The Philosopher's Pupil

Opinions differed about whether John Robert Rozanov was ‘in his own way’ rather handsome, or whether he was one of the ugliest creatures ever seen. He was tall, he had always been burly and was now stout. He had an extremely large flat-topped head and a low brow, with hair which had always been very short and grizzled, curly, almost frizzy, and was now grey with no sign of balding. His eyes, large and with an odd fierce rectangular appearance, were an unnerving shade of light yellowish-brown and gleamed brightly. His face was broad and high-cheek-boned, and when one knew about his Russian ancestry could look Slavonic. He had a big strong aquiline nose and a big wet sensuous flabby mouth which pouted out above his chin. He dressed carelessly and was voted by women, some of whom found him attractive, some repulsive, to look a ‘perfect wreck’.

The door opened and Rozanov confronted his pupil. There was no pretence on either side that this was a social call, supposed to be a surprise or uncertain in its purpose. George said nothing. Rozanov said, ‘Come in,’ and George followed him into the little dark parlour at the back of the house. Rozanov turned on the lamp.

Apart from the shock glimpse at the Baths, it was some years since George had seen his old teacher and (as he later observed, at first he was too stunned) Rozanov had changed a good deal. He had become fatter, slower in his movements and stiffened by arthritis. The shabbiness and shagginess was now clearly that of old age. A little saliva foamed at the corners of his protruding lips as he talked. His once-smooth brow had grown soft pitted flesh, humped between deep lines of wrinkles. Coarse hairs were growing from his nose and ears. Grey braces, visible under his gaping jacket, supported his uncertain trousers half-way up his paunch. He had always looked rather dirty and now looked dirtier. He filled the little room with his bear-like presence and his smell. He stared gloomily at George.

George did not attempt to conceal his emotion. He found a sweet aggressive little pleasure in giving in to it. He leaned back against the wall and put a hand to his throat. He rubbed his hand across his eyes, and said, ‘Well, hello.’ His voice shook.

Rozanov said, ‘Hello, how are you?’ He had a curious stilted voice which mingled English academic with American and traces of his mother’s Ennistonian.

George said, ‘God.’

Rozanov, scratching and poking his large fleshy ear, moved across to the window and looked out at the scrap of back garden with the Cox’s Orange Pippin tree which his father had planted. Other thoughts, momentarily dispelled, pressed obsessively back into his mind.

George took hold of his wits and shook himself like a dog. He advanced a little. There was not far to move. The room was very small and there was a desk and a sideboard and two armchairs in it. He said, ‘I’m glad to see you.’

John Robert said, ‘Oh yes,’ still looking out of the window.

‘We hope you’re going to stay in Ennistone.’

‘Yes — ’

‘You are going to stay with us?’

John Robert turned round from the window and stood awkwardly with his back to it. He said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Anyway we can have some talks,’ said George. As the philosopher did not reply he added, ‘That’s good.’

There was a silence. He could hear the philosopher’s noisy breathing and the little tearing sound as he began to pick at the top of one of the chairs.

‘Are you writing your great book, I mean the final one?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I don’t mean the final one, you’re not all that old, I suppose. I hope you’re writing philosophy?’

‘No.’

‘What a pity! Why not, are you tired of it at last? I often wondered if you’d ever get tired of it and give it up.’

‘No.’

‘Look, there’s an awful lot I’d like to talk to you about, an awful lot I’d like to ask. You know I always felt there was something behind everything that you said.’

‘I don’t think there was,’ said John Robert. He was now regarding George with his pale fierce eyes.

‘I mean a sort of secret doctrine, something you only revealed to the initiated.’

‘No.’

‘Well, I hope you won’t mind if I ask you lots of questions, about philosophy I mean, not personal ones of course, and not today, I just came today to say hello, to look at you sort of, we can fix times later, I expect you’ll be glad of someone to talk philosophy to, I’ve been reading philosophy, you know, I’ve kept it up. I’ll tell you what I’ve been reading, not now, I don’t want to bother you now. I expect lots of people will want to see you and bother you, I expect the Ennistone Gazette has been after you.’

‘No, it hasn’t.’

‘Maybe they’re afraid of you, people seem to be, I was I remember, yes, I was you know. Perhaps you’ve mellowed, as they say! I wonder if you’re writing your memoirs?’

‘No.’

‘You ought to write your memoirs, you’ve had an interesting life, after all. I wonder what you think about your philosophy now, what it amounts to? How would you classify it?’

‘How would I what?’ said John Robert.

‘Sorry, that’s a silly word, I wondered what you felt your contribution had been, along what line? I used to think it was my destiny to explain your philosophy to the world. That was stupid of me, I daresay. But I’d still like to! There’s so much for us to talk about, so much you could explain. We’d need time. You used to say, in philosophy, if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all!’

‘I’m afraid I won’t have time,’ said John Robert.

‘We could just talk a bit every week, I’d value it so much, there aren’t any other philosophers in Ennistone so far as I know.’

‘I won’t have time,’ John Robert repeated. He looked at his watch. ‘I’m expecting someone, I hope you don’t mind — ’

‘When are they coming?’

‘Eleven,’ said John Robert who was incapable of inventing a social fib or telling a direct lie.

‘Then we’ve a bit of time yet, perhaps I’m talking stupidly, it’s shyness, I’m shy and nervous — ’

‘If you’ve got anything definite to say — ’ said John Robert.

‘I suppose you’ve heard that I lost my job?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve got a pension, so it’s all right. You’ll never guess how I lost it.’

‘Perfectly true.’

‘I broke all the Roman glass in the Museum.’

‘All the Roman glass?’ This idea roused a faint interest in John Robert.

‘Yes, on purpose, I hurled it on the floor and it smashed in pieces, all of it.’

‘Have they glued it together again?’ the sage asked.

‘I’ve no idea. They started picking it up very carefully. One of the girls was crying. Then I left.’

There was a silence.

‘Do you want to know why I —?’

John Robert said abruptly, ‘How’s your wife?’

George, who had been blushing and wearing, he now realized, a perfectly ridiculous expression, hardened his face. He moved out from behind one of the armchairs. He said, ‘I tried to kill her.’

John Robert raised his eyebrows.

‘I drove our car into the canal, on purpose of course like the glass, I jumped out and she went in with the car. Only she got out somehow. Too bad. Better luck next time.’

John Robert said, ‘You haven’t changed much.’

The remark pleased George. He relaxed a little. He said, ‘I wonder if I did really intend to kill her? I’ve asked myself that. It’s something I’d like to discuss with you, it’s like things we used to talk about. What is consciousness, after all, what is it, does it exist?’

‘What else is there?’ said John Robert gloomily.

‘What are motives, is one responsible? You said once we all have contemptible motives. But some thinkers say that crime is a form of grace. Sometimes I’ve felt a crime is like a duty. Isn’t that a kind of transcendental proof? If crime is a duty then evil be thou my good has sense. You once said it hadn’t.’

‘Did I?’

‘You denied it had any content, I think it has. I wonder why you put me off philosophy? Well, you haven’t, I’ve continued on my own. I’d like to tell you what I’ve been thinking. I’m very interested in things you said about time. Sometimes I feel I lose the present moment, like losing the centre of one’s field of vision, my sense of my individuality goes, I can’t feel my present being — ’

‘I suggest you see a doctor.’

‘I’m making a philosophical point! Why did you stop me from doing philosophy?’

‘I thought you weren’t good enough,’ said John Robert looking at his watch again. ‘Vous pensiez trop pour voire intelligence, c’est tout.’

‘Christ, can’t you even tutoie me after all these years? You said “always attempt what is too hard for you”. Didn’t you? That’s just what you prevented me from doing. I was a coward anyway. But now perhaps if you’ll help me — ’

‘I don’t think — ’

‘You ruined my life, you know. Do you know? If you hadn’t discouraged me just at that crucial moment I might have made something of my life. I never recovered from your high standards. So you owe me something!’

‘I owe you nothing,’ said John Robert, but he said it without animosity, indeed without animation.

‘Kant cared about his pupils. Not like Schlick. Kant looked after his pupils years later — ’

‘You know nothing about Schlick.’

‘You destroyed my belief in good and evil, you were Mephistopheles to my Faust.’

‘You flatter yourself.’

‘You think I don’t have Faustian temptations? You have stolen me from myself. You used to say philosophy was like the Grand National, or else it’s nothing. Maybe I’ve broken my neck. If I’ve broken my neck, I wish to God you’d shoot me.’

‘Your head seems to be full of things I used to say. Please don’t get so excited.’

‘I’ve read a lot of things about you, I read an article saying you believed Plato’s Form of the Good was a large marble ball preserved somewhere on top of a column. Did you read that?’

‘No.’

‘It wasn’t very polite. So you’ve given up philosophy?’

‘No.’

‘I thought you said you had.’

‘No.’

‘You look much older. How old are you? You’ve got false teeth, you didn’t have when I saw you in California. I hope I’m dead when I’m your age. I suppose you’re waiting for me to apologize?’

‘What for?’

‘Being bloody rude to you in California.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. I do apologize. And for being rude today. I prostrate myself. Caliban must be saved too.’

‘What?’

‘Caliban must be saved too. You said that in a lecture. Have you forgotten?’

‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t. I knew you were talking about me. God, how much more real I feel now that I’m with you at last, more bloody real than I’ve felt for years, for years. I’ve craved for your presence. John Robert, you must help me. You stole my reality, you stole my consciousness, you’re the only person who can give them back to me. Salvation is by magic, you said that once. I beg you, I beseech you. It’s a matter of salvation, it’s a matter of living or dying. Christ, can’t you even look at me, can’t you concentrate on me for a moment? Please let me see you, let me be with you, it doesn’t matter what we talk about.’

‘George,’ said John Robert, looking at him at last, ‘you are suffering from an illusion. There is no structure here to make sense of the language you are using, there is no context for any conversation between us. If I was kind to you now and encouraged you to come and see me I would be lying to you. I don’t want to discuss your soul and your imagined sins. I am not interested, I haven’t any wisdom or any help to give you. You have an entirely illusory view of our relationship. And do stop worrying about philosophy - in your case philosophy is just a nervous craving.’

‘You reject me!’

‘No. I’m sorry. I haven’t got that much concern about you. I haven’t any concern about you. I just don’t want to see you.’

‘That can’t be true! Why are you taking up this attitude? Why are you so angry with me? What have you been thinking about me?’

‘I am not angry with you. I have not been thinking about you. You are simply making a mistake. Just go away.’

At that moment the front door bell rang.

John Robert, looking exasperated at last, moved past George to get out into the hall. George stood in the doorway, conscious now of the violent beating of his heart, and gazed at his teacher’s bulky form in the dim illumination that came through the little fanlight above the door. The next moment the grey but clear light of the street revealed the apparition of Alex, in her best fur coat, with her long eyes aglow, and her long pale mouth smiling. As John Robert, saying nothing, stepped aside, and she stepped forward, she saw George. The expressions of mother and son were suddenly similar, brilliantly cat-like. Alex stopped smiling, then smiled again, a quite different smile. George intensified the frown he had been wearing for John Robert, adding an accompanying smile or sneer.

John Robert, turning, said to George, ‘Good-bye.’

Alex moved forward again, past John Robert, who was holding the door open, and stood at the foot of the staircase to get out of George’s way. George passed her with averted head. His hand touched the soft grey fur of the long coat which she wore pulled well in to her slim waist with a steel chain belt. He smelt her face powder. He passed John Robert with a shudder and the door closed.

Once outside George was consumed by hate, jealousy, misery, remorse, fear and rage. Emotions blackened the sky and tore his entrails like vultures. He imagined taking his shoe off and breaking the window. However, his face was impassive; even the frown had left it. He walked quietly away from the house, walked on about twenty yards, and then stopped and stood perfectly still for several minutes. Two students from Ennistone Polytechnic who were going to drop a notice about a political meeting in on Nesta Wiggins, recognized him and promptly crossed the road.

George knew himself. He knew what a terrible piece of work had been accomplished that morning, what a mass of material for his grief and chagrin he had heaped up during that short visit. Everything he had said to Rozanov had been wrong. He had behaved like a petulant child, not like his real self at all. He now saw clearly what he ought to have said, what tone he ought to have adopted. He had deliberately not decided on any policy beforehand, had prepared no speech. That was folly. He should have said … or else have written a letter explaining … He began to walk along, recalling with nausea the pleading accents with which he had begged for what he wanted. And then Alex arriving. What on earth did that mean, what unholy alliance, what threat to him? He had never connected Alex with John Robert; she had never spoken of him except for vaguely mentioning that she had met him. How sickening. Was Alex to be friends with John Robert excluding George? Would John Robert turn Alex against him? What were they talking about now, those dreadful two, they must be talking about him.

As he came up toward the Roman bridge he remembered the hammer. An elderly lady, a Miss Dunbury, retired from doing very fine work at the Glove Factory, who lived at number three Blanch Cottages, saw with excitement a man pause to pick a blunt instrument (as she perceived it, being a great reader of detective stories) out of her privet bush. She began to search for her glasses in order to scan the Ennistone Gazette for murders. Being short-sighted, she had not recognized George. If she had, she would have been even more excited.

Alex, who had arrived by taxi and combed her hair on the doorstep, recovered quickly from the shock of seeing George, upon which she had no time to speculate. For some reason, George had not figured at all in her imaginings, as if she had perfectly forgotten that he had been Rozanov’s pupil. She felt a quick physical tremor as he passed, which blended quickly into her general nervous agitation.

John Robert went past her into the back room and she followed him. The glimpse at the Baths had prepared her to see him older. Now, dressed in a big loose shabby corduroy jacket falling off one shoulder and wearing a grey pullover under his braces, he looked less old. Unbid, Alex pulled off her coat and threw it on a chair. She took in the room, so small, with a thin little black grate and a narrow little grimy mantelpiece and a couple of miserable sloppy armchairs and a shiny little sideboard with a crumpled lace cover on it. There was a small school desk, the top open, stuffed with papers and a general dotting of china ornaments, puppy dogs and ballet dancers and such, placed there long ago by John Robert’s mother. There was a hole in the carpet and dust everywhere and a damp smell.

John Robert seemed momentarily tongue-tied, which set Alex more at her ease. She smiled at him.

‘How kind of you to come.’

‘Not at all. I’m very glad to see you.’

‘Would you like some - some tea?’

Alex would have liked a whisky and soda but she remembered that John Robert had been a teetotaller. She said, ‘No, thank you.’

‘Or coffee - I think there’s some?’

‘No thanks.’

He said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m a non-drinker, there isn’t anything else in the house. Would you please sit down?’

Alex sat on the arm of one of the armchairs, raising a little puff of dust.

‘What a pretty garden, so small and - and easy to manage.’ As there was a little silence she added, ‘I’m sure George was very glad to see you.’

The mention of George was just a nervous urge, she did not want to talk about George.

‘Oh yes, yes.’

John Robert sat heavily into the other armchair, then finding himself almost on the floor pulled himself up again, grunting, with some difficulty and sat on a creaky upright chair which swayed alarmingly.

Alex said, ‘Are you glad to be back?’

John Robert considered the question seriously. ‘Yes, I am. I remember a lot of faces of people round here, in the shops and so on, changed of course. My parents liked living here, it was always a friendly neighbourhood.’

‘After America, Ennistone must seem so quiet and small.’

‘Nice and quiet, nice and small.’

Alex stared at John Robert who was not looking at her, and her heart moved within her. His big head sunk inside the collar of his jacket, he looked almost like a hunchback. She saw the coarse pitted texture of his skin and the strength of his nose of a bird of prey and the way his large wet mouth pouted and drooped. She felt an impulse to reach out and touch, not his knee but the shiny dirty material of his trouser leg.

‘Mrs McCaffrey — ’

‘I wish you’d call me Alex. We have known each other a long time.’

‘Indeed, I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Yes –?’ Alex’s eyes stared as if she would flatten him with them and pin him to the wall.

‘You must say frankly if you feel you don’t want to, or that you’d like to think it over — ’

‘Yes —?’

‘In any case it may be impossible After all — ’

‘Yes, yes —?’

‘I was wondering,’ said John Robert, ‘if you would be so kind as to let me rent the Slipper House.’

This was so much what Alex was not expecting (and yet what was she expecting?) that she could not answer at once, could not even immediately understand the words or collect her wits to consider whether or how she was displeased or disappointed or - yet what right had she? But what did it mean?

‘I’m sorry, I can see that this is not something you want to do.’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Alex decisively, ‘I do want to, I should be absolutely delighted to rent the Slipper House - to you — ’

‘You should perhaps reflect a little.’

‘I’ve reflected. I should be very pleased indeed.’

‘I thought perhaps it might be occupied by someone else.’

‘No, no, it’s empty. I have no one - it may be a bit damp - I’ll put all the heating on - and it needs more furniture - it’s got beds and chairs of course but — ’

‘I beg you not to go to any trouble. I can provide anything extra that is necessary.’

‘What a wonderful idea!’ said Alex, whose imagination had been in motion. The whole picture now seemed perfectly charming and full of possibilities. ‘Would you like to come round now and we can look at the place together?’

‘No, no thank you. I don’t need it just yet. I just wanted to know if it was available.’

‘Oh it is, oh yes, available.’

‘Thank you — ’

‘I expect you’re going to write your great book there?’ said Alex. ‘It’s very peaceful. I’ll see no one bothers you. I could cook for you — ’

‘I’ll let you know, if I may, when - And you’ll tell me about rent, and conditions —?’

Alex resisted a desire to cry out that no rent was required. She said, ‘Mr Osmore will fix all that, I’ll ask him to write to you.’

John Robert rose to his feet. The interview was evidently over. Alex wished she had accepted the cup of tea. She rose too and pulled on her big soft coat and drew in her metal belt by an extra link.

‘Well, we’ll be in touch.’

‘Yes, thank you for coming.’

In a moment Alex was out in the windy street, careless now of her tossing hair. She walked along briskly with her hands in her pockets, smiling to herself, then laughing.

‘Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men, we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings, the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable …’

Diane uttered these solemn and terrible words meekly kneeling upon her knees in the darkness of St Paul’s Church, Victoria Park, at chilly draughty 8 a.m. early service (poorly attended on weekdays). She had uttered those words innumerable times since her earliest childhood, had chumbled them with her tongue and her lips until they were very smooth but not quite weightless. She did not bother her head about God’s wrath and indignation, she knew unreflectively that there was no such thing. The burden of sin was another matter: there was a burden and a grievous remembrance, hurt and damage and remorse.

George had not been to see her for a week. She felt powerless as in dreams when the muscles will not tense and the limbs will not move. She felt as if she were in public view in a pillory, stared at, laughed at, whispered about. She needed to nerve herself to go to the Baths, to the shops, to the Church, her contacts with life, her last innocent occupations, swimming, shopping and praying. Yesterday in Bowcocks all the lights had gone out because of a power-cut. The big internal areas of the shop, scarcely penetrated by the afternoon light, were suddenly dim as if foggy. Diane, who had been fingering some cheap jewellery, which she had no intention of buying, put it down abruptly. As she stood in the middle of one of the aisles, watching the ghostly figures move, a gale of fear came up out of her soul as if she had been transported to hell. She loved Bowcocks, where she had worked once; it was a safe warm brightly coloured place where she was allowed to roam about unharmed. This sudden transformation seemed a premonitory omen. She hurried out in a panic, jostling people, tears starting into her eyes.

Two opposite passions tormented her. She wanted to run, to get right away into the ‘newness of life’ promised by the prayer book. The idea of some total escape was attended by a vision of dazzling happiness: just to be by herself somewhere where there was no sex and no men, not to be doing any more of the things she was now doing, this would be enough. Unfortunately the vision contained no definite plan of removal and did not even compose a strong motive to find one. On the other hand, her love for George seemed to become more intense and more pure the more painful the situation became. Perhaps it was just that as she suffered she should be recompensed by some moral bonus. If only the love had a way, a space, a place, a mode of entry, some kind of blessed simplicity.

When Diane murmured that she had sinned in thought, word and deed and earnestly repented, she could not fix her thoughts upon George. She thought rather in a scrappy way about the old days, the ugly graceless nude photos, Mrs Belton’s awful place, drunk men at roadhouses looking at their watches and saying, ‘Come on!’ Had she not escaped from that? But where to? Ought she not to be thinking about Stella? No, she could not think about Stella, Stella was taboo, any thought she could think about George’s wife would be an abomination. Leave that to God. Oh what an awful mess and how terribly unlucky she had been. George had once said to her, ‘You’re no worse than the others, kid, only in you it shows. You’re like me. We’re more honest, we’re out in the open.’ But that wasn’t right either.

‘We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful God, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercy. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table …’ The spellbinding continuity of the magnificent words was sustained by Father Bernard’s fine sonorous slightly singsong voice. A sense of the mystery of this extraordinary proceeding had remained with Diane ever since her childhood days, before her confirmation at St Olaf’s, when the communion service figured as a secret as awful as that of sex and somehow connected. ‘They eat bread and drink wine.’ She got up in the dim cold church, as foggy as Bowcocks after the electricity went off, and moved with three or four other figures in the direction of the lighted chancel. Stepping cautiously upon the tiles in her high-heeled shoes, she passed through the thorny doorway of the ornate red and gold rood screen, first hanging back with humble consideration to let the others pass before her. (The others did the same.) As she approached the handsome altar, its tremendous marble attired in gorgeous embroideries, and knelt down, her heart beat faster. She bowed her head, then raised it, aware of the glorious rustling figure of Father Bernard towering above.

‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving. The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.’ Father Bernard’s hand touched her lip as he gave her the wafer, and she was made happy by her sense of his sense of her presence. The heavy jewelled cup, gift of a long-dead Newbold, tilted and the sweet heady wine fed her hunger and warmed her body and pleasantly dazed her wits. She returned to her place with bowed head and a momentary sense of being a completely changed person.

‘Those things, which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, vouchsafe to give us, for the worthiness of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord: and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always.’ There was a silence, then a faint scuffling as the congregation rose from their knees. The communicants, who had dotted themselves sparsely about the huge church, consisted of the following: an elderly Miss Larkin, somehow connected with the ‘famous’ painter; a Miss Amy Burdett, who played the organ, rather slowly, on Sundays; a Mrs Clun, a widow, who ran Anne Lapwing’s Boutique (Anne was an imaginary figure); a youth called Benning recently come to teach engineering at the Polytechnic; Hector Gaines who was a devout man and liked to have learned conversations with Father Bernard; and Miss Dunbury of Blanch Cottages. Miss Dunbury was especially concerned to bewail her manifold sins, which did not include reading detective stories (Father Bernard had assured her this was not a sin) but did include scanning the newspapers for murders and feeling disappointed when there were none.

Saint Paul’s Church, Victoria Park, built in 1860 by an admirer of William Butterfield, was a huge barn-like structure, without side aisles, dominated by the towering gilded reredos. (The rood screen, by Ninian Comper, has been added later.) The dwindling worshippers sat in some stocky modern pews near the east end, leaving the large space behind to be occupied by Victorian ghosts. There were four suitably bedizened side chapels, mere recesses however, not the encrusted caves which Father Bernard would have preferred. The walls of the church were decorated by a large solemn play of reddish and yellowish bricks and tiles, now revealed almost in its entirety since many of the Victorian funeral monuments had been shaken down by the wartime bomb which destroyed the tower and the Rectory. Post-war austerity had not restored these relics which languished in the crypt, ignored by Father Bernard who found the walls quite glorious enough as they were, assuming that they could not be covered by oriental hangings. The floor was paved by matching tiles, bearing many ingenious geometric devices and stylized flowers, from which Father Bernard had stripped away the senseless modern carpets installed by his predecessor. Persian rugs would have been acceptable, but the days of rich patrons were over. There was, one of the last donations, one lonely tapestry hanging under the west window, designed by Ned Larkin, representing Christ as a very pale clean-shaven young working man, holding with evident anxiety the tools of a carpenter. (The same donor had contributed a John the Baptist by a pupil of Eric Gill.) The exquisite rood screen had been miraculously undamaged by the bomb, as had the Victorian glass which a zealous rector had taken down and stored. It was without special merit but ensured darkness.

Father Bernard loved his church and its high Anglican tradition which he did not let down but rather quietly elevated as far as he was able. (Mr Elsworthy at St Olaf’s catered for the lower brethren.) He had however suffered various defeats at the hands of his bishop. He no longer heard confessions, although there was a beautiful confessional, gaudy as a sedan chair, which a devotee had brought over from Germany. His plain-song choir had ceased to be, and he now only said one Latin mass a month. He still otherwise made exclusive use of Cranmer’s Prayer Book although he had been expressly told not to. In return for being allowed to muffle the crucifixes during Lent, he had surrendered no less than three plaster madonnas. He did this, however, with feigned reluctance, since he was not interested in the cult of the Virgin, and it did no harm to have a grievance. Someone, he did not know who, appeared to be informing on him to the bishop. He did not yearn for the big Victorian rectory but lived modestly in a small ‘clergy house’ where he looked after himself, could reasonably dispense with pretentious ‘entertaining’, and was able to practise his private cults unmolested. He had no curate: better so, any curate now would be an episcopal spy. He was well aware of his reputation for being ‘not a priest but a shaman’. He did not mind. Salvation itself was magic: total redemption by cosmic act of the whole visible world. His own cruder spells, material symbols of a spiritual grace, were surely acceptable. Acceptable to whom? Father Bernard had ceased to believe in God. As he paced often alone in his large handsome church he felt increasingly conscious of the absence of God, the presence of Christ. But his Christ was a mystical figure, the blond beardless youth of the early Church, not the tormented crucified one of flesh and blood.

Some of his parishioners once complained that Father Bernard’s sermon on ‘prayer’ consisted of advice about breathing exercises. Yet Father Bernard had once chattered freely to the Almighty; not to the stern Jewish God of his childhood, but to a milder and less manly deity. He had been a student at Birmingham where he studied chemistry and gained a black belt at judo. The hated chemistry was the last thing he did to please his earthly father, whose heart he broke-soon afterwards by his conversion to Christianity. Father Bernard carried that unhealed wound (that crime) secretly within him. His father, never reconciled, was dead now. Father Bernard could no longer commend him to God since that channel of communication was also closed. He often thought about his father, and about his darling mother who had been so dreadfully taken from him before he collapsed into the arms of Christ. He sat and breathed. He knelt and breathed. And every day, by the magic power which had been entrusted to him, he changed bread and wine into flesh and blood. He continued to revere this mystery and to find it endlessly and thrillingly arcane.

Father Bernard had long ago decreed solitude for himself: that included celibacy. He did not disapprove of homosexual love, and would have made the same decision if he had been heterosexual, which he was not. After messing about with human sexual adventures he decided to devote his love, that is his sexuality, to God. When God passed out of his life he loved Christ. When Christ began, so strangely, to withdraw and change he just sat, or knelt, and breathed in the presence of something or in the presence of nothing. He was never now seriously tempted to break his vow of chastity, but he remained, in the common abject sense, a sinner. He had considerably disturbed the equanimity of a young chorister whose hand he had sometimes held in the dark empty church after choir practice. (This was in the days of the plain-song choir, conducted by a Jonathan Treece, sadly gone from Ennistone. The musical art now depended on the simpler skills of lady organists.) Worse still, alarmed by his own feelings, Father Bernard had hurt the boy by suddenly ‘sheering off’ without an explanation. This child, now a youth and no churchgoer, worked in London but occasionally, on visits to Ennistone, met Father Bernard in the street and cut him. This caused the priest much pain and obsessive sessions of planning how to ‘retrieve’ a situation which was, he always had to conclude, better left alone. He could but hope that the main damage was to his own vanity. There were of course young men whom he simply could not get out of his head. Tom McCaffrey was one. Father Bernard had seen Tom grow from a schoolboy into a student. They met frequently. He would very much have liked to take Tom in his arms. Instead he lowered his eyes. Did Tom know? Perhaps.

Father Bernard was well and fairly calmly aware that in many ways he was a perfectly rotten priest. He celebrated, to his own personal satisfaction, the rites that pleased him, often with no one present but himself. He did not go round visiting, as his predecessor had done, and as he had done himself in his early days in the parish in Birmingham. He was uninterested in politics. He did not run debates, or discussion groups, or encounter groups, or a youth club, or a mothers’ union, or a Sunday school. He liked to have his evenings to himself, after evensong, which he celebrated every day, usually alone. He wanted plenty of time to meditate and to read theological books which he perused with a kind of unholy excitement as if they were pornography. Occasionally he spent the evenings having long emotional talks with special penitents. He enjoyed that. He did not go out seeking sinners, but remained comfortably at the receipt of custom in case they should come seeking him. He had steady vaguely sentimental relationships with a small number of women (Diane was one, Gabriel would have been one too if it had not been for Brian) wherein he allowed himself a little bit of hand-holding. He knew how confoundedly lazy and selfish he was. But although this troubled him a little more than his heresy did, it did not trouble him very much. He knew the things which he absolutely must not do. He did not seriously consider that he ought to leave the priesthood. Only very lately had he begun to feel sometimes insecure. Was scandal possible, disgrace, banishment, after all?

Mass being over, he processed himself off the scene, took off his glittering vestments, and reappeared in his black cassock at the west door of the church in case anyone wanted to talk to him. Three of his communicants were there, Hector Gaines, Benning (whose first name was Robert) and Diane. Father Bernard made a bee-line for Benning, who was thin and large-eyed and looked touchingly starved, and shook him by the hand. ‘Glad to see you again, Bob. Do we call you Bob?’

‘Bobbie,’ said the youth, blushing a little and holding on to the priest’s hand.

‘That’s good,’ said Father Bernard, briskly releasing him. ‘Come again, won’t you, Bobbie. Church is home.’

He turned to Diane, giving a friendly wave to Hector, which indicated to that intelligent fellow, with whom the priest was on close and amicable terms, that he did not want to talk to him just now.

Hector and Benning turned away together into the cold morning wind which was blowing a little rain.

‘Rum jerk,’ said Bobbie.

‘Who?’

‘The parson.’

‘He’s a very nice jerk,’ said Hector, ‘and he knows a lot of things.’

They continued to walk together, Hector thinking about Anthea Eastcote (to banish whose image he had been hoping to enlist clerical assistance), and Bobbie Benning wondering gloomily how on earth he was to go on teaching a subject which he had lately realized was far too difficult for him.

Father Bernard turned a switch at the door, darkening the altar lights, leaving only the red sanctuary light, and led Diane back down the aisle. They sat side by side, the priest holding her hand, kneading it gently. ‘Well, little one?’

Diane squeezed his hand, holding it for a little longer, then letting it go and drawing back. She found the priest attractive but utterly strange; he was so unlike other men, so devoid of the coarseness which men had. She liked touching him but was always nervous in case George, whose absent presence always haunted her, should suddenly appear from behind a pillar. She valued her friendship with Father Bernard, especially since George tolerated her church-going.

In reply to the priest’s question, Diane, still overwrought by the emotions attendant upon receiving the sacrament, began to cry.

‘Now, now, stop it, you can, have a bit of courage.’

‘Courage! I’m nothing, I’m a jelly. A jelly can’t have courage.’

‘A jelly can pray.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Be quiet and breathe God. Seek help. Ask and it shall be given. Knock and it shall be opened.’

‘Ask what, ask who?’

‘If you really ask, you are certain to be answered. You must fight your own demon with your own Lord. He knows. Lo, thou tellest my flittings, put thou my tears in thy bottle.’

‘I’m so worried about George,’ said Diane. ‘I’m so miserable for him. He isn’t really so bad, it’s just a myth people keep going. All right, he did push that man out of the window — ’

‘I hadn’t heard that one.’

‘It was an accident, he didn’t mean to, and I don’t believe he tried to kill his wife like they say — ’

The priest had heard various recitals of George’s misdeeds. They varied considerably. It was true that people wanted to think ill of him. Of course Father Bernard was interested in George, in what Brian called his ‘predatory’ way, but he found this lost sheep very difficult to think about, as if what he thought was constantly falsified at the start. His heart, usually a trusted guide, did not guide him here. He would never have said so to Diane, but he was afraid of George. He sensed something unusual in him, a sort of liberated malice. Yet this too could be an illusion.

‘If only he’d stop drinking,’ she said, ‘he’d get better. Oh I do wish you’d do something for George.’

The priest stared at her with his light luminous shining eyes. He was feeling tired and hungry. He had been in the church fasting since five-thirty. He said, ‘I can’t.’

‘You can. Summon him. Order him to come and see you.’

‘He wouldn’t come.’

‘He would. It’s just the sort of thing that would amuse him.’

‘Amuse him! You think he’d come to scoff and remain to pray?’

‘Once you started talking to him — ’

‘George is beyond me,’ said the priest. ‘I’d better not meddle.’ He snapped his fingers softly.

There was a familiar scraping sound, then a loud creaking, then a metallic clang. It was the west door opening and shutting. Father Bernard moved a little away from his penitent. His eyes, accustomed to the dim light, were dazzled for a moment by the gleaming reds and blues of the tall judging Christ, who, leaning upon his sword, was represented in the west window. A heavy tread, a bulky form was coming down the aisle. Father Bernard rose to his feet.

John Robert, his vision even more affected by the sudden change from light to dark, made his way towards the risen figure which was slightly illuminated by the sanctuary light, and in spite of the different garments which it was now wearing, recognized it as the man who had been pointed out to him at the Baths by Bill the Lizard. He approached the priest and said, ‘Rozanov.’

This sound, muttered in John Robert’s odd voice, might have conveyed nothing were it not that Father Bernard had, on the same occasion, had the philosopher pointed out to him by several people.

‘How do you do,’ said Father Bernard, ‘I am Father Bernard, the Rector, I am glad to see you.’ His heart made itself felt, large and warm. ‘This is Mrs Sedleigh - perhaps you already — ’

Diane had now also risen. She had of course never met John Robert, though she had occasionally seen him. She stood in breathless trembling panic like a doe which has suddenly smelt the close proximity of a lion. (There was actually a musty animal odour coming from the philosopher which Father Bernard’s fastidious nostrils had also detected.) This big man, who had come so alarmingly near to her, held George’s fate in his hands, the power of life or death. As Diane shuddered with this sudden intuition she wondered, does he know who I am? (In fact he did not.)

John Robert nodded. Diane murmured that she must go and went, her light swift feet tapping almost noiselessly upon the tiles as she ran toward the west door.

Father Bernard waved vaguely after her. He was feeling rather dismayed himself. He felt surprised, embarrassed, anxious, shy, and obscurely frightened.

‘I should like to ask you something,’ said Rozanov, his voice coming through clearly now.

‘Surely, wait a moment, let’s have some more light.’

The priest moved softly, with a rustle of his gown, to the nearest switchboard, and illuminated a side chapel containing a Victorian picture of Christ at Emmaus.

He combed out his girlish hair with his fingers and returned to John Robert who had sat down. Father Bernard settled in the pew in front of him, curled himself up with a swirl of skirts, and turned to face the philosopher.

‘I’d like to say “welcome back”, but then you have scarcely been away. Is it for me to say “welcome back”? At any rate, welcome to my church.’

This slightly complex speech seemed to interest Rozanov. He thought about it for a moment and seemed pleased.

‘Thank you.’

‘You never worshipped here, I think?’

‘No, I was brought up as a Methodist.’

‘Are you still a believer?’

‘No.’

There was silence for a moment. Father Bernard began to feel a burning anxiety. What did this strange creature want, and how could he, somehow, keep him? This was an odd thought. Odder still was the image which next came to the priest of Rozanov, large and quietly captive, sitting in a cage. He smiled and said, ‘If I can assist you in any way I shall be very glad to. You have only to speak.’ Father Bernard found himself adopting this rather stilted style in addressing Rozanov, as if he were talking in a foreign language.

The philosopher seemed in no hurry to do as he was bidden. He looked about the church with curiosity, chewing his large lower lip.

‘May I show you round the church? Would you like that? There are points of interest.’

‘No, thank you. Another time perhaps.’

After another silence Rozanov, still gazing about him, said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Yes - what about?’

‘About anything.’

‘About - anything?’

‘Yes,’ said Rozanov. ‘You see, I have only lately ceased to teach, returned from America, and for the first time I have no one to talk to.’

Father Bernard felt a little giddy. He said, ‘But surely there are plenty of people— ’

‘No.’

‘You mean -just talk?’

‘I should explain. I have always, over very many years, had pupils and colleagues with whom I could talk philosophy.’

‘I am not a philosopher,’ said Father Bernard.

‘Yes, and that is certainly a pity,’ said Rozanov. He sighed. ‘You don’t happen to know of any philosophers in Ennistone? Not of course that any philosopher would do — ’

Father Bernard hesitated. ‘Well, there’s George McCaffrey, but of course you know him.’

‘Not McCaffrey. Do you know of any —?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Then you will have to do.’ The words had an authoritative finality.

‘I shall certainly do my best,’ said Father Bernard humbly, rather dazed, ‘but I’m still not quite clear about what you want.’

‘Simply someone to talk to. Someone entirely serious. I am accustomed to clarifying my thoughts in the medium of conversation.’

‘Suppose I don’t understand?’ said Father Bernard.

John Robert suddenly smiled, turning towards the priest.

‘Oh that doesn’t matter. So long as you say what you think.’

‘But I — ’ Father Bernard felt it would be graceless to protest. Besides he was now in a fever lest his preposterous vistor should change his mind.

He said, ‘You want someone to, sort of, hit the ball back?’

‘Yes. An image which - yes.’

‘Not that I am in any way a match for you, to pursue the metaphor.’

‘That is unimportant.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Good for you!’ said John Robert. ‘When can we start? Tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’ said Father Bernard faintly.

‘Well then Monday, Tuesday?’

‘Tuesday - but look, what sort of - how often —?’

‘Could you manage every two or three days? As it suits you of course, I don’t want to interfere with your parish work.’

‘No, that’s all right - would you like to come to the Clergy House?’

‘No, I like to talk when I’m walking.’

Father Bernard detested walking, but he was already himself captured and caged.

‘Yes, fine.’

‘Could you call for me at my place, you know, 16 Hare Lane in Burkestown, about ten?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Thank you, I’m most obliged.’

Rozanov got up and marched off. Father Bernard rose too. The church door scraped and creaked and clanked shut again. Father Bernard sat down. He felt amazed, flattered, appalled, alarmed, touched. He sat still with his luminous eyes shinier than ever. Then he began, like Alex, quietly helplessly to laugh.

Hattie Meynell was sitting on her bed in the dormitory at school. Girls were not supposed to be in their dormitories during the day except to change before and after games. Games were over and Hattie had changed and had tea and ought to have been at prep. However, since she was so senior and this was her last term she felt, although she had always had a great respect for the school rules which were ever so rational, that she might, just now for a bit, do as she pleased. Younger at school, when she had yearned for oblivion even more than she did now, she had regarded her bed as her home, and something of this sense of refuge still remained. There were two other beds in the room, with white coverlets like the one which Hattie was rumpling by sitting on (which ought never to be happening). The big Victorian windows showed outside, in a clear soft evening light, a lawn with coniferous trees, then tennis courts whose wire cages made a silvery geometrical fuzz, then the mild green hills of the English countryside. Two girls were playing tennis, but not ‘officially’ since this was not a tennis term (they were allowed to play of course, but there was no coach). Hattie was wearing her changed-for-supper uniform, a silky light brown blouse with an embroidered collar and a round-necked dark brown pinafore dress of very fine corduroy. She had kicked off her shoes and was holding, lifted up on to her knee, one of her brown-stockinged feet. The girls were not allowed to wear tights, which were deemed bad for their health. Hattie was the ‘little waif’ referred to earlier, John Robert Rozanov’s grand-daughter. She was seventeen.

The school was a very expensive rather progressive rather old-fashioned boarding school. It was progressive in its political and social ideas, old-fashioned in its discipline and academic standards. Hattie had been a pupil there for five years, during which time her American accent had been overlaid by a very different English one. She had crossed the Atlantic more times than she could remember. She had wanted a pony, then ceased to want one. She had worn a gold band on her teeth, then ceased to wear it. She had plaited her hair in a pigtail, then put it up. She had passed a number of exams. At night she slept curled up with her hands crossed over her breasts. She was very unhappy but she did not recognize what ailed her as unhappiness.

Tomorrow she would have her hair washed by Miss Adkin, who came on Saturdays to wash the girls’ hair. This hair-washing was a ‘funny time’, which Hattie could not decide about; many things at school were like that. Miss Adkin established herself in one of the bathrooms, and the girls, dressed in their pretty dressing-gowns, queued, always laughing a lot; for some reason hair-washing was ridiculous and somehow thrilling. Miss Adkin was a rather jokey lady but looked like a priestess, as if she might suddenly have produced a pair of shears and cut off all the girls’ hair instead of washing it. Her customers sat in turn with their heads over the bath, and Miss Adkin sprayed on hot water, soaped, sprayed, soaped and sprayed and soaped again, while the semi- Inaudible client complained that the water was too hot and the soap was getting in her eyes. Most of the girls had long hair, and there was something strange and shocking in the sudden transformation of dry fluffy tresses into long dark snakes swirling about in the water that kept rising in the bath, while Miss Adkin’s strong claw-like fingers searched each bowed and suppliant scalp. Then a warm white furry towel was wrapped around each damp head and the turbaned victim ran red-faced and giggling away. Hattie disliked having her hair washed, but it excited her.

Beside each bed there was a chest of drawers, and on these the junior girls were allowed to place only three personal objects. Senior girls could please themselves so long as decorum was observed. Make-up was of course forbidden, as was jewellery and anything suggestive of display. Hattie had few possessions. On her chest there was a brown china rabbit scratching its ear, which had come up with her through the school, and which she could not bear to put away though other girls derided it; there was a long sleek Eskimo seal made of black soapstone, and a little pink-and-white Japanese vase (into which she never put flowers as that was not allowed). The dormitory was a weird place, though not terrible like the big dormitories in which, as a younger girl, she had cried herself to sleep every night. The stairs and landings, which were blurred by her little weeping ghost, stained by her tears, had always been strange haunted spaces to her, as if already removed into the brown haze of the past. Was it her future sadness which made the place so dim and foggy? It was hard to believe that soon she would be leaving it forever.

Hattie, though thin and pale, was very healthy and hardy, good at games and gymnastics. She was a pale straight girl, neither tall nor small, with long straight white-blond hair and blue eyes of a disconcerting pallor, as if they had great blobs of creamy whiteness mixed into the blue. Her father, Whit Meynell, had had an Icelandic mother. Hattie had never met her father’s parents. Her mother had died when she was a small child. After that she travelled with her father during his academic peregrinations. Whit Meynell was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out. No one would publish his book, however many times he rewrote it. He was a loving though extremely fretful and anxious and inefficient father. He set up his tents in various different universities, from all of which he was soon tactfully evicted. He never achieved ‘tenure’. His frightful anxieties about the future were mercifully ended by a fatal (entirely accidental) motor crash. Hattie was ten.

After that, Hattie went to live for a time with her aunt, Whit Meynell’s younger sister, who lived in a small town called Westfield, original home of the Meynells, situated in a woody desolation beside a muddy lake not far from Austin, Texas. Hattie missed her father agonizingly and wept longer than anyone thought at all proper. She got on quite well with Whit’s sister Margot, but the arrangement only lasted a couple of years because Margot, who was unmarried, driven by a sudden and interesting desperation, decided to go and seek her fortune in New York, and could not see how to include Hattie in this enterprise. Margot wrote to this effect to Hattie’s only other visible relative, John Robert Rozanov. John Robert had of course ‘turned up’ in Hattie’s life at intervals. He had never got on well with Hattie’s mother, Amy, though he maintained the forms of communication. Whit he could not stand and was at pains not to see. (There were kinds of intellectual muddle so degrading that John Robert preferred not to be reminded of their existence.) If he was ‘giving a paper’ anywhere near where Hattie’s house happened to be, he would occasionally come and take the child out to tea. These ‘treats’ were rather glum, since Hattie, who heard no good of her grandfather at home, was frightened of him, and both of them were thoroughly awkward. Here too, however, the proprieties were observed, and John Robert replied promptly to Margot’s letter. His idea was that the best way now to dispose of Hattie was to put her in an English boarding school. (He had made himself financially responsible for the child since Whit’s death.) He expressed the wish that Margot might ‘have’ her in the holidays. Hattie was by now twelve. The holidays were at first a jumbled business, with Hattie dispatched to France or Germany to stay with strange families, on arrangements made by the school in accordance with John Robert’s wishes, then whisked across the Atlantic to live in rooms near Margot’s flat, since Margot’s way of life could not just then be shared with an innocent young girl. Margot had by this time got as far towards New York as Denver, Colorado, where she finally married a Jewish lawyer called Albert Markowitz, and was able to establish a respectable home to which Hattie could come, but that was a little later.

Meanwhile something unusual, even odd, had happened in Hattie’s life. An idea had germinated in the brilliant, but (in worldly matters) rather naïve and confused mind of John Robert. Perhaps he felt a bit guilty about having been inattentive, and wished to defend himself against a charge of wilful neglect. Perhaps he wanted simply to save himself the trouble of organizing and supervising Hattie’s movements round the world. Whatever the reason, he decided that Hattie must have a permanent female companion, a person who in the old days could have been called her ‘maid’. And in order to find such a person John Robert came back to Ennistone. He wanted an English girl, he needed advice, he did not want to waste time on the operation. He arrived and established himself (at the Ennistone Royal Hotel, 16 Hare Lane being let at the time). He had written beforehand to William Eastcote (Rose Eastcote was already dead) but Eastcote happened to be away at a Friends’ conference in Geneva. The only other person in Ennistone whom he cared to trust in this matter was Ruby Doyle. John Robert had conceived, not exactly an affection, but a kind of respect for Ruby in the old Linda Brent days when Ruby, then young but looking much the same, had been so discreetly helpful. There was a kind of monumental thing- In- Itselfness about Ruby which pleased the philosopher. Ruby, scarcely capable of speech, was incapable of lies. He felt that Ruby would do the few things that she could do without fuss and without the interference of any messy general ideas. She also knew how to keep her mouth shut. John Robert, by nature secretive, did not want his project discussed in Ennistone. He wrote to Ruby and summoned her to the hotel. Ruby could not read or write but, so I am told, she took the letter to the gipsy camp. She certainly said nothing to Alex. When John Robert had explained what he wanted, Ruby responded promptly and without emotion that she had a connection, a cousin, who was now unemployed and who might suit the professor. How exactly the young woman in question (Pearl Scotney, she was called) was related to Ruby, and to Diane, was a matter of speculation. Some said they were all half-sisters, probably none of them knew for certain. Ruby bore, she said, her father’s surname, Pearl bore her unmarried, abandoned, mother’s name, and Diane had borne her unmarried, abandoned, mother’s name (Davis) until her marriage with the disastrous Sedley. It might even have been that the connection between them had been originally suggested by their being called Pearl, Ruby and Diamond. John Robert interviewed Pearl in London and decided that she would do. He gave her an airline ticket to Denver and instructions about where to find Hattie. He also wrote to Margot, who was surprised, annoyed and relieved. Pearl arrived and found Hattie spending her first summer holidays in a dim flatlet in the large complex where Margot lived, and trying to do her holiday tasks while suffering from agonizing loneliness and chronic tears. Hattie was thirteen, Pearl was twenty-one.

John Robert had not, in conceiving his project, worked it out in any detail; he had not for instance wondered what Pearl was to do when Hattie was at school, and had to have this problem brought to his attention by Pearl. Pearl had no home in Ennistone, and in any case John Robert had made it clear that he did not want her to sojourn, perhaps talk, in his native town. It was decided that Pearl should continue to live where she had been living in north London and, when not in attendance upon Hattie, to continue if she wished her part-time secretarial work, without any diminution of the generous salary which John Robert paid her. Hattie’s boarding school was in Hertfordshire, and here it was also Pearl’s duty to visit her, and see she was contented and supplied with all that she needed.

This idea of John Robert’s, which might, for all the care or common sense that he exercised in setting it up, have proved disastrous, in fact turned out well. Hattie vividly recalled, and she and Pearl often talked it over later, Pearl’s first arrival in Denver. John Robert had sent Hattie a short note to tell her that he had engaged a ‘companion’ for her. Hattie tearfully anticipated the arrival of some gorgon. Pearl on her side was already beginning to regret what had at first seemed a miraculous adventure. What horrid neurotic little brat perhaps awaited her? Pearl went first to Margot’s flat, then to the nearby cubby-hole where Margot had stored Hattie. Hattie’s first sighting of Pearl was not reassuring. It could not exactly be said that Pearl resembled Ruby, yet there was something of Ruby’s ‘Mexican’ look in Pearl’s hard strong face. Pearl was lean with very dark brown straight hair and a sallow complexion and a thin nose which came straight down from her forehead and thin fierce lips. Her eyes were of the greenish light-brown colour known as hazel. She glared nervously at Hattie, and Hattie vanished into the dim haze of her frightened childish face. Then Pearl smiled, and then Hattie smiled. They both said later that they knew at once that it would be ‘all right’, although perhaps all that happened was that Hattie saw that Pearl was considerably younger than the person she expected (John Robert had failed to specify Pearl’s age) and Pearl saw that Hattie was timid and harmless.

Pearl Scotney, born in Ennistone, had grown up in London whither her unhappy mother had transferred her. Pearl could not remember her father. Her mother had followed Diane’s profession, only Pearl never told anyone this. She always said her mother was a dress-maker. The mother drank, then died. Pearl went to a foster home. Up to this time Pearl’s connection with her ‘family’ in Ennistone had consisted of ‘keeping in touch at Christmas’, at least Ruby and Diane sent Christmas cards; giving evidence that they knew Pearl existed and where she was. Pearl sent nothing. Her mother had wanted no family ties, no remembrances, no connection with her nightmarish past. Pearl’s foster-mother rather randomly initiated a rapprochement by writing to Ruby and Diane asking for money. Diane sent some. Ruby came to see the child and manifested some gruff affection. Ruby in fact would have liked to bring Pearl to Ennistone and install her at Belmont, only she could not think out how to suggest this to Alex. As soon as Pearl left school, her main aim in life was to get away from her foster-mother (the feeling was mutual) and Ruby found her a temporary job in Ennistone as a maid and child-minder with some visiting Americans. During this period Pearl taught herself typing (and spelling) and then became a secretary. She had some small messy love affairs and felt very confused and unhappy. However, she was able to earn her living and to begin to be, which she never thought as a child that she ever would be, a real person. She had an uneasy sort of relation with Ruby and Diane. Ruby was moodily affectionate, sometimes suddenly possessive, prompt in detecting rebuffs. Diane was (so Pearl thought) resentful, even envious of a sort of irresponsible independence which she attributed to the younger girl. So things had been going along when John Robert Rozanov interfered in the course of Pearl’s life. John Robert judged that Pearl Scotney ‘had her head screwed on’; and it appeared that John Robert was right.

Arrived in Denver, and after her relief at finding Hattie so harmless, Pearl was suddenly filled with power. Challenged by a rather peculiar situation, she took charge of it. She felt all of a sudden free, competent, and (she noticed one morning) very nearly happy. Being a very long way from London, and from Ennistone, helped too. She was in a germless void, and she loved every minute, though also telling herself that it would not last. The first thing was to tackle Margot Meynell. Hattie could wait, and did wait, silent with admiration. Margot, whose love life was in a delicate and complex state, viewed the newcomer with dismay. Margot had not told John Robert that Hattie was not living in her flat. She feared Pearl as a hostile informer and agent of a superior power. However, Pearl had a frank conference with Margot which made the latter feel much better. It was clear, said Pearl, that she and Hattie must find a considerably larger, considerably better flat. John Robert had said nothing about flats. Perhaps he had assumed that Margot would house both the girls. Perhaps he thought Pearl would arrange things as she thought best. Perhaps he had not reflected on the matter at all. Pearl, in her new role, wrote John Robert a ‘business letter’ over which she laboured long, saying that she thought that Hattie and herself should move into a flat near to Miss Meynell’s, as quarters were a bit cramped. This, without lying, implied that Hattie had been living with Margot (not that Pearl minded lying half as much as, for instance, Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor did). John Robert, who was certainly not short of money, replied that he had opened an account for Pearl in a Denver bank and she was to do as she thought fit. After this Pearl took complete charge and Margot gratefully retired, though without forfeiting the allowance which John Robert continued to pay her.

After Pearl came, Hattie stopped hating Denver. The girls learnt to ski. (Pearl persuaded Margot to ski too, only she promptly broke her leg.) However there was now less of Denver and more of Europe. Pearl delivered Hattie to the ‘families’ or accompanied her to some of the better-known monuments and museums. Hattie could now speak French, German and Italian. Pearl had learnt no language at school and been taught no grammar. For a time she tried secretly, and in vain, to teach herself French. Then regretfully gave up. When they went sightseeing, Pearl had a simpler cause of unease; she was afraid that something might happen to Hattie. She did once lose her in Rome and had a terrible half-hour. Back in the USA there was travelling too. Sometimes John Robert came to Denver, sometimes the girls flew to see him in California, once to Boston where he was spending a semester, once to St Louis, more than once to New York. On these occasions they saw little of the philosopher, meetings being still rather in the ‘having tea’ style. John Robert would then question Hattie about her school studies and about where she had been and what she had done, but he would soon start looking at his watch. Once he asked her to read a passage of Racine. On these occasions John Robert was polite and grateful to Pearl but managed somehow (perhaps unconsciously) to mark the difference between the girls, who by now regarded each other as sisters. Hattie was ‘the mistress’, Pearl ‘the maid’. Pearl put this away in a package of resentment which however remained fairly small. Hattie and Pearl were both rather afraid of John Robert. But during his absences Hattie, at least when she was younger, did not trouble her head about him, whereas Pearl did.

Pearl was an employee, one whose employment could be terminated. This fact which had not at first occupied Pearl’s attention much, or Hattie’s at all, now began to disturb them both. New feelings and understandings were bodying themselves forth in Hattie’s mind. Pearl had been a mother, then a sister. This had never seemed odd before. Why should it feel so now? Once at school Hattie overheard one of the mistresses, talking about her and Pearl, say, ‘It’s an unhealthy relationship.’ Hattie, in secret tears, had been hurt and puzzled. Pearl was an employee, a servant. John Robert had established her by fiat. He could remove her by fiat. And now Hattie was leaving school, that too had been decreed. She supposed there would be more travel, more museums, more and different teachers, the university. Soon she would be eighteen. She felt unready for this or indeed any other future. Had she a future? Or was the problem rather that she had nothing else, an excess of future, white and unmarked and blank? Her future. Could she own such a thing? One of the teachers talked about a crisis of identity. Hattie had no identity and nothing as creative as a crisis. She thought, I am nothing, I am a floating seed which a bird will soon eat. ‘Lives of great men all remind us we must make our lives sublime, and departing leave behind us footprints in the sands of time.’ So they sometimes sang in chapel, where Hattie had acquired some vague Anglicanism. The unprinted sand stretched ahead, making Hattie feel weary, weary, as if her life were already over. Her only positive feeling was a sense of her own innocence. She had not yet ‘become bad’ as so many people, as she knew, became. Evil, that too was part of the white blankness of the future.

Such thoughts flitted in her head as she sat now on her white school bed, and held her warm brown-stockinged foot in her hand. They flitted around with lots of other thoughts, memories of snowy slopes mauve with aspens, of that melancholy lake in Texas, of her dear father frowning with anxiety as he prepared his lectures, of the awful little flatlet where she had cried so much before Pearl came, of the kindly nervous guilty face of Margot Meynell, now Mrs Albert Markowitz, and distantly distantly dimly of Hattie’s mother, the unhappy dead lady who had once been Miss Rozanov.

A distant bell rang. Hattie thrust a clean handkerchief into her knickers, and emerged substanceless as a seed into the brown spaces of the landing and the stairs which she was destined to dream about for the rest of her life.

John Robert Rozanov was floating like an enormous baby in the hot flowing waters of his private bath in the Ennistone Rooms. His bath was a large boat-shaped affair made of white tiles with blunt ends. At each end there was a seat which was under water when the bath was full. There was a fan which expelled the steam, but John Robert had not put it on; he liked steam. The hot curative waters flowed in, indeed roared in, from the fat glistening brass taps which were never turned off by day or night, so that the Rooms were full of a ceaseless roaring to which the inmates were quickly accustomed and said to deafened visitors ‘I don’t hear it!’ ‘They may not hear it, but it affects them,’ someone said darkly to the Director of the Institute, Vernon Chalmers, who quickly prepared and kept in reserve a little monograph on the therapeutic powers of sound. Dazed, almost drowsy, with unheard noise John Robert floated, his white-skinned whale-belly huge before him. His big flipper-like hands kept him buoyant, moving slowly to and fro in the space of the bath, while the steaming water fell from the taps at a controlled temperature of forty-two degrees Centigrade. The bath could be filled by turning a brass handle to close the plug at the bottom, after which the water rose to an outlet vent near the top. When the plug was lifted, the water subsided to a uniform level of about a foot, spitting and gurgling under the violence of the jets from above.

Last night John Robert had dreamt that he was being pursued by a lot of squealing piglets who turned out to be human infants running very fast on all fours. Later he saw the same creatures lying on the ground as if asleep, only now they were dolls, and he thought, ‘they were dolls after all.’ Some of them lay quiet, and these he took to be dead; others were moving and twitching slightly, and these he took to be dying. He thought, but surely dolls must be dead. He picked up one of the dead ones and put it in his pocket. His mother came and asked to see it. When he brought it out he saw with horror that it was alive and in pain. In the morning he woke up early and went out for a walk. He looked into the big bright clean Methodist church where he had worshipped as a child. He had not been there for a long time and felt a weird shock when he recognized the numbers of the hymns. He then visited the little corrugated- Iron Roman Catholic chapel where his mother had once told him that they worshipped a goddess. Why had she frightened him by saying that, was it meant to be a joke? He looked inside into the dark which was full of images. An aged priest appeared who said that he remembered his grandfather. People in Burkestown all knew John Robert, smiled at him and said, ‘Good morning, Professor.’

John Robert propelled himself to one end of the bath and adopted a sitting position, his head and shoulders now above the water. He mopped his red swollen steamy face with an adjacent towel, and began to go through the exercises which his Japanese doctor in California had recommended for his arthritis. When John Robert went to Texas and Arizona his arthritic symptoms disappeared. Since his return into the English spring he had felt old familiar pains together with new strange ones. As he rotated his head and twitched his shoulders and turned his arms into snakes he sighed, then groaned into the hurly-burly of the roaring stream. The warmth was kind to his bulky pain-ridden body. As he swayed himself gently in the waters he could not but believe in their therapeutic power. But for the weary diminishing cells of the mind there was no alleviation, unless it might be a strong electric shock to shake them all up again like counters in a game. He was so tired and so old, and he had so much to decide and such terrible things to do.

Meanwhile outside at that very moment the sun was shining on the Outdoor Bath, which was less steamy today because the air temperature was higher. The sky was blue, clothes and bodies looked bright and hard-edged and clear, and the cries which people always utter in swimming-pools echoed in the sunny northern light. In Diana’s Garden Ruby, Diane and Pearl were standing together, a rare conjunction, not marked since few people in Ennistone knew Pearl by sight. Pearl had been to visit her foster-mother who lived in Kilburn and who had written to her asking for money. Pearl could have sent the money by post, but decided to visit the old lady at least partly so as to exhibit her own affluence and sophistication. The foster-mother, visited, made a point of not being interested in Pearl’s life. Then she wept self-pityingly. Pearl left, upset and cross. Unhappy stirred up memories then made her suddenly want to go to Ennistone, where there was no particular reason for her to be and where she rarely went, since she knew that it was out of bounds under John Robert’s rules. She came to the Baths looking for Ruby.

Diane was wearing a dark blue tweed coat which she had bought at the second-hand shop. She ought not to have bought it. She had savings, but George’s non-appearance was reducing her spending money. It can’t go on, she told herself. She was not sure what this meant, but at least it suggested that her troubles would end somehow. Everything was disorderly and menacing. A lot of things had been stolen on the day when the lights went out at Bowcocks. Supposing someone were to accuse her of thieving? Everyone would be thrilled to believe it, she was vulnerable to any accusation. Suppose her money ran out, could she ask Ruby or Pearl for a loan? Impossible. Ruby regarded Diane as a fallen woman, someone who had ruined herself and was finished. Diane could not forgive this. Nor could she forgive Pearl for being young and free, and for looking so horribly healthy and independent in a corduroy jacket and trousers. Diane felt close to tears. How pleased everyone would be to see her crying in public. Everyone, that is, except George, who would be furiously angry. Fortunately George was absent. I had better go, thought Diane, I’ve been away for long enough, perhaps he’ll come - Oh, if only I could go to the cinema like ordinary people do. Where will I be a year from now? Will I be somewhere else, could I be? Will I be dead? Will he be dead? The idea that George was going to commit suicide had now lodged in her mind. This did not appal her, it gave her a kind of relief, not because she felt she would survive George, but because she apprehended it as her own death.

Ruby was brown and monumental and self-absorbed, not even showing the little signs of pleasure, like tiny droplets glistening upon a rock, which she usually exhibited when Pearl was present. Ruby was totally fascinated by her new relationship with Alex. At least Ruby’s side of it was new. Alex did not really know. Ruby had not yet moved. Ruby was actually far more alarmed by her new state of mind than her employer was. Some old unquestioned thing had quietly gone out of her life. Was it good that it had gone? Ruby sensed her power and was appalled by it. It was almost as if she could, if she wished, destroy Alex. Did she want to? No. But the pension, that meant independence, equality. Equality? She had only to stretch out her hand and decree it. She had only to go and sit in the drawing-room with Alex and say, we must eat together henceforth, we are two old women living together from now on. Could she do that? Ruby could picture doing it, but could not picture what might follow. It did not occur to her that Alex might tell her to go. The idea of being ‘dismissed’ did not exist for Ruby. How could it? She had brushed Alex’s hair when Alex was sixteen.

‘How’s the little madam?’ said Diane.

‘All right. I haven’t seen her lately.’

‘Aren’t you paid to keep an eye on her?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you call at the school?’

‘She doesn’t like it.’

‘Why, is she ashamed of you?’

‘No.’

‘Off to USA soon, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t do it,’ said Ruby suddenly.

‘Do what?’

‘Be like me.’

‘It’s not like that,’ said Pearl, ‘I’m not her— ’ She could not find the word.

‘Who’s that girl?’ said Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor.

‘My brother’s mistress.’

‘Good heavens.’

‘Which girl do you mean? The girl in the tweed coat is George’s mistress. The big old brown thing is my mother’s servant. I don’t know who the girl in trousers is.’

‘Servant,’ murmured Emma. ‘What a strange old-fashioned word.’

Tom was garbed for swimming, his wig of long curly hair still dry. Emma was dressed, complete with coat and waistcoat and high collar and bow tie and watch chain.

‘Why don’t you talk to her?’

‘Which?’

‘Either.’

‘I can’t talk to the mistress, so I can’t talk to the servant.’

‘Why not? You smiled at the mistress.’

‘Yes, but she didn’t smile back.’

‘So I saw. Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why these prohibitions?’

‘Because of George.’

‘George is a reason?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is George here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I want to meet him.’

‘I don’t advise it.’

‘You seem to live under a reign of terror. What’s that?’

‘What?’

‘That thing with the railing round it.’

‘That’s the Little Teaser.’

‘The what?’

‘That’s what we call it. Lud’s Rill. It’s a hot spring. It jumps up a little. It’s very hot.’

‘I don’t think much of it. Where’s the real hot spring?’

‘You can’t see it. It’s somewhere down below.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘Who’s that girl?’

‘Anthea Eastcote.’

‘She didn’t smile either. You smiled at her.’

‘She didn’t see me.’

‘She did. She cut you.’

‘Oh never mind. Perhaps she wants to make me jealous.’

‘You’re upset.’

‘I’m not!’

‘The trouble with you is you want everybody to love you.’

‘Stop nagging, Emma.’

‘All right, I won’t say another word.’

‘And don’t sulk either.’

‘Who’s the chap with her?’

‘Hector Gaines. He’s a historian. You’d like him.’

‘Introduce me.’

‘Not now.’

‘You drag me here and you won’t introduce me to anyone.’

‘There’s Alex!’

‘Where?’

‘There.’

‘You mean the girl in the green costume who’s kicking up the water and twirling round and round like a corkscrew?’

‘Yes. She likes doing that.’

‘She reminds me of something I saw once in a pool in the west of Ireland.’

‘Well, I’m going swimming now. Be good.’

Tom dived in and swam toward Alex. Like Adam, he felt easier with her in the water. She had stopped her whirligig and waved to him. Tom passed her, touching her wet smooth shoulder, squeezing it slightly. She put her hand to his head, tugging the wet curls. He passed on with a lighter heart. It was true that he wanted everyone to love him, everyone.

Alex looked after him. She was well aware that Tom’s not staying was an important gesture, a declaration of independence. On the other hand she knew that Tom wished to have it both ways, to stand away and yet to be absolutely wanted. He had come to see her yesterday. She had not play-acted preoccupation, distraction. She had been really unable to attend to him and to fuss over him as she usually did. He had found her in the Slipper House with Ruby, cleaning, moving furniture, installing new things which she had ordered. Tom and Ruby carried some of the heavier objects up the stairs. Alex did not explain these changes to Tom. She had not explained them to Ruby. Robin Osmore had written to Rozanov with details of the let. Alex felt uneasy, happy. Life was, again, vivid and unpredictable at last.

‘Don’t drip all over me.’

‘Sorry, Emma.’

‘I want to meet George.’

‘He isn’t here!’

‘Isn’t that your other brother coming, with the boy?’

‘Hello, Brian. You remember Scarlett-Taylor.’

‘Hello. I hear you went to see Alex yesterday.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Gabriel telephoned. We’ve stopped seeing her.’

‘Really?’

‘A wishful thought.’

‘Do you know Alex’s latest? She wants to keep bees!’

‘She must be stopped at all costs.’

‘How’s dog, papillon?’ said Emma to Adam.

‘Zed’s fine,’ said Adam, with distant but friendly dignity.

‘Isn’t he here?’

‘He’s not allowed. I want him to swim. He swims well. He loves it.’

‘Are we going to the sea?’ said Tom to Brian.

‘The family seaside jaunt is on, I believe, come the summer.’

‘Staying in a hotel?’

‘No, just the day.’

‘Not near Maryville, I couldn’t bear it.’

‘There’s the moon,’ said Adam to Emma. And there indeed it was, quite full and as pale as a cream cheese in the brilliant blue sky.

‘Why doesn’t it shine?’

‘The sun doesn’t let it.’

‘Have you got a dog?’

‘No,’ said Emma. Then something caught him in the throat. He had had a dog when he was Adam’s age, a darling spaniel with a spotty nose. It had been run over and killed before his eyes. He said, ‘I did have one - once — ’

Adam understood and looked away.

‘Look out,’ said Tom, ‘Percy Bowcock with Mrs Osmore.’

‘Too late, hello, Percy. Good morning, Mrs Osmore.’

‘May I introduce my friend, Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor? Mr Bowcock, Mrs Osmore.’

Percy (a rich Bowcock, Gabriel’s cousin) said to Brian, ‘Do you think Professor Rozanov could be persuaded to give a lecture in the Ennistone Hall?’

‘How should I know, I’m not in charge of the old fool,’ said Brian. Brian’s rudeness sometimes made people say that he was simply George by other means, but that was only a façon de parler.

Tom said to Adam, ‘Give me an idea for a pop song.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Scarlett-Taylor and I are going to write a pop song and make our fortunes.’

‘We are not,’ said Emma.

‘I shall write the words and he will write the music. Think of something, a pop song only needs one line.’

‘What about - what about - “It’s only me.”’

‘It’s only me?’

‘Yes. There’s two snails on a leaf, one on each side. Then one comes round the leaf and says to the other one, “It’s only me.”’

‘Must they be snails?’ said Tom after a moment’s thought.

‘I see them as snails,’ Adam said firmly.

‘I think it’s brilliant,’ said Tom.

Mrs Osmore asked Emma how he was enjoying Ennistone. Emma said it was a very interesting place.

‘You’re Irish, Mr Taylor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh I know. The sorrows of Ireland! You must feel such resentment against us for still occupying your country.’

Emma smiled sweetly.

‘Is that Tom McCaffrey?’ said Pearl.

‘Yes.’

‘He’s grown up.’

‘He’s not as pretty as he used to be,’ said Diane, who had funny feelings about Tom.

‘How are things at Belmont?’ Pearl asked Ruby.

‘Bad.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the fox. The fox does it.’ This was a piece of old gipsy folklore.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Diane.

‘It will come to bad things.’

‘I suppose you’re going to see Professor Rozanov?’ Diane said to Pearl. ‘Will he give you your severance pay?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Jobs are hard to get these days.’

‘Luckily I don’t need one.’

‘Don’t be touchy.’

‘Are you going to see him now?’ asked Ruby.

‘Not now.’

‘Tomorrow? Isn’t it funny that he’s back at the old house at Hare Lane?’ said Diane. ‘Where are you spending the night? The Royal Hotel, I suppose?’

Pearl blushed scarlet. Rozanov had not told her or Hattie that he was coming to Ennistone. She had supposed him safely far away in California. If he were to see her …. Aflame with guilt, she looked round the clear brilliantly coloured scene. She said, ‘I must go, I’ve got to telephone, nice to have seen you.’ And she turned and ran for the exit.

‘What do you suppose — ’ began Diane.

‘Here’s Madam,’ said Ruby.

She still sometimes referred to Alex in this way.

It had begun to rain.

‘Put your umbrella up, you’re getting wet,’ said Tom to Emma.

‘You go and get dressed, you’re shivering with cold.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Well, I am, looking at you.’

‘I say, there’s George.’

Emma, who had put his umbrella up, put it down again.

George, dressed in black swimming-trunks, was standing absolutely still on the edge of the pool. He was looking into the distance and thinking. He had woken up this morning and once again heard the birds uttering human speech. Then he had thought it was Stella, speaking outside on the stairs, only there was no one there. He went into the garden and saw a fish swimming in a tree, only it was a memory of a dream which had somehow got loose. He rang up the Ennistone Rooms and found out that John Robert had engaged a room. He went to the library to find out exactly what had happened to Schlick, but he could find no book about Schlick.

As he came out to the pool he had seen Diane, seen her see him, and seen her turn away slowly and go. He wanted, in a way, very much to go to Diane, to be in that familiar room, to smell her cigarettes and hold her hand, just that. But he was afraid to go to her. He must not, now, make himself weak, gentle, consoled. He almost felt he could have wept in that room holding her hand. There was in George something that was not himself, something puny, even pathetic, a little miserable bedraggled animal which disturbed him with its whimpering. He would, if he could, kill that mean frightened little animal. Against it now he summoned up his world-resentment, his sense of cosmic injustice, his hatred of his enemies, and his old valuable contempt for women. The rain beat down upon his hair, making it even darker and flattening it in to his head. The rain rolled over his brown body, brown as all the heliotropic Ennistonian swimmers were. The rain studded his body with bright points.

Valerie Cossom, looking at him from across the grey pitted water, constrained her heart with her hand, and stiffened her mind by trying to think about the party line. She had never spoken to George. She wondered if she ever would.

‘Introduce me to George.’

‘No.’

‘You’re afraid.’

‘Oh Emma —’

‘I shall introduce myself, now.’

‘You don’t know - stop - oh all right.’

Tom, nearly naked, and Emma, fully clothed and getting very wet since he had not reopened his umbrella, advanced along one side of the pool, then set off along the next toward George, who was standing by himself, the rain, now sharp and biting, having driven most of the swimmers back into the water.

George became aware of an approach, then of Tom, and very slightly turned his head.

‘George - hello — ’

George kept his head slightly turned, his wide-apart eyes slewed round toward his brother but not looking at him. Tom had an odd impression, rather like a memory, of a madman in a cupboard. He felt intensely, what he had in the past more vaguely felt, George’s uncanny quality, unpleasant like the smell of a ghost.

Tom went on, ‘George, I’d like you to meet my friend, Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor.’

George said nothing. He moved his body. Tom flinched. Then George, still without looking directly at Tom, took hold of Tom’s adjacent arm, squeezed it for a moment extremely hard, then pushed him away with the palm of his hand, turning as he did so to his previous posture of contemplation.

Tom moved back, cannoned into Emma, turned smartly and led Emma away.

‘Damn you.’

‘Sorry — ’

‘You see what he’s like. Or rather you don’t.’

‘Well, what is he like?’

‘Oh fuck him. I’m getting bloody cold. I’m going in to dress.’

Tom, hurrying to the changing-rooms and now shuddering with cold, could feel his arm burning from George’s vicious grip. He could also feel the flat sensation of the palm of George’s hand upon his shoulder. As he turned into the door he saw farther down, just entering the Promenade, the back views of Anthea Eastcote and Hector Gaines. He found the key which would release his clothes from the locker, and felt, for a moment, a storm of emotion inside his peace-loving breast.

On the Promenade Anthea Eastcote and Hector Gaines were drinking coffee. Anthea had put on her round tinted glasses. She was really rather short-sighted, and skilfully concealed the fact. She had however seen Tom smile and had pretended not to. She felt upset about this now. She was very fond of Tom, whom she had known since they were tiny children, not of course in love; it was just that sometimes he seemed a little too cheerfully at home with the prospect of never possessing her.

Hector Gaines, agonizingly aware of Anthea’s breasts, now safe and snug inside her tight mauve sweater, was telling himself that he was thirty-four and she was twenty-one, and that he had finished his work on Gideon Parke and ought to go to Aberdeen to see his mother, whose loving letters never complained about his infrequent visits.

Brian McCaffrey, also vividly aware of Anthea Eastcote’s breasts, came up to the counter to order his coffee and Adam’s special of pineapple juice and Coca-Cola. He greeted Anthea, whom of course he knew well since she too was a Friend, and Hector, whom he knew slightly.

He said to Anthea, ‘How’s your uncle Bill? Someone said he was a bit off colour.’

‘Oh he’s fine. Hello, Adam, what are you doing, being a tree?’

Adam, who was standing with his arms spread out, said, ‘No, I’m drying my wings.’

Brian and Adam retired a little way with their drinks, Adam, who never called Brian ‘Daddy’ or anything of that sort, said, ‘Why is the moon sometimes there at night and sometimes there during the day?’

‘Because it’s going round the earth while we’re going round the sun.’

‘But how exactly?’

‘Oh heavens - it’s - I’ll look it up.’

Brian sat down and banged his coffee cup on to the table. He had just heard that economies at the Town Hall were likely to bring his job to an end.

Hector said timidly to Anthea, ‘Shall we go and see the sculpture exhibition in the Botanic Gardens or the Ennistone Art Society in the Hall?’

Anthea said, ‘You go, I’ll join you there.’ She wanted to go and make her peace with Tom.

‘But which?’

‘Which what?’

‘Which exhibition?’

‘Oh, the Art Society, it’s still raining.’

Gabriel had arrived. She swept in, in dripping mac and black sou’wester, and plumped down at Brian’s table.

‘You’re late,’ said Brian.

‘She’s gone.’

‘Who’s gone?’

‘Stella. She disappeared while I was out shopping. She left a note just saying she felt she should go and not to worry.’

‘Well, she’s been with us long enough and we weren’t doing her any good.’

‘But where’s she gone to?’

‘If you don’t know I certainly don’t.’

‘She can’t have gone back to George!’

‘I don’t see why not. Anyway it’s none of our business.’

‘Suppose she kills herself?’

‘She won’t.’

Gabriel burst into tears.

‘Oh stop that! Come on, we’re going home.’

Vernon Chalmers, Director of the Institute, sitting in his office in the Annexe, was startled by a sudden uproar which seemed to come from the direction of Diana’s Garden. He thought at first that some sort of fight or riot must have broken out. Then he realized it was a sound of laughter. He got up from his desk and went to the window.

Tom McCaffrey, emerging clothed into the abating rain, heard the same sound. Anthea caught him up. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello, Anthea, what’s up?’

‘Let’s go and see.’

Tom took her hand for a moment and they ran along the edge of the pool.

A small crowd had gathered near Lud’s Rill. Tom, racing ahead, saw the following strange sight, Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor, his clothes soaked and dripping, dancing about in helpless frustration inside the railing which surrounded the spring.

What had happened was simple. Emma, disturbed by the memory of his dog, was filled with a sudden desire to approach the little fount and feel how hot the water really was. It was easy enough, stepping upon a nearby stone, to vault in. Getting out was another matter. There was nothing inside to step on, and the railings, breast high, had spiked tops curving inwards. Enraged at his own folly, and now provoked by the laughter of spectators, he ran from place to place, peering through his rain-spotted glasses, trying to find somewhere to put his foot, then attempting to draw himself up by placing his hands on top of the curving rails. They were too high, he was not strong enough. The encouragement of the spectators became more ribald. An authoritative figure strode forward: it was Nesta Wiggins in her bikini. She shouted, ‘Stop laughing, help him!’, which prompted more laughter. But there was nothing that Nesta could do. Emma refused her proffered hand. She ran off crying, ‘Get a ladder!’

Tom roared with laughter. Then he hurried on and, reaching the enclosures, knelt down, thrusting one sturdy knee through the railings. Emma ran to him, put one foot on his knee, gripped one of the rails at the top, and leapt to freedom. Clapping and cheers greeted his escape. Crimson with chagrin, Emma had already set off for the exit.

Tom ran after him. ‘You’ve left your umbrella behind. Shall I get it?’

Emma walked on in grim silence, and Tom followed him out, laughing again.

‘Do you believe in God?’

‘No.’

‘Come, anything counts as belief these days.’

‘No.’

‘So you’re an odd sort of priest.’

‘Yes.’

‘You reject God?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is not enough to reject him, you must hate him.’

‘Do you hate him?’

‘I abominate the concept.’

Father Bernard said, ‘So do I,’ but in a whisper.

‘Why do you whisper, do you think he’s listening?’

‘I don’t believe in a personal God.’

‘You mean “God” isn’t a name?’

‘But I believe in a spiritual reality.’

‘What does “reality” mean here, what is “spiritual”, could you give examples?’

It was Tuesday and Father Bernard had called at Hare Lane at ten o’clock as instructed. He had avoided the Institute in the interim so as not to ‘spoil’ the meeting, to which he looked forward with a ridiculous excitement and alarm. (He never swam on Sundays as an act of abstinence. He once gave up swimming for Lent and suggested to his appalled congregation that they should do likewise.) On arrival at the philosopher’s house he had been dismayed to find John Robert all ready to go for a long walk. Father Bernard, who had lost the athletic tastes and talents of his youth, disliked long walks and could scarcely envisage having any sort of difficult conversation while in motion (he was slightly deaf). Now Rozanov was talking of going across the Common and out into the country. The priest marked his displeasure by asking for some safety pins and fussily pinning up the hem of his cassock. He was determined not to go out into the country, and hoped (rightly as it turned out) that once they were talking he could lead John Robert along an easier route. He therefore suggested that since he had to pay a brief pastoral visit at Blanch Cottages (a lie), they should go by West-wold and the Glove Factory and the Roman bridge and through Victoria Park and Druidsdale and thus to the Common and thus (as far as Father Bernard was concerned) back to Burkestown. John Robert agreed and they set off at first in silence, with John Robert walking uncomfortably fast, and had crossed the bridge when John Robert kindly remembered that the priest had forgotten to call at Blanch Cottages. Father Bernard, rather ashamed, went back to pay a pointless call on Miss Dunbury, leaving that blameless lady puzzled and scrutinizing her conscience. By now they had entered the outskirts of Victoria Park, walking at the slower pace which Father Bernard had resolutely imposed upon the philosopher.

‘For instance, are you saved?’

‘What does that mean?’ countered the priest.

‘Answer first.’

‘No, of course not!’

‘When I was young,’ said John Robert, ‘people used to ask me that, as if it were a simple question. I even thought I understood it.’

‘Did you think you were saved?’

‘No, but I thought my mother was. People meant salvation by magic, being totally changed.’

‘In virtue of a cosmic event, as explained by St Paul.’

‘The cosmos would have to shudder and shake to change a single man.’

‘So you think we can’t change?’

‘Paul, what a genius, to see that the crucifixion was the thing that mattered, what courage, to make the cross popular! The Gospels are so self- Important and pompous — ’

‘Pompous!’

‘“And he passed over into Galilee.” No! In Paul we hear the voice of a thinking man, an individual.’

‘A demon, I think.’

‘He had to invent Christ, that required demonic energy. I envy Paul. But don’t you believe in salvation without God? What do you offer to your flock? Or do you tell them lies?’

‘What indeed?’

‘Enlightenment and so on?’

‘When I think of such matters I feel humble and afraid.’

‘I don’t believe you. What do you do about it ?’

‘I pray.’

‘How can you?’

‘I reach out to Christ.’

‘To Christ? He died long ago.’

‘Not mine. We know nobody as well as we know Jesus. A mystical being.’

‘Of your own invention.’

‘No - not invented - not like other inventions - really - just somehow there. That’s it in a way.’

‘It?’

‘Our problem now, the problem of our age, our interregnum, our interim, our time of the angels — ’

‘Why angels?’

‘Spirit without God.’

‘So you expect a new revelation?’

‘No, just to hang on.’

‘Until?’

‘Until religion can change itself into something we can believe in.’

‘Surely you don’t credit these historical dramas?’ said John Robert. ‘History is fictitious. To want, however modestly, salvation by history is to live a lie. All prophets are devils, vile peddlers of illusions.’

‘I was only hoping — ’

‘Anyway, when it comes to it, what do you want to save?’

‘Oh - I don’t know - certain images - certain rites - certain spiritual situations - the conception of sacraments - certain words even.’

‘Why call it religion?’

‘It certainly isn’t morality.’

‘True. But this mystical Christ of yours, do you talk to him, ask him things?’

‘I come to him. I live him and breathe him.’

‘Are you a mystic?’

‘No, that would be to claim merit.’

‘Never mind merit, are you a mystic?’

‘I believe in a spiritual world as if it were very close to this world, as if it were - well, I believe that it is - this world - exactly the same and yet absolutely different.’

‘You have an experience?’

‘Not like a vision. More like a vibration.’

‘Isn’t that sex?’

‘Well, isn’t sex everywhere? Is it not an image of spirit, is it not spirit itself? Can spirit, our spirit and there is no other, ever rise so high that it leaves sex behind?’

‘Death excludes sex. Its proximity kills desire. Wisdom is the practice of dying.’

‘Surely sex as spirit embraces death too.’

‘That old romantic stuff! I am surprised at you. Your spiritual sex is about suffering. Christianity is a cult of suffering.’

‘Not if Christ didn’t rise it isn’t. And it is essential that he did not rise. If he be risen then is our faith vain.’

‘That is good. Only don’t deny that it is the suffering that attracts you. If there is any absolute it condemns our evil to death, not to purgation.’

‘What about redemptive suffering?’

‘Is there such a thing?’

‘Of course there is, we are surrounded by it — when someone loves another person and suffers for him, with him — this releases spiritual energy — like an electric charge.’

John Robert reflected. ‘Well — silent fruitless love there’s plenty of, and we would need a God to give any point to that. I don’t believe in your redemptive suffering. A delightful idea, like your mystic Christ — a lie. It’s self-flattery, illusion, like almost anything that pleases. Are you a homosexual?’

‘Yes, but I live chastely. I don’t mind what other people do.’

‘So you are a narcissist?’

‘Certainly, narcissists can look after others because they are content with themselves. They are creative, imaginative, humorous, sympathetic. Those who lack narcissism are resentful envious husks. It is they who try to give it a bad name.’

John Robert laughed, then frowned.

At that moment they were walking, at the modest pace imposed by the priest, along the road called Forum Way which bordered the end of the Belmont garden. Behind the wall could be seen the tall dramatic gawky form of the ginkgo tree, and the shallow green roof of the Slipper House shining from the recent rain. There was a glossy black-painted wooden gate in the wall. John Robert cast a glance towards the Slipper House, then at the gate.

‘You’re a Jew?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does that worry you?’

‘Should it?’

‘Being a Christian, isn’t that treason, doesn’t it feel like a betrayal?’

‘No! I am a religious man. That at least my religion does for me.’

‘Frees you from guilt.’

‘From irrational guilt.’

‘But does it change you at all, does your Christ do anything for you?’

‘He stops me from doing things.’

‘That was what Socrates’s daemon did.’

‘But - it’s not difficult — ’

‘You mean you don’t make sacrifices?’

‘No.’

‘So there’s not much at stake for you then, with your Christ.’

‘At stake? Everything’s at stake.’

‘If you don’t really have to raise a finger, everything is not at stake.’

‘I mean - it’s a totally different world.’

‘The world of faith, of your faith?’

‘I know … that there is always … more quietness, more silence … more space … into which I can move … on … and be made … better, somehow … It’s not a drama, not sort of exciting, or violent, like things being at stake.’

‘I like your picture. Morality makes mincemeat of metaphysics by the simplicity of its claims. And that fool Ivor Sefton thinks that metaphysical imagery is paranoiac! We are all image-makers. So a quiet life and no guilt? What do you do in your parish work?’

‘I enact rites. I wait for people to summon me.’

‘A fireman priest! Not a fisher of men.’

‘I am a fish not a fisher, a fish in search of a net.’

‘I will make you fishers of men if you follow me. There was a little sect who used to sing that, in Burkestown, when I was a child.’

‘They’re still there, down beside the railway.’

‘Simple faith. They think they are saved.’

‘Faith means - at least, not having to count your sins.’

‘But if there is no God you must count your sins, since no one else will, or do you believe that virtue is a harmony of good and evil?’

Father Bernard was horrified. ‘I am not a Gnostic! A most detestable heresy! That really is magic!’

‘Heresy! Are you not up to your neck in it? But why magic?’

‘The desire to know can degenerate into mere trickery. Our natural love for evil makes us think we understand it. Then we read good into it, like turning lead into gold. But it’s not like that - the difference between good and evil is absolute - the two poles are not in view - we are not gods.’

‘You believe in this absolute difference, this - distance?’

‘I think we experience it at every moment. Yes, I believe in it - don’t you?’

Rozanov said after a moment, ‘Why are we so sure about this? Is it the sort of thing we can be sure about? What would be a test? What does seem clear is that the spiritual world is full of ambiguities, full of these “readings”, full of the magic you are so afraid of. If you appeal to experience, well we experience that all right. What about your mystic Christ. Isn’t he an ambiguous magical figure? For instance, you are in love with him, aren’t you?’

Father Bernard had begun to feel upset, annoyed with Rozanov, and even more with himself for having so crudely spoken about things which were, when unspoken, so clear and pure. He said, ‘I shouldn’t have spoken of him.’

‘Ah, I understand, I understand. We’ll leave him alone. But isn’t religion bound to descend into consolation? You don’t want to change, or to sacrifice anything, but because of some vague experience you regard yourself as excused, as innocent, simul iustus et peccator?’

They were now quite close to the Common, walking through Druidsdale, and the priest noticed that Rozanov, who had hitherto allowed his companion to determine the route, had taken a sharp right-hand turn in order to avoid going along the road where George McCaffrey lived.

Father Bernard did not answer directly, but said, ‘You were right to mention love. Isn’t that somehow the proof that good and evil exclude each other?’

‘Plato might have thought that, Plotinus might have felt it, but I doubt if you can make sense of it.’

‘Perhaps I can’t - but - when we love people - and things - and our work and - we somehow get the assurance that good is there - it’s absolutely pure and absolutely there - it’s in the fabric - it must be.’

‘We like to make much of this word “love”, to pat it and stroke it - but does love as we know it ever appear except as a mask of self? Ask your own soul. Who was that?’

At that moment they had been passed by Nesta Wiggins’s father, who raised his hat respectfully to the philosopher.

‘Dominic Wiggins, a tailor, he lives in Burkestown, a nice man.’

‘I remember the Wigginses,’ said John Robert, ‘they were Catholics.’

They were now walking on the Common where the ground was damp and muddy. Father Bernard hated getting mud on his shoes. Part of his cassock had become unpinned and was trailing on the wet grass verges. He was beginning to want a drink. If they stayed on the shorter path back into Burkestown by the old railway cutting they could reach the Green Man in twenty minutes. Or had someone told him that the confounded philosopher was a teetotaller?

Father Bernard said, ‘We like to say that everyone is selfish, but that’s just a hypothesis.’

John Robert said, ‘Good, good!’ He added, ‘Your mind interests me. But you haven’t answered my question.’

‘When we love pure things we experience pure love.’

‘People? Wretched crooks, thugs to a man?’

‘Loving others as Christ - I mean loving Christ in them.’

‘That really is sentimental twaddle. Kant thought we should respect Universal Reason in other people. Bunkum. If ex hypothesi I wanted you to love me, I should want you to love me, not my reason or my Christ nature.’

‘Well - yes - of course you are right.’

‘And things - I believe you mentioned loving things - how’s that done?’

‘Anything can be a sacrament - transformed - like the bread and wine.’

‘What for instance? Trees?’

‘Oh trees, yes - that tree — ’

They were just passing a hawthorn bush, it could scarcely be called a tree, which was putting out, amid its healthy shining thorns, sharp little vivid green buds.

‘The beauty of the world,’ said John Robert. ‘Unfortunately I am insensitive to it. Though it might have point as a contrast to art. Art is certainly the devil’s work, the magic that joins good and evil together, the magic place where they joyfully run together. Plato was right about art.’

‘You enjoy no art form?’

‘No.’

‘Surely metaphysics is art.’

‘That is - yes - a terrible thought.’ The philosopher was silent as if appalled by some dreadful vision which these words had conjured up. He said, ‘You see - the suspicion that one is not only not telling the truth, but cannot tell it - that is - damnation. A case for the millstone.’

As Father Bernard could think of nothing to say to this the philosopher went on:

‘Your idea of loving pure things is trickery, and I doubt if the notion of loving Christ in rotten swine like you and me even makes sense. It’s sentimentality. It’s all done with mirrors like the Ontological Proof. You imagine a perfect love which emanates from a pure source in response to your imperfect love, in response to your frenetic desire for love - then because this gives you a warm feeling you say you’re certain.’

‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’

‘Mutatis mutandis! I suppose that’s what’s called faith. You feel it all coming beaming back. But you would need the God you don’t believe in to make it real. It’s all the same imperfect stuff churning to and fro. You want a response. You can’t have a real one so you fake one, like sending a letter to yourself.’

Father Bernard said, ‘It’s true - we do hunger for love - that’s deep all right. You too - you long to be loved - don’t you?’

After a moment Rozanov said, ‘Yes, but it’s a weakness - that’s the thing that I say in a whisper. Ah - well. Do you love your parishioners, the chap you visited? You see, after all you do visit them.’

‘A woman - well - not exactly.’ The image of Miss Dunbury accused Father Bernard and he laughed. ‘No - but I’m glad she exists.’

‘You laugh? She makes you feel happy, pleased?’

‘Yes, she’s funny. She’s virtuous and absurd.’

‘Isn’t happiness your good then?’

‘No, no, no. Good is my good.’

‘What does this tautology do for us? Good is a Cheshire cat.’

‘But don’t you think then that we can - do - anything?’

‘Morally? We can be quiet and sensible and feel contempt for ourselves. And there is the idea of duty, an excellent conception. I mean, these things go on. But chiefly - we can see ourselves as petty and ridiculous and - and base.’

‘That is your happiness.’

John Robert laughed. ‘There isn’t any deep structure in the world. At the bottom, which isn’t very far down, it’s all rubble, jumble. Not even muck, but jumble.’

‘Isn’t this stoicism, protecting yourself from being surprised by anything? Nil admirari.’

‘Protecting yourself from being surprised, or disgusted, or horrified, or appalled into madness - by anything - especially by yourself.’

‘Is morality a mistake then?’

‘A phenomenon.’

‘I think you are being - shall we say - insincere.’

‘Insincere. Good. Go on.’

‘You seem to me to be a very moralistic person. For instance, you seem to set some absolute value on truth.’

‘Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth — well, it’s like brown — it’s not in the spectrum.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s not a part of morality, not like you mean morality. Truth is impersonal. Like death. It’s a doom.’

‘Cold?’

‘Oh, these metaphors!’

‘But you can’t just recognize one value.’

‘Why not?’

‘I mean if you recognize one value won’t you find all the others hidden inside it? Must one not be able to?’

‘What sort of “must” is this? Are all values to come tumbling out of one like goodies out of a stocking? Truth is sui generis. And as for the rest - there is no spectrum, that was a bad image, a slip.’

‘A significant slip, I think.’

‘The idea of the internal connection of virtues is pure superstition, a comforting illusion, the sort of thing that I believed when I was twenty. That doesn’t bear close examination.’

‘Oh no — ’ said Father Bernard, or rather he murmured it. ‘Oh no,’ no.’

They were now in sight of the Ennistone Ring, the point at which the sage must at all costs be prevented from setting off diagonally across the Common and out into the countryside. Father Bernard was glad to see that he was flagging a little. The path had been uphill and they were both short of breath.

‘Bill the Lizard saw a flying saucer up here,’ said Rozanov.

‘But you don’t believe in such things?’

‘Why not? Think what we can do, and add a million years.’

‘But they don’t - appear - interfere.’

‘Why should they? They’re studying us. I should like to think that there were intelligences absolutely unlike my own. It would somehow be such a relief. Perhaps they live longer and have - oh -wonderful - real- philosophers.’

‘I find the whole idea uncanny,’ said Father Bernard, ‘and somehow-horrid.’

‘Bill didn’t feel this. He felt it was something good - a wholly good visitation. But then - he would be likely to see - something good.’

‘Even if it wasn’t there? I imagine you don’t class Mr Eastcote as one of us rotten swine?’ This casual characterization had been festering in Father Bernard’s mind.

‘No,’ said Rozanov with discouraging curtness. Then, ‘Why, whatever have they done to the Ring?’

The priest and the philosopher gazed at the megaliths which were arranged in a broken circle some sixty yards in diameter. There were nine stones. The earliest reference to them is eighteenth-century, when four of them were standing. The others were uncovered and collected and erected in their present still-disputed positions by a nineteenth-century archaeologist. Six of them are tall and narrow, three (one of these fragmentary) roughly diamond-shaped, suggesting the two sexes. Here even speculation ended. It was hard to believe that mortal men had placed them there at some time for some purpose. There they stood in the pale sad damp light, occupying a temporal moment, wet with rain, transcending history, oblivious of art, resisting understanding, monstrous with unfathomable thought, and dense with mysterious authoritative impacted being. The wind blew the long grasses at their feet, while beyond and between them could be seen rounded hills and woods where here and there grey church towers were successfully illumined by the shifting cloudy light.

‘They’ve spoilt them!’

‘There was a lot of argument,’ said the priest.

‘They’ve taken off all the moss and those yellow rings.’

‘They cleaned them with electric wire brushes. It shows the grain of the stone, but of course all that spotty lichen has gone.’

‘They cleaned them, they scratched them with vile brushes, they dared to touch them, these, the nearest things to gods that our contemptible citizens will ever see.’ Rozanov stood there, his coat blowing, his mouth open, his face crinkled up with pain.

The priest watched him, then ventured to pull at his sleeve so as to urge him back in the direction of the town. Then as they started down the hill it began a little to rain, while they saw before them the sunlight momentarily touching the gilded cupola of the Hall and the golden weathercock of St Olaf’s Church.

‘What do you regret most in your life?’ said the philosopher.

‘What kind of regret? Not to have established unselfish habits. Not to be destined to be alone. Well, no, not that. And you?’

‘Lies. The sin of silence. What do you fear most?’

‘Death.’

‘Death is nothing, you will not know it, you mean pain, you see you still confuse the two.’

‘Oh all right - and you?’

‘To find out that morality is unreal.’

‘But isn’t that just what you think - that it is a phenomenon?’

‘A phenomenon is something. Duty is something, a barrier. But to find out that it is not just an ambiguity with which one lives - but that it is nothing, a fake, absolutely unreal.’

‘To find that there are no barriers?’

‘That there could come a place, a point, where morality simply gave way, did not exist.’

‘There can be no such place.’

‘God would be needed to guarantee that, and any existent God is a demon. If even one thing is permitted it is enough. A prison with one way out is not a prison.’

Father Bernard thought for a moment.

‘Aren’t you just doing what you wouldn’t let me do? I wanted to draw all good out of one good. You want to discredit all good because there is one evil which good can’t get at.’

‘A good image. If in the pilgrimage of life there is any place beyond good and evil, it is our duty to go there.’

‘Our duty?’

‘That is the final paradox. When one reaches a certain point, morality becomes a riddle to which one must find the answer. The holy inevitably moves toward the demonic. Fra Angelico loved Signorelli.’

‘Perhaps he did. But then didn’t Signorelli love Fra Angelico? The demonic moves toward the holy.’

‘No. That is my point. If the holy even knows of the demonic it is lost. The flow is in that direction, the tide runs that way, water flows down hill. That is what “no God” means, which is still a secret even from those who babble it. Everything in the cosmos is reversed, as in some theories in physics. Philosophy teaches us that, in the event, all the greatest minds of our race were not only in error, but childishly so. The holy must try to know the demonic, must at some point frame the riddle and thirst for the answer, and that longing is the perfect contradiction of the love of God.’

‘This sounds like - that awful - doctrine — ’

‘No, not your puerile heresy.’

‘I don’t follow you. Nothing in heaven or earth can alter my duty to my neighbour.’

‘It can put it ever so little out of focus. Have you not felt just that, you who are tainted by the holy?’

The priest considered silently. He said, ‘It’s nonsense. But what is the way out of what you call the prison? Do you mean suicide?’

‘The proof. It could be. There are many gates. But for one man perhaps one gate.’

‘One thing he is tempted to do which would make everything else permissible? Why not murder then?’

‘Why not?’

‘And you become the demon who is God.’

‘We are being carried away by a metaphor, it is my fault, I have lived too long with images. One thinks one is on a high place, at an edge, where the air is purer and clearer.’

‘You had better stop thinking,’ said Father Bernard.

‘I can’t. But don’t worry — ’

‘You’re not tempted to commit suicide or murder?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘But you are - tempted - to do something awful - the - as you said - the proof?’

‘No,’ said Rozanov, ‘no, no.’

They were descending a grassy slope into the abandoned railway cutting, sometimes known as Lovers’ Lane, a place of leafy resort for courting couples, which served as a path from the Common into Burkestown. The cutting ended, on the Common side, in the abrupt bricked-up mouth of a tunnel, and became gradually shallower on the Ennistone side where it ended at a level crossing near to the station. A few drops of rain still fell, and Father Bernard noticed shining drops poised upon the primroses and pendant grasses and raggedy hawthorns, and celandine and fretty chervil and brambles and briar bushes which now rose up above their heads. Suddenly there was a rushing tearing sound as if a ghostly train had emerged from the tunnel, or one of John Robert’s demons were charging in the form of a large animal through the foliage. Something big and heavy and extremely agitated came rolling and bundling down the bank and out on to the level grass in front of the walkers’ feet. This, a moment later, turned out to be Tom McCaffrey and Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor still engaged in a scuffle which had started at the top of the slope. They sat up laughing still clutching each other, then became aware of witnesses and leapt up, making way.

‘Hello,’ said the priest raising his hand, as he and Rozanov now continued their journey, passing between the two boys who had stood back, one on each side.

‘Hello, Father.’

The walkers heard behind them an outbreak of giggles and fou rire.

‘There’s a happy man,’ said Father Bernard. ‘Happy because innocent, innocent because happy.’

‘Who?’

‘Tom McCaffrey, the one with the long hair, didn’t you recognize him? I don’t know who the other boy is.’

They walked on in silence. The level crossing was in sight. Father Bernard felt a strange pang, a contraction of the heart like an onset of disease. He felt there was something he ought to do while there was still time. He wondered if he would ever talk to the philosopher again. He said, ‘I wish you would do something to help George McCaffrey.’

‘I want to ask you one thing,’ said Rozanov. ‘I will make it a condition of our having any further conversations that you do not mention the name of that young man.’

‘Oh, as you will.’

As they walked on into the town Father Bernard wondered to himself, do I like him, do I love him, do I hate him, is he mad?

It was Sunday morning again. In St Paul’s Church Father Bernard was leading the faithful in telling God that they had erred and strayed from His ways like lost sheep, had followed too much the devices and desires of their own hearts, had offended against His holy laws, had left undone those things which they ought to have done, and done those things which they ought not to have done, and generally had no health in them.

In the Quaker Meeting House a profound silence reigned. Gabriel McCaffrey loved that silence, whose healing waves lapped in a slow solemn rhythm against her scratched and smarting soul. The sun was shining through wind-handled trees outside, making a shifting decoration of yellow spear-heads upon the white wall. The room was otherwise bare of adornment, a big handsome highceilinged eighteenth-century room, with tall round-headed windows. The benches were arranged in three tiers, forming three sides of a square, of which a plain oak table occupied the fourth side. The party who wanted flowers on the table were regularly defeated by those who felt that God’s spirit was embarrassed by corporeal charms.

Present were Brian, Gabriel and Adam, William Eastcote and Anthea, Mr and Mrs Robin Osmore, Mrs Percy Bowcock, Nesta Wiggins, Peter Blackett, Mrs Roach the doctor’s wife, Nicky Roach the doctor’s son, now studying at Guy’s Hospital, Rita Chalmers, wife of the Institute Director, Miss Landon who was a teacher at Adam’s school, Mr and Mrs Romage who kept a grocer’s shop in Burkestown, and a Mrs Bradstreet, a visiting friend who was staying at the Ennistone Royal Hotel and taking the cure for a condition in her back. The attendance varied, being today rather sparse. A week ago Milton Eastcote the philanthropist, William’s cousin, had been present and had given an address about his work in London. Dr Roach was often kept away by professional duties, too often said those who thought that the doctor was more attached to the natural light of science than to the illumination from above. Nesta Wiggins was a recruit of several years standing, having abandoned the paternal Catholic fold for the douce blank Quaker rites. She esteemed the Friends, who were active in good works in Ennistone, and was particularly attached to William Eastcote. Peter Blackett, whose parents were ‘humanists’, came out of curiosity and admiration for Nesta. Nesta was sorry she could never persuade her friend Valerie Cossom to come along, but Valerie regarded all religious observances as superstitious opiates. Percy Bowcock, who had used often to accompany his wife, now came no more, and Gabriel had heard someone say that he had become a Freemason. Gabriel knew little of Freemasonry, and whether it was compatible with the ideals of the Society of Friends, but she was sorry not to see her cousin (to whose house she was rarely invited). She was fond of him and admired him very much and only coveted his wealth a little, and could not help feeling a bit censorious about the Freemasons, since they were secretive, and Friends did not approve of secrets.

But what about her own secrets? She stole a glance at Brian (she was sitting as always between her husband and her son) and saw the usual look of strained brooding anxiety. She looked across at the calm pale face of William Eastcote who was sitting opposite to her. Eastcote smiled. The silence breathed with long slow soundless exhalations, with slower deeper rhythms, seeming ever more unbreakable and profound, as if everyone in the room would soon come to some absolute stop, perhaps quickly peacefully serenely die. Sometimes during the whole meeting no one spoke. Gabriel liked that best. Human speech sounded so petty, so unforgivably stupid, after that great void. Some people spoke with piercing exalted voices. Today, however, her own trivial thoughts were bubbling in her ear. She was thinking about a cracked jug which she had seen in a junk shop in Biggins. She had said to Adam, who was with her, ‘What a pretty jug, but it’s cracked.’ Adam had immediately taken the side of the jug. ‘He wants someone to love him and look after him, we’ll love him and look after him, we’ll take him home and wash him and dry him and find him a place to sit.’ Sometimes Adam’s determination to personify his surroundings upset Gabriel to the point of wild annoyance. Adam seemed to be deliberately playing upon her tortured sensibilities. ‘That jug, he’s saying to himself, will that nice lady buy me.’ Gabriel said, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s all cracked, it’s no use,’ and hustled him on. Now it had become clear to her that nothing in the world was more important than going back to that shop and buying that jug. She would go early tomorrow morning. But, oh, suppose it had gone! Tears rose up behind Gabriel’s eyes. All these things were somehow images of death. Adam had such awful dreams sometimes. She encouraged him to tell his dreams. Gabriel had once heard Ivor Sefton lecture at the Ennistone Hall. He said that children should tell their dreams and join the symbolic dream material to their waking life. But Adam’s dreams frightened Adam and Gabriel, and surely telling them would make him remember them. Adam dreamed so much about drowning. I am a silly woman, thought Gabriel, and Brian blames me for losing Stella, as if I had made a mistake, as if I had opened the door and let her run out! I couldn’t comfort Stella, she is so hard and silent and superior. She is an opposite woman to me. But I should have done better, I didn’t look after her properly; and where is she now, has she killed herself? Is she with George? Brian had telephoned and called round but got no answer. At the thought of Stella comforting George, forgiving him, holding him in her saving arms, Gabriel felt nothing but pain, and she knew that it was a wicked pain. Her feelings about George were part of her silliness, part of the stupid feeble sensibility which made her encourage Adam’s funny soft porous attitude to the world, and be hurt by it at the same time. Brian thought she was making Adam weak and dreamy. But it was all to do with feeling so sorry for everything. Her feeling for George was like that, feeling very very sorry for him, feeling oh so much protective possessive pity-love, a sort of desperate sorry-for affection. It’s so private, she thought. But then all my love is private, as if it were a secret.

Adam was conscious of a ball of slightly mobile blazing warmth up against his side which was Zed curled up in the pocket of his duffle coat. Zed was not allowed in the Institute but he was allowed to come to Meeting. Why should not dogs be present, since the waves and particles of the Inner Light flowed through them too? Besides, there were precedents. Mrs Bowcock’s mother’s corgi had attended for years. Zed’s little delicate head with its black-and-white domed brow peered from the top of the pocket. After looking about for some time with an alert critical air, he had fixed upon Robin Osmore, staring intently at the legal man with an expression of amazed quizzical curiosity. Osmore, aware of the scrutiny, became uneasy, disconcerted, fidgeted, looked elsewhere, then looked back to find the little beast still staring, its clever humorous gaze giving an extraordinary impression of a judging intelligence, a strange little spirit, not really a dog at all. Adam touched the silky fringy end of Zed’s long ear with his finger tips. He was thinking about Rufus. When he thought about Rufus it was as if a kind of lurid gap appeared in the world through which something red and black kept flashing out at him. He knew instinctively that these thoughts were dangerous, perhaps bad. He never told his mother the very strange weird things he dreamed about Rufus, and about Zed. Sometimes in dreams he was Rufus. Adam never mentioned Rufus, and his parents imagined that Adam had forgotten that Rufus ever existed. Sometimes Adam wondered whether he himself were not really George’s son, and had been exchanged for Rufus when he was in the cradle. They were almost exactly the same age. It was as if Rufus by dying had laid a kind of debt upon him. He had to grow up for Rufus, to carry him along like an invisible twin. Yes, he thought, I’m growing up for Rufus, in a way I am Rufus. And this thought led him back to George and to the way George had winked, and the way George had stared at him when they saw each other that day at the Institute, when Adam had sat down among the potted plants.

Anthea Eastcote was sitting next to her great-uncle. There was a bond of love between these two, though they were shy with each other. William was childless and awkward with children. Anthea, who turned so many heads and always looked so radiantly pleased with herself, had had her troubles. Her father, a talented mathematician, had run away to Australia with one of his students, her brother had emigrated to Canada and was no more seen, her beautiful mother had died of a wasting illness three years ago. Now, supported by a lifetime of such Sunday mornings, she sat quiet with folded hands, gazing with large wide-open pensive eyes above the heads of the McCaffreys opposite. Her smooth sweet face, luminous like a pale lighted lantern, glowed with health, her soft lips were pursed in a little bud of reflection, and her brown-golden curly rumply hair arched on her head, electric as silk. Used to employing such times for self-scrutiny, she was ruefully examining the way in which she was leading poor Hector on, while all the time she was vainly in love with a fellow student, one Joey Tanner, at York University where she was studying History.

Brian McCaffrey was thinking to himself, when I consider how much rage and spite and malice and jealousy and envy and lust I carry around inside myself, how can I blame anybody for anything? He inspected a tiny almost invisible dot-like insect which was walking slowly across the back of his hand, crushed it with a fingertip, then cast an anxious guilty look in Adam’s direction. He raised his gaze once more, focusing on a point between William Eastcote’s chin and Anthea Eastcote’s mouth. He thought to himself, Christ, Tom could have that girl if he wanted to. He’s only got to try, he could have that handsome clever sweet girl just by stretching out his hand. Well-off too. He must be mad. Why is he so bloody lazy and careless and stupid? If he exerted himself the least little bit he could get her, he could marry her. Oh God! She’s so beautiful, she’s so intelligent, she’s so angelic, she’s got everything, oh if only I were young again, if only I were free and young, as now I shall never be. I wonder if I should say anything to Tom? No, certainly not, I should go crazy if Anthea were my sister- In-law. Let her go away, since I can’t have her, let her go away, I don’t want to know she exists. Curse her, curse everything. My bloody job is on the rocks and I haven’t even told Gabriel yet. Oh damn, damn, damn, he said to himself, as Alex used to say when he was a child, bending down awkwardly with her dustpan and brush. Anyway I’m getting old. Thank God I shall be out of the future of this rotten old planet. As everything is going to be blown up, what does it matter what I do? One gets bloody tired of morality. I would do what I want at last, except that I can’t. Oh hell. Roll on nuclear war.

At this moment there was a commotion at the back, behind where Mrs Roach and Nicky were sitting, and Tom McCaffrey and Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor came in rather out of breath. They sat down noisily, audibly panting, then quickly composed themselves and put on solemn expressions. Several people smiled at Tom. Silence reigned again. After a suitable interval of glazed contemplation, Emma began to look about him with surreptitious curiosity. He had never been to a Quaker meeting before, and his historian’s instincts were aroused. He adjusted his glasses and gazed about, impressed by the dense atmosphere of repose and feeling suddenly rather happy. Then Tom felt a little tickling and shuddering sensation beside him and heard a slight noise as the bench began to vibrate. Emma was silently laughing. He had noticed Zed peering out of Adam’s pocket. He pointed, nudging Tom. Zed transferred his stare from Mr Osmore to Emma, gazing with an air of amused and rather impertinent attention. Tom began to laugh too. He stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth and closed his eyes upon happy tears. The next moment he was praying, as if he were lifted up and carrying others with him. Love flowed in his soul. He would love them all, save them all: Alex and Brian and Gabriel and Stella and Emma and George and … oh especially George.

Nesta Wiggins was blushing scarlet as she always did when it occurred to her that it was her duty to rise and speak. She was a nervous public speaker, but, driven by conscience, a frequent one. She had realized that she ought to get up and suggest that the money voted for the repainting of the Meeting House ought instead to be donated to the recently opened appeal for the new community centre on the wasteland beyond the canal. (The treasurer, Nathaniel Romage, who loved the fabric of the House, was secretly hustling on the painting since he feared exactly this conscience-searching for worthier objectives on the part of some members of the Meeting.) However, as Nesta’s breath came quick and she leaned forward to get up, William Eastcote rose to his feet. Nesta relaxed, satisfied. No one at Meeting ever spoke after William Eastcote had spoken. Bill the Lizard had been thinking about his wife Rose, and how Rozanov had remembered her as presiding over their ‘wholesome feasts’ of long ago. He had been thinking too about something which Dr Roach had lately said to him. He had given himself a dispensation to lie to John Robert about his health. Something was wrong, but perhaps not cancer. He was to go to the hospital tomorrow. He thought about his father, who had used the Quaker ‘thou’ and who now seemed to belong to an infinitely remote past, as if William’s own life were itself being quickly transformed into history, and as if those who had formed him and taught him and given him their precious stainless examples, his parents, his teachers, his friends, were already gathering round.

When he felt the urge to rise, his heart, like Nesta’s, beat hard. He was always a diffident speaker. He said, ‘My dear friends, we live in an age of marvels. Men among us can send machines far out into space. Our homes are full of devices which would amaze our forebears. At the same time our beloved planet is ravaged by suffering and threatened by dooms. Experts and wise men give us vast counsels suited to vast ills. I want only to say something about simple good things which are as it were close to us, within our reach, part still of our world. Let us love the close things, the close clear good things, and hope that in their light other goods may be added. Let us prize innocence. The child is innocent, the man is not. Let us prolong and cherish the innocence of childhood, as we find it in the child and as we rediscover it later within ourselves. Repentance, renewal of life, such as is the task and possibility of every man, is a recovery of innocence. Let us see it thus, a return to a certain simplicity, something which is not hard to understand, not a remote good but very near. And let us not hesitate to preach to our young people and to impart to them an idealism which may later serve them as a shield. A deep cynicism in our society too soon touches old and young, forbidding us to speak and them to hear, and making us by an awful reversal ashamed of what is best. A habit of mockery destroys the intelligence and sensibility which is reverence. Let us prize chastity, not as a censorious or rigid code, but as fastidious respect and gentleness, a rejection of promiscuity, a sense of the delicate mystery of human relations. Let us do and praise those things which make for a simple orderly open and truthful life. Herein let us make it a practice to banish evil thoughts. When such thoughts come, envious, covetous, cynical thoughts, let us positively drive them off, like people in the olden days who felt they were defeating Satan. Let us then seek aid in pure things, turning our minds to good people, to our best work, to beautiful and noble art, to the pure words of Christ in the Gospel, and to the works of God obedient to Him in nature. Help is always near if we will only turn. Conversion is turning about, and it can happen not only every day but every moment. Shun the cynicism which says that our world is so terrible that we may as well cease to care and cease to strive, the notion of a cosmic crisis where ordinary duties cease to be and moral fastidiousness is out of place. At any time, there are many many small things we can do for other people which will refresh us and them with new hope. Shun too the common malice which finds consolation in the suffering and sin of others, blackening them to make our grey seem white, rejoicing in our neighbours’ downfall and disgrace, while excusing our own failures and cherishing our own undiscovered secret sins. Above all, do not despair, either for the planet or in the deep inwardness of the heart. Recognize one’s own evil, mend what can be mended, and for what cannot be undone, place it in love and faith in the clear light of the healing goodness of God.’

William sat down and found his heart still beating hard. He bowed his head and folded his hands, which were trembling. He wondered to himself, whatever possessed me to utter all those high-flown words, wherever did they come from? Then the memory piercingly returned to him of what the doctor had said, and he shuddered with weakness and fear.

The silence continued, ringing now with the echoes of what William had said, and each person present promised himself some amendment of life. Brian thought, what a skunk I am, and how lucky I am to have such a dear good sweet wife and such a marvellous son, I must go and see Alex soon, and bloody stop hating everything and everyone. Gabriel thought, dear, dear William, how much I love him, yes, I must stop being so feeble and silly, and I must not think those mean spiteful thoughts about Stella, and I must think differently about George, but how? Adam thought, I must stop imagining those funny things about Rufus and I must be kinder to my father and talk to him and not tease him. Anthea Eastcote thought, I must be frank with Hector Gaines and I must give up Joey Tanner. Nicky Roach thought, I must work harder and not go to bed with girls all the time (but he felt rather sad about this). Mrs Roach thought, I must stop spending these crazy amounts on clothes. I must be mad! Nathaniel Romage thought, perhaps I ought to reconvene the committee before I have the house painted? Mrs Romage thought, I had better stop cooking the books. Ought I to confess to Nat that I’ve been cooking the books? No. Miss Landon thought, I must prepare my lessons better and, quite simply, stop loathing the children. Nesta Wiggins thought, I ought to go to Mass now and then to please my father and stop being so ridiculously pleased with myself. I’m just a stinking sinner. Well, I am, aren’t I? Mrs Bradstreet had a very serious sin, not unconnected with her late husband, upon her conscience. Sometimes she felt she was damned, sometimes she felt she should tell everything to the police (how much did they know?). She decided that for the present she would follow William Eastcote’s advice and lay it all before God. However, she had done this before to no avail. Emma thought, I must go and see my mother, I must go and see my singing teacher, and I must … just somehow … try to become .. less awful. Tom thought, I’m innocent, I’m good, I love everybody. I shall go on being innocent and good and loving everybody, oh I feel so happy! What Zed thought is not known, but as his nature was composed almost entirely of love, he may be imagined to have felt an increase of being.

‘A chair does a lot for a picture’ was one of Alex’s sayings. At this moment she was trying out this guidance in the Slipper House, as she moved a bamboo chair with a pink cushion on it and placed it underneath a contemporary print of the eighteenth-century ‘bath house of transcendent beauty’ which had been pulled down to make way for the Institute building. The effect was good. It was Sunday evening. The bells of St Olaf’s, distinctly audible in damp weather with a west wind blowing, were decorating the muzzy soft brown twilight. All the lights were on in the Slipper House, the central heating was on, the shutters were closed. Every window had inside shutters, all of which had been decorated by the young painter, Ned Larkin, Geoffrey Stillowen’s discovery. The most ambitious scene, representing the family in Belmont garden, was in the sitting-room downstairs, but each room had its window into the fantasy world of Mr Larkin. The main bedroom, where Alex now stood, revealed in the space of the shuttered window above the window seat, a blue sky traversed by a silver airship, and down below looking up a dog, a black-and-white terrier whom Alex dimly remembered, but not his name. The upstairs shutters and curtains had not been touched for some time and turned out to be full of dust and moths and spiders. With Ruby, she had cleaned the whole house thoroughly, and could now enjoy it by herself. Working silently with Ruby had been a strain. How easily her mother would have chatted all the time, encouraging the servant, cheering her on.

Alex looked at the bed, a plain strong single bed with handsome plain ball-headed posts at each corner made of a grainy gleaming nut-brown wood, a fine piece, a relic of its time. In the centre of the headboard an incised oval design was carved, representing perhaps a seed or the cosmos. This carving had excited Alex when she was a girl. Here John Robert Rozanov would sleep. In the little room next door, in a plain handsome nut-brown matching wardrobe, he would keep his clothes. In the sitting-room downstairs, or perhaps in the second bedroom which Alex had prepared as a study, with a light oak desk and a lamp with a leaded-glass shade, he would write his great book. In the evenings when he was tired he would talk to Alex, first of old times, then of other things. Further than this Alex did not allow her thoughts to wander, at least with any clarity. Indeed much was unclear. The kitchen was scrubbed and accoutred, but who would cook his meals? Ruby and Alex had worked hard. A few pieces of furniture had been brought in from Belmont, but the house still had the airy, empty, rather pale, faintly provisional look which somehow suited it. It had never really been occupied. It had been a place for summer parties and populous fêtes of Stillowens long gone and scattered. Had her father, after her mother’s death, ever slept in this room, with the silver airship and the little dog and another woman? Alex could not believe it. The house, which the Ennistonians believed to be such a strange ambiguous place, was somehow innocent and unstained and unused, like her golden-haired brother who had died in the war, blown to pieces by a shell near Monte Cassino. She had seen his neat clean white little gravestone among hundreds of others in a beautiful Italian cemetery.

Alex padded down the slippery shallow wooden stairs and stood in the sitting-room, near to the picture of her childish self holding the little bouquet of flowers upon the shutter. There was a smell of wood smoke from a fire which she had experimentally lit in the big open grate in the kitchen. She had brought in an oval folding table from Belmont in case John Robert should elect to work downstairs. The beautiful parquet floor, upon which Alex’s slippers now skated softly, was dotted with rugs, geometrical Persian rugs from Belmont, and curious woollen rugs and rugs made out of rags which the architect had inspired Alex’s mother to buy especially Tor the Slipper House. Upon the walls, painted egg-shell blue, some wood engravings of curvaceous willow trees were hanging. There was an intense silence, outside of which a motor car was passing on the road at the bottom of the garden along which Father Bernard and John Robert had walked on their way to the Common. With a discreet sidelong glance she observed her reflection in the cut-glass fountain mirror. She felt ageless, poised and young, ready to begin the world anew.

At that moment a fox barked with a sharp hoarse anguished sound very near to the house, and the front door opened abruptly and someone came in. Alex put a hand on her heart. It was Ruby. Ruby looked through the open door of the sitting-room, saw Alex and came quickly towards her with an arm outstretched. Alex shuddered and stepped back, then accepted the letter which Ruby was holding out. For a moment she had felt as if her old servant were about to strike her. The impression was so strong that she was not able to bring out the dismissive ‘thank you’. She said nothing. The big brown creature stared at her, then turned and marched out. She had failed to take her shoes off at the door. Alex, who had already recognized John Robert’s handwriting, sat down on the window seat below the painted shutter. The letter had evidently been delivered by hand. She tore it open.

Dear Mrs McCaffrey,

I have received the details from Mr Osmore and am in agreement with the conditions of the tenancy of the Slipper House. I will pay the rent quarterly by banker’s order as suggested. I should perhaps have explained to you that I do not propose to occupy the Slipper House myself, but require it as a temporary residence for my granddaughter Harriet Meynell and her maid. The young women will of course look after themselves and not disturb you, and can come and go by the back gate. I am grateful to you for this convenience. I will give due notice of closure of tenancy in accordance with the agreement. I am shortly returning to the USA and take this opportunity to thank you and to bid you goodbye.

Yours sincerely,

J. R. Rozanov

Alex crumpled up the letter and stuffed it into her pocket. She stared across the room at one of the wood engravings and noticed how the willow branches had made a face, a rounded head, something like her son George. She felt instant ravening hatred for the ‘young women’ who would spoil and desecrate the beautiful innocent house. She wondered if she could now refuse the tenancy. No, it was too late. George’s head tangled into the willows looked as if it were drowning. She went out into the hall and shook off her slippers into the slipper box and put on her shoes. All the lights could be turned out by switches at the door, and she turned them out. She went out of the house and closed the door and locked it. The church bells were silent, the wet grass was soaking her shoes, she felt an old anguish which had perhaps been hanging somewhere in the garden in a thought-cloud from the past, her sudden piercing obsessive jealous remorse when she had heard that Linda Brent was going to marry John Robert Rozanov. Love she could give to no one expanded painfully in her heart.

‘Sing to me.’

‘No.’

‘Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel!’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to see your singing teacher?’

‘I put him off.’

‘Again?’

‘Again. Are you going to see your mother?’

‘Don’t nag me!’

‘What’s the stuff in that bottle?’

‘Ennistone water.’

‘Christ, I put it in my whisky. What’s that noise?’

‘Owls. The wind. The night mail approaching Ennistone station. Did you sing at evensong?’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘What was it like?’

‘High. I saw the “servant” in church.’

‘Who?’

‘Your mother’s servant.’

‘Oh Ruby - did anyone talk to you?’

‘The priest followed me, he said good evening.’

‘He’s an odd bird. He meditates to jazz music. He used to be a wrestler.’

‘Why didn’t you come?’

‘It would create a sensation. Did you like St Paul’s as well as Meeting?’

‘Yes.’

‘Better?’

‘No.’

‘Good. What was it Adam said to you after Meeting?’

‘He told me that a hoverfly has thirty thousand brain cells and we have billions.’

‘Got to keep our spirits up somehow. What did you like about Meeting?’

‘The silence. The little dog. What Mr Eastcote said.’

‘Yes - he makes one feel purified, washed clean, whiter than snow.’

‘Does he?’

‘Don’t you feel like that after communion?’

‘I haven’t taken communion for years. I haven’t been to church for years.’

‘Why did you go this evening?’

‘Because of Mr Eastcote.’

‘There you are!’

‘How long does your feeling go on?’

‘What feeling?’

‘Whiter than snow.’

‘Oh most of the time. I feel unfallen. How does wickedness start? And don’t pretend you know!’

‘Of course I know. Your ignorance is exceptional.’

‘Well, I always knew I was exceptional. I’ve nearly finished our song.’

‘Our song?’

‘The one you’re going to write music for and make our fortune.’

‘I can’t write music.’

‘You said you could.’

‘You misunderstood me.’

‘Will you swim tomorrow?’

‘No.’

‘But you’ll come?’

‘I want to stare at the philosopher.’

‘Wasn’t it delightful the way we rolled at his feet.’

‘It doesn’t delight me to appear a perfect fool to someone I respect.’

‘Of course you’ve read some of his books.’

‘If I’d had a hat I would have taken it off with a conspicuous gesture.’

‘Well, you certainly fell at his feet.’

‘My glasses got bent.’

‘We’ll hang around and have a retake.’

‘And I want to stare at your brother.’

‘George? I’ve still got a bruise where he savaged me.’

‘You think it was hate. Why shouldn’t it be love?’

‘I take a simpler view of love.’

‘If I had a brother like George I’d do something about him.’

‘If you had a brother like George you’d know you couldn’t.’

‘I’d bloody try.’

‘He fascinates you. He fascinates a lot of people. The unfascinated ones throw up their hands.’

‘And what do you do?’

‘Oh I care for George, but he’s impossible, he systematically destroys all the little links with life that most people depend on.’

‘Did he try to drown his wife?’

‘No, that was just something that Brian said! Brian hates him.’

‘Where is she?’

‘No one knows, probably gone to Japan.’

‘Japan?’

‘Her father lives there. He hates George too.’

‘Why don’t you drink? You annoy me sitting there with nothing to do.’

‘Why don’t you sing? Sing Phil the Fluter’s Ball.’

‘Yah.’

‘Where’s all that wild gaiety and smiling eyes and warm humorous charm?’

‘Shut up.’

‘You’re just pretend Irish.’

‘All Irish are pretend Irish.’

You don’t know what to say, I know,

In a way you want to stay,

In a way you want to go.

You can’t make up your mind.

You want to go away

But not leave me behind.

Let’s sit together and see,

In the same room just quietly,

Don’t be in pain, don’t talk of doom,

Don’t catch that train just yet.

While you play out your game

I’ll always be the same,

Let’s wait and see. Just don’t forget,

It’s only me.

I want you but only forever,

I can’t settle for less you.

I want you but only forever,

I won’t press you,

I won’t distress you

If I can’t possess you.

Don’t feel it a sin

You can pack it in at any time,

It’s not a crime,

I’ll bear it and I’ll grin!

I’ll be a hero most of all in this,

I’ll let you go with a loving kiss,

My heart is full of fear,

But you are free,

Don’t go away, my dear -

But if you do, I’ll smile and say

Good-bye, don’t cry, for you are you,

And I am only me.

Don’t tear yourself apart, darling,

How much I love you, you know, that’s not in doubt,

I don’t want to bruise your heart, darling,

You’re always free to go - out.

I won’t scream and shout.

Why should you love me after all,

There’s no good reason.

Any time can be the fall,

You can leave in any season.

I want you for my wife,

I want you all my life,

But if you fly away, and we can’t be together,

I won’t die, I’ll say

Good-bye, good flying weather, from only me.

I want you but only forever

Nothing else will do,

I want you but only forever,

That is my only you.

If you take flight

I won’t die out of spite,

I won’t cry out of spite,

I won’t be unkind

If you change your mind,

I won’t torment you,

Hide the pain in my heart,

Make it easy to part,

I won’t prevent you.

I want your happiness,

I won’t be bad,

I’ll say good-bye, God bless you,

And don’t be sad, darling -

It’s only me.

Tom was pleased with his pop song which had developed so quickly out of Adam’s germinal idea about the two snails. Later in the evening, after the conversation recorded above, he and Emma had got rather drunk together, and Tom had then retired to his bedroom to polish up his ode. Now it was after midnight. Tom occupied the back room with the view over the garden, and beyond over the town where the floodlight upon the cupola of Ennistone Hall had just been switched off. The town, beneath dark night clouds, composed a pattern of yellow dotted lines, a few pale window squares still visible here and there. The Ennistonians went early to bed. Tom had given himself over to the song, imagining in touching detail the situation which it portrayed: he, the hero, in love, but restraining his fierce possessive desire, the girl shy, gentle, timid, (a virgin?) unable to decide. He respects her indecision, even loves the vagueness which torments him, the fuzzy shadowy helpless non-logical uncertainty and lack of definition which Tom somehow associated with the girl whom he would one day love. (That very evening he and Emma had decided that neither of them had ever really been in love.) Tom, the hero, stands back, gives to the girl freedom, space and time, pressing down in his heart the fear of failure together with the painful need which would attempt to cage her. He wants her, but only forever, and must therefore envisage her loss, though this now seems like death. Tranquillizing his anguish of suspense, he is gentle with her, making her feel how simple, how friendly and kind, how very undangerous he is, just her old familiar admirer. But do girls like that sort of chap, Tom wondered suddenly. Well, in this song they do. Perhaps he would now write another song with a different sort of hero, not a gentleman. But in fact Tom did himself aspire to be a gentleman and believed that he was one. He could, he felt, never descend to the base level where sex is coarsely spoken of and women are deemed to be cattle. Of course Tom’s imagination occupied itself with women. He imagined protected girls who snuggle down in virgin cots at night. He thought too about rather wicked wild girls, who had run away from home, but he did not associate them with his mother. Perhaps Tom’s thoughts about women were influenced more than he ever realized by the shade of Feckless Fiona, eternally young Fiona, waif and victim, whom it was somehow his task to save and keep unmarked by the world. And for her perhaps he had remained a little childish, and still thought of himself as innocent. As he had said to Emma, he felt unfallen and did not yet understand how wickedness began.

Emma was in bed in the larger front bedroom where the budding green plane trees filled the window, their speckled branches swaying in the wind, visible in the light of the street lamps of Travancore Avenue until Emma had drawn the curtains. He had spent some time earlier on trying to straighten out the frame of his glasses which had become twisted in the tumble down the slope in the railway cutting. He fiddled for a while, screwing up his eyes and occasionally rubbing the red mark which the wire bridge made upon his nose. Desisting at last, he had got into bed and resumed his reading of The Origins of Military Power in Spain 1800-1854.

Now he had closed his book and was thinking about his singing teacher, Mr Hanway. Emma and Mr Hanway had been together for several years, but their relations had remained formal. Emma called Mr Hanway ‘Sir’, never by his first name which was Neil, and Mr Hanway called Emma ‘Scarlett-Taylor’. The formal pattern of their dealings did not however prevent Emma from suspecting, it went no further than suspicion, that Mr Hanway felt for him a love which exceeded the natural affection of a teacher for a gifted pupil. Sometimes, as it seemed, through the conventional gauze of their converse, Mr Hanway’s eyes blazed momentarily at Emma with some involuntary signal of emotional need.

Emma was not unduly disturbed by this suspicion. His moral temperament was fastidiously reticent and agnostic, devoid of the eager curiosity which often masquerades as benevolence. In any case, music made a holy world within which Emma and Mr Hanway could lead safe intelligible lives, making sense of each other through the bond of a transcendent necessity. When Emma sang to his teacher, or when they sang together, they were joined in a communion which was not only more spiritual than any alternative but more satisfying. Sometimes when Mr Hanway criticized his pupil or chided him for carelessness or laziness or forgetfulness of precept, Emma felt an emotion which resonated far away at the back of Mr Hanway’s calm pedantic tones. But Emma felt sure that Mr Hanway did not want to change anything, suspecting as he must that no change could better him, and finding perhaps a satisfaction, which went beyond anything which Emma could imagine, in the state of affairs as it was. Thus their relationship could have gone on and on, as such relationships between singers often do; only now Emma had come, in a terrible way, to question the value and doubt the future of his own talent.

It was not that he was tired of singing. The physical joy of that strange exercise still transported him, and the sense of absolute power with which it filled him was undiminished. Singing, the creation of sound by a disciplined exercise of mind and body, is perhaps the point at which flesh and spirit most joyfully meet. There is a travail and a bringing forth as a purified sound enters the world. The perfected cry of an individual soul. Somewhat of this did Emma think and feel. Nor did he undervalue his endowment and what he had made of it. But it was just beginning to seem, since he could not give his whole life to it, pointless to go on. His discouragements were in part his own, personal and metaphysical, and in part those which he shared with other counter-tenors. (Mr Hanway had, of course, other pupils, but arranged the timetable so that Emma, at least, never met any of his fellows. When he was with his teacher it always seemed that Mr Hanway had endless time to spare for Emma alone. Of course this impression may simply have arisen from his being a good teacher.) The counter-tenor voice is a highly developed falsetto, not a boy’s voice nor a castrato’s. (Purcell was a counter-tenor.) It has a narrow range, and the counter-tenor repertoire is small and perceptibly finite. Emma had pretty well been its rounds. He had sung many English lute songs; the gloomy sadness of Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry and music suited him well. He sang Purcell and Handel. He and Mr Hanway had combed the ‘early music’ offerings, and the formal love-banter of the eighteenth century had been for them a natural tongue. Now Mr Hanway was taking Emma through the part of Oberon in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, singing the other parts himself with his remarkable voice which was able to become so many ‘other voices’, as his piano was able to become an orchestra. Mr Hanway (a tenor) had been an opera singer once; but he never spoke of those days.

Of course Mr Hanway wanted Emma to become a professional singer. Emma did not now talk about his work at the university. On the subject of the further future they had both become cowards. Mr Hanway was always suggesting occasions, urging the necessity of public singing as part of Emma’s ascesis. During his first year in college Emma had sung with a consort, and also contributed a solo, at a student musical evening. The amazed congratulations of his fellow students embarrassed rather than pleased him. His unusual talent was by now becoming a guilty secret. He had sworn Tom to secrecy as far as Ennistone was concerned. He continued to practise, but gradually less. At Ennistone he had got up early on two mornings and crossed the common, beyond the gipsy camp, to practise; but had simply felt ridiculous as if he had lost confidence in the whole operation. What was the point? He could not be a historian and a singer, and he wanted to be a historian. Why go on and on training an instrument which he could not use? The sad thing that Emma had lately realized was that if he ceased to keep his voice at its very best he would not want to use it at all. Since that was the future, had he not better embrace it at once? To become a professional singer was out of the question. So he must make up his mind to stop taking lessons. Normally he went every week to Mr Hanway. Now he had cancelled two weeks. He would have to go to Mr Hanway … and tell him … that he would not ever be coming … for another lesson. Which would mean that they would never meet again, since they had no other bond.

He could not do it. He knew that he would go on as usual and say nothing and lie and avoid seeing the anxiety in his teacher’s eyes. Nor could he indeed, for himself, make such a terrible choice, surrender such a joy, such a gift. Not to sing again? It was unthinkable. So there was perhaps no decision to be made after all.

Tom McCaffrey had laid aside his verses and had stood for some time at the window. He could see, not far away, a street lamp making lurid greens among some pine trees in Victoria Park. Beyond was the darkness of the Common on one side and the Wasteland on the other. The feeling of universal love which had so uplifted his heart in the Meeting that morning was still with him. He felt, as he looked out over the sleeping city, the tautness and strength of his youth being as it were dedicated, transformed into a kind of wisdom. He felt like a healer, one who has perhaps only lately become aware of a divine gift, and holds it in reverent secrecy among a people in need. Soon his mission would begin. Some unconquerable feeling, expressing itself as joy, wrought in his body and made him tremble. He remembered Emma’s words, ‘If I had a brother like George I would do something about him.’

Tom pulled the curtains upon the remaining lights of Ennistone and took off his shirt. Looking in the mirror he saw the bruise upon his arm which plainly showed the marks of George’s fingers. He thought, George is drowning, and he held on to me. And Tom felt that the very next day he would go to George and just sit in his presence and utter some good thing, some simple thing which he would be inspired to say; and George would suddenly see that there was one place in the world where there was and could be no enemy. Of course he may curse and chuck me out, thought Tom, but later he’ll reflect and he’ll understand. It must be so. He thought, I’ll see George and I’ll see Alex and I’ll tell them - what - oh it’s like conversion, being changed, being saved, what’s the matter with me? I’ll do them good, I must do, it will simply flow out of me like electricity, a life ray, I’m changed like after an atomic explosion, only it’s all good. Is it something that Mr Eastcote did to me? Not just that, it can’t be. Mr Eastcote was just a sign, it’s God existing, ought I to kneel down?

Tom took off his shoes and socks. He did not kneel down but stood slightly swaying as if yielding to a shaft or stream of force which was coming up from below like bubbles rising blithely through water. He took off his vest and put on his pyjama jacket. He took off his trousers and pants and put on his pyjama trousers. Was he, after this revelation, this showing, this transformation of his flesh into some pure transcendent substance, going simply to bed, to sleep? Looking at his bed, he felt all of a sudden very tired as if he had been walking, working, travailing for a long time, and he knew that if he went to bed he would be asleep in a second. He thought, I won’t sleep, I’ll prolong it. I’ll go and tell it all to Emma.

When Tom got to the door of his room he felt his energy taking the form of an agonizing sense of urgency. He flew across the landing and burst into Emma’s room. Emma, with his bedside light on, had returned to his reading. As soon as he saw Tom’s face he took off his glasses.

Tom said, ‘Emma - oh - Emma.’

Emma said nothing, but he drew the bedclothes aside. Tom, still in the swift impetus of his wafting, came to his friend, and for a moment they lay breast to breast, holding each other in a fierce bruising clasp, their hearts beating with a terrible violence; and so they lay in silence for a long time.