The Sea, the Sea

TWO

NOW IN LONDON I am writing the story of Rosina’s arrival and of what happened just after it. After Rosina’s car raced away I stood quite still in a condition of total shock, the kind of shock which annihilates space and time and renders one almost contemplative. I was paralysed. I cannot think why I did not fall to the ground, the revelation was, in its initial impact, so terrible. I grasped it first, I do not quite know why, in this way, not as something unwelcome or horrible, but purely as the impossible come true, like what we cannot imagine about the end of the world. And indeed it was the end of the world. I remember then very slowly reaching out my hand so that I could support myself against the rock. By the time I was able to reach down to the ground and pick up the torch I somehow knew that Hartley must have gone, must have continued down the road and by now be far ahead, or that perhaps she was taking a short cut across the fields. I was in any case not sure which way she had been going when the car lights caught her. My mind was so shocked I could not make the simplest decision about what to do. I started off hurrying towards the village and then stopped. It did not occur to me to call out her name, that would have been impossible. I hardly indeed remembered her name, it would have emerged, as in a dream, as an incoherent bellow. I hurried back and stupidly shone the torch about, inspecting the place where I had seen her. The bright light revealed the marks of the car tyres, the trampled grass, the yellow pock-marked rock, the mist moving. At last slowly, and like a man returning from a funeral, I walked back across the causeway to the house. The lamps were still burning in the kitchen, the fire was alight in the little red room. It was all quiet and as it had been when, in a previous age of the world, I had been talking with Rosina.

I was trembling. Eating, drinking, were equally impossible. I went into the little red room and sat down by the fire. Is she a widow? This agonizing question had somehow, it seemed, formulated itself at once, in the very first awful moment of recognition. Awful, not because she had so almost completely changed, but because I knew that everything was in ruins about me, every old assumption was gone, every terrible possibility was open. That there could soon be dreadful pain did not then occur to me at all, I think. It was not envisaging pain that made me feel so shattered, it was just experience of the change itself. I felt a present anguish such as an insect must feel as it emerges from a chrysalis, or the crushed foetus as it batters its way into the world. It was not, either, a removal to the past. Memory seemed now almost irrelevant. It was a new condition of being.

I did eventually go to bed where I slept instantly like a dead thing. I had by then composed one or two more simple thoughts or questions. Is she a widow? was so pervasive as to be scarcely a question, it was the atmosphere I breathed. I wondered had she seen me in the village and if so had she recognized me? I had seen her distantly several times. Oh my God how terrible. I had seen her and not known her. But surely I, who was scarcely changed, must have been recognizable at once. Why then had she not spoken to me? Perhaps she had chanced not to see me, perhaps she was short-sighted, perhaps-what was she doing in the village anyway? Did she live here, or was she on holiday? Perhaps she would disappear tomorrow, never be seen again. Where was she going to along the misty sea road at night? The idea came to me that she might be working at the Raven Hotel. But she was over sixty, Hartley was over sixty. I had never put it to myself that Hartley too was growing old. Then I wondered if she had seen me in the dark, and if so had she realized that I had recognized her? Then I thought: she saw me with Rosina. What might she have overheard, what had we been saying? I could not remember. Then I decided she could not possibly have seen me as I was behind the headlights. And tomorrow: tomorrow I would search and search for her and find her and then…

I woke up next morning to an instant sense of a changed world. The awful feeling was less, and there was a new extremely anxious excitement and a sheer plucking physical longing to be in her presence, the fierce indubitable magnetism of love. There was also a weird hovering joy, as if I had been changed in the night into a beneficent being powerful for good. I could produce, I could bestow, good. I was the king seeking the beggar maid. I had power to transform, to raise up, to heal, to bring undreamt-of happiness and joy. My God, I had come here, to this very place, and against all the chances I had found her at last! I had come here because of Clement, and I had found Hartley. But: is she a widow?

I was in the village before nine o’clock. It was a sunny morning promising heat. I walked quickly round the little streets. Then I went down to the harbour and back by a footpath which led up the hill to the bungalows. As soon as the two shops were open I visited both of them. I walked round again. Then I went into the church, which was empty, and sat for a while with my head in my hands. I found that I was able to pray and was indeed praying. This was odd since I did not believe in God and had not prayed since I was a child. I prayed: let me find Hartley and let her be alone and let her love me and be made happy by me forever. My being able to make Hartley happy had become the most desirable thing in the world, something the possession of which would crown my life and make it perfect. I went on praying and then in a strange way it was as if I had fallen asleep. I certainly had the experience of waking up and feeling panic in case I had lost Hartley, as my only chance to find her had come and gone while I was sleeping. Her holiday was over, she had gone home, she had run away, she had suddenly died. I jumped up and looked at my watch. It was only twenty past nine. I ran out of the church. And then at last I saw her.

I saw: a stout elderly woman in a shapeless brown tent-like dress, holding a shopping bag and working her way, very slowly as if in a dream, along the street, past the Black Lion in the direction of the shop. This figure, which I had so vaguely, idly, noticed before was now utterly changed in my eyes. The whole world was its background. And between me and it there hovered, perhaps for the last time, the vision of a slim long-legged girl with gleaming thighs. I ran.

I reached her, running up from behind, when she had just passed the pub, and as I came level with her I touched one of the wide brown sleeves of her dress. She stopped, I stopped. I could say nothing.

The familiar face turned to me, the pale round fey face with the secret-violet eyes, and with a sort of almost reflective movement of relief I thought: I can make sense of it, yes, it is the same person, and I can see it as the same person, after all.

Hartley’s face, which now seemed absolutely white, expressed such an appalling terror that I would have felt terrified myself had I not been engaged in some urgent almost mechanical search for ‘similarities’, for ways to blend the present with the far past. Yes, that was Hartley’s face, though it was haggard and curiously soft and dry. A sheaf of very fine sensitive wrinkles at the corner of the eye led upwards to the brow and down towards the chin, framing the face like a wreath. There were magisterial horizontal lines upon the forehead and long darkish hairs above the mouth. She was wearing a moist red lipstick and face powder which had caked here and there. Her hair was grey and neat and conventionally waved. But the shape of her face and head and the look of her eyes conveyed something untouched straight from the past into the present.

She started to murmur something. ‘Oh-it’s-’ It was of course at once clear that she knew who I was. She mumbled ‘Oh-’, staring at me in a kind of blank terrified supplication.

I managed at last to say ‘Come-come-’ and pulled again at her sleeve and began to move back towards the church. I did not attempt to walk with her. She followed me a few feet behind and I kept looking back at her and stumbling. God knows who witnessed this encounter. Perhaps a dozen people, perhaps no one. I could not see anything except Hartley’s terrified eyes.

I went into the church and held the big heavy door open for her. The place was still empty. The big windows of plain glass gave a bright cool light. I sat down in a nearby pew and she sat down close to me in the next row in front, so that she had to turn round to see me. In the damp musty atmosphere I could smell her face powder and feel the warmth of her body. She had dropped her bag and gripped the back of the pew with her two hands. The hands were red and wrinkled and in a moment she hid them again. She murmured ‘I’m sorry-’ and closed her eyes. I laid my brow on the polished wooden surface where her hands had been and said, ‘Oh, Hartley-Hartley-Hartley-’

It occurred to me later that I never for a second doubted that her emotion was as strong as my own; although this could well have been otherwise. When I lifted my head she was dabbing her face with a handkerchief and breathing open-mouthed in a shuddering way, not looking at me.

‘Hartley, I-oh, Hartley-oh, my dear-where do you live, do you live in the village?’ I do not know why I asked this question first, perhaps just because it was easy to answer. Speech of any sort seemed the problem, as if we spoke different languages and must teach each other to talk.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not on holiday, you live here?’

‘Yes.’

‘So do I. I’m retired now. Where do you live?’

‘Up on the hill.’

‘In one of those bungalows?’

‘Yes.’ She added, ‘There’s a lovely view.’ She too was babbling. Her handkerchief had smudged some lipstick onto her cheek.

‘You got married, didn’t you-are you still-I mean is your husband still-have you got a-husband-now-?’

‘Yes, yes, oh yes. My husband is alive-he’s with me, yes-we live-we live here.’

I was silent while a whole world of possibilities gradually folded themselves up, like some trick of stagecraft, quietly collapsing, folding, merging, becoming very small and vanishing. So that-was that-at any rate. And I would have to think, to invent, in a new way, to exist in this situation which was now, I realized, whatever was the case with Hartley, the continuing and only situation for me, the final state of affairs, the world centre.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

She shook her head slightly, jerked it with emotion, at this last awkward tribute. A short litany, a vast brief Amen.

I went on, ‘I’m not married, I never married.’

She moved her head again, staring down at the reddened handkerchief. And we were silent for a moment together, as if surveying breathlessly a huge event which had just taken place. Then as in a crisis people will hurry on to talk at random, I said quickly, ‘Did you see me before at all, did you see me in the street, perhaps you didn’t recognize me?’

‘Oh yes. I saw you nearly three weeks ago. I recognized you. You haven’t changed.’

I could not bring myself to say ‘You haven’t changed’, though later I cursed myself for not saying it. How much do women mind when they lose their looks, how much do they know? But I was instantly caught up and appalled by another thought. ‘But then why didn’t you speak to me?’

‘I wasn’t sure if you would want to know me. I thought perhaps you felt it would be better if we didn’t recognize each other-’

‘You mean you thought I’d recognized you and-and cut you-just ignored you? How could you think that?’

‘I didn’t know-I didn’t know how you felt after all those years-whether you blamed me or had forgotten me. You are so grand and famous-you mightn’t like me or want to know me-’

‘Oh, Hartley, how can you, if you only knew-I’ve spent the years looking for you, I’ve never stopped loving you-’ I touched the shoulder of the brown dress, taking the collar of it for a second between my fingers.

‘Don’t, don’t,’ she murmured, moving slightly away.

‘Did you know that I saw you last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘I only recognized you then. I’ve been in a frenzy ever since. I wouldn’t have pretended not to know you, what a terrible thing! How could you think I’d blame you or forget you! You are my love, you are still that, you are still what you were for me-’

She gave an odd little grimace like a smile and shook her head, still not looking at me.

I could not say more, I had to blunder on into the terrible things. ‘You’re still with the same-husband-the one you married-then? ’

‘Yes, the same one.’

‘I never knew his name, I-I don’t know your married name.’

‘I’m Mrs Fitch. His name is Fitch, Benjamin Fitch.’

I bowed over this as over a stomach blow. There was now a name attached to this horror of her being married, this horror that I would have to live with somehow. An awful wave of self-pity overcame me and I wrinkled up my face with pain. ‘Hartley-what does he do, I mean, what does he, does he work at?’

‘He’s disabled a bit, he went about in a car as a representative, did various jobs, like a salesman, he’s retired now. We came here, we were in the Midlands, we came here, to the bungalow to live-’

‘Oh isn’t it strange, Hartley, we both came here to meet each other again, and we didn’t know. It seems like fate, doesn’t it?’ But oh the pain of it.

Hartley said nothing. She looked at her watch.

‘And-children-have you?’

‘We have a son. He’s eighteen. He’s away just now.’

She spoke more calmly and with a sort of deliberation, as if getting some necessary task over.

‘What’s his name?’

She said after a moment. ‘Titus.’ She repeated, ‘Titus-is his name.’ Then she said, looking at her watch again, ‘I must go, I must go to the shop, I shall be late.’

‘Hartley, please, stay here please, I must go on talking to you, tell me-oh-tell me, what did your husband do, sell, before he retired?’ I must just keep on asking questions.

‘Fire extinguishers. He was in fire extinguishers.’ She added, ‘He was always so tired in the evenings.’

This sudden vista of her evenings, years and years of her evenings, led me on blunderingly to ask, ‘And are you happily married, Hartley, have you had a good life?’

‘Oh yes, yes, I’ve been very happy, a very happy marriage, yes.’

It was impossible to tell if she was sincere. Probably she was. A good life. What an odd phrase I had used. And had both our lives passed, and had they somehow been completed, since we last met? Hartley’s voice, retaining the thin droning slightly monotonous, to me so immensely attractive, sound which it had always had, with the touch of the local accent, made me realize how much my own voice had changed.

I was suddenly breathless and put both of my hands onto the back of the pew. My little finger touched her dress and she moved slightly again. Something black seemed to threaten me from a little way above my head. She had been happy all these years, yes, why not, and yet I could not believe it, could not bear it. She had existed all these years and our lives were gone. I breathed quickly through my mouth and the darkness went away. I thought, I must be ingenious, and the word ‘ingenious’ seemed like a help to me. I must be ingenious and see to it that I do not suffer too much. I must look for some happiness, simply for some comfort, here, ingeniously.

I said, not knowing quite what I meant to say nor why, ‘That woman in the car last night, she’s a well-known actress, Rosina Vamburgh, she was just visiting me-’

‘We hardly ever go to the theatre-’

‘She was just visiting me on business-’

‘I saw you on telly.’

‘Did you, what was it-?’

‘I forget. I must go now,’ she repeated and got up and retrieved her shopping bag.

I felt panic. ‘Hartley, don’t go, you look-oh so tired-’ This was not the best thing to say, but it expressed a sort of anguish of protectiveness and tenderness and pity and a kind of humility which I felt about her then as I saw her standing there before me in the guise of an old woman. She did look tired, tiredness was somehow the expression of her face, not sadness or suffering so much as a vast weariness as of one who has worked too hard for years and years.

‘I’m very well, apart from endless tummy trouble. You look well, Charles, and so young. I must go.’ She shuffled past me in the direction of the door.

I leapt up and followed her. ‘But what shall we do?’

Hartley looked at me as if she was not sure what this question meant.

I repeated, ‘What shall we do? I mean-oh, Hartley, Hartley, when shall I see you, can we meet after you’ve done your shopping, can we meet in the pub, or would you come down to my house-’ Vistas of madness opened beyond these words.

Hartley opened the church door, pulling at it laboriously, and over her shoulder I could see Dummy’s grave and the criss-cross iron gate and the village street with people in it and the far horizon line of the sea. I said wildly, ‘Of course I’ll call on you, I’d so much like to meet your husband, you must both come down to my funny house and have a drink, you know I live-’

‘Yes, I know, thank you, but not just now, my husband is not too well-’

‘But I’ll see you, I must-what’s your address, which bungalow? ’

‘It’s called Nibletts, it’s the last one, but don’t-I’ll let you know-’

‘Please, Hartley, see me after you’ve done your shopping, let me help you-’

‘No, no, I’m late. Don’t come, you stay here. I’ll see you later, I mean on another day, please don’t do anything, I’ll let you know. I must run now, I’ll let you know. Please stay here. Goodbye.’

I had wanted to touch her, but somehow only with my fingertips as if she were a ghost which might dissolve, I had wanted to hold her dress between my fingers. Now I felt a more precise need to take her head and draw it quietly against me and hear her heart beating. Old desires were suddenly present. I saw her blue, blue eyes and the curious mad look of her round face which was so unchanged. And her lips which had been so white and so cold.

I started to say, ‘I’m not on the telephone-’

She went quickly out of the church and closed the door carefully. Obeying her I stayed. I went back to the same place and sat down and once more put my hands where her hands had been.

What was I going to do, how was I going to manage myself for the rest of my life now that I had found Hartley again? Was I going to go round to ‘Nibletts’ once a week and have tea with Mr and Mrs Benjamin Fitch? Or entertain them to beans and sausages and claret at Shruff End? Take them up to London for a show? Take an interest in Titus’s future? Look after them all? Leave Titus my money? My mind leapt wildly about, huge vistas opened, immense areas of the future were suddenly live and quick with possibilities, all of them terrible. Ingenious, I thought, I must be ingenious. I looked at my watch. It was ten twenty. So much awful thought in so little time. I sat for a while until I reckoned that Hartley would have done her shopping and gone back up the hill, and then emerged from the church and sat on Dummy’s grave, leaning against the gravestone which bore the image of the ‘foul anchor’. From there I could see, over some trees, the roofs of the bungalows, including the last one, the residence of Mr and Mrs Fitch. A disabled travelling salesman. What was the matter with him? A cripple? I knew that I would have to go and take a look at Mr Benjamin Fitch, very soon.

Why had Hartley been so reluctant, why had she not said ‘Yes, come and see us’ or ‘We’d love to come and see you’? Sanity demanded such gestures, whatever she felt. Politeness demanded them and by politeness one might, for the present at any rate, be saved. Or was the crippled husband really ill, suffering, peevish and bedridden perhaps? But oh what did Hartley feel, what made her seem so strained and anxious? Her reluctance to invite me to her house was perhaps understandable, indeed very understandable. ‘You are so grand and famous.’ She was perhaps a little bit ashamed of her house and her husband. That need not mean she did not love him. But did she love him? I had to know. Was she really happy? I had to know. And that old horrible sweetish thought now kept coming to me: she must regret it so much, that wrong choice. She must have spent her life regretting that she had not married me. ‘I saw you on telly.’ What was that like? What mean gnawing pains of remorse did she feel when she saw me as a ‘celebrity’? How could she know that I was still just me and that I still missed her? And must she not think of me as surrounded by attractive women, as probably possessing a permanent mistress? She had seen Rosina, she might have seen Lizzie. Perhaps, it suddenly occurred to me, and this was so painful and so sweetish too, she is reluctant to see me precisely because of her regrets: remorse, jealousy, the waywardness of fruitless daydream. She does not want to know any more about what might have been. Oh God, those years, our whole life, that we might have spent together. She does not want… to start to love me… all over again…

I already had enough instinct for dangerous thoughts to thrust this one aside. I was indeed, as I leaned back against the sun-warmed lichen-spotted surface of Dummy’s laconic monument, sketching a kind of programme for survival. Roughly, the programme was like this. There was no doubt that I must now somehow contrive to devote the rest of my life to Hartley. (I quickly banished the idea that Mr Fitch was seriously ill and would shortly die.) This could only be done if I accepted their marriage and could successfully attempt to construct a friendship with her, and presumably with him. Hartley and I were not just revisiting each other as tourists, that was out of the question. At the least, the husband must tolerate me. Perhaps I could be allowable as a figure of fun? I did not quite care for this, but so quick is imagination that I already heard Hartley saying to her spouse, ‘Why there’s dear old Charles again, he can’t keep away!’-while she felt-something a little different. Perhaps the husband might even be flattered that a ‘show business personality’ admired his wife. However these were unsavoury or at any rate premature speculations.

What I must now concentrate upon was the possibility of love in the form of a pure deep affectionate mutual respect, a steady constant binding awareness. Of course it would be, it would have to be, love between us, but love purged of possessive madness, purged of self, disciplined by time and the irrevocability of our fates. We must find out how at last to be absolutes to each other, never to lose each other, without putting any foot wrong or spilling one drop of some brimming vessel of truth and history which was held up austerely between us. I will respect her, I will respect her, I kept saying to myself. I felt a tenderness for her that was deep and pure, a miracle of love preserved. How clear it flowed, that fountain from the far past. Yes, we must quietly collect our past, collect it up with tacit understanding, without any intensity or drama, blaming and exonerating ourselves with a difference. And how wonderfully possible it seemed, this silent process of redemption, as I rethought our passionate, yet gentle and divinely inept little conversation in the church. Was that what it was like, meeting the great love of one’s life again after all those years? And had we not been for each other the shy direct innocent creatures we had once been? The nature of our converse had never been spoilt, and in that blundering conversation its note could unmistakably be heard again. Perhaps I would indeed, through her and through our old childish love, now irremediably chaste, be enabled to become what I had hoped to become when I came away to the sea, pure in heart.

The question: is she a widow? already seemed to belong to the remote past, to some vanished and entirely obsolete method of thinking. The question which was now, in spite of the programme for rational survival with which I was consoling myself, in danger of becoming agonizingly urgent, was: is she happy? To decide this it was necessary to inspect Mr Fitch. And moreover it was quite impossible to wait. As I walked slowly back to Shruff End I thought: I have got to see Mr Fitch today. I will call on them about six o’clock this evening.

It was not until I was actually ringing the bell at Nibletts that it occurred to me to wonder whether in all those years Hartley had ever actually told him anything about me at all!

Nibletts is a small square bungalow built of a red brick which has been partly and mercifully whitewashed. Without compromise it squats upon the hill, with a group of wind-tormented trees opposite to it, beside it the slope to the village, behind it the slope to the sea, beyond and above it, woodland. It has a firm solid air. Other houses might be built upon sand or even be made of sand, but not so Nibletts. The bricks are unchipped, sharp and uneroded at the corners. There is no moss upon the roof and one feels that none will ever grow there. An equally undimmed red-tiled path leads to the front door between beds of spiky little rose bushes in their first flowering. A fuzzy mass of white clematis, growing up one of the wooden posts of the porch, soothes with some grace the blue front door which is covered with very thick, very shiny paint. The door has an oval panel of opaque frosted glass which seems to creep before the eyes. Nibletts is not a charmless house, it is pretty and homey, with its discreet patchy whitewash and its bright flower-fringed door. Within there are four main rooms, the sitting room and kitchen-dining room being both at the back where a descending lawn is overwhelmed by the view of the sea. But I anticipate.

The day had become hot. The temperature had risen to eighty degrees in the afternoon and the air was still shimmering with heat. From the hillside one could see the distant headlands of the bay couchant in a light-brownish heat haze. The vast bowl of the sea was glowing a very pale blue with silvery mirages and streaks of light. The crowded roses were hotly odorous. The bell, which I rang just as I suddenly thought that perhaps Mr Fitch was unaware that I knew his wife, and that this accounted for her panic, was penetratingly sweet, like a tuning fork struck for a choir of angels. Low voices were at once heard within. Then, after a moment, Hartley opened the door.

I got the shock again of her changed appearance, since in my intense and cherishing thought she had become young again, before I saw on her face a look of fear which instantly vanished. Then I could see nothing but her large eyes, seeming violet and somehow glazed and veiled as if they were looking beyond me. I could feel myself blushing, the accursed red wave surging up through my neck and face.

I had deliberately prepared nothing to say. I said, ‘Oh excuse me, I was passing by, returning from a walk and I just thought I’d call in for a moment.’

I had time before she replied to think: I ought to have let her speak first! Then if she had indeed never told her husband about me she could pretend I was selling brushes. I was wearing my jeans with a clean white shirt and my faded but decent cotton jacket. I tried to look into her eyes but it was impossible, and the fear or whatever it was had gone.

She said nothing to me but turned to speak back into the house. It sounded like-‘It’s him-’ As she spoke she swung the door back, half closing it in my face, and for a moment I thought she was simply going to shut it.

There was the sound of an ejaculation within, perhaps just ‘Oh’.

The door swung open again and Hartley was smiling at me. ‘Do come in for a minute.’

I wiped my feet on the large clean bristly orange mat and stepped into the hall, blinded by the change of light.

All the way from Shruff End, and indeed all day since my resolve to call on Hartley, I had been feeling sick with excitement, sick with a blend of obscure bodily agitation and clarified fear, not unlike (only this was much worse) what I used to feel when I dived off very high boards in California to impress Fritzie. I could not now see Hartley properly in the sudden darkness of the interior, but I felt her presence as a violent diffused magnetism which somehow pervaded the whole house, as if Hartley were the house and as if I had been swept into a cavern where she embraced me and I could not touch her. Indeed the impossibility of touching her made my whole body shake with a kind of negative electricity. At the same time I was sickeningly conscious of the invisible husband. I had vividly imagined and reimagined beforehand the moment of arrival, ringing the bell, meeting Mr Fitch, and this had seemed in anticipation like a dive into the unknown, indeed into the irrevocable. Only now it was proving an agonizingly slow dive, as if the water towards which I was moving was receding, leaving me falling slowly through the air.

Hartley actually left me standing in the hall and went back into a room for a whispered consultation, almost closing the door. The hall was tiny. I was now conscious of an altar-like table with a rose bowl, and above it a large brown print of a mediaeval knight. Hartley emerged and threw open another door, ushering me into an empty room which proved to be the sitting room. She said, ‘I’m so sorry, we’re in the middle of our tea, we’ll join you in a moment. ’ Then she left me again, closing the door.

I realized now how dangerously I had acted and how foolish I had been. Six o’clock for me meant drinks. I had imagined it would be a sensible and humane time to call. In fact I had interrupted their evening meal. To beguile the frightful interval I looked round the room. A large bow window with a big semicircular white-painted window-ledge gave a partial view of the village and a full view of the harbour and the sea. A pair of expensive-looking field glasses lay on the ledge beside a massive bowl of roses. The sea was shining into the room like an enamelled mirror with its own especial clear light. This light excited and upset me, and dazzled me so that now I could scarcely see my surroundings. There was a thick carpet underfoot and the room was hot and stuffy and smelt excessively of roses.

Hartley came in followed by her husband. In my first dazzled view of him Fitch looked grossly boyish. He was rather short and thick-set and had a bullet-headed boy’s look, with a thick neck and short mousy hair. He had very dark brown narrow eyes, a rather large clear-cut sensual mouth, and a prominent shiny nose with broad flaring nostrils. He was broad shouldered and powerful looking. If he was crippled it certainly did not show. He came in smiling. I beamed, blinking a little, and we spontaneously shook hands. ‘Glad to meet you.’ ‘I hope you didn’t mind my calling? ’ ‘Not at all.’

Hartley, who had been wearing something blue, perhaps an overall, when she opened the door, was now revealed in a yellow cotton dress with a tight bodice and a big skirt. She moved nervously about, not looking at me. ‘Oh dear, I must open a window. How stuffy this room is. Won’t you sit down?’

I sat down in, or got stuck into, a tubby velvety low-slung arm-chair.

Hartley said to Fitch, ‘Shall we bring our meal in here?’

He said, ‘Why not?’

Hartley went back into the kitchen where they had evidently been eating and returned with two plates, while Fitch pulled a gate-leg table out from the wall and set it up rather uncertainly upon the thick carpet. Hartley then handed the two plates to Fitch, who stood holding them while she fussed looking for table mats to put them on. The two plates, with their knives and forks upon them, were then put down, a plate of bread or something was fetched, upright chairs were pulled across the resistant carpet, and Hartley and Fitch sat down, their chairs half turned so as to accommodate me. They had been eating ham and salad, but it was now immediately clear that further eating had become impossible.

Hartley said to me, ‘Would you like anything to eat?’

‘Oh no thanks. I only called for a moment. I’m terribly sorry, I see I’ve interrupted your-’

‘Not at all.’

Fitch said nothing but looked at me with his dark narrow eyes, flaring out his nostrils into two great holes. His big mouth in repose looked rather forbidding.

Surprise, or perhaps a flurried annoyance, seemed to have deprived them of the power of conversing, so I floundered quickly to get something going. I had decided to depart after the very briefest possible polite interchange.

‘What a lovely view you have.’

‘Yes, isn’t it, we got the house for the view really.’

‘My house just looks on the rocks and the sea. It’s nice for swimming though. Do you swim much?’

‘No, Ben can’t swim.’

‘I like your big window, you can see all round.’

‘Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it.’ She added, ‘It’s our dream house.’

‘Have you got electricity?’ asked Fitch, who had hitherto been silent.

I rated this as a definitely friendly remark. ‘No. You have, haven’t you, that must be a blessing. I get along with oil lamps and calor gas.’

‘Got a car?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘No. What brought you to this part of the world?’

‘Well, no special reason, a friend of mine described it to me, she grew up near here, and I wanted to retire near the sea, and houses are cheaper here than-’

‘They aren’t all that cheap,’ said Fitch.

All this while my visible surroundings were, now that I was accustomed to the light, imprinting themselves upon me with the sharpness and authority of a picture. I was conscious of my awkwardly outstretched legs, my still flushed face, my fast heartbeat, the stuffy rose-scented air to which the open window seemed to have made no difference, and the fact that I felt at a disadvantage in a low chair. I took in the brown and yellow floral design on the carpet, the light brown wallpaper, the shiny ochre tiles round the electric fire which was set in the wall. Two round brass bas-reliefs representing churches hung on either side of the fire. A funny-looking shaggy rug upon the carpet was making extra difficulties for one of the table legs. There was a large television set with more roses on top of it. No books. The room was very clean and tidy, so perhaps, except for watching television, life went on in the kitchen. The one sign of habitation was, on one of the chairs, a glossy mail order catalogue and an ash tray with a pipe in it.

At the table Hartley and Fitch were sitting stiff and upright, like a married pair rendered by a primitive painter. There was something especially primitive about the clear outlines and well-defined surfaces of Fitch’s eccentric and not altogether unpleasing face. Hartley’s face was, perhaps just in my timid fugitive vision of it, hazier, restless, a soft moon of whiteness with hidden eyes. I was able to look only at her flowing yellow dress, round-necked, rather resembling a night-dress, and patterned all over with tiny brown flowers. Fitch was wearing a shabby light blue suit, jacket and trousers, with a thin brown stripe. Braces were visible through the unbuttoned jacket, which he had probably pulled on when I was announced. His blue shirt was clean. Hartley patted down, then plumped up, the waves of her grey hair. I felt sick with emotion and embarrassment and shame and a desire to get away and assess what all this was doing to me.

‘Have you lived here long?’

‘Two years,’ said Fitch.

‘Still settling in really,’ said Hartley.

‘We saw you on television,’ said Fitch. ‘Mary was thrilled, she remembered you.’

‘Yes, of course, she remembered me from school, of course-’

‘We don’t know any celebrities, quite a thrill, eh?’

To get off this loathsome subject I said, ‘Is your son still at school?’

‘Our son?’ said Fitch.

‘No, he’s left school,’ said Hartley.

‘He’s adopted, you know,’ said Fitch.

Earlier on they had been fiddling now and then with their forks, pretending to be about to eat. Now they had laid them down. They were looking, not at me, but at the carpet near my feet. Fitch shot an occasional glance at me. I decided it was time to go.

‘Well, it’s very kind of you to let me call. I must be off now. I’m so sorry I interrupted your-your meal. I do hope you’ll come over and visit me soon. Are you on the telephone?’

‘Yes, but it’s out of order,’ said Fitch.

Hartley had risen hastily. I got up and tripped over the shaggy rug. ‘What a nice rug.’

‘Yes,’ said Hartley, ‘it’s a rag rug.’

‘A-?’

‘A rag rug. Ben makes them.’ She opened the sitting-room door.

Fitch got up more slowly and as he now moved, standing aside to wave me out of the room, I saw that he limped. He said, ‘You go first, I’ve got a gammy leg. Old war wound.’

I said, as I went through the dim hall towards the glaring brightness of the oval glass on the door, ‘Well, we must be in touch, mustn’t we, I do hope you’ll both come over and have a drink and see my funny house and-’

Hartley swung the front door open.

‘Goodbye, thanks for calling,’ said Fitch.

I was on the red tiled path and the door had closed. As soon as I was out of sight I began to run. I reached the village street panting and began to walk more slowly along the footpath which led to the coast road. As I walked I began to have a weird uncomfortable sensation in my back which, amid all the wild emotions and sensations which were rushing about inside me, I could identify as the sensation of being observed. I was about to turn round when it came to me that I was now well inside the span of the Nibletts view and within range of Fitch’s powerful field glasses, should he care to sit on the window ledge and check on my departure. Parts of the village street were plainly visible from Nibletts, though the church and the churchyard were hidden by trees. So was that the explanation of Hartley’s uneasiness, her thought that perhaps Fitch had actually seen me meet her and lead her away towards the church? She had, I remembered, walked behind me, not with me. How odd it must have looked though, with me as a crazed Orpheus and her as a dazed Eurydice. Yet why should she be afraid of being seen to meet somebody, even me, in the street? Resisting the present temptation to look back I walked smartly on and was soon among the stunted trees and gorse bushes and rocky outcrops near to the road, and out of sight from the hill. It was still very hot. I pulled off my jacket. It was soaked under the arms with dark stains of anxious perspiration and the dye had stained my shirt.

I then began to wonder many things, some very immediate, others vastly remote and metaphysical. First there was the question I had so belatedly asked myself when I was ringing the bell. Evidently Hartley had told her husband that she knew me, but when and how, and indeed why, had she told him? Years and years ago when she first met him? After they got married? When they ‘saw me on telly’? Or even, when she got home this morning from our meeting in the street? ‘Oh, I just met someone I used to know, such a surprise.’ And she might then recall their having seen me on television. But no, this was too elaborate. She must have told him much earlier, after all why on earth not: did I want her to have kept me a secret? As indeed I had so devotedly kept her a secret… Why had I done so? Because she was something holy which almost any speech would profane. In so far as I had ever mentioned Hartley to anyone I had always regretted it. No one understood, no one could understand. Better the austere sterility of silence. One of the horrors of marriage is that the partners are supposed to tell each other everything. ‘It’s him.’ They had obviously been talking about me today. I just hated the idea that, through all those years, they could have chatted about me, dismissed me, demeaned it all, chewed it all up into some sort of digestible matrimonial pabulum. ‘Your schoolboy admirer has done well for himself!’ Fitch called her ‘Mary’. Well, that was her name too. But ‘Hartley’ was her real name. In choosing to abandon it had she deliberately abandoned her past?

When I got home, although it was still very light outside, the house seemed dark and by contrast with the sunshine, cool and damp. I poured myself some sherry and bitters and took it out onto my little rock-surrounded lawn at the back and sat on the rug which I had placed upon the rock seat beside the trough where I put the stones. But it was at once intolerable not to see the water, so I climbed up a bit, gingerly holding my glass, and sat on top of a rock. The sea was now a bluish purple, the colour of Hartley’s eyes. Oh God, what was I to make of it all? Whatever happened I must try not to suffer. But in order for me not to suffer two incompatible states of affairs had to exist: I had to achieve a steady permanent and somehow close relationship with Hartley, and I had to avoid entering a hell of jealousy. Also of course I must not disturb her marriage. And yet why ‘of course’…?

No, no, I could not, would not think of disturbing her marriage. It would be unthinkably immoral to try, and there was no reason to imagine that I would necessarily succeed if I did try! That way madness lay. I did not, looking at that pair, imagine that the glamour of a ‘celebrity’ would be much to conjure with. This made me think of how Hartley looked, that slightly vague fey look she had always had of looking past one. I had sometimes allowed myself the luxury of brooding upon her remorse. Perhaps she had felt remorse. But now-the person I had loved, and loved now, was not likely to be stupidly dazzled by a ‘reputation’. So if I was searching for cracks in the fabric… Well of course I was not doing that, I was just trying to understand. I could make little, on reflection, of le mari. I had expected, I now realized, an insignificant little man. I had doubtless required and wanted an insignificant little man. But Fitch was somehow, I could not quite think why, not insignificant. What was he like? What went on inside the sealed container of this marriage? And would I ever know? I could not help at least feeling rather pleased that Titus was adopted.

All this led me back to the now somehow central question: is she happy? Of course I knew enough about the mystery of marriage to be aware that this may be a frivolous question to ask about a married person. People may be settled into ways of life which preclude continued happiness, but which are satisfactory and far to be preferred to alternatives. A small number of married couples are increasingly pleased with each other and radiate happiness. Sidney and Rosemary Ashe radiated happiness. There was certainly no such radiation up at Nibletts; though of course I must take into account the unease caused by my sudden appearance. There had been an awkwardness the cause of which was obscure. And surely, if they had been very happy together, they would both instinctively have wanted to show off this happiness to the intruding outsider? A happy couple cannot help showing off. Sidney and Rosemary did it all the time. So did Victor and Julia. And yet this was inconclusive. What was plain, and this indeed was the thought which prevented the awful pain from beginning, was that I must soon see Hartley again, alone if possible, and get some clearer picture of the situation.

As the sun began to go down and the sea was turning gold under a very pale green sky I laid my empty glass in a cranny and crawled up to a higher rock from which I could get a view of the whole expanse of water. In the lurid yet uncertain light I found that I was now suddenly scanning the scene and watching it intently. What was I looking for? I was looking for that sea monster.

The next day before nine o’clock I was entering the church. I had reached it by a roundabout route, first climbing over the rocks on the other side of the road, then veering away through the gorse in the direction of the Raven Hotel, crossing the bog on the seaward side of Amorne Farm, going through three fields and three prickly hedges, and approaching Narrowdean from inland along the main road. By this method I did not at any point enter the Nibletts ‘view’. I tried not to feel sure that Hartley would come to the church; in any case I decided that it was the only place where it was worth keeping a vigil, since it was more unlikely that she would walk out to Shruff End. Of course there was no one there, although someone had been in since yesterday and had put upon the altar a vast odorous bowl of white roses which disturbed me with all sorts of deep incoherent unconceptualized apprehensions. Time had suffered a profound disturbance, and I could feel all sorts of dark debris from the far past shifting and beginning to move up towards the surface. I sat feeling sick and reading the Ten Commandments which were almost illegibly inscribed upon a brown board behind the roses, and trying not to pay any special attention to the tenth and seventh and trying not at every moment to expect Hartley. The bright sun was blazing in through the tall rounded leaded faintly-greenish glass windows of the church and making the big room, for that after all was all that it was, feel weird and uneasy. There was a good deal of dust about, moving idly and airily in the sunlight, and the smell of the roses mingled with the dust and with some old musty woody smell, and the place seemed unused and very empty and a little mad. It seemed a suitable spot for a strange momentous interview. I felt frightened. Was I frightened of Fitch?

I waited in the church for more than an hour. I walked up and down. I read all the memorial tablets carefully. I smelt the roses. I read pieces of the horrible new prayer book (no wonder the churches are empty). I inspected the embroidered hassocks wrought by the local ladies. I climbed onto the pews and looked out of the windows. I thought of poor Dummy lying out there in the churchyard, scarcely more speechless now than he ever was. At about twenty past ten I decided that I had to get out into the air. It was all a great mistake, hiding in the church when Hartley might be walking openly about the streets. I wanted to see her so much that I was nearly moaning aloud. I ran out and went down through the iron gate and sat on a seat where I could see quite a lot of the little ‘high street’, but without being visible from the hillside. After a few minutes I saw a woman who looked like Hartley creeping along by the wall on the far side of the street, going in the direction of the shop. I say ‘creeping along’ because that was part of my first vision of her as an old woman, before I knew who she was, and it was this ‘old woman’ image that I was seeing now. I jumped up and set off after her. As she crossed the road she turned slightly and saw me and increased her pace. It was Hartley all right and she was running away from me! She did not go into the shop, but whisked round into what I called Fishermen’s Stores Street. When I reached the corner running, she was nowhere to be seen. I went into the Fishermen’s Stores, but she was not there. I wanted to howl with exasperation. I ran along to the end of the street where it petered out in a few derelict cottages and a five-barred gate and a large meadow fringed by trees. She could not have crossed that meadow. Had she gone into one of the houses? I ran back; then I saw a little alleyway leading off the street, a narrow sunless fissure between the blank sides of two houses. I ran down it, stumbled over a strewing of pebbles, and turned a sharp corner into a square enclosed space between the low whitewashed walls of backyards, where there were a number of overflowing dustbins and old cardboard boxes and an abandoned bicycle. And there, standing quite still in the middle of this scene, was Hartley. She was standing just behind a low outcrop of the sparkling yellow rock which surrounded my house.

She looked at me out of a sort of resigned trance-like calm, staring and unsmiling, and yet I could see that inwardly she was trembling like a quarry. The dark shadow of a wall fell across the yard, dividing the rock and somehow composing the picture, covering Hartley’s feet as she stood there holding a basket and her handbag. She was wearing a blue cotton dress today with a closely packed design of white daisies, and a loose baggy brown cardigan over it, although the day was already hot.

I ran up to her and seized hold not of her arm but of the handle of her shopping basket. This chase, this catch, had frightened us both. ‘Oh Hartley, don’t do it, don’t run away from me, it’s mad, thank God I found you, if I hadn’t I’d have gone crazy! I must talk to you. Come to the church, please.’

I pulled at the handle of the basket and she walked in front of me down the narrow alley.

‘You go to the church. I’ll follow you after I’ve shopped. Yes, I promise.’

I went back to the church. After that chase, after that awful enclosed space with the dustbins and the rock and the bicycle, I too was trembling. She came in ten minutes. I went to take her heavy basket from her. I simply did not know how to behave to her, there was some profound awful barrier of what I felt as embarrassment, though it was also dread. If only some touch of grace could turn all this pain into communication and the gestures of love. But grace in every sense was lacking. I felt now a frantic desire to touch her, to hold her, but I could think of no way of achieving this, as if it would have been an amazing physical feat. We sat down where we had sat before, she in the pew in front, turning round to me.

‘Why did you hide? I can’t bear this. We must-we must somehow get a grip on this situation-I shall go mad-’

‘Charles, please don’t be so-and please don’t call round unexpectedly like that-’

‘I’m sorry-but I’ve got to see you-I still care about you. What do you expect me to do? At least we’ve got to be friends, now we’ve got this chance to-this chance-Of course I won’t do anything you don’t want-Please-look, couldn’t you and your husband come round and see me, come round for drinks tomorrow at six, well at five, at seven, any time that suits you. Come to funny old Shruff End, I want you to see the house. Why not?’

Hartley was hunched up, her head shrunk into her neck, the rumpled collar of her blue dress cupping her hair. She was looking down, almost hidden by the pew. ‘Please don’t expect anything of us, I mean don’t call on us or ask us to-we don’t go to parties-’

‘It’s not a party!’

‘It’s not necessary for us to be like that just because-And please don’t run after me in the street, people will notice.’

‘But you ran away from me, you hid-’

‘Where we live people don’t sort of entertain because they’re neighbours, they keep themselves to themselves.’

‘But you already know me! And there needn’t be any “entertaining” if you mean ridiculous formalities, I hate that anyway. Hartley, I won’t put up with this. Can’t you just explain?’

Hartley now looked at me properly. I noticed that today she was wearing no lipstick, and this helped me to read her, to read her young look into her old look. Her tired pale wrinkled soft round face now looked very sad, with a kind of resigned sadness, as I had never seen it then, even when she was leaving me. But her sadness was resolute, almost wary, and she was entirely attentive, the vivid eyes no longer vague. She revealed her red slightly swollen hands, and clawed ineffectually at her rumpled collar.

‘What is there to explain, why should I-?’

‘You mean I’m not behaving like a gentleman?’

‘No, no-Look, I must go to the hairdressing lady.’

‘I behaved like a gentleman then and look where it got me! I never pressed you. I believed you when you said you’d marry me. I loved you. I love you. All right, you said then that you couldn’t trust me, you thought I’d be unfaithful and so on, oh God! Perhaps you feel something like that, that you couldn’t trust me now-But believe me, there are no women, no one with me, I’m alone, really alone. I want you to know that.’

‘There’s no need to say, it doesn’t matter-’

‘Yes, don’t misunderstand me. I just want you to know it’s simply me, and I’m like I always was, so there’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I must go to the hairdresser.’

‘Hartley, please-Oh all right, why indeed should you explain? Do you want me to go away now and never try to see you again?’

Of course I did not intend her to say yes, and she did not.

‘No, I don’t want that. I don’t know what I want.’

The desolate sound of this, the sound of need at last, made me feel much happier and much more clear-headed. ‘Hartley darling, you’ve got to talk to me, you know you have. After all there’s so much to talk about, isn’t there? I won’t do you any harm. My love for you then was mixed up, with all sorts of conflicts which don’t exist now, so it can all be better and we’ve sort of got it back again after all. Don’t you see? We can be real friends. And I do want to get to know your husband.’ I then felt bound to add, ‘I did like him so much, by the way.’ This rang false. Hartley had hunched herself up again behind the pew. ‘Anyway we must talk. There’s so much I want to tell you before it’s too late. And I want to ask you hundreds of questions. I don’t mean about what happened then. I mean about you and how you’ve lived and about-oh-Titus. I’d love to meet him. Perhaps I could help him.’

‘Help him?’

‘Yes, why not? Financially for instance, or-I know a lot about the world, Hartley-about some worlds, anyway. What does he want to do, what is he studying?’

Hartley gave a deep sigh, and then rubbed her cheeks with her red hands. She produced her handkerchief, still stained with lipstick. Tears had risen into her eyes.

‘Hartley-dear-’

‘He’s gone, he ran away, he’s lost, we don’t know where he is. We haven’t heard anything from him for nearly two years. He’s gone away.’

‘Oh God-’ So cunning and vile is the human soul that I felt instantly glad that Hartley had this understandable cause of grief and had told me about it and was weeping about it in my presence. Suddenly there was sympathy, communication.

‘I’m so sorry. But can’t he be found, have you told the police? There are ways of finding people. I could help there.’

Hartley mopped her face, then took a mirror and powder compact out of her bag and dabbed powder round her eyes. I had seen so many women powder their faces. I was seeing Hartley perform this little ritual of vanity for the first time. She said, ‘You can’t help and please don’t try to. Better to leave us alone and-’

‘Hartley, I’m not going to leave you alone, so you must make up your mind to that and invent some humane way of dealing with me! Are you just afraid of falling in love with me again, is that it?’

She stood up, lifted her shopping basket, which was beside me, and dropped her handbag into it. I came round into her pew and put my arms firmly round her shoulders. It still felt like doing the impossible. For a moment she bowed her head and rolled her brow quickly to and fro against my shirt, and I felt the blazing warmth of her flesh against mine. Then she pushed past me and began to walk to the door. I followed.

‘When shall I see you?’

‘Please don’t, you’ll worry us, and please don’t write.’

‘Hartley, what is it? Let go. Let yourself love me a bit, there’ll be no harm. Or do you think I’m such a grandee? I’m not, you know. I’m just your oldest friend.’

‘Don’t do anything, I’ll write to you, later.’

‘You promise?’

‘Yes. I’ll write. Only don’t come.’

‘Won’t you explain?’

‘There’s nothing to explain. Stay here please.’ And she went away.

Dearest Lizzie, I have been reflecting on what you said in your sweet and wise letter, and what you said also when we met at the tower. I have to ask your pardon. I think perhaps that you are right after all. I love you, but it may be that my rather (as you say) ‘abstract’ idea of our being together is not, for either of us, the best expression of that love. We might just create confusion and unhappiness for both. Your ‘suspicions’ of me may indeed be just, and you are not the first one to express such doubts! Perhaps I am by now too much of a restless Don Juan. So let us play it differently. This is not necessarily a sad conclusion, and we must both be realistic, especially as someone else’s happiness is also at stake. I was very touched and impressed by the spectacle of your relationship with Gilbert. It is an achievement and must of course be respected. What does it matter what people exactly ‘are’ to each other, so long as they love and cherish each other and are true to each other? You were so right to emphasize that word. You doubted my capacity to be loyal and I am near enough to sharing your doubts to be anxious for us not to take the risk. It is just as well that we never defined what we expected. We are both fortunate in being happy as we are, and we can simply count our old affectionate friendship, now so happily revived, as a bonus. We don’t want, do we, any more anguish or muddle. You are quite right. I shall respect your wisdom and your wishes and the rights of my old friend Gilbert! It is, as you said, important that we all three like each other; and let us, as you urged, enjoy a free and unpossessive mutual affection. So please forget my original foolish letter, to which you so bravely and rationally responded, and also my somewhat bullying tactics at our last meeting! I am lucky to have friends such as you and Gilbert and I intend to treasure them in a sensible and I hope generous way. I shall look forward to seeing you soon in London where I shall be arriving shortly. I will let you know. Accept, both of you, my affectionate best wishes and, if I may belatedly offer them, my congratulations.

Be well, little Lizzie, and remember me.

Your old friend,

Charles.

This was the letter, partly disingenuous, partly sincere, which I wrote to Lizzie on the afternoon of the day when I saw Hartley in the church for the second time. I returned home in a frenzy of misery and indecision, and after a while spent fruitlessly wondering what to do next, I decided that one sensible thing at least which I could do to pass the time would be to get rid of Lizzie. This involved no mental struggle and no problem except the labour of writing a suitable letter and concentrating upon Lizzie long enough to complete it. How totally in every atom I had been changed was shown by the fact that my ‘idea’ about Lizzie now seemed to me an insane fancy from whose consequences I had been mercifully saved by Lizzie’s own common sense; and for this I blessed her. A flame had licked out of the past and burnt up that structure of intentions completely. What had been made clear in the last two days (which seemed like months) was how far I had been right in thinking that there was only one real love in my life. It was as if I had in some spiritual sense actually married Hartley long ago and was simply not free to look elsewhere. Of course I had really known this all along. But on seeing her again the sense of absolute belongingness had been overwhelming; in the teeth of our fates’ most exquisite cruelty, in the teeth of all the evidence, we belonged to each other.

I did in fact manage to think quite intensely about Lizzie while I was writing the letter, and to think of her with a kind of generous resigned affection. I saw her laughing radiant face as it had been when she was younger, when we used to laugh so much about her loving me. In spite of the incredible gaucherie of my ‘idea’ it was possible that I had, quite accidentally, acquired Lizzie as a friend whose affection and loyalty might even one day be of value. But now the decks must be cleared. There must be absolutely no problem, no ‘interesting connection’ involving discussions or letters or visits. I had no time and no strength for any such muddle and it would be criminal to risk one. My hint about coming to London was of course simply a ploy to keep Lizzie there. I could not have endured the arrival of an emotional Lizzie on my doorstep now. There had been a slaughter of all my other interests, and upon the strange white open scene of the future only one thing remained. So let little Lizzie remain safely in storage with Gilbert; I could now even feel benevolent towards him. Was this new detached generosity, I wondered in passing, a first symptom of that changed and purified form of being which the return of Hartley was going to create in me? Was Hartley, seen not touched, loved not possessed, destined to make me a saint? How strange and significant that I had come precisely here to repent of my egoism! Was this perhaps the final sense of my mystical marriage with my only love? It was an extreme idea, but it had its own deep logic, and flourished somewhat upon the absence of alternatives. There was, for me, surely no other move?

I was of course aware that one point of the ‘extreme idea’ was that it consoled me with an offer of happiness, though of an extremely refined and attenuated sort. Other prospects, more closely related to the horror of recent events, were less vague and less pleasing; and I had an urgent dark desire to act which was not illumined by my aspirations to sanctity. But what could I do? Start looking for Titus? My central question at least was now answered: Hartley was unhappy. But this brought forward a further central question. Why was she unhappy? Was it simply because her son had vanished or were there other reasons? Why would she not let me help her, why would she not let me in? Or was it naïve to expect confidences from a woman I had not seen for more than forty years? I had kept her being alive in me, but to her I might simply be a shadow, an almost forgotten schoolboy. I could not believe this. Was she perhaps on the contrary still so much in love with me that she dare not trust herself to see me? Did she imagine I had smart handsome mistresses of whom she would be miserably jealous? What had she been doing down on the sea road when Rosina’s headlights suddenly revealed her to me? Had she come to spy, to find out?

She had promised to write, but would she write, and if she did would she ‘explain’? Could I, was I capable of it, simply wait, and perhaps wait and wait, for that letter, and, obeying her, do nothing? I so intensely wanted to ‘explain’ myself, to pour out everything I felt and thought, and which in those miserable scrappy encounters I had not managed to say. Should I write her a long letter? If I did I would certainly not entrust it to the post. That brought me back again to le mari. Why was she unhappy? Was it because he was jealous, a tyrant, a bully, who never let anyone come near her? Was that it? And if so… How my mind leapt forward at this thought, and how many lurid vistas and fiery hollows were suddenly opened up. At the same time I knew that sanity, and a faithfulness to Hartley which must be kept untainted, forbade this kind of speculation.

I had no heart to cook lunch. I fried an egg but could not eat it. I drank some of the young Beaujolais which had been delivered from the Raven Hotel. (I found the wine, Beaujolais and some Spanish stuff, outside the door when I got back from the village.) Then I occupied myself by writing the letter to Lizzie which I have copied out above. After that I thought it might do my soul some good if I went swimming. The tide was in and the sea was very calm, and clearer than usual. Looking down from my cliff before I dived in I could see tall dark trees of seaweed gently waving and fishes swimming between them. I swam about quietly, looking at that special ‘swimmer’s view’ of the sea, and feeling, for the time, possessing and possessed. The sea was a glassy slightly heaving plain, moving slowly past me, and as if it were shrugging reflectively as it absent-mindedly supported its devotee. Some large seagulls with the yellowest conceivable beaks gathered to watch me. I felt no anxiety about getting out, and when I swam back to my cliff face I was able quite easily to cling on to my handholds and footholds and pull myself up out of the water. In fact the little cliff is not in itself very hard to climb, it is just that, as I explained, if one is being constantly lifted up and abruptly dropped again by the movement of the waves, it is impossible to keep one’s fingers and toes in place long enough to get a proper grip. When I was in the sea I thought to myself how little it mattered to me that Hartley was no longer beautiful. This seemed a good thought and I held on to it and it brought me, together with tenderness, a little calm.

After that I stupidly sat in the sun but it was too hot and my immersion had after all brought me little wisdom. Perhaps I had not been wrong in thinking of the sea as a source of peace, but it was an ineffective medicine thus taken in a gulp. It required a regime. I walked about, scorching my feet and looking into one or two of my pools but the pleasure had departed and I could no longer concentrate upon those brilliant lucid little civilizations, although in the strong light the coloured pebbles and the miniature seaweed trees looked like jewels by Fabergé. I watched a dance of prawns and the progress of a green transparent sea-slug, and saw again the long coiling red worm which had somehow reminded me of my sea serpent. Then I noticed to my annoyance some tourists from, I suppose, the Raven Hotel who were actually standing on my land and inspecting the tower. I went into the house with burning shoulders and a splitting headache.

It was now obvious that I would soon have to do something, to perform some ritual act which would relate to my situation and perhaps alter it. What I wanted to do, of course, was to run straight to Hartley. I had not even kissed her yet. How timid and feeble I had been this morning in the church. But I would have ‘ingeniously’ to find some substitute for this headlong rush. Like the deprived addict I found ordinary diversions useless. Everything I did now had to relate to the one world-centre. I decided, just in order to keep moving, to walk down to the village and post the letter to Lizzie. Of course I hoped to see Hartley, but I did not really imagine that I would. It was now late afternoon, the kind of vivid light which would have made me want to shout with joy a little while ago. When I had crossed the causeway I saw some letters lying in my dog kennel and I picked them up. One of them was from Lizzie. I tore it open and read it as I walked along.

My darling, of course the answer will have to be yes. My fears were foolish and unworthy, please forgive my confused response to your wonderful offer. I am your page, as I always was, and shall I not come to you if, even for a moment, you need me? I haven’t said anything to Gilbert yet and I don’t know how to. When we meet will you please be gentle and help me about this? I can’t just abandon him. There must be some way of not hurting him too much. Please understand. And let me see you soon, I want to say so many things. Shall I come to you, or will you be in London? I wish I could telephone you. (Don’t ring here because of Gilbert.) By the way, I told Gilbert I was writing to you because he asked, and he says will you have dinner with us here Monday of next week if you’re in town? I pass this on, but I imagine in the circumstances you won’t want to.

I love you so much.

Lizzie.

I am so frightened that you are angry with me. Please reassure me soon.

I sighed over this rather shifty missive, which gave me so little pleasure. What was this ‘offer’ I was supposed to have made her? She almost made it seem as if she was endeavouring to oblige me. I noted that she had not yet told Gilbert, and showed no signs of leaving him. But I felt no urge to reflect upon the state of Lizzie’s mind, it did not matter now.

I hastened my steps and reached the Post Office just before it closed. I posted my letter to Lizzie and sent her a telegram which ran as follows. Your first idea was right. See my letter which crossed with yours. In London soon and gratefully accept dine you and Gilbert. Love Charles. That should make the situation sufficiently clear and also keep Lizzie in London. I had of course no intention of dining with them, and would send a cancellation at the last moment.

I emerged into the street where it was still sunny, and the evening light was making even the slates on the roofs cast little shadows, and the whitewashed walls were silver-gilt. I walked up to the church and looked inside. It was empty and already in shadow and full of the smell of the roses which were a white blur in the hazy dusty air. I came out into the light and spent some time looking at the various sailing ships on the tombstones which the slanting illumination had brought out in strong relief; walking back down the street it occurred to me that the Black Lion was open and I went in. There was the usual sudden hush.

‘Seen any more ghosts?’ said Arkwright, as he served me with cider.

‘No.’

‘Wasn’t you asking about big eels,’ said someone else, ‘seen any?’

‘No.’

‘Seen any seals?’

‘No.’

‘He ain’t seen nothing.’

A titter.

I was feeling hungry, so I ate a cheese sandwich and a horrible pork pie. I sat for a while and looked at the rest of my mail. I did not care a fig for the company and I did not mind if they knew it. The letters, sent on by Miss Kaufman, were all personal but of little interest. They included one which would formerly have pleased me from Sidney Ashe describing comical goings-on in Stratford, Ontario. There was also one from my physicist friend (previously mentioned I think) Victor Banstead of Cambridge. I crumpled all the letters up, including Lizzie’s, and dropped them into a nearby basket, and then had to scrabble in it, under the amused gaze of the company, to get them out again. I crammed them in my pocket and said goodnight. No one answered. Once I had closed the door there was prolonged laughter.

I did not take the diagonal footpath but followed the road which led straight on towards the harbour. Once I was clear of the village I stopped and looked up at the hillside. The sun was low and a few lighted windows already shone here and there, weirdly pale. I am very long-sighted, and although I had needed my pincenez to read the letters, I could see the bungalows quite clearly. There seemed to be a faint light in the sitting room at Nibletts. Supper would be over and they would be watching television. In silence? It occurred to me: I could not conceive of married life. How was such a state of affairs possible? I felt a very strong desire to go up the hill and knock on the door. Supposing I arrived with a bottle of champagne…? But I had now invented a device for getting through the next hours. There might very well be a letter from Hartley tomorrow morning. And if by any chance there was not… I would… decide what to do. Then I wondered, in that little house, how, where can she write a private letter? In the bathroom? He must go away sometimes. Would it be a private letter? Marriage was indeed a mystery.

I walked on down to the harbour where the calm, calm sea was just audibly lapping. The harbour was empty and quiet and darkish within the firm arm of its stone quay which seemed to be exuding the thick powdery light. As I loitered I could feel the warmth of the stone under my feet. A cormorant passed by, low over the waves, a black cross-shaped portent. Now there was a big pale crumbly moon and a brilliant evening star. Just beyond, in the ladies’ bathing place, two boys were playing on the dark seaweed, but silently as if magicked by the hour. I walked slowly along the coast road in the direction of Shruff End, then on past it, and spent some time looking at Raven Bay with the hotel lights reflected in the water. The evening star changed from gold to silver and the moon diminished and gained a hard-edged brilliance. I walked back at last and as I turned onto the causeway I saw a curious flicker within the house as if a light were moving. I stopped and watched. There was a momentary clear flicker which ducked and then became hazy behind one of the front windows, then vanished. Someone inside was walking about carrying a candle. My first thought was that it was Hartley. Then I thought it was more likely to be Rosina. I walked back along the road and sure enough, hidden behind the projecting rock where it had been before, was her horrible little red car.

I felt such intense annoyance that I actually kicked one of the wheels. I decided that I could not bear to see Rosina. Her unspeakable presence in my house was a sacrilege. The sight of her impertinent face would provoke me to unreasoning anger. The horror and vulgarity of a quarrel would be unbearable; and there would be no getting rid of her. I glided with long tip-toe strides along the causeway and round the side of the house onto the lawn. I could now see into the kitchen. Yes, there was Rosina, with two lighted candles on the kitchen table, trying unsuccessfully to light one of my lamps, and probably ruining the wick in the process. I saw her intent cross-eyed stare and the bad-tempered movements of her mouth as she twiddled the wick roughly up and down and poked it with the lighted match. The lamp flared up, then went out. She was wearing something black, with a white shirt, and her dark hair, which was hanging loose, was swinging almost into the candle flame. I receded quietly, picking up as I did so the rugs and cushions which were lying on the grass. It was just as well I had eaten something in the pub, otherwise hunger would have driven me into the house.

I clambered over the rocks until the house was invisible and found, very close to the sea and just above it, a long shallow depression where I had sunbathed once or twice in the prehistoric days. The night was very warm, very still, and as I put my glasses in a place of safety and composed myself for sleep I wondered sadly why it had never occurred to me to sleep out here in the days when I was happy. It was so close to the sea which was gently slapping the rock just below, it was like being in a boat. And as my rocky bed sloped a little down towards the water, I could lie with my head on a cushion, looking straight out at the horizon, where the moon was making an almost but not quite motionless rift of silver. The first stars were already sharp and bright. More stars were coming, more, more. Lying on my back, wrapped in my rug, my hands clasped in front of me, I prayed that all might be well between me and Hartley, that somehow that lifelong faithful remembering, what I now thought of as my mystical marriage, might not be lost or wasted, but somehow come to good! And then, as if the spirit that I prayed to had admonished me in reply, I tried to put myself out of the picture and to pray only for Hartley: that she might be happy, that Titus might come home, that her husband might love her and she him. This was more difficult. In fact it was so difficult that the temptation of which I had been aware earlier, and which I had so firmly driven away, began to creep in again from the side, however hard I tried to think only good thoughts. Is her husband, Fitch, Ben, whatever his name is, a jealous tyrant, is he the cause of her unhappiness? If so then perhaps…? I decided at last that if there was no letter from Hartley in the morning I would call at the bungalow and damn the consequences. Because… I had to know… the answer… to that question.

Then I found that I was not thinking about Hartley any more, but about my mother. I saw her face covered with wrinkles of anxiety and disapproval and love. Then I was seeing Aunt Estelle, wearing a little round straw hat, sitting at the wheel of the white Rolls-Royce. I know that it excited my father to see her drive that big car. It excited Uncle Abel. It excited me. Aunt Estelle wearing a broad band round her head like a ‘fillet’, which we used to make such silly jokes about at school when we were translating Latin. She played tennis so well. They had a hard court at Ramsdens. How was it that she resembled James, she so pretty, so gay, he with his silences and his occluded lowering face? Some gauzy mask of similarity had been put over his head, like the Hartley-mask that so many women had worn for me through the years, even that funny old woman in the village who was so unlike her. But had I forgotten already, that funny old woman was Hartley! Then was James really Aunt Estelle? Now Aunt Estelle was dancing on a dark rotating gramophone record, dancing in the middle where the label was, and somehow she was the label, a face, with torn paper, torn paper, turning and turning with the record. And all this time I was keeping my eyes open, or trying to, only they kept closing, because I wanted to go on watching the stars, where the most extraordinary things were happening. A bright satellite, a man-made star, very slowly and somehow carefully crossed the sky in a great arc, from one side to the other, a close arc, one knew it was not far away, a friendly satellite slowly going about its business round and round the globe. And then, much much farther away, stars were quietly shooting and tumbling and disappearing, silently falling and being extinguished, lost utterly silent falling stars, falling from nowhere to nowhere into an unimaginable extinction. How many of them there were, as if the heavens were crumbling at last and being dismantled. And I wanted to show all these things to my father.

Later I knew that I had been asleep and I opened my eyes with wonder and the sky had utterly changed again and was no longer dark but bright, golden, gold-dust golden, as if curtain after curtain had been removed behind the stars I had seen before, and now I was looking into the vast interior of the universe, as if the universe were quietly turning itself inside out. Stars behind stars and stars behind stars behind stars until there was nothing between them, nothing beyond them, but dusty dim gold of stars and no space and no light but stars. The moon was gone. The water lapped higher, nearer, touching the rock so lightly it was audible only as a kind of vibration. The sea had fallen dark, in submission to the stars. And the stars seemed to move as if one could see the rotation of the heavens as a kind of vast crepitation, only now there were no more events, no shooting stars, no falling stars, which human senses could grasp or even conceive of. All was movement, all was change, and somehow this was visible and yet unimaginable. And I was no longer I but something pinned down as an atom, an atom of an atom, a necessary captive spectator, a tiny mirror into which it was all indifferently beamed, as it motionlessly seethed and boiled, gold behind gold behind gold.

Later still I awoke and it had all gone; and for a few moments I thought that I had seen all those stars only in a dream. There was a weird shocking sudden quiet, as at the cessation of a great symphony or of some immense prolonged indescribable din. Had the stars then been audible as well as visible and had I indeed heard the music of the spheres? The early dawn light hung over the rocks and over the sea, with an awful intent gripping silence, as if it had seized these faintly visible shapes and were very slowly drawing them out of a darkness in which they wanted to remain. Even the water was now totally silent, not a tap, not a vibration. The sky was a faintly lucid grey and the sea was a lightless grey, and the rocks were a dark fuzzy greyish brown. The sense of loneliness was far more intense than it had been under the stars. Then I had felt no fear. Now I felt fear. I discovered that I was feeling very stiff and rather cold. The rock beneath me was very hard and I felt bruised and aching. I was surprised to find my rugs and cushions were wet with dew. I got up stiffly and shook them. I looked around me. Mountainous piled-up rocks hid the house. And I saw myself as a dark figure in the midst of this empty awfully silent dawn, where light was scarcely yet light, and I was afraid of myself and quickly lay down again and settled my rug and closed my eyes, lying there stiffly and not imagining that I would sleep again.

But I did sleep and I dreamed that Hartley was a ballet dancer and was circling a huge stage sur les points dressed in a black tutu and a head-dress of sparkling diamonds and black feathers. Now and then she would leap, and I would say to myself, but she stays in the air, it’s uncanny, it’s like levitation, she just stays there. And as I watched I said to myself in a complacent way, isn’t it wonderful that we’re both so young and we have all our lives before us. How can old people be happy? We’re young and we know that we’re young, whereas most young people just take it for granted. Then the stage was a forest and a prince also dressed in black came and carried Hartley away, and her head hung back over his shoulder as if her neck was broken. I stayed there still thinking, how wonderful that I’m young; I had a bad dream and thought that I was old. And I’m sure, I’m sure, that on the other side of those trees there is a lake, or perhaps it is the sea. I woke up in the sunshine, and whereas in my other wakings I had understood at once where I was, this time I was very startled, and could still see Hartley’s dead face, her head hanging limply in that terrible way; and I felt a foreboding and a horror which I had not felt in the dream. I pushed myself up on my elbow and only gradually worked out why I was here, lying on the rock, in the bright sunlight in front of a blue muttering sea. I got up slowly, and then felt a pang of sadness as I remembered being so pleased about being young in my dream. I looked at my watch. It was six thirty. It was only then that I thought: if there is no letter this morning I shall go to the bungalow. That is settled.

I felt very hungry. I wondered if Rosina had spent the night in the house. I climbed over the rocks as far as the road and walked back towards Shruff End. I looked into the rocky recess where she had left her car. It was gone. I went on and across the causeway. Of course there were no letters yet. When I got inside I made a thorough search of the house. There were a lot of spent matches lying about, but my bed showed no signs of having been slept in. I was glad about that. She must have gone away late last night. She had opened a bottle of wine and a tin of olives and had eaten some bread. She left no note, but had left her mark by strewing the smashed remains of a rather pretty teacup in the middle of the kitchen table. It could have been worse. I breakfasted, since I was so hungry, on tea and toast and the remainder of the olives. Then I just waited, and waited, and while I did so I tried to remember what I had felt when I looked at the stars, but already it was fading. Then I started making sorties to the dog kennel. About half past nine there were some letters, but none from Hartley. About ten I was walking around the village. At half past ten I was outside Nibletts.

I resisted the temptation to peer anxiously at the house as I walked up the path. I wanted to seem to blunder in, and the best way to do that was actually to blunder in. Down in the village I had felt sick with an anxious yearning sense of Hartley’s proximity. Now the magnetism of her nearness produced a desperate audacity; I felt out of control, heavy, dangerous. I rang the sweet-sounding bell and its hollow angelic chime made a terrible vibration inside the house.

There was then a slight sound of scuffling, but no voices were audible. I realized that my head must be fuzzily visible through the frosted glass. Did they have many visitors?

Ben opened the door. He had by now become ‘Ben’ in my thoughts, so ardently had I been attempting to inhabit Hartley’s mind. He was wearing a white cotton tee shirt which made him appear rather stout, and he looked unshaven. The parts of his face which were not grubbily bristled were greasy, and there were shiny lumps on his brow. As he tossed his head back with an animal gesture I saw the black interior of his wide nostrils.

I said, ‘Good morning,’ and smiled.

He said, ‘What is it?’ with an expression of surprise, genuine or assumed, which let him off smiling.

‘Oh I was out for my morning constitutional and I thought I’d call. I felt it would be so nice to glimpse you and Hartley again, now we are neighbours. And I wanted to bring you something. May I come in for a moment?’ I had planned this beforehand. I put my foot onto the step.

Ben glanced behind him; then he opened the door wider with one hand, while with the other he opened the door of one of the front rooms. Then he stood back with his arms extended so that he and the two doors made a screen or barrier to shepherd me harmlessly into the front room.

This was obviously the spare bedroom. It was rather small, containing a divan, a chair, a chest of drawers. Sunlight illumined bright red flowers upon the unlined curtains. The room smelt of furnishing fabric and furniture polish and dust and of not being used. The divan bed beneath a blue and white gingham cover had clearly not been made up. There was a framed colour photograph of a tabby cat. Ben came inside and shut the door and just for a second I felt afraid of him.

There was little space. He did not ask me to sit down, so we stood facing each other beside the divan. I had decided that to begin with I would keep on gaily chattering, and I had settled on an order of discourse which I hoped that I would now remember. There was much to be discovered, and perhaps a very short time to discover it in.

‘How is Mary? I hope she is well?’ I remembered to call her Mary. ‘I hoped to catch a glimpse. I’ve got a little note here for you both.’

‘She isn’t here,’ said Ben.

I felt sure this was a lie. ‘Well, here it is, my little note.’ I handed over a sealed envelope addressed to Mr and Mrs Fitch.

Ben took the envelope, gazed at it frowning, then gave me a blank stare. He said, ‘Thank you,’ and opened the door.

I said, ‘Won’t you read it please? It’s just an invitation.’ I smiled again.

Ben gave a sort of sigh of irritation and tore open the envelope. As he did so I saw over his shoulder through the open door that the door of the kitchen, which had been closed when I entered, was now ajar. The heavy smell of roses, dustier, more appallingly sad inside the house than outside, came through from the hall. I could see the ‘altar’ with the brown questing knight above it. Ben looked up, and closed the bedroom door again.

I said, waving my arm in an explanatory way towards the invitation, and trying with gestures of a simulated bonhomie to fill and dominate the little room and simulate a flow of mutual conversation, ‘As you see, it’s just a formal invitation, and, look, I’ve written on the back that I do so hope you and Mary will drop in. I’ve got one or two friends down from London,’ this was untrue of course, but I thought it might sound less significantly alarming than a proposed à trois, ‘and I wondered if you and your wife would be so good as to toddle over to Shruff End and have a drink on Friday, it’s quite informal, no need to dress or anything, and you needn’t stay long.’ As this did not sound quite polite and as Ben was still frowning at the card, deciphering my kind message on the back, I added, ‘Or of course if you would prefer it you could come over just the two of you on Thursday or Saturday or any time really, I’m not tied up. I do hope you will. Your house is so charming, so well done, I’m sure you could advise me about mine-I so wanted to ask you about various things-the village and-the locality and-’

‘I don’t think we can come,’ said Ben. He added, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Ah well, if you can’t manage anything just now, I expect you’re busy and it’s not convenient, we could fix something a little later, perhaps, I could drop in next week, I often pass this way. I used to be such a busy person and now I have all the time in the world, do you find that now you’ve retired? Of course it’s marvellous and one’s so lucky, especially living in a place like this. Yes, I do like your house. Is that your pussy cat, isn’t he charming? ’ I gestured towards the colour photograph of the cat which was hanging over the bed.

Ben turned towards the photo and for a second his brow and his mouth relaxed and his eyes lightened and widened. ‘Yes. That’s Tamburlaine. We called him Tambi. He’s dead now.’

‘What a splendid name. It’s so important what you call a cat. Tabbies are top cats, don’t you think? I’ve always been such a rolling stone I’ve never been able to keep an animal, such a pity. Have you got a cat now?’

Ben threw the invitation card and the crumpled envelope onto the bed. The brusque movement put an end to my chatter. He stood for a moment opening his mouth and showing his uneven teeth in some kind of indecision. He ruffled up his short thick mousy hair. He said, ‘Listen.’ There was a pause, he gulped breathlessly and my own breath was suspended. We stood together bulkily in the little room, I leaning a little over him. ‘Listen, it’s not on, sorry, we don’t want to know you. Sorry to put it like that but you won’t seem to take a hint. I mean, there’s no point, is there. All right, you knew Mary a long time ago, but a long time ago is a long time ago. She doesn’t want to know you now, and I don’t want to start, see. You don’t have to see people now because you saw them once or went to school with them or what. Things change and people have their own worlds and their own places. We aren’t your sort, well, that’s obvious, isn’t it. We don’t want to come to your parties and meet your friends and drink your drinks, it’s not on. And we don’t want you barging in here at all hours of the day either, sorry if this sounds rude, but it’s better to get it understood once and for all. I don’t know how you live with your friends in your world, but we don’t live like that, we’re quiet folk and we keep ourselves to ourselves. See? So as far as this stuff about “old school friends” or whatever goes, forget it. Of course we’ll pass the time of day with you if we see you in the village, but we don’t want to be on visiting terms, that’s not our kind of thing. So-thank you for your invitation-but, well, there we are.’ Here he fumbled loudly with the door handle, presumably to warn Hartley to be out of the way.

As he spoke, and as I listened to him, I had been looking down at the narrow scantily covered divan. That was certainly not Ben’s bed; so they slept together. I listened to his rigmarole almost without any surprise, almost as if it were a cassette which I myself had invented. I felt at the same time angry, confused, and tormented by the certainty that Hartley was in the house, silent, hiding from me. Why?

One thing I had firmly decided beforehand was that however Ben reacted I was not going to lose my temper or display any emotion. It was certainly at this moment not easy to retain my mask of urbanity. Ben, after his speech, was standing stiffly, wrought up by his own words, frowning as if puzzled and staring at the photo of the cat. He had not raised his voice, indeed he had spoken in rather low though emphatic tones, and he had not yet opened the door. Doubtless he wanted, when he did so, to be sure of making a quick job of getting me out of the house.

I felt my accursed tendency to blush betraying me. My face and neck had changed colour, my cheeks were blazing. I said as coolly and airily as I could, ‘Well, all right, but I hope you’ll think it over. After all we are neighbours. And if you think I’m some sort of jet set grandee or something you’re quite wrong. I’m a very simple person, as I hope you’ll discover. I’ll write to you again later on. I wonder if I could see Mary just for a moment before I go?’

‘She isn’t here.’

‘I expect she’s out shopping. Maybe she’ll be back soon? I’d love to see her.’

‘She isn’t here!’ Ben picked up the envelope and the invitation card from the bed and hurled them onto the floor. Then he threw the door wide open with a crash.

He was standing between me and the door, and there was an awkward moment. He backed a little and I made a concessive flourishing gesture with my hand, instinctively designed to dissipate the sudden aura of violence. I got past him into the hall and began to fumble with the front door. Ben, who had immediately followed me, began to open the door and our hands touched. I then had to sidestep again to get out of the house. I was not able to look back towards the kitchen, and was in any case blind with emotion. I saw with terrible clarity the glaring scarlet and orange of some extremely large roses growing beside the path. The door banged. I fumbled hastily with the complicated fastening of the gate and managed to get out onto the pavement. I walked fast down the hill. I did not run. I began to walk more slowly, more slowly, and by the time I reached the village I was strolling. Acute feelings of anger, fear and a sort of boiling shame gradually subsided. Had I scuttled out like a frightened dog? I decided that the answer to that question did not matter. I touched my burning cheeks and cooled them with the back of my hand.

And as the violent feelings became calmer another emotion, darker, deeper, came slowly up from below. Or rather there were two emotions closely, blackly, coiled together. I felt a piercing pain connected with the vision of that mean flimsily covered divan and with the inference that… Hartley… slept… with that brutal ageing schoolboy. I knew that I felt this particular pain now not just because of the divan, but because, until I had made sure of what I had made sure of, I had been attempting to block out altogether certain reactions to the situation, certain pictures, certain terrible sensations. The other emotion which now, closely embraced with this one, rose dark and gleaming to the surface was: a kind of frightful glee. Ben was just as I had-feared-and hoped. He was a hateful tyrant. He was a thoroughly nasty man. And so… And so…

History