Tins labelled "God in Oil", shaped like mosques, licked with gold paint. The menu that had offered "Fried God in Batter". That was a long time ago. In a canteen somewhere in. England. Lydgate was in a Land-Rover, bumping over beaches, the sea in his right ear, because the road from the capital to the oil towns had not yet been completed. But already he could see the perpetual bonfires on the round horizon, the waste gases being burnt up, a show which the children born there took to be an aspect of the natural world. But the Land-Rover got stuck in one of the small rivers that flowed, after rain, over the sand to meet the sea. The differential was flooded. Crocodile snouts sailed towards him.
Where had that been? The Persian Gulf? Hardly.
"Are you glad I came back?" she asked. His legs were pinioned under hers, heavy warm marble.
"Eh? What? Oh, yes."
"You don't sound very enthusiastic."
"Oh." He was awake. The gas-fires were moving up the hill, cars coming home. His own car would be seen, parked in her porch. "I ought to go home now."
"Home? You haven't got a home. Home is with me."
"Oh, no. It's impossible. We tried it, and it was impossible." He wanted a cigarette, and his cigarettes were in the pocket of his trousers that lay, crumpled, over her crumpled and torn dress on the floor of the living-room. And her heavy limbs held him down. It was a double bed. Why did she have a double bed? That reminded him; he must ask P.W.D. for a double bed. Wajak would be coming back soon, with the children.
"It's not so impossible. You only have to learn to be less selfish. It's easy enough."
"I'll go my own way." No, Wajak was not coming back. He would go his own way. Time to move on.
"You just like to use people, don't you ? You never want to give —“
"I can't help it. I'd better go now."
"Because, after all, it isn't as though you're still young. You're over fifty, you're grey, you puff and you pant. You're no catch for anyone."
"I know all that. I don't mind nobody wanting me. I'll go my own way."
"Oh, no, you won't. Nobody goes his own way. It's too easy."
"I've finished with women."
"That's easy to say, isn't it? You forget you've finished with them when you want them. Half an hour ago you wanted me."
"I know. I can't help it."
"You've got to learn."
"I don't want to."
"Nobody wants to. But they've got to, just the same."
"But it's not too much to ask. (Look, I must have a cigarette.) I mean, just to be left alone."
"Nobody's ever left alone."
The differential was flooded. He would have to walk six miles over the sand to the river outpost with the small P.W.D. workshop. God in uranium. Soon the Mosque would be ready, Bastians calling the people to prayer. "What's that?" he said. "What did you say?"
"You can bring your things in a truck tomorrow. But don't bring anything of hers."
"She's dead."
"Who's dead? When did she die? What are you talking about?"
"Eh?"
"All right. Go to sleep. We all have a long, long day."
Ah, Francis Burroughs Lydgate, at it again? Hast thou in thy wasted frame not one ounce, not one teaspoonful, not one drip off the spout of an oilcan of human tenderness? Dost thou disdain to carry on thy back the burden that all but thee accept gladly, knowing it to be the inheritance of all mankind? Not sin only, but the knowledge that taking involveth giving, that we are all members of one another, that the perfect round of man and woman in hardly contrived harmony is a shadow or figure of that heavenly round or harmony in which we are destined ultimately to merge our shrieking selfhood, becoming one with the one with the one with the one with the
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
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