Spurious Read Online Free PDF Page B

ferry, travelling out to Spain. W.: ‘We should go on a trip, one day. We should go to Spain’. And then: ‘We’re not going to go anywhere, are we? We’re men of habit. Simple beings’. And then, ‘Everything’s got to be the same. That’s our strength’.
    The last Duke of Edgcumbe, W. tells me, married a barmaid from the pub, and put the whole estate up for sale. The city bought it. It’s a miracle, we agree, as we walk out along the shore to where the path rises up through the woods.
    It was here the Dukes and their guests would drive about in their carriages in the twilight, imagining they were in some Gothic romance. There’s even a faux-ruined folly built on the hill, looking very unconvincing in the autumn sun.
    A landslide has taken the woods with it; some trees still stand, growing aslant, though most have fallen. The path has been diverted, but W. prefers the old route. It’s slow going—very overgrown—and where the cliff has completely collapsed, we have to scramble across scree.
    What would happen if we fell? It’s a long way down. But W. and I never think about our deaths or anything like that. That would be pure melodrama. Besides, if we died, others would come along to replace us. Our position is structural, we’ve always been convinced of that. We’re only signs or syndromes of some great collapse, and our deaths will be no more significant than those of summer flies in empty rooms.
    As we look out to sea, a great shadow seems to move under the water. He can see it, says W.—‘Look: the kraken of your idiocy’. Yes, there it is, moving darkly beneath the water.
    W. is growing his hair, he says.—‘It’s what the kids are doing’. The kids are looking very gentle, we agree. It’s the age of Aquarius.—‘So why aren’t you growing yours? Go on, grow it!’ This as we mount the Hoe from the town side.
    ‘The sea makes me happy’, W. says, ‘does it make you happy?’ It does. We stand before the whole panorama, from Mount Batten to Mount Edgcumbe, the far off seabreak with the lighthouse at one end, and, because it’s a very clear day, the farther lighthouse that can be seen standing blue ten miles out against the horizon. And then the various islands, large and small. And the whole sweep of water, shimmeringly blue under the very blue sky: here we are again!
    To think it will all end so soon! To think we’re on the edge of the greatest catastrophe! The oceans will boil, the sky will burn away into space. And won’t we be the first to be swept away? Won’t we be the first to go under?
    The apocalypse is close, we know that. The apocalypse is coming, of that we are certain …
    As we walk towards the lido, W. tells me about the Greek phalanx. The soldiers locked their shields together, he says, to form a great defensive wall. Their bronze-tipped spears would poke out of the front. Together, loyal, they were almost invincible, says W.—‘Of course you wouldn’t understand any of this’, he says. ‘You’re not loyal. You know nothing of loyalty. You would break the phalanx’, says W. ‘You’d be the first to break it’.
    W.’s great fantasy, and he must admit, he says, that it is a fantasy, is of forming a community of writers and thinkers, linked by mutual friendship. Together we’ll be capable of more than we might do on our own. That’s what he’s always hoped, says W. It’s what he’s always dreamt of.
    Above all, we have to avoid the traps of careerism, says W. Loyalty and trust, that’s what matters: we have to be prepared to die for one another.—‘Literally that: to die for one another’ , W. says. ‘It’s all about the phalanx’, W. says. ‘The phalanx you would immediately betray’.
    That’s the ultimate paradox, W. observes: that one with such faith in friendship should end up with such a friend. Would I die for him? No. Would I immediately betray him, given any opportunity? Yes. In fact, I’ve already done so several times.
    Where did it all