'I seem to have lost the taste for it in a funny way. Just as well when you come to think of it. But then it never has done much for me, drink. It's a man's thing really, I expect.'
'I wish there were something I could get you.'
'I know you'd get it for me if there were. Darling, if you don't mind terribly I think I'll go to bed now. I'm a bit tired.'
'I'll come with you.'
'You're off, are you?' Hunter had risen to his feet with remarkable agility. 'Look after yourself, darling.'
He had kissed Catharine. Lucy had come forward.
'I'll see you off in the morning.'
'You're not to bother, love.'
'Cathy, it's no bother.'
'I'd sooner, honestly.'
'Well, if you're sure…'
The two women had embraced and clung together for some moments.
'I'll be in to see you as soon as they'll let me.'
'Good night, my dear boy. You know where to find me when you get back to camp.'
'Good night, Max. Thanks for coming along this evening.'
Catharine and Churchill had gone up by the front stairs, past the tapestry and along the corridor to her bedroom. A half-filled suitcase had been standing open on the chest of drawers. Only a brush and comb had been lying on the dressing-table. When she left him to go to the bathroom, he had stood at the window. A sky haze saw to it that there was almost nothing to see, and there was nothing to hear, whereas usually, at this time, hardly five minutes would have gone by without lights advancing or retreating along the drive, car engines being started or switched off, voices, footsteps on the gravel. He had wondered how long it would be before Lucy's visitors resumed their calls, and reflected that Ross-Donaldson would have known the answer to that; at least, would have had a firm answer ready, with reasons. How was he spending his evenings nowadays? Churchill had grinned briefly.
Two minutes later, he and Catharine had started undressing as hastily as they had ever done when impatient to make love, but this time they had not faced each other. He had been about to get into bed when she said his name. He had turned to her.
'Look at me,' she had said. 'You know, just in case.'
He had gone over to her and they had kissed. She had trembled for a moment, and when she stopped she had still been stiff in his arms.
'I love you,' he had said.
'I know. And I love you.'
They had stood together a little longer. Then she had said, 'Let's go to sleep now. You set the alarm.'
In bed she had turned away from him at once and he had been grateful, because he would not have been able to make love to her and had been dreading her expectation of it. About a quarter of an hour later they had heard Hunter drive away from the front of the house. Just after that she had asked for the light to be turned out, saying she thought she would sleep better in the dark.
Every time he reached this point in his thoughts, Churchill found it harder to begin again at Hunter's arrival. The body lying against his seemed to call more and more urgently for action on his part, but he could conceive of none that would be relevant. Love had turned out to be action in a way that had gone on surprising him: he had always assumed it to be a process followed by a state. But now, the very thing that made action so necessary made it impossible. On the thread in the center of the node, nothing mattered but being on the thread, nothing else could be thought about except by a tiny, remote, artificially maintained corner of the mind. As soon as he had put matters to himself like this, that corner was overrun. What was in store for Catharine-not the hospital bed and the anaesthetics, not the trolley and the table and the surgeons, but the ultimate-became all that there was and was going to be.
He felt the bodily mechanism that controls respiration switch itself off like an electric light. It soon proved to be useless, indeed misleading, to go on trying to breathe according to that dimly remembered earlier rhythm. He took in air and exhaled it and let his lungs stay idle until they should need more. But after a long time they still seemed not to need any, and he thought he had better breathe in again. When he did, he found he had no idea when to stop. There was a kind of corner ahead beyond which he would be able to breathe out as when yawning or sighing. He had still not reached it when his lungs turned out to have no room for more air. When he had stayed like that for a while without any discomfort or particular impulse to breathe out, he voluntarily breathed out. He failed to recognize the point at which he usually stopped doing this. It was a slightly less warm night than of late, but he felt sweat break out on his chest. He tried vainly to keep still.
'Are you all right?' asked Catharine, speaking with an immediate clarity that showed him she had not been asleep.
Panting a little, he reached out of bed and switched on the light.
'We've got to talk,' he said.
'Good. I was afraid we were never going to. Can I have a cigarette?'
The act of producing and lighting one for each of them cheered him a little.
'I've been wanting to say things to you,' he said, 'but then I didn't want to, I didn't see how I could, apart from stuff that didn't count about how are you getting on and don't worry too much, because I didn't want to frighten you. But of course I suppose that was silly. But I couldn't think of a way of really saying anything at all that wouldn't be to do with frightening things.'
