‘All right, all right – ’
‘You promise you won’t go, you promise – ?’
‘I won’t go – not yet – ’
‘Say “promise”, say it, say the word – ’
‘ “Promise”.’
‘My mind’s all hazy.’
‘That’s sleep. Good night, there’s a good girl. I’ll leave the door ajar a little. Francis and I will be quite near.’
She protested still, but I left her and returned to the sitting – room. Only one lamp was lit and the room was ruddy and dusky. There were murmurs from the bedroom, then silence. I felt exhausted. It had been a long day.
‘What’s that vile smell ?’
‘It’s the gas, Brad. I couldn’t find the matches.’
Francis was sitting on the floor beside the glowing gas fire with the bottle of sherry. The level in the bottle had dropped considerably.
‘Of course you can’t remember being in the womb,’ I told him. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘It isn’t impossible. You can.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘We can remember what it was like when we were in the womb and our parents had sex.’
‘If you can believe that you can believe anything.’
‘I’m sorry I upset Priscilla.’
‘She keeps talking about suicide. They say if people talk about suicide they don’t do it.’
‘That’s not so. I think she could.’
‘Would you stay with her if I went away?’
‘Of course, I’d only want board and lodging and a bit – ’
‘I can’t go though. Oh God.’ I leaned back against one of the armchairs and closed my eyes. The calm image of Rachel rose before me like a tropical moon. I wanted to talk to Francis about myself, but I could only talk in riddles. I said, ‘Priscilla’s husband is in love with a young girl. They’ve been lovers for ages. He’s so happy now he’s got rid of Priscilla. He’s going to marry the girl. I haven’t told Priscilla, of course. Isn’t falling in love odd? It can happen to anyone at any time.’
‘So,’ said Francis. ‘Priscilla is in hell. Well, we all are. Life is torture, consciousness is torture. All our little devices are just morphia to stop us from screaming.’
‘No, no,’ I said, ‘good things can happen. Like, well, like falling in love.’
‘We’re each of us screaming away in our own private padded cell.’
‘Not at all. When one really loves somebody – ’
‘So you’re in love,’ said Francis.
‘Certainly not!’
‘With who? Well, I know actually and can tell you.’
‘What you saw this morning – ’
‘Oh, I don’t mean
her
.’
‘Who then?’
‘Arnold Baffin.’
‘You mean I’m in love with – ? What perfectly obscene nonsense!’
‘And he’s in love with you. Why has he taken up with Christian, why have you taken up with Rachel?’
‘I haven’t – ’
‘Just to make the other one jealous. You’re both unconsciously trying to bring about a new phase in your relationship. Why do you have nightmares about empty shops, why are you obsessed with the Post Office Tower, why do you keep worrying about smells – ’
‘It’s Priscilla who dreams about empty shops, my shops are crammed – ’
‘Well, there you are!’
‘And every man in London is obsessed with the Post Office Tower, and – ’
‘Have you never realized that you’re a repressed homo
sexual
?’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m grateful to you for your help with Priscilla. And don’t misunderstand me, I am a completely tolerant man. I have no objection to homosexuality. Let others do as they please. But I just happen to be a completely normal heterosexual – ’
‘One must accept one’s body, one must learn to relax. Your thing about smells is a guilt complex because of your repressed tendencies, you won’t accept your body, it’s a well – known neurosis – ’
‘I am not a neurotic!’
‘You’re trembling with nerves and sensibility – ’
‘Of course I am, I’m an artist!’
‘You have to pretend to be an artist because of Arnold, you identify with him – ’
‘I discovered him!’ I shouted. ‘I was writing long before him, I was well known when he was in the cradle!’
‘Sssh, you’ll wake Priscilla. The emotion rubs off on the women, but the source of the emotion is you and Arnold, you’re crazy about each other – ’
‘I am
not
homosexual, I am
not
neurotic, I
know
myself – ’
‘Oh all right,’ said Francis, suddenly changing his posture and turning away from the fire. ‘All right. Have it your own way.’
‘You’re just inventing this out of spite – ’
‘Yes, I’m just inventing it. I
am
neurotic and I
am
homosexual and I’m bloody unhappy about it. Of course you don’t know yourself, lucky old you. I just know myself too bloody well.’ He began to cry.
I have rarely seen a man crying and the sight inspires disgust and fear. Francis was whimpering loudly, producing suddenly a great many tears. I could see his fat reddened hands wet with them in the light of the gas fire.
‘Oh, cut it out!’
‘Sorry, Brad. I’m such a bloody sod – I’ve been so unhappy in my life – when they struck me off the register – I thought I’d die of unhappiness – and I’ve never had a happy relationship, never – I crave for love, everybody does, it’s as natural as pissing – and I’ve never had a bloody crumb of it – and I’ve given so much love to people – I really can love people, I can, I let them walk over me – but nobody’s ever loved me, even my bloody parents didn’t love me – and I haven’t a home, I’ll never have a home, everyone throws me out sooner or later, usually sooner. I’m a wanderer on the face of the earth – I thought Christian might be nice to me, Christ I’d sleep in the hallway – I just want to serve and help people and be good to everybody, only it always goes wrong somehow – I think about suicide all the time, every bloody day I want to die and stop this torture, but I go crawling on, shitting with misery and fear – I’m so Christ awful bloody lonely I could scream with it for hours on end – ’
‘Stop talking this foul rubbish!’
‘All right, all right. Sorry, Brad. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I expect I just want to suffer. I’m a masochist. I must like pain or I wouldn’t go on living, I’d have taken my bottle of sleeping pills years ago, I’ve thought of it often enough. Oh Christ, now you’ll think I’m bad for Priscilla and boot me out – ’
‘Stop making that horrible noise, I can’t bear it.’
‘Forgive me, Brad. I’m just a – ’
‘Try to be a man, try to – ’
‘I can’t – Oh God – it’s just the bloody pain – I’m not like other people, my life just doesn’t work, it never has – and now you’ll throw me out, and, oh God, if you only knew –
‘I’m going to bed,’ I said. ‘Have you got your sleeping bag here – ’
‘Yes, it’s – ’
‘Well, get into it and shut up.’
‘I want to have a pee.’
‘Good night!’
I left the room abruptly and went across the passage and listened outside Priscilla’s door. At first I thought she was crying too. No, she was snoring. After a while it began to sound like Chaine – Stokes respiration. I went on into the spare room, where I had still not remembered to make up the bed, and lay down clothed with the light on. The house was gently creaking with the footsteps of my upstairs neighbour, a shadowy youth called Rigby who sold ties in Jermyn Street. The heavy stealthy steps of another man followed him up. Whatever they did above they fortunately did it quietly. There was another sound, a kind of muffled knocking. It was my heart. I resolved to go and see Rachel early on the following morning.
‘Where’s Arnold?’
‘Gone to the library. So he says. And Julian’s gone to a pop festival.’
‘I sent Arnold that review. Did he say anything?’
‘I never see him reading his letters. He said nothing. Oh Bradley, thank God you’ve come!’
I hugged Rachel in the hall, behind the stained glass of the front door, beside the hall stand, next to the coloured print of Mrs Siddons which I could see through the red haze of her hair. Still imprinted on my eyes was the vision of her broad pale face as she opened the door, crumpled into an ecstasy of relief. It is a privilege to be received in this way. There are human beings who have never been so welcomed. Something of Rachel’s age, of her being weary, no longer young, was visible too and touching.
‘Look, come upstairs.’
‘Rachel, I want to talk – ’
‘You can talk upstairs, I’m not going to eat you.’
She led me by the hand, and in a moment we were in the bedroom where I had seen Rachel lying like a dead woman with the sheet over her face. As we came in Rachel pulled the curtains and then dragged the green silk counterpane off the bed.
‘Now, Bradley, sit down beside me.’
We sat down rather awkwardly side by side and stared at each other. I felt the roughness of the blankets under my limp hand. The welcoming image had faded and I was rigid with confusion and anxiety.
‘I just want to touch you,’ she said. And she did touch me with her finger tips, lightly touching my face and neck and hair, as if I were a holy image.
‘Rachel, we must know what we’re doing, I don’t want to behave badly.’
‘Guilt would interfere with your work.’ She lightly closed my eyes with her finger tips.
I jerked away from her. ‘Rachel, you aren’t just doing this to spite Arnold?’
‘No. I think I started thinking about it, somehow out of self defence, and then that awful time, you know, in this room, you were here, you were inside the barrier as it were, and I’ve known you so long, it’s as if you had a special role, like a knight with a charge laid upon him, my knight, so necessary and precious, and I’ve always seen you a little as a wise man, a sort of hermit or ascetic – ’
‘And it always gives ladies particular pleasure to seduce ascetics.’
‘Perhaps. Am I seducing you? Anyway, I’ve got to perform an act of will. Otherwise I shall die of humiliation or something. I feel it’s a holy time.’
‘This could be a pretty unholy idea.’
‘It’s your idea too, Bradley. Look where you are!’
‘We are both conventional middle – aged people.’
‘I’m not conventional.’
‘well, I am. I’m pre – permissive. And you are my best friend’s wife. And one doesn’t with one’s best friend’s wife – ’
‘What?’
‘Start anything.’
‘But it’s started, it’s here, the only question is what we do with it. Bradley, I’m afraid I do rather enjoy arguing with you.’
‘You know where arguments like this end.’
‘Between the sheets.’
‘God, we might as well be eighteen.’
‘Look, is all this because Arnold is having an affair with Christian?
Is
he having an affair with Christian?’
‘I don’t know and it no longer matters.’
‘You still love Arnold, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes, yes, yes, but that doesn’t matter either. He’s just played the tyrant for too long. I must have new love, I must have love outside the Arnold – cage – ’
‘I suppose women of your age – ’
‘Oh don’t start that, Bradley.’
‘I just mean, naturally one might want a change, but let’s not do anything – ’
‘Bradley, with all your philosophy, surely you know that it doesn’t really matter what we do.’
‘It does. You were saying we wouldn’t deceive Arnold. It matters if we do, it matters if we don’t.’
‘Are you afraid of Arnold?’
I reflected. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, you must stop being. Oh my dear, don’t you see that this is somehow the point? I must see you unafraid. This is what being my knight is. That will really let me out. And it will do something great for you too. Why can’t you write ? Because you’re all timid and repressed and tied up. I mean in a spiritual way.’
This was close to what I had thought myself. ‘Then are we to love each other in a spiritual way?’
‘Oh Bradley, look, enough of this argument, let’s undress.’
All this time we had been sitting sideways facing each other, not touching, except when the tips of her fingers lightly tapped my face, then the lapels of my jacket, my shoulders and arms, as if she were putting a spell upon me.
Rachel turned away, and in a single quick contorted movement peeled off her blouse and brassière. Naked to the waist she now regarded me. This was a very different matter.
She was blushing and her face had become suddenly more tentative. She had very full round breasts with huge brown mandalas. The unclothed body wears a very different head from the clothed body. The blush extended down her neck and faded into the deep V of mottled sunburn which stained the flesh between her breasts. Her body had an air of unexhibited chasteness. I knew that this was a most unwonted gesture. And indeed it was a long time since I had seen a woman’s breasts. I looked but did not move.
‘Rachel,’ I said. ‘I am very touched and moved, but I really think this is most unwise.’
‘Oh stop it.’ She suddenly clasped my neck and rolled me back on the bed. There was a pushing and a scrambling and in a moment she was entirely naked beside me. Her body was hot. She was panting and her lips were against my cheek. She said, ‘Oh God.’
To lie fully clothed, with one’s shoes on, beside a panting naked woman is not perhaps very gentlemanly. I raised myself on one elbow so that I could see her face. I did not want to be submerged by this warm gale. I looked intently down at her face. There was a grimace upon it which reminded me of certain Japanese pictures, a mingling of pain and joy, the eyes narrowed, the mouth squared. I touched her breasts, moving my hand over them very lightly, scrutinizing them with my touch. I looked down and regarded her body, which was plump, fleshy. I drew my hand down over her stomach which contracted under my fingers. I felt excited, stunned, but this was not quite desire. I seemed to be outside, seeing myself as in a picture, a fully dressed elderly man in a dark suit and a blue tie lying beside a pink naked pear – shaped lady.