blanket a yard from the opening, was the fog, yellow, opaque, infernal, completely still. I stood in the doorway. In the hollow damp silence I could hear the echo of receding footsteps. I went down into the street, ran a little way, and stopped to listen. My footprints lay behind me, a reeling progress, upon the damp pavement. With a choking sigh more profound than silence the fog enclosed me. I opened my mouth to call out to her but found that I had forgotten her name.
Seventeen
Darling, I'm sorry I was so drunk yesterday – and I do hope I didn't make a beastly stain on the carpet. You and Palmer were sweet about it. You must let me pay to have it cleaned. I think after all I shall go away, though I'm not sure where. So don't expect to hear from me for a bit. I'm perfectly all right and you're not to worry about me. I'll make the arrangements about moving the furniture before I go. I'll be glad when that part is over. I may have seemed churlish, but don't think I'm not deeply grateful for your concern. I may yet need your help; and I would be a fool to be indifferent to having, still now, your love. Though I'm not sure after all that I understand what generosity is. However, even if what I manifested was something else, it was like enough to it and might become changed into it in time without anyone noticing, don't you think? Forgive me and bear with me.
M.
My dearest child, I'm sorry I was so drunk yesterday. I hope I didn't tire you out. I should have gone sooner. This is just a little note to say that I may perhaps go away for a while, so I won't see you in the near future. I think honestly that this may be a good thing, as I am afraid that if we meet now we may quarrel. As I said yesterday, I am not really aggrieved about Alexander. I have quite got over that: and I do believe you when you say you love me. But I just feel too bloody miserable and mixed up to be able to see you without fretting terribly about taking decisions which I do not feel myself competent to take at present. You understand. It may seem unreasonable to ask you to love me all the same and to love me especially: but nothing here is reasonable, and in love nothing is ever reasonable. So, selfish, inconsiderate, and sorry for myself, I ask just that.
Your M.
Dear Dr Klein,
I literally do not know how to apologize for what happened last night. What form of words can I use to say how very deeply I regret my extraordinary conduct? You will have concluded, indeed you did, if I remember, conclude that I was drunk. Mad would perhaps describe it better. And perhaps all I can do by way of apology is to offer some explanation, however crude, of how I could have behaved in so eccentric a fashion. Before this however let me express the hope that I did not seriously hurt you. Indeed, I am speechless with contrition. I can only trust that, since you have seen much of the world, you experienced no damaging shock, however profound the dislike and contempt which my actions cannot but have provoked in you.
As you know, I have been under an extreme strain of late; how extreme, I did not fully know until yesterday. You said once earlier on that I was a violent man. I plead guilty to this charge, and to having, as I now realize, grossly over-estimated my powers of control. It was both unfortunate and unjust that you, an innocent party, should have had the benefit of my violence. I spoke wildly last night when I implied that you had harmed me. Your actions in my regard were, I fully realize, without malice and indeed without interest: I would be a fool in any case to imagine that I could have inspired any concern in you which could find expression in animosity. It is just that I am feeling thoroughly persecuted at present and because you arrived at a moment when I was particularly strained and irrational I flew at you.
Yet also it was no accident. I owe it to you here to attempt to understand myself. Indeed I am grateful to you, because in some way, and not only by occasioning last night's outburst, you have helped me to see what has gone wrong. I love my wife and I still desire her. I also love your brother. As may or may not have been obvious to you – it was until lately by no means obvious to me – my feelings for Palmer are of no normal intensity. I have never been in the accepted sense, a homosexual, but certainly my attachment to Palmer has some-thing of this colour; and it is an odd thing, though it may be for all I know a phenomenon well known to clinical psychology, that Palmer's liaison with my wife has increased rather than diminished my affection for him. The situation implied, therefore, or perhaps I should say however, a two-way jealousy: yet it has been a long time before I have become aware of this implication. It may be suggested that my slowness was due to a preoccupation with moral principles, and indeed at the conscious level I believe that I did make moral efforts, if such things are ever really made, in the direction of what I understand to be generosity and compassion. A more profound and plausible explanation may however be found in the particular role which Palmer and Antonia have played towards me, and with which I have so readily cooperated. I mean of course the role of parents. It was I fear, not by chance that I married a woman considerably older than myself; and when that woman turned her affections toward a yet older man, to whom I was already related in a quasi-filial manner, the stage was set for my regression to the situation of a child.
But children, as we know, are savages, and their immature love for their parents is often with difficulty distinguished from hatred. Of such hatred and such violence you were for a moment the innocent, yet as I have said not the accidental, victim. Although naturally I entertain no personal feelings towards you whatsoever, not even, as I have explained, those of the slightest resentment, your connexion with Palmer made you serviceable as a symbol, you became as it were the joker in the pack whom I could imagine momentarily to be the object of my fury. I should add that it was, needless to say, an ephemeral fury, fully expended, as I deeply regret, upon you: I have, I must assure you, no real ill-feeling toward Palmer. Indeed this solitary outburst has helped me, by making me more profoundly conscious of myself, to purge my imagination of evil humours and to render myself more truly like the generous person whose part I have endeavoured to play. I say this in case you should, after last night's exhibition, feel any apprehension of possible violence to your brother. I assure you sincerely that there is no such possibility.
It only remains for me to apologize to you very humbly and to hope that even if, as I fear, you find my conduct inexcusable, you will at least, if you have had the patience to read this letter, find it somewhat more comprehensible.
I am yours sincerely
Martin Lynch-Gibbon
Dear Honor Klein,
I am afraid there is little point in trying to explain my conduct of last night, and scarcely any point even in apologizing. I was, as you observed, very drunk, and I behaved like a wild beast. I can only say that I am not only as shocked at myself, but also as amazed, as you could possibly be. I cannot account for it, nor would you be interested in a rigmarole of implausible hypotheses about the state of my psyche. It is enough to have assaulted you without boring you into the bargain. I must, however, write this letter to send, though without any hope of its being acceptable, my very humble and very sincere apology. I dare to hope that I did not seriously hurt you. If I caused you any pain, I assure you that my condition bums me more sharply than the harshest blow. I cannot think what came over me; nor can I at all conjecture what your state of mind about me can now be. It would hardly need saying, were it not that I fear I have consistently behaved badly to you, but you are to me an object of profound respect, not only because you are Palmer's sister but because you are you: and I feel a most biting regret at having forfeited, I must fear for ever, the possibility of your good opinion. I will not prolong this letter. I hope, contrary to your prediction, that we may meet again: though I shall certainly not offer you my company in the foreseeable future, nor of course will I expect any answer to this communication. I am very sorry indeed for my shocking behaviour.
Yours sincerely,
Martin Lynch-Gibbon
Dear Honor,
I am sorry that I behaved to you like a beast and a madman. I cannot offer any explanation – nor is this indeed in the ordinary sense an apology. I feel that things between us, after last night, have passed beyond the region of apologies. I want to write to you something brief and something honest to be, as it were, in lieu of posturings of regret which might not be entirely sincere. I have in the past felt resentment against you, even dislike of you, and not entirely without cause. Ever since you appeared on the scene you have, for reasons which remain obscure to me, behaved towards me with hostility, and in two instances you have deliberately done me harm. I am
