The Acceptance World

3

EARLY in the morning, snow was still drifting from a darkened sky across the diamond lattices of the window-panes; floating drearily down upon the white lawns and grey muddy paths of a garden flanked by pines and fir trees. Through these coniferous plantations, which arose above thick laurel bushes, appeared at no great distance glimpses of two or three other houses similar in style to the one in which I found myself; the same red brick and gables, the same walls covered with ivy or Virginia creeper.

This was, no doubt, a settlement of prosperous business men; a reservation, like those created for indigenous inhabitants, or wild animal life, in some region invaded by alien elements: a kind of refuge for beings unfitted to battle with modern conditions, where they might live their own lives, undisturbed and unexploited by an aggressive outer world. In these confines the species might be saved from extinction. I felt miles away from everything, lying there in that bedroom: almost as if I were abroad. The weather was still exceedingly cold. I thought over a conversation I had once had with Barnby.

‘Has any writer ever told the truth about women?’ he had asked.

One of Barnby’s affectations was that he had read little or nothing, although, as a matter of fact, he knew rather thoroughly a small, curiously miscellaneous collection of books.

‘Few in this country have tried.’

‘No one would believe it if they did.’

‘Possibly. Nor about men either, if it comes to that.’

‘I intend no cheap cynicism,’ Barnby said. ‘It is merely that in print the truth is not credible for those who have not thought deeply of the matter.’

‘That is true of almost everything.’

‘To some extent. But painting, for example — where women are concerned — is quite different from writing. In painting you can state everything there is to be said on the subject. In other words, the thing is treated purely aesthetically, almost scientifically. Writers always seem to defer to the wishes of the women themselves.’

‘So do painters. What about Reynolds or Boucher?’

‘Of course, of course,’ said Barnby, whose capacity for disregarding points made against him would have supplied the foundation for a dazzling career at the Bar. ‘But in writing — perhaps, as you say, chiefly writing in this country — there is no equivalent, say, of Renoir’s painting. Renoir did not think that all women’s flesh was literally a material like pink satin. He used that colour and texture as a convention to express in a simple manner certain pictorial ideas of his own about women. In fact he did so in order to get on with the job in other aspects of his picture. I never find anything like that in a novel.’

‘You find plenty of women with flesh like that sitting in the Ritz.’

‘Maybe. And I can paint them. But can you write about them?’

‘No real tradition of how women behave exists in English writing. In France there is at least a good rough and ready convention, perhaps not always correct — riddled with every form of romanticism — but at least a pattern to which a writer can work. A French novelist may conform with the convention, or depart from it. His readers know, more or less, which he is doing. Here, every female character has to be treated empirically.’

‘Well, after all, so does every woman,’ said Barnby, another of whose dialectical habits was suddenly to switch round and argue against himself. ‘One of the troubles, I think, is that there are too many novelists like St. John Clarke.’

‘But novelists of the first rank have not always been attracted to women physically.’

‘If of the first rank,’ said Barnby, ‘they may rise above it. If anything less, homosexual novelists are, I believe, largely responsible for some of the extraordinary ideas that get disseminated about women and their behaviour.’

Barnby’s sententious tone had already indicated to me that he was himself entangled in some new adventure. Those utterances, which Mr. Deacon used to call ‘Barnby’s generalisations about women’, were almost always a prelude to a story involving some woman individually. So it had turned out on that occasion.

‘When you first make a hit with someone,’ he had continued, ‘you think everything is going all right with the girl, just because it is all right with you. But when you are more used to things, you are always on your guard — prepared for trouble of one sort or another.’

‘Who is it this time?’

‘A young woman I met on a train.’

‘How promiscuous.’

‘She inspired a certain confidence.’

‘And things are going wrong?’

‘On the contrary, going rather well. That is what makes me suspicious.’

‘Have you painted her?’

Barnby rummaged among the brushes, tubes of paint, newspapers, envelopes and bottles that littered the table; coming at last to a large portfolio from which he took a pencil drawing. The picture was of a girl’s head. She looked about twenty. The features, suggested rather than outlined, made her seem uncertain of herself, perhaps on the defensive. Her hair was untidy. There was an air of self- conscious rebellion. Something about the portrait struck me as familiar.

‘What is her name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why not?’

‘She won’t tell me.’

‘How very secretive.’

‘That’s what I think.’

‘How often has she been here?’

‘Two or three times.’

I examined the drawing again.

‘I’ve met her.’

‘Who is she?’

‘I’m trying to remember.’

‘Have a good think,’ said Barnby, sighing. ‘I like to clear these matters up.’

But for the moment I was unable to recall the girl’s name. I had the impression our acquaintance had been slight, and was of a year or two earlier. There had been something absurd, or laughable, in the background of the occasion when we had met.

‘It would be only polite to reveal her identity by now,’ Barnby said, returning the drawing to the portfolio and making a grimace.

‘How did it start?’

‘I was coming back from a week-end with the Manaschs’. She arrived in the compartment about an hour before we reached London. We began to talk about films. For some reason we got on to the French Revolution. She said she was on the side of the People.’

‘Dark eyes and reddish hair?’

‘The latter unbrushed.’

‘Christian name, Anne?’

‘There was certainly an “A” on her handkerchief. That was a clue I forgot to tell you.’

‘Generally untidy?’

‘Decidedly. As to baths, I shouldn’t think she overdid them.’

‘I think I can place her.’

Don’t keep me in suspense.’

‘Lady Anne Stepney.’

‘A friend of yours?’

‘I sat next to her once at dinner years ago. She made the same remark about the French Revolution.’

‘Did she, indeed,’ said Barnby, perhaps a shade piqued at this apparently correct guess. ‘Did you follow up those liberal convictions at the time?’

‘On the contrary. I doubt if she would even remember my name. Her sister married Charles Stringham, whom I’ve sometimes talked of. They are getting a divorce, so I saw in the paper.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Barnby. ‘I read about it too. Stringham was the Great Industrialist’s secretary at one moment, wasn’t he? I met him with Baby and liked him. He has that very decorative mother, Mrs. Foxe, whom really I wouldn’t—’

He became silent; then returned to the subject of the girl.

‘Her parents are called Bridgnorth?’

‘That’s it.’

‘One starts these things,’ Barnby said, ‘and then the question arises: how is one to continue them? Before you know where you are, you are thoroughly entangled. That is what we all have to remember.’

‘We do, indeed.’

Lying in bed in the Templers’ house, feeling more than a little unwilling to rise into a chilly world, I thought of these words of Barnby’s. There could be no doubt that I was now, as he had said, ‘thoroughly entangled’.

Everyone came down late to breakfast that morning. Mona was in a decidedly bad temper. Her irritation was perhaps due to an inner awareness that a love affair was in the air, the precise location of which she was unable to identify; for I was fairly certain that neither of the Templers guessed anything was ‘on’ between Jean and myself. They seemed, indeed, fully occupied by the discord of their own relationship. As it happened, I found no opportunity to be alone with Jean. She seemed almost deliberately to arrange that we should always be chaperoned by one of the other two. She would once more have appeared as calm, distant, unknown to me, as when first seen, had she not twice smiled submissively, almost shyly, when our eyes met.

Mona’s sulkiness cast a gloom over the house. Although obviously lazy and easy-going in her manner of life, she possessed also an energy and egotism that put considerable force behind this display of moodiness. Templer made more than one effort to cheer her up, from time to time becoming annoyed himself at his lack of success; when conciliation would suddenly turn to teasing. However, his continued attempts to fall in with his wife’s whims led in due course to an unexpected development in the composition of the party.

We were sitting in a large room of nebulous character, where most of the life of the household was carried on, reading the Sunday papers, talking, and playing the gramophone. The previous night’s encounter with Quiggin had enflamed Mona’s memories of her career as an artist’s model. She began to talk of the ‘times’ she had had in various studios, and to question me about Mark Members; perhaps regretting that she had allowed this link with her past to be severed so entirely. Professionally, she had never come across such figures as Augustus John, or Epstein, trafficking chiefly with a group of the lesser academic painters; though she had known a few young men, like Members and Barnby, who frequented more ‘advanced’ circles. She had never even sat for Isbister, so she told me. All the same, that period of her life was now sufficiently far away to be clouded with romance; at least when compared in her own mind with her married circumstances.

When I agreed that both Members and Quiggin were by then, in their different ways, quite well-known ‘young writers’, she became more than ever enthusiastic about them, insisting that she must meet Quiggin again. In fact conversation seemed to have been deliberately steered by her into these channels with that end in view. Templer, lying in an armchair with his legs stretched out in front of him, listened indifferently to her talk while he idly turned the pages of the News of the World. His wife’s experiences among ‘artists’ probably cropped up fairly often as a subject: a regular, almost legitimate method of exciting a little domestic jealousy when life at home seemed flat. Her repeated questions at last caused me to explain the change of secretary made by St. John Clarke.

‘But this is all too thrilling,’ she said. ‘I told you St. John Clarke was my favourite author. Can’t we get Mr. Quiggin to lunch and ask him what really has happened?’

‘Well—’

‘Look, Pete,’ she exclaimed noisily. ‘Do let’s ask J. G. Quiggin to lunch today. He could get a train. Nick would ring him up — you will, won’t you, darling?’

Templer threw the News of the World on to the carpet, and, turning towards me, raised his eyebrows and nodded his head slowly up and down to indicate the fantastic lengths to which caprice could be carried by a woman.

‘But would Mr. Quiggin want to come?’ he asked, imitating Mona’s declamatory tone. ‘Wouldn’t he want to finish writing one of his brilliant articles?’

‘We could try.’

‘By all means, if you like. Half-past eleven on the day of the luncheon invitation is considered a bit late in the best circles, but fortunately we do not move in the best circles. I suppose there will be enough to eat. You remember Jimmy is bringing a girl friend?’

‘Jimmy doesn’t matter.’

‘I agree.’

‘What do you think, Nick?’ she asked. ‘Would Quiggin come?’

One of the charms of staying with the Templers had seemed the promise of brief escape from that routine of the literary world so relentlessly implied by the mere thought of Quiggin. It was the world in which I was thoroughly at home, and certainly did not wish to change for another, only for once to enjoy a week-end away from it. However, to prevent the Templers from asking Quiggin to lunch if they so desired was scarcely justifiable to anyone concerned. Besides, I was myself curious to hear further details regarding St. John Clarke; although I should have preferred by then to have heard Members’s side of the story. Apart from all that — indeed quite overriding such considerations — were my own violent feelings about Jean which had to be reduced inwardly to some manageable order.

‘Who is “Jimmy”?’ I asked.

‘Surely you remember Jimmy Stripling when you stayed with us years ago?’ said Templer. ‘My brother-in-law. At least he was until Babs divorced him. Somehow I’ve never been able to get him out of my life. Babs can demand her freedom and go her own way. For me there is no legal redress. Jimmy hangs round my neck like a millstone. I can’t even get an annulment.’

‘Didn’t he go in for motor racing?’

‘That’s the chap.’

‘Who disliked Sunny Farebrother so much?’

‘Hated his guts. Well, Jimmy is coming to lunch today and bringing some sort of a piece with him — he asked if he could. Not too young, I gather, so your eyes need not brighten up. I can’t remember her name. I could not refuse for old times’ sake, though he is a terrible bore is poor old Jimmy these days. He had a spill at Brooklands a year or two ago. Being shot out of his car arse-first seems to have affected his brain in some way — though you wouldn’t think there was much there to affect.’

‘What does he do?’

‘An underwriter at Lloyd’s. It is not his business capacity so much as his private life that has seized up. He still rakes in a certain amount of dough. But he has taken up astrology and theosophy and numerology and God knows what else. Could your friend Quiggin stand that? Probably love it, wouldn’t he? The more the merrier so far as I’m concerned.’

‘Quiggin would eat it up.’

‘Do ring him, then,’ said Mona.

‘Shall I?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Templer. ‘The telephone is next door.’

There was no reply from Quiggin’s Bloomsbury flat, so I rang St. John Clarke’s number; on the principle that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. The bell buzzed for some seconds, and then Quiggin’s voice sounded, gratingly, at the other end of the line. As I had supposed, he was already engaged on his new duties. At first he was very suspicious of my seeking him out at that place. These suspicions were not allayed when I explained about the invitation to lunch with the Templers.

‘But today’ he said, irritably. ‘Lunch today? Why, it’s nearly lunch-time already.’

I repeated to him Mona’s apologies for the undoubted lateness of the invitation.

‘But I don’t know them,’ said Quiggin. ‘Are they very rich?’

He still sounded cross, although a certain interest was aroused in him. I referred again to his earlier meeting with Mona.

‘So she remembered me at Deacon’s party after all?’ he asked, rather more hopefully this time.

‘She has talked of nothing but that evening.’

‘I don’t think I ought to leave St. J.’

‘Is he bad?’

‘Better, as a matter of fact. But there ought to be someone responsible here.’

‘Couldn’t you get Mark?’ I asked, to tease him.

‘St. J. does not want to see Mark just at the moment,’ said Quiggin, in his flattest voice, ignoring any jocular implications the question might have possessed. ‘But I suppose there is really no reason why the maid should not look after him perfectly well if I went out for a few hours.’

This sounded like weakening.

‘You could catch the train if you started now.’

He was silent for a moment, evidently anxious to accept, but at the same time trying to find some excuse for making himself so easily available.

‘Mona reads your articles.’

‘She does?’

‘Always quoting them.’

‘Intelligently?’

‘Come and judge for yourself.’

‘Should I like their house?’

‘You’ll have the time of your life.’

‘I think I will,’ he said. ‘Of course I shall be met at the station?’

‘Of course.’

‘All right, then.’

He replaced the receiver with a bang, as if closing an acrimonious interchange. I returned to the drawing-room. Templer was sprawling on the sofa, apparently not much interested whether Quiggin turned up or not.

‘He’s coming.’

‘Is he really?’ said Mona, shrilly. ‘How wonderful.’

‘Mona gets a bit bored with my friends,’ said Templer. ‘I must say I don’t blame her. Now you can sample something of another kind at lunch, sweetie.’

‘Well, we never see anybody interesting, sweetie,’ said Mona, putting on a stage pout. ‘He’ll at least remind me of the days when I used to meet intelligent people.’

‘Intelligent people?’ said Templer. ‘Come, come, darling, you aren’t being very polite to Nick. He regards himself as tremendously intelligent.’

‘Then we are providing some intelligent company for him,’ said Mona. ‘Your ex-brother-in-law isn’t likely to come out with anything very sparkling in the way of conversation — unless he has changed a lot since we went with him to Wimbledon.’

‘What do you expect at Wimbledon?’ said Templer. ‘To sit in the centre court listening to a flow of epigrams about foot-faults and forehand drives? Still, I see what you mean.’

I remembered Jimmy Stripling chiefly on account of various practical jokes in which he had been concerned when, as a boy, I had stayed with the Templers. In this horseplay he had usually had the worst of it. He remained in my memory as a big, gruff, bad-tempered fellow, full of guilty feelings about having taken no part in the war. I had not much cared for him. I wondered how he would get on with Quiggin, who could be crushing to people he disliked. However, one of the traits possessed by Quiggin in common with his new employer was a willingness to go almost anywhere where a free meal was on offer; and this realistic approach to social life implied, inevitably, if not toleration of other people, at least a certain rough and ready technique for dealing with all sorts. I could not imagine why Mona was so anxious to see Quiggin again. At that time I failed entirely to grasp the extent to which in her eyes Quiggin represented high romance.

‘What happened to Babs when she parted from Jimmy Stripling?’

‘Married a lord,’ said Templer. ‘The family is going up in the world. But I expect she still thinks about Jimmy. After all, you couldn’t easily forget a man with breath like his.’

Some interruption changed the subject before I was able to ask the name of Babs’s third husband. Mona went to tell the servants that there would be an additional guest. Templer followed her to look for more cigarettes. For a moment Jean and I were left alone together. I slipped my hand under her arm. She pressed down upon it, giving me a sense of being infinitely near to her; an assurance that all would be well. There is always a real and an imaginary person you are in love with; sometimes you love one best, sometimes the other. At that moment it was the real one I loved. We had scarcely time to separate and begin a formal conversation when Mona returned to the room.

There the four of us remained until the sound came of a car churning up snow before the front door. This was Quiggin’s arrival. Being, in a way, so largely responsible for his presence at the Templers’ house, I was relieved to observe, when he entered the room, that he had cleaned himself up a bit since the previous evening. Now he was wearing a suit of cruelly blue cloth and a green knitted tie. From the start it was evident that he intended to make himself agreeable. His sharp little eyes darted round the walls, taking in the character of his hosts and their house.

‘I see you have an Isbister in the hall,’ he said, dryly.

The harsh inflexion of his voice made it possible to accept this comment as a compliment, or, alternatively, a shared joke. Templer at once took the words in the latter sense.

‘Couldn’t get rid of it,’ he said. ‘I suppose you don’t know anybody who would make an offer? An upset price, of course. Now’s the moment.’

‘I’ll look about,’ said Quiggin. ‘Isbister was a typical artist- business man produced by a decaying society, don’t you think? As a matter of fact Nicholas and I have got to have a talk about Isbister in the near future.’

He grinned at me. I hoped he was not going to raise the whole question of St. John Clarke’s introduction there and then. His tone might have meant anything or nothing, so far as his offer of help was concerned. Perhaps he really intended to suggest that he would try to sell the picture for Templer; and get a rake-off. His eyes continued to stray over the very indifferent nineteenth-century seascapes that covered the walls; hung together in patches as if put up hurriedly when the place was first occupied. No doubt that was exactly what had happened to them. In the Templers’ house by the sea they had hung in the dining-room. Before the Isbister could be discussed further, the two other guests arrived.

The first through the door was a tall, rather overpowering lady, followed closely by Jimmy Stripling himself, looking much older than I had remembered him. The smoothness of the woman’s movements, as she advanced towards Mona, almost suggested that Stripling was propelling her in front of him like an automaton on castors. I knew at once that I had seen her before, but could not at first recall the occasion: one so different, as it turned out, from that of the moment.

‘How are you, Jimmy?’ said Templer.

Stripling took the woman by the arm.

‘This is Mrs. Erdleigh,’ he said, in a rather strangled voice. ‘I have told you so much about her, you know, and here she is.’

Mrs. Erdleigh shook hands graciously all round, much as if she were a visiting royalty. When she came to me, she took my hand in hers and smiled indulgently.

‘You see I was right,’ she said. ‘You did not believe me, did you? It is just a year.’

Once more, suffocating waves of musk-like scent were distilled by her presence. By then, as a matter of fact, a month or two must have passed beyond the year that she had foretold would precede our next meeting. All the same, it was a respectable piece of prognostication. I thought it wiser to leave Uncle Giles unmentioned. If she wished to speak of him, she could always raise the subject herself. I reflected, at the same time, how often this exterior aspect of Uncle Giles’s personality must have remained ‘unmentioned’ throughout his life; especially where his relations were concerned.

However, Mrs. Erdleigh gave the impression of knowing very well what was advisable to ‘mention’ and what inadvisable. She looked well; younger, if anything, than when I had seen her at the Ufford, and smartly dressed in a style that suggested less than before her inexorably apocalyptic role in life. In fact, her clothes of that former occasion seemed now, in contrast, garments of a semi- professional kind; vestments, as it were, appropriate to the ritual of her vocation. With Stripling under her control — as he certainly was — she could no doubt allow herself frivolously to enjoy the fashion of the moment.

Stripling himself, on the other hand, had changed noticeably for the worse in the ten years or more gone since our former meeting. His bulk still gave the impression that he was taking up more than his fair share of the room, but the body, although big, seemed at the same time shrivelled. His hair, still parted in the middle, was grey and grizzled. Although at that time still perhaps under forty, he looked prematurely old. There was an odd, disconnected stare in his eyes, which started from his head when he spoke at all emphatically. He appeared to be thoroughly under the thumb of Mrs. Erdleigh, whose manner, kindly though firm, implied supervision of a person not wholly responsible for his own actions. Later, it was noticeable how fixedly he watched her, while in conversation he inclined to refer even the most minor matters to her arbitration. In spite of his cowed air, he was far more friendly than when we had met before, an occasion he assured me he remembered perfectly.

‘We had a lot of fun that summer with my old pal, Sunny Farebrother, didn’t we?’ he said in a melancholy voice.

He spoke as if appealing for agreement that the days when fun could be had with Sunny Farebrother, or indeed with anyone else, were now long past.

‘Do you remember how we were going to put a po in his hat-box or something?’ he went on. ‘How we all laughed. Good old Sunny. I never seem to see the old boy now, though I hear he’s making quite a bit of money. It’s just the same with so many folks one used to know. They pass by on the other side or join the Great Majority.’

His face had lighted up when, upon entering the room, he had seen Jean, and he had taken both her hands in his and kissed her enthusiastically. She did not seem to regard this act as anything out of the way, nor even specially repugnant to her. I felt a twinge of annoyance at that kiss. I should have liked no one else to kiss her for at least twenty-four hours. However, I reminded myself that such familiarity was reasonable enough in an ex-brother-in-law; in fact, if it came to that, reasonable enough in any old friend; though for that reason no more tolerable to myself. Stripling also held Jean’s arm for a few seconds, but, perhaps aware of Mrs. Erdleigh’s eye upon him, removed his hand abruptly. Fumbling in his pocket, he produced a long gold cigarette-case and began to fill it from a packet of Players. Although physically dilapidated, he still gave the impression of being rich. The fact that his tweeds were crumpled and the cuffs of his shirt greasy somehow added to this impression of wealth. If there had been any doubt about Stripling’s money, his satisfactory financial position could have been estimated from Quiggin’s manner towards him, a test like litmus paper where affluence was concerned. Quiggin was evidently anxious — as I was myself — to learn more of this strange couple.

‘How’s the world, Jimmy?’ said Templer, clapping his former brother-in-law on the back, and catching my eye as he handed him an unusually stiff drink.

‘Well,’ said Stripling, speaking slowly, as if Templer’s enquiry deserved very serious consideration before an answer was made, ‘well, I don’t think the World will get much better as long as it clings to material values.’

At this Quiggin laughed in a more aggressive manner than he had adopted hitherto. He was evidently trying to decide whether it would be better to be ingratiating to Stripling or to attack him; either method could be advantageous from its respective point of view.

‘I think material values are just what want reassessing,’ Quiggin said. ‘Nor do I see how we can avoid clinging to them, since they are the only values that truly exist. However, they might be linked with a little social justice for a change.’

Stripling disregarded this remark, chiefly, I think, because his mind was engrossed with preoccupations so utterly different that he had not the slightest idea what Quiggin was talking about. Templer’s eyes began to brighten as he realised that elements were present that promised an enjoyable clash of opinions. Luncheon was announced. We passed into the dining-room. As I sat down at the table I saw Mrs. Erdleigh’s forefinger touch Mona’s hand.

‘As soon as I set eyes on you, my dear,’ she said, gently, ‘I knew that you belonged to the Solstice of Summer. When is your birthday?’

As usual, her misty gaze seemed to envelop completely whomsoever she addressed. There could be no doubt that her personality had immediately delighted Mona, who had by then already lost all her earlier sulkiness. Indeed, as the meal proceeded, Mrs. Erdleigh showed herself to be just what Mona had required. She provided limitlessly a kind of conversational balm at once maternal and sacerdotal. The two of them settled down to a detailed discussion across the table of horoscopes and their true relation to peculiarities of character. I was for some reason reminded of Sillery dealing with some farouche undergraduate whom he wished especially to enclose within his net. Even Mona’s so recently excited interest in Quiggin was forgotten in this torrent of astrological self-examination, systematically controlled, in spite of its urgency of expression, by such a sympathetic informant. Mona seemed now entirely absorbed in Mrs. Erdleigh, whose manner, vigorous, calm, mystical, certainly dominated the luncheon table.

The meal passed off, therefore, with more success than might have been expected from such oddly assorted company. I reflected, not for the first time, how mistaken it is to suppose there exists some ‘ordinary’ world into which it is possible at will to wander. All human beings, driven as they are at different speeds by the same Furies, are at close range equally extraordinary. This party’s singular composition was undoubtedly enhanced by the commonplace nature of its surroundings. At the same time it was evident that the Templers themselves saw nothing in the least out-of-the-way about the guests collected round their table for Sunday luncheon; except possibly the fact that both Quiggin and I were professionally connected with books.

If Quiggin disapproved — and he did undoubtedly disapprove — of the turn taken by Mona’s and Mrs. Erdleigh’s talk, he made at first no effort to indicate his dissatisfaction. He was in possession of no clue to the fact that he had been arbitrarily deposed from the position of most honoured guest in the house that day. In any case, as a person who himself acted rarely if ever from frivolous or disinterested motives, he would have found it hard, perhaps impossible, to understand the sheer irresponsibility of his invitation. To have been asked simply and solely on account of Mona’s whim, if he believed that to be the reason, must have been in itself undeniably flattering to his vanity; but, as Mr. Deacon used sadly to remark, ‘those who enjoy the delights of caprice must also accustom themselves to bear caprice’s lash’. Even if Quiggin were aware of this harsh law’s operation, he had no means of appreciating the ruthless manner in which it had been put into execution that afternoon. Mona’s wish to see him had been emphasised by me when I had spoken with him on the telephone. If she continued to ignore him, Quiggin would logically assume that for one reason or another either Templer, or I myself, must have desired his presence. He would suspect some ulterior motive as soon as he began to feel sceptical as to Mona’s interest in him being the cause of his invitation. As the meal progressed, this lack of attention on her part undoubtedly renewed earlier suspicions. By the time we were drinking coffee he was already showing signs of becoming less amenable.

I think this quite fortuitous situation brought about by the presence of Mrs. Erdleigh was not without effect on Quiggin’s future behaviour towards Mona herself. If Mrs. Erdleigh had not been at the table he would undoubtedly have received the full force of his hostess’s admiration. This would naturally have flattered him, but his shrewdness would probably also have assessed her deference as something fairly superficial. As matters turned out, apparent disregard for him keenly renewed his own former interest in her. Perhaps Quiggin thought she was deliberately hiding her true feelings at luncheon. Perhaps he was right in thinking that. With a woman it is impossible to say.

In the early stages of the meal Quiggin had been perfectly agreeable, talking to Jean of changes taking place in contemporary poetry, and of the personalities involved in these much advertised literary experiments. He explained that he considered the work of Mark Members commendable, if more than a trifle old-fashioned.

‘Mark has developed smoothly from beginnings legitimately influenced by Browning, paused perhaps too long in byways frequented by the Symbolists, and reached in his own good time a categorically individual style and phraseology. Unfortunately his œuvre is at present lacking in any real sense of social significance.’

He glanced at Mona after saying this, perhaps hoping that a former friend of Gypsy Jones might notice the political implications of his words. However he failed to catch her attention, and turned almost immediately to lighter matters, evidently surprising even Templer by sagacious remarks regarding restaurant prices in the South of France, and an unexpected familiarity with the Barrio chino quarter in Barcelona. However, in spite of this conversational versatility, I was aware that Quiggin was inwardly turning sour. This could be seen from time to time in his face, especially in the glances of dislike he was beginning to cast in the direction of Stripling. He had probably decided that, rich though Stripling might be, he was not worth cultivating.

Stripling, for his part, did not talk much; when he spoke chiefly addressing himself to Jean. He had shown — perhaps not surprisingly — no interest whatever in Quiggin’s admirably lucid exposition of the New School’s poetic diction, in which Communist convictions were expressed in unexpected metre and rhyme. On the other hand Stripling did sometimes rouse himself in an attempt to break into the stream of astrological chatter that bubbled between Mrs. Erdleigh and Mona. His mind seemed to wander perpetually through the mystic territories of clairvoyance, a world of the spirit no doubt incarnate to him in Mrs. Erdleigh herself. Although this appearance of permanent preoccupation, coupled with his peculiar, jerky manner, conveyed the impression that he might not be quite sane, Templer seemed to attach more importance to Stripling’s City gossip than his father had ever done. Mr. Templer, I remembered, had been very curt with his son-in-law when financial matters were in question.

All the while I felt horribly bored with the whole lot of them, longing to be alone once more with Jean, and yet also in some odd manner almost dreading the moment when that time should come; one of those mixed sensations so characteristic of intense emotional excitement. There is always an element of unreality, perhaps even of slight absurdity, about someone you love. It seemed to me that she was sitting in an awkward, almost melodramatic manner, half-turned towards Quiggin, while she crumbled her bread with fingers long and subtly shaped. I seemed to be looking at a picture of her, yet felt that I could easily lose control of my senses, and take her, then and there, in my arms.

‘But in these days you can’t believe in such things as astrology,’ said Quiggin. ‘Why, even apart from other considerations, the very astronomical discoveries made since the time of the ancients have negatived what was once thought about the stars.’

We had returned to the drawing-room. Already it was obvious that the afternoon must be spent indoors. The leaden, sunless sky, from which sleet was now falling with a clatter on to the frozen snow of the lawn, created in the house an atmosphere at once gloomy and sinister: a climate in itself hinting of necromancy. The electric light had to be turned on, just as if we were sitting in the lounge of the Ufford. The heavy claret drunk at luncheon prompted a desire to lie at full length on the sofa, or at least to sit well back and stretch out the legs and yawn. For a second — soft and exciting and withdrawn immediately — I felt Jean’s hand next to mine on the cushion. Quiggin lurked in the corners of the room, pretending to continue his examination of the pictures, his silence scarcely concealing the restlessness that had overtaken him. From time to time he shot out a remark, more or less barbed. He must by then have tumbled to the implications of his own status at the party. Nettled at Mrs. Erdleigh’s capture of Mona, he was probably planning how best to express his irritation openly.

‘Oh, but I do,’ said Mona, drawling out the words. ‘I think those occult things are almost always right. They are in my case, I know.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Quiggin, brushing aside this affirmation with a tolerant grin, as the mere fancy of a pretty girl, and at the same time addressing himself more directly to Stripling, at whom his first attack had certainly been aimed, ‘but you can’t believe all that — a hard-headed business man like yourself?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Stripling, ignoring, in fact probably not noticing, the sneering, disagreeable tone of Quiggin’s voice. ‘It’s just the fact that I am occupied all day long with material things that makes me realise they are not the whole of life.’

However, his eyes began to start from his head, so that he was perhaps becoming aware that Quiggin was deliberately teasing him. No doubt he was used to encountering a certain amount of dissent from his views, though opposition was probably not voiced as usual in so direct and dialectical a manner as this. Quiggin continued to smile derisively.

‘You certainly find in me no champion of the City’s methods,’ he said. ‘But at least what you call “material things” represent reality.’

‘Hardly at all.’

‘Oh, come.’

‘Money is a delusion.’

‘Not if you haven’t got any.’

‘That is just when you realise most money’s unreality.’

‘Why not get rid of yours, then?’

‘I might any day.’

‘Let me know when you decide to.’

‘You must understand the thread that runs through life,’ said Stripling, now speaking rather wildly, and looking stranger than ever. ‘It does not matter that there may be impurities and errors in one man’s method of seeking the Way. What matters is that he is seeking it — and knows there is a Way to be found.’

‘Commencement — Opposition — Equilibrium,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh in her softest voice, as if to offer Stripling some well-earned moral support. ‘You can’t get away from it— Thesis — Antithesis — Synthesis.’

‘That’s just what I mean,’ said Stripling, as if her words brought him instant relief. ‘Brahma — Vishnu — Siva.’

‘It all sounded quite Hegelian until you brought in the Indian gods,’ said Quiggin angrily.

He would no doubt have continued to argue had not a new element been introduced at this moment by Jean: an object that became immediately the focus of attention.

While this discussion had been in progress she had slipped from the room. I had been wondering how I could myself quietly escape from the others and look for her, when she returned carrying in her hand what first appeared to be a small wooden palette for oil paints. Two castors, or wheels, were attached to this heart-shaped board, the far end of which was transfixed with a lead pencil. I recalled the occasion when Sunny Farebrother had ruined so many of Stripling’s starched collars in a patent device in which he had a business interest, and I wondered whether this was something of a similar kind. However, Mrs. Erdleigh immediately recognised the significance of the toy and began to laugh a little reprovingly.

‘Planchette?’ she said. ‘You know, I really rather disapprove. I do not think Good Influences make themselves known through Planchette as a rule. And the things it writes cause such a lot of bad feeling sometimes.’

‘It really belongs to Baby,’ said Jean. ‘She heard of it somewhere and made Sir Magnus Donners get her one. She brought it round to us once when she was feeling depressed about some young man of hers. We couldn’t make it work. She forgot to take it away and I have been carrying it round — meaning to give it back to her — ever since.’

Stripling’s eyes lit up and began once more to dilate.

‘Shall we do it?’ he asked, in a voice that shook slightly. ‘Do let’s.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, speaking kindly, as if to a child who has proposed a game inevitably associated with the breakage of china, ‘I know trouble will come of it if we do.’

‘But for once,’ begged Stripling. ‘Don’t you think for once, Myra? It’s such a rotten afternoon.’

‘Then don’t complain afterwards that I did not warn you.’

Although I had often heard of Planchette, I had never, as it happened, seen the board in operation; and I felt some curiosity myself to discover whether its writings would indeed set down some of the surprising disclosures occasionally described by persons in the habit of playing with it. The very name was new to both the Templers. Stripling explained that the machine was placed above a piece of blank paper, upon which the pencil wrote words, when two or three persons lightly rested their fingers upon the wooden surface: castors and pencil point moving without deliberate agency. Stripling was obviously delighted to be allowed for once to indulge in this forbidden practice, in spite of Mrs. Erdleigh’s tempered disparagement. Whether her disapproval was really deep-seated, or due merely to a conviction that the game was unwise in that particular company, could only be guessed.

Quiggin was plainly annoyed; even rather insulted, at this step taken towards an actual physical attempt to invoke occult forces.

‘I thought such things had been forgotten since the court of Napoleon III,’ he said. ‘You don’t really believe it will write anything, do you?’

‘You may be surprised by the knowledge it displays of your own life, old chap,’ said Stripling, with an effort to recover the breeziness of earlier days.

‘Obviously — when someone is rigging it.’

‘It’s hardly possible to rig it, old chap. You try and write something, just using the board by yourself. You’ll find it damned difficult.’

Quiggin gave an annoyed laugh. Some sheets of foolscap, blue and ruled with red lines for keeping accounts, were found in a drawer. One of these large sheets of paper was set out upon a table. The experiment began with Mona, Stripling and Mrs. Erdleigh as executants, the last of whom, having once registered her protest, showed no ungraciousness in her manner of joining the proceedings, if they were fated to take place. Templer obviously felt complete scepticism regarding the whole matter, which he could not be induced to take seriously even to the extent of agreeing to participate. Quiggin, too, refused to join in, though he showed an almost feverish interest in what was going forward.

Naturally, Quiggin was delighted when, after a trial of several minutes, no results whatever were achieved. Then the rest of us, in various combinations of persons, attempted to work the board. All these efforts were unsuccessful. Sometimes the pencil shot violently across the surface of the paper, covering sheet after sheet, as a new surface was substituted, with dashes and scribbles. More often, it would not move at all.

‘You none of you seem to be getting very far,’ said Templer.

‘It may be waste of time,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh. ‘Planchette can be very capricious. Perhaps there is an unsympathetic presence in the room.’

‘I should not be at all surprised,’ said Quiggin, speaking with elaborately satirical emphasis.

He stood with his heels on the fender, his hands in his pockets — rather in the position Le Bas used to adopt when giving a lecture on wiping your boots before coming into the house — very well pleased with the course things were taking.

‘I think you are horrid,’ said Mona.

She made a face at him; in itself a sign of a certain renewed interest.

‘I don’t think you ought to believe in such things,’ said Quiggin, nasally.

‘But I do:

She smiled encouragingly. She had probably begun to feel that occult phenomena, at least by its absence, was proving itself a bore; and that perhaps she might find more fun in returning to her original project of exploring Quiggin’s own possibilities. However, this exchange between them was immediately followed by sudden development among the group resting their fingers on the board. Jean and Mona had been trying their luck with Stripling as third partner. Jean now rose from the table, and, dropping one of those glances at once affectionate and enquiring that raised such a storm within me, she said: ‘You have a go.’

I took the chair and placed my fingers lightly where hers had been. Previously, when I had formed a trio with Mrs. Erdleigh and Mona — who had insisted on being party to every session — nothing of note had happened. Now, almost at once, Planchette began to move in a slow, regular motion.

At first, from the ‘feel’ of the movement, I thought Stripling must be manipulating the board deliberately. A glassy look had come into his eye and his loose, rather brutal mouth sagged open. Then the regular, up-and-down rhythm came abruptly to an end. The pencil, as if impatient of all of us, shot off the paper on to the polished wood of the table. A sentence had been written. It was inverted from where Stripling was sitting. In fact the only person who could reasonably be accused of having written the words was myself. The script was long and sloping, Victorian in character. Mrs. Erdleigh took a step forward and read it aloud:

‘Karl is not pleased.’

There was great excitement at this. Everyone crowded round our chairs.

‘You must ask who “Karl” is,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, smiling.

She was the only one who remained quite unmoved by this sudden manifestation. Such things no longer surprised her. Quiggin, on the other hand, moved quickly round to my side of the table. He seemed divided between a wish to accuse me of having written these words as a hoax, and at the same time an unwillingness to make the admission, obviously necessary in the circumstances, that any such deception must have required quite exceptional manipulative agility. In the end he said nothing, but stood there frowning hard at me.

‘Is it Karl speaking?’ asked Stripling, in a respectful, indeed reverential voice.

We replaced our hands on the board.

‘Who else,’ wrote Planchette.

‘Shall we continue?’

‘Antwortet er immer.’

‘Is that German?’ said Stripling.

‘What does it mean, Pete?’ Mona called out shrilly.

Templer looked a little surprised at this.

‘Isn’t it: “He always answers”?’ he said. ‘My German is strictly commercial — not intended for communication with the Next World.’

‘Have you a message? Please write in English if you do not mind.’

Stripling’s voice again trembled a little when he said this.

‘Nothing to the Left.’

This was decidedly enigmatic.

‘Does he mean we should move the coffee tray?’ Mona almost shouted, now thoroughly excited. ‘He doesn’t say whose left. Perhaps we should clear the whole table.’

Quiggin took a step nearer.

‘Which of you is faking this?’ he said roughly. ‘I believe it is you, Nick.’

He was grinning hard, but I could see that he was extremely irritated. I pointed out that I could not claim to write neat Victorian calligraphy sideways, and also upside-down, at considerable speed: especially when unable to see the paper written upon.

‘You must know “Nothing to the Left” is a quotation,’ Quiggin insisted.

‘Who said it?’

‘You got a degree in history, didn’t you?’

‘I must have missed out that bit.’

‘Robespierre, of course,’ said Quiggin, with great contempt. ‘He was speaking politically. Does no one in this country take politics seriously?’

I could not understand why he had become quite so angry.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ said Templer, now at last beginning to show some interest. ‘Perhaps he’ll make himself clearer if pressed.’

‘This is too exciting,’ said Mona.

She clasped her hands together. We tried again.

‘Wives in common.’

This was an uncomfortable remark. It was impossible to guess what the instrument might write next. However, everyone was far too engrossed to notice whether the comment had brought embarrassment to any individual present.

‘Look here—‘ began Quiggin.

Before he could complete the sentence, the board began once more to race beneath our fingers.

‘Force is the midwife.’

‘I hope he isn’t going to get too obstetric,’ said Templer.

Quiggin turned once more towards me. He was definitely in a rage.

‘You must know where these phrases come from,’ he said. ‘You can’t be as ignorant as that.’

‘Search me.’

‘You are trying to be funny.’

‘Never less.’

‘Marx, of course, Marx,’ said Quiggin testily, but perhaps wavering in his belief that I was responsible for faking the writing. ‘Das Kapital… The Communist Manifesto.’

‘So it’s Karl Marx, is it?’ asked Mona.

The name was evidently vaguely familiar to her, no doubt from her earlier days when she had known Gypsy Jones; had perhaps even taken part in such activities as selling War Never Pays!

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Quiggin, by implication including Mona in this reproof, probably more violently than he intended. ‘It was quite obvious that one of you was rigging the thing. I admit I can’t at present tell which of you it was. I suspect it was Nick, as he is the only one who knows I am a practising Marxist — and he persuaded me to come here.’

‘I didn’t know anything of the sort — and I’ve already told you I can’t write upside-down.’

‘Steady on,’ said Templer. ‘You can’t accuse a fellow guest of cheating at Planchette. Duels have been fought for less. This will turn into another Tranby Croft case unless we moderate our tone.’

Quiggin made a despairing gesture at such frivolity of manner.

‘I can’t believe no one present knows the quotation, “Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one,”’ he said. ‘You will be telling me next you never heard the words, “The Workers have no country.”’

‘I believe Karl Marx has been “through” before,’ said Stripling, slowly and with great solemnity. ‘Wasn’t he a revolutionary writer?’

‘He was,’ said Quiggin, with heavy irony. ‘He was a revolutionary writer.’

‘Do let’s try again,’ said Mona.

This time the writing changed to a small, niggling hand, rather like that of Uncle Giles.

‘He is sick.’

‘Who is sick?’

‘You know well.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In his room.’

‘Where is his room?’

‘The House of Books.’

The writing was getting smaller and smaller. I felt as if I were taking part in one of those scenes from Alice in Wonderland in which the characters change their size.

‘What can it mean now?’ asked Mona.

‘You have a duty.’

Quiggin’s temper seemed to have moved from annoyance, mixed with contempt, to a kind of general uneasiness.

‘I suppose it isn’t talking about St. John Clarke,’ I suggested.

Quiggin’s reaction to this remark was unexpectedly violent. His sallow skin went white, and, instead of speaking with his usual asperity, he said in a quiet, worried voice: ‘I was beginning to wonder just the same thing. I don’t know that I really ought to have left him. Look here, can I ring up the flat — just to make sure that everything is all right?’

‘Of course,’ said Templer.

‘This way?’

We tried again. Before Quiggin had reached the door, the board had moved and stopped. This time the result was disappointing. Planchette had written a single word, monosyllabic and indecent. Mona blushed.

‘That sometimes happens,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, calmly.

She spoke as if it were as commonplace to see such things written on blue ruled accounting paper as on the door or wall of an alley. Neatly detaching that half of the sheet, she tore it into small pieces and threw them into the waste-paper basket.

‘Only too often,’ said Stripling with a sigh.

He had evidently accepted the fact that his enjoyment for that afternoon was at an end. Mona giggled.

‘We will stop now,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, speaking with the voice of authority. ‘It is really no use continuing when a Bad Influence once breaks through.’

‘I’m surprised he knew such a word,’ said Templer.

We sat for a time in silence. Quiggin’s action in going to the telephone possessed the force of one of those utterly unexpected conversions, upon which a notorious drunkard swears never again to touch alcohol, or a declared pacifist enlists in the army. It was scarcely credible that Planchette should have sent him bustling out of the room to enquire after St. John Clarke’s health, even allowing for the importance to himself of the novelist as a livelihood.

‘We shall have to be departing soon, mon cher’, said Mrs. Erdleigh, showing Stripling the face of her watch.

‘Have some tea,’ said Templer. ‘It will be appearing at any moment.’

‘No, we shall certainly have to be getting along, Pete,’ said Stripling, as if conscious that, having been indulged over Planchette, he must now behave himself specially well. ‘It has been a wonderful afternoon. Quite like the old days. Wish old Sunny could have been here. Most interesting too.’

He had evidently not taken in Quiggin’s reason for hurrying to the telephone, nor had any idea of the surprising effect that Planchette’s last few sentences had had on such a professional sceptic. Perhaps he would have been pleased to know that Quiggin had acquired at least enough belief to be thrown into a nervous state by those cryptic remarks. More probably, he would not have been greatly interested. For Stripling, this had been a perfectly normal manner of passing his spare time. He would never be able to conceive how far removed were such activities from Quiggin’s daily life and manner of approaching the world. In Stripling, profound belief had taken the place of any sort of halting imagination he might once have claimed.

Quiggin now reappeared. He was even more disturbed than before.

‘I am afraid I must go home immediately,’ he said, in some agitation. ‘Do you know when there is a train? And can I be taken to the station? It is really rather urgent.’

‘Is he dying?’ asked Mona, in an agonised voice.

She was breathless with excitement at the apparent confirmation of a message from what Mrs. Erdleigh called ‘the Other Side’. She took Quiggin’s arm, as if to soothe him. He did not answer at once, apparently undecided at what should be made public. Then he addressed himself to me.

‘The telephone was answered by Mark,’ he said, through his teeth.

For Quiggin to discover Members reinstated in St. John Clarke’s flat within a few hours of his own departure was naturally a serious matter.

‘And is St. John Clarke worse?’

‘I couldn’t find out for certain,’ said Quiggin, almost wretchedly, ‘but I think he must be for Mark to be allowed back. I suppose St. J. wanted something done in a hurry, and told the maid to ring up Mark as I wasn’t there. I must go at once.’

He turned towards the Templers.

‘I am afraid there is no train for an hour,’ Templer said, ‘but Jimmy is on his way to London, aren’t you, Jimmy? He will give you a lift.’

‘Of course, old chap, of course.’

‘Of course he can. So you can go with dear old Jimmy and arrive in London in no time. He drives like hell.’

‘No longer,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, with a smile. ‘He drives with care.’

I am sure that the last thing Quiggin wanted at that moment was to be handed over to Stripling and Mrs. Erdleigh, but there was no alternative if he wanted to get to London with the least possible delay. A curious feature of the afternoon had been the manner in which all direct contact between himself and Mrs. Erdleigh had somehow been avoided. Each no doubt realised to the full that the other possessed nothing to offer: that any exchange of energy would have been waste of time.

In Quiggin’s mind, the question of St. John Clarke’s worsened state of health, as such, had now plainly given place to the more immediate threat of Members re-entering the novelist’s household on a permanent footing. His fear that the two developments might be simultaneous was, I feel sure, not necessarily based upon entirely cynical premises. In a weakened state, St. John Clarke might easily begin to regret his earlier suspension of Members as a secretary. Sick persons often vacillate. Quiggin’s anxiety was understandable. No doubt he regarded himself, politically and morally, as a more suitable secretary than Members. It was, therefore, reasonable that he should wish to return as soon as possible to the field of operations.

Recognising at once that he must inevitably accompany the two of them, Quiggin accepted Stripling’s offer of conveyance. He did this with a bad grace, but at the same time insistently, to show there must be no delay now the matter had been decided. This sudden disintegration of the party was displeasing to Mona, who probably felt now that she had wasted her opportunity of having Quiggin in the house; just as on the previous day she had wasted her meeting with him in the Ritz. She seemed, at any rate, overwhelmed with vague, haunting regrets for the manner in which things had turned out; all that unreasoning bitterness and mortification to which women are so subject. For a time she begged them to stay, but it was no good.

‘But promise you will ring up.’

She took Quiggin’s hand. He seemed surprised, perhaps even rather touched at the warmth with which she spoke. He replied with more feeling than was usual in his manner that he would certainly communicate with her.

‘I will let you know how St. J. is.’

‘Oh, do!

‘Without fail.’

‘Don’t forget.’

Mrs. Erdleigh, in her travelling clothes, had reverted to my first impression of her at the Ufford as priestess of some esoteric cult. Wrapped about with scarves, veils and stoles, she took my hand.

‘Have you met her yet?’ she enquired in a low voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Just as I told you?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs. Erdleigh smiled to herself. They piled into the car, Quiggin glowering in the back, hatless, but with a fairly thick overcoat. Stripling drove off briskly, sending the crisp snow in a shower from the wheels. The car disappeared into the gloomy shadows of the conifers.

We returned to the drawing-room. Templer threw himself into an armchair.

‘What a party,’ he said. ‘Poor old Jimmy really has landed something this time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have to marry that woman. She’s like Rider Haggard’s She — She who must be obeyed.’

‘I thought she was wonderful,’ said Mona.

‘So does Jimmy,’ said Templer. ‘You know, I can see a look of Babs. Something in the way she carries herself.’

I, too, had noticed an odd, remote resemblance in Mrs. Erdleigh to his elder sister. However, Mona disagreed strongly, and they began to argue.

‘It was extraordinary all that stuff about Marx coming up,’ said Templer. ‘I suppose it was swilling about in old Quiggin’s head and somehow got released.’

‘Of course, you can never believe anything you can’t explain quite simply,’ said Mona.

‘Why should I?’ said Templer.

Tea merged into drinks. Mona’s temper grew worse. I began to feel distinctly tired. Jean had brought out some work, and was sewing. Templer yawned in his chair. I wondered why he and his wife did not get on better. It was extraordinary that he seemed to please so many girls, and yet not her.

‘It was a pretty stiff afternoon,’ he said.

‘I enjoyed it,’ said Mona. ‘It was a change.’

‘It certainly was.’

They began to discuss Planchette again; ending inevitably in argument. Mona stood up.

‘Let’s go out tonight.’

‘Where to?’

‘We could dine at Skindles.’

‘We’ve done that exactly a thousand and twenty-seven times. I’ve counted.’

‘Then the Ace of Spades.’

‘You know how I feel about the Ace of Spades after what happened to me there.’

‘But I like it.’

‘Anyway, wouldn’t it be nicer to eat in tonight? Unless Nick and Jean are mad to make a night of it.’

I had no wish to go out to dinner; Jean was noncommittal. The Templers continued to argue. Suddenly Mona burst into tears.

‘You never want to do anything I want,’ she said. ‘If I can’t go out. I shall go to bed. They can send up something on a tray. As a matter of fact I haven’t been feeling well all day.’

She turned from him, and almost ran from the room.

‘Oh, hell,’ said Templer. ‘I suppose I shall have to see about this. Help yourselves to another drink when you’re ready.’

He followed his wife through the door. Jean and I were alone. She gave me her hand, smiling, but resisting a closer embrace.

‘Tonight?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Not a good idea.’

‘I see.’

‘Sorry.’

‘When?’

‘Any time.’

‘Will you come to my flat?’

‘Of course.’

‘When?’

‘I’ve told you. Any time you like.’

‘Tuesday?’

‘No, not Tuesday.’

‘Wednesday, then?’

‘I can’t manage Wednesday either.’

‘But you said any time.’

‘Any time but Tuesday or Wednesday.’

I tried to remember what plans were already made, and which could be changed. Thursday was a tangle of engagements, hardly possible to rearrange at short notice without infinite difficulties arising. Matters must be settled quickly, because Templer might return to the room at any moment.

‘Friday?’

She looked doubtful. I thought she was going to insist on Thursday. Perhaps the idea of doing so had crossed her mind. A measure of capriciousness is, after all, natural in women; perhaps fulfils some physiological need for both sexes. A woman who loves you likes to torment you from time to time; if not actually hurt you. If her first intention had been to make further difficulties, she abandoned the idea, but at the same time she did not speak. She seemed to have no sense of the urgency of making some arrangement quickly — so that we should not lose touch with each other, and be reduced to the delay of writing letters. I suffered some agitation. This conversation was failing entirely to express my own feelings. Perhaps it seemed equally unreal to her. If so, she was unwilling, perhaps unable, to alleviate the strain. Probably women enjoy such moments, which undoubtedly convey by intensity and uncertainty a heightened awareness of their power. In spite of apparent coldness of manner her eyes were full of tears. As if we had already decided upon some definite and injudicious arrangement, she suddenly changed her approach.

‘You must be discreet,’ she said.

‘All right.’

‘But really discreet.’

‘I promise.’

‘You will?’

‘Yes.’

While talking, we had somehow come close together in a manner that made practical discussion difficult. I felt tired, rather angry, very much in love with her; on the edge of one of those outbursts of irritation so easily excited by love.

‘I’ll come to your flat on Friday,’ she said abruptly.