"The Black Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murdoch Iris)Part Three– – s, he had so much enjoyed our shopping. She conducted it. Boldly she chose food, cleaning stuff, washing stuff, kitchen things. She even bought a pretty blue dustpan and brush with flowers painted on. And an apron. And a sun hat. We loaded up the hired car. Some prophetic wit had made me keep my licence up to date. But, after earless years, I was driving cautiously. It was five o'clock of the same day and we were far from London. We were in a village, the car was parked outside the village shop. Grass grew between the paving stones and the sloping sun was giving to each blade of grass its own individual brown little shadow. There was still quite a long way to go. Seeing Julian playing housekeeper so busily and naturally and ordering me about as if we had been married for years made me sick with joy. I dissembled the intensity of my delight so as not to make her self-conscious. I bought some sherry and some wine because that is what couples do, but I felt I should be perpetually drunk on sheer pleasure. At moments I almost wanted to be alone so as to meditate more single-mindedly upon what had happened. When we had driven on a bit and I had stopped to relieve myself in a wood, and as I stood looking down at a criss-crossy linoleum of pine needles, and a little copse of frondy moss in a tree root and a few stars of scarlet pimpernel, I felt like a great poet. These tiny things stood before me, the concrete embodiment of something resonant and huge, of histories and ecstasies and tears. Human happiness is rarely in the best of circumstances without shadows, and an almost pure happiness can be a terror to itself. My happiness at this time, though intense, was far from pure, and in the midst of all this mad joy (watching Julian buy the dustpan and brush, for instance) I soon started rehearsing terrors and miseries. Of course there was vengeful Arnold, resentful Rachel, miserable Priscilla. There was the quaint and curious fact that I had lied about my age. There was a huge question mark over the immediate future. But these matters were, now that I was with Julian, problems rather than nightmares. Soon and in solitude I would tell her everything and she would be the just judge. The fact of loving and being loved can make (in a way which is of course sometimes illusory) even the most practical of difficulties seem trivial or even senseless. Nor did I in any vulgar sense fear exposure. We would be secret. No one knew of this place. I had told my plans to nobody. What troubled me as I drove along in that very blue twilight between fat flowery chestnut trees and saw the full moon like a dish of Jersey cream above a barley field which was still catching the light of the sun, were two things, one vast and cosmic, the other horribly precise. The cosmic trouble was that I was feeling, in some way quite unconnected with ordinary speculations about what might happen, that I should certainly lose Julian. I did not doubt now that she loved me. But I felt a kind of absolute despair, as if we had loved already for a thousand years and were condemned to become weary of something so perfect. I raced about the planet like lightning, I put a girdle round the galaxy, and was back in the next second gasping with this despair. Those who have loved will understand me. I was giddy with fear. A great loop had been made in the continuum of time and space and across the mouth of it Julian's right hand held my left. All this had happened before, perhaps a million times, and because of this was doomed. There was no ordinary future any more, only this ecstatic tormented terrified present. The future had passed through the present like a sword. We were already, even eye to eye and lip to lip, deep in the horrors to come. My other trouble was wondering, when we reached Patara and I tried to make love to Julian, whether I should succeed. So we started arguing. «You're thinking too much, Bradley, I can see you are. We'll solve all these problems. We'll have Priscilla to live with us.» «We won't be living anywhere.» «What do you mean?» «We just won't. There isn't any future. We shall go on and on driving in this car forever. That's all there is.» «You mustn't speak like that, it's false. Look, I've bought brown bread and toothpaste and a dustpan.» «Yes. That's a miracle. But it's like the fossils which religious men used to think God put there when He created the world in 4000 b.c. so that we could develop an illusion of the past.» «I don't understand.» «We have an illusion of the future.» «That's wicked talk and a betrayal of love.» «Our love is in the nature of a closed system. It is complete within itself. It has no accidents and no extension.» «Please don't talk that abstract sort of language, it's a way of lying.» «Maybe. But we have no language in which to tell the truth about ourselves, Julian.» «Well, I have. I'm going to marry you. You will write a great book. I will try to write a great book.» «Do you really believe this?» «Yes. Bradley, you're tormenting me, I think you're doing it on purpose.» «Perhaps. I feel so connected with you. I am you. I must stir a little, even cause pain, if I'm to apprehend you at all.» «Cause me pain then, I'll bear it gladly, but it must be inside our security.» «Oh everything's inside. That's the trouble.» «I don't know what you mean by 'inside.' But you seem to be speaking as if it were all an illusion, as if you could leave me.» «I suppose it could be interpreted like that.» «But we've only just found each other.» «We found each other millions of years ago, Julian.» «Yes, yes, I know. I feel that too, but really, ordinary really, since Covent Garden it's only two days.» «I'll meditate on that.» «Well, meditate properly. Bradley, you couldn't leave me, what nonsense are you talking.» «No, I couldn't leave you, my utter darling, but you could leave me. I don't mean anything about doubting your love. It's just that whatever miracle made us will automatically also break us. We are for breaking, our smash is what it's for.» «I won't let you talk like this. I'll hold you and silence you with love.» «Mind out. This is tricky light for driving in.» «Will you stop a minute?» «No.» «Do you really think I could leave you?» «Sub specie aeternitatis, yes. You have done so already.» «You know I don't understand Latin.» «A pity your education was so neglected.» «Bradley, I shall get angry with you.» «So we are quarrelling already. Shall I drive you back to Ealing?» «You are deliberately hurting and spoiling.» «I am not a very nice character. You must get to know me some time.» «I do know you. I know you inside out and backwards.» «You do and you don't.» «Do you doubt my love?» «I fear the gods.» «I fear nothing.» «Perfection is instant despair. Instant despair. Nothing to do with time.» «If you despair you doubt that I love you.» «Maybe.» 'Will you please stop driving?» «What can I do to prove that I love you absolutely?» «I don't see that you can do anything.» «I shall jump out of the car.» «Don't be silly.» «I shall.» And the next moment she had. There was a sound like a small explosion, a puff of air, and she was gone from my side. The door gaped, cracked open, swung and slammed back. The seat beside me was empty. The car careered onto the grass verge and stopped. I looked back and saw her in the half-light lying in a dark motionless heap by the side of the road. I have had terrible moments in my life. Many of them came to me after this one. But this was, seen in retrospect, the most beautiful, the purest and the most absolutely punishing. Gasping with terror and anguish I got myself out of the car and ran back. The road was empty and silent, the air filled with atoms of darkening blue, defeating the sight. Oh the poor frailty of the human form, its egg-shell vulnerability! How can this precarious crushable machine of flesh and bones and blood survive on this planet of hard surfaces and relentless murderous gravity? I had felt the crash and crunch of her body upon the road. Her head was in the grass, her legs hunched up on the verge. The moment of stillness when I got to her was the worst. I knelt beside her, moaning aloud, not daring to touch or move that perhaps terribly damaged body. Was she conscious, would she in a moment begin to scream with pain? My hands hovered about her with a condemned tragic helplessness. I had a very different future now as I ineptly questioned that inert and scattered being that I did not dare even to fold in my arms. Then Julian said, «Sorry, Bradley.» «Are you badly hurt?» I said in a grating breathless voice. «Don't-think-so-' Then she sat up and put her arms round my neck. «Oh Julian, be careful, are you all right, is anything broken?» «No-I'm sure-not-Look, I fell onto these humpy cushions of grass or moss or-«I thought you fell on the road.» «No, I just-grazed my leg again-and I banged my face-ouf! I think I'm perfectly all right though, it just hurts-Wait a moment, let me just try moving-Yes, I'm perfectly all right-Oh I am sorry-I took her in my arms properly then and we held onto each other, half lying among the little mossy grassy hillocks beside a ditch full of white flowering nettles. The creamy moon had become smaller and paler and more metallic. Darkness began to thicken about us in the dense air as we held each other in silence. «Bradley, I'm getting cold, I've lost my sandals.» «Bradley, please. I hear a car, someone will come.» I got up, burning, and helped her up, and then in fact a car did come by and its lights showed her legs, the blue of her dress which matched her eyes, and a flash of her shaggy brown-gold mane. It also showed her sandals lying together upon the road. «There's blood on your leg.» «It's just a graze.» «You're limping.» «No, just stiff.» We walked back to the car and I turned on the headlights and made an intricate bower of green leaves in the middle of the dark. We got into the car and held each other's hands. «It won't be necessary to do that again, Julian.» «I'm very sorry.» Then we drove on in silence, her hand on my knee. For the last bit she read the map by torchlight. We crossed a railway line and a canal into a sort of empty flat land. There were no lights of houses to be seen now. The lights of the car showed how the roadway faded into a stony verge of smooth grey pebbles and vivid green wiry grass. We paused and turned at a featureless crossroads where Julian turned her torch onto the ringer post. The road turned into a stony track along which we bumped at five miles per hour. And at last the headlights swung round and revealed two white gate posts and the name written in bold Italian lettering: patara. The car moved onto gravel and the lights jerked over red-brick walls and we came to a halt outside a narrow latticed porch. Julian already had the key, she had been holding it for miles. I peered at oi our haven. It was a little square red-brick bungalow. The agent had been a trifle romantic. «It's marvellous,» said Julian. She let me in. All the lights were on. Julian had run from room to room. She had pulled back the sheets of the double divan bed. «I don't think this is aired at all, it's quite damp. Oh Bradley, let's go down to the sea straightaway, shall we? Then I'll cook supper.» I looked at the bed. «It's late, my darling. Are you sure you're all right after that fall?» «Of course! I think I'll just change, it's got a bit chilly, and then we'll go down to the sea, it must be just there, I think I can hear it.» I went out of the front door and listened. The sound of the sea sieving pebbles came in a regular harsh grating sigh from over the top of some little eminence, sand dunes perhaps, just in front of me. The moon was slightly hazed over but giving out a golden, not silvery, illumination by which I could see the white garden fencing, ragged shrubs and the outline of a single tree. A sense of emptiness and level land. Air moving softly, salty. I felt a mixture of bliss and pure fear. After a few moments I went back into the house. Silence. I went into the bedroom. Julian, in a mauve-and-white flowered petticoat with a white fringe was lying on the bed deeply asleep. Her glowing brown hair was spread all over the pillow and half over her face in a silky network like part of a beautiful shawl. She lay on her back with her throat exposed as if to the knife. Her shoulders, pale in colour, were as creamy as the moon at dusk. Her knees were a little drawn up, the bare muddied feet sideways and pointed. Her hands, also brown with earth, had found each other and nestled between her breasts like a pair of animals. Her right thigh, below the line of the white fringe, was red and scraped in two places, once where she had climbed over the fence, once where she had thrown herself out of the car. She had indeed had an eventful day. So had I. I sat and brooded over her and pondered a hundred things. I had no intention of waking her, though I did wonder if I should bathe her thigh. The long scratches looked quite clean. This sudden magical withdrawal into unconsciousness was just what I had been wanting at different times during the day, to be with her and yet not with her. And now as I sat and sighed beside her there was a strange pleasure in not touching her. After a while I lightly lifted the bedclothes over her, laying down the folded sheet just below those clasped and nestling hands, and I wondered what I had done, or more perhaps what she had done, since it was more her will than mine which had so completely transformed our lives. Perhaps tomorrow morning it would all seem to her like a dreadful dream. Perhaps tomorrow I would be driving a weeping girl back to London. For that too I must be faithfully ready, for I had already been given a fortune which I did not in the least deserve. How wonderful and terrible it had been when she leapt out of the car. But what did it mean except that she was young and the young love extremes? She was a child of extremes and I was a puritan and old. Would I ever make love to her? Ought I to? Would I be able to? «Look, Bradley, an animal's skull, all washed by the sea. What is it, a sheep?» «A sheep yes.» We 11 take it, back. «There are all those stones and shells to take back too.» «Well, we can get the car down, can't we?» «I think so. There's that cry again. What did you say it was?» «The curlew. It says its name. Oh Bradley, look at this beautiful piece of wood, the way the sea has had it, it looks like Chinese writing.» «Are we to bring that too?» «Of course.» I took the square piece of wood, all its wrinkles smoothed and joined by the sea water until it looked like a sort of delicate sketch of an old face, a sketch such as some Italian artist, Leonardo perhaps, might make in a rather abstract way in his notebook. I took the sheep's skull. The skull, bereft of teeth but otherwise fairly complete, had been in the sea for some time. There was nothing sharp upon it. It had been smoothed and caressed and polished until it seemed more like a work of art, some exquisite fabrication in ivory, than one of nature's remnants. The bone was densely smooth to the touch, warmed by the sun, the colour of thick cream, the colour of Julian's shoulders. «Bradley, are you awake? Tea, coffee, milk, sugar? How little know about you.» «Indeed. Tea, milk, sugar. Did you see my socks?» «I love your socks. We're going straight down to the sea.» And we did. We had a picnic breakfast with milky tea in a thermos flask and bread and butter and jam, down on the flat stones of the beach, just beside where the sea, much more gently than last night, was touching the clean fringe of the land, which it had itself fashioned to be its pure spouse and counterpart, withdrawing to breathe and returning again to touch. Behind us were wind-combed sand dunes and yellow arches of long reedy grass and blue sky the colour of Julian's eyes. Before us was the calm cold English sea, diamond-sparkling and rather dark even under the sun. There have been many moments of happiness. But that first breakfast beside the sea had a simplicity and an intensity which it would be hard to match. It was not even plagued by hope. It was just perfect communion and rest and the kind of joy which comes when the beloved and one's own soul become so mingled with the external world that there is a place made for once upon the planet where stones and tufts of grass and transparent water and the quiet sound of the wind can really be. It was perhaps the other side of the diptych from last night's moment of seeing Julian in the twilight lying motionless beside the road. But it was not really connected, as moments of pure joy are not really connected with anything. Any human life which has such moments has surely put a trembling finger upon nature's most transcendent aim. As I sat and watched her preparing our lunch (she had told me quite correctly that she could not cook) I marvelled at her sheer grasp of the situation, her absolute hereness, and I tried to put off all anxiety, as it seemed that she had done, and to keep at bay the demons of abstraction in protest against which she had hurled herself from the moving car. In the afternoon we drove across the flowery courtyard to collect our trophies and to look for more and we laid them out on the rough weedy lawn in front of the house. The stones were all elliptical and faintly humped and fairly uniform in size but varied immensely in colour. Some were purple spotted with dark blue, some tawny with creamy blotches, some a mottled lavender grey, many with swirling patterns round a central eye or strikingly decorated with stripes of purest white. As Julian said, it was very difficult to decide to leave any of them behind. It was like being in a huge art gallery and being told to help oneself. The most privileged stones she now took inside together with the sheep's skull and the bits of driftwood. The square piece of wood with the Chinese writing she propped upright like an icon upon the chimney piece of our little sitting-room, with the sheep's skull on one side of it and the gilt snuffbox on the other, and on the window ledges she arranged the stones among pieces of grey worked tree root, like small modern sculptures. I watched her total absorption in these tasks. We had tea. After tea we drove over to the big church and walked about inside its bony emptiness. A few chairs upon the huge stone floor be tokened a tiny congregation. There was no stained glass, only huge oerpendicular windows through which the cool sun shone onto the rather powdery stone of the floor, casting a little shadow into 'iescats many centuries old. The church in the flat land –f ruined ship or ark, or perhaps like the skeleton of al, under whose gaunt ribs one moved with awe in silence with soft feet, padding and prowling,! ri s! We drove back under a sky of light brown cloud streaked with long mouths full of green or orange light, and I felt exalted and hollow and clean and at the same time burning with desire and wondering, but with no will of my own, what was going to happen next. Julian prattled on and I gave her a short tutorial on English church architecture. Then she announced that she wanted to swim and we drove to the dunes and ran to the sea and it turned out that she had her bathing costume on underneath her dress and she rushed into the water and was soon splashing about and taunting me. (I cannot swim.) I think however that the sea was extremely cold for she came out of it fairly quickly. Meanwhile I sat upon the ridge of patterned stones above the water, holding the hem of her discarded dress and, until I noticed what I was doing and deliberately relaxed, crushing it up spasmodically in my hand. I did not think that Julian was deliberately postponing the moment of love-making or that she was doubting her gift of herself. Nor did I think that she wanted me to force her. I felt entirely given over to her instinct and to the tempo of her being. The moment I longed for and dreaded would come at its natural time, and its natural time would be tonight. The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular one and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries. There are, I am told, people who just want «a woman» or «a man.» I cannot conceive of this state of affairs and it does not concern me. I had rarely wanted another human being absolutely which was the same as to say that I had rarely wanted another human being at all. Holding hands and kissing, that can mean something in friendship, though it had not been my way. But that trembling dedication to the totality of another I had experienced-well, as I sat on the divan bed that evening and waited for Julian I felt, never before: though I knew intellectually that I had been in love with Christian. And there had been another case, of which I do not tell the story here. It was and was not like the first day of the honeymoon when the newly married pair, in tender deference to each other, feign habits which are not their own. I was not a young husband. I was not young and I was not a husband. I felt none of the youthful spouse's need to take control, his reflective anxiety about the future, his calmingly classified commitment. I feared the future and I was committed but I felt myself that day in a world so entirely weird, in a land of marvels, where all that was required of my courage was that I should walk on and on. I felt no need to take control. It was not that Julian controlled me. We were both of us controlled by something else. We had had eggs for lunch and sausages for supper. At supper we drank some of the wine. Julian had the healthy young person's indifference to alcohol. I thought I would be too excited to drink, but I downed two glasses with a sort of amazed appreciation. Julian had taken great pleasure in finding a pretty tablecloth and laying the table as elaborately as she could for both meals. Patara was, as advertised, well provided with all household necessities. Julian's dustpan and brush were otiose. (It also, as advertised, had its own electricity from a generator in the abandoned farmyard.) She had brought in flowers from the garden, straggling canterbury bells of a faded cottony blue, yellow loosestrife and wild lupins from beyond the fence, and one white peony streaked with crimson, as georgeous as a lotus. We sat down formally and laughed with delight. After supper she said suddenly, «There's nothing to worry about.» «Uh– hu.» «You understand me?» «Yes.» We washed up. She went into the bathroom and I went into the bedroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I inspected my dulled straight hair and my thin discreetly wrinkled face. I looked amazingly young. I got undressed. Then she came and we were together for the first time. When one has at last got what has been ardently longed for one wishes time to cease. Often indeed at such moments it is miraculously slowed. Looking into each other's eyes we caressed each other without any haste at all, with a sort of tender curious astonishment. I felt none of Marvell's frenzy now. I felt rather that I was privileged to be living out in a brief span some great aeon of the experience of love. Did the Greeks know between 600 and 400 b.c. what millennia of human experience they were enacting? Perhaps not. But I knew, as I worshipped my darling from head to foot that I was under orders, a sort of incarnate history of human love. «Don't be silly, Bradley.» «I'm too old.» «Darling, we'll sleep.» «I'm going outside for a minute.» I went out naked into the dark garden where the light from the bedroom showed a dim square of jagged grass and dandelions. A mist was coming in from the sea, drifting slowly past the house, curling and uncurling like cigarette smoke. I listened and could not hear the waves, but a train rattled and then cried out like an owl somewhere in the land behind me. When I came back she had put on a sort of– dark blue silk nightshirt, unbuttoned to the navel. I pushed it back onto her shoulders. Her breasts were the perfect fruit of youth, rounded and just pendant. Her hair had dried into a soft golden fuzz. Her eyes were huge. I put on a dressing-gown. I knelt in front of her without touching her. «My darling, don't worry.» «I'm not worrying,» I said. «I'm just no bloody good.» «It will be all right.» «Julian, I'm old.» «Nonsense. I can see how old you are!» «No, but-How bruised you are, your poor arm and your leg.» «I'm sorry-« «It's beautiful, as if you'd been fingered by a god, stained with purple.» «Come into bed, Bradley.» «Your knees smell of the northern sea. Has anyone ever kissed the soles of your feet before?» «No.» «Good. Sorry to be such a failure.» «You know there isn't any possible failure here, Bradley. I love you.» «I'm your slave.» «We will be married, won't we?» «It's impossible.» «You needn't scream.» «Well, why do you say these sort of abstract things that you don't mean?» «I'm just instinctively protecting myself.» «You haven't answered properly. You will marry me, won't you?» «You're quite mad,» I said, «but as I told you, I'm your slave. Whatever you go on wanting will be the law of my being.» «That's settled then. Oh dear, I am so tired.» We both were. After we had turned off the light she said, «And another thing, Bradley. Today has been the happiest day I have ever had in my whole life.» I was asleep two seconds later. We woke at dawn and embraced each other again, but with the same result. The next day the mist was still there, thicker, still moving in from the sea with a sort of relentless marching motion, passing by the house in a steady purposive manner like a shadowy army bound for some distant hosting. We watched it, sitting laced together in the window seat of the little sitting-room in the early morning. After breakfast we decided to walk inland and look for a shop. The air was chilly and Julian was wearing one of my jackets as an overcoat, since it had not occurred to her to purchase a coat during her shopping spree. We walked along a footpath beside a little stream full of watercress and then came to a signalman's cottage and crossed the railway and then went over a humpy bridge which was reflecting itself in a very quiet canal. The sun was piercing the mist now and rolling it up into great cloudy spheres of gold in the midst of which we walked as between huge balls which never quite touched us or touched each other. I felt very troubled about what had happened, or rather not happened, during the night, but I was also being made insanely happy by Julian's presence. To torment us I said, «We can't stay here forever, you know.» «Don't use that tone of voice. That's your 'despair.' Not again.» «No, just saying the obvious.» «I think we must stay here awhile to learn happiness.» «It's not my subject.» «You mean about our marriage?» «Yes. Then later on I'll do my exams, everything will be-«Suppose I were much older than-« «Oh stop worrying, Bradley. You want to sort of justify everything.» «I am by you eternally justified. Even if your love were to end now I am justified.» «Is that a quotation?» «Only from me.» «Well, it isn't going to end now. And do stop boring me about your age.» «For all that beauty that doth cover thee is but the seemly raiment of my heart, which in thy breast doth live as thine in me. How can I then be older than thou art?» «Is that a quotation?» «It's a damn rotten argument.» «Bradley, have you noticed anything about me?» «One or two little things, I suppose.» «Have you noticed that in the last two or three days I've grown up?» I had noticed that. «Yes.» «I was a child and perhaps you are still thinking of me as a child. But now I am a woman, a real one.» «Oh my darling girl, hold onto me, hold onto me, hold onto me, and if I ever try to leave you don't let me.» We walked across a meadow to a little village and found our shop and as we began to walk back the mist cleared away completely. And now the dunes and our courtyard were huge and glistening with sun, all the stones, dampened a little by the mist, shining in their different colours. We left our basket beside the fence and ran on down towards the sea. Julian suggested that we should collect some wood for a fire, but this proved difficult because every bit of wood we found was far too beautiful to burn. However we did find a few pieces which she consented to immolate, and I was carrying them back through the sandy dunes to our collecting point, leaving her still on the beach, when I saw in the distance something which absolutely froze my blood. A man in uniform on a bicycle was just riding along the bumpy track away from our bungalow. I called to Julian that I was going back to the house to get the car to carry the wood, and she should stay and go on collecting. I wanted to see if our bicyclist had left anything. I started off across the courtyard, but in a moment she was calling, «Wait for me!» and racing after me and clasping my hand and laughing. I averted my terrified face from her and she noticed nothing. When we got to the house she stopped in the garden to inspect some stones which she had placed there in a row. I moved without obvious haste to the porch and went in through the door. A telegram was lying on the mat and I picked it up with a quick swoop. I went on into the lavatory and locked the door. The telegram was addressed to me. I began to fumble at it with trembling fingers. I tore the whole thing, including the telegram itself, then stood there holding the two halves of the paper together. It read, Please telephone me immediately Francis. I stared at these deadly words. They could only mean something catastrophic. And the incomprehensibility of this visitation was terrifying. Francis did not know this address. Someone must have found out, how? Arnold presumably. We had made some slip, how, when, what, some fatal mistake. Even now Arnold was on his way here and Francis was trying to warn me. Julian called, «Yoo hoo!» I said, «Coming,» and emerged. I had to get to the telephone at once and without letting Julian know. «I think it's lunch time, don't you?» said Julian. «Let's fetch the wood after.» She was putting the blue-and-white check tablecloth onto the table again. She put the jug of flowers in the centre of the table, from which it was always ceremonially removed as we sat down to eat. Already there were these customs. «But we can go then on the way,» said Julian. «They may be shut this afternoon. And we may not want to go that way.» «I'll come with you, then.» «No, you stay here. Why don't you go and pick some of that watercress we saw? I'd love some for my lunch.» «Oh good, yes, I'll do that! I'll get a basket. Don't be long.» She pranced off. I went to the car, then failed to start it in my agitation. At last it started and I set off bumping horribly slowly along the track. By road the nearest village was where our big church was. There must be a telephone box there. The church was just outside the village on the side towards the sea, and I could recall nothing of the place from our night arrival. I passed the garage. I had thought of asking the garage man if I could use his telephone, but it might, not be private. I drove past the church and turning a corner saw the village street'and a public telephone box. I stopped outside it. Of course the box was occupied. Inside it a girl, gesticulating and smiling, turned her back on me. I waited. At last the door opened. I found I had no change. Then the operator would not answer. Finally I achieved a reverse charge call to my own number and heard Francis, who had picked up the receiver at once, babbling at the other end. «Francis, hello. How did you know where I was?» «Oh Bradley-Bradley-« «What's the matter? Has Arnold found out? What sort of a mess have you made of things?» «Oh Bradley-« «What is it, for God's sake? What's happened?» There was silence, then a high whining sound. At the other end of the line Francis was crying. I felt sick with fear. «What-?» «Oh Bradley-it's Priscilla-«What?» «She's dead.» I became suddenly and strangely conscious of the telephone box, the sunshine, somebody waiting outside, my own staring-eyed face in the mirror. «How-?» «She killed herself-she took sleeping tablets-she must have had them hidden-I left her-I shouldn't have done-we took her to hospital-but it was too late-oh Bradley, Bradley-«She is really-dead?» I said, and I felt that she simply couldn't be, it was impossible, she was in hospital where people were helped to get better, she simply could not have killed herself, it was another false alarm. «Really-dead? Are you sure-?» «Yes, yes-oh I am so-it was all my fault-she's dead, Bradley-she was alive in the ambulance-but then they told me she wasn't alive any more-I-oh Bradley, forgive me-Priscilla wasn't alive any more. «It's not your fault,» I said mechanically. «It's my fault.» «Oh I'm so wretched-it's all my fault-I want to kill myself-I can't live after this, how can I-« More whining and crying. «Francis. Stop that whimpering. Listen. How did you find out where I was?» «I found a letter in your desk from the agent-I thought you might be there-I had to find you-Oh Bradley, I've been in hell, in hell, not knowing where you were-thinking this had happened and you didn't even know-I sent the telegram late last night but they said it wouldn't arrive till this morning.» «I've just got it. Hold on. Just keep quiet and hold on.» I stood silent in the slanting ray of the sun, looking at the pitted concrete of the telephone box, and I wanted to cry out, She cannot be dead, has everything been done, everything? I wanted to take Priscilla in my arms and make her live again. I wanted desperately to console her and to make her happy. It would have been so easy. «Oh God, oh God, oh God-« Francis was saying softly, repeating it again and again. «Listen, Francis. Does anyone else know I'm here, does Arnold know?» «No. No one knows. Arnold and Christian came over last night. They rang up and I had to tell them. But I hadn't found the letter then and I told them I didn't know where you were.» «That's good. Don't tell anybody where I am.» «But, Brad, you're coming back at once, aren't you? You must come back.» «I'm coming back,» I said, «but not at once. It was only chance you found that letter. You must consider that this telephone conversation didn't happen.» «But, Brad, the funeral and-I haven't done anything-she's in the mortuary-«You haven't told her husband, you know, Roger Saxe?» «No, I-« «Well, let him know. You'll find his address and phone number in my address book in the-«Yes, yes-«He'll organize the funeral. If he won't, organize it yourself-Start organizing it anyway-Do whatever you'd do if you really didn't know where I was-I'll come when I can.» «Oh Brad, I can't do it-you must come, you must-they keep asking-she's your sister-«I hired you to look after her. Why did you leave her?» «Oh God, oh God, oh God-« «Do as I tell you. There's nothing we can do for-Priscilla-she isn't-there any more.» «Brad, please come, please-for my sake-Until I see you I'm in hell-I can't tell you what it's been like-I must see you, I must-«I can't come now,» I said. «I can't-come-now. Get on with the arrangements-get hold of Roger Saxe-I leave it all to you. I'll come when I can. Goodbye.» I put the receiver down quickly and came out of the box into the full sun. The man who had been waiting looked at me curiously and went in. I walked over to the car and stood beside it, touching the bonnet. The dry road had made it dusty. I made trails in the dust with my fingers. I looked along the quiet pretty village street, composed of eighteenth-century houses of different shapes and sizes. Then I got into the car and turned it and began to drive back very slowly past the church and on towards Patara. As I drove along the road at about fifteen miles an hour I realized what an ambiguous and suspended state I had been in since our arrival, so long ago, at Patara. I had of course been prepared to occupy myself simply with being happy, simply with the miracle of her continued presence. This was right surely. These days of paradise, rescued from the slow anxious mastication of time, should not be marred by pusillanimous fears of the future, or by that despair which Julian called my «abstraction.» On the other hand, as I now saw, some deep reflection had been at work, must have been at work, within that seemingly thoughtless joy-of-presence. I had, half hidden from myself, terrible purposes. My problem was simply how to keep Julian forever. And although I had said, to myself and to her, it is impossible, I knew at the same time that having once been with her in this way I could not now surrender her. The problem of keeping her had once, inconceivably long ago, seemed like the problem of persuading myself that it would, in spite of everything clearly to be said against this, be right to accept her generosity and take every possible advantage of it. But by now the problem had become, within the quiet self-concealed flow of my relentlessly purposive ratiocination, something much more blackly primitive, something which was scarcely problem or scarcely thought any more, but more like a sort of growth in my mind. I had of course already decided not to tell Julian about Priscilla's death. If I told her I would have to go back to London at once. And I felt that if we left our refuge now, if we parted now, with our flight unconsummated, the process which would ensure our liberation from doubt and our eternal betrothal might never take place at all. It was something which, for both of us, I had to do, it was my destined ordeal to keep silent in order to bring us both through this darkness. And it must be done now in unbroken continuity with what had happened. The love-making was part of this. I could not and would not chill Julian's young blood now with this tale of suicide. Of course I would have to «discover» it soon, we would have to go back soon, but not yet, not without my having reached that point of decision which seemed so close and which would enable me and make me worthy to keep her forever. There was nothing I could do for Priscilla. My duty henceforth was to Julian. The sheer pain of the concealment was itself part of the ordeal. I wanted to tell Julian at once. I needed her consolation and her precious forgiveness. But for both our sakes I had for the moment to do without this. «What ages you've been. I say, look at me and guess who!» I came in through the porch and blinked in the comparative obscurity of the sitting-room. At first I could not see Julian at all, could only hear her voice coming to me out of darkness. Then I saw her face, the rest obscure. Then I saw what she had done. She was dressed in black tights, black shoes, she wore a black velvet jerkin and a white shirt and a gold chain with a cross about her neck. She had posed herself in the doorway of the kitchen, holding the sheep's skull up in one hand. «I thought I'd surprise you! I bought them in Oxford Street with your money, the cross is a sort of hippie cross, I got it from one of those men, it cost fifty pence. All I needed was a skull, and then we found this lovely one. Don't you think it suits me? Alas, poor Yorick-What's the matter, darling?» «Nothing,» I said. «You're staring so. Don't I look princely? Bradley, you're frightening me. What is it?» «Nothing.» «I'll take them off now. We'll have lunch. I got the watercress.» «We won't have lunch,» I said. «We're going to bed.» «You mean now?» «Yes.» I strode to her and took her wrist and pulled her into the bedroom and tumbled her on the bed. The sheep's skull fell to the floor. I put one knee on the bed and began to drag at her white shirt. «Wait, wait, you're tearing it!» She began hastily undoing the buttons and fumbling with the jerkin. I pulled the whole bundle up and over her head, but the chain and cross impeded them. «Wait, Bradley, please, the chain's got round my throat, please.» I dug in the snowy whiteness of the shirt and the silky tangle of her hair for the chain and found it and snapped it. The clothes came away. Julian was desperately undoing her brassiere. I began hauling down the black tights dragging them over her thighs as she arched her body to help me. For a moment, still fully dressed, I surveyed her naked. Then I began to tear my clothes off. «Oh Bradley, please, don't be so rough, please, Bradley, you're hurting me.» Later on, she was crying. There had been no doubt about this love-making. I lay exhausted and let her cry. Then I turned her round and let her tears mingle with the sweat which had darkened the thick grey hairs of my chest and made them cling to my hot flesh in flattened curls. I held her in a kind of horrified trance of triumph and felt between my hands the adorable racked sobbing of her body. «Stop crying.» «I can't.» «I'm sorry I broke the chain. I'll mend it.» «It doesn't matter.» «I've frightened you.» «Yes.» «I love you. We'll be married.» «Yes.» «We will, won't we, Julian?» «Yes.» «Do you forgive me?» «Yes.» «Please stop crying.» «I can't.» Later on still we made love again. Then somehow it was the evening. «What made you like that, Bradley?» «The Prince of Denmark, I suppose.» We were exhausted and very hungry and I needed alcohol. We ate our lunch of liver sausage and bread and cheese and watercress without ceremony by lamplight with the windows open to the blue salty night. I drank up all the rest of the wine. What had made me like that? Had I suddenly felt that Julian had killed Priscilla? No. The fury, the anger, was directed to myself through Julian. Or directed against fate through Julian and through myself. Yet of course this fury was love too, the power itself of the god, mad and alarming. «It was love,» I said to her. «Yes, yes.» I had removed, at any rate, my next obstacle, though the world beyond it looked different again, not what I had expected. I had prefigured the proximity of some simplifying intellectual certainty. What there was now was my relationship to Julian, stretching away still into the obscurity of the future, urgent and puzzling and historically dynamic, changing, it seemed, even from second to second. The girl looked different, I looked different. Was that the body which I had worshipped every part of? It was as if the terrible abstraction had been carried by the rush of divine power right into the centre of our passion. I found myself, at moments, trembling, and saw Julian trembling. And the touching thing was that we were comforting each other, like people who had just escaped from a fire. «I will mend your chain, I will.» «There's no need to mend it, I can just knot it.» «And I'll mend the sheep's skull too.» «It's in too many pieces.» «I'll mend it.» «Let's draw the curtains. I feel bad spirits are looking in at us.» «We are surrounded by spirits. Curtains won't keep them out.» But I pulled the curtains and came round behind her chair, touching her neck very lightly with my finger. Her flesh was cool, almost cold, and she shuddered, arching her neck. She made no other response, but I felt that our bodies were rapt in a communion with each other which passed our understanding. Meanwhile it was a time for quiet communication by words, for speech of a new sort, arcane prophetic speech. «I know,» she said. «Swarms of them. I've never felt like this before. Listen to the sea. It sounds so close. Though there's no wind.» We listened. «Bradley, would you go and lock the front door?» I went and locked it and then sat down again facing her. «Are you cold?» «No, it's not-coldness.» «I know.» She was wearing the blue dress with the white willow-spray pattern which she had been wearing when she fled and a light woollen rug off our bed around her shoulders. She was staring at me with big eyes and every now and then a spasm passed across her face. There had been a lot of tears but none now. She looked so much, and beautifully, older, not the child I had known at all, but some wonderful holy woman, a prophetess, a temple prostitute. She had combed her hair down smoothly and pressed it back and her face had the nakedness, the solitude, the ambiguous staring eloquence of a mask. She had the dazed empty look of a great statute. «Oh you wonderful, wonderful thing.» «I feel so odd,» she said, «quite impersonal, I've never felt like this before at all.» «It is the power of love.» «Does love do that? I thought yesterday, the day before yesterday, that I loved you. It wasn't like this.» «It is the god, the black Eros. Don't be afraid.» «Oh I'm not-afraid-I just feel shattered and empty. I'm in a place where I've never been before.» «I'm there too.» «Yes. Yes.» «You even resemble me. I feel I'm looking into a mirror.» I had the strange feeling that I was speaking these words. I was speaking through her, through the pure echoing emptiness of her being, hollowed by love. «Then I looked into your eyes and thought: Bradley! Now you have no name.» «We are possessed.» «I feel we are joined forever. Sort of-dedicated.» «Yes.» «Listen to that train, how clear it sounds.» We listened to it passing, far off. «Is it like this in inspiration, I mean when you write?» «Yes,» I said. I knew it was, though I had never yet experienced it, never yet. But now, empowered, I would be able to create. Though still in the dark, I had come through my ordeal. «Is it the same thing really?» «Yes,» I said. «The desire of the human heart for love and for knowledge is infinite. But most people only realize this when they are in love, when the conception of this desire being actually fulfilled is present to them.» And art too-«Is this desire-purified-in the presence of-its possibility-in the divine presence.» «Art and love-«Must both envisage eternal arrangements.» «You will write now, won't you?» «I will write now.» «I feel complete,» she said, «as if why we had to come together had been somehow explained. And yet the explanation doesn't matter. We are together. Oh Bradley, I'm yawning!» «And my name's come back!» I said. «Come on. To bed and to sleep.» «I don't think I've ever felt so beautifully tired and heavy in my life.» I was deeply asleep. Some sound was crashing, crashing, crashing into the place where I was. I was a hidden Jew whom the Nazis had found at last. I heard them, like the soldiers in Uccello's picture, beating their halberds on the door and shouting. I stirred, found Julian still in my arms. It was dark. «What is it?» Her frightened voice woke me into full consciousness and absolute dread. Someone was banging and banging and banging on the front door. «Oh who can it be?» She was sitting up. I felt her warm darkness beside me, seemed to see light reflected from her eyes. «I don't know,» I said, sitting up too and putting my arms round her. We clung together. «Better keep quiet and not put the light on. Oh Bradley, I'm so frightened.» «I'll look after you.» I was so frightened myself I could hardly think or speak. «Sssh. Perhaps they'll go away.» The banging, which had stopped for a moment, was resumed louder than before. Some metal object was being pounded on the panels of the door. There was a sound of splintering wood. I turned on a lamp and got up. As I did so I actually saw my bare legs trembling. I pulled on my dressing-gown. «Stay here. I'll see. Lock yourself in.» «No, no, I'm coming too-«Stay here.» «Don't open the door, Bradley, don't-I put the light on in the little hall. The banging stopped at once. I stood in silence before the door, now knowing who was on the other side of it. I opened the door very quietly and Arnold came, or rather almost fell, in through it. I turned on the lights in the sitting-room and he followed me in there and put down on the table the large spanner with which he had been beating on the door. He sat down, not looking at me, breathing hard. I sat down too, covering my bare knees which were shuddering convulsively. «Is-Julian-here?» said Arnold, speaking thickly, as if in drunkenness, only he was certainly not drunk. «Yes.» «I've come to-take her away-«She won't want to go,» I said. «How did you find us?» «Francis told me. I asked him and asked him and asked him, and he told me. And about the telephone call.» «What telephone call?» «Don't pretend,» said Arnold, looking at me now. «He told me he telephoned you this morning about Priscilla.» «I see.» «So you couldn't-drag yourself away-from your love nest-even though your sister-had killed herself.» «I am going to London tomorrow. Julian is coming with me. We are going to be married.» «I want to see my daughter. The car is outside. I am going to take her back with me.» «No.» «Will you call her, please?» I got up. As I passed by the table I picked up the spanner. I went to the bedroom. The door was closed, not locked, and I went in and locked the door after me. Julian was dressed. She was wearing one of my jackets over her dress. It reached down to her thighs. She was very pale. «Your pa.» «Yes. What's that?» I threw the spanner down on the bed. «A lethal weapon. Not for use. Better come and see him.» «You will-« «I'll protect you. There's nothing whatever to worry about. We'll just explain the situation to him and see him off. Come. No, wait a minute. I need some trousers.» I rapidly put on a shirt and trousers. I saw with surprise that it was only just after midnight. I went back to the sitting-room and Julian followed. Arnold had got up. We faced him across the table, which was still strewn with the remnants of our supper which we had been too worn out to clear away. I put my arm round Julian's shoulder. Arnold had got a grip on himself and had clearly resolved not to shout. He said, «My dear girl-«Hello.» «I've come to take you home.» «This is home,» said Julian. I squeezed her, and then moved to sit down, leaving them facing each other. Arnold in a light macintosh, with his exhausted denuded emotional face, looked like some sort of fanatical gunman. His pale, pale eyes stared and his lips were moving as if he were soundlessly stammering. «Oh Julian-come away-You can't stay here with this man-You must have lost your mind-Look, here's a letter from your mother begging you to come home-I'll put it here, please read it-How can you be so pitiless and callous, staying here and-I suppose you've been-after poor Priscilla-«What about Priscilla?» said Julian. «So he hasn't told you?» said Arnold. He did not look at me. His teeth clicked together and there was a spasm in his face, perhaps the attempt to conceal a glare of triumph or pleasure. «What about Priscilla?» «Priscilla is dead,» I said. «She killed herself yesterday with an overdose.» «He knew this morning,» said Arnold. «Francis told him by telephone.» «That's correct,» I said. «When I told you I was going to the garage I went to telephone Francis and he told me.» «And you didn't tell me? You hid it-and then we-all the afternoon we were-«Ach-« said Arnold. Julian ignored him, staring at me and drawing my jacket closer about her, its collar turned up enclosing her tousled hair, her hands crossed at the neck. «Why?» I rose. «It's hard to explain,» I said, «but please try to understand. There was nothing more I could do for Priscilla. And for you-I had to stay-and bear the burden of being silent. It wasn't callousness.» «Lust might be its name,» said Arnold. Tears overflowed Julian's eyes and dropped down onto the lapels of my jacket. «Oh Bradley-how could you-how could we-oh poor, poor Priscilla-what a terrible thing-«He is irresponsible,» said Arnold. «Or else he's a bit mad. He's totally callous. His sister dies and he won't leave his lovemaking.» «Oh Bradley-poor Priscilla-« «Julian, I was going to tell you tomorrow. I was going to tell you everything tomorrow. I had to stay today. You saw how it was. We were both possessed, we were held here, we couldn't have gone, it had to happen as it did.» «He's mad.» «Tomorrow we'll go back to ordinary things, tomorrow we'll think about Priscilla and I'll tell you all about it and how much I am to blame-« «It was my fault,» said Julian, «it was because of me. Otherwise you would have been with her.» «One can't stop people from killing themselves if they're determined to. It may even be wrong to do so. Her life had become very sad.» «A convenient justification,» said Arnold. «So you think Priscilla is better off dead, do you?» «No. I'm just saying it-at least could be thought about like that-I don't want Julian to feel that-Oh Julian, I ought to have told you.» «Yes-It's-I feel a sort of doom on us-Oh Bradley, why didn't you say-?» «Sometimes one has to be silent even if it hurts awfully. I wanted your consolation, of course I did. But something else was more important.» «The sexual gratification of an elderly man,» said Arnold. «Think, Julian, think. He is thirty-eight years older than you are.» «No, he isn't,» said Julian. «He's forty-six, and that's-Arnold gave a sort of laugh and there was the same spasm in his face. «He told you that, did he? He's fifty-eight. Ask him.» «He can't be-«Look him up in Who's Who.» «I'm not in Who's Who.» «Bradley, how old are you?» «Fifty-eight.» «When you are thirty he will be nearly seventy,» said Arnold. «Come on. Surely this is enough. We've kept this quiet and there's no need for shouting. I see Bradley even removed the blunt instrument. Let's go, Julian. You can have your cry in the car. Then you'll start feeling what an escape you've had. Come. He won't try to stop you now. Look at him.» Julian was looking at me. I covered my face. «Bradley, take your hands away. Please. Are you really fifty– eight?» «Yes.» «Can't you see he is? Can't you see he is?» She murmured, «Yes-now-« «Does it matter?» I said. «You said you didn't mind what age I was.» «Oh don't be pathetic,» said Arnold. «Let's all keep our dignity. Come, Julian, please. Bradley, don't think I'm being unkind. I'm doing what any father would do.» «Quite,» I said, «quite.» Julian said, «I can't bear it, about Priscilla, I can't bear it, I can't bear it-«Steady,» said Arnold. «Steady. Come now.» I said, «Julian, don't go. You can't just go like that. I want to explain things to you properly and alone. Al. l right, if you now feel differently about me, that's that. I'll drive you anywhere you want and we'll say good-bye. But I beg you not to leave me now. I ask you in the name of-in the name of-«I forbid you to stay,» said Arnold. «I regard this relationship as a defilement. I'm sorry to use such strong language. I have been very upset and very angry and I am trying hard to be reasonable and to be kind. Do just see this thing objectively. I cannot and I will not go away without you.» «I want to explain to you,» I said. «I want to explain about Priscilla.» «How can you-?» she said. «Oh dear-oh dear-« She was crying now helplessly, with trembling wet lips. I felt agony, physical pain, total terror. «Don't leave me, my darling, I should die.» I went to her and reached out towards her, touching the sleeve of my jacket timidly. «Julian, I can't let you go now, I'd go mad please don't go-you must stay with me long enough to let me defend myself-«You are indefensible,» said Arnold. «Why argue? Can't you see it's over? You have had a caper with a silly girl and now it's over. The spell is broken. And give me that spanner. I don't like to see you holding it.» I gave him the spanner, but I did not move from the door. I said, «Julian, decide.» Julian, making an effort with her tears, pulled herself quickly but firmly away from her father's grip. «I'm not going with you. I'm going to stay here with Bradley.» «Oh thank God,» I said, «thank God.» «I want to hear what Bradley has to say. I'll come back to London tomorrow. But I'm not going to leave Bradley alone in the middle of the night.» «Thank God.» «You're coming with me,» said Arnold. «No, she isn't. She's said what she wants to do. Now please go away. Arnold, think. Do you want us to fight about this? Do you want to crack my head with that spanner? I promise I'll bring Julian to London tomorrow. Nobody shall force her, nobody can force her, she'll do what she wants to do, I'm not trying to kidnap her.» «Please go,» she said. «I'm sorry. You've been kind and-quiet, but I must just stay here tonight. I promise I'll come to you and listen to everything you want to say. But please be merciful and leave me now to talk to him. We've got to talk, do understand. You can't really do or undo anything here.» «She's right,» I said. Arnold did not look at me. He looked at his daughter with a very concentrated desolate stare. He gave a sort of gasping sigh. «Do you promise to come home tomorrow?» «I'll come and see you tomorrow.» «Do you promise to come home?» «Yes.» She suffered this embrace for a moment, then gently freed herself and went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. I followed and tried to put my arms round her, but she thrust me away with little gentle half-unconscious gestures. «Oh Julian, we haven't lost each other, have we? I am so deeply sorry I lied about my age, it was stupid. But it doesn't really matter, does it? I mean, we're beyond where it matters, it can't matter. And I couldn't go back to London this morning. I know it was a crime not to. But it was a crime that I committed because I love you.» «I feel so confused,» she said, «I feel so awfully confused-«Let me explain how-«Please. I can't hear, I just wouldn't be able to hear-Everything's been such a shock-like a-destruction-I'd rather-I think I'll just go to the lavatory and then I'll try to go to sleep.» She went away, returned, and took off her dress and put on her dark blue silk night-shirt over her underclothes. She seemed already like a sleepwalker. «Julian, thank you for staying. I worship you with gratitude for having stayed. Julian, you will be kind to me, won't you. You could break my neck with your little finger.» She begun to get heavily into the bed, moving stiffly, like an old person. «That's right,» I said. «We'll talk in the morning, won't we. We'll sleep now. If we can just go to sleep in each other's arms we'll be so much helped, won't we.» She looked up at me sombrely, the tears dry on her face. «May I stay, Julian?» «Bradley-darling-I'd rather be by myself just now. I feel as if I'd been invaded or-broken-I've got to become complete again and for that-it's better to be alone-just now.» «Yes, yes.» «Good night, my darling.» I kissed her on the brow and then quickly got up and turned the light out and closed the door. Then I went and locked and bolted the front door. Everything seemed possible tonight, even the return of Arnold with the spanner. I sat in an armchair in the sitting-room and wished I had brought some whisky with me. I resolved to stay awake for the rest of the night. I felt so hurt and frightened that it was very hard to think at all. I felt like simply doubling up over my pain and groaning. What did it look like to her, what would it do to her, my being so exposed and humiliated by her father? Arnold did not need to beat me to my knees with a blunt instrument. He had quite sufficiently defeated me. What did that failure about Priscilla mean? Oh if only I had been given the time to tell her all myself. Would Julian suddenly see me quite differently? Would I look to her like an old man crazed with lust? I must explain that it was not just because I wanted to go to bed that I concealed Priscilla's suicide, that I abandoned Priscilla, that I left her, alive and dead, to others. It was because these things were greater than themselves, because there was a sort of dedication, a sort of visitation, something else to which I had to be absolutely faithful. Would this seem nonsense to her now? Would, and this I am afraid was the most tormenting thought of all, the difference between forty-six and fifty-eight prove to be fatal? Later on I started thinking about Priscilla and the sheer sadness of it all and the pitifulness of her end. The shocking fact of her death seemed only now to be reaching my heart, and I felt futile ingenious love for her. I ought to have thought about how to console her. It would not have been impossible. I began to feel sleepy and got up and prowled around. I opened the bedroom door and listened to Julian's steady breathing and prayed. I went into the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror. The godly radiance had withdrawn from my face. My eyes were hooded by wrinkles, my brow was scored, little blood-red worms crawled in the dull sallow skin, I looked gaunt and old. But Julian was sleeping quietly and all my hope slept with her. I returned to my sitting-room armchair and put my head back and instantly fell asleep. I dreamed that Priscilla and I were young again, hiding under the counter in the shop. I awoke to a grey awful spotty early-morning light which made the unfamiliar room present in a ghastly way. The furniture was humped shapelessly about me like sleeping animals. Everything seemed to. be covered with soiled dust sheets. The slits in the clumsily drawn curtains revealed a dawn sky, pale and murky, without colour, the sun not yet risen. I experienced horror, then memory. I began to get up, felt painfully stiff, and smelt some vile odour, probably the odour of myself. I swung myself to the door, heaving a stiff leg, hanging onto the backs of chairs. I listened at the door of the bedroom. Silence. I very cautiously opened the door and put my head round it. It was hard to see in the room: the granular dawn light, with the texture of a bad newspaper picture, seemed to obscure rather than promote vision. The bed was in some sort of chaos. I thought I could discern Julian. Then I saw that there were only tossed sheets. The bed, the room, was empty. I called her name softly, ran into the other rooms. I even looked crazily into cupboards. She was not in the house. I went outside onto the porch and ran all round the house and then out onto the level of the stony courtyard, and down to the dunes, calling her name, shouting now, yelling as loudly as I could. I came back and hooted the horn of the car again and again, making a ghastly tocsin in the empty absolutely quiet twilit scene. But nothing answered. There was no doubt about it. She had gone. I went back into the house, turning on all the lights, a doom– stricken illumination in the gathering day and searched the place once again. On the dressing table was a pile of five-pound notes, the change from the money I had given her to buy clothes, which I had insisted she should keep in her handbag. The handbag, her new one, which she had bought in the «shopping spree,» had gone. All her new clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe. There was no letter, no communication for me, nothing. She had disappeared into the night with her handbag, in her blue willow-pattern dress, without a coat, without a word, creeping out of the house while I slept. I got to the road and doubled back towards the railway station. At the little toy station the platforms were empty. A railway man walking along the tracks told me that no train had stopped there during the night hours. I drove on to the main road and along it in the direction of London. The sun was shining coldly and brightly and a few cars were already about. But the grassy verges of the road were empty. I turned back and drove the other way, through the village, past the church. I even stopped and went into the church. Of course it was hopeless. I drove back and ran into the cottage with a desperate feigned hope that she might have returned while I was away. The little place with its open door and its ransacked air and all its lights on stood obscenely void in the bright sunshine. Then I drove the car to the dunes, running its bonnet into a dewy wall of wispy wiry grass and sand. I ran about among the dunes and down onto the beach, shouting, «Julian! Julian!» The climbing sun shone onto a quiet sea which without even a ripple drew its level line along the gently shelving wall of many-coloured elliptical stones. w,, ait, Brad, better let Roger go first.» Christian was holding my arm in a firm grip. With his face stiff and his false soldier's tread Roger marched self-consciously out of his pew and back towards the door of the chapel. The brocaded curtains had closed upon Priscilla's coffin, now bound for the furnace, and the unspeakable service was over. «What do we do now, go home?» «No, we should walk around a bit in the garden, I think it's customary, at least it is in the U. S. A. I'll just say a word to those women.» «Who are they?» «I don't know. Friends of Priscilla's. I think one of them's her char. Kind of them to come, wasn't it?» «Yes, very.» «You must talk to Roger.» «I have nothing to say to Roger.» We walked slowly down the aisle. Francis, fluttering by the doorway, stood aside to let the women pass, sent a ghastly smile in our direction, then followed them out. «Brad, who was that poetry by that the man read?» «Browning. Tennyson.» «It was lovely, wasn't it? So suitable. It made me cry.» Roger had arranged the cremation and had devised a terrible set of poetry readings. There had been no religious service. We emerged into the garden. A light rain was falling from a brightish brownish sky. The good weather seemed to be over. I shook Christian's hand off my arm and put up my umbrella. Roger, looking responsible and manly and bereaved in smart black, was thanking the poetry-reader and another crematorium official. The coffin-bearers had already gone. Christian was talking to the three women and they were affecting to admire the dripping azaleas. Francis, beside me, was trying to get in under my umbrella, and was repeating a story which he had already told me, with variations, several times. He was whimpering a little as he spoke. He had wept audibly during the service. «Oh Brad, forgive me.» «Stop whingeing like a bloody woman. Go away, will you? It wasn't your fault. It had to happen. It was better like that. You can't save someone who wants death. It was better so.» «You told me to look after her, and I-«Go away.» «Where can I go to, oh where can I go to at all? Brad, don't drive me away, I'll go mad, I've got to be with you, otherwise I'll go mad with misery, you've got to forgive me, you've got to help me, Brad, you've got to. I'm going back to the flat now and I'll tidy it up and I'll clear it all, I will, oh please let me stay with you now, I can be useful to you, you needn't give me any money-I don't want you in the flat. Just clear off, will you.» «I'll kill myself, I will.» «Get on with it, then.» «You do forgive me, don't you, Brad?» «Yes, of course. Just leave me alone. Please.» I jerked the umbrella away, turning my shoulder against Francis, and made for the gate. Flip-flopping rainy steps caught up with me. Christian. «Brad, you must talk to Roger. He says would you wait for him. He has some business to talk with you. Oh Brad, don't run off in that awful way. I'm coming with you, anyway, don't run off. Do come back and talk to Roger, please.» o ' r «He should be content with having killed my sister without bothering me with his business.» «Well, wait a moment, wait, wait, look, here he comes.» I waited under the arty lich-gate while Roger advanced under his umbrella. He even had a black macintosh. «Bradley. A sad business. I feel much to blame.» I looked at him, then turned away. «As Priscilla's heir-I paused. His umbrella touched mine and I took a pace back. I could see Christian's live eager face just beyond, watching, with the avid curiosity of the unhurt. She had no umbrella and was wearing a dark green raincoat and a smart black macintosh hat with a wide brim, like a small sombrero. Francis had gone back to the azalea ladies. I said nothing to Roger, just looked at him. «The will is very simple, there should be no problem. I'll let you see a copy of course. And perhaps you wouldn't mind returning to me any things of Priscilla's which you have, those jewels for instance, they could be sent by registered post. Or better still, perhaps I could call for them this afternoon at the flat, if you're going to be in? Mrs. Evandale has very kindly said I may call for the things Priscilla left at her house-I turned my back on him and walked away down the street. He called after me, «I'm very upset too, very-but what's the use Christian was walking beside me, having got in underneath the umbrella, taking my arm again. We passed a small yellow Austin which was parked at a meter. Inside at the wheel sat Marigold. She bowed to me as we passed, but I ignored her. «Who's that?» said Christian. «Roger's mistress.» A little later the Austin passed us by. Marigold was driving with one arm thrown round Roger's back. Roger's head lay on her shoulder. No doubt he really was very upset, very. «Brad, don't walk so fast. Don't you want me to help you? Don't you want me to find out where Julian is?» «No.» «But do you know where she is?» «No. Could you take your hand off my arm, please?» «All right-but you must let me help you, you can't just go off by yourself after all these horrors. Please come and stay at Notting Hill. I'll look after you, I'd love to. Will you come?» «No, thank you.» «No.» «But where is she, Brad, where can she be, where do you think she is? You don't think she's killed herself, do you?» «No, of course not,» I said. «She's with Arnold.» «Could be. I haven't seen Arnold since-«He came and took her away in the night against her will. He's got her cooped up somewhere, lecturing her. She'll soon give him the slip and come back to me, like she did before. That's all there is to it.» «We-ell-« Christian peered up at me, peeking from under her black sombrero. «How do you feel, Brad, generally in yourself? You know, you need looking after, you need-«Just leave me alone, will you. And keep Francis at Notting Hill. I don't want to see him. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll take this taxi. Goodbye.» It was perfectly simple of course, what had happened. I saw it all now. Arnold must have come back while I was asleep and either cajoled or forced Julian to get into the car with him. Perhaps he had asked her to sit in the car to talk to him. Then he had driven off quickly. She must have wanted to hurl herself from that car. But she had promised me not to. Besides, she wanted no doubt to convince her father. Now they were somewhere together, arguing, fighting. Perhaps he had locked her into a room somewhere. But she would soon escape and come back to me. I knew that she could not simply have left me like that without a word. I had been to Ealing of course. When I had driven back to London I went to my flat first in case there was a message, then on to Ealing. I parked the car opposite the house and went and rang the bell. No one came. I went and sat in the car and watched the house. Then after about an hour I started walking up and down on the opposite pavement. I could now see Rachel who was watching me from the upstairs landing window. After a bit more of this she opened the window and shouted, «She isn't here!» and closed the window again. I drove away and returned the car to the car-hire firm and went back to my flat. I decided now to remain on duty at the flat since that was where Julian would come to when she escaped. I had only emerged to attend Priscilla's funeral. The world is perhaps ultimately to be defined as a place of suffering. Man is a suffering animal, subject to ceaseless anxiety and pain and fear, subject to the rule of what the Buddhists call dukha, the endless unsatisfied anguish of a being who passionately desires only illusory goods. However within this vale of misery there are many regions. We all suffer, but we suffer so appallingly differently. An enlightened one may, who knows, pity the fretful millionaire with as pure an energy as he pities the starving peasant. Possibly the lot of the millionaire is more genuinely pitiable, since he is deluded by the solace of false and fleeting pleasures, while there may be a compulsory wisdom contained in the destitution of the peasant. Such judgments however are reserved for the enlightened, and ordinary mortals who feigned to utter them would rightly be called frivolous. We properly think it a worse fate to starve in poverty than to yawn in the midst of luxury. If the suffering of the world were, as it could be imagined to be, less extreme, if boredom and simple worldly disappointments were our gravest trials, and if, which is harder to conceive, we grieved little at any bereavement and went to death as to sleep, our whole morality might be immensely, perhaps totally, different. That this world is a place of horror must affect every serious artist and thinker, darkening his reflection, ruining his system, sometimes actually driving him mad. Any seriousness avoids this fact at its peril, and the great ones who have seemed to neglect it have only done so in appearance. (This is a tautology.) This is the planet where cancer reigns, where people regularly and automatically and almost without comment die like flies from floods and famine and disease, where people fight each other with hideous weapons to whose effects even nightmares cannot do justice, where men terrify and torture each other and spend whole lifetimes telling lies out of fear. This is where we live. This preludes, dear friend, my apologia, offered to you not for the first time, concerning this love story. The pains of love? Pooh! And yet: the ecstasy of love, the glory of love. Plato lay with a beautiful boy and thought it no shame to see here the beginning of the path to the sun. Happy love undoes the self and makes the world visible. Unhappy love is, or can be, a revelation of pure suffering. Too often of course our reverses are clouded and embittered by jealousy, remorse, hatred, the mean and servile «if onlys» of a peevish spirit. But there can be intuitions even here of a more sublime agony. And who can say that this is not in some way a fellow feeling with those quite otherwise afflicted? Zeus, they say, mocks lovers' oaths, and we may covertly smile even while we sympathize with the lovelorn, especially if they are young. We believe they will recover. Perhaps they will, whatever recovery may be. But there are times of suffering which remain in our lives like black absolutes and are not blotted out. Fortunate are those for whom these black stars shed some sort of light. I thought this afterwards, lying upon my bed, while Francis padded softly around the house inventing tasks for himself. I lay on my bed with the curtains half pulled and gazed at the chimney piece and at the buffalo lady and at A Friend's Gift. I also felt a violent rage against Arnold, which was a kind of jealousy, a vile emotion. At least he was her father and had an indestructible connection with her. I had nothing. Did I really believe, I was asked later, that on that awful night Arnold had really come back and taken Julian away? I cannot answer this clearly. My state of mind, which I shall in a moment attempt to describe, is not easily conveyed. I felt that if I could not build a pattern of at least plausible beliefs to make some just bearable sense out of what had happened I should die. Though I suppose what I was conceiving was not true death, but a torture to which death would be preferable. How could I live with the idea that she had simply left me in the night without a word? It could not be. I knew there was an explanation. Did I desire her during this time? The question is frivolous. In waiting time devours itself. Great hollows open up inside each minute, each second. Each moment is one at which the longed-for thing could happen. Yet at the same instant the terrified mind has flown ahead through centuries of unlightened despair. I tried to grasp and to arrest these giddy convulsions of the spirit, lying on my back on my bed and watching the window glow from dark to light and fade again from light to dark. Odd that a demonic suffering should lie supine, while a glorified suffering lies prone. I shall now advance the narrative by quoting several letters. I know that you will communicate with me as soon as you are able to. I will not leave the flat for a single moment. I am a corpse awaiting its Saviour. Accident and its own force induced the revelation of a passion which duty might have concealed. Once revealed, your miraculous self-giving increased it a thousandfold. I am yours forever. And I know that you love me and I absolutely trust your love. We cannot be defeated. You will come to me soon, my darling and my queen. Meanwhile, oh my dear, I am in so much pain. B. Dear Christian, have you now any idea where Julian is? Has Arnold taken her away somewhere? He must be keeping her hidden by force. If you can discover anything at all, however vague, let me know for God's sake B. Please reply at once by telephone or letter. I do not want to see you. Dear Arnold, I am not surprised that you are afraid to face me again. I do not know how you persuaded or forced Julian to go away with you, but do not believe that any arguments of yours can keep us apart. Julian and I have talked with full knowledge and understand each other. After your first departure all was well between us. Your «revelations» made and can make no difference. You are dealing with a kind of mutual attachment which, since you make no mention of it in your books, I assume that you know nothing of. Julian and I recognize the same god. We have found each other, we love each other, and there is no impediment to our marriage. Do not imagine that you can constitute one. You have seen that Julian was unwilling even to listen to you. Please now recognize that your daughter is grown-up and has made her choice. Accept, as indeed you finally must, her free decision in my favour. Naturally she cares what you think. Naturally too she will not finally obey you. I expect her return hourly. By the time you get this she may even be with me. Your objection to me as a suitor has of course deep motives. The matter of my age, though important, is certainly not crucial. You have even admitted to me that as a writer you are a disappointed man. And some part of you has always envied me because I have kept my gift pure and you have not. Continual mediocre creation can sour a whole life. The compromise with the second best, which is the lot of almost every man, is by the bad artist externalized into a persisting testimony. How much better the silence and guarded speech of a more strict endeavour. That I should also have gained your daughter's love must seem, I can well understand, like the last straw. I am sorry that our friendship, or whatever name one may give to the obsessive relationship which has bound us together for so many years, should end in this way. This is not the place to utter its elegy. If I feel vindictive towards you now, it is simply because you are an obstacle in the way of something infinitely more important than any «friendship.» Doubtless it is wise of you to keep out of my way. And if you visit me again, do not bring a blunt instrument with you. I do not care for threats and hints of violence. I have, I assure you, quite enough violence inside myself ready to be provoked. Julian and I will settle our future together privately and in our own way. We understand each other perfectly. Please accept this fact and cease your cruel and vain attempts to force your daughter to do what she does not want to do. B.P. Dearest Old Brad, Brad (this is the most important part of this letter), I want to say this to you. I wish in a way I hadn't met Arnold so pat on coining back. I like him and I feel sort of curious about him and he amuses me. (And I like to be amused.) But he's a red herring, I guess. I came back for you. (Did you know that?) And I'm still here for you. I go for you in a deep way, I never really gave you up, you know. And in a deep way you're even far more amusing than Arnold. So why not let's get together? If you need consoling, I'll console you. As I told you before, I'm a damned attractive clever rich widow. A lot of people are after me. So what about it, Brad? That little old till-death-do-us-part bit did mean something, you know. I'll ring again tomorrow. Caring for you, Brad old thing, with much love, The passage above about «waiting» may have suggested that weeks had now passed. In fact four days, which seemed like four years, had passed. Men who live by words and writing can, as I have already observed, attach an almost magical efficacy to a communication in that medium. The letter to Julian I wrote out three times, sending one copy to Baling, one to her Training College and one to her school. I could scarcely believe that any would reach her, but it was a relief to pain to write the letters and to drop them in the box. On the day after the funeral Hartbourne rang up to explain in detail why he had been unable to attend. I forgot to say that he had earlier dictated to Francis by telephone a carefully worded message of condolence about Priscilla's death! My doctor also rang to say that my usual brand of sleeping pill was now on the forbidden list. On the third evening Rachel turned up. Of course whenever the doorbell rang I rushed out sick with hope and terror. Twice it was Christian (whom I did not let in), once Rigby asking for Francis. (Francis went out and they talked for some time in the court.) The fourth time it was Rachel. I saw her through the glass and opened the door. Seeing Rachel there in the flat was like a bad trip in a time machine. There was a memory-odour like a smell of decay. I felt distressed, physically repelled, frightened. Her wide round pale face was terribly familiar, but with the ambiguous veiled familiarity of a dream. It was as if my mother had visited me in her cerements. She came in tossing her head with a surge of excitement, a perhaps feigned air of confidence, almost of elation. She strode by me, not looking at me, her hands deep in the pockets of her tweed coat which had been cobwebbed-over by the light rain. She was purposeful and handsome and I flinched out of her way. She took off her woollen hat and her coat and shook them lightly and hung them up in the hall. We sat down in the sitting-room in the cold brown early-evening light. Rachel smoothed her skirt down neatly about her knees. «Bradley, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about Priscilla.» «Where's Julian?» «Don't you know?» «I know she'll come back. I don't know where she is.» «Poor old Bradley,» said Rachel. She gave a nervous ejaculatory laugh like a cough. «Where is she?» «She's on holiday. I don't know where she is just now, I really don't. Here's the letter you sent her. I haven't read it.» I took the letter. The return of a passionate letter unread desolates far regions of the imagination. If somewhere she had read my words the world was changed. Now all blew back upon me like dead leaves. «Oh Rachel, where is she?» «Honestly I don't know, I'm not in touch. Bradley, do stop it. Think of your dignity or something. You look terrible, you look a hundred. You might shave at least. This thing is all in your mind.» «You didn't think so when Julian said she loved me.» «Rachel,» I said, «you are talking about someone else. You are not talking about Julian, about my Julian.» «Your Julian is a fiction. This is what I'm telling you, dear Bradley. I'm not saying she didn't care for you, but a young girl's emotions are chaos.» «And you are talking to another person. You obviously have no conception of what you're dealing with. I live in a different world, I am in love, and-«Do you think there is some magic in those words which you utter so solemnly?» «Yes, I do. All this is happening on a different plane-«This is a form of insanity, Bradley. Only the insane think that there are planes which are quite separate from other planes. It's all a muddle, Bradley, it's all a muddle. God knows, I'm saying this to you in kindness.» «Love is a sort of certainty, perhaps the only sort.» «It's just a state of mind-«It's a true state of mind.» «Oh Bradley, do stop. You've had a terrible time lately, no wonder your head's in a whirl. I am so awfully sorry about Priscilla.» «Priscilla. Yes.» «You mustn't blame yourself too much.» «No-« «Where did Francis find her? Where was she lying when he found her?» «I don't know.» «You mean you didn't ask?» «No. I suppose she was in bed.» «I would have wanted to know-all the details-I think-just to picture it-Did you see her dead?» «No.» «Didn't you have to identify her?» «No.» «Someone must have done.» «Roger did.» «Odd about identifying dead people, recognizing them. I hope I don't ever have to-«He's keeping her prisoner somewhere, I know he is.» «Really, Bradley, you seem to be living in some sort of literary dream. Everything is so much duller and more mixed-up than you imagine, even the awful things are.» «He locked her in her room before.» «Of course he didn't. The girl was romancing.» «Do you really not know where she is?» «Really.» «Why hasn't she written to me?» «She's no good at writing letters, never has been. Anyway give her time. She will write. Perhaps it's just a rather difficult letter to compose!» «Rachel, you don't know what's inside me, you don't know what it's like to be me, to be where I am. You see it's a matter of absolute certainty, of knowing your own mind and somebody else's with absolute certainty. It's something completely steady and old, as if it's always been, ever since the world began. That's why what you say is simply nonsense, it doesn't make any sense to me, it's a sort of gabbling. She understands, she spoke this language with me at once. We love each other.» «Bradley dear, do try to come back to reality-«This is reality. Oh God, supposing she were dead-«Oh don't be silly. You make me sick.» «Rachel, she isn't dead, is she?» In a way, the truth was that I did not. I could attach no precise events to the idea of Rachel. Here memory was simply a cold cloud to be shuddered at. She was a familiar person and a familiar presence, but the notion that I had ever done anything in relation to her was utterly shadowy, so much had the advent of Julian drained the rest of my life of significant content, separating history from prehistory. I wanted to explain this. «Yes, I do-of course-remember-but it's as if-since Julian-everything has been-sort of amputated and-the past has quite gone-it didn't mean anything anyway-it was just-I'm sorry this sounds rather unkind, but being in love one simply has to tell the truth all the time-I know you must feel that there was a sort of-betrayal-you must resent it-«Resent it? Good heavens no. I just feel sorry for you. And it's all a pity and a sort of waste and rather pathetic really. Well, a sad thing, a disappointment perhaps, a disillusionment. It seems odd to me now that I ever felt that you were a sort of strong wise man or that you could help me. I was touched when you talked about eternal friendship. It seemed to mean something at the time. Do you remember talking about eternal friendship?» «No.» «Can you really not remember? You are peculiar. I wonder if you're having some sort of breakdown? Can you really not recall our liaison at all?» «There was no liaison.» «Oh come, come. I agree it was brief and stupid and I suppose rather improbable. No wonder Julian could hardly believe it.» «You told Julian?» «Yes. Hadn't you thought that I might? Oh but of course you'd forgotten all about it!» «You told-?» «And I'm afraid I told Arnold almost straightaway. You're not the only one who has states of mind. With my husband at any rate, I'm not very discreet. It's a risk one runs with married people.» «When did you tell her-when-?» «Oh, not till later. When Arnold came down to your love-nest he brought Julian a letter from me. And in that letter I told her.» «What did you tell her?» «And when she did get back, I must say-«What did you tell her?» «Simply what happened. That you appeared to be in love with me, that you started kissing me passionately, that we went to bed together and it wasn't a great success but you swore eternal devotion and so on, and then Arnold came and you ran out without your socks on and bought Julian that pair of boots-«Oh God-you told her-all that-«Well, why not? It did happen, didn't it? You don't deny it, do you? It was relevant, wasn't it? It was part of you. It would have been wrong to conceal it.» «Oh God-« «No wonder you tried to forget it all. But, Bradley, one is responsible for one's actions, and one's past does belong to one. You can't blot it out by entering a dream world and decreeing that life began yesterday. You can't make yourself into a new person overnight, however much in love you feel you are. That sort of love is an illusion, all that 'certainty' you were talking about is an illusion. It's like being under the influence of drugs.» «No, no, no.» «Anyway it's over now and no harm done. You needn't worry too much or feel remorse or anything, she had already decided it was a mistake. She has some sense. Really, you mustn't take a young girl's feelings so literally. You haven't lost a pearl of great price, my dear Bradley, and you'll appreciate this sooner than you imagine. You'll soon be heaving a sigh of relief too. Julian is a very ordinary little girl. She's immature, not all there yet, like an embryo. Of course there was a lot of emotion swilling around, but it didn't really signify too much who was at the receiving end of it. It's a very volatile time of life. There's nothing steady or permanent or deep in any of these great crazes. She's been 'madly in love' any number of times in the last two or three years. My dear man, did you really imagine you would be the sticking point of a young girl's passion? How could that be? A girl like Julian will have to love a hundred men before she finds the right one. I was just the same. Oh do wake up, Bradley. Look at yourself in a mirror. Come back to earth.» «And she came straight to you?» «I suppose so. She arrived pretty soon after Arnold-' «And what did she say?» «Do stop looking like King Lear «What did she say?» «What could she say? What could anyone say? She was crying like a maniac anyway and-« «Oh Christ, oh Christ.» «She got me to repeat it all and give all the details and swear it was true and then she believed me.» «But what did she say? Can't you remember anything, she actually said?» «She said, 'If only it had been longer ago.' I suppose she had a point there.» «She didn't understand. It wasn't at all like what you said. When you said that, it wasn't true. When you used those words they conveyed something which simply wasn't true. You implied-«I'm sorry! I don't know what words you would expect me to have used! Those ones seemed to me to be pretty appropriate and accurate.» «She can't have understood «I think she did understand, Bradley. I'm sorry, but I think she did.» «You said she was crying.» «Oh madly, like a child who was going to be hanged. But she always did enjoy crying.» «How could you have told her, how could you-But she must have known it wasn't like that, it wasn't like that-«Well, I think it was like that!» «How could you have told her?» «It was Arnold's idea. But I didn't honestly feel at that point that I had to be discreet any more. I thought a little shock would bring Julian to her senses-« «Why have you come here today? Did Arnold send you?» «No, not particularly. I felt you ought to be told about Julian.» «But you haven't told me!» «About it being-well, you must have assumed it anyway-all over.» 'We.'» «Don't shout. And I came, you won't care of course, but out of a sort of kindness. I wondered if I could help you.» I stared at her with amazement, she was handsome, pale and bland, elated and precise, eloquent, vibrating with dignity and purpose. «Rachel, I don't think we understand each other at all.» «Well, don't worry. You'll feel relieved later on. Just try not to feel resentment against me or against Julian. You'll only make yourself miserable if you do.» I got up and went to the bureau and got out Arnold's letter. I got it out simply with the intention of making sure I had not dreamt it. Perhaps my memory really was disturbed. There was a sort of blank over Arnold's letter and yet I seemed to recall-I said, holding the letter in my hand, «Julian will come back to me. I know this. I know it just as well as I know-«What's that you have there?» «A letter from Arnold.» I began to look at the letter. There was a ring at the front doorbell. I threw the letter onto the table and ran out to the door in heart-agony. A postman stood outside with a very large cardboard box, which he"Wha? sathatrPшn the flшшr' «Parcel for Mr. Bradley Pearson.» «What is it?» «I don't know, sir. Is that you, then? I'll just push it in, shall I? It weighs a ton.» The postman nudged the big square box in through the doorway with his knee and made off. As I returned to the sitting-room I saw Francis sitting on the stairs. He had obviously been listening. He looked like an apparition, one of those ghosts that writers describe which look just like ordinary people and yet not. He smiled obsequiously. I ignored him. Rachel was standing by the table reading the letter. I sat down. I felt very tired. «You ought not to have shown me this letter.» «You don't know what you've done. I shall never never never forgive you.» «But, Rachel, you said you and Arnold told each other everything, so surely you-«God, you are vile, vindictive-«It's not my fault! It can't make any difference, can it?» «Truly, I didn't mean you to read it, it was just a crazy accident, I didn't mean to upset you. Anyway Arnold has probably changed his mind by now-« «Of course you meant me to read it. It's your vile revenge. I hate you for this forever. You can't understand anything here, you can't understand anything at all-And to think of your having that letter and gloating over it and imagining-«I didn't gloat-«Yes, you did. Why else did you keep it except as a weapon against me, except to show it to me and hurt me because you think I deserted you-«Honestly, Rachel, I haven't given you a single thought!» «Aaaaah-« Rachel's scream flamed out in the darkening room, more visible suddenly than the pale round of her face. I saw the disturbed violent agony of her eyes and her mouth. She ran at me, or perhaps she was simply running to the door. I stumbled aside and crashed my elbow against the wall. She passed me like a stampeding animal and I heard the after-sigh of her scream. The front door flew open and through the open street door I saw lamplight reflected in the wet paving stones of the court. I went out slowly and closed both doors and began turning lights on. The apparition of Francis was still sitting on the stairs. He smiled an isolated irrelevant smile, as if he were a stray minor spirit belonging to some other epoch and some other story, a sort of lost and masterless Puck, smiling a meditative cringing unprompted affectionate smile. «You were listening.» «Brad, I'm sorry-«It doesn't matter. What the hell's this?» I kicked the cardboard box. «I'll open it for you, Brad.» I watched while Francis tore the cardboard and dragged the top off the box. It was full of books. The Precious Labyrinth. The Gauntlets of Power. Tobias and the Fallen Angel. A Banner with a Strange Device. Essays of a Seeker. A Skull on Fire. A Clash of Symbols. Hollows in the Sky. The Glass Sword. Mysticism and Literature. The Maid and the Magus. The Pierced Chalice. Inside a Snow Crystal. Arnold's books. Dozens of them. I looked at the huge compact mountain of smugly printed words. I picked up one of the books and opened it at random. Rage possessed me. With a snarl of disgust I tried to tear the book down the middle, ripping the spine in two, but it was too tough, so I tore the pages out in handfuls. The next book was a paperback and I was able to tug it into two and then into four. I seized another one. Francis watched, his face brightening with sympathy and pleasure. Then he came down the stairs to help me, murmuring «Hi!» to himself, «Hi!» as he dragged the books to pieces and then pursued and tore again the white cascading sheaves of print. We worked resolutely through the contents of the box, standing sturdily with our feet apart like men working in a river, as the pile of dismembered debris rose about us. It took us just under ten minutes to destroy the complete works of Arnold Baffin. «How are you feeling now, Brad?» «All right.» I had fainted or something. I had eaten practically nothing since my return to London. Now I was sitting on the black woolly rug on the sitting-room floor with my back against one of the armchairs which was propped against the wall. The gas fire was flaring and popping. One lamp was alight. Francis had made some sandwiches and I had eaten some. I had drunk some whisky. In fact I felt very strange but not faint any more, no more little eruptions in my field of vision, no more heavy black canopies descending and bearing me to the ground. I was now on the ground and feeling very long and leaden. I could see Francis clearly in the flickering light, so clearly that I frowned over it, he was suddenly too close, too present. I looked down and noticed that he was holding one of my hands. I frowned over that too and removed it. Francis who, as I recalled, had by now drunk a good deal of whisky, was kneeling beside me eagerly and attentively, not in an attitude of repose, as if I were something which he was making. His lips were pushed out coaxingly, the big red underlip curling over and the mucus of the mouth showing in a scarlet line. His little close eyes were sparkling with inward glee. His dispossessed hand joined his other hand, rubbing rhythmically up and down his plump thighs on the shiny shabby material of his blue suit. He made a little sympathetic chortling noise every now and then. I felt, for the first time since my return to London, that I was in a real place and in the presence of a real person. At the same time I felt as people feel who after much ailing become suddenly far more ill and helpless, relaxed into the awfulness of the situation. I still had wit enough to see how pleased Francis was at my collapse. I did not resent his pleasure. «Have some more whiskers, Brad, it'll do you good. Don't you worry, then. I'll find her for you.» «That's right,» I said. «I'll stay here, I must. She'll come here, won't she. This is where she'll come to. She could come at any time. I'll leave the front door open again tonight, like I did last night. She can come in then like a little bird coming to its place. She can come in.» «Tomorrow I'll search for her. I'll go to her college. I'll go to Arnold's publisher. I'll pick up a clue somewhere. I'll go first thing tomorrow morning. Don't you grieve, Brad. She'll be back, you'll see. This time next week you'll be happy.» «I know she'll come back,» I said. «It's odd when one knows. Her love for me was an absolute word spoken. It belongs to the eternal. I cannot doubt that word, it is the logos of all being, and if she loves me not chaos is come again. Love is knowledge, you see, like the philosophers always told us. I know her by intuition as if she were here inside my head.» «I know, Brad. When you really love somebody it's as if the whole world's saying it.» «Everything guarantees it. Like people used to think everything guaranteed God. Have you ever loved like that, Francis?» «Yes, Brad. There was a boy once. But he committed suicide. It was years ago.» «Oh my God, Priscilla. I keep forgetting about her.» «Steve. Don't, Brad.» «Priscilla died because nobody loved her. She dried up and collapsed inside and died like a poisoned rat. God doesn't love the world, He can't do, look at it. But I hardly seem to care at all. I loved my mother.» «Me too, Brad.» «A very silly woman, but I loved her. I felt a sense of duty to Priscilla, but that's not enough, is it?» «I guess not, Brad.» «Because I love Julian I ought to be able to love everybody. I will be able to one day. Oh Christ, if I could only have some happiness. When she comes back I'll love everybody, I'll love Priscilla.» «Priscilla's dead, Brad.» «Love ought to triumph over time, but can it? Not time's fool, he said, and he knew about love if anybody did, he was bloody crucified if anybody was. Of course one's got to suffer. Perhaps in the end the suffering is all, it's all contained in the suffering. The final atoms of it all are simply pain. How old are you, Francis?» «Forty-eight, Brad.» «You're ten years luckier and wiser than I am.» «I've never had any luck, Brad. I don't even hope for any any more. But I still love people. Not like Steve of course, but I love them. I love you, Brad.» «She will come back. The world hasn't changed for nothing. It can't change back now. The old world has gone forever. Oh how my life has gone from me, it has ebbed away. I cannot believe I am fifty-eight.» «Have you loved a lot of women, Brad?» «I never really loved anybody before Julian came.» «But there were women, after Chris I mean?» «Don't say his name, Brad, please. I wish I hadn't told you it.» «Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise because you don't need the future. I am happy now, I think. I'll write it all down, only not tonight.» «I envy you being a writer chap, Brad. You can say what you feel. I'm just eaten by feelings and I can't even shout.» «Yes, I can shout, I can fill the galaxy with bellowings of pain. But you know, Francis, I've never ever really explained anything. I feel now as if at last I could explain. It's as if all the matrix of my life which has been as hard and tight and small as a nut has become all luminous and spread out and huge. Everything's magnified. At last I can see it all and visit it all. Francis, I can be a great writer now, I know I can.» «Sure you can, Brad. I always knew you had it in you. You were always like you were a great man.» «I've never given myself away before, Francis, never gambled myself absolutely. I've been a timid frightened man all my life. Now I know what it's like to be beyond fear. I'm where greatness lives now. I've handed myself over. And yet it's like being under discipline too. I haven't any choice. I love, I worship and I shall be rewarded.» «Sure, Brad. She will come.» «Yes. He will come.» «Brad, I think you'd better go to bed.» «Yes, yes, to bed, to bed. Tomorrow we'll make a plan.» «You stay here and I search.» «Yes. Happiness must exist. It can't all be made of pain. But what is happiness made of? All right, all right, Francis, I'll go to bed. What's the worst image of suffering you can think of?» «A concentration camp.» «Yes. I'll meditate on that. Good night. Perhaps she'll come back in the morning.» «Perhaps you'll be happy this time tomorrow.» The morning brought the crisis of my life. But it was not anything that I could have conceived of in my wildest imaginings. «Wake up, wake up, Brad, here's a letter.» I sat up in bed. Francis was thrusting at me a letter in an unfamiliar hand. It had a French stamp. I knew that it could only be from her. «Go, go, and close the door.» He went. I opened the letter, shuddering, almost weeping with hope and fear. It read as follows. Please please don't feel badly about me, don't be too sad or cross with me either. Forgive my ignorance of myself, forgive my worthless empty selfish youth. I can't quite now believe that you absolutely loved me, how could you have done. A mature woman would attract you much more deeply. I think that men like «youthful bloom» and so on but perhaps they don't really distinguish young girls much from one another and quite rightly, one is so unformed. I hope you don't think I behaved like a «loose woman.» I felt great feelings and at every moment I did what seemed unavoidable. I don't regret anything unless I hurt you and you won't forgive me. I must stop this letter, I keep saying the same things over and over again, you must be quite fed up. I am so very sorry that I went without saying good-bye. (I got a lift back to London quite easily, by the way. I'd never hitch-hiked before.) I felt I had to go, though I didn't think anything else just then, and since then it has seemed more sensible to keep on with that course rather than make more muddle and misery for everybody, though I terribly terribly want to see you. We will meet again, won't we, later on perhaps, after some time, and try to be friends, when I am a little more mature. That will be something new and valuable too. I feel now, especially as we go farther and farther south, that life is full of all kinds of possibilities. I do hope I shall manage with the Italian! Oh forgive me, Bradley, forgive me. I expect by now you just feel that you have had an odd dream. I hope it has been a good dream. Mine was. Oh I do feel so unhappy though, I feel all topsy-turvy. I don't know when I've cried so much. I have been so stupid and thoughtless. I love you with real love. It was a revelation. I don't unsay anything. But it wasn't part of any life we could have lived. Julian «Brad, may I come in?» I was dressing. «Is it good news, Brad?» «She's in Italy,» I said. «I'm going after her. She's in Venice.» The letter had, of course, been written for Arnold's eye. The bit about his «providing the stamp» made that plain. The girl was being supervised, virtually a prisoner. Of course she couldn't, as she said, «explain clearly.» She had continued writing a vague repetitive effusion, in the hope of being able to put in a real message at the last moment, hence the references to «not being able to end.» That had proved impossible. Doubtless Arnold arrived, read the letter and told her to complete it. Then he took it away and posted it. He would see to it that she had no money to buy stamps herself. However she had managed to tell me that she was writing under duress. She had also managed to convey her destination. «Snow and ice,» to which she had drawn attention, patently meant Venice. The Italian for «snow» is «neve,» and together with the reference to «Italian words,» the anagram was obvious. And in «topsy-turvy» language a little place in the mountains clearly meant a large place by the sea. And Arnold had mentioned Venice, though then to mislead me. Names are not uttered at random. «Are you going to Venice today?» said Francis, as I was getting into my trousers. «Yes. At once.» «Do you know where she is?» «No. The letter's in code. She's staying with a fan of Arnold's, I don't know who.» I thought for a moment. «All right. You might be useful.» «Oh good! Shall I go now and get the tickets? You should stay here, you know. She might telephone or you might get a message or something.» «All right.» That made sense. I sat down on the bed. I was feeling rather faint again. «And-I say, Brad, shall I do some detective work? I could go to Arnold's publisher and find out who his Venice admirer is.» «How?» I said. The flashing lights were coming back and I saw Francis's face, all plumped out with eagerness, surrounded by a cascade of stars, like a divine visitation in a picture. «I'll pretend to be writing a book about how different nationalities see Arnold's work. I'll ask if they can put me in touch with his Italian admirers. They might have the address, it's worth trying.» «It's a brainwave,» I said. «It's an idea of genius.» «And Brad, I'll need some money. I'll book us to Venice then.» «There may be no direct flight at once, if there isn't book us through Milan.» «And I'll get some maps and guide-books, we'll need a map of the city, won't we?» «Yes, yes.» «Make me a cheque then, Brad. Here's your cheque book. Make it out to 'bearer' and I can take it to your bank. Make it a big one, Brad, so I can book us the best way. And Brad, would you mind, I haven't any clothes, it'll be hot there, won't it, do you mind if I buy some summer clothes, I haven't a thing?» «Yes. Buy anything. Buy the guides and a map, that's a good idea. And go to the publisher. Yes, yes.» «Can I buy you some things, you know, a sun hat or a dictionary or anything?» «No. Go quickly. Here.» I gave him a large cheque. «Oh thanks, Brad! You stay here and rest. I'll be back. Oh how exciting! Brad, do you know, I've never been to Italy, ever at all!» When he had gone I went into the sitting-room. I had a blessed purpose now, an objective, a place in the world where she might be. I ought to be packing a suitcase. I felt incapable of doing so. Francis would pack my case. I felt faint with longing for Julian. I still held her letter in my hand. In the bureau bookcase opposite to me were the love poems of Dante. I pulled them out. And as I touched the book I felt, so strange is the chemistry of love, that my embroiled heart was furthering its history. I felt love now in the form of a sort of divine anger. What I was suffering for that girl. Of course I would love my pain. But there is a rich anger which is bred so, and which is of the purest stuff that love is ever made of. Dante, who spoke his name so often and suffered so at his hands, knew that. S'io avessi le belle trecce press, che fatte son per me scudiscio e ferza, pigliandole anzi terza, con esse passerei vespero e squille: e non sarei pietoso ne cortese, ami farei com' orso quando scherza; e se Amor me ne sferza, io mi vendicherei di piu di mille. Ancor ne It occhi, and' escon le faville che m'infiammono il cor, ch'io porto anciso, guarderei presso e fiso, per vendicar lo fuggir che mi face: e poi le renderei con Amor pace. I was lying face downwards on the floor, holding Julian's letter and the Rime together against my heart, when the telephone rang. I staggered up amid black constellations and got to the instrument. I heard Julian's voice. No, it was not her voice, it was Rachel's. Only Rachel's voice, in emotion, horribly recalling that of her daughter. «Oh-« I said, «Oh-«, holding the telephone away from me. I saw Julian in that second in a jagged explosion of vision, in her black tights and her black jerkin and her white shirt, holding the sheep's skull up before my face. «What is it, Rachel, I can't hear?» «Bradley, could you come round at once.» «I'm just leaving London.» «Please could you come round at once, it's very, very urgent.» «Can't you come here!» «No. Bradley, you must come, I beg you. Please come, it's something about Julian.» «Rachel, she is in Venice, isn't she? Do you know her address? I've had a letter from her. She's staying with a fan of Arnold's. Do you know? Have you got an address book of Arnold's you could look it up in?» «Bradley, come round here at once. It's very-important. I'll tell you everything-you want to know-only come-«What is it, Rachel? Rachel, is Julian all right? You haven't heard anything awful? Oh God, have they had a car accident?» «I'll tell you everything. Just come here. Come, come, at once, in a taxi, every moment matters.» «Rachel, is Julian all right?» «Yes, yes, yes, just come-I paid the taxi with trembling hands, dropping the money all over the place, and ran up the path and began banging on the knocker. Rachel opened the door at once. I hardly recognized her. Or rather, I recognized her as a portentous revenant, the weeping distraught figure of the beginning of the story, her face grossly swollen with tears and, it seemed, again bruised, or perhaps just dirtied as a child's may be after much rubbing away of tears. «Rachel, there's been a car accident, they've telephoned, she's hurt? What's happened, what's happened?» Rachel sat down on a chair in the hall and began to moan, uttering great terrible ringing moans, swaying herself to and fro. «Rachel-something terrible has happened to Julian-what is it? Oh God, what has happened?» Rachel got up after a moment or two, still moaning and supporting herself against the wall. Her hair was a thick tangled frizzy mass, like the hair of the insane, torn at and dragged across her brow and eyes. Her mouth, all wet, was open and shuddering. Her eyes, oozing great tears, were slits between the swollen lids. Laboriously, like an animal, she pushed past me, still leaning with one hand on the wall, and made her way towards the door of the drawing-room. She pushed it open and made a gesture forward. I followed her into the doorway. Arnold lay sideways, his knees up, one hand palm upward extended towards my foot. His eyes were half closed, showing a glint of white eyeball, his teeth were gritted together and the lips slightly withdrawn from them as if in a snarl. There was blood caking his pale tossed hair and dried in marbled patterns on his cheek and neck. I could see that the skull was appallingly dinted at the side, the darkened hair descending into the depression, as if Arnold's head had been made of wax and someone had pressed strong fingers hard in. A vein at the temple still oozed a little. A large poker was lying on the carpet where the blood was. The blood was red and sticky, the consistency of custard, skinning a little on the surface.1 touched, then held, Arnold's tweedy shoulder, warm with the sun, trying to stir him a little, but he seemed as weighty as lead, bolted to the floor, or else my trembling limbs had no strength. I stepped back with blood upon my shoes, and trod upon Arnold's glasses which were lying just beyond the circle of blood. «Oh God-you did that-with the poker-She whispered, «He's dead-he must be-is he?» «I don't know-Oh God-«He's dead, he's dead,» she whispered. «Have you sent for the-Oh Christ-what happened?» «I hit him-we were shouting-I didn't mean-then he started screaming with pain-I couldn't bear to hear him screaming like that-I hit him again to stop him screaming-«We must hide the poker-you must say it was an accident-Oh what shall we do-He can't be dead, he can't be-«I kept calling him and calling him and calling him, but he wouldn't move.» Rachel was still whispering, standing in the doorway of the room. She had stopped crying and her staring eyes seemed larger and wider, she kept rubbing her hands rhythmically upon her dress. «He may be all right,» I said. «Don't worry. Did you ring the doctor?» «He's dead.» «Did you ring the doctor?» «No.» «I'll get the doctor-And the police-I suppose-And an ambulance-Tell them he fell and hit his head or something-Oh Christ-I'll take the poker away anyhow-Better say he hit you and-« I picked up the poker.1 stared for a moment at Arnold's face. The sightless eye-glint was terrible. I felt sick urgent panic, the desire to hand this nightmare over as quickly as possible to somebody else. As I moved towards the door I saw something on the floor near Rachel's feet. A screwed-up ball of paper. Arnold's writing. I picked it up and brushed past her where she still stood leaning in the doorway. I went out into the kitchen and put the poker down on the table. The ball of paper was Arnold's letter to me about Christian. I took out a box of matches and began to burn the letter in the sink. It kept falling into a basin of water since my hands would not obey me. When at last I had reduced it to ashes I turned the tap on it. Then I started washing the poker. Some of Arnold's hair was stuck to it with blood. I dried it and put it away in a cupboard. «Rachel, I'm going to telephone. Shall I telephone just a doctor or the police as well? What are you going to say?» «It's no good-« She turned back into the hall, and we stood there together in the dim light beside the stained-glass panel of the front door. «You mean it's no good not telling the truth?» «No good-« «But you must tell them it was an accident-that he hit you first-that it was self-defence-Rachel, shall I telephone the police? Oh do please try to think-' She murmured something. «What?» «Dobbin. Dobbin. My darling-« I realized, as she now turned away, that this must be her pet name for Arnold which in all the years I had known them I had never heard her utter. Arnold's secret name. She turned away from me and went into the dining-room, where I heard her fall, onto the floor or perhaps into a chair. I heard her begin to lament once more, a short cry, then a shuddering «fa-fa-fa-« then the cry again. I went back into the drawing-room to see if Arnold had moved. I almost feared to see him opening accusing eyes, wriggling with the pain which Rachel had found so unendurable. He had not moved. His position seemed now as inevitable as that of a statue. Already he did not look like himself any more, his grimacing expression that of a complete stranger, expressing, like a Chinaman, some quite strange and unrecognizable emotion. His sharp nose was red with blood, and there was a little puddle of blood in his ear. The white eye glinted, the pained mouth snarled. As I turned from him I noticed his small feet, which I had always found so characteristic and so annoying, clad in immaculately polished brown shoes, lying neatly together as if comforting each other. And as I moved to the door I now saw little smears of blood everywhere, on the chairs, on the wall, on the tiles of the fireplace, where in some unimaginable scene in some quite other region of the world he had reeled about; and saw upon the carpet the shadowy marks of bloody footprints, his, Rachel's, mine. I got to the telephone in the hall. Rachel's cries were softening into little almost dreamy wails. I dialled 999 and got a hospital and said there had been a bad accident and asked for an ambulance. «A man has hurt his head. His skull cracked I think. Yes.» Then after a moment's hesitation I rang the police and said the same things. My own fear of the police made any other course unthinkable. Rachel was right, concealment was not possible, better to reveal all at once, anything was better than the horror of being «found out.» It was no good saying Arnold had fallen downstairs. Rachel was in no condition to be taught a cover story. She would blurt out the truth in any case. I went into the dining-room and looked at her. She was sitting on the floor with her mouth wide open and her two hands squeezing either side of her face. I saw her mouth as a round O, she looked subhuman and damned, her face without features, her flesh drained and blue, like those who live underground. «Rachel. Don't worry. They're coming.» «Dobbin. Dobbin. Dobbin.» I went out and sat on the stairs and found that I was saying, «Oh-oh-oh-oh-« and could not stop. The police arrived first. I let them in and pointed to the back room. Through the open front door I saw the sunny street and cars coming, an ambulance. I heard somebody say, «He's dead.» «What happened?» «Ask Mrs. Baffin. In there.» «Who are you?» Men in dark clothes were coming in, then men in white clothes. The dining-room door was shut. I was explaining who Arnold was, who I was, how I came to be there. «Cracked his skull like an egg shell.» Rachel screamed behind a closed door. «Come with us, please.» I sat in a police car between two men. I started explaining again. I said, «He hit her, I think. It was an accident. It wasn't murder.» At the police station I told them all over again who I was. I sat with several men in a small room. «Why did you do it?» «Do what?» «Why did you kill Arnold Baffin?» «I didn't kill Arnold Baffin.» «What did you hit him with?» «I didn't hit him.» «Why did you do it? Why did you do it? Why did you kill him?» «I didn't kill him.» «Why did you do it?» |
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