I don’t know much about writing things down—not, I mean, in the way aproper writer would do. The bit about that picture I saw, for instance. Itdoesn’t really have anything to do with anything. I mean, nothing came ofit, it didn’t lead to anything and yet I feel somehow that it is important,that it has a place somewhere. It was one of the things that happened tome that meant something. Just like Gipsy’s Acre meant something to me.
Like Santonix meant something to me.
I haven’t really said much about him. He was an architect. Of courseyou’ll have gathered that. Architects are another thing I’d never had muchto do with, though I knew a few things about the building trade. I cameacross Santonix in the course of my wanderings. It was when I was work-ing as a chauffeur1, driving the rich around places. Once or twice I droveabroad, twice to Germany—I knew a bit of German—and once or twice toFrance—I had a smattering of French too—and once to Portugal. Theywere usually elderly people, who had money and bad health in aboutequal quantities.
When you drive people like that around, you begin to think that moneyisn’t so hot after all. What with incipient2 heart attacks, lots of bottles oflittle pills you have to take all the time, and losing your temper over thefood or the service in hotels. Most of the rich people I’ve known have beenfairly miserable3. They’ve got their worries, too. Taxation4 and investments.
You hear them talking together or to friends. Worry! That’s what’s killinghalf of them. And their sex life’s not so hot either. They’ve either got long-legged blonde sexy wives who are playing them up with boyfriends some-where, or they’re married to the complaining kind of woman, hideous6 ashell, who keeps telling them where they get off. No. I’d rather be myself.
Michael Rogers, seeing the world, and getting off with good-looking girlswhen he feels like it!
Everything a bit hand-to-mouth, of course, but I put up with that. Lifewas good fun, and I’d been content to go on with life being fun. But I sup-pose I would have in any case. That attitude goes with youth. When youthbegins to pass fun isn’t fun any longer.
Behind it, I think, was always the other thing—wanting someone andsomething…However, to go on with what I was saying, there was one oldboy I used to drive down to the Riviera. He’d got a house being built there.
He went down to look how it was getting on. Santonix was the architect. Idon’t really know what nationality Santonix was. English I thought at first,though it was a funny sort of name I’d never heard before. But I don’tthink he was English. Scandinavian of some kind I guess. He was an illman. I could see that at once. He was young and very fair and thin with anodd face, a face that was askew7 somehow. The two sides of it didn’t match.
He could be quite bad-tempered8 to his clients. You’d have thought as theywere paying the money that they’d call the tune9 and do the bullying10. Thatwasn’t so. Santonix bullied11 them and he was always quite sure of himselfalthough they weren’t.
This particular old boy of mine was frothing with rage, I remember, assoon as he arrived and had seen how things were going. I used to catchsnatches here and there when I was standing12 by ready to assist in mychauffeurly and handyman way. It was always on the cards that Mr. Con-stantine would have a heart attack or a stroke.
“You have not done as I said,” he half screamed. “You have spent toomuch money. Much too much money. It is not as we agreed. It is going tocost me more than I thought.”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Santonix. “But the money’s got to bespent.”
“It shall not be spent! It shall not be spent. You have got to keep withinthe limits I laid down. You understand?”
“Then you won’t get the kind of house you want,” said Santonix. “I knowwhat you want. The house I build you will be the house you want. I’mquite sure of that and you’re quite sure of it, too. Don’t give me any ofyour pettifogging middle- class economies. You want a house of qualityand you’re going to get it, and you’ll boast about it to your friends andthey’ll envy you. I don’t build a house for anyone, I’ve told you that.
There’s more to it than money. This house isn’t going to be like otherpeople’s houses!”
“It is going to be terrible. Terrible.”
“Oh no it isn’t. The trouble with you is that you don’t know what youwant. Or at least so anyone might think. But you do know what you wantreally, only you can’t bring it out into your mind. You can’t see it clearly.
But I know. That’s the one thing I always know. What people are after andwhat they want. There’s a feeling in you for quality. I’m going to give youquality.”
He used to say things like that. And I’d stand by and listen. Somehow orother I could see for myself that this house that was being built thereamongst pine trees looking over the sea, wasn’t going to be the usualhouse. Half of it didn’t look out towards the sea in a conventional way. Itlooked inland, up to a certain curve of mountains, up to a glimpse of skybetween hills. It was odd and unusual and very exciting.
Santonix used to talk to me sometimes when I was off duty. He said:
“I only build houses for people I want to build for.”
“Rich people, you mean?”
“They have to be rich or they couldn’t pay for the houses. But it’s not themoney I’m going to make out of it I care about. My clients have to be richbecause I want to make the kind of houses that cost money. The houseonly isn’t enough, you see. It has to have the setting. That’s just as import-ant. It’s like a ruby13 or an emerald. A beautiful stone is only a beautifulstone. It doesn’t lead you anywhere further. It doesn’t mean anything, ithas no form or significance until it has its setting. And the setting has tohave a beautiful jewel to be worthy14 of it. I take the setting, you see, out ofthe landscape, where it exists only in its own right. It has no meaning untilthere is my house sitting proudly like a jewel within its grasp.” He lookedat me and laughed. “You don’t understand?”
“I suppose not,” I said slowly, “and yet—in a way—I think I do….”
“That may be.” He looked at me curiously15.
We came down to the Riviera again later. By then the house was nearlyfinished. I won’t describe it because I couldn’t do it properly, but it was—well—something special—and it was beautiful. I could see that. It was ahouse you’d be proud of, proud to show to people, proud to look at your-self, proud to be in with the right person perhaps. And then suddenly oneday Santonix said to me:
“I could build a house for you, you know. I’d know the kind of houseyou’d want.”
I shook my head.
“I shouldn’t know myself,” I said, honestly.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t. I’d know for you.” Then he added, “It’s a thou-sand pities you haven’t got the money.”
“And never shall have,” I said.
“You can’t say that,” said Santonix. “Born poor doesn’t mean you’ve gotto stay poor. Money’s queer. It goes where it’s wanted.”
“I’m not sharp enough,” I said.
“You’re not ambitious enough. Ambition hasn’t woken up in you, but it’sthere, you know.”
“Oh, well,” I said, “some day when I’ve woken up ambition and I’vemade money, then I’ll come to you and say ‘build me a house.’”
He sighed then. He said:
“I can’t wait…No, I can’t afford to wait. I’ve only a short time to go now.
One house—two houses more. Not more than that. One doesn’t want to dieyoung…Sometimes one has to…It doesn’t really matter, I suppose.”
“I’ll have to wake up my ambition quick.”
“No,” said Santonix. “You’re healthy, you’re having fun, don’t changeyour way of life.”
I said: “I couldn’t if I tried.”
I thought that was true then. I liked my way of life and I was having funand there was never anything wrong with my health. I’ve driven a lot ofpeople who’ve made money, who’ve worked hard and who’ve got ulcersand coronary thrombosis and many other things as a result of workinghard. I didn’t want to work hard. I could do a job as well as another butthat was all there was to it. And I hadn’t got ambition, or I didn’t think Ihad ambition. Santonix had had ambition, I suppose. I could see thatdesigning houses and building them, the planning of the drawing andsomething else that I couldn’t quite get hold of, all that had taken it out ofhim. He hadn’t been a strong man to begin with. I had a fanciful ideasometimes that he was killing5 himself before his time by the work he hadput out to drive his ambition. I didn’t want to work. It was as simple asthat. I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad thing, thatthe human race had unfortunately invented for itself.
I thought about Santonix quite often. He intrigued16 me almost more thananyone I knew. One of the oddest things in life, I think, is the things oneremembers. One chooses to remember, I suppose. Something in one mustchoose. Santonix and his house were one of the things and the picture inBond Street and visiting that ruined house, The Towers, and hearing thestory of Gipsy’s Acre, all those were the things that I’d chosen to remem-ber! Sometimes girls that I met, and journeys to the foreign places in thecourse of driving clients about. The clients were all the same. Dull. Theyalways stayed at the same kind of hotels and ate the same kind of unima-ginative food.
I still had that queer feeling in me of waiting for something, waiting forsomething to be offered to me, or to happen to me, I don’t quite knowwhich way describes it best. I suppose really I was looking for a girl, theright sort of girl—by which I don’t mean a nice, suitable girl to settle downwith, which is what my mother would have meant or my Uncle Joshua orsome of my friends. I didn’t know at that time anything about love. All Iknew about was sex. That was all anybody of my generation seemed toknow about. We talked about it too much, I think, and heard too muchabout it and took it too seriously. We didn’t know—any of my friends ormyself—what it was really going to be when it happened. Love I mean.
We were young and virile17 and we looked the girls over we met and we ap-preciated their curves and their legs and the kind of eye they gave you,and you thought to yourself: “Will they or won’t they? Should I be wastingmy time?” And the more girls you made the more you boasted and thefiner fellow you were thought to be, and the finer fellow you thought your-self.
I’d no real idea that that wasn’t all there was to it. I suppose it happensto everyone sooner or later and it happens suddenly. You don’t think asyou imagine you’re going to think: “This might be the girl for me…This isthe girl who is going to be mine.” At least, I didn’t feel it that way. I didn’tknow that when it happened it would happen quite suddenly. That Iwould say: “That’s the girl I belong to. I’m hers. I belong to her, utterly18, foralways.” No. I never dreamed it would be like that. Didn’t one of the oldcomedians say once—wasn’t it one of his stock jokes? “I’ve been in loveonce and if I felt it coming on again I tell you I’d emigrate.” It was thesame with me. If I had known, if I had only known what it could all cometo mean I’d have emigrated too! If I’d been wise, that is.
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1
chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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3
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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taxation
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| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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askew
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| adv.斜地；adj.歪斜的 | |
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bad-tempered
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| adj.脾气坏的 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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bullied
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| adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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12
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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13
ruby
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| n.红宝石，红宝石色 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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15
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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16
intrigued
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| adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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