'I'm sorry, Willy, I'm terribly sorry.'Tears came to her now, wrapping her whole head in a quick storm. To hide them she moved to the window and picked up the binoculars again, blinking the tears away. She stared unseeingly into a bright circle of light. Then after a moment her grip on the glasses tightened. 'Willy, something perfectly extraordinary is going on down there.'
Thirty-three
'Paula.''Oh, hello, John.''May I walk along with you?''Yes, surely.''Where are the twins?''Out swimming with Barbie. That's them out there.'Three heads bobbed far out in the calm sea over which the afternoon sun had laid a shallow golden haze. Two natives accompanied by a spaniel clumped noisily over the pebbles.Montrose, an immobile fluffy ball upon the breakwater, watched the spaniel pass with slit-eyed malevolence. In the further distance Pierce and Mingo were standing by the water's edge.'Shall we sit down?'They sat on the hot stones, Paula pulling her yellow dress well down to her knees. Ducane's hand dug instinctively into the pebbles, seeking the damp cooler stones below. 'Do you mind?'He took off his jacket.'Odd how those stones are never quite spherical.' Paula spoke in her most precise tones, sounding like one of her children. She examined a mottled mauvish pebble and then tossed it into the water.He's in the Red Sea, now, she thought, he's steaming north.An enormous elongated Eric, all face and head, moved slowly under steam through a calm resistless sea. I must be completely relaxed, she thought. I must have no will, no purpose, I must simply undergo him.I'll meet him in London, she thought. But would he want to share her bed? How would it be? Perhaps it would be better to see him down here? But she could not bear that he should come near the twins. I must be rational, she thought, I must be rational.'Paula – ''Sorry. Were you saying something?', What's the matter, Paula? And don't say nothing's the matter. I can see you're frantic about something.''Nothing's the matter.''Come, come, Paula. Everyone has been noticing it. Tell me what's the matter. I might be able to help.'So everyone had been noticing it. 'You can't, John. I'm as lonely as a lunatic.''Paula. You're going to tell me.'Am I? she wondered almost vaguely. She picked up and examined another imperfectly spherical stone and tossed it after the first one.'Paula, please, my dear ', If I could only tell it all in a completely cold objective way,' she said aloud to herself.'Yes, yes, do that. You can. What's it about? Just tell me roughly what it's about, to make a start.''It's about a chap called Eric Sears.''Who is he?''My former lover.''Oh.''You probably. imagine, as everybody seems to, that I divorced Richard. Well, I didn't. Richard divorced me because I had a love affair with Eric.''Did you love Eric?''I must have done.''Do you love Eric?''No, I don't think so.''Are you seeing him?''I'm going to. He's on his way back from Australia to see me, to claim me.''You don't have to be claimed if you don't want to.''It's – more complicated than that.''You're bound to him in some way?.''Yes.''A child?»'No, no. It's awful. I couldn't tell you.''But you're going to tell me.''It was how things happened with Richard.''I imagine Richard had had plenty of love affairs before Eric came on the scene?''Yes. That's what they say, is it? Yes, Richard was unfaithful.But that doesn't excuse my unfaithfulness. It doesn't even explain it. I was temporarily insane.''What's Eric like? What does he do?''He's a potter. He's a big blond man with a beard. At least he had a beard. He's a demon.''How was it that things happened with Richard.'Paula took a deep breath. She felt her face contract as if a great wind were straining the flesh backward. She said, 'They had a fight.'Paula was conscious of the immense quietness of the scene.The sun shone down into clear still water revealing the pale paving of the sea. Very distant feet crunched upon pebbles.Far away an aeroplane hummed, descended. Out on the horizon the swimming children splashed, their voices all but lost in the hot air which moved very slightly above the water like a heavy canopy. 'What happened?' said Ducane's voice, very very softly.'It was quite sudden,' she said. 'It was at our house, in the billiard room. You know, well perhaps you don't know, at our house in Chelsea there's a big room for billiards built on at the back. Richard used to play a bit. It had a door leading into the garden. It was late one night and Richard had said he'd got to go to Paris on office business. I think he said this just to trap me. Of course I'd told him about Eric. I'd told him about Eric right at the start, in a cold blank sort of way, and he was cold and blank about it too. I didn't even properly realize that he was jealous. I thought it might even be a kind of relief to him.Eric came round to the house that evening. It was idiotic of me to let him come there but he very much wanted to. He hadn't been before. I think he just wanted to walk around in Richard's place. We were talking in the hall. I think we were just going to leave and go to Eric's flat. Then we realized that Richard had come in through the garden and was standing in the billiard room in the darkness listening. As soon as I heard a sound I knew what had happened and I turned the light on. Eric and Richard had never met before. We all stood together in the billiard room and Eric started to make some sort of speech. He wasn't particularly put out and he was proposing to carry off the situation with a high hand. Then Richard just sprang at him. Eric's a big man, but Richard was in the Commandos, and he just knew how to fight and Eric didn't. He hit Eric somehow on the neck and I think Eric was half stunned. Then, God knows how he did it, and it happened so quickly, he pushed Eric back against the wall and
