He stared at it without thought. Then he began to scrutinize it more closely. Something about the centre part of it was beginning to look curiously familiar. Then suddenly Ducane saw what it was. The central part of the square consisted of the Latin words of the ancient Christian cryptogram.
O
O
A
A
This elegant thing can be read forwards, backwards or vertically, and consists, with the addition of A and 0 (Alpha and Omega) of the letters of the first two words of the Lord's Prayer arranged in the form of a cross.
A A I APATERNOSTER
0
0
Who had invented, to scrawl mysteriously upon what darkened wall, that curious charm to conjure, by its ingenious form and its secret content, what powers surely more sinister and probably more real than the Christian god? And what had Radeechy done to it, to divert its power and make its talismanic value his own? Ducane studied the letters round the edge of the square. A and 0 again twice, only reversed. The other letters then simply read RADEECHY PATER DOMINUS.
Ducane threw the paper down. He felt disappointed, touched, upset. There was something schoolboyish and pathetic in the egoism of Radeechy's appropriation of the Latin formula. It was the sort of thing one might have carved inside one's desk at school. Perhaps all egoism when it is completely exposed has a childish quality. Ducane felt piercingly sorry for Radeechy. The solving of the cryptogram had given him a sense of speech with him, but babbling baffled speech. After all the machinery of evil, the cross reversed, the slaughtered pigeons, the centre of it all seemed so empty and puerile. Yet Radeechy was dead, and were not the powers of evil genuine enough which had led him to two acts of violence? Ducane could not see into that world. He saw only the grotesque and the childish, and whatever was frightening here seemed to be something of limited power, something small. Perhaps there were spirits, perhaps there were evil spirits, but they were little things. The great evil, the dreaded evil, that which made war and slavery and all man's inhumanity to man lay in the cool self-justifying ruthless selfishness of quite ordinary people, such as Biranne, and himself.
Ducane got up and walked about the room. The scene had certainly been cleared. Fivey gone, Judy gone, Biranne gone, Jessica gone, Kate gone, Paula gone. He looked at himself in a mirror. His face, which he thought of as 'lean', looked peaky and thin, and he noticed the greasy unclean appearance of his hair and the dulled lock of grey in the centre of his forehead.
His eyes were watery and yellowed. His nose was shiny and red from the sun. He wanted somebody, somebody. He needed a shave, He said to himself, an era of my life has come to an end. He reached for some writing paper and sat down and began to write.
My dear Octavian,
It is with great regret that I write to tell you that I must tender my resignation…
Thirty-eight
Will I faint when I see him? Paula wondered.
It was idiotic to meet in the National Gallery. He had suggested on a postcard that they should meet beside the Bronzino.
Paula had been touched. But it was a silly Richardesque idea all the same. If he had sent a letter and not a postcard she might have suggested something else. As it was she felt all she could do was send another postcard saying yes. Fortunately there was nobody about at this fairly early hour except an attendant who was now in the next room.
Paula had arrived too soon. As Richard, with characteristic thoughtlessness, had suggested an early morning meeting, she had had to stay overnight at a hotel. She did not want to stay either with John Ducane or with Octavian and Kate. Indeed she had not told Octavian and Kate. And she needed to be alone. She had not slept. She had been unable to eat any breakfast.
She had sat twisting her hands in the hotel lounge and watching the clock. Then she had to run to the cloakroom thinking she was going to be sick. At last she rushed out of the hotel and got into a taxi. Now there was half an hour to wait.
I might faint, thought Paula. She still felt sick and a black canopy seemed to be suspended over her head, its lower fringes swinging just above the level of her eyes. If that blackness were to come rushing down her body would twist and tilt and she would fall head first down into a dark shaft. She felt the vertigo and the falling movement. I'd better sit down, she thought. She moved carefully to the square leather-cushioned seat in the centre of the room and sat down.
The violence, the violence remained between them like a mountain, or rather it had become more like a dreadful attri bute of Richard himself, as if he had been endowed with a menacing metal limb. Odd to think that. It was Eric who really had the metal limb. Had that scene in the billard room made Richard impossible for her for ever? She had never really thought this, but she seemed to have assumed it. Without it she would never have left Richard. With it she had not even wondered if it was possible to stay. Was it reasonable, was it not mad, to find this thing so important, so as it were, physically important?
Paula stared at Bronzino's picture. Since Richard had appropriated the picture she had deliberately refrained from making any theoretical study of it, but she remembered vaguely. some of the things which she had read about it earlier on. The figures at the top of the picture are Time and Truth, who are drawing back a blue veil to reveal the ecstatic kiss which Cupid is giving to his Mother. The wailing figure behind Cupid is Jealousy. Beyond the plump figure of the rose-bearing Pleasure, the sinister enamel-faced girl with the scaly tail represents Deceit. Paula noticed for the first time the strangeness of the girl's hands, and then saw that they were reversed, the right hand on the left arm, the left hand on the right arm. Truth stares, Time moves. But the butterfly kissing goes on, the lips just brushing, the long shining bodies juxtaposed with almost awkward tenderness, not quite embracing. How like Richard it all is, she thought, so intellectual, so sensual.
A man had appeared in the doorway. He seemed to materialize rather than to arrive. Paula felt great force pin her against the back of her seat. He came quickly forward and sat beside her.
