The Philosopher's Pupil

George had once witnessed a brawl in a pub in London. A thug had attacked a man and knocked him down. Now the thug was kicking the head of his victim who was lying on the floor. No one intervened. Everyone stood spellbound, including George who watched fascinated. (He could still recall the sound of the kicking.) Then a girl ran forward and shouted, ‘Stop, stop, oh stop.’ The thug said to the girl, ‘Give me a kiss then, and I’ll stop.’ The girl went to him and he kissed her, dragging brutally at her hair. Then he said, ‘Undress!’ The girl began to cry. ‘Undress, or I’ll kick him again.’ The girl pulled herself away and ran out of the door, and the thug kicked the fallen man again. George, who was near the door, followed the girl out. She was walking along the street audibly crying, wailing. Was she a prostitute who knew the thug, or a friend of the victim, or else a brave bystander? George didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to speak to the girl, he just followed her for a while, excited by the scene, then slowed down and lost her. About a year later he saw her again, in another part of London, and the coincidence gave him a curious kind of fright. He did not follow her on this occasion. Now, yesterday, here in Ennistone, he had seen the girl for the third time. It was near twilight, and George was walking from the library towards Druidsdale, when the girl turned out of a side road and began to walk on ahead of him. George followed her and fear came upon him in the form of a compulsion to run to catch her up and speak to her, although this also seemed impossible. When she turned a corner ahead of him he slowed down. When he reached the corner he saw her walking on the other side of the road. Only now, between him and her, there was another man, a familiar-looking man wearing a black mackintosh. George realized with a coldness which made him almost faint that this other man was himself, and that if he ever saw the face of that man he would fall down and die. George turned and ran back in the other direction, running and running through the darkening streets of the town.

Now in the morning this seemed all like an evil dream, something he desired to dismiss absolutely from his mind without even wondering whether it was fantasy or ‘real’, whatever these terms might mean. He thought he had heard a continued screaming in the silence of the night, composing the silence. He had heard the pigeons saying ‘Rozanov, Rozanov’ in the early dawn. A kind of beastliness possessed George now, a wanton slovenliness, which was necessary to his way of life. The place where he slept downstairs, on a sofa in the sitting-room, had become dirty and smelt like an animal’s lair. He no longer undressed to sleep, simply took his shoes off. He shaved occasionally, not often enough to prevent his face becoming bluish and dark. He rose each day as to a mysterious programme, which misery and bitterness made it impossible to execute. He wanted to see Diane, yet felt that her sentimental pity and her sheer stupidity would make him want to kill her. Sometimes, for a second, he thought about Stella as of something remarkable but unreal: clean, shining, made of metal. He walked round to Hare Lane and knocked on John Robert’s door and, receiving no answer, sat down on the pavement.

After a while a number of people came to look at him from a distance. At last someone (it was Dominic Wiggins) approached him to say that Rozanov was not now at Hare Lane, but had gone to live in the Ennistone Rooms. George got up and set off slowly toward the Institute. As he walked, it began to rain. He did not go into the Baths, but entered the Rooms by the street door where there was a porter in a glass box. There was also a board listing the names of the occupants and the numbers of their rooms and also whether they were in or out. George saw with a tremor but without surprise that Rozanov’s room was number forty-four. Rozanov was said to be in. George went on into the furry-carpeted corridor. Here the sound of the waters was considerable and their smell sulphurous. George knocked on Rozanov’s door, but could hear no answering call. He opened the door.

Rozanov, fully clothed, was sitting at a table by the window writing. There were books on the table. Rozanov frowned when he saw George, and drew one of the books over the paper he had been writíng on.

John Robert’s room retained some remnants of past splendour, surviving in the form of a meaningless gloomy pretentiousness, suggestive of an abandoned night club. Three walls were covered with sheets of a brittle black material, cracked in places. The wall opposite the door was papered with a zigzag pattern of silver and light green. A tall thin chest of drawers of a black shininess which declared itself neither as wood nor as metal, and a tall thin matching wardrobe with a tall thin elliptical mirror stood about with the awkwardness of huge ornaments. The carpet continued the silver and light green pattern, varied with wavy black lines. A low light green sofa with fat flat arms embraced a lot of small black cushions. A chintz armchair and an office-furniture-style plastic-covered table and chair had entered as aliens to represent in their humble way utility and comfort. A little steam crept through the wooden louvred doors of the bathroom. The room was warm, and full of the water noise which so soon became inaudible.

George said, ‘Nice place you have here,’ and sat down on the chintz armchair, but rose again, finding it too low. He stood near the tall thin wardrobe and saw himself in the tall thin silver ellipse of the mirror. He thought, that’s the man I was following. (He looked dirty and unhappy.)

John Robert said, ‘I’m busy now.’

‘Writing your great book?’

‘No.’

‘I remember you used to talk about seeing thoughts like Melville’s whale far below. What’s in the sea now? Monsters?’

‘I am busy, please go away.’

‘Will you talk to me?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? I was your favourite pupil once.’

‘No.’

‘You lie, I was. Why should it worry you anyway if I say I was your favourite pupil? Are you so vain that you feel ashamed of me?’

‘Please — ’

‘Everything I said to you last time was wrong. I demeaned myself, I crawled, that was a mistake. You know what I want. I want to be justified, you can justify me, I want to be saved, you can save me. I am just stating facts. Other minds, other minds, how we used to worry over that one! I want to know what you think of me.’

I don’t think anything about you.’

‘You do, you must.’

‘You keep imagining I think about you, I don’t.’

‘You thought enough about me to destroy me. Or did you do it by accident, without even noticing?’

‘I didn’t destroy you, George,’ said John Robert with a sigh.

‘You mean I am destroying myself?’

‘I don’t think so. You are just disappointed.’

‘What about you? Aren’t you disappointed? Everything went wrong since Aristotle, you used to say. That’s a long time. And big you were going to sort it all out! Have you? Of course not. No one reads your books now. What are you worth? Have I wrecked my life for a charlatan?’

‘That’s enough.’

‘You flayed me, you took away my life- Illusions, you killed my self-love.’

‘I doubt that,’ said John Robert, ‘but if I did kill your self-love I am very much to be congratulated and so are you.’

‘You know what I mean. Without self-love there is nothing but evil. I wish I’d never met you.’

‘What you call evil is simply vanity. You have lost your self-esteem for some reason which does not interest me, and you are suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Go and scratch your sores somewhere else.’

‘You suggest I go home and pull myself together?’

‘No, I suggest you go to Ivor Sefton and he will tell you a story about yourself which will cheer you up.’

‘You don’t know what these hurts are like.’

‘You mean loss of face.’

‘Loss of face, loss of soul, loss of child. You know nothing of real pain. But I don’t want to talk to you about that, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve never loved anybody in your life, not a single being. You only married Linda Brent to spite my mother, because she wasn’t interested in you.’

‘George,’ said John Robert, ‘I know quite well that you are only saying these wild things to annoy me so that — ’

‘You were mad with spite because you weren’t invited to the grand houses!’

‘To annoy me so that I shall become angry and my anger will make a bond between us, but you will not succeed. You simply don’t interest me enough.’

‘We’re alike, you know. We’re both demons, you’re a big one and I’m a little one, the big ones make the little ones scream. You hate me because I’m a caricature of you. Isn’t that so?’

‘I don’t hate you.’

‘How can you treat another human being with such contempt? And I was your pupil, and does that not mean anything to you? Can’t you even react? You’ve lost all your fire!’

‘I wish — ’

‘Did I push the car? Doesn’t that interest you?’

‘What car?’

‘The car with my wife in. If I pushed the car does that mean I intended to kill her? What was I thinking at just that moment? Did I intend to drive the car into the canal? Now I’ve killed my wife, all is permitted. Someone in Dostoyevski thought that if he killed himself he could become God.’

‘Well, go and kill yourself somewhere else.’

‘But wouldn’t it be a better way to become God to kill someone else? That’s harder than killing yourself.’

‘You are as restless and peevish as ever. It’s a sign of stupidity.’

‘Peevish! Now you really are trying to provoke me.’

‘I assure you I am not - I just want you to go away.’

‘You told me long ago to draw in my horns. But I can’t. My horns are permanently out and my eyes are staring forward into the dark.’

‘It’s hard to stare into the dark. Very few people do it.’

‘Do you think so poorly of my mind?’

‘No.’

‘So you do encourage me?’

‘No, I mean I don’t care a fig about your mind.’

‘My mind is full of such strange trash. Jingles and - spells - I can’t explain. Do you think I’m mad?’

‘No.’

‘You said it’s not philosophy unless it makes you tremble. You are an incurable teacher. I am trembling now. Teach me.’

‘Why do you go on worrying about philosophy? It doesn’t matter.’

‘So you admit that at last, after all those dull years!’

‘I mean think your own thoughts. Why do you want to think mine?’

‘You know why. The guards in the concentration camps realized with joy that they didnt care. They had been afraid that they would care. But they found they didn’t, they were free! Isn’t that worth thinking about?’

‘You are not thinking,’ said John Robert. ‘You are simply suffering from a nervous craving of the will. Now let us close this ridiculous conversation.’

‘You don’t want it to end. You want to go on tormenting me. I am approaching the limit. It’s strange out there. Something terrible could happen.’

‘Go and buy yourself some Nazi badges.’

‘You think I’m playing at it?’

‘Yes. You’re a fake, a faux mauvais, pretending to be wicked because you’re unhappy. You’re not mad or satanic, you’re just a fool suffering from hurt vanity. You lack imagination. What made you bad at philosophy makes you bad at being bad. It’s a game. You’re a dull dog, George, an ordinary dull mediocre egoist, you will never be anything else.’

‘Don’t try me too much.’

‘You never tried to kill your wife, you dropped the Roman glass because you were drunk, you’re just a clown. Now go away unless you want me to start feeling sorry for you.’

George moved in the room. He opened the wardrobe door and looked inside and touched John Robert’s overcoat which was hanging up. He opened the door of the bathroom and looked into the steamy pit of the bath. He closed the door again. He said:

‘What’s the matter with you? Where’s all the power you used to have? You care for no one, you are alone. I doubt if you’ve ever had a woman. You had a daughter, but who was her father? You hated her and she hated you. Who’s supposed to feel sorry for whom, I wonder? You’re old and toothless and you smell. It’s the end, you’re losing your mind, it’s vanishing day by day and you haven’t anything else. You’ve seen through philosophy, you’re vindictive and drained dry, and you are alone. No one loves you, you love no one. Isn’t all that true?’

‘Just shut up, please, and go.’

‘Don’t you care what I think about you?’

‘As far as I’m concerned you don’t exist.’

‘I existed for you once. When did I cease to exist and why? Tell me, I’ve got to know.’

‘This is a pseudo question. You remember enough philosophy to know what that is. Ask, why is the question posed? Only ask yourself, not me.’

‘Have you no advice for me?’

‘Yes, stop drinking.’

‘John Robert, I know I was very rude to you in California, and I’ve been rude to you today, I know I haven’t been what I ought to be - Christ, now I’m crawling again - but you’ve banished me long enough and punished me long enough, let it be over now.’

‘These emotive words imply a state of affairs which simply does not exist between us. Nothing exists between us.’

‘You say you think I’m — ’

‘Oh never mind what I said! I don’t think anything about you. There isn’t any structure here for communication.’

‘There is structure! How can you deny it? There is! We are human beings! You taught me philosophy and I love you.’

‘George, listen, you want me to be angry with you and even to hate you, but I can’t. Take this as a kind word and please go.’

‘Oh damn you, damn you, damn you!’

‘Get out!’ said John Robert. He stood up.

The loud hum of the sealed-off water had covered the sound of Father Bernard knocking timidly on the door. He knocked twice and then entered. He saw, and at once partly understood, the end of George’s battle with Rozanov.

Rozanov said again, but quietly, ‘Get out, go.’

George was wearing a black mackintosh, like his alter ego. The collar was still turned up as it had been when, coming in out of the slight rain, he had arrived. His uncombed hair was standing jaggedly up on end, his untidy open shirt collar and dirty vest were visible at the neck of his mackintosh. He stood, his hands in his pockets, looking with burning eyes towards the philosopher who had risen, hunched and glaring, like a huge cruel-beaked bird behind the desk.

Father Bernard had been peacefully meditating to the sound of Scott Joplin when Rozanov’s letter had arrived that morning, simply summoning him to the Rooms. None too soon for the priest had the letter come, for he had heard nothing from Rozanov since their conversational walk upon the Common. A yearning had come upon Father Bernard, a need, an obsessive desire to be with the philosopher again, to be in his presence; and with this a fear that Rozanov had, after their conversation, found him wanting in the qualities necessary for a chosen companion. Father Bernard had thought of writing to Rozanov, but after being told to wait till he was summoned, did not yet dare to. He had composed many letters in his mind, some of them polemical.

Now, seeing George in defeat, so evidently rejected, and intuiting the appeal which must have been made to so ambiguous a power, Father Bernard felt himself in danger. But he recognized too a ‘high moment’, a moment of grace such as sometimes came upon him quite suddenly, and he felt elation. He hesitated only a moment before going forward and kissing George upon the cheek. It was an odd action. It was some time since the priest had kissed anybody. Hand-holding was different.

George was evidently startled, as if unaware whether he had received a kiss or a light slap. He stepped back. Then with vague eyes and without looking the priest in the face, he circled round him and went out of the door, leaving it open. Father Bernard closed the door.

John Robert was annoyed. He was annoyed with himself, with George, and now with Father Bernard. He took the kiss as an affront to himself, even a criticism, certainly an intrusion, the striking of a deliberate false note. The incident filled him with disgust. He was cross with himself for having at the end, and possibly in a muted way earlier in the conversation, exhibited emotion. He was not as indifferent as he had feigned to be to some of George’s taunts. He found hurt feelings of that kind extremely unbecoming. He was annoyed now because he thought that Father Bernard, who stood with downcast gaze, had already intuited his whole complex of feelings.

John Robert sat down noisily, fiddling with his books and papers, and motioned the priest to a seat. The priest put two of the sofa cushions on the chintz chair and sat down, looking now at John Robert with his glowing brown eyes which could not help admitting understanding and asking for pardon.

‘I’m sorry,’ Father Bernard actually said.

‘What for?’

‘Oh - interrupting.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said John Robert. He seemed to be at a loss.

Father Bernard, his high moment still upon him, said, ‘You could help George so much. Just a little gentleness. You have so much power.’

‘Are you telling me what to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘I asked you not to speak of him.’

‘Forgive me. I would not have done so without — ’

‘Without the impression you have just received.’

‘Precisely.’

‘And what is that impression?’

Father Bernard was silent a moment, and then said, ‘You ought to be kind to him. Just - quietly. It wouldn’t take up much of your time. Anything would do, any signal of kindness. Then he would be docile, he might even leave you alone!’

‘You know nothing about it.’ John Robert felt immediate contempt for himself for saying anything so banal and so patently untrue. He had so many and so pressing things to think about which had nothing whatsoever to do with George. To be put in the wrong by the priest and urged to examine himself in this matter was really too much. For a moment he felt such intense loathing for his visitor, he was tempted to tell him to go. He glared at Father Bernard. ‘Are you familiar with Dante?’

‘Yes.’

‘Guarda e passa.’

‘No,’ said the priest, ‘no.’

Father Bernard tossed his finely combed hair (he had combed it down in the corridor before entering), his nostrils dilated and his cheeks burned. He raised a defensive hand and made as if to snap his fingers, but he said nothing and continued to stare at the philosopher.

Rozanov said, ‘Let us not talk of that. I called you here because I want to ask you a favour. I won’t keep you long.’

‘Oh?’ Father Bernard felt disappointment. He had assumed that another philosophical conversation would ensue, and had already planned to tell Rozanov that he disliked having to think when he was walking. He had enjoyed playing the young man to John Robert’s Socrates. He had hoped that a routine was being established.

‘I shall be going back to America rather sooner than I expected.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry — ’

‘You perhaps know, or perhaps you do not, that my granddaughter Harriet Meynell is coming to live in Ennistone.’

‘Yes?’ This was the first that Father Bernard had heard of the existence of a grandchild.

‘I would like you to keep a helpful eye upon her.’

Father Bernard felt instant alarm. He pictured a toddler. In any case, tasks, trouble, danger. ‘How old is she?’

‘Seventeen, I think. Perhaps eighteen. She has been at boarding school.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ Father Bernard now pictured a noisy American teenager. He must keep his head and say no quickly.

‘Just see her, know what she’s doing.’

‘Just that?’

‘I should say that she will have her chaperone with her.’

‘Her chaperone?’

‘A maidservant. They will be living in the Slipper House. That is the folly, or whatever one may call it, in the garden at Belmont, Mrs McCaffrey’s house.’

Father Bernard nodded. Everyone knew about the Slipper House. He was still alarmed. ‘What will she be doing?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘How will she be employing her time? Will she be working, finding a job, studying or —?’

‘I want her to proceed to an English university but she may need a - supervisor, a sort of tutor - could you do that?’

‘No!’ said Father Bernard wildly. ‘I mean what is her subject?’

‘I don’t know exactly. Some arts subject. Perhaps you could discuss it with her?’

‘But shouldn’t you discuss it with her?’ said the priest.

‘Oh, I shall talk to her, but I imagine - probably nothing will be decided. She is still young. There would be things to be found out - I mean about her capacities and wishes - and about - entrance requirements and - could you do that?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said the priest. ‘Well, I suppose I could.’

‘Just see that she’s reading something, and not wasting her time. I would pay you of course.’

Father Bernard stared at the big bony face of the philosopher and his large power-hungry nose and his moist pendant mouth and yellow bloodshot eyes. With his shock of stout stiff slightly curly grey hair and flat head he looked like a very old general, a Russian general. It was impossible to suspect him of impertinence. These ideas emerged with a kind of mad solipsism, a massive lack of connection with the world. Father Bernard said, ‘I don’t want to be paid. I have a salary and I have duties which I may or may not perform. I am prepared to add this child to my list of duties, that’s all. I will talk to her and see what she can do and if necessary find someone to coach her, I suppose - but don’t expect too much of me, I can’t be responsible - if I write you letters, will you answer them?’

‘About the girl, yes.’

Here Father Bernard almost stamped with exasperation. ‘But will you —?’

‘In emergency you can telephone me collect, that means reversing the charges.’

‘But — ’

‘I shall feel better if someone here is keeping an eye on her. I saw you as that - as a sort of pedagogue - but if you can just - I leave it to you. I’m most grateful. I will let you know when she arrives.’

Father Bernard fell back helplessly in his chair. It had by now occurred to him that the young girl might constitute a permanent link between him and the philosopher. Did he really want such a link? Evidently he did. But what a responsibility, what a time-consuming possibly irritating burden, and … a girl of seventeen … suppose something went awfully wrong …

‘Yes, all right,’ he said.

‘That’s settled then.’ Rozanov began to rearrange his desk, a clear indication that the interview was over. He added, ‘If you ever do have to telephone me, which I hope won’t be necessary, do remember to check the American time first.’

Father Bernard stood up. He said, ‘I’d like to talk to you again.’

‘What about?’

‘About anything. Like we did up on the Common. Or were you just testing me for the post of tutor?’

‘I - no - that had nothing to do with it.’

There was a silence during which Father Bernard felt an almost overwhelming impulse to say something more about George.

Rozanov said, ‘I feel sure you should consider leaving the priesthood.’

‘Oh. Why?’

‘Wouldn’t it be more honest? With your beliefs you must feel you are in a false position, living a lie. You must have taken vows. Aren’t you breaking them?’

‘Well, nowadays people are fairly relaxed about — ’

‘But didn’t you swear something or other?’

‘I swore that I assented to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion.’

‘But that’s old-fashioned realistic theism! You don’t believe that?’

‘No.’

‘What else did you swear?’

‘To obey the bishop.’

‘And do you?’

‘No.’

‘What then does it mean to you to be in Holy Orders?’ The phrase came oddly and pompously and impressively out of John Robert’s mouth. ‘How can you go on?’

Father Bernard felt suddenly sick, he was going to be sick with rage, a black vomit of sudden positive hatred of Rozanov was going to spill out of his mouth on to the carpet. He swallowed and said, ‘I just can, that’s all. Well, good day.’

He marched to the door and jerked it open. Vast clouds of smoke and heat rolled out at him together with a sudden roaring noise, and for a moment he thought the place was on fire. Then he realized that the element was water not fire. He had opened the door of the bathroom by mistake.

He banged the door shut and made for the other door and got out into the carpeted corridor which belonged neither to a hospital nor to a hotel. Here he was again aware of the sound of water. He wondered, should I go back and apologize. Then he thought, am I mad? Apologize to that maniac? Whatever for? And he realized with horror that now and henceforth John Robert Rozanov was there inside his mind, like a virus, something that could not be cured. He had a new disease. Rozanovism.

Hattie and Pearl were in the Slipper House. They were as happy as two little mice in a doll’s house. They had never had a house before.

The effect upon them both was extraordinary, far beyond anything which they could have expected, even though they had looked forward to their unexpected new habitat with considerable excitement. They laughed and ran about like mad things. They were drunk with pleasure, although they could not at all coherently have said what it was that pleased and amused them so much.

Perhaps the poor neglected misunderstood Slipper House had stored up a lot of vague sweet innocent ownerless happiness from its past, the past when Alex and her brother Desmond were young, and when Geoffrey and Rosemary Stillowen invented games and parties for scores of beautiful young people, Quakers and Methodists, for whom sex was a future mystery and a present romance, and whose lives were still unshadowed in a world where nobody believed that there would ever be another war.

That may have been so. But also of course the two girls, at a moment when both of them were anxiously and silently feeling the cold turning band of time entering a new phase, had received a curious reprieve. Suddenly everything was fun, everything flowered into a kind of dotty youthfulness together which they had never really had before. Now suddenly Hattie was older and suddenly Pearl was younger. The strict old-fashioned upbringing which John Robert had distantly decreed for Hattie had not at all prepared her for this shock of gleeful joy. She and Pearl were ‘gay young things’, imprisoned perhaps and perhaps doomed (there were ideas which they sometimes glimpsed, as it were, over their shoulders) but for the moment compelled to have no other occupation but to inhabit the present, and carry on, in that exquisitely artificial little house, what felt like a delightful charade.

Pearl had arrived first with suitcases. The taxi had deposited her in the twilit evening at the back gate where she had found Ruby waiting. Before that, letters had been flying to and fro, letters which were more like army instructions than works of epistolary art. John Robert had written to Pearl to say that he wanted her and Hattie to ‘abide’ (his use of the word ‘abide’ was the only point of stylistic interest in his letter) during the summer at the Garden House (‘Slipper House’ was a nickname of course), Belmont, Tasker Road, Ennistone, by courtesy of Mrs McCaffrey, whom they were not to bother, but to use the back gate in Forum Way. He wrote in similar terms to Hattie. His letter to Pearl began ‘Dear Pearl!’ and ended ‘Yours sincerely, J. R. Rozanov.’ His letter to Hattie began ‘My dear Hattie’ and ended ‘Yours J R R’ (scrawled). He had never established himself as ‘granddad’ or ‘grandpapa’ or any such. Hattie had no name for him and called him by no name. Alex had written to John Robert with marked coldness that she ‘noted his arrangement’. He had not replied. Pearl had written to Ruby saying when she would arrive. (Ruby did not show the letter to Alex but took it to the gipsies to be read.) Neither Pearl nor Hattie had written to Alex since Pearl did not feel it was their place to do so. Alex did not write to Hattie because she did not know her address and felt affronted. Ruby casually informed Alex of Pearl’s arrival date.

Ruby, strong as a horse, had helped Pearl carry the numerous suitcases to the house. These contained Pearl’s own clothes and Hattie’s English summer clothes which were stored at Pearl’s flat. Hattie’s school trunk and book box was to come by rail. Pearl and Ruby got the stuff inside and closed the door. They went into the sitting-room and turned on the light and sat down.

Pearl closed her eyes and said, ‘Oh!’ Some extraordinary painful excitement caught hold of her like a sudden cramp, mixed with very private fear. She wished Ruby would go away. She wanted to explore the house by herself.

‘It’s all nice here, we did it,’ said Ruby, wide-legged, staring at Pearl with her brooding predatory stare.

‘We —?’

‘Me and her.’

‘Good - thanks — ’

‘I’m to clean.’

‘No-don’t- I can.’

‘You don’t want me here.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘You don’t. Will you come up to the house and see her?’

‘I don’t see that I need to. Do I?’

‘Please yourself. Well, there you are. When’s Missie coming?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Everyone here’s mad to see her.’

‘How do they know?’

‘They know. They’re mad to see his grand-daughter. They want a good laugh.’

‘Why should they laugh?’

‘People always laugh. What’ll you do with your two selves?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Pearl. ‘Enjoy them, I hope!’

Ruby said, ‘It’s well for some. She’s not pleased.’

‘Mrs McCaffrey?’

‘You’d better see her and curtsey, tomorrow.’

‘Oh all right. Only I won’t curtsey. I suppose that’s a joke.’

‘Please yourself.’

‘Ruby, dear, don’t be cross.’

‘I’m not cross.’

‘What’s that strange noise?’

‘The horrible fox animal. It lives here, in this garden.’

Pearl heard the strange noise again later that night as she went up to bed alone. Next morning she went to Belmont and showed herself to Mrs McCaffrey who was aloof and gracious and vague. That evening Hattie arrived.

‘What fun this is.’

‘But it won’t last.’

‘Don’t keep saying that, Pearl darling. Aren’t you happy?’

‘Yes. That doesn’t stop me from being happy.’

‘I’m happy.’

‘I’ve never heard you say that before.’

‘Don’t sound sad about it, it isn’t your fault.’

‘I know.’

‘Our life is so odd.’

‘Yes. How you’ve grown up.’

‘You mean because I say our life is odd?’

‘It is. But a year ago you wouldn’t have said so.’

‘There are many things we say now which we wouldn’t have said a year ago.’

‘How awfully far off Denver seems.’

‘Like a dream.’

‘Does this seem real?’

‘No, but it’s so present. In Denver we were always looking up.’

‘You mean up at the snow?’

‘And sort of far away.’

‘Perhaps into the future.’

‘Oh, the future —! This is all so much more hereness and nowness.’

‘That’s what you mean by happy.’

‘The snow was like the sea and yet it wasn’t. I do wish we lived by the sea. I wish this house would fly away to the sea. I can imagine this house flying, I’m sure it can.’

‘I wish it would fly away somewhere.’

‘Away from here? Away from what?’

Pearl was silent. It was ten o’clock at night and they had been talking since their picnic supper. Everything had been, since Hattie’s arrival two days ago, a picnic. Continual rain had served as an excuse for staying in the house. They had gone out to shop and Pearl had taken Hattie on a rainy walk round the centre of Ennistone. Not only had Hattie of course never visited Ennistone, where John Robert had never resided during her lifetime so far, she had scarcely until lately heard of the place. John Robert never talked about his past, and Pearl’s life history made no reference to the now so momentous town. Moreover the girls had previously, in their of course fairly frequent talk about Hattie’s grandfather, avoided any deep or searching discussion of him. The mystery of John Robert remained unplumbed and indeed unreferred to. Pearl had felt, when Hattie was younger, that it would be improper to discuss the great man in any way which was in danger of bordering on the disrespectful. Pearl had, also, thoughts of her own about John Robert which she would not have risked revealing. Hattie, in a curious childish way which was peculiar to her own situation, simply did not think much about him at all. He had figured, when she was younger, in the light of a rather burdensome duty. The occasions of ‘having tea’ and answering perfunctory questions about her welfare had been ordeals to be got through without making mistakes. The atmosphere of these meetings was, in Hattie’s memory, heavy, soggy, airless, infinitely depressing, and faintly menacing. She was always a bit, though not exceedingly, frightened of John Robert. Pearl was also, and more, frightened of him. Now, for the first time, they were both, it appeared, settled in a place where he too, for the moment at any rate, was living. It so ‘appeared’ simply from the fact that the address given on his letters was 16 Hare Lane, Ennistone. No doubt John Robert would manifest himself. Both the girls tried not to worry about that.

With the house to play with, it was not too hard not to worry. After Hattie had had her glimpse of the town they settled down to arrange and inhabit. Hattie’s trunk and box of books had come. They set out books and hung up clothes. They moved the furniture about. Hattie placed on her chest of drawers the brown china rabbit scratching his ear, the sleek black slug-like Eskimo seal, and the little pink-and-white Japanese vase, into which she put some primroses which she had intrepidly picked down at the Forum Way end of the garden. They had run about everywhere and opened every drawer and every cupboard and swung out every painted shutter. In a room downstairs they had been startled to open a cupboard door and be confronted by a staring bevy of little gods, made out of clay and papier mâché and painted in gaudy colours. These were Alex’s old ‘fetishes’ which she had meant to remove, but had forgotten when she ‘gave up’ the Slipper House after learning that it was not destined to contain John Robert. She had removed the paint and brushes, sad picturesque reminders of her old life as a failed painter, but she had left the little gods behind. Hattie had carried one of them, a red dog-headed thing with staring eyes, up to her bedroom to join the rabbit and the seal and the Japanese vase, but some superstitious scruple soon made her return him to his cupboard. On her first night alone Pearl had elected to sleep in the smaller bedroom which faced Belmont (which Alex had destined for John Robert’s study) rather than the larger room (with the dog and the airship) which looked down the rest of the garden toward the back gate. But Hattie, when she came, had preferred the view towards Belmont because it contained a birch tree and the copper beech and the ginkgo.

‘I suppose I really ought to go and see Mrs McCaffrey tomorrow.’

‘The professor said not to bother her. I told her we’d come. We’ll meet her in the garden.’

‘I suppose we can go in the garden.’

‘He didn’t say anything about the garden.’

‘How near the trains sound in the night air. Did you lock the door?’

‘Yes.’

They were sitting in Hattie’s bedroom, Hattie in her mauve-and-white long-sleeved school nightdress. Pearl in a dark blue petticoat and dark blue stockings. Hattie sat on the bed, Pearl in one of the oriental bamboo chairs. They sat up straight, intent, alert, as at a meeting. Hattie’s almost silver hair was in a long thick plait down her back; it had a strange sleek vegetable look, like something which might be found growing in an exotic tree. Her marble-pale eyes roved anxiously as if she might suddenly see, in what surrounded her, some unexpected fault or void. One hand was at her lips, while the other touched her brow as if settling or adjusting some dim turban-like aura which hung about her head. Her childish complexion was smooth and translucent, unmarked by any line. Tonight Pearl did not look her stern age. She had just washed her dark brown hair, bringing out reddish lights in it, as it hovered for a brief time buoyant and frizzy about her face. Even tomorrow it would be darker and straighter and stiff once more. Sometimes Pearl’s sallow brow and the thin nose which ran from it so unwaveringly straight, like a line drawn down to point to her thin straight mouth, had a brownish puckered look which could almost be described as ‘weather-beaten’. Today, Pearl’s brownness was waxen, handsome, slightly burnished, touched as by a southern sun, and her brown-green eyes were pensive and not fierce.

‘I must mend this nightie. Look, it’s tearing at the shoulder.’

‘I’ll mend it,’ said Pearl, ‘just leave it around tomorrow.’

‘No, why should you mend my clothes?’

Pearl did not answer this question. A kind of unnerving background to such questions had been assembling itself for some time. She said instead, ‘It’s time you bought some more clothes. You are a funny girl, most girls are mad about clothes.’

‘I’m not,’ said Hattie. Then she said, ‘We must save money.’

This gave another of those unnerving vistas.

‘We?’ In fact Pearl was saving money, she saved a lot of her own salary, and she had also saved Hattie’s money in that it had so far proved difficult to persuade Hattie, who was still remarkably indifferent to clothes and ‘good living’ generally, to spend much of it. ‘The professor’ (as Pearl always called him) did not inquire, and Pearl did not feel it her duty to tell him that Hattie’s allowance was piling up in the bank. One day Hattie might need that money. Pearl, with her straight thin nose and her straight thin mouth, kept her head, and this ‘keeping’ included not speculating too much about the giddy-making openness of the future. She was glad that the money, hers and Hattie’s, was there; and this, her relief, and Hattie’s, in all the circumstances so puzzling and question-raising ‘we’, brought up for them something which was distressing. Although they never said so, neither of them altogether trusted Rozanov, so powerful, so unpredictable, so extremely peculiar.

‘Wouldn’t you like to go to London to buy some clothes? We could make a sensible list. There are things you need.’

‘No, Pearl, no. I want to stay here.’

‘Then we could go to Bowcocks, that’s the big shop in Ennistone.’

‘No. When I say here I mean here. I want to stay in this house and hide. I’m so happy here with you. Let’s not get involved with other people and going about.’

‘Hattie, dear heart, you mustn’t hide, it’s bad for you. Now you’ve left school.’

‘Oh I know, I know — ’

Tears were suddenly in Hattie’s eyes.

Pearl ignored them. ‘You must come into the town, you must come swimming, you know you love swimming.’

Hattie had heard about the Baths. The idea of the hot spring tempted her.

‘But people would see me. Well, I suppose they wouldn’t bother because they wouldn’t know who I was, and why should they bother even then? But I don’t want to be looked at. I couldn’t wear a bikini.’

‘Why not? People do here!’

‘I’ll get a proper costume, I don’t want to wear a bikini any more anyway.’

‘So we’ll have to go to the shops!’

‘I think I won’t go to the Baths, it must be so public.’

Pearl recalled Ruby’s remarks about ‘people laughing’. Of course the news about Rozanov’s granddaughter must be all round Ennistone. The curiosity about Hattie would be intense, and not altogether benevolent. Hattie’s fear at being looked at was prophetically just. Pearl said, ‘Oh don’t be so silly.’

‘Pearl.’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘About sex.’

‘Oh!’

‘I know we’ve talked about it and I didn’t want to ask you what you didn’t want to say.’

Pearl did not help Hattie out with her questions.

‘Pearl, whatever is it like?’

Pearl laughed. ‘You mean — ’

‘Oh, you know I know everything - but - don’t laugh - I know - and I’ve read - but what is it really like?’

‘You mean, is it nice?’

‘I just don’t see how it can be. Am I very odd? I find the whole idea absolutely disgusting.’

Pearl did not say, as she was suddenly tempted to, that that was exactly how she had found it. She said, ‘You’re not odd, just childish, like a girl from the past. Most girls of your age - Hattie, don’t worry about it. It all depends on people. If the man is nice sex is nice, I daresay.’

‘So you didn’t like it! Sorry, I know once before you wouldn’t talk about it — ’

‘I didn’t like the men, those particular ones - I was a fool.’

‘I don’t think I shall ever like any men,’ said Hattie. She began slowly to unplait her hair. Pearl got up to help her.

‘Pearl dear — ’

‘Yes.’

‘About my grandfather.’

‘Yes.’

‘You do like him?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Pearl’s quick ringers undid the thick cold pale rope of hair at the nape of the warm neck.

‘Do you think he thinks much about us?’

‘Not much. But enough.’

‘Pearl - oh how I wish - no matter - I was thinking about my father.’

‘Yes.’

‘He was such a good dear man, so quiet and sort of - lost — ’

‘Yes.’

‘Pearl, you won’t ever leave me, will you? I couldn’t be parted from you now, we’ve grown together, like - not like sisters exactly, just like us. You’re my only person, and I don’t want anyone else ever. I’m so all right with you.’

‘I’ll be around,’ said Pearl.

She hated this conversation, which stirred up her own fear with an exact and accurate touch, like a finger far outstretched to disturb a wound.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever grow up. I’ll crawl into a crack and go to sleep forever.’

‘Hattie, stop, don’t be so feeble, think how lucky you are, you’re going to the university — ’

‘Am I?’

‘And you’ll meet lots of nice men there, gentlemen, not like the ones I knew.’

‘Gentlemen!’ Hattie began to laugh, a sort of wild groaning laugh, tossing her silky hair all round her face.

There was a sudden screeching sound down below, then another. The telephone. The girls looked at each other in amazement and alarm.

‘Who can it be, so late? You go, Pearlie.’

Pearl darted down the stairs on her slippered feet. Hattie followed barefoot, her warm feet leaving sticky prints on the gleaming parquet which Ruby had polished so carefully.

Pearl in the hall was saying, ‘Yes. Yes.’ Then, ‘Hattie, it’s for you.’

‘Who —?’

‘I don’t know, a man.’

Hattie took the telephone. ‘Hello.’

‘Miss Meynell? This is Father Bernard Jacoby.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m the - did your grandfather tell you —?’

‘No.’

‘I’m the - the clergyman - your grandfather asked me to - to — ’

‘Yes?’

I should have worked this out beforehand, thought Father Bernard at the other end, and I ought not to have had that last glass of port, and dear me, it’s so late, and I do think he might have told the girl.

‘He asked me to have a talk with you about your work.’

‘My work - you mean - like a tutor?’

‘Sort of, not quite - don’t worry, we’ll invent something. I mean we’ll work something out - just a talk really. Could I come round tomorrow morning, about eleven say?’

‘Yes. Do you know where —?’

‘Oh yes, I know the Slipper House, we all know the Slipper House!’

‘Oh - yes - thank you.’

‘Goodnight, my child.’

Good heavens, what a bungler I am, thought Father Bernard. He had even managed to chuckle in a suggestive way when talking about the Slipper House. The girl had sounded quiet and civil, but you never knew with Americans. He poured out another glass of port.

‘He said he was a tutor, a clergyman,’ said Hattie. ‘He’s coming round tomorrow.’

‘Well, never mind tomorrow, let’s go to bed.’

‘Oh, Pearl, what’s that noise?’

‘That’s the fox barking. It lives here in the garden.’

Pearl opened the front door. A wave of silent moist warm fragrant spring air came with a great slow stride into the house. Pearl turned off the hall light and they looked out into the darkness.

‘Foxie,’ said Hattie softly, ‘dear foxie - he lives right here in our garden — ’

‘Would you like to go out, dear? I’ll get your coat and shoes. We could walk on the lawn.’

‘Oh no, no, no. Foxie, oh foxie — ’ Tears began to stream down Hattie’s face and she gave a little sob.

‘Hattie, stop. You’re not ten years old now! Go to bed, you silly idiotic baby.’

‘Yes, I will. Don’t come. I’m going to turn out my light. Stay here a little. I’d like to think you were outside - only don’t go far - and don’t forget to lock the door.’

Hattie fled up the stairs.

Pearl walked out on to the grass. The shutters were closed upstairs, only a little light came dimly through the stained-glass landing window. A lighted upstairs window at Belmont could be seen through the trees.

Pearl breathed the soft fuzzy moist surprising spring air with its message of new life and pain and change. She stroked her hand down her straight brow and her thin nose. She thought, I have got everything wrong, I have played every card wrong, I’ve had luck, oh such luck, but I didn’t understand, I didn’t think well enough of myself - I had such mean small expectations, I wanted too little, and now it’s too late.

She looked at the Belmont lights. A curtain was blowing out below a sash window, frighteningly, like a ghost leaning out. Ruby was going to bed, watching television perhaps. Of course she was not going to be like Ruby. Hattie was a girl from the past. Ruby too belonged to the past. A life like Ruby’s could not be lived now. Ruby was an anachronism, an old brown dinosaur. But had not Pearl made a similar mistake, missed a turning, taken a road that led not higher up, but into a low mean small life? It was the money, thought Pearl, I spent those precious years just being pleased that I had money! And even the other day I got pleasure out of going to see that poor old wreck my foster-mother and showing off in front of her! As if I had anything to show off really! I’ve just been lucky, and I enjoyed the luck in a stupid selfish way and didn’t use it. I’m like someone in a story who is given a fairy wish, and wastes it asking for a pretty dress or a cake. I didn’t use my luck when I could to get up, to get out. I could have learnt the things Hattie was learning, or some of them. I could have learnt French at any rate, or something. I let her do all the talking and the looking while I just packed the cases and mended her clothes. Well, I did look, but I didn’t know enough and now I can’t remember. It isn’t that I’m lazy, but I have the soul of a servant and it didn’t occur to me. I was so glad just to be travelling and using money and feeling like someone in an advertisement. I didn’t see that the door was open. Why didn’t I feel more resentment? That might have helped me. If only I had hated Hattie, as I thought I might. But loving Hattie - that’s terrible - and now -

Pearl thought how in a very little while Hattie would change. Hattie was at the precious crystalline end point of her childhood, of her innocence. The sense of this was in Hattie’s own confused pain, her tears, her cry of ‘Foxie - oh foxie’. And her wish that she and Pearl might stay forever in the never-never land of her own arrested youth, which time was sweeping on toward the rapids of absolute change. Hattie would remember with blushes the sweet silly words she had uttered tonight. She would show Pearl how much she had changed, she would have to.

But she won’t show me, thought Pearl, because I won’t be here. I shall be far away. We shall be separated. He told me to come, to be what I am, and for years I have obeyed him. Now, soon, he will simply tell me to go and be no more seen.

Loving Hattie. Ah, that was bad enough. But Pearl’s predicament was even worse than that. She loved John Robert.

‘Let me have a look,’ said George. He took the field glasses from Alex.

They were installed at the drawing-room at Belmont. Beyond the birch tree (whose droopy pose always reminded Alex of Gabriel) one of the upper windows of the Slipper House was clearly visible. The hazy budding April branches of the tree just brushed the lower right-hand corner of the image. The window was one of the windows of Hattie’s bedroom. George was lucky. He saw what Alex had failed to see, Hattie in a white petticoat suddenly skipping across the room. It was the middle of the morning, and Hattie was an early riser, but she had suddenly decided that she wanted to change her dress. The clergyman was due to call in half an hour, and the subtle voice that tells a woman, even a careless girl, how to dress for a man had told her she must change. Hattie came back into view carrying the dress over her arm, and paused. Her hair was undone and was streaming about everywhere until, with her free hand, she slowly gathered it away behind her bare shoulders. Then she passed out of sight again.

George pressed his lips together and lowered his glasses.

‘See anything?’

‘No.’ He turned away from the window.

Alex followed.

‘A maiden bower,’ said George.

‘I doubt if they’re maidens.’

‘Oh surely the little young one is.’

‘She hasn’t had the courtesy to come and see me.’

‘Two sequestered girls. The town will be in quite a tizzy.’

‘The little cat will get out.’

George had arrived unannounced. Alex came down to find him standing in the hall. George had a way of standing, with his head slightly tilted, which suggested, simply by the way in which he occupied the space, that he had just been slinking along and was now only partly visible. So he stood, looking up under his eyebrows, at his mother. God, how conceited he is, she thought as she looked down on him. But, also, her heart turned over for him, it shifted and burned.

Now, in the drawing-room, he had wandered, touching things, moving the little encampment of bronze figures which had stood more or less in that same place on the mantelpiece since he had been a child.

Alex’s unease about George’s arrival blended with a baneful memory of a dream which she had had last night. She dreamed she was in Belmont, but the house had become enormous like a palace, and rather dark and twilit as if pervaded by a yellowish fog. Alex was walking through the house, sometimes accompanied by a woman who seemed to know it better than she did. In the course of this walking, Alex found herself alone in a gallery from which she looked down into a large dim room, almost like a hall, which was full of all sorts of lumber. The room was obviously abandoned and, Alex felt, had not been entered for a long time. Tables and chairs and boxes and piles of things like lamp-stands and old clocks lay about in disorder, and near the middle of the room there was an old-fashioned gramophone with a huge horn. Alex, looking down into the silent abandoned foggy room, felt terrible fear. She thought, but there is no such room in Belmont. Where could such a large secret derelict room be in my house? She hurried away and told her discovery to the woman who seemed to know the house so well. The woman said, ‘Oh, that’s just the old downstairs sitting-room, remember?’ and threw open a door to reveal a shabby disordered room which Alex recalled as a former housekeeper’s room. Alex thought with relief, oh yes, that’s all it is! Then, looking, she realized that this ordinary room was not the room that she had seen.

George had taken off his black mackintosh. He was wearing one of his light grey check suits with a waistcoat and, today, had put on a tie and combed his hair. His head had its sleek hair-oil look. He took off his jacket and stood before Alex in his shiny-backed waistcoat, staring at her and showing his little square separated teeth. It was not exactly a smile.

Alex thought, he’s different, he’s the same yet different. He smells different, sort of sour. And then she thought of the room in her dream. And she thought, he’s the same, yet he is mad.

Alex looked at George with her cat-look, while with clever quick fingers she adjusted the collar of her blouse. She was wearing an old coat and skirt. If she had known George was coming she would have changed. She noted the little instinctive movement of her vanity.

‘How are you, George?’

‘Fine. How are you, Alex?’

‘All right. Would you like some coffee?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘A drink?’

‘No.’

‘Any news of Stella?’ Alex said this, and indeed at that moment felt it, as if it were the most ordinary sort of inquiry after someone’s wife.

‘No,’ said George after a moment, almost thoughtfully, in a kind of dreamy pensive manner, as if seeing a truthful vision, ‘Stella is all right.’

‘You’ve heard something?’

‘No. But you may be sure … that she is all right …’

‘Good,’ said Alex. Sometimes she and George quarrelled in such an odd painful senseless way because their conversation went astray at some point, took a wrong turn. It was as if George, from a position high above, had decided how the conversation ought to go if it were not to break some law. When the hidden law was broken Alex, punished by pain and confusion, always felt it was her fault. Was their talk, this time too, going to become something awful? She must try hard, she must keep in touch with George. She wanted to place her hand upon his arm, just above the shirt cuff, but of course that was impossible.

‘We may be dead, and indeed perhaps are …’

‘Are you coming with us to the seaside?’ said Alex.

There was something crude, almost pointless in this appeal to a family tradition, just a substitute for touching George’s arm.

‘Lordie, are we going?’ said George, and smiled. He had stopped moving about and sat down near the fire-place, looking up at his mother with his wide-apart eyes and wrinkling his small nose.

‘Yes, I don’t care, but Brian and Gabriel insist.’

‘It isn’t yet anyway. Why do you bring it up? Isn’t it time we stopped going there? You know, we shall never forgive you for selling Maryville.’ George was still smiling.

‘Well — ’

‘How’s your friend Professor Rozanov?’

So that’s it, thought Alex. He has come to find out … And of course I too want to find out … A dull stale sadness came over her.

‘I don’t know. He asked me to come to talk about letting the Slipper House, that was all.’

‘You haven’t seen him since?’

‘No.’

George seemed relieved. He now leaned back in his chair, letting his attention wander.

It was Alex’s turn to walk about the room.

‘How are you getting on with Rozanov?’

‘Me?’ said George. ‘He loves me, he hates me, he pushes me, he pulls me. It’s the old story. How will it end? He’ll be dead soon anyhow. The old people are being cleared away.’ He cast a malevolent look at Alex. ‘We who remain will have other troubles. Hey nonny nonny-no.’

Alex, who had wandered to the window, turned her back on him.

‘Good heavens!’

‘What?’ George got up and joined her at the window.

There were people in the garden.

Alex had lived her life with the view from the window, the drooping birch tree, the copper beech, the fir tree whose noble reddish shaft on which the sunlight glowed soared up so high, the furry lithe awkward ginkgo, and down below the perfect lawn, mown to a shaven sleekness by the gardener, more often now (since he was grown so old) by herself. She had been a child, looked at, in that garden, where she had later looked at her own children. But after, for years and years, there had been no one in the garden, it had remained as the Slipper House. No one, that is, except, when Brian and Gabriel came visiting, Adam and Zed whose presence there she so intensely resented.

Now in fact the first person whom she saw was Zed, right in the middle of the lawn, quite near to the house. She thought, what is that white thing, has someone left a bag there? Then, as she recognized the dog, Adam walked across the grass in the direction of the garage, touching the birch tree and the fir tree on his way. Never before had Adam entered the garden except under licence from Belmont. The back gate had always been kept locked. Now beyond there were figures under the trees near the Slipper House, even a sound of voices. Alex recognized Brian, Gabriel, Pearl Scotney, and coming into view the ill-omened priest in his cassock.

‘The damned impertinence,’ said Alex.

‘Well, you let the place,’ said George. ‘Why did you let it if you hate it all so?’

‘I thought Professor Rozanov would be there.’ Alex immediately regretted this entirely unnecessary revelation.

George said, ‘Oh,’ and then, but without intensity, ‘Don’t mess with Rozanov, he’s dynamite.’

‘Of course they came in through the back gate,’ said Alex. ‘Anyone can come in now. They’ll wear a path across the grass. Oh damn, damn, damn.’

George laughed. He said, ‘The defences are breached. Everything is deep but nothing is hidden. There are meanings in the world.’

The door behind them opened and Ruby came in.

Ruby stood there mute. She was wearing a long white apron, not spotless, over her long brown dress. She stared, not at Alex, but at George.

George said, ‘Hello, old Ruby thing!’ He went forward and touched her shoulder.

‘Ruby, could you get some coffee?’ said Alex.

Ruby vanished.

‘Why should she come in?’

‘She came to look at me,’ said George.

‘Who invited her? She just comes into rooms now, she just walks in.’

‘Maybe she reckons she lives here.’

‘She takes things. I think she takes and hides them and then finds them again. She’s becoming very peculiar. I had to ask for the coffee to get rid of her.’

‘You ought to pet her a little. She wants to be touched.’

‘Really —!’

‘Plato said that everything you say to a slave should be an order. You carry out that advice pretty well. Now I come to think of it, I’ve never heard you say anything to Ruby which wasn’t an order, not even something like “It’s raining.”’

Alex felt suddenly that she might burst into tears, weep bitterly like a child in front of her eldest son. Everyone was against her, everyone criticized her and attacked her. She said, ‘Why don’t you go and join them at the Slipper House.’

‘And spoil the fun?’

‘You want to see the girl. Go and see her.’

‘And seduce her? What about my còffee?’

Alex was silent, calling up old allies, rage and hate, to blunt her grief and dry her tears.

‘All right,’ said George, well aware of those mounting emotions. ‘I’ll go. And when Ruby comes with the coffee ask her to sit down. I’d like to think of you having coffee together.’

He picked up his coat and jacket and faded from the room.

George went downstairs and into the garden by the back door, but he did not go to join the ‘intruders’ who were standing outside the Slipper House. There had been, at this juncture, no glimpse of ‘the little one’. He stood near the garage looking down the garden. Adam, who had been sitting in the Rolls, heard the sound of the opening and shutting door. Standing up on the seat of the car he could watch George through the dusty window of the ‘motor house’. He had never observed George like this before, at such close quarters, unobserved himself. It was exciting. George’s face at that moment was worth observing, being like that of a tragic actor registering indecision together with some deep emotion, then clearing and becoming round and benign. He was carrying his mackintosh and his jacket over his arm. He dropped the mac on the grass, put on the jacket, then slowly put on the mac, still gazing down the garden. Something like what Alex saw as his ‘conceited’ look had returned. Then he turned and went away along the path which led to the street in front of the house (Tasker Road). Adam sat down again and took hold of the steering wheel of the car. Somewhere, he heard Zed utter a bark.

George, though he was indeed curious about ‘the little girl’, decided not to join the group at the Slipper House. Something almost like shyness deterred him, a sudden sense of how it was becoming harder and harder to communicate with anyone. He had visited Alex partly to find out the meaning of her visit to John Robert (of which he believed her account) and partly to reassure himself that, confronted with his mother, he could actually talk to her. Alex would have been surprised to know that in some way his talk with her had fortified him. George was also deterred from going to the Slipper House by a very special feeling of fear which came to him quite suddenly, a sense of taboo. The image of Hattie in her petticoat came back to him with intense vividness. He had thought: that girl, his grand-daughter, is dangerous, she’s the most dangerous thing in the world. It was as that thought came to him that his face had cleared; for he had not at all liked the sense of being, almost, too embarrassed to walk up naturally to those strangers. As he neared the front gate some movement caught the corner of his eye and he saw that he was accompanied by Zed. The little dog, as George’s head turned, barked at him, then retreated and posed, front feet down, back up, the rump and plumy tail aloft. Then he sprang up, stamped his tiny paw, whined eloquently, then barked again. George lifted a threatening fist and Zed snarled, showing white pointed teeth. George thought with satisfaction, even the dogs bark at me now. He went out into the road, banging the front gate after him. He thought, shall I go to the cinema? No, I’ll go and see Diane. She’d better be in.

Zed ran past a viburnum bush and came face to face with a fox.

Zed had not meant anything in particular by barking at George. He had followed George from the garage, sniffing at his heels. George always smelt different from other humans; but today there was a new smell, stronger and more exciting, but also rather nasty. It was an animally smell, yet also it offended Zed in some fastidiousness of his soul, which was clothed in white plumage and burning with ecstasy and love. Zed was endlessly interested in George. He smelt him, when he could get near enough (which was not often) with a special nose-wrinkling fascination. If he had seen George buried he would have dug him up. When Zed saw the front gate he began to run on toward it, but was startled by George’s sudden turning and his threatening gesture. This gesture wakened an old feeling in Zed that George was dangerous to Adam. So he had snarled (which he very rarely did) and then, satisfied with his performance, scampered back toward his master. As it happened, Adam, who was still in the garage, had shut the door, so Zed ran on down the garden; and it was then that he came face to face with the fox. It was the big dog fox.

Zed had never seen a fox but he had smelt the strong frightening odour and he knew what the apparition was. He recognized, as he had never done before, an absolute enemy. Cross humans and snappy dogs were hazards. But this was different. Zed, as he came to an abrupt stop, felt suddenly his solitude and with it the completeness of his doghood, only in which lay now his salvation. It did not occur to him to bark for help. Indeed as his black eyes stared at the fox’s blue eyes he felt incapable of barking.

The big fox looked down at Zed with its cold pale eyes, which were sombre and ruthless and sad, awful eyes which knew not of the human world. The fox’s face, with its heavy black marking, looked macabre and wild, a face that devoured other faces. Zed knew that he must stand. If he turned and ran the fox would pursue him and in a few steps those jaws would crack his back. Zed could see the fox’s teeth, wrinkling a little the soft black lip of the muzzle. And still they stared, the fox’s black paw still raised in the attitude in which Zed had surprised him. They were so close that Zed could feel the warm current of his enemy’s breath. He stared up. There was no movement he could make to assert his doghood. At any movement the fox might think he was about to flee, and leap. Zed measured the terrible strength and the more terrible will that confronted him. He stared, calling up his own will and the strange authority which his species derived, alone among other animals, from the society of the human race.

Then a strange thing happened. The fox turned his head a little and lowered it right down until his muzzle almost touched the grass, still keeping his blue pale wild eyes fixed upon Zed. Then he dropped his black paw and sidled a little, as in a slow dance, moving round the dog. Zed moved slightly keeping his face resolutely toward the fox and staring with his blue-black eyes in which there was reflected so much of the expression of man. The fox continued to move round Zed with his head lowered and his eyes gazing, moving as in a very slow rhythmic dance, and Zed continued, upon the same spot, to turn. Then, quite suddenly, there was a noise nearby, human voices. The fox turned and in a second vanished. Zed sat down where he was. He felt so strange, as if he pitied the fox, or almost envied him, and did not want to return to the world of happiness. After a moment or two, avoiding Brian and Gabriel (for it was they), he ran back toward the garage, where the door was still shut. Outside on the gravel he began playing with the stones, tapping them with his little white paw as if they were his ball, and he forgot about the fox.

‘He’s sweet,’ said Hattie, holding Zed in her arms.

On entering the garden from the back gate, Adam and Zed had run straight on toward the garage, passing the Slipper House toward which the grown-ups wended their slower way. Adam had sat in the Rolls, turning the wheel this way and that, stood up to observe George, sat again, then emerged to find Zed waiting and had inspected the colony of martins underneath the eaves who were busy renovating last year’s nests. Later in the summer the baby birds would be closely visible, propped up in the nests like little dolls with white faces. Then Brian and Gabriel had come to find him, and he had run back with Zed to find Hattie and Pearl standing outside on the grass with Father Bernard. Zed had run straight to Hattie, who had picked him up and was pressing her nose into his furry shoulder while he licked her forehead. The combination of the dry coolish tickly fur and the warm round small body agitated with slightly struggling but trustful doggy affection and the smooth wet tongue caressing her brow quite overcame poor Hattie. She could feel Zed’s heart beating fast and her own heart beat fast too. She wanted to hug the dog and cry. She put him down hastily. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Zed,’ said Adam. He touched the skirt of Hattie’s dress. Hattie had put on a flowery summer dress earlier in the morning, but had changed into a straight many-buttoned navy blue shift over a blue-and-white striped shirt blouse when she decided to put her hair up.

‘They are alpha and omega,’ said Father Bernard smiling.

The cool April sun was shining out of a cool blue sky, making the green tiles of the Slipper House glisten as if they were wet. Dew upon the grass, newly come into the moving sunlight, flashed like diamonds; and a trail of dewy footprints across the lawn from the little copse which occupied the bottom of the garden presaged the footpath dreaded by Alex.

Pearl, who had persuaded Hattie to emerge, now stood behind her in the doorway of the house. She was wearing over her brown dress an apron which she had deliberately failed to remove when she saw from the window the advancing ‘company’. She had folded her arms in front of her and stood at attention, wearing her calm dour Mexican look, brown as her dress. She was aware of the priest casting curious glances at her and trying in vain to catch her eye with his nervous girlish smile.

The Brian McCaffreys returning from a shopping expedition (it was Saturday) had met Father Bernard who had proudly announced his destination. Gabriel was at once anxious, with this excuse, to ‘drop in’ and catch a glimpse of the famous girl. The news that John Robert Rozanov’s grand-daughter was installed at the Slipper House was the talk of the Institute. Her appearance there was eagerly awaited. In a sudden gust of possessive emotion, about which she felt secretive and almost guilty, Gabriel felt that she must see the waif and establish a special relation with her before she became the property of everybody. She tried to conceal the quality of her interest from Brian and Adam. She also wanted to find out whether John Robert had committed Hattie to Alex’s care. She had suggested a subsequent visit to Alex, but Brian was in no mood to see his mother. Although he complained he was, however, not unwilling to demonstrate his independence of her by visiting the Slipper House, and he too wanted to look at the girl.

Gabriel had impulsively handed over a cake (purchased for Leafy Ridge tea-time) which Hattie had handed to Pearl who had put it inside the front door on the floor. Gabriel’s earnest wet eyes were fixed with diffident sympathy upon Hattie. Gabriel had today had the infelicitous idea of tying her floppy hair back with a ribbon. Her face looked strained and shiny, her nose red in the April wind. Arrived, she felt embarrassed and apologetic, having awkwardly refused Hattie’s suggestion that they should come in. She now regretted this refusal, but could think of no way of retrieving the blunder which kept Hattie out on the grass shivering slightly in the cold wind. Gabriel was also upset because she had seen for a moment, just as she arrived at the Slipper House, the figure of George standing near the back door of Belmont and looking down the garden.

Hattie’s simple pinafore dress made her look schoolgirlish, although her white-blond hair had been assembled, without Pearl’s aid, into a large woven bun which climbed up the back of her head. She looked thin, almost ill (which she was not), untouched by sun, her pallid unmarked complexion damp like the stem of a winter plant. Her face, timid again, now after she had set Zed down, so lacked emphasis and colour that she seemed like a study in white by a painter whose whim it was to make a girl’s face scarcely appear from the faint hues of a uniformly milky canvas. Only her lips, poised and pouting a little with some persisting question, showed a faint natural pink. And her eyes, marbled with whiteness, were a faint but very clear pale blue.

Brian, standing behind Gabriel and smiling, showing his wolf teeth, thought, what a funny little drowned rat of a thing. And yet in two or three years that could be a beautiful woman.

Gabriel was saying, ‘If you need anything, please just let us know. Our telephone number, I’ll write it down, sorry I haven’t got a - Brian, could you write down our telephone number for — ’

‘It’s in the book,’ said Brian.

‘Oh, of course, anyway I expect Mrs McCaffrey is looking after you?’ Even after years of marriage it did not really occur to Gabriel that there was any Mrs McCaffrey except Alex. She cast a glance toward Belmont. The figure of George had disappeared.

‘Oh no,’ said Hattie, ‘we’re on our own. I haven’t even met Mrs McCaffrey. I suppose I ought to have done?’ She turned for a moment to Pearl, who remained rigid with folded arms.

‘I expect your grandfather drops in to see you have everything — ’

‘No, I haven’t seen him either - we don’t know, do we, Pearl - whether he’s - where he is exactly — ’

‘Oh dear!’ said Gabriel, ‘I mean — ’

‘What are you doing here?’ said Brian.

‘I don’t know,’ said Hattie, not comically but awkwardly, making Brian’s brusque question seem even ruder. Realizing this she added, ‘I expect I shall be studying.’

‘We shall be studying,’ said Father Bernard smiling.

‘What will you study?’ said Gabriel.

‘I don’t know — I don’t really know anything much — ’

‘Can you swim?’ said Brian.

Oh yes — ’

‘Then I expect we’ll see you at the Baths. Everyone in Ennistone comes to the Baths. Eh?’

There was a pause. Adam had withdrawn with Zed and was standing behind Brian on the side toward the back gate, looking as if he wanted to go away. He stood with his feet wide apart, wearing the corduroy knee breeches and brown jersey which was the uniform of his school. His round brown eyes scanned Hattie with the puzzlement of a young savage.

Hattie looked at him and said, ‘I like your togs.’

The word ‘togs’ emerged from Hattie’s lips betokening, in a way which all present obscurely understood, her curious unbelongingness, her statelessness, her lack of a native tongue and a native land.

Adam bowed.

‘It’s his school uniform,’ said Gabriel.

‘How nice — ’

‘Well, we must go,’ said Brian. ‘We must leave you two to your studies! Come on, Gabriel.’

‘You will, won’t you — ’

‘Yes, of course— ’

‘Good-bye, then — ’

‘So kind — ’

Brian and Gabriel emerged from the back gate into Forum Way. Adam and Zed had run out before them.

‘Well, what did you think?’ said Gabriel.

‘Was that her school uniform?’

‘Of course not! It was rather smart, I thought — ’

‘She’s an infant. She ought to be in white frills.’

‘What did you think of her?’

‘Nothing. She’s a skinny little American.’

‘She hadn’t much of an American accent, more English public school.’

‘Yuk!’

‘I thought she was sweet.’

‘Of course you did. She thought Zed was sweet.’

‘Why are you so cross?’

‘I’m always cross.’

‘You were quite rude.’

‘So were you, you were salivating with curiosity.’

‘Oh dear — ’

‘And what on earth possessed you to give her our cake?’

‘We can get another.’

‘They’ll all be gone.’

‘Did you see George?’

‘George? Has he got himself inside that house already?’

‘He was standing up near Belmont - I think — ’

‘You imagined it. I didn’t see him. You’ve got George on the brain.’

‘We ought to have said something nice to the maid,’ said Gabriel. ‘No one spoke to her.’

‘I suppose she’s American.’

‘No, someone at the Baths said she was some sort of relation of Ruby’s.’

‘Of Ruby’s? How perfectly horrible.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it makes things connect. I don’t want things to connect.’

‘But why?’

‘All connections are sinister. I don’t want anything to connect with anything.’

‘Did you like her, the little girl, Miss Meynell?’ Gabriel asked Adam whom they had just caught up with.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Gabriel thought, Oh dear, he’s jealous! And he wasn’t really pleased because I’d bought the cracked jug, well, he was pleased but not enough. And Brian thinks I think about George. And I do think about George. I suppose that was George I saw and I didn’t imagine it? I do wish I had more children. I’d love a little girl like Hattie. I wish George was my child too. Oh what nonsense my poor head is full of. She said, ‘Let’s invite her round.’

‘Who?’

‘Miss Meynell of course. She must be lonely — ’

‘She won’t be lonely for long,’ said Brian. ‘Mark my words, that girl will be a troublemaker.’

‘I can’t think why you — ’

‘And we will not invite her round. For heaven’s sake, don’t let us mess about with anything to do with Rozanov. Everything about that man brings bad luck. And do take that bloody ribbon off your hair, do you want to look sixteen too?’

After the Brian McCaffreys had disappeared out of the back gate and Hattie and her ‘tutor’ had gone into the sitting-room, Pearl Scotney was left alone. She put Gabriel’s impulsive cake away in a tin and put on her coat and went out into the garden. Near the Slipper House the lawn, broad and tree-dotted near the house, began to narrow to a meander of green, coming to an end in the thicker maze of trees and shrubs at the end of the garden. Here there was a garden shed, a space for a bonfire, and an area which had once been a grass tennis court. There was also the remains of a small vegetable garden. (The old gardener no longer came regularly.) Pearl walked this way, away from Belmont, and threaded between lilac and viburnum and buddleia and azalea and rhus and small Japanese maples which were putting out vivid curly red buds which looked like decorations made out of coral. Here and there were some taller trees, fir and chestnut and an old ilex. This region, which mixed higher and lower vegetation, was sometimes called ‘the shrubbery’, sometimes ‘the copse’. The paths were grassy, or else of sad dark earth grown over with green moss.

Pearl, who liked plants and trees, noticed her surroundings and, as human beings can, took a little pleasure in them in the middle of her general large unhappiness. She felt as she walked, giddy, suffering one of those fits of non- Identity which probably attack most souls at some time. As she had stood at attention behind her ‘young mistress’ at the door of the house she had felt, in her apron uniform, invisible. Well, the priest had noticed her; but she had not liked his notice. That young Mrs McCaffrey had thrown her one or two of her vague over-sweet smiles, but that meant nothing. Hattie’s ‘we’ meant nothing too. Well, it meant something just now in Hattie’s heart; but Hattie’s heart was entering a danger zone, vulnerable to the world, soon to be public property. Her heart which now hugged its little world in a small space, curled up as in a womb, would soon be enlarged to welcome many, perhaps very many, new loves. New desires, new attractions, new knowledge must come now. Hattie was at the end, the very last soft inaudible breath, of her childhood. It was the time, the logical time, for Pearl to let go, indeed to be forced to let go. A mother might feel like this, she thought. But after all a mother is forever. I am not Hattie’s mother or her sister or even her second cousin. Hattie has no conception of my relationship to her, and will easily begin to feel it to be unreal and to belong to the past.

Pearl had thought these thoughts many times before, prophetically. Now that the time had come to think them for real, she was so tired of them that she could not regard them as posing any problem she could possibly solve. She had wondered whether, in putting Hattie and herself into the Slipper House, like two dolls put away in a doll’s house, John Robert had had any particular end in view. Pearl had imagined, continuing her unremitting guesswork about John Robert’s mind, that he had intended Mrs McCaffrey to ‘keep an eye’ on Hattie, perhaps to take her over. But this peril, which Pearl had been determined to resist, had not so far materialized. Meanwhile she discouraged Hattie from seeing Alex. It seemed that they were really ‘on their own’. After all, had they not always been so? Only when Hattie was a child ‘on their own’ had had a different sense. Hattie had survived marvellously, they had both done, without a social world. They knew a few of Margot’s (new very respectable) friends. They had made, in their tramping about Europe, no permanent acquaintances, and this had been partly, Pearl now recognized, because of Pearl’s possessiveness as well as because of Hattie’s shyness. Hattie had school friends (Verity Smaldon, for instance) to whom Pearl had surrendered her for brief visits. But these were fragile attachments, mere contextual connections. Hattie, so infinitely and emptily ready for the world, was still, unless Pearl possessed her, unpossessed.

But what about John Robert? Throughout the years of Pearl’s regime the philosopher had manifested an extraordinary combination of absolute correctness and absolute indifference. Money and plans and instructions materialized with prompt effective clarity. Go here, go there, do this, do that. But mainly the great man had remained invisible, and when he did appear his attentions to Hattie were vague, distracted, absent-minded and reluctant. He was always ‘elsewhere’. He notoriously ‘did not like children’, and had never made any serious attempt to ‘get on’ with his grand-daughter, whose wordless diffidence matched his own monumental awkwardness and lack of tact. His relations with Pearl had been even more, though correct, without substance. John Robert had taken one look at Pearl and had decided to trust her absolutely. It seemed to her that he had never looked at her since. How much he must have understood in the first look. Or more likely, how carelessly he had gambled with Hattie’s welfare and her happiness. If Hattie had detested Pearl she would never have told John Robert. Did he realize this, did he care? The absoluteness of the trust, the large sums of money involved, the larger sums of more important matters, sometimes stunned Pearl and touched her with a terrible deep touch. At the same time, once the trust was given, she became invisible, she received only instructions, never encouragement or praise. These she would more cheerfully have done without if she had felt that John Robert thought of her even sometimes as something other than an efficient instrument of his will.

Pearl had, at the start, been frightened of John Robert and of the whole situation, though also, of course, excited and elated by it. It was later, when Pearl felt calm and secure enough to observe Rozanov, herself unobserved (and since she was ‘invisible’ she had many such chances) that the terrible ailment began. How charmless that big, awkward man was, careless about Hattie, egotistically absent-minded, consulting always his convenience and oblivious of theirs. How ugly he was too, fat and flabby and wet-mouthed with jagged yellow teeth. (This was before he had acquired the false ones commented on by George.) His big head and big hooked nose made him look like a vast puppet in a carnival. His movements were graceless and clumsy. His stare was startled and disconcerting as if, when he looked at someone, he simultaneously recalled something awful which had nothing to do with the person looked at. With all this there went a certain decisive precision which Pearl, reciprocating his trust, relied upon. Where the girls’ arrangements were concerned, he meant and did what he said. But what he said to her were only orders. They never had a conversation.

How differently, two years later, did Pearl feel about the impossible being in whose hand their fates rested. She mistook, at first, her warmer feelings for protectiveness, even pity. She ran to fetch his coat, though she did not presume to help him on with it, an operation which his arthritis had rendered difficult. His stick was not only in view, but polished. She also cleaned his shoes. (He never commented.) Sometimes he told her to make telephone calls to hotels. Once he asked her to go out and buy him a hat. (‘What kind?’ ‘Any kind.’) That had caused Pearl a lot of joy and pain. She used to say to herself, though never to Hattie, ‘the poor old chap’. He was a shambling eccentric who needed to be looked after. Too late she realized that her heart was involved.

If he had really just been a ‘poor old chap’ she would probably have loved him too, but differently. As it was, there was an extra spice of fear and admiration. Not that either Pearl or Hattie had ever read any of his books, but they took it for granted that he was ‘awfully distinguished’. Pearl actually got one of his books out of a library once, but could not understand it and hurriedly took it back for fear he should suddenly arrive and find her reading it: which she knew would displease him very much indeed. Also, she wanted to disguise her obsession from Hattie, and had so far succeeded. It was not Pearl’s ‘place’ to love John Robert. Meanwhile he walked in her dreams, surrounded by the joy and fear which had been dimly presaged in the adventure with the hat. She must do everything right, she must be perfect and not fail. Above all, she must not be discovered. It did not occur to her to console herself by taking a heroic stance; her situation was without choice, her course the only possible one. She lived inside a love so improper and so hopeless that she felt sometimes almost free to enjoy herself therein. Love, even without hope, was a joyful energy. When John Robert wrote to her she blushed under her dark complexion. Before he came she imagined his coming a hundred times. When he came she was scarlet, faint, but invisible, always efficient. As she stood at attention and awaited his instructions she longed to seize his hand and cover it with kisses. She loved his orders. That was all that he gave her, and it was much. She trembled and he looked through her with his preoccupied and distant eyes.

I must give them up, thought Pearl, as she stood on the green mossy path and looked through the trees at the April sun on the lawn beyond. I must give them both up. I must cut off, cut away, and become another person.

Quelconque une solitude

Sans le cygne ni le quai

Mire sa desuetude

Au regard que j’abdiquai

Ici de la gloriole

Haute à ne le pas toucher

Dont maint ciel se bariole

Avec les ors de coucher

Mais langoureusement longe

Comme de blanc linge ôté

Tel fugace oiseau si plonge

Exultatrice a cote

Dans l’onde toi devenue

Ta jubilation nue.

‘What is the subject of longe?’ asked Father Bernard. By this time he was becoming rather confused himself.

Hattie suggested ‘solitude’. This had not occurred to Father Bernard. He said, ‘Oh, not oiseau?’

‘Could be oiseau,’ Hattie said politely.

He had reflected with interest, even with a little excitement, upon the prospect of meeting Miss Meynell and examining her to see what stuff she was made of, since thus he interpreted John Robert’s vague idea. He thought, the great man has no conception of the girl, doesn’t know what on earth to do with her. He can’t go on hiding her away in a boarding school, he has to make a decision but doesn’t know how to. All right, I’ll have a look at her at least. But I shall leave him in no doubt about his responsibilities! I’m not going to be saddled with her!

Having accepted the idea that he was to ‘examine’ Miss Meynell, Father Bernard felt at a loss how to proceed. He decided to be frank, to explain that he was not in any sense her ‘tutor’, and that he simply wanted to explore with her, if he could, the subjects which she had found interesting at school, testing her in a friendly way so as to give a helpful report to her grandfather. ‘Not mathematics,’ he added, laughing, at which he had been a perfect dunce. Miss Meynell, not admitting to having been a dunce, agreed it was unnecessary to discuss this subject. She received him nervously and, when the ‘visitors’ had gone, ushered him into the sitting-room. The maid, a girl with an interesting head, looked in to ask if they wanted coffee, which they did not. When Father Bernard had explained his plan, Miss Meynell became quiet and business-like. He had already had a surprise. He had expected a big loutish ‘grown-up’ girl, ‘all over the place’, but this small, quiet creature was both more childish and more composed than his picture of an ‘American teenager’.

He began by asking her to make a precis of the leading article in The Times, which, together with some books, he had brought with him. This she did creditably, saying that they often did précis at school. He then inquired whether she knew any foreign languages, and when she admitted to German asked if she could speak it at all, at which she uttered a fluent outburst of remarks which he could not altogether follow. Hastily leaving German, he inquired about her Italian. Yes, Miss Meynell knew some Italian. Father Bernard, leaving Clergy House in a hurry, had picked up his copy of Dante, and now turned, with new-found caution, to a passage which he knew well in the third Canto of the Inferno. ‘Per me si va nella città dolente, per me si va nell’eterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente.. .’ It was only when he had the book open that he realized with a curious pang, even with a sort of fright, that the passage he had chosen contained the terrible words which John Robert had uttered in condemnation of George McCaffrey: a condemnation now seen to be of such resonance and such finality, and against which, as Father Bernard had known at the time, and knew now with an added poignancy, he ought instantly to have protested. He asked Hattie to read the first fifty lines of the canto in Italian, which she did readily and with an expression which declared her understanding. She then proceeded to an occasionally hesitant but accurate translation. Dante and Virgil have passed the gate to hell but have not yet crossed Acheron. In this no man’s land, rejected both by heaven and hell, Dante gets his first glimpse of tormented people, and is duly horrified. (He was to see worse. Did he get used to it?) ‘Who are these people so overcome by pain?’ Virgil replies that ‘this is the miserable condition of wretched souls who lived without disgrace and without praise. Mixed with them are the vile angels who are neither rebels nor loyal to God, but were for themselves.’ ‘Master, what makes them cry out so terribly?’ ‘They have no hope of death, and their blind life is so abject that they envy every other lot. Mercy and justice alike despise them. Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa. Do not let us speak of them; just look and pass by.’ How terrible, Father Bernard thought, that this ferocious judgement and those words should have come spontaneously into John Robert’s mind when Father Bernard wanted to talk about George; and the priest felt a sudden rage, almost a hatred, rising in him against the philosopher, and mingling with the lurid and exalted emotions aroused by the fierce words of the great poet.

‘Do you believe in hell, Miss Meynell?’

‘Please call me Hattie. I’m Harriet - but that’s what they call me - Hattie.’

‘Do you believe in hell, Hattie?’

‘No. I don’t believe in God and the after life. I’m sorry.’

Father Bernard did not think it consistent with his tutelary role to say that he did not either. He said, ‘We are subject to time. We cannot conceive of eternity. All we can know of hell is what happens to us in the present. If there is hell it is now.’

‘You mean people live now in hell? You mean like - hungry people?’

‘I mean like evil people.’

‘But the people here weren’t evil, were they?’

‘No, but then they weren’t quite in hell, were they?’

‘It seemed awful enough,’ said Hattie. She added, ‘I feel so sorry for poor Virgil being drawn into that terrible world.’

‘You mean the Christian world?’

‘Well-yes— ’

Father Bernard laughed and patted her hand as he took the book from her. They left the theological discussion at that point and proceeded to the French language, and it was here that Father Bernard found himself in really deep water. He had brought a few books of French poetry with him including Mallarmé, whom he now picked up and opened more or less at random. He had intended to choose a less difficult poem, but the book had opened automatically at one of his favourites, and he had laid it on the table between them. Looking at it now, he realized that although he could sort of understand the poem, and liked it very much, he could not construe it.

Neither, of course, could Hattie, who had never seen the poem before.

Hattie’s attempt at a literal translation began: ‘A sort of solitude without a, or the, swan or quay reflects its disuse in the look which I abdicated, or removed, from the glorious - no, the vanity - so high it can’t be touched, with which many skies streak themselves with the golds of sunset, but languidly wanders like white linen taken off a sort of fugitive bird if it plunges — ’ By the time Hattie had broken down here they were both laughing.

‘It’s impossible!’

‘You read it aloud as if you understood!’

‘Well it’s beautiful - but whatever does it mean?’

‘What do you think it’s about, what sort of scene is the poet evoking?’

Hattie looked silently at the text, while Father Bernard admired her smooth boyish neck over which tendrils of pale-fair hair from the complex bun were distractedly straying.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Since he says there is no swan and no quay, I suppose it might be a river?’

‘Good deduction. After all it’s a poem!’

‘And there’s a wave at the end.’

‘And - nue?’

‘Someone naked, perhaps someone swimming naked.’

‘Yes. It’s like a puzzle picture, isn’t it.’

‘He’s turning away from the gloriole that means sort of false showy something, doesn’t it, which is too high to touch compared with - no, well - and the bird can’t be the subject because then longe wouldn’t be right - I think - so I suppose regard is the subject - but— ’

‘Oh never mind about the subject — ’

‘But I do mind! The solitude, the uninteresting solitude, reflects its swanless desolation in the look which he had turned away from the false glory, too high to touch, with which many skies dapple themselves in sunset golds - perhaps he thinks sunsets are vulgar - then, or but why but? - something or other, either his look on a fugitive bird, no I see, his gaze coasts languidly, no, languorously, along like white linen taken off - that can’t be right - has longe got an object, could it be the bird? - perhaps the bird is like the linen, maybe it’s a white bird that plunges - like the - the clothes which - no, no, surely the jubilation plunges - and the languorous gaze coasts along the jubilation - I mean - then “but” would have sense - it’s all rather dull until my gaze languorously - no - if a (but why if?), if a bird plunges like white linen taken off, my gaze languorously follows, exulting beside me, or it, in the wave that you have become, your naked jubilation - oh dear! that can’t be right — ’

Hattie had become quite excited. With one hand she absently pulled the hairpins out of her hair, gathered the mass of silky silver-yellow stuff together, and pushed it all down the back of her dress.

Father Bernard was excited too, but not by the grammatical quest. He had never, he now realized, subjected the poem to the sort of scrutiny which even Hattie’s jumbled commentary comprised. What was the subject of what? Who cared? The general sense of the poem was perfectly clear to him, or rather he had made his own sense and hallowed it long ago.

He said, ‘Let’s get the general picture. You said there was a river and someone swimming naked. How many people are there in the poem?’

Hattie replied, ‘Two. The speaker and the swimmer.’

‘Good. And who are they?’

‘Who are they? Oh, well, I suppose the poet and some friend — ’

Father Bernard’s imagination had, in taking charge of the poem, taken advantage of the fact that the sex of the swimmer was not specified. In the blessed free-for-all of fantasy he had pictured the charming companion, whose underwear slides off with the languid ease of a bird’s flight, as a boy. The final image was particularly precious to him of the young thing diving in and rising into the wave of his plunge, tossing back his wet hair and laughing. And all about, the green river bank, the sunshine, the warmth, the solitude … Do you think it’s a love poem?’ he asked her.

‘Well, it could be.’

‘How can it not be?’ he almost cried. He thought, she is unawakened. ‘The poet is with his — ’ he checked himself.

‘Girl friend, I suppose,’ said Hattie stiffly. She was feeling shocked at Father Bernard’s evident indifference to the pleasure of finding out main verbs and what agrees with what; and she had not failed to notice his dismay at her outburst of German.

‘Girl friend! What a phrase. He is with his mistress.’

‘Why not his wife?’ said Hattie. ‘Was he married?’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t matter. This is a poem. We don’t want wives in poems. He is with a lovely young woman — ’

‘How do you know she’s lovely?’

‘I know. Just see the picture.’

Hattie said more kindly, ‘Yes, I think I can - it’s like that picture by Renoir - La baigneuse au griffon - only there - well, there are two girls, not a man and a girl.’

This did not interest Father Bernard, at any rate he did not pursue it, but the evocation of the lush greenery and the Impressionist painter accorded with his racing mood. ‘Yes, yes, it’s sunny and green and the river is glittering and the sunshine is coming through the leaves and dappling, that was a good word you used, the naked form of the — ’

‘The sun doesn’t dapple the girl, it’s the gloriole, no it’s the sky or skies that dapple themselves with — ’

‘Never mind, you must get the sense of the whole - the linen, white like the bird, slips away — ’ The image which had now, with magisterial charm, risen up in the priest’s mind, lily-pale and glowing with youth, was that of Tom McCaffrey.

At about the same time that Father Bernard was taking liberties (and they went rather far) with the shade of Tom McCaffrey, the real Tom, standing in Greg and Ju’s sitting-room in the house in Travancore Avenue, was gazing with puzzlement and alarm at a letter which he had just found lying upon the door mat. It had been sent by post to Belmont, whence it had evidently been redelivered by hand. It read as follows:

16 Hare Lane

Burkestown

Ennistone

Dear Mr McCaffrey,

I wonder if you would be so good as to come round and see me, as soon as is convenient, at this address? There is something which I want to ask you. During the next few days, I shall be at home until midday.

Yours sincerely

J. R. Rozanov

P.S. I would be grateful if you would treat this request as a matter of confidence.

Tom’s first thought, when he saw the startling signature, was that, of course, the letter was intended for George. He inspected the envelope again, where John Robert had certainly and clearly written ‘Thomas McCaffrey’, to which he had ridiculously added ‘Esquire’.

Scarlett-Taylor came in. Tom handed him the letter. ‘What do you think of this?’

Emma read the letter, frowned, and returned it to Tom. ‘You’ve let him down already.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He asked you to treat it as a matter of confidence. Now you’ve shown it to me.’

‘Oh well - yes - but — ’

‘Fortunately for you, I shall observe perfect discretion about your lapse.’

‘He asked me to treat it as a matter of confidence, but I didn’t say I would — ’

‘Any gentleman would respond — ’

‘Damn it, I only got it a minute ago.’

‘I fail to see what difference that makes.’

‘I didn’t have time to think!’

‘That shows that you are instinctively irresponsible, you cannot even be trusted for a minute.’

‘You’re romantic about him, you wish he wanted to see you.’

‘Don’t be a perfect fool.’

‘You’re jealous!’

‘You’re childish!’

‘You’re sulky.’

‘Do you want a punch?’

‘You wouldn’t punch anybody.’

‘Couldn’t I — ’

‘I said you wouldn’t, not couldn’t. Emma, don’t be cross with me - you aren’t cross, are you? We can’t quarrel, we can’t quarrel, we can’t — ’

Since the occasion of Tom’s momentous visit to Emma’s room, an uneasy odd relationship had existed between them. That, the visit, had been something noumenal, as if they had slipped out of time, out of ordinary individual being. They had not made love in any of the rather mechanical senses in which Tom had hitherto understood a making of love. It was rather that, instantly, they had become love. For Tom it was like being embraced by an angel, being inescapably held between the wings of an angel who was and was not Emma. This enfolding was perfect happiness, perfect bliss, perfect unproblematic, undramatic sexual joy. Tom could not remember having, after Emma took him in his arms, moved at all. As he recalled it, they had both lain, gripped together, absolutely motionless, in a spellbound ecstatic trance, perfectly relaxed yet also in extreme tension, in a holdingness of immense urgent power. In this entranced state Tom had fallen asleep. He had awakened near dawn and was at once aware of where he was and that Emma, still utterly close to him but no longer holding, was awake too. As soon as Emma felt Tom awakening he murmured to him, ‘Go, Tom, go.’

Tom instantly and obediently left Emma’s bed and returned to his own where he fell at once into a blissful deep happy sleep from which he did not emerge until after eight o’clock.

He dressed quickly and ran out to the kitchen where he could already hear breakfast sounds. Emma, frying sausages, gave him a glance and a curt good morning. Emma, dressed in his suit, complete with waistcoat and watch chain, with his narrow rimless spectacles, looked alien, almost forbidding.

Tom said hello and sat down at the kitchen table. Then he got up and laid the table and fetched fruit juice from the fridge. He was given two sausages, said thank you, and ate them. Emma drank some fruit juice but did not eat or say anything or look at Tom.

At last Tom had said, ‘Thank you very very much for last night. But you’re angry with me.’

Emma said, ‘Last night was unique.’ After this he got up and went away into his room.

When he had gone Tom felt a dark, dense anguish curiously shot with joy. Later Emma emerged from his room and made some quite ordinary remarks and generally signalled the resumption of ordinary life, which Tom, rather to his surprise, found himself able to join in resuming. Since then they had carried on as before and yet not as before. There were no strange looks or new and unusual touches or contacts. It was rather as if they both moved more gracefully in an enlarged space. There was a new consciousness in the air; but this remained vague, and Emma’s occasional ‘sulks’ did not seem different in quantity or quality. At bedtime on the next day it had been somehow clear that Tom was to occupy his own bed and not Emma’s. Tom was not upset. He lay in his bed and laughed quietly. And in the days that followed, during which ‘that night’ was not referred to, he was not unhappy. He felt a diffused excitement, a sort of secretive tenderness, which increased his bodily well-being and his natural cheerfulness. Today (the day of the arrival of John Robert Rozanov’s letter) Emma had been especially testy and touchy, but still without making any allusion to their ‘happening’. Would it now, Tom wondered, disappear undiscussed into the past, and become like a dream, gradually unhappening into oblivion?

‘Are you going?’ said Emma.

‘To see Professor Rozanov? Certainly I am. Wouldn’t you? I’m dying with curiosity.’

‘You could go now, this morning. It’s not eleven yet. How long would it take you to get there?’

‘Twenty minutes. Whatever can it be? Could it be something awful?’

‘You mean like his having secretly married your mother?’

Tom began to laugh, then abruptly stopped. Good heavens! That he could not endure; but of course it was only a joke —

Emma went on. ‘Don’t worry, if he had he would say “I have something to tell you”, not “I have something to ask you”.’

‘But what can he want to ask?’

‘Something about George?’

Tom felt suddenly disappointed, then frightened. ‘God. I hope not. I don’t want to muck around with George’s emotions. I mean - Christ, I hope George doesn’t find out I’ve been visiting his guru - that would be trouble.’

‘You haven’t visited him yet. Maybe it would be wise not to go.’

‘Oh I’m going! I’m going now!’

‘You ought to shave.’

Tom ran to the bathroom and shaved carefully and combed his hair.

‘And put on a tie.’

Emma was looking round the bathroom door and Tom could now see Emma’s face wearing its old familiar quizzical mocking look. He turned and went to his friend and put his arms around his neck.

‘Emma, all right, I’m not going to talk about it if you don’t want, but something or other did occur, heavens knows what, and I just want you to know that I’m not worrying about it at all and that the most important aspect of the matter as far as I’m concerned is that I love you.’

‘I love you too, you dope, but nothing follows from that except that.’

‘Well, isn’t that rather a lot? And that night — ’

‘A hapax legomenon.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Something that only occurs once.’

‘You mean like the birth of Jesus Christ?’

‘Don’t be damn silly about this — ’

‘Well, the world can be changed — ’

‘Oh just shut up, will you. Put a tie on.’

Tom found a tie. ‘Do you think I should clean my shoes?’

‘No. You aren’t visiting God.’

‘Oh. Aren’t I? Will you walk with me?’

‘No. Clear off.’

By the time Tom McCaffrey had reached John Robert Rozanov’s door he had worked himself up into a fair fever. He had pictured every sort of embarrassing, maddening, painful, disastrous business involving George, Rozanov, and himself. Rozanov wanted him to tell George never to communicate with him again. Rozanov wanted him to console George and ask him not to be too upset because Rozanov was too busy to see him any more. (Tom could imagine how George would greet such an embassy.) Rozanov wanted him to instruct George to print some public amendment of some article in which George had misrepresented or plagiarized Rozanov. Trying in desperation to think of something that Rozanov might want which was not connected with George, his disturbed fantasy put forward the idea that perhaps John Robert was about to reveal that he was really Tom’s father! Tom had never entertained this speculation before and did not now entertain it for long. It was promptly driven from his head by the indignant shade of Alan McCaffrey, assisted by that of Fiona Gates. Love for his parents suddenly filled Tom’s soul, disturbing him even more. And these two, as they had always been, comforting and benign ghosts, gave Tom a heightened sense of the vulnerability of happiness and of how dangerous and unpredictable and just bloody tiresomely powerful this eccentric philosopher might prove to be.

Arrived at the door of 16 Hare Lane, he dabbed nervously at the bell, which made a tiny grunt. He pushed it again harder and longer and produced a loud impertinent hiss. The door opened instantly and was filled by the stout burly form of the philosopher.

John Robert said nothing, but stepped awkwardly backward into the dark hall to make way for Tom who stepped awkwardly forward into the space. John Robert then moved backwards, followed by Tom, to the door of the sitting-room, then turned his back on the boy and blundered forward into the room.

Outside, a brilliant April light dazzlingly displayed blue sky, fast white cloudlets, the Cox’s Orange tormented by wind, a disconsolate fence with slats missing, unkempt ruffled damp grass. The room by contrast was dark, low-ceilinged and narrow, the tiny grate and mantelpiece like a slit.

John Robert said, ‘Please sit down. Please - sit - down — ’

Tom took in two hopeless slumping low-slung armchairs, and since he had to obey the command rapidly, reached out and seized from beside John Robert an extremely rickety upright chair which he placed on a black lumpy rug beside the fireplace and sat down.

John Robert looked at the armchairs, made as if to sit on the arm of one and decided not to. Tom leapt up.

‘No - you sit - I’ll - there’s another chair - in the hall — ’

John Robert pushed past Tom who was still standing, and returned with another upright chair which he put with its back to the window. He then closed the door into the hall. They both sat down.

Tom felt he should say something, so said ‘Good morning’, which sounded rather stilted. He had not only never spoken to Rozanov before, he had never been at close quarters with him or had an opportunity to inspect his face. This in fact was difficult to do now with the dazzling light behind, and the moving clouds making the room seem to tilt like a ship laid over.

‘Mr McCaffrey,’ said the philosopher. ‘I hope very much that you will excuse the liberty - if it is a liberty - of my asking you to hear - what I want to say — ’

Tom felt a pang of fear which he had recognized as a pang of guilt. It had not occurred to him in his imaginings as he walked along that John Robert might want to accuse him of something. What had he done? What could he have done, to harm, hurt, annoy, incense this great man - or to make the great man imagine that he had been harmed or hurt and could justly be annoyed or incensed? Tom searched his conscience, at once a prey to vague huge remorse. Where in his imperfect conduct could this fault lie? Did John Robert think that Tom had encouraged George to - or told George that —? But almost at once, as he confusedly accused himself of he knew not what, he was aware that John Robert was himself upset, perhaps even nervous.

‘Please — ’ said Tom, ‘there’s nothing you could - I mean if there’s anything - I could do - or — ’

‘There is,’ said Rozanov, ‘something that you could do — ’ He stared at Tom, wrinkling up his pitted brow, his big moist prehensile lips thrust forward.

Tom thought: Oh God. It is about George.

‘Before I explain - or at any rate - before I - introduce - what I want to - I hope you will not mind if I ask you a few simple questions.’

‘No.’

‘And may I say, as I said in my letter, that I desire - indeed I require - that you should regard everything that is said in this room as strictly confidential, or to use a simpler and stronger word, as a secret. You understand what that means?’

‘Yes.’

‘You will not speak of this conversation with anybody!’

‘Yes. I mean no, I won’t — ’ It did not occur to Tom to query this requirement, which after all, since nothing had yet been revealed, might have seemed unreasonable, so much was he already under the spell of the philosopher. In any case, he would have promised as much and more at that moment, so great was his curiosity.

‘I want to ask you, then, these questions, which I believe you will answer truthfully.’

‘Yes - yes — ’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty.’

‘And in good health? Well, obviously you are.’

‘Yes.’ Tom thought, he wants me to go on an expedition to find something, buried treasure in California, for instance.

‘You are at the university in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are you studying?’

‘English.’

‘Do you enjoy your work?’

‘Yes, on the whole.’

‘What sort of degree will you get?’

‘Second-class.’

‘How will you earn your living?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘What would you like to do?’

‘I’d like to be a writer.’

‘A writer?’

Tom thought, he wants me to write his biography! What perfect fun, trips to America —

‘What have you written so far?’

‘Oh, just poems and one or two stories —’

‘Have you published anything?’

‘Just one poem in the Ennistone Gazette. But of course, I think I could write anything - I’m interested in biography — ’

‘You don’t want to be a philosopher, do you?’

‘No-no, I don’t.’

‘Good. Would you say that you were a cheerful person?’

‘Oh yes. I think I’d be a good travelling companion.’

‘A good travelling companion.’ John Robert was interested in this point.

‘Oh yes, I’m awfully good-tempered and practical— ’ John Robert and Tom, his biographer, secretary, his privileged aide, travelling about America, but the world, together … George would be furious. Oh God, George. But could it all be somehow about George after all? Perhaps he wants me to be George’s keeper? Tom gazed fascinated at John Robert’s huge face and fierce yellow-brown eyes and red lips pouting with will.

‘Your family are Quakers. Do you practise your religion?’

‘I go to Meeting - to the Quaker Meeting - sometimes. It means something to me.’

‘Did you go last Sunday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Are you engaged to be married?’

‘No. Certainly not.’

‘Are you - please excuse these questions - but - well - are you living with a young lady?’

‘No.’

Tom’s mind switched back to buried treasure. An adventure, a quest. Good. A dangerous one? Not so good. Suddenly he thought, he wants to recruit me for the Secret Service! That’s what all this ‘confidential’ business is about! I’ll say no. I couldn’t stand that. But it’s exciting all the same, and jolly flattering really!

‘But you have done - I mean - you have had - sexual experience?’

‘Yes, but not much, and not now.’ Unless what happened last Sunday night counted?

‘Are you heterosexual?’

‘Yes.’ Tom thought, that settles it, it must be the Secret Service. It’s true I’m heterosexual. But suppose he asks if I’m homosexual too?

This question did not occur to John Robert. He pondered. Tom had begun to feel, staring at the philosopher and distinguishing his face from the light behind, slightly giddy. The dazzling white clouds were driving the narrow tilting ship-room swiftly along. John Robert’s face, huge with command and troubled concentration, was difficult to keep in focus. Tom thought, he is coming to the point, whatever in heaven and earth the point may be. He could hear his own fast breathing and Rozanov’s.

‘I imagine you know that I have a grand-daughter, Harriet Meynell.’

This took Tom completely by surprise. He had not heard the local gossip. He was vaguely aware that such a person existed, but he had never seen her or thought about her and felt extremely vague about her age. He thought, does he want me to take her on visits to the Natural History Museum? Jesus, how can I get out of this?

‘Yes.’

‘She is seventeen.’

This put a slightly different complexion on the matter. Was he to show her round London, take her to Hamlet? Where was she anyway? He said, ‘Is she in America?’

‘No, she is in Ennistone, at the Slipper House. Didn’t you know that I have rented the Slipper House from your mother?’

‘No.’ Tom did not feel bound to go into his relationship, incomprehensible to himself, with Alex.

‘She is there with her maid,’ said John Robert with a ridiculous solemnity.

‘Oh - good — ’

‘She has never been in Ennistone before.’

‘I could show her the town, if that’s what you want — ’ Or was the weird old codger merely chatting?

‘I want you to meet her, to get to know her.’

‘And introduce her to some young people? I could do that. I could give a party for her.’ Already Tom was planning whom he would invite.

‘I don’t want her to meet anybody else. Only you.’

‘But why - why only me?’

‘Only you.’ John Robert was breathing audibly through his mouth which he had opened wide, and was gazing at Tom with a look which seemed like hatred but was no doubt only the result of concentration. Being so concentrated upon was beginning to give Tom a panicky feeling of being trapped. He wanted to get up and lean on the mantelpiece, or open the door into the hall. But he could not move. He was fixed by John Robert’s glare and John Robert’s purpose.

‘Perhaps you could explain,’ said Tom, trying to sound forceful but sounding timid.

‘She needs a protector.’

‘Oh, I’ll protect her - I mean when I’m here - I’m usually not here. I can protect her for a fortnight.’

‘I shall require more than that.’

Tom thought, he is mad, he is totally unhinged. He is mad, and yet he is not mad. As he underwent the philosopher’s gaze Tom felt rather mad himself as if he might suddenly have to get up and go to John Robert and touch him.

‘I’ve got to go back to London and - and work — ’ said Tom. ‘I can’t sort of - do you mean a sort of chaperone? I’m not the person you want.’ As he said this he felt a sudden pain, as if to be separated from John Robert forever, after this conversation, would be terrible anguish! Is he hypnotizing me? Tom wondered.

‘You are the person I want.’

‘But what to do, what for — ’

‘I don’t want a lot of people, a lot of men — ’

‘A lot of men?’

‘Vying - for my grand-daughter.’

The word ‘vying’ sounded so odd and foreign to Tom as John Robert said it that Tom could hardly for a moment understand it.

Tom said, ‘She’s only seventeen! And anyway, why not? Am I supposed to keep them off?’

‘She is nearly eighteen.’

‘Then can’t she look after herself? Girls can these days. If you want a chaperone, can’t her maid do it?’

‘You ask if you are supposed to keep them off. Yes. I want that to be - clear.’

‘But how can it be! I can’t devote the rest of my life to her!’

John Robert was silent, leaning back now and staring.

What is this that I’m being turned into, this task that is being forced on me, Tom thought. Shall I go, shall I run? Shall I suddenly be bloody rude? He could not. He said, leaning forward and speaking gently as to a child, ‘Do you want me to sleep in front of her door?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want me to be her brother?’

‘No. I do not want you to sleep in front of her door, I do not want you to be her brother.’

Tom took in the emphasis. ‘Whatever do you want then?’

‘I want you to marry her.’

John Robert rose to his feet, and Tom, as the philosopher’s huge form blocked the light, sprang up too and retreated to lean against the flimsy shiny little sideboard. They remained so, John Robert staring open-mouthed and Tom gazing at the blurred image of the philosopher’s head, beyond which the cold brilliant sun was shining on the agitated branches of the apple tree. Then, as if there was nothing else to do, they both sat down again. Tom found that his heart was racing and that he was blushing violently. He thought, I didn’t know that one could blush from fear.

John Robert, as if what he had just said was something perfectly ordinary, went on, ‘I shall settle some money upon her, not a great sum. I hope, of course, that she will go on to the university if she proves able to. Marriage should not interfere with that.’

‘But I don’t want to marry her! I don’t want to marry anybody!’

‘You haven’t even met her yet.’ John Robert said ‘even’ in a tone which suggested that he had understood Tom to say the exact opposite of what he had said.

‘But I don’t want to meet her, I have to go back to London tomorrow — ’

‘Surely that is not so.’

‘All right, it isn’t, but — ’

‘I would be glad if we could arrange now — ’

‘But why, what is this, why me, what about her, she’s a child, she won’t want to marry, and if she does she won’t want to marry me. I mean things aren’t like that — ’

‘Oftener than we think,’ said the philosopher, ‘we can make things be the way we desire.’

‘But why - why marry her?’

‘Do you suppose that I am simply inviting you to seduce her?’

Tom felt positively guilty before John Robert’s indignant look. Was he then already so far entangled that he could be accused of some sort of levity? It had occurred to his confused mind that John Robert was some sort of crazy voyeur. He seemed to be offering Tom his grand-daughter, but with what motive? He was a madman from California, a dangerous crazy man. But Tom was, at that moment, too dominated by John Robert, too much under the spell of his high serious tone, to be able to see his proposal in any crudely sinister light. He did, however, very much wish that he was somewhere else, that he was free again as he had been.

‘Look,’ said Tom, ‘let’s take this slowly. I mean, what’s this idea for?’

‘I should have thought,’ said the philosopher, ‘that it was clear what I wanted. In many parts of the world marriages are arranged. I am attempting to arrange this one.’

‘But — ’

‘It is often said that an arranged marriage gives the best hope of happiness.’

‘Not for liberated people. I mean she hasn’t grown up in purdah!’

‘She has had a very sheltered upbringing,’ John Robert said primly.

‘Yes, but that’s not a reason - really I - why try to arrange this —?’

‘I want to see her settled.’

Tom thought, he wants to get rid of the child, he wants to palm her off on someone he thinks he can intimidate! He said, ‘But why choose me? I told you I was going to get a second class degree.’

‘A middling talent makes a more serene life.’

Tom, incensed, said, ‘But I might become a great writer, and you know how selfish writers are.’

John Robert replied gloomily, ‘Some risks must be taken.’

‘But the world is full of young men - what about your pupils - there must be someone —?’

‘I do not think a philosopher would be suitable.’

‘Why, are philosophers under a curse?’

John Robert took this exclamation seriously. ‘Yes.’

‘All right, but there are plenty of men around who are not philosophers! You must have had some positive idea in your head when you selected me. Or have you already tried dozens —?’

‘No! Only you.’

‘But why —?’

John Robert hesitated. Then he said, ‘There are, it is true, accidental features involved. No doubt I could have made a more - a more brilliant choice, if I may put it so. But if I had made a contest of all the world I would have consumed time and probably bred confusion. I want it all to be simple.’

‘Simple! I was available and you thought I’d agree!’

‘I thought,’ said John Robert, ‘that you - I have the impression that you - I have been told that you have a happy temperament. I wonder if you realize how rare that is?’

‘No - yes - but — ’

‘I want my grand-daughter to be happy.’

‘Yes, of course, but — ’

‘You seem to be a clean-living young man.’ Echoes of John Robert’s Methodist childhood, and some American campuses, were in the tone of this utterance, which sounded to Tom, although it had some echoes for him too, utterly ridiculous in the context.

‘But I said I’d had girls!’

‘Some experience is desirable. I assume you are not promiscuous.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Tom, though he was not sure just what standard of clean-living he was thereby claiming.

‘There you are then,’ said John Robert, as if this finally proved Tom’s suitability for and acceptance of his plan. ‘I do not want her,’ he went on, ‘to enter a world of vulgar sexuality. I want her innocence to be respected. I want a simple clear arrangement, without - confused situations or - false melodrama.’

‘I appreciate,’ said Tom, picking up John Robert’s measured tone, ‘that you do not want to waste your time on this matter. I am sure you have a great many more important things to do. You want to get all this fixed up and finished with!’

John Robert ignored or perhaps did not notice the sarcasm. He said, ‘Finished with, yes. Some money will, of course, come with her, as I told you.’ The ‘of course’ was uttered as to an established suitor. He added, ‘I need hardly mention that she has had no experience - she is - a virgin.’

Tom felt that he was being steadily entangled simply by forms of words. He looked away from the philosopher’s face and gazed, blinking, out of the window. He saw, two or three gardens away in the middle distance, a man in a tree. The man was sitting astride a branch and holding something, perhaps a saw. Tom immediately thought about Christ entering Jerusalem. There must be some picture, he thought, where there is a man up a tree watching Christ passing by. How ludicrous and weird it is that I am sitting here and watching a man up a tree while I try to think what to say to this perfect lunatic. How can I get out? Of course it was all crazy, but he must be polite to the old eccentric. And of course it was, in a way, flattering … and awfully interesting …

He closed his eyes, then looked down at the threadbare red-and-blue Axminster carpet which at once began dancing and jumping before his gaze. Now the blue was the background, now the red was. The carpet was flashing at him like a lighthouse.

‘Well?’ said John Robert.

‘Have you told her —?’ Tom was endeavouring to focus once more upon the big face which now seemed to overhang the room like a pendent rock. John Robert seemed to be getting larger. Soon he would resemble Polyphemus.

‘No, of course not,’ said John Robert, as if this were obvious.

‘Why not?’

‘When and if you agree, I shall inform her.’

‘But I can’t agree, it isn’t possible — ’

‘In that case I will ask you to go. I am sorry I have taken up your time.’

‘Wait a minute — ’ I can’t go now, thought Tom in anguish, I can’t! He said, ‘She won’t like me, why should she? And perhaps I won’t like her - and anyway it’s daft.’

‘Naturally,’ said John Robert, ‘I do not expect you to promise to succeed. I doubt if, except in certain simple cases, it is conceptually possible to promise to succeed.’ He paused for a moment to consider this, then went on, ‘I want you to promise to try.’ He added, ‘I should require you to promise to try.’

Tom plunged his hands into his curly hair and pulled. ‘But you can’t control people like this — ’

‘I can attempt to. You are perfectly free to say no, and if you do meet her you are both perfectly free to decide against the plan. In which case I shall try again.’

‘With another man.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh God!’

‘I do not see,’ said John Robert, ‘that I am proposing anything particularly unreasonable. Nobody is being forced to do anything.’

I am, thought Tom. It must be hypnosis. He said, scarcely crediting his own words, ‘May I think it over?’

‘No. Either you agree now to meet her with a view to marriage — ’

‘How can I meet her with a view to marriage? I’ve never seen her, she’s seventeen, I’m twenty, it’s not - it’s not the picture, it’s not the scene — ’

‘All right, then I bid you farewell. I am grateful to you for having come.’

‘No, no, this is most unfair, how can I say - it’s all so extraordinary — ’

‘I should have thought the situation was fairly clear. You don’t have to do anything except be serious.’

‘But I can’t just make myself be your sort of serious, I mean taking this as serious — ’

‘Come, Mr McCaffrey, you do not think that I am jesting.’

‘No, of course not, I just mean — ’

‘As I say, you can try. You can keep the end in view. I should add that if you decide at this stage to proceed no further then I must request you to make another promise.’

‘Another promise?’

‘You have already promised not to reveal to anyone what has passed between us today.’

‘Have I? Well, yes— ’

‘I must also ask you to promise, should you decide not to proceed in this matter, not ever to meet or become acquainted with Miss Meynell.’

‘But how can — ’

‘And, should you try and fail, you must engage never to see or approach her again.’

‘I don’t see — ’

‘You are not a fool. You must understand the point of these requests.’

‘Oh - yes - I suppose so — ’

‘Well, will you make the attempt?’

The phrase ‘make the attempt’ rang in Tom’s ears like the rattle of a chain - or was it more like a bugle call? He thought, is this madman carefully and by magical words, by little planned psychological movements, making me his prisoner? Or is it all random and crazy? Will what I say have consequences? Should he, he wondered, see it as a trap, or as an ordeal, a quest? Why should he accept such a ridiculous uncanny sort of plan? Except that … he could not by now perhaps bear not to … could he, in leaving the room, just leave it all behind? All sorts of emotions which he could not understand were already engaged.

Tom said desperately, just to gain a few seconds more time, ‘But do you really mean it - everything that you’ve said?’

‘Don’t ask idle questions. Concentrate your mind.’

Tom thought, am I being hypnotized? Am I going to undertake this insane business just to oblige him, just to obey him, just, oh heavens, not to be separated from him? He said, ‘All right, I’ll try.’

John Roberts gave a long sigh. He said, ‘Good - good - that’s settled then.’

‘But,’ Tom gabbled, ‘it’ll be no use, it’s certain not to work, she won’t like me, we’re bound to dislike each other, it’s all impossible, we won’t get on, she’ll hate the idea — ’

‘You have agreed to try, further speculation is pointless. You will of course speak of this conversation to no one. And when you approach her, use every discretion. This is not an escapade. There must be nothing noisy, nothing public.’

‘But people will know I’ve met her — ’

‘There is no need for this to become a subject of gossip. I desire that it should not. The Slipper House is secluded.’

The phrase sent Tom’s imagination reeling. ‘All right, but — ’

‘Am I to infer from the fact that you seemed unaware of Miss Meynell’s arrival that you are not staying at Belmont?’

‘No. I’m at 41 Travancore Avenue. Down the Tweed Mill end.’

John Robert wrote the address down in a notebook. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘it is time for me to go to the Institute. We will not walk together.’

‘But, wait, what am I to do, what do you want me to do, will you take me to her?’ Like mating dogs, he thought.

‘I shall have nothing more to do with the matter.’

‘Nothing more to —?’

‘You will make your own arrangements about meeting her.’

‘But you’ll tell her?’

‘Yes— ’

‘But how am I to do it?’

‘I leave that to your - experience.’

John Robert had risen and Tom stumbled up. He watched the philosopher put on his overcoat and gloves and a brown woollen cap which he pulled down over his ears.

Tom realized there was something that he had not asked and which in so dangerous a situation it would be as well to have clarified. ‘Can we - suppose we - well - make love - people do now when they’re not sure - and then she decides not — ’

The question seemed to annoy, even dismay, John Robert. This possibility was evidently new to his imagination. He frowned. ‘We need not look so far ahead.’

‘But I’d like to know — ’

‘I have not enjoyed discussing this matter and I do not want to discuss it any further. We have said enough.’ He spoke as if the whole disagreeable problem had been forced upon him by Tom.

Tom stood aside to let Rozanov sidle past him. They went into the hall where they stood awkwardly face to face for a moment. Rozanov was as tall as Tom. Tom smelt the philosopher’s garments, a philosophical smell of sweat and thought. Rozanov fumbled behind him, undid the front door and backed out of it. Tom followed him out and closed the door.

‘Now I go to the right and you go to the left. Remember your promises.’

The bulky man began to recede down the street until he came to Burkestown High Road and disappeared from view. Tom watched him go, then turned and walked in the other direction as far as the Green Man. The Green Man was open, but Tom did not go in. He was already like a drunken person, his head whirling and his heart dilated with a very queer mixture of pain and fear and joy. Joy? Why on earth joy? Was it simply that he was flattered by this amazing attention? He kept saying to himself, he’s mad, it doesn’t matter, it’s not real, I’m not involved in anything! He walked beyond the pub, as far as the level crossing and watched a train go by. Then he turned back.

When Tom, on his way back to Travancore Avenue, had crossed the eighteenth-century bridge and got as far as the Crescent and reached the middle of the curve, he saw Scarlett-Taylor waiting for him at the other end. As he passed number 29, the home of the senior Osmores, Robin Osmore and his wife happened to be looking out of one of the tall windows of their handsome drawing-room on the first floor. Robin said, ‘Why there’s Tom McCaffrey. What a handsome boy he has grown up to be.’

Mrs Osmore said nothing. She resented the way in which everyone, even her husband, praised Tom as if, by common consent, he had been elected to be a sort of hero. He was no better-looking than Gregory and not half as clever. She mourned Gregory’s absence and was permanently wounded by his imprudent marriage to that pert Judith Craxton child. Oh why had Greg not married Anthea Eastcote, as Mrs Osmore had a thousand times urged him to do, ever since they were children together at the Crescent play school? She was also annoyed that Gregory had lent his house to Tom without telling her (she learnt it at the Baths). She felt sure that Tom, who was so careless and thoughtless, would do the house some serious damage, perhaps burn it down. He might even wear Greg’s clothes. It would all end in tears.

Meanwhile as, filled with foreboding and curiosity, Emma left the house and walked toward the Crescent whence Tom was likely to return, he had been reflecting on the mysterious nature of physical love. What after all does it consist in? What makes it absolutely unlike anything else at all? Suddenly the reorientation of the world round one illumined point, all else in shadow. The total alteration of corporeal being, the minute electric sensibility of the nerves, the tender expectancy of the skin. The omnipresence of a ghostly sense of touch. The awareness of organs. The absolute demand for the presence of the beloved, the categorical imperative, the haunting. The fire that burns, the sun that expands, the beauty of all things. The certainty; and with it the great sad cool knowledge of change and decay. Emma was never on good terms with his own strong feelings, and with half of himself was determined not to love Tom, not to love him at all, since he was not yet in love. Even as he lay, he too, in the angelic clutch and felt Tom, with such wonderful trust, falling asleep in his arms, as he lay and held Tom feeling as protective as God and as all-powerful, while desire was blessedly diffused in a cloud of anguish, he was even then coldly planning how he would minimize, belittle and liquidate this happening as a part of his life, making it small and without consequence. He gloomily observed some utterly new happiness, something created ex nihilo, which had come to him and put its finger upon him. And when, this very morning, Tom had put his arms round his neck and cried ‘I love you,’ Emma had felt the joyful ‘whiff of eternity’ which accompanies any real love. But it would not do. He knew how impulsive and affectionate Tom was, how little perhaps it meant. Tom was a lover of all the world, constantly reaching out his warm hands to touch things and people. In any case, Tom was framed to delight in and be the delight of women. Maybe I’d better go to Brussels and see my mother, Emma thought. But he knew he would not.

‘What happened?’ said Emma. ‘What did he want?’

‘He wants me to marry his grand-daughter.’

‘What? No. You’re joking.’

‘Honest! He wants to dispose of her, he wants to marry her off, and he’s chosen me! Isn’t that crazy, isn’t it a laugh?’ And Tom laughed and continued to laugh as he look hold of his friend’s arm and began to lead him back in the direction of Travancore Avenue.

Emma pulled away. ‘But how - so you know this girl?’

‘No! Never set eyes on her! I think she’s never been here, she’s been living in America.’

‘He must be mad.’

‘Mad as a hatter, crazy as a coot, nutty as a fruitcake! And fancy his wanting me!’

‘You told him politely to get lost.’

‘No. I’ve agreed! The marriage is arranged! All I’ve got to do now is make her acquaintance! She’s in Ennistone — ’

‘Tom—’

‘He guaranteed she’s a virgin, she’s seventeen, he’s going to settle some money on us, we shall buy a house in the Crescent — ’

‘Stop talking like that, damn you.’

‘Don’t be cross. Why, I believe you’re jealous!’

This charge, whether seriously made or not, enraged Scarlett-Taylor. ‘You’re talking in a vile vulgar way which I resent!’

‘Well, don’t froth at the mouth, it’s not my idea!’

‘But of course you told him it was crazy, impossible — ’

‘I tried to, but he wouldn’t listen. He said marriages were sometimes arranged and he was trying to arrange one. He said I was to go and see her and he’d tell her I was coming. He thinks he can make people do things. He can make people do things.’

‘He can’t make you marry his grand-daughter!’

‘Can’t he? Time will show. I’ve agreed to try.’

‘You agreed? You agreed to something so absurd - so - so improper - so immoral?’

‘I don’t see what’s immoral about it — ’

‘He’s playing with you.’

‘Oh, I assure you he was serious!’

‘I mean one can’t proceed like that, one can’t do such things, a gentleman can’t — ’

‘Why not, what are you getting at? I’m not sure I’m a gentleman anyway.’

‘If you aren’t I don’t want anything more to do with you. And you oughtn’t to have told me about it.’

‘You oughtn’t to have asked me!’

‘You’re right. I oughtn’t to have asked you.’

‘Don’t be so bloody censorious then! Look, I just said I’d see her. He may be serious, but I’m not.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘You got so bothered when I said I’d agreed - now you’re bothered because I say I haven’t really!’

‘You’re deceiving him, you lied to him!’

‘Are you on his side now?’

‘I’m going back to London!’ Emma stopped and actually stamped his foot, red in the face.

‘Oh come now - stop it, Emma, we mustn’t quarrel about this. I said I’d have a look at her. Why not? It seemed to me rather a lark.’

‘A lark?’

‘Well, why not? Come on, walk along with me, don’t stand there in a rage.’ They walked on.

‘You ought to have said no, clearly and simply.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you can’t intend to marry a seventeen-year-old girl you’ve never seen before. Think about her — ’

‘I can’t, I don’t know what she’s like — ’

‘How will she feel about this? You’ll simply upset her, you’ll upset yourself, and make a horrible painful muddle, a horrible moral muddle, something disgusting and vile. How can you have been such a crazy irresponsible fool!’

‘I can always say I’ve changed my mind. After all, I haven’t done anything yet.’

‘Thank heavens you haven’t. You’ll write and tell him it’s off?’

‘No, I don’t think I will. Not yet anyway. I want to meet her. Why ever not?’

‘I’ve told you why not.’

‘I’m curious. Wouldn’t you be? Let’s go and look at her together. Only do stop being angry. You distress me when you’re angry, you frighten me, and I don’t like being distressed and frightened.’

‘Leave me out. And don’t expect me to help you later when you’re wishing like hell you’d followed my advice!’

‘Of course I shall expect you to help me! Calm down. Why are you so excited?’

But Tom was shaken by Emma’s attack, not least because he saw the good sense in it. There could indeed be some sort of nasty mess: he preferred not to imagine the details. But he knew that he was caught; his curiosity, his vanity, a dotty sense of adventure, a sense of fate, urged him on. It was as if his value had been changed, and John Robert had made him a new person. How could he, having in his thought, even for this short time, touched this seventeen-year-old girl, promise as John Robert required (and he would have had to promise) not ever to come to know her? This prohibition alone was enough to ‘set him on’. And if he refused, he could never now be as he was. Some uncanny magic was already at work. He might indeed regret having tried, but he would even more, and bitterly, regret having funked the challenge. If he refused he would ‘lose’ Rozanov: Rozanov whom even this morning he had cared nothing about, had lived contentedly without, and who now represented some sort of necessity. He was no longer free, he was even perhaps no longer innocent: no longer happy.

Emma said, ‘And he told you not to tell anyone.’

‘Yes.’

‘You scoundrel.’

‘You won’t tell. It’s like talking to myself or God. Come, let’s make up, let’s sing, let’s sing that German round you taught me. I’ll begin.’

Tom began to sing softly,

‘Alles schweiget. Nachtigallen

Locken mil süssen Melodien

Tränen ins Auge

Sehnsucht ins Herz.’