What are you doing in there, Mary?'
'Washing up, Willy.'
'Don't – I'll do it later. Come and talk to me.'
'I've put the raspberries in a bowl. I've put some sugar on them. We might eat them for tea.'
'We might.'
Meals with Willy were still rare, strange, like a picnic, like a eucharist.
Mary came back into the sitting-room wiping her hands on the drying-up cloth. The heat in the room made a kind of positive velvety silence in which one moved slowly as if swimming.
Willy was stretched out in his armchair beside the hearth.
The front of his shirt was open to the waist revealing a curly that of grey hair which looked like a shaggy undergarment.
He had dug his fingers into the that and was scratching abstractedly. Mary placed a chair between him and the table and sat down, putting one hand on his shoulder. It was not like a caress, but more like the firm grasping of something loved yet inanimate, like the steering wheel of a car.
'Is Paula coming for the Aeneid? I'm so glad you persuaded her to read.'
'No, she scratched today.' 'How far have you got?' Book six.' 'What's happening?' 'Aeneas has descended to the underworld.' 'And what's he doing there?' I; I 'He has just met the shade of his helmsman Palinurus. Palinurus fell asleep and fell off the stern of the ship and was drowned. As his body is unburied Charon will not carry him across the Styx. But he is told that the people near to where he died will establish a tomb and a cult in his memory, and the region will bear his name. This news cheers the poor fellow up more than somewhat!' Willy's singsong recital oppressed Mary's heart. She said, 'Do you think everyone ought to descend at some time to the underworld? T 'You mean in search of wisdom or something?' 'Yes.' 'Certainly not! It's very dark and stuffy and one is more likely to feel frightened than to learn anything. Let the schoolroom of life be a light airy well-lighted place!' Mary remembered the squealing brakes and the awful cry. She ought to tell all this to Willy. Since she had told John she ought to tell Willy. Only he couldn't make it easy the way John could. And she knew that today she was to be clumsy with him and denuded of grace. She said, 'Do you think you learnt anything in that place?' 'In Dachau? Certainly. I learnt how to keep warm by rubbing myself against a wall, how to be almost invisible when the guards came round, how to have very very long sexual fantasies ' 'Sorry. I'm being stupid.' 'No, you're not, my dear. But very few ordeals are redemptive and I doubt if the descent into hell teaches anything new. It can only hasten processes which are already in existence, and usually this just means that it degrades. You see, in hell one lacks the energy for any good change. This indeed is the meaning of hell.' 'I suppose at any rate it shows one what one is.' 'Sometimes not even that. After all, what is one? We are shadows, Mary, shadows.' 'I'm sure you were not degraded.' 'Come, come, this is gloomy talk for a lovely girl on a lovely day,' 'Willy, will you teach me German again – later on? T 'If you wish it, my child. But why bother about learning German? It's not very important. Almost anything is more important than learning German.' 'But I can't share anything with you,' she said, 'your memories, your language, your music, your work, nothing. I'm just I'm just – a woman.' 'A woman. But isn't that everything?' 'No, it isn't.' She got up and went over to the window. The window ledge was dusty and a dead fly, suspended on a spider's thread, hung motionless against the glass of the open casement. Mary thought, I must clean the place. The Swiss binoculars, their grey leather shafts veneered with dust, lay upon the ledge and Mary lifted them absently. In the magic circle she saw the edge of the. sea, the little whitish ripple curling against the dry stones. Then there were two big dark hunched-up figures. They were Ducane and Paula, sitting just beside the water, deep in talk. Mary put the glasses down irritably. 'Mary.' 'Yes, Willy.' 'Come back here.' She came back, vague, uneasy, and standing over him thrust her fingers into his white silky hair at the centre of the brow. 'Mary, I can never marry you, I can never marry anybody.' Mary's fingers stiffened. Then she drew them back through the fine hair and moved them over his brow, spreading the light perspiration with her fingertips. 'That's all right, Willy.' 'Forgive me, my dear.' 'It's all right. I'm sorry I bothered you.' 'You haven't bothered me. You've done me ever so much good. You've made me twice as much alive.' 'I'm glad ' 'I'm eating so much now. I shall get as fat as Octavian.' 'I'm glad. I wish Kate hadn't talked so much about us though.' 'It'll blow over. We shall be as before.' 'Theo will be glad. He thought he'd lost you.' 'Theo is an ass.' 'We shall be as before.' She caressed his brow, staring over his head at the bookshelves. She did not want to be as before. She wanted great changes in her life. She grappled clumsily with a great obscure pain which had risen up in front of her like a bear. 'Mary, I love you. Don't be hurt by me.' 'I can't help being hurt – 'she said. 'Cheer up. I can't give you anything but love, baby, that's the only thing I've plenty of, baby.' 'Don't, Willy. I'm sorry I disturbed things as they were. I've been a fool.' 'You've been a divine fool and you've disturbed nothing.' 'It's this interminable summer. I wish it would end. Sorry, I'm talking nonsense.' 'You need a holiday.' 'Yes, I need a holiday.' 'I think I shall get away myself, go to London maybe.' 'That's right.' What has happened, thought Mary. She moved away, coming apart from him with a kind of horror, as if a human limb were to break off, softly, easily, in a dream. She knew that a certain joy which she had taken in him might never come to her again, the joy of veiled anticipation and purpose. Some precious ambiguous possibility, which would have remained intact for ever, had been taken from them. 'What seat?'
