William Golding - The Paper Men

ThePaper Men

WilliamGolding

Formy friend and publisher

CHARLESMONTEITH

Chapter One

Iknew at once that it was one of those nights. The drink, such as ithad been, was dying out of my brain and leaving a kind of sediment ofirritation, vague discomfort and even remorse. It had not been no, indeed a bender or booze- up. By the exercise of specialpleading I could have persuaded other people that my evening'sconsumption had been no more than reasonable with regard to theduties of a host: an English author entertaining a professor ofEnglish Literature from overseas. I could also have pleaded that ithad been my fiftieth birthday and that we had been having, quote, oneof those long, continental meals that are at the heart of Europeancivilization, unquote. (Come to think of it I don't know if that's aquote or not. Call it a clitch.) But the indefatigable analyst of mycharacter myself, that is would have none of it.There had been those drinks at lunch. They were the fatal first step,implying in themselves a desert period between four and five o'clockwhen one would feel not justified but urged, shoved, compelled by theprocess started at midday to bring the six o'clock hour of offeringthe guest a drink back to five o'clock, which in its turn andso on. If I could congratulate myself on a degree of sobriety athalf- past three in the morning, it was a minuscule triumph that mostpeople would have considered a defeat.

Andboring young Professor Rick L. Tucker would be there at breakfast! Atthe memory of him I started up in bed, then collapsed again with agroan. It was a small blessing to count, that he had no wife withhim, or I should probably have made a pass at her or at the veryleast been suggestive. And we should drink again. No. I should drinkagain, out of opportunity and boredom, thus making a nonsense of thehigh moral stand, the teetotalism that had seemed so irrefrangible nolonger ago than last Monday.

Therewas another thing. It was a black hole in my memory of the previousnight, where the long summer evening had turned into night. It wasnot a large black hole merely a blotch between theafter-dinner drinking and yes, now it was smaller, the blackhole I mean, because on its very brink I remembered getting up yetanother bottle, opening it, despite their protests and doingwhat? I examined my throat, my mouth, my head, my stomach. It wasimpossible to believe that I had really made any significant inroadsinto that (fifth?) bottle. Otherwise my head would be ... and mystomach would be ... and the black hole would be ...

Itwas at that very moment and if I bothered to leaf throughthat pile of journals out there that I am going to burn, I could tellyou the hour as well as the date that I conceived a thought.The point where drinking can be defined as alcoholism is preciselywhere the black hole is recognized as part of it. I rememberthinking, in the terrible clarity of early morning, that the symptomsalso implied that the disease was incurable. For it was part of therunning of the mind, the universal process. I sat up in bed, butslowly. The window was aglimmer. I moved into another emotional gear,another symptom, perhaps, a feeling of dry, hard factuality thatprobed my situation from every side, an army of unutterable law whichin time might produce unthinkable horrors, as in all accounts of drugaddiction. It was not impossible to envisage this very dryness andbleakness as a monster itself that was not yet visible andwould not, I thought with a spurt of real desperation, would not everbe visible if I could help it! I would fight the black hole, fight iton the beaches, in pubs and restaurants, clubs, bars, in travel, inthe house, in the very damned delectable bottles themselves, hopingat last to find some pleasure without payment or, alternatively, apleasure taken in calm, sober daylight rather than this stare so dryand hard I was frightened, I remember, in a deep, hard way,an appalled way. No, no, I protested to the glimmering window, itcan't be as bad as that! But the words of the wise man returned uponme. Remember that everything that can happen to a man can happen toyou!

Itook hold of myself. There is no such thing as universal insurance.Black hole there might be, but the first thing a bitterly soberingman would do would be to probe it, find a light to shine here andthere until the hole was seen to be no more than a case offorgetfulness that must increase with the advance, year by year, ofmiddle age. My sanity told me that there was a tool to hand. I hadonly to go downstairs, examine the four empty bottles and the fifthpartly empty,one, look round in the spirit of Holmes or of Maigretand reconstruct that period between dinner and bed from the evidenceof glasses and bottles, spilt booze it might be, or perhapsmercifully not and I should find the fifth bottle still full with nomore than a cork drawn

Atthat, I heard Elizabeth turn over in the other bed with a sleeper'ssigh. She would know oh, yes indeed! Doubtless I should hearall in bad time; but why wake her and ask? The way to discover thetruth was to creep down in dressing-gown and slippers, yes, and withthe pocket torch which I kept at the ready by my bed because our areais no- torious for power failures. Nor must I be fobbed off by anydrunken efforts on my own part to conceal the evidence. I mustinterrogate the bottles. If it proved necessary, I must sneak out ofthe back door no, the conservatory was quieter get tothe dustbin, ashcan, poubelle, whatever one chose to call it and, notto elaborate, count the empties. For the truth was that already I didnot believe in the bottle still full but with the cork drawn. Thatwould be a miracle and miracles, though they might happen, did notseem to apply to me. Yet, so enfeebled was I in mind rather than bodythat the thought of waking Elizabeth accidentally turned the prospectof getting out of bed into a test of will power like diving into coldwater. I have never liked cold water.

Itwas at this moment that my wavering mind was made up for me. Therubberized lid of the dustbin outside the back door fell off. Somehowthat made the whole issue clear. I was no longer a repentant drinker.I was Outraged Householder. Sir, how much longer in the guise ofenlightened conservationism are we to endure the depredations ofthese clumsy creatures and at the same time run the risk ofcontamination by a disease once thought eradicated? Sir, while wemust be mindful, sir sir, sir, sir

Bloodybadgers. I twisted out of bed, hardly minding whether Elizabeth wokeor not. The only gun in my house was an ancient but powerful airgunwhich I had acquired with a tin of pellets through circumstances tootrivial and complex to be worth recording. Author no,well-known author no, damn it, Wilfred Barclay shoots badger.Was there a law against it? Something dating from King John orthereabouts? Could you not shoot a badger on your own land? My headwas quite extraordinarily uncluttered, my hangover marvellouslypushed into the background. I felt pardoned. Perhaps it was thepossibility of killing something, the countryman's hereditaryprivilege. I bundled into my dressing-gown, shoved on my slippers.Stealthily I stole down the stairs, past the room where our guestslept his solitary sleep in the letto matrimoniale of the spare room.I fished the gun out of the cupboard by the dining-room fireplace,cocked and loaded it. I tiptoed into the warm conservatory, openedthe door and peered round the corner.

Herewas a dilemma. How do you shoot a badger when you can make it out asno more than an enlargement of a dustbin? The creature had its pawson the rim, its head down, as it searched nastily and avidly throughour rubbish. It would be licking at scraps of pate and perhapsgnawing old bacon rind or the bone from a gammon. It was wild natureand probably gassable but only by the appropriate authorities. Thenagain (was there a chill in the air for all the time of the year?)were badgers dangerous not only by transmitting disease, butactively, toothily, clawily dangerous? Would a wounded badger attack?Would a tickled-up badger or one with young (were there young withit?) go for my throat? The situation was not simple and was furthercomplicated by the absurd. I was wearing an old pair of pyjamas andthe cord of my dressing-gown was gripping me a little above where thepyjamas should have been gripping me but were too ancient for theirelasticated top to do so. They were performing as they always did,even in contrary conditions. If I was losing weight, they slippeddown. If I was gaining weight, they slipped down. I had the loadedgun in one hand, my torch in the other and no third hand for mytrousers which now fell suddenly under my dressing-gown so that Ionly just caught them by clapping my knees together. It was, perhaps,no situation from which to face a charging badger. I recognizeduneasily the hand of what I sometimes thought to be my personalnemesis, the spirit of farce.