Time of Hope

Part Four The First Surrender

I had thought, when Marion took me shopping in London and talked of her complexion, of how the same words spoken by Sheila would have taken their special place, would have been touched by the enchantment of strangeness: so that I should remember them, as I remembered everything about her, as though they were illuminated. For everything she did, when I was first in love, was separated from all else that I heard or saw or touched; the magic was there, and the magic laid an aura round her; she might have been a creature from another species. For me, that was the overmastering transformation of romantic love. And in part it stayed so — until in middle age, a generation after I first met her, years after she was dead, there were still moments when she possessed my mind, different from all others.

It stayed so, after that January afternoon in my attic. There were nights when we had walked hand in hand through the bitter deserted streets, and I went back alone, rehearing the words spoken half an hour before, but hearing them as though they were magic words. The slightest touch — not a kiss, but the tap of her fingers on my pocket, asking for matches to light a cigarette — I could feel as though there had never been any other hands.

Yet that January afternoon had added much. That I knew even as she stood there, her face dissolved by tears. I could no longer shape her according to my own image of desire. I was forced to try to know her now. She was no longer just my beloved, she was a separate person whose life had crashed head-on into mine. And I was forced to feel for her something quite separate from love, a strange pity, affection, compassion, inexplicable to me then as it was at the first intimation in her mother’s drawing-room.

I began to learn the depth and acuteness of her self-consciousness. She could not believe that I was not tormented likewise. She wondered at it. Whereas she — she smiled sarcastically and harshly, and said: ‘It would be hard to be more so. You can’t deny it. You can’t pretend I’m not.’

She was angry about it. She blamed her parents. Once she said, not angrily, but as a matter of fact: ‘They’ve destroyed my self-confidence for ever.’ She wanted ease at all costs, and used all her will to get it. If I could give her ease, she never thought twice about visiting me in my room. People might think she was my mistress; she knew now that I hungered for her; her parents would stop her if they could; she dismissed each of those thoughts with contempt, when the mood was on her and she felt that I alone could soothe her. Nothing else mattered, when her will was set.

I knew something else, something so difficult for a lover to accept that I could not face it steadily. Yet I knew that she was going round like a sleepwalker. She was looking for someone with whom to fall in love.

I knew that she was desperately anxious, so anxious that the lines deepened and the skin darkened beneath her eyes, that she would never manage it. She did not love me, but I gave her a kind of hope, an illusory warmth, as though through me she might break out into release — either with me or another, for as to that, in her ruthlessness, innocence, and cruelty, she would not give a second’s thought.

Such was the little power I had over her.

She was afraid that she would never love a man as I loved her. It was from that root that came her acts of Christmas Eve, her deliberate cruelty.

For she was cruel, not only through indifference, but also as though in being cruel she could find release. In such a scene as that on Christmas Eve, she could bring herself to the emotional temperature in which most of us naturally lived.

It was hard to take, at that age. The more so, as she played on a nerve of cruelty within myself — which I had long known, which except with her I could forget. Once or twice she provoked my temper, which nowadays I had as a rule under control. She made me quarrel: quarrels were an excitement to her, a time in which to immerse herself, to swear like a fishwife; to me, except in the height of rage, they were — because I had so little power over her — like death.

It was harder for me, because now I longed for her completely. The time was past when I could be satisfied, thinking of her alone in her room; each scrap of understanding, each wave either of compassion or anger, and the more I wanted her. On that January afternoon, when I had the first sight of her as a living creature, driven by her nature, I felt not only the birth of affection, as something distinct from love — but also I was trembling with desire. And that was the first of many occasions when she felt my hand shake, when she felt in me a passion which left her unmoved, which made her uneasy and cruel. For now I wanted her in the flesh. Although everything I knew made nonsense of the thought, I wanted her as my wife.

I had not enough confidence to tell her so. I had always been afraid that I had no charm for her. Sometimes, now that I wanted her so much, I hoped I had a little; sometimes, I thought, none at all. Occasionally she was warm and active and laughing in my arms; then, at our next meeting, irritated by my need for her, she would smoke cigarette after cigarette in an endless chain so as to give me no excuse to kiss her. I could not face the cold truth she might tell me if I took the cigarette away.

She caused me intense jealousy. Not only with Tom Devitt; in fact she quarrelled with him early in the year. I told her that I was suspicious of her quarrels. ‘You needn’t be this time,’ she said. ‘Poor Tom. It’s a pity. He couldn’t turn me into a doctor’s wife.’ She reflected, with a frown.

‘The more helpless they are, the worse one treats them.’ She looked at me. ‘I know I’m unpleasant. You can tell me so if you like. But I’m telling the truth. It’s also true of less unpleasant women. Isn’t it so?’

‘I expect it’s true of us all,’ I said.

‘I’ve never found a man who made me helpless yet,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it would be like.’

‘I’ve found you,’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not so helpless. I shouldn’t come to see you if you were.’

I ceased to be jealous of Tom Devitt, but there were others. They were nearly all misfits, waifs and strays, often — like Devitt — much older than she was. For the smart comely young businessmen who pursued her she had no use whatsoever. But she would find some teacher at the School timid with women or unhappily married, and I should hear a threatening, excited ‘we’ again. She had a very alert and hopeful eye for men whom she thought might fascinate her. In getting to know them, she rid herself of her self-consciousness; instead of shrinking into a corner, as she did in company, she was ready to take the initiative herself, exactly as though she were a middle-aged woman on the prowl for lovers. I could see nothing in common between those who pleased her. I knew that she herself imagined some implacably strong character, some Heathcliff of a lover who would break her will — but they were all weaker and gentler than she was.

Each of those sparks of interest guttered away, and she came back, sometimes pallid, ill-tempered, more divided than before, sometimes sarcastic and gay.

I was beyond minding in what state she came back. For each time I was bathed in the overwhelming reassurance of the jealous. After days spent in the degrading detective work of jealousy, I saw her in front of me, and the calculations were washed away. It was only the jealous, I thought later, who could be so ecstatically reassured. She had said that she went home by the eight-ten last night. Where had she been between teatime and the train, with whom had she been? Then she said that her mother had been shopping in the town, and they had gone to the pictures. Only the suspicious could be as simple and wholehearted in delight as I was then.

I did not spend much time with the group during those months. My first Bar examination happened in the summer, and whenever I could not see Sheila I was trying to concentrate upon my work. I went out at night with George and Jack, I still went to Martineau’s on Fridays, but the long weekends at the farm I could no longer spare. There was, I knew, a good deal of gossip; by now it was common knowledge that I was head over heels in love with Sheila. Marion also began to keep away from the group, and we never met at all.

There was one pair of curious, observant eyes that did not let me keep my secrets unperceived. Jack Cotery was interested in me, and love was his special subject. He watched the vicissitudes in my spirits as day followed day. He went out of his way to meet Sheila once or twice. Then, in the summer, not long before I set off to London to take the examination, he exerted himself. He came up one night and said, in his soft voice ‘Lewis, I want to talk to you.’

I tried to put him off, but he shook his head.

‘No. Clearly, it’s time someone gave you a bit of advice.’

He was oddly obstinate. It was the only time I had known him make a determined stand about someone else’s concerns. He insisted on taking me to the picture-house café. ‘I’m more at home there.’ He grinned. ‘I’m tired of your wretched pubs.’ There, under the pink-shaded lights, with girls at the tables close by, whispering, giggling, he was indeed at home. But that night he was keeping his eyes from girls. With his rolling muscular gait he led the way into the corner, where there was a table separate from the rest. The night was warm; we drank tea, and got warmer; Jack Cotery, in complete seriousness, began to talk to me.

Then I realized that this was an act of pure friendliness. It was the more pure, because I had recently been busy trying to stop one of his dubious projects. In the autumn he had borrowed money from George, in order to start a small wireless business. Since then he had launched out on a speculation that was, if one took the most charitable view, somewhere near the edge of the shady. He was pestering George for more money with which to extricate himself. I had used my influence with George to stop it. My motives were not all disinterested; I might still want to borrow from George myself, and so Jack and I were rivals there; but still, I had a keen nose for a rogue, I had no doubt that to Jack commercial honesty was without meaning, and thus early I smelt danger, most of all, of course, for George.

Jack was a good deal of a rogue, but he bore no grudges. No doubt he enjoyed advising me, showing off his expertness, parading himself where he was so much more knowledgeable, so much less vulnerable, than I. But he had a genuine wish, earthy and kind, to get me fitted up with a suitable bed-mate, to be sure that I was enjoying myself, with all this nonsensical anguish thrown away. He had taken much trouble to time his advice right. With consideration, with experienced eyes, he had been watching until I seemed temporarily light-hearted. It was then, when he felt sure that I was not worrying about Sheila, that he took me off to the picture-house café. He actually began, over the steaming tea ‘Lewis, things aren’t so bad with your girl just now, are they?’

I said that they were not.

‘That’s the time to give her up,’ said Jack, with emphasis and conviction. ‘When you’re not chasing her. It won’t hurt your pride so much. You can get out of it of your own free will. It’s better for you yourself to have made the break, Lewis, it will hurt you less.’

He spoke so warmly that I had to answer in kind.

‘I can’t give her up,’ I said. ‘I love her.’

‘I’ve noticed that,’ said Jack, smiling good-naturedly. ‘Though why you didn’t tell me earlier I just can’t imagine. We might have dangled a few distractions before your eyes. Why in God’s name should you fall for that — horror?’

‘She’s not a horror.’

‘You know very well she is. In everything that matters. Lewis, you’re healthy enough. Why in God’s name should you choose someone who’ll only bring you misery?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Once or twice’, I said, ‘I’ve been happier with her than I’ve ever imagined being.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jack. ‘If you didn’t get a spot of happiness when you’re first in love, it’d be a damned poor lookout for all of us. Look here, I know more about women than you do. Or if I don’t’, he grinned, ‘I must have been wasting my time. I tell you, she’s a horror. Perhaps she’s a bit crazy. Anyway, she’ll only bring you misery. Now why did you choose her?’

‘Has one any choice?’ I said.

‘With someone impossible,’ said Jack, ‘you ought to be able to escape.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ I said.

‘You’ve got to,’ said Jack, with more vigorous purpose than I had ever heard from him. ‘She’ll do you harm. She’ll make a mess of your life.’ He added: ‘I believe she’s done you a lot of harm already.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said.

‘I bet you don’t know when to make love to her.’

The hit was so shrewd that I blushed.

‘Damn the bitch,’ said Jack. ‘I’d like to have her in a bedroom with no questions asked. I’d teach her a thing or two.’

He looked at me.

‘Lewis,’ he said, ‘it’s the cold ones who can do you harm. I expect you wonder if any woman will ever want you.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I do.’

‘It’s absurd,’ said Jack, in his flattering, easy, soothing fashion. ‘If you’d run across someone warm, you’d know how absurd it is. Why, with just a bit of difference, you’d have a better time than I do. You’re sympathetic. You’re very clever. You’re going to be a success. And — you’ve got a gleam in your eye… It’s like everything else,’ he went on. ‘You’ve got to believe in yourself. If she’s ruined that for you, I shall never forgive her. I tell you, it’s absurd for you to doubt yourself. There are hundreds of nicer girls than Miss Sheila who’d say yes before you’d had time to ask.’

When he cared, he was more skilful than anyone I knew at binding up the wounds.

Jack looked across the table. I was certain that he had something else to say, and was working his way towards it. He was using all his cunning, as well as his good nature.

‘Now Marion’, he said, as though casually, and I understood, ‘would be a hundred times better — for any purpose that you can possibly imagine. I don’t mind telling you, I’ve thought of her myself. I just can’t understand why you’ve done nothing about it.’

‘I’ve been pretty occupied,’ I said. ‘And I wasn’t—’

‘I should have thought’, said Jack, ‘that you might have found time to think of her. After all, she’s been pining for you long enough.’

I was forced on to the defensive. I said, in confusion, that I knew she was rather fond of me, but he was exaggerating it beyond all reason.

‘You bloody fool,’ said Jack, ‘she worships the ground you walk on.’

I still protested, Jack went on attacking me. If I did not realize it, he said roughly, it must be because I was blinded by Sheila. The sooner I got rid of her the better, if I could not notice what was going on round me. ‘Remember too,’ said Jack, ‘if anyone falls in love with you, it is partly your own fault. It’s not all innocence on your side. It never is. There’s always a bit of encouragement. You’ve smiled at her, you’ve been sympathetic, and you’ve led her on.’

I felt guilty: that was another stab of truth. I argued, I protested again that he was exaggerating. I was confused: I half wanted to credit what he said, just for the sake of my own vanity; I half wanted to be guiltless.

‘I don’t care about the rights and wrongs,’ said Jack. ‘All I care about is that the young woman is aching for you. Just as much as you ache for your girl. And without any nonsense about it. She wants you, she knows she wants you. But remember she can’t wait for ever. If I never advise you again, Lewis, I’m doing so now. Get free — not next week, tonight, go home and write the letter — and take Marion on. It will make all the difference to you… I’m not at all sure’, he said surprisingly, ‘that you wouldn’t be wise to marry her.’

The examination did not trouble me overmuch. It was not a decisive one; my acquaintances who were taking law degrees, like Charles March, were exempt from it; unless I did disgracefully badly, nothing hung upon the result. Once I got started, I felt a cheerful, savage contempt for those who tried to keep me in my proper station. I had only taken one examination in my life, the Oxford, but I found again that, after the first half-hour, I enjoyed the game. In the first lunch interval, certain that I was not going to disgrace myself, I reflected realistically, as I had done before, that my performance this year would be a guide to my chances twelve months hence in the Bar Finals — on which, in my circumstances, all depended.

I stayed at Mrs Reed’s, for no better reason than habit, but this time I did not have to look in entreaty at the hall table each time I entered the house. Sheila’s letter arrived on my second morning, according to her promise. For I had seen her before I left town, not listening to Jack Cotery, despite the comfort he had given me. The letter was in her usual allusive style, but contained a passage which made me smile: ‘My father has lost his voice, which is exceedingly just. He croaks pathetically. I have offered to nurse him — would you expect me to be good at the healing word?’ And, a little farther on, she wrote: ‘Curiously enough, he inquired about you the other day. He is probably thinking you might be useful some time for free legal consultations. My family are remarkably avaricious. I don’t know whether I shall inherit it. Poor Tom used to have to prescribe for my father. But Tom was a moral coward. You are evasive and cagey, but you’re not that.’

Evasive and cagey, I thought, in the luxury of considering a beloved’s judgement, in the conceit of youth. Was it true? No one else had ever said so. So far as I knew, no one had thought so. She had seen me get on, in harmony, with all kinds of people — while she shrank into a corner. And she alone had seen me quite free.

She wrote in the same vein about her father, her mother, herself. She was unsparing; equally remote from moral vanity or visceral warmth; she saw no reason to give herself or anyone else the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes her judgements were lunatic, and sometimes they went painfully deep. Those judgements were her revenge. People got through life with their lies and pretences, with their spontaneity, with their gluey warmth denied to her. She was left out of the party. So she told them that the party was false and the good-fellowship just a sham, and in telling them so she was sometimes no truer than a hurt child; but sometimes she tore the façade off the human condition, and made us wince at the truth.

Her letter brought her near, and I went undisturbed through the rest of the papers. I saw Charles March at dinner, with his usual party of Cambridge friends. He undertook to find out my marks in detail; he had no idea why I was so curious, nor that next year’s examination was a crisis in my career, but he was a sensitive, quick-witted man, pleased to be of help. I envied his assumption that it was easy to discover what was going on behind the scenes. Some day, I thought, I too must be as sure of myself, as much able to move by instinct among the sources of information and power. Twenty years ahead, and it was ironical to meet Charles March, and for us to be reminded that I had once resolved to emulate him.

I remained in London for an extra afternoon, in order to go to Lord’s and watch some cricket. There, in the sunshine, I felt peace seep over me like a drug, steadying my heart, slowing my pulse. The examination was safe. Soon I should be seeing Sheila. There was not even the shadow of care, as there had been that day — it suddenly came back to memory and made me smile — when my father watched his first and only cricket match and I sat beside him, eight years old.

But that evening, as the train rushed through the midland fields and in half an hour I should be home, that mood of peace seemed separated from me by years or an ocean. I was fretted by anxiety, as though my mind were a vacuum, and immediately one ominous thought left it, another bored in. I had an irresistible sense that I was returning into trouble, every kind of trouble. I struggled with each item of anxiety, but the future was full of pain. I was angry with myself for being the prey of nerves. It was time to remember that I was strained by this kind of apprehension whenever I came home from a journey. I had just to accept it, like a minor disease. If I did not, I should become as superstitious as my mother. But as I stepped on to the station platform I was looking round in dread, expecting some news of Sheila that would break my heart. I bought an evening paper, dreading against all reason that she might have chosen this day to become engaged. I rang her up from the station; she sounded surprised, amused, and friendly, and had no news at all.

For a moment I was reassured, as though in a fit of jealousy. Then I felt anxious about George, and went to see him; in his case, there had been some faint cause for worry, though neither he nor I had taken it seriously; that night, it still seemed faint, though he did produce some mystifying information about Martineau.

My nerve-storm dropped away; and for weeks after my examination all was smooth. George had a piece of professional success, the alarm over Martineau began to seem unreal; Jack Cotery had begun, by luck or daring, to make some money. Sheila was uncapricious and gay, and had set herself the task of teaching me to take an interest in painting. My examination result appeared in The Times, and had gone according to plan. It reappeared in the local papers, having been sent there by Aunt Milly, who had now finally decided to admit that I was less foolish than most young men. Their curious alliance still operating, George impressed on her that I was fulfilling my share of the bargain. He went on ‘to gain considerable satisfaction’, as he said himself, by ramming the fact of my performance in front of anyone who had ever seemed to doubt me.

I received a few letters of congratulation, a bland one from Eden, an affectionate and generous one from Marion, a fantastically florid one from Mr Vesey — and a note from Tom Devitt. My father professed a comic gratification; and Sheila said: ‘I didn’t expect anything else. But if you make me celebrate, I shall quite like it.’ It was my first taste of success, and it was sweet.

Nevertheless, I had returned into trouble. As the summer went on, some of the ominous thoughts of the journey came back; but this time they were not a trick of the nerves, they were real. The first trouble — the first sign that the luck had changed, I found myself thinking, in the superstitious way of which I was ashamed — was a mild one, but it harassed me. It followed close behind the congratulations, and was a disappointment about my examination. Charles March had kept his word. Somehow or other he had obtained the marks on my individual papers. They were not bad, but I was not high up the list of the first class. They were nothing like good enough if I were to make a hit next year.

There was no option. Next year I had to do spectacularly well. It was an unfair test, I thought, forgetting that I had once faced these brutal facts — when I first made my choice. But it was different facing facts from a long way off: and then meeting them in one’s nerves and flesh. It was very hard to imagine a risk, until one had to live with it.

There was nothing for it. Next year I had to do better. I had to improve half a class.

I consulted George. At first, he was unwilling to accept that anything was wrong. I was exaggerating, as usual, said George stormily; I was losing my sense of proportion just because this man March, whom George had never heard of, reported that I had not done superlatively well in a couple of papers. No one was less ready than George to see the dangerous sign. He had to be persuaded against his will, in the teeth of his violent temper, that a disquieting fact could conceivably exist, particularly in a protégé’s career. He denounced Charles March. ‘I see no reason’, shouted George, ‘why I should be expected to kowtow to the opinions of your fashionable friends.’ He denounced me for being an alarmist. I had to be rough and lose my own temper and tell him that, however much he deceived himself about others, he must not do it about me. These were the official marks, never mind how they were obtained. Brusquely I told him that it was just a problem of cramming; the facts were clear, and I was not going to argue about them: I wanted to know one thing — how could I pull up half a class?

Immediately, without the slightest rancour, George became calm and competent. He proceeded to analyse the marks with his customary pleasure in any kind of puzzle. Neither George nor I had been certain that I should need such a degree of detailed knowledge. ‘Though’, said George, ‘I was under the impression that you had got hold of most of the classic cases. They didn’t ask you much that was really out of the way. I imagined that you’d conquered most of this stuff months ago.’

It was too much of a temptation for George to resist saying tactfully: ‘Of course, I realize there have been certain complications in your private life.’

‘What’s to be done?’ I said.

‘Your memory is first class,’ said George. ‘So you simply can’t have read enough, that’s all. We’d better invent a new reading programme for you. We’d better do it now.’

Without needing to look up a single authority, without asking me one question about the syllabus of the Bar examinations (which he had, of course, never taken himself) or what books I had already read, George drew up a working timetable for me for each week between that day and the date of the finals. ‘Nine months to go,’ said George with bellicose content, and wrote down the first week’s schedule. He forgot nothing; the programme was well-ordered, feasible, allowed time for a fortnight’s revision at the end, and then three days free from work. I preserved that sensible document, so neat and orderly, in George’s tidy legal handwriting. It might have been the work of one of nature’s burgesses.

But there were many days in the months ahead when George did not speak or act in the slightest respect like one of nature’s burgesses; and that was the second trouble into which we were plunged. It seemed grave then. In retrospect it seemed more than grave, it seemed to mark the point where the curve of George’s life began to dip. At this point, I need only say a few words about it. The upheaval in our circle began with Martineau. We had always known that he was restless and eccentric; but we expected him to continue his ordinary way of life, entertaining us on Friday nights, and safeguarding George’s future in the firm. Suddenly he went through a kind of religious conversion. That autumn he relinquished his share in the practice. It was a few months later, early in 1927, that he completed his abnegation; then he sold all his remaining possessions, gave the money away, and at fifty-one began to wander round the country, begging his way, penniless and devout.

It was now left to Eden to decide whether George should ever become a partner. We all urged George at least to establish a modus vivendi with Eden. George, dogged by ill fortune and his own temperament, promptly performed a series of actions which made Eden, who already disliked him, rule him out of the running, not only then, but always. And so at twenty-seven George was condemned to be a managing clerk for the rest of his life. There were many consequences that none of us could have foreseen; a practical one was that George began to cooperate in Jack Cotery’s business.

To me, that trouble was light, though, compared to a quarrel with Sheila — a quarrel which I said to myself must be the last. It came with blinding suddenness, after a summer in which most of our meetings had been happy, happier than any since the days of innocence a year before. We amused each other with the same kind of joke, youthful, reckless, and sarcastic. I had discovered that I could often coax and bully her out of her indrawn, icy temper. It was the serene hours that counted. I was not much worried when, in the early autumn, days followed each other when she sat abnormally still, her eyes fixed in a long-sighted stare, when if I took her hand it stayed immobile and I seemed to be kissing a dead cheek. I had been through it before, and that removed the warning. She would emerge. Meanwhile, she was not giving me any excuse for jealousy. For weeks she had not mentioned any other man. And, in those fits of painful stillness, she saw no one but me.

One day in September we had been walking in the country, and were resting on the grass beside the road. She had been quiet, wrapped deep in herself, all afternoon. Suddenly she announced ‘I’m going shooting.’

I laughed aloud, and asked her when and where. She said she was travelling to Scotland, the next week.

‘I’m going shooting,’ she repeated.

Again I laughed.

‘What’s funny about that?’

Her tone was sharp.

‘It is funny,’ I said.

‘You’d better tell me why.’

Her tone was so sharp that I took her shoulders and began to shake her. But she broke loose and said ‘I suppose you mean that I only know these people because my father married for money. I suppose it is a wonderfully good joke that my mother was such a fool.’

With bewilderment I saw that she was crying. She was staring at me in enmity and hate. She turned aside, and dried the tears herself.

On the way back, I made one effort to tell her that nothing had been further from my mind. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, and we went along in silence. Intolerably slowly (and yet I could not bear to part), the miles went by. We came to the suburbs and walked in silence under the chestnut trees.

At the station entrance, she spoke.

‘Don’t see me off.’ She added, as though she was forced to: ‘I shall be away a month. I shan’t write much. I’m too prickly. I’ll tell you when I get back.’

In the days that followed, I was angry as well as wretched. It would be easy to cease to love her, I thought, making myself remember her cold inimical face. Then I cherished those unwilling words at the station. ‘Prickly’ — was she not trying to soften it for me, in the midst of her own bitterness? Why hadn’t I made her speak? This was not a separation, I comforted myself, and wrote to her, as lightly as though that afternoon had not existed. As I wrote, I had the habitual glow, as if she must, through my scribble on the paper, be compelled at that moment to think of me. No answer came.

A fortnight after that walk in the country, I was strolling aimlessly through the market place. I was on edge, and sleeping badly; it was hard to steer myself through a day’s work; I had come out that afternoon, hoping to freshen myself for another two hours later on. It was nearly teatime on a dark autumn day, with the clouds low, but bright and cosy in the streets, the shops already lighted. Smells poured out into the crowded streets, as the shop doors swung open — smells of bacon, ham, cheese, fruit — and, at the end of the market place, the aroma of roast coffee beans, which mastered them all, and for a moment dissolved all my anxiety and took me back to afternoons of childhood. In our less penurious days, before the bankruptcy, my mother used to take me shopping in the town, when I was a small child; and I smelt the coffee then, and watched the grinding machine in the window, and heard my mother assert that this was the only shop she could think of patronizing.

I watched the grinding machine again, sixteen years later (for I could not have been more than five when I accompanied my mother). I would have sworn that she had actually used the word ‘patronizing’; and indeed it gave me a curious pleasure to think of her so — for few women could the word have been more apt, at that period, before she had been cast down.

At last I turned away. On the pavement, walking towards me, was Sheila. She was wearing a fur coat which made her look a matron, and her head was bent, staring at the ground, so that she had not seen me. At that instant it occurred to me we had never met by accident before.

I called her name, She looked up. Her face was cold and set.

‘I didn’t know you were back,’ I said.

‘I am,’ said Sheila.

‘You said you’d be away a month.’

‘I changed my mind,’ she said. She added fiercely: ‘If you want to know, I hated it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I might have done in time.’

‘I don’t mean in time,’ I said. ‘You ought to have told me before today.’

‘Try to remember this,’ said Sheila. ‘You don’t own me. If I wanted you to own me, I should be glad to tell you everything. I don’t want it.’

‘You let me just run into you like this—’ I cried.

‘I don’t propose to send you word every time I come into the town,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know when I want to see you.’

‘Will you have some tea?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going home.’

We moved away from each other. I looked back, but not she.

That was all. That was the end, I thought.

I too was full of anger and hate, as I made my resolve that night. I could have stood jealousy, I could have stood her madnesses and cruelty, but this I could no longer stand. I had had too much. I strengthened myself by the pictures of her indrawn face, in which there was no regard for me. There were hours when I hoped that love itself had died.

I must cut her out of my heart, I thought. Jack was right; Jack had been right all along. I must cut her out of my heart; and I knew by instinct that, to do it, I must not see her again, speak to her, receive a word from her or write to her, even hear of her at second hand. That was my resolve; and this time, unlike Christmas Eve, I felt the wild satisfaction that I could carry it out.

I worked with a harsh gusto, staying in my attic when she might be in the town, going only to the reference library when there was no chance that we could meet. I took precautions to avoid her as elaborate as those I had once used to pin down each minute of her day. And then I wanted to distract myself. Jack was right. She had done me harm; she had left me lonely and unsure. I thought (as I had often done since that night in the café, as I had done after meetings where Sheila did not give an inch and I was humiliated) of the bait Jack had laid for me. I thought of Marion. Would she have me, if I went to her now?

I had wondered many times whether Jack was right about her too. Had she really been in love with me? I wanted it to be true. Just then, I was voracious for any kind of woman’s love.

I believed that Marion had been fond of me. I believed that if I had wooed her, I could probably have persuaded her to love me. That was as far as I trusted Jack’s propaganda. Yet now, unsure of myself, I wanted to meet Marion again. I had not seen her, except to wave to in the streets, for months. She was the most active of us, and it would have been right out of character for her to sit and mope. She had gone off and attached herself to the town’s best amateur theatrical company. There she found a new circle: to my surprise, people spoke highly of her as a comic actress. I wished that we could be brought together again, without any contrivance of mine. I had, of course, a furtive, fugitive hope that Jack might not after all have been exaggerating, and that she would fall into my arms.

Strangely enough, it was through Martineau that I caught a glimpse of her at the theatre. It was a Friday night in November. Although we did not know it, Martineau was within a few days of renouncing his share in the firm, and we were to go to the house for only one more Friday night. Unconcerned, amiable, and light hearted, Martineau mentioned that The Way of the World was being acted the following week, and invited me to go with him to see it.

It was a singular choice of entertainment, I thought later, for a man who was on the point of trying to live like St Francis; but Martineau enjoyed every minute of it. He appeared in his wing collar, frock coat, and grey trousers, for, until he actually left the firm, he never relaxed in his dress. We sat near to the stage, and Martineau roared with laughter, more audibly than anyone in the house, at each bawdy joke. And he was particularly taken by Marion. She was playing Millamant, the biggest part she had had with this company, and she won the triumph of the evening. Her bright eyes flashed and cajoled and hinted; on the stage her clumsiness disappeared, she stood up straight, she had presence and a rakish air, and her voice lilted and allured. Despite her reputation, I had not expected anything like it. I felt very proud of her.

Martineau was captivated entirely.

‘She’s a stunner,’ he said, using enthusiastically, as he often did, the slang of years ago. ‘She’s a perfect stunner.’

I told him that I knew her fairly well.

‘Lucky old dog,’ said Martineau. ‘Lucky old dog, Lewis.’ At the end of the play, Martineau was reluctant to leave the theatre. ‘Lewis,’ he said, ‘what do you say to our paying respects to your young friend? Going round to the stage door, we used to call it.’

We had to wait, along with other friends of the cast, for the theatre was a makeshift one, and all the women dressed in one large room. At last we were allowed in. Marion was still shining in her greasepaint, surrounded by people praising her. She was lapping it up, from all quarters, both sexes, from anyone who had a word of praise, whatever its quality. She caught my eye, looked surprised, smiled, cried out ‘Lewis, my dear’, then turned to listen, her whole face open to receive applause, to a man who was telling her how wonderful she had been. The air was humming with endearments and congratulations. I took Martineau to Marion, and he added his share, and it was clear that she could not have enough of it.

A couple of young men were competing for her attention, but Martineau held her for a time. Apart from a smile of recognition, and a question upon how I liked the show, she had been too ecstatic in her triumph to come aside to me. She was glad I was there; but she was glad Martineau was there, she was glad everyone in the room was there; she was ready to embrace us all.

The company were holding a party, and we had to leave. Marion called goodbyes after Martineau, after me, after others who had been praising her.

Martineau and I went out into the cold night air.

‘What a stunning girl,’ said Martineau. ‘I say, Lewis, your friend is something to write home about.’

I agreed. But I was lonely and dispirited. I wished I had not gone.

On winter afternoons, when I could not work any longer, I gazed from my attic window over the roofs. This time last year — the thoughts crept treacherously in — I might have been at tea with Sheila. Now the evening ahead was safe, quite safe. I was keeping my resolve. I had abstained from all the forbidden actions, in order to cut her out of my heart. Yet why — I could not help crying to myself — had she of all women the power to set me free?

I was not well that winter, and for days together slept badly and woke in a mysterious malaise. There was nothing I could be definite about, but I was worried, for the Bar Finals and the future, as I lay awake listening to the thudding of my heart. It was necessary, I knew, to take no notice. And I had to do my best to see that George was not too much damaged, now that Martineau had left the firm in November. Often, when I felt like lying in bed, I had to struggle through some work, and then drag myself off to an argument with George or Eden. There were other lives beside one’s own; it was a discipline hard to learn, when one was young, ill, and empty with unrequited love.

Sometimes those discussions were a relief, simply because they took away from my loneliness. I had not the spirit to seek for Marion, away from her stage properties. That night at the theatre had been a misfire when I did not want another. It was out of loneliness that I returned to the group, for there I could find without effort the company of some young women. They welcomed me back. George began by saying: ‘I take it that you’re slightly reducing the extent of your other commitments.’

‘It’s over,’ I said. I did not wish to speak of it.

‘Thank God for that,’ said George. ‘I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.’ And automatically, from that moment, George demoted Sheila in his speech. After being cloaked in euphemisms for a year, she was referred to once more as ‘that damned countyfied bitch’.

Jack was listening, attentively and shrewdly. ‘Good,’ he said, but he looked troubled. I wondered if he noticed that, when I went out to the farm, I did not stir from the house for fear of the remote chance of meeting Sheila. I wondered too if he would pass any word to Marion.

With a considerateness that touched me, the Edens asked me to their Christmas Eve party, in my own right, asking me to bring a partner if I felt inclined. Eden went out of his way to drop the hint that they had ‘rather lost touch with Sheila Knight’. I went alone. Just as last year, the drawing-room was redolent of rum and spice and orange; most of last year’s party were there; all was safe, I listened to Eden, the fire blazed, Mrs Eden did not mention Sheila. In the early morning, when I left the house, it was colder than that last warm Christmas morning, and no car stood outside.

It was on a January morning, returning home from the reference library (I had changed my routine, so as never to be in the main shopping streets in the afternoon), that I found a telegram waiting at my lodgings. Before I opened it, I knew from whom it came. It read: YOU ONCE WANTED TO BORROW A BOOK FROM ME IT IS NOT A GOOD BOOK I SHALL BRING IT TO THE USUAL CAFÉ TOMORROW AT FOUR. It was signed SHEILA, and, luxuriating in the details, I noticed that it had been dispatched from her village that morning at nine-five. It gave me the pleasure of intimacy, silly and caressing, to think of her going to the post office straight after breakfast.

I made no struggle. I had two weapons to keep me out of danger — pain and pride. But I dismissed the pain, and thought only of my emptiness. As for pride, she had appeased that, for it was she who asked. I was infused by hope so sanguine that I felt the well-being pour through me to the fingertips. I watched motes dancing in the winter sunlight. Just as when I was first in love, it seemed that I had never seen things so fresh before.

The clock was striking four when I went through the café, past a pair of chess players already settled in for the evening, down to the last alcove. She was there, reading an evening paper, holding it as usual a long way from her eyes. She heard my footstep, and watched me as I sat down beside her.

She said: ‘I’ve missed you.’ She added: ‘I’ve brought the book. You won’t like it much.’

She set herself to talk as though there had been no interval. I was irritated, in one of those spells I had previously known. Was this she whose absence made each hour seem pointless? Yes, she was good-looking, but was that hard beauty really in my style? Yes, she was clever enough, but she had no stamina in anything she thought or did.

At the same instant I was chafing with impatience for reassurances and pledges. I did not want to listen to her, but to take her in my arms.

She saw that something was wrong. She frowned, and then tried to make me laugh. We exchanged jokes, and she worked at a curious awkward attempt to coax me. Once or twice the air was electric, but through my fault there were gaps of silence.

‘When shall I see you again?’ said Sheila, and we arranged a meeting.

I went away to drink with George, impatient with her, compelled by the habit of love to count the hours until I saw her next — but incredulous that I had not broken away. Perhaps it would have been like that, I thought, if our roles had been reversed and she had done the loving. There might have been many such teatimes. Perhaps it would have been better for us both. But when I drank with George there was no jubilation in my tone to betray that afternoon, even if he had been a more perceptive man.

By the first post of the day I was expecting her, I received a letter. My heart quickened, but as I read it I chuckled.

‘I can’t appear tomorrow afternoon’, she wrote, ‘because I have a shocking cold. I always get shocking colds. Come and see me, if you’d like to, and can face it. My mother will be out of the way, visiting the sick. If I were a parishioner, she would be visiting me, which would be the last straw.’

When I was shown into the drawing-room, I saw that Sheila was not exaggerating. She was sitting by the fire with her eyes moist, her lids swollen, her nostrils and upper lip all red; on the little table by her side were some books, an inhaler, and half a dozen handkerchiefs. She gave me a weak grin. ‘I told you it was a shocking cold. Every cold I have is like this.’ Her voice was unrecognisably low, as well as thick and muffled.

‘You can laugh if you want to,’ she said. ‘I know it’s comic.’

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ I said, ‘but it is a bit comic.’ I was feeling both affectionate and amused; she was so immaculate that this misadventure seemed like a practical joke.

‘My father doesn’t think so,’ she said with another grin. ‘He’s terrified of catching anything. He refuses to see me. He stays in his study all day.’

We had tea, or rather I ate the food and Sheila thirstily drank several cups. She told the maid that she would not eat anything, and the maid reproached her: ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever, Miss Sheila. You’re hungrier than you think.’

‘That’s all you know,’ Sheila retorted. In her mother’s absence the maid and Sheila were on the most companionable terms.

While I was eating, Sheila watched me closely.

‘You were cross with me the other day.’

‘A little,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’

‘I’m trying to behave,’ she said. ‘What have I done?’

‘Nothing.’ It was true. Not once had she been cruel, or indifferent, or dropped a hint to rouse my jealousy.

‘Wasn’t it a good idea to make it up?’

I smiled.

‘Then what was the matter?’

I told her that I loved her totally, that no one could be more in love than I was, that no one could ever love her more. I had not seen her for three months and I had tried to forget her — three bitter months; then we met, and she expected me to talk amiably over the teacups as though nothing had happened.

Sheila blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and considered.

‘If you want to kiss me now, you can,’ she said. ‘But I warn you, I don’t really feel much like it.’

She pressed my hand. I laughed. Cold or no cold, her spirits were further from the earth than mine could ever be, and I could not resist her.

She was considering again.

‘Come to a ball,’ she said suddenly. She had been searching, I knew, for some way to make amends. With her odd streak of practicality, it had to be a tangible treat.

‘I hate balls,’ she said. ‘But I’ll go to this one if you’ll take me.’

‘This one’ was a charity ball in the town; Mrs Knight was insisting that her husband and Sheila should go; it would annoy Mrs Knight considerably if I made up the party, Sheila said, getting a double-edged pleasure.

‘My mother thinks you’re a fortune hunter,’ said Sheila with a smile. For a moment I was amused. But then I was seized by another thought, and felt ashamed and helpless.

‘I can’t come,’ I said.

‘Why can’t you? You must come. I’m looking forward to it.’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

I was too much ashamed to prevaricate.

‘Why not? It isn’t because of Mother, is it? You never mind what people think.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ I said.

‘I believe my father doesn’t dislike you. He dislikes nearly everyone.’

She unfolded a new handkerchief.

‘I’m getting angry,’ she said nasally, but she was still good-tempered. ‘Why can’t you come?’

‘I haven’t got the clothes,’ I said.

Sheila sneezed several times and then gave a broad smile. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘For you of all men to worry about that. I give up. I just don’t understand it.’

Nor did I; it was years since I had been so preposterously ashamed.

‘It has worried you, hasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know why, but it has,’ I confessed.

Sheila said, with acid gentleness ‘It’s made me remember how young you are.’

Our eyes met. She was in some way moved. After a moment she said, in the same tone ‘Look. I want to go to this ball. They don’t give me much money, but I can always get plenty. Let me give you a present. Let me buy you a suit.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Are you too proud?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

She took my hand.

‘If I’d made you happier’, she said, ‘and then asked if I could give you a present — would you still be too proud?’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said.

‘Darling,’ she said. It was rare for her to use the word. ‘I can’t be articulate like you when you let yourself go. But if I ask you to let me do it — because of what’s happened between us?’

In a brand new dinner jacket, I arrived with the Knights at the charity ball. It was held in the large hall, close by the park, a few hundred yards away from where Martineau used to live. Perhaps that induced me at supper to tell the story of Martineau, so far as I then knew it; I had seen him leave the town on foot, with a knapsack on his back, only a few days before.

I told the story because someone had to talk. The supper tables were arranged in the corridors all round the main hall, and the meal was served before the dance began. As a party of four, we were not ideally chosen. Sheila was looking tired; she was boldly made up, much to her mother’s indignation, but the powder did not hide the rings under her eyes, and the painted lips were held in her involuntary smile. She was strained in the presence of her parents, and some of her nervousness infected me, the more so as I was still not well. With her usual directness and simplicity, Mrs Knight resented my presence. She produced a list of young men who, in her view, would have been valuable additions — some of whom Sheila had been seeing in the last few months, though she had resisted the temptation to let fall their names. As for Mr Knight, he was miserable to be there at all, and he was not the man to conceal his misery.

He was miserable for several reasons. He refused to dance, and he hated others enjoying fun which he was not going to share. His wife and Sheila were active, strong women, who loved using their muscles (Sheila, once set on a dance floor, forgot she had not wanted to come, and danced for hours); Mr Knight was an excessively lazy man, who preferred sitting down. He also hated to be at any kind of disadvantage. In his own house, backed by everything Mrs Knight could buy for him, he was playing on his home ground. He did not like going out, where people might not recognize him or offer the flattery which sustained him.

I picked up an example right at the beginning of supper. Mrs Knight announced that the bishop had brought a party to the hall. Shouldn’t they call on him during the evening? I could feel that she had not abandoned hope of getting her husband some preferment.

‘Not unless he asks us, darling,’ said Mr Knight faintly.

‘You can’t expect him to remember everyone,’ said Mrs. Knight, with brisk common sense.

‘He ought to have remembered me,’ said Mr Knight. ‘Heought to have.’

I guessed that conversation had been repeated often. She had always planned for him to go far in the Church; he was far more gifted than many who had climbed to the top. When she married him, she was prepared to find ways of getting all the bishops on the bench to meet him. But he would not do his share. As he grew older, he could not humble himself at all. He had too much arrogance, too much diffidence, to play the world’s game. Later on, I ran across a good many men who had real gifts but who, in the worldly sense, were failures; and in most of them there was a trace of Mr Knight; like him, they were so arrogant and so diffident that they dared not try.

Mr Knight was miserable; Mrs Knight indignant; Sheila strained. We did not talk much for the first half of supper, and then, in desperation, I brought out the story of Martineau.

‘He must be a crank,’ said Mrs Knight as soon as I finished. ‘Well, Mrs Knight,’ I said, ‘no one could call him an ordinary man.’

‘Harry Eden’, she decided, ‘must be glad to see the back of him.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Mr Eden is devoted to him.’

‘Harry Eden was always a loyal person,’ said Mrs Knight.

Sheila broke in, clearly, as though she were thinking aloud: ‘He’ll enjoy himself!’

‘Who will?’ her mother asked obtusely.

‘Your Martineau.’ Sheila was looking at me. ‘He’ll enjoy every minute of it! It’s not a sacrifice.’

‘Of course’, said Mr Knight, in his most beautifully modulated voice, ‘many religions have sprung up from sources such as this. We must remember that there are hundreds of men like Martineau in every century, Those are the people who start false religions, but I admit that many of them have felt something true.’ Mr Knight was theologically fair-minded; but his nose was out of joint. If anyone was to act as raconteur to that party, he should do so. He proceeded to tell a long story about the Oneida community. He told it with art, far better than I had told mine, and as we chuckled, he became less sulky. I thought (for I was irritated at not being allowed to shine in front of Sheila) that his story had every advantage, but that mine was at any rate first-hand.

After supper I danced with Sheila and Mrs Knight alternately. They had many acquaintances there, who kept coming up to claim Sheila. As I watched her round the hall, my jealous inquisitiveness flew back, like a detective summoned to an unpleasant duty: was this one with whom she had threatened me last year? But, when I danced with her, she did not mention any of her partners. Her father was behaving atrociously, she said with her usual ruthlessness. And she had to talk to all these other people; she wanted to be quiet with me. So, much of the night, we danced in a silence that to me was languorous.

It was far otherwise in my alternate dances. Mrs Knight disapproved of me, but she demanded her exercise, and dancing with her became vigorous and conversational. She took it heartily, for she had a real capacity for pleasure. I was an unsatisfactory young man, but I was better than no one to whirl her round. She got hot and merry, and as we passed her friends on the floor she greeted them in her loud horsy voice. And she surprised me by issuing instructions that I was to take care of myself.

‘You’re not looking so well as you did,’ she said, in a brusque maternal stand-no-nonsense manner.

I explained that I had been working hard.

‘You’re not keeping fit. You’re pale,’ she said. ‘How long is it to your exam?’

I knew that exactly. ‘Ten weeks.’

‘You mustn’t crock up, you know.’

I knew that too. Yet, though I wished she was not Sheila’s mother, I was coming to like her. And, dancing with her at that ball early in 1927, I had a curious thought. George and I and thoughtful persons round us used to predict that our lives were going to see violent changes in the world. At the ball, inside the Knights’ house, those predictions seemed infinitely remote, a bubble no more real than others that George blew. Yet if they came true, if Mrs Knight lost all, lost servants and house and had to work with her hands and cook for her husband, I could imagine her doing it as heartily as she was dancing now. I should not like to be within the range of her indignation, but she would survive.

For one dance, both she and Sheila were taken off by others and I was left at our table with Mr Knight. Out of the corner of his eye, he must have noticed that my own glance was drawn time and again to follow Sheila. He was still bad-tempered at being ignored so much that night, and he did not intend to let me sit and dream. He required me as an audience and I had to listen to the main points of a letter that he thought of writing to The Times. Then, half-maliciously, he made me look at a dark-haired girl in a red dress, just dancing by our corner of the hall.

‘I’m not certain of your standards, Eliot,’ he said, ‘but should you say that she was pretty?’

‘Very,’ I said.

‘They live in my parish, but they don’t attend. I’m afraid that she’s broken a good many hearts.’

He was being deliberately oblique, I knew. He did not appear to be watching me, but he was making sure that I concentrated on the girl in the red dress.

‘She ought to get married,’ he said. ‘She ought to get married. It’s bad for anyone to break too many hearts. It shows there’s something’ — he paused — ‘shall I say torn? inside their own.’

He was, of course, talking in code. That was the nearest he would come to mentioning Sheila. But he was so subtle and oblique that I could not be certain what he was telling me. Was he giving me a warning? Was he trying to share a worry, knowing that I loved her, feeling that I too was lost and concerned for what might happen to her? Was he, incredibly, encouraging me? Or was he just being malicious at my expense? I had no idea. In his serious moments, when he gave up acting, I never knew where I was with Mr Knight.

Soon after, Sheila said that she wanted some air. Instead of dancing, we walked outside the hall. There was nowhere to sit out, except in the colonnades which looked over the park. She took my arm, and we stood there. Couples were strolling behind us, though the March night was sharp. Right round the other side of the park, the tram-standards made a necklace of lights (we were looking in the direction that I walked, feet light with hope, the last Christmas Eve but one).

‘Rather pretty,’ said Sheila. Then she asked, unexpectedly: ‘What does Martineau believe?’

I had to collect myself before I replied.

I said: ‘I’m not sure that he knows himself. I think he’d say that the only way to live a Christian life was to live like Christ. But—’

‘He’s doing it because he wants to do it,’ said Sheila. From the lights of the hall behind, I could see her face. She was lined, harassed, concentrated, and rapt. Her beauty was haggard; she was speaking with absolute certainty. ‘All people are selfish, Though they make a better show of it than I do. He’ll go about humbly helping his fellow men because it makes him feel good to do it.’

Looking into the dark stretches of the park, she said: ‘What do you believe?’

I gripped her arm, but she said, in the same tone: ‘I don’t want to hear anything nice. What do you believe?’

I told her — and anything I said seemed flat after the rapt question — that I had no faith in any of the faiths. For me, there was something which took their place; I wanted to find some of the truths about human beings.

‘Yes,’ said Sheila. In a moment, she said: ‘I believe in something.’

‘What?’

She said: ‘I believe in joy.’

We did not speak again before we returned to the Knights’ table. The dance that we had left was not yet ended, and Mrs Knight looked gratified that we had come back so soon. Mr Knight reclined heavily in his chair, spreading himself in the company of his womenfolk. I had just heard an affirmation which sounded in my mind throughout Sheila’s life and after, as clear, as thrilling, as vulnerable, and as full of hope, as when she stared over the park and spoke into the darkness. Yet that evening it vanished as quickly as a childhood dread. Just then it seemed only a remark, past and already half-forgotten, as, tired and subdued, she took her place by her father. Mr Knight’s splendid voice rose, and we all listened to him.

There were nights when it was a pleasure to lie awake. Outside, a train would rattle and roar over the bridge (I remembered, in the Zeppelin raids, my mother saying: ‘The trains are our friends. When you can hear them, you feel that everything is going on all right.’). I had finished another textbook, and lay there, with a triumphant surge of mastery, because I knew it inside out; I would ask myself a question, answer it as though I were already in the examination hall, and then switch on the light to see if I had any detail wrong.

And, night after night, I did not want to sleep until I had re-cherished, like a collector going over his prints, each moment and each word of that absurd scene in the Knights’ drawing-room, with Sheila snuffling her m’s and n’s, and saying ‘I wadt you to cub to the ball.’

As I thought of her so, my prayers were cut in two, and my longings contradicted each other. On the one side, I begged: let me stay here, having known that comical delight, having known loving peace; let me stay cherishing it, for that afternoon was so delicate that it would perish at a touch. On the other, I wanted all, not just the tantalizing promise: I wanted to be sure of her, to fight my way Past the jealousies, to rely on such afternoons for the staple of my life, to risk any kind of pain until I had her for my own.

The first time we met after the ball, neither of us said a word that was not trivial. I was happy; it was an hour in a private world, in which we lived inside a crystal shell, so fragile that either of us could speak and shatter it.

At our next meeting, she did speak. Although she was ‘trying to behave’, she had to let slip, for the first time since our reconciliation, that a new admirer was trying to rush her. After one dinner he was demanding some fixture for each day of the next week.

‘Shall you go?’

‘I shall go once,’ Sheila said.

‘Shall you go more than once?’

‘It depends on how much I like him.’ She was getting restive, and there was a harsh glint in her eyes.

There and then I knew I must settle it. I could not go on in this suspense. Even though, before we parted, Sheila said awkwardly: ‘He’s probably not a very useful young man.’

I must settle it, I thought. I decided how I must talk to her. We had arranged our next assignation in the usual place. I copied her action when she had her cold, and wrote to say that I was laid up. I could borrow some crockery from my landlady — would Sheila come and make some tea for me?

The March afternoon was cloudy; I turned the gas fire full on, and it snored away, brilliant in the dark room. I had tried to work, but gave it up, and was sitting on the bed, listening, for each footstep on the stairs.

At last I heard her. At last, but it was only a minute past the hour. The nerves at my elbows seemed stretched like piano strings. Sheila entered, statuesque in the light from the gas fire.

‘You needn’t have asked me to make tea,’ she began without any preliminary. ‘I should have done it without asking.’

We kissed. I hoped that she did not notice that my hands were shaking. She patted my shoulder.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing much,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit strung up, that’s all.’

She switched on the light.

‘I shall never have a bedside manner,’ she said. ‘Look, if you’re worried, you ought to see poor Tom Devitt. He was a sensible doctor.’

I thought it was not meant to be cruel. In her innocence, that was over long ago.

‘You rest,’ she said. ‘I’ll make the tea. You needn’t have asked me.’

She had brought some cakes, though she never ate them, some books, and, eccentrically, a tie. There was something random about her kindness: it was like a child trying to be kind. She was gay, putting the kettle on the gas ring, making tea, giving me my cup. She switched off the light again, and sat on the other side of the fire, upright on the hard chair. She talked on, light and friendly. The suspense was raging inside me. I answered absently, sometimes after a delay, sometimes not at all. She looked inquiringly ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

I was quivering, so that I took hold of the bedrail.

She asked another question, about some book or person, which I did not hear. The blood was throbbing in my neck, and I could wait no longer.

‘Sheila,’ I said. ‘Marry me.’

She gazed at me, and did not speak. The seconds spread themselves so that I could not tell how long a time had passed; I could hear the fire, whose noise was a roar in my ears, and my own heart.

‘How ever would you manage’, she asked, ‘to keep us both?’

I had anticipated any response but that. I was so much astonished that I smiled. My hands were steadier, and for the first time that day I felt a respite.

‘We might have to wait,’ I said. ‘Or I’d find a way.’

‘I suppose you could. Yes, you’ve got plenty of resource.’

‘But it’s not important,’ I cried. ‘With you—’

‘It might be important,’ said Sheila. ‘You never give me credit for any common sense.’

‘It’s not the point,’ I said. ‘And you know it’s not.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said, as though reluctantly.

‘If you’ll marry me,’ I said, ‘I’ll find a way.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Do you think I’m playing?’

‘No.’ She was frowning. ‘You know me better than anyone else does, don’t you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Yes, you do,’ she said, ‘That’s why I came back. And you still want to marry me?’

‘More than anything that I shall ever want.’

‘Lewis, if I married you I should like to be a good wife. But I couldn’t help it — I should injure you. I might injure you appallingly.’

‘That is for me to face,’ I said. ‘I want you to marry me.’

‘Oh,’ she cried. She stood up, rested an elbow on the mantelpiece, arched her back, and warmed her calves in front of the fire. I watched the glow upon her stockings; she was silent, looking not at me but straight down the room. Then she spoke: ‘If I marry, I shall hope to be in love.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not in love with you,’ she said. ‘You know that, and I’ve told you.’ She was still not looking at me. ‘I’m not in love with you,’ she repeated. ‘Sometimes I ask myself why I’m not. I ask myself what’s the matter with me — or what’s missing in me, if you like.’

A few times in my life, there came moments I could not escape. This was one. I could not escape the moment in which I heard her voice, high, violent, edged with regret and yet with no pity for herself or me.

In time, I asked: ‘Must it always be so?’

‘How do I know?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You can answer that — maybe better than I can.’

‘Tell me what you feel.’

‘If you must hear,’ she said, ‘I think I shall never love you.’ She added: ‘You may as well hear the rest. I’ve been hoping I should love you — for a long time now. I’d rather love you than any of the others. I don’t know why. You’re not as nice as people think.’

At that, having heard the bitterest news of my young manhood, I burst out laughing, and pulled her down on to my knee to kiss her. That final piece of ruthless observation took away my recognition of what I had just heard; and suddenly she was glad to be caressed and to caress. For now she was radiant. Anyone watching us then, without having heard the conversation, would have guessed that she had just received a proposal she was avid to accept — or, more likely, that she was out to win someone of whom she was almost but not quite sure. She was attentive, sleek, and shining. She was anxious to stroke my face when I looked downcast. She wanted to rub away the lines until I appeared as radiant as she did. She was reproachful if, for a moment, I fell into silence. She made me lie on the bed, sat by me, and then went out to buy supper. About that we had what to all appearance was a mild, enjoyable lovers’ quarrel. She proposed to fetch fish and chips: I told her that, despite her lack of snobbery, she was enough a child of the upper middle class to feel that the pastimes and diet of the poor were really glamorous. The romance of slumming, I said. You’re all prostrating yourselves before the millions, I said. And I had a reasonable argument: I had to live in that room; her sense of smell was weak, but mine acute. She pouted, and I said that classical faces were not designed for pouting. We ended in an embrace, and I got my way.

She left late in the evening, so late that I wondered how she would get home. Wondering about her, suddenly I felt the lack of her physical presence in the room. Then — it came like a grip on the throat — I realized what had happened to me. The last few hours had been make-believe. She had spoken the truth. That was all.

It was no use going to bed. I sat unseeing, just where I sat while she answered my proposal. She had spoken with her own integrity. She was as much alone as I was — more, for she had none of the compensations that my surface nature gave me as I moved about the world. She had spoken out of loneliness, and out of her craving for joy. If my heart broke, it broke. If I could make her love me, well and good. It was sauve qui peut. In her ruthlessness, she had no space for the sentimentalities of compassion, or the comforting life. She could take the truth herself, and so must I.

Had I a chance? Would she ever love me? I heard her final voice — ‘if you must hear’ — and then I thought, why had she been so happy afterwards? Was it simply that she was triumphant at hearing a proposal? There was a trace of that. It brought back my mocking affection for her, which was strongest when I could see her as much chained to the earth as I was myself. She could behave, in fact, like an ordinary young woman of considerable attractions, and sit back to count her conquests. There was something predatory about her, and something vulgar. Yes, she had relished being proposed to. Yet, I believed, with a residue of hope, that did not explain the richness of her delight. She was happy because I had proposed to her. There was a bond between us, though on her side it was not the bond of love.

But that — I heard her final voice — was the only bond she craved.

I did not know how to endure it. Sitting on my bed, staring blindly at where she had stood, I thought what marriage with her would be like. It would only be liveable if she were subjugated by love. Otherwise she would tear my heart to pieces. Yet, my senses and my memories tore also at my heart, even my memories of that night, and I did not know how to endure losing her.

I did not know on what terms we could go on. I had played my last card, I had tried to cut my suspense, and I had only increased it. Would she sustain the loving make-believe of the last few hours? If she did not, I could not stand jealousy again. I was not strong enough to endure the same torments, with no light at the end. Now it rested in her hands.

I had not long to wait. The first time we met after my proposal, she was gay and airy, and I could not match her spirits. The second time, she told me, quite casually, that she had visited the town the day before.

‘Why didn’t you let me know?’ The cry forced itself out.

She frowned, and said: ‘I thought we’d cleared the air.’

‘Not in that way.’

She said: ‘I thought now we knew where we stood.’

I had no intention then. But, unknown to me, one was forming.

Three days later, we met again, in the usual alcove in the usual café. She had come from her hairdresser’s, and looked immaculately beautiful. I thought, with resentment, with passion, that I had seen her dishevelled in my arms. Through tea we kept up a busy conversation. She made some sarcastic jokes, to which I replied in kind. She said that she was going to a dance. I did not say a word, but went back to the previous conversations. We were talking about books, as though we were high-spirited, literary-minded students, who had met by accident.

She went on trying to reach me — but she knew that I was not there. Her face had taken on an expression of puzzled, almost humorous distress. Her eyes were quizzically narrowed.

She asked the time, and I told her five o’clock.

‘I’ve got lots of time. I needn’t go home for hours,’ she said.

I did not speak.

‘What shall we do?’ she persisted.

‘Anything you like,’ I said, indifferently.

‘That’s useless.’ She looked angry now.

Automatically I said, as I used to: ‘Come to my room.’

‘Yes,’ said Sheila, and began powdering her face.

Then my intention, which up to then I had not known, broke out.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘What?’ She looked up from her mirror.

‘Sheila,’ I said, ‘I am going to send you away.’

‘Why?’ she cried.

‘You ought to know.’

She was gazing at me, steadily, frankly, unrelentingly. She said: ‘If you send me away now, I shall go.’

‘That’s what I want.’

‘Once I shouldn’t have. I should have come back and apologized. I shan’t do that now, if you get rid of me.’

‘I don’t expect you to,’ I said.

‘If I do go, I shall keep away. I shall take it that you don’t want to see me. This time I shan’t move a single step.’

‘That’s all I ask,’ I replied.

‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sure.’

Without another word, Sheila pulled on her coat. We walked through the smoky café. I noticed our reflections in a steam-filmed mirror. We were both white.

At the door we said the bare word, goodbye. It was raining hard, and she ran for a taxi. I saw her go.

One day, between my proposal to Sheila and our parting, I met Marion. I was refreshed to see her. I found time to speculate whether Jack had, in fact, slipped in a word. She was much more certain of herself than she used to be. Of us all, owing to her acting, she had become most of a figure in the town. She threw her head back and laughed, confidently and with a rich lilt. I had no doubt that she had found admirers, and perhaps a lover. Her old earnestness had vanished, though she would always stay the least cynical of women.

With me she was friendly, irritated, protective. Like many others at that time, like Mrs Knight at the ball, she noticed at once that I was looking physically strained. It was easy to perceive, for I had a face on which wear and tear painted itself. The lines, as with Sheila, were etching themselves while I was young.

Marion was perturbed and cross.

‘We’ve got to deliver you in London on the—’ It was like her to have remembered the exact date of Bar Finals. ‘We don’t want to send you there on a stretcher, Lewis.’

She scolded George.

‘You mustn’t let him drink,’ she said. ‘Really, you’re like a lot of children. I think I’m the only grown-up person among the lot of you.’

Against my will, she made me promise that, if I did not feel better, I would go to a doctor.

I was afraid to go. Partly I had the apprehension of any young man who does not know much of his physical make-up. There might be something bad to learn, and I was frightened of it.

But also I had a short-term fear, a gambler’s fear. Come what may, I could not stop working. It was imperative to drive myself on until the examination. Nothing should stop that; a doctor might try to. After the examination I could afford to drop, not now.

I parted from Sheila on a Friday afternoon. The next morning, as I got out of bed, I reeled with giddiness. The room turned and heaved; I shut my eyes and clutched the mantelpiece. The fit seemed to last, wheeling the room round outside my closed eyelids, for minutes. I sat back on the bed, frightened and shaken. What in God’s name was this? Nevertheless, I got through my day’s quota of reading. If I broke the programme now, I was defeated. I felt well enough to remember what I worked at. But the next morning I had another attack, and for two days afterwards, usually in the morning, once at night.

I was afraid: and above all I was savagely angry. It would be intolerable to be cheated at this stage. Despite Sheila, despite all that had happened to me, I had got myself well-prepared. That I knew. It was something I had to know; I should suffer too much if I deceived myself this time. George was speaking not with his cosmic optimism, but as a technical expert, when he encouraged me. Recently I had asked him the chances. George did not think naturally in terms of odds, but I pressed him. What was the betting on my coming out high in the first class? In the end, George had answered that he thought the chances were better than even.

It would be bitter beyond bearing to be cheated now. My mind was black with rage. But I was also ignorant and frightened. I had no idea what these fits meant. My fortitude had cracked. I had to turn to someone for help.

I thought of calling on old Dr Francis — but, almost involuntarily one evening, after struggling through another day’s work, I began walking down the hill to the infirmary. I was going to ask for Tom Devitt. The infirmary was very near, I told myself, I should get it over quicker; Tom was a modern doctor, and the old man’s knowledge must have become obsolete; but those were excuses. She had spoken of him the afternoon that I proposed, and I went to him because of that.

At the infirmary I explained to a nurse that I was an acquaintance of Devitt’s, and would like to see him in private. She said, suspiciously, formidably, that the doctor was busy. At last I coerced her into telephoning him. She gave him my name. With a bad grace she told me that he was free at once.

I was taken to his private sitting-room. It overlooked the garden, from which, in the April sunshine, patients were being wheeled. Devitt looked at me with a sharp, open, apprehensive stare. He greeted me with a question in his voice. I was sure that he expected some dramatic news of Sheila.

‘I’m here under false pretences,’ I had to say. ‘I’m presuming on your good nature — because we met once. I’m not well, and I wondered if you’d look me over.’

Devitt’s expression showed disappointment, relief, a little anger.

‘You ought to have arranged an appointment,’ he said irritably. But he was a kind man, and he could no more forget my name than I could his.

‘I’m supposed to be off duty,’ he said. ‘Oh well, You’d better sit down and tell me about yourself.’

We had met just the once. Now I saw him again, either my first impression had been gilded, or else he had aged and softened in between. He was very bald, his cheeks were flabby and his neck thickening. His eyes wore the kind of fixed, lost look that I had noticed in men who, designed for a happy, relaxed, comfortable life, had run into ill luck and given up the game. I should not have been surprised to hear that Devitt could not bear an hour alone, and went each night for comfort to his club.

There was also a certain grumbling quality which overlaid his kindness. He was much more a tired, querulous, professional man than I had imagined him. But he was, I felt, genuinely kind. In addition, he was businesslike and competent, and, as I discovered when I finished telling him my medical history, had an edge to his tongue.

‘Well,’ said Tom Devitt, ‘how many diseases do you think you’ve got?’

I smiled. I had not expected such a sharp question.

‘I expect you must have diagnosed TB for yourself. It’s a romantic disease of the young, isn’t it—’

He sounded my lungs, said: ‘Nothing there. They can X-ray you to make sure, but I should be surprised.’ Then he set to work. He listened to my heart, took a sample of blood, went through a whole clinical routine. I was sent into the hospital to be photographed. When I came back to his room Devitt gave me a cigarette. He seemed to be choosing his words before he began to speak.

‘Well, old chap,’ he said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything organically wrong with you. You’ve got a very slight mitral murmur—’ He explained what it was, said that he had one himself and that it meant he had to pay an extra percentage on his insurance premium. ‘You needn’t get alarmed about that. You’ve got a certain degree of anaemia. That’s all I can find. I shall be very annoyed if the X-rays tell us anything more. So the general picture isn’t too bad, you know.’

I felt great comfort.

‘But still,’ went on Tom Devitt, ‘it doesn’t seem to account for the fact that you’re obviously pretty shaky. You are extremely run down, of course. I’m not sure that I oughtn’t to tell you that you’re dangerously run down.’ He looked at me, simply and directly: ‘I suppose you’ve been having a great deal of worry?’

‘A great deal,’ I said.

‘You ought to get rid of it, you know. You need at least six months doing absolutely nothing, and feeding as well as you can — you’re definitely undernourished — and without a worry in your head.’

‘Instead of which,’ I said, ‘in a month’s time I take the most important examination of my career.’

‘I should advise you not to.’

At that point I had to take him into my confidence. I was not ready to discuss Sheila, even though he desired it and gave me an opening. ‘Some men can have their health break down — through something like a broken engagement,’ said Tom Devitt naïvely.

‘I can believe that,’ I said, and left it there. But I was quite open about my circumstances, how I was placed for money, what this examination meant. For every reason I had to take it this year. If my health let me down, I had lost.

‘Yes,’ said Devitt. ‘Yes. I see.’ He seemed taken aback, discomfited.

‘Well,’ he added, ‘it’s a pity, but I don’t think there’s a way out. I agree, you must try to keep going. Good luck to you, that’s all I can say. Perhaps we can help you just a bit. I should think the most important thing is to see that you manage to sleep.’

I smiled to myself; on our only other meeting, he had been concerned whether I got enough sleep. He gave me a couple of prescriptions, and then, before I went, a lecture.

He told me, in an uncomfortable, grumbling fashion, that I was taking risks with my health; I was probably not unhealthy, but I was liable to over-respond; I was sympathetotonic; I might live to be eighty if I took care of myself. ‘It’s no use telling you to take care of yourself,’ said Tom Devitt. ‘I know that. You’ll be lucky if you have a comfortable life physically, old chap.’

I thanked him. I was feeling both grateful and relieved, and I wanted him to have a drink with me. He hesitated. ‘No. Not now,’ he said. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’m very glad you came. I hope you pull it off. It would be nice to have been some good to you.’

I rejoiced that thought, and, though I had another bout of giddiness next day, I felt much better. Perhaps because of Devitt’s reassurance, the bouts themselves seemed to become less frequent. I read and wrote with the most complete attention that I could screw out of myself. I was confident now that I should last the course.

On the Saturday I travelled out to the farm later than the rest, because I could not spare the afternoon. I had not said much to George about my health. To the little I told him, he was formally sympathetic; but in his heart he thought it all inexplicable and somewhat effeminate.

I was so much heartened that I needed to tell someone the truth, and as soon as I saw Marion among the group I took her aside and asked her to come for a walk. We struck across the fields — in defiance. I headed in the direction of the vicarage — and I remarked that I had kept my promise and gone to a doctor. Then I confessed about my symptoms, and what Devitt had said.

‘I’m very much relieved, I really am,’ cried Marion, ‘Now you must show some sense.’

‘I shall arrive at this examination,’ I said. ‘That’s the main thing.’

‘That’s one thing. But you mustn’t think you can get away with it for ever.’ She nagged me as no one else would have done: I was too wilful, I tried to ride over my illnesses, I was incorrigibly careless of myself.

‘Anyone else would have gone to a doctor months ago,’ she said. ‘That would have spared you a lot of worry — and some of your friends too, I may say. I’m very glad I made you go?’

I could hear those I’s, a little stressed, assertive in the middle of her yearning to heal and soothe and cherish. In all tenderness such as hers, there was the grasp of an ego beneath the balm. I had never romanticised Marion. People said she was good, full of loving-kindness, so free from sentimentality in her unselfish actions that one took from her what one could not from another. Much of that was true. Some of us had generous impulses, but she carried hers out. She never paraded her virtues, nor sacrificed herself unduly. If she enjoyed acting, then she spent her time at it, took and revelled in the applause. She was no hypocrite, and of all of us she did most practical good. And so Jack Cotery and the rest admired her more than any of our friends.

I was very fond of her, and flattered because she was fond of me. Yet I knew that in a sense she was vainer than Sheila, more grasping than myself. I think I liked her more because she needed applause for her tender actions. In my eyes, she was warm, tenacious, tough in her appetite for life, and deep down surprisingly self-centred. It was her lively, self-centred strength that I drew most refreshment from; that and her feeling for me. There was no war inside her, her body and soul were fused and would in the end find fulfilment and happiness. As a result, her company often brought me peace.

She brought me peace that evening (in the lanes I had once walked wet through) in a cool twilight when, behind the lacework of the trees, the sky shone a translucent apple-green. There I confided to her, far more than I had to anyone, of what had happened between me and Sheila. I was too secretive to reveal the depth of my ecstasy, torments, and hope; some of it I wrapped up in mockery and sarcasm; but I gave her a history which, so far as it went, was true. She received it with an interest that was affectionate, greedy, and matter-of-fact. Perversely, so it seemed to me, she did not regard Sheila’s behaviour as particularly out of the ordinary. She domesticated it with a curious, quasi-physical freemasonry, as though she or any other woman might have done the same. She did not consider Sheila either excessively beautiful or strange, just a young woman who was ‘not quite certain what she wanted’. Marion’s concern was directly for me, ‘Yes, it was a pity you ran across her,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I expect you puzzled her as much as she did you — that is, if I know anything about you.’

I was wondering.

‘Still, it’s better for you that it’s over. I’m glad.’

We had turned towards home. The green of the sky was darkening to purple.

‘So you sent her away?’ she said.

‘Yes, I sent her away.’

‘I don’t expect she liked that. But I believe it was right for you.’

In the half-dark I put my arm round her waist. She leaned back, warm and solid, against me. Then, with a recoil of energy, she sprang away.

‘No, my lad. Not yet. Not yet.’ She was laughing.

I protested.

‘Oh no,’ said Marion. ‘I’ve got something to say first. Are you free of Sheila?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you. I’ve parted from her.’

‘That’s not the same,’ said Marion. ‘My dear, I’m serious. You ought to know I’m not a capricious girl. And’, she said, firmly, confidently, reproachfully, ‘you must think of me for once. I’ve given you no reason to treat me badly.’

‘Less than anyone,’ I said.

‘So I want you to be honest. Answer my question again. Are you free of Sheila?’

The first stars were coming out. I saw Marion’s eyes, bright, not sad but vigilant.

I wanted to know her love. But she forced me not to lie. I thought of how I had gone, as though hypnotized, to Tom Devitt, because his life was linked to Sheila’s; I thought of my memories, and of waking at nights from dreams that taunted me. I said ‘Perhaps not quite. But I shall be soon.’

‘That’s honest, anyway,’ Marion said, with anger in her voice. Then she laughed again. ‘Don’t be too long. Then take me out. I’m not risking you on the rebound.’

Decorously, she slipped an arm through mine.

‘We’re going to be late for supper, my lad. Let’s move. We’ll talk of something sensible — like your exam.’

In the late spring, in April and early May, even the harsh red brick of the town seemed softened, The chestnuts flowered along the road to Eden’s house, the lilacs in the gardens outside Martineau’s. I was near the end of my reading, George’s calculations had not been fallible, and I had only two more authorities to master. In the mild spring days I used to take my books to the park, and work there.

But there were times when, sitting on a bench with my notebook, I was distracted. On the breeze, the odour of the blossoms reached me; I ached with longing; I was full of restlessness, of an unnamed hope. Those were the days when I went into the town in the afternoon; I looked into shop windows, stood in bookshops, went up and down the streets, searched among the faces in the crowd; I never visited our usual café, for she did not go there alone, but I had tea in turn in all those where I had known her meet her mother. I did not see her, neither there, nor at the station (I remembered her trains as I did my last page of notes). Was it just chance? Was she deliberately staying at home? Was she helping me to see her no more? I told myself that it was better. In the spring sunshine, I told myself that it was better.

On the day before I left for London and the examination, George, to whom formal occasions were sacred, had insisted that there must be a drinking party to wish me success. I had to go, it would have wounded George not to; but I, more superstitious and less formal, did not like celebrations before an event. So I was grateful when Marion gave me an excuse to cut the party short.

‘I’ll cook you a meal first,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be certain that you have one square meal before your first paper.’

I ate supper in her lodgings before I joined George at our public house. Marion was an excellent cook in the hearty English country style, the style of the small farmers and poor-to-middling yeomen stock from which she came. She gave me roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, an apple pie with cheese, a great Welsh rarebit. Eating as I did in snacks and pieces, being at my landlady’s mercy for breakfast, and having to count the pennies even for my snacks, I had not tasted such a meal for long enough.

‘Lewis,’ said Marion, ‘you’re hungry.’ She added: ‘I’m glad I thought of it. Cooking’s a bore, whatever anyone tells you, so I nearly didn’t. Shall I tell you why I decided to feed you?’

Comfortably, I nodded my head.

‘It’s just laying a bait for large returns to come. When you’re getting rich and successful, I shall come to London and expect the best dinners that money can buy.’

‘You shall have them.’ I was touched: this meal had been her method of encouraging me, practical, energetic, half-humorous.

‘You see, Lewis, I think you’re a pretty good bet.’ Soon after, she said: ‘You’ve not told me. Have you seen Sheila again?’

‘No.’

‘How much have you thought about her?’

I wished that she would not disturb the well-being in the room. Again I had to force myself to answer truly.

I said: ‘Now and then — I see ghosts.’

She frowned and laughed.

‘You are tiresome, aren’t you? No, I mustn’t be cross with you. I asked for it.’ Her eyes were flashing. ‘Go and polish off this exam. Then you must have a holiday. And then — ghosts don’t live for ever.’

She smiled luxuriously, as though the smile spread over her whole skin.

‘I’m afraid’, she said, ‘that I was meant to be moist and jealous and adoring.’

I smiled back. It was not an invitation at that moment. We sat and smoked in silence, in a thunderous comfort, until it was time for my parting drink with George.

Just as George, on the subject of how to prepare for an examination, advised me as though he were one of nature’s burgesses, so I behaved like one. I went to London two days before the first paper; I obeyed the maxims that were impressed upon all students, and I slammed the last notebook shut with a night and a day to spare. Slammed it so that I could hear the noise in the poky, varnish-smelling bedroom at Mrs Reed’s. Now I was ready. One way or the other, I thought, challenging the luck, I should not have to stay in that house again.

I spent a whole day at the Oval, with all my worries shut away but one. I did not think about the papers, but I was anxious lest, at the last moment, I might be knocked out by another turn of sickness. I had been feeling better in the past weeks, and I was well enough as I lolled on the benches for a day, and as I meandered back to Judd Street in the evening. I walked part of the way, over Vauxhall Bridge and along the river, slowly and with an illusion of calm. I stopped to gaze at a mirage-like sight of St Paul’s and the city roofs mounted above the evening mist. Confidence seeped through me in the calm — except that, even now, I might be ill.

I slept that night, but I slept lightly. I had half woken many times, and it was early when I knew that it was impossible to sleep longer. I looked at the watch I had borrowed for the examination: it was not yet half past six. This was the day. I lay in bed, having wakened with the fear of the night before. Should I get up and test it? If I were going to be wrecked by giddiness that day, I might as well know now. Carefully I rose, trying not to move my head. I took three steps to the window, and threw up the blind, In streamed the morning sunlight. I was steady enough. Recklessly, I exclaimed aloud. I was steady enough.

I did not return to bed, but read until breakfast time, a novel I had borrowed from Marion; and at breakfast I was not put off either by Mrs Reed’s abominable food or the threat of her abominable postcards. ‘I’ve got one ready for you to take away,’ she told me, with her ferocious bonhomie. ‘I’ll send you a bouquet,’ I said jauntily, for the only way to cope with her was not to give an inch. I sometimes wondered if she had a nerve in her body; if she knew young men were nervous at examinations; if she had ever been nervous herself, and how she had borne it.

In good time, I caught a bus down to the Strand. Russell Square and Southampton Row and Kingsway shimmered in the clean morning light. My breath caught, in something between anticipation and fear, between pleasure and pain. Streams of people were crossing the streets towards their offices; the women were wearing summer dresses, for the sky was cloudless, there were all the signs of a lovely day.

The examination was to be held in the dining hall of an Inn. I was one of the first to arrive outside the doors, although there was already a small knot of candidates, mainly Indians. There I waited by myself, watching a gardener cut the lawn, smelling the new-mown grass. Now the nervousness was needle-sharp. I could not resist stealing glances at my watch, though it was only two minutes since I had last looked. A quarter of an hour to go. It was intolerably long, it was a no man’s land of time, neither mine nor inimical fate’s. Charles March came up with a couple of acquaintances, discussing, in his carrying voice, in his first-hand, candid, concentrated fashion, why he should be ‘in a state’ before an examination which mattered nothing and which even he, despite his idleness, presumably would manage to scrape through. I smiled. Later I explained to him why I smiled. As the doors creaked open, he wished me good luck.

I said: ‘I shall need it.’

The odour of the hall struck me as I went quickly in. It made my heart jump in this intense expectancy, in this final moment. I found my place, at the end of a gangway. The question paper rested, white, shining, undisturbed, in the middle of the desk. I was reading it, tearing my way through it, before others had sat down.

At first I felt I had never seen these words before. It was like opening an innings, when one is conscious of the paint on the crease, of the bowler rubbing the ball, as though it were all unprecedented, happening for the first time. The rubrics to the questions themselves seemed sinister in their unfamiliarity: ‘Give reasons why…’, ‘Justify the opinion that…’ Although I had read such formulas in each examination paper for years past, the words stared out, dazzling, black on the white sheet, as if they were shapes unknown.

That horror, that blank in my faculties, lasted only a moment. I wiped the sweat from my temples; it seemed that a switch had been touched. The first question might have been designed for me, if George had been setting the paper. I read on. I had been lucky — astonishingly lucky I thought later, but in the hall I was simply filled by a throbbing, combative zest. There was no question I could not touch. It was a paper without options, and eight out of ten I had waiting in my head, ready to be set down. The other two I should have to dig back for and contrive.

I took off my wristwatch and put it at the top of the desk, within sight as I wrote. I had at my fingers’ end the devices which made an answer easy to read. My memory was working with something like the precision of George’s. I had a trick, when going so fast, of leaving out occasional words: I must leave five minutes, prosaically I reminded myself, to read over what I had written. Several times, as though I had a photograph in front of me, I remembered in visual detail, in the position they occupied in a textbook, some lines that I had studied. In they went to my answer, with a little lead-up and gloss. I was hot, I had scarcely lifted my eyes, obscurely I knew that Charles March was farther up the hall, on the other side of the gangway. This was the chance to try everything I possessed: and I gloried in it.

The luck remained with me throughout. Of all the past papers I had worked over, none had suited me as well as the set this year. Nearly all the specialized knowledge I had acquired from George came in useful (not the academic law he had taught me, but the actual cases that went through a provincial solicitor’s hands). On the afternoon of the first day I was half-incredulous when I saw my opportunities. Then I forgot everything, fatigue, the beating of my heart, the sweat on my face, as for three hours I made the most of them.

I was jubilant that first night. Jubilant but still guarded and in training, telling myself that it was too early to shout. In the warm May evening, though, I walked at leisure down Park Lane and through the great squares. Some of the houses were brilliant with lights, and through the open doors I saw staircases curving down to the wide halls. Cars drove up, and women swept past me on the pavement into those halls, leaving their perfume on the hot still air. In my youth, in my covetousness and pride and excitement, I thought that my time would come and that I too should entertain in such a house.

The last afternoon arrived, and the last paper. The spell had not broken. It suited me as well as the first. Except that by now I was tired, I had spun out my energies so that I was near the end of my tether. I wrote on, noticing my tiredness not much more than the extreme heat. But my timing was less automatic; I had finished the paper, read it through, and still had five minutes to spare.

Ah well, I was thinking, it has been pretty good. Each paper up to the standard of the first, and one distinctly better. One better than I could have hoped. Then the room went round, sickeningly round, and I clutched the desk. It was not a long attack; when I opened my eyes, the hall stood hazily there. I smiled to myself, a little uneasily. That was too close a call to relish.

I was still sick and giddy as Charles March came down the aisle; but he joined me, we left the hall together, and after the civilities of inquiring about each other’s performances we went to get some tea. I was glad of the chance. I had often wished to talk to him alone. We sat in a tea shop and did post mortems on the papers.

He was an active, rangily built young man with hair as fair as mine and excessively intelligent, inquiring eyes. At a glance, one could tell that he was a man of force and brains. He was also argumentative, which was in George’s style rather than mine, and had a talent for telling one home truths with the greatest possible edge. But he was capable of a most concentrated sympathy. Somehow he had divined that this examination was of cardinal importance to me. That afternoon at tea, seeing me delighted with what I had done, yet still strained and limp, he asked me to tell him. Why did it matter seriously? I had obviously done far better than he had, or than any sane person would consider necessary. Why did it matter? Did I feel like telling him?

Yes, I felt like it. In the clammy tea shop, with the papers spread on the table, I explained my position, under Charles March’s keen, hard, and appreciative eyes. It was out of my hands now, and I talked realistically and recklessly, frankly and with bravado. Until the result came out, I should have no idea what was to become of me.

‘Yes,’ said Charles March. ‘It’s too much to invest in one chance. Of course it is. You’ve done pretty well, of course.’ He pointed to the papers. ‘Whether you’ve done well enough — I don’t see that anyone can say.’

He was understanding. He knew that I could not have stood extravagant rosy prophecies just then.

Charles had refrained from any kind of roseate encouragement; and he was right, for I could not have received it. Yet, in the theatre that night, listening to the orchestra, I was all of a sudden carried on a wave of joy, certain that all I wanted was not a phantom in the future but already in my hands. I was not musical, but in the melody I possessed all I craved for. A name was mine; I was transferred from an unknown, struggling, apprehensive young man; a name was mine. Riches were mine; all the jewels of the imagination glittered for me, the houses, the Mediterranean, Venice, all I had pictured in my attic, looking down to the red brick houses and the slate; I was one of the lords of this world.

Yes, and love was mine. In the music, I remembered the serene hours with Sheila, her beautiful face, her sarcastic humour, the times when her spirit made mine lighter than a mortal’s, the circle of her arms round me and her skin close to.

I had not to struggle for her love. It was mine. I had the certainty of never-ending bliss. As I listened to the music, her love was mine.

When I returned to the town I had four weeks to wait for the result. And I hid from everyone I knew. I paid my duty call on George, to show him the papers and be cross-questioned about my answers: he, less perceptive than Charles March, shouted in all his insatiable optimism that I must have done superbly well. Then I hid, to get out of sight, out of reach of any question.

I was half-tempted to visit Marion. But our understanding was clear — and also, and this kept me away for certain, I was not fit to be watched by affectionate, shrewd eyes. I did not want to be seen by anyone who knew me at all, much less one who, like my mother, would claim the right of affection to know me well. Just as I had never shared my troubles with my mother, so I could not share this suspense now.

Could I have shared it with Sheila, I thought once? I could have talked to her; yet such troubles were so foreign to her, so earth-bound beside her own, that she would not touch them.

Since the night at the theatre, she had been constantly present in my mind. Not in the forefront, not like the shadow of the result. I was not harassed about her. Even with my days quite empty, I never once walked the streets where I might meet her, and in my prowls at night I was not looking for her face. Underneath, maybe, I knew what was to come, what my next act must be.

Yet, one evening in June, my first thought was of her when my landlady bawled up the stairs that a telegram had arrived. I had only received one telegram in my life, and that from Sheila. The examination result, I assumed, would come by the morning post. I ran down, ripped the telegram open just inside the front door. It was not from Sheila, but the blood rushed to my face. I read: CONGRATULATIONS AND HOMAGE STUDENTSHIP PRIZE ACCORDING TO PLAN SEE YOU SOON MARCH.

I threw it in the air and hugged my landlady.

‘Here it is,’ I cried.

I only half realized that the waiting was over — just as I had only half realized it when my mother proclaimed the news of my first examination, that solitary piece of good news in her hopeful life. I was practising the gestures of triumph before I felt it. On my way to George’s, telegram in hand, I was still stupefied. Not so George. ‘Naturally,’ he called out in a tremendous voice. ‘Naturally you’ve defeated the sunkets. This calls for a celebration.’

It got it. George and I called on our friends and we packed into the lounge of the Victoria. George was soon fierce with drink. ‘Drink up! Drink up!’ he cried, like an angry lion, to astonished salesmen who were sitting quietly over their evening pint. ‘Can you comprehend that this is the climacteric of our society?’ That extraordinary phrase kept recurring through the mists of drink, the faces, the speeches and the songs. Drunkenly, happily, I impressed upon a commercial traveller and his woman friend how essential it was to do not only well, but competitively and superlatively well, in certain professional examinations. I had known, I said in an ominous tone, many good men ruined through the lack of this precaution. I was so grave that they listened to me, and the traveller added his contribution upon the general increase in educational standards.

‘Toasts,’ cried George, in furious cheerfulness, and at the end of each threw his glass into the fireplace. The barmaids clacked and threatened, but we had been customers for years, we were the youngest of their regulars, they had a soft spot for us, and finally George, with formidable logic, demonstrated to them that this was, and nothing else could possibly be, the climacteric of our society.

It went on late. At midnight there was a crowd of us shouting in the empty streets. It was the last of my student nights in the town. George and I walked between the tramlines up to the park, with an occasional lorry hooting at us as it passed. There, in the middle of the road, I expressed my eternal debt to George. ‘I take some credit,’ said George magnificently. ‘Yes, I take some credit.’

I watched him walk away between the tramlines, massive under the arc lights, setting down his feet heavily, carefully, and yet still with a precarious steadiness, whistling and swinging his stick.

All the congratulations poured in except the one I wanted. There was no letter from Sheila. Yet, though that made me sad, I knew with perfect certainty what I was going to do.

I went to London to arrange my new existence. I arranged my interview with Herbert Getliffe, whose Chambers I was entering, on Eden’s advice; I found a couple of rooms in Conway Street, near the Tottenham Court Road. The rooms were only a little less bleak than my attic, for I was still cripplingly short of money, and might be so for years.

In something of the same spirit in which I had abandoned Aunt Milly’s and spent money living on my own, I treated myself to a week in a South Kensington hotel. Then, since it was the long vacation, I should return to the attic for my last weeks in the town — and in October I was ready for another test of frugality in Conway Street. But in this visit, when I was arranging the new life, I deserted Mrs Reed’s and indulged myself in comfort — just to prove that I was not frightened, that I was not always touching wood.

It was from that hotel that I wrote to Sheila, asking her to meet me.

I wrote to Sheila. Since the examination I had known that if she did not break the silence, I should. Despite the rebellion of my pride. Despite Jack Cotery’s cautionary voice, saying: ‘Why must you fall in love with someone who can only make you miserable? She’ll do you harm. She can only do you harm.’ Despite my sense of self-preservation. Despite any part of me that was sensible and controlled. Prom within myself and without, I was told the consequences. Yet, as I took a sheet of the hotel notepaper and began to write, I felt as though I were coming home.

It was surrender to her, unconditional surrender. I had sent her away, and now I was crawling back. She would be certain in the future that I could not live without her. She would have nothing to restrain her. She would have me on her own terms. That I knew with absolute lucidity.

Was it also another surrender, a surrender within myself? I was writing that letter as a man in love. That was the imperative I should have found, however thoroughly I searched my heart. I should have declared myself ready to take the chances of unrequited love. And all that was passionately true. Yet was it a surrender within myself?

I did not hear that question. If I had heard it, writing to Sheila when I was not yet twenty-two, I should have laughed it away. I had tasted the promise of success. I was carving my destiny for myself. Compared with the ordinary run of men, I felt so free. I was ardent and sanguine and certain of happiness. It would have seemed incredible to hear that, in the deepest recess of my nature, I was my own prisoner.

I wrote the letter. I addressed it to the vicarage. There was a moment, looking down at it upon the writing table, when I revolted. I was on the point of tearing it up. Then I was swept on another surge, rushed outside the hotel, found a pillar box, heard the flop of the letter as it dropped.

I had written the first night of that week in London, asking Sheila to meet me in five days’ time at Stewart’s in Piccadilly. I was not anxious whether she would come. Of that, as though with a telepathic certainty, I had no doubt. I arrived at the café before four, and captured window seats which gave on to Piccadilly. I had scarcely looked out before I saw her striding with her poised, arrogant step, on the other side of the road. She too had time to spare; she glanced at the windows of Hatchard’s before she crossed. Waiting for her, I was alight with hope.