The day had been wasted. Bulger's head was aching, splitting. Casually, through the corner of his eye, he became aware that they were walking alongside a deep gravel-pit. Watkins could not he more than a foot from the edge. Bulger did not think; he just acted swiftly, instinctively. He thrust out both his hands with all the power in him and hurled Watkins into the pit. There was no more Watkins.

"Glory! glory! glory!" shrieked Bulger. "It's finished! It's over! I shan't ever he worried again! Goodbye, Watkins! Glory! Glory! Glory!" Oh it was a lovely night! Bulger strode on for hours over the moonlit hill-tops. "Hallelujah!" he said. "It's finished! It's over for ever and ever!"

I present you a picture of Bulger in his room thirty years later, a wrinkled, tormented greybeard, his head between his hands. Ah, he had long had time to learn that it wasn't finished, it wasn't over. He had only burked his problem, poor old Bulger, he had not solved it.

"Did I like him? Didn't I like him? Did I? Didn't I? Did I? Didn't I? Did I? Didn't I? O damn, did I?"

Which seems to indicate that not even murder is going to help you in cases of acute philosophic doubt. Perhaps not even suicide. It is a grim prospect. I wonder if I, for my part, will ever have the courage to go to Vicenza again.