beyond. To see her actually going, to see her leaving my life forever through a certain door, was like an act of self- destruction which held its own dark satisfaction. Yet even this idea was, when the day came, obscured, and in my reeling consciousness there was nothing left but the notion of actually seeing her. This, it seemed, was miracle enough, was painful joy enough, even if it only lasted for a moment.
I looked at my watch and wondered if I dared to go to the bar again for some more whisky. I decided to stay where I was. I subsided behind the paper. One arm was beginning to ache. A kind of blank exhaustion came over me. The end-of-the-world atmosphere was beginning to be oppressive, and I could not determine whether a distant roaring noise was made by aeroplanes or by my own blood. The whole day had been a vigil. Perhaps I was now falling asleep. I found my head nodding as if it would fall off. In a few seconds I was adrift in a dream which I had had several times lately, a dream concerning a sword and a severed head; and then I saw Palmer and Honor naked in each other's arms, enlaced, closer and closer, until they seemed to have become one person.
I jerked my head upright and secured the paper which had wavered a little. I had nodded only for a moment. I confirmed this by looking at my watch; and I peered again round the edge of the paper. Then like demons rising I saw them come. They were gliding up from below side by side, first their two heads and then their shoulders as the escalator bore them up towards the level. I moved the paper back into position and blotted them out and closed my eyes. I wondered now if I could sustain the scene at all.
It took me several minutes to collect myself. When I ventured to look again they had gone over to the bar and now had their backs to me. Palmer was ordering drinks. He ordered three drinks. Then I saw that they had a girl with them, a smart pale girl with neatly cropped hair wearing a new Burberry overcoat. They sat down all three together still with their backs to me. Something in the way the girl handled her drink was suddenly familiar to me. She turned her head, stroking down her nose with a forefinger. It was Georgie.
I lowered the paper a little farther and became absorbed in staring at them. I could not quite believe that I was seeing them, so little did my eyes feed the voracity of my mind. Honor and Palmer showed me each a turned shoulder and part of a cheek. Georgie sat with her back to me directly, revealing her uptilted profile as she turned from time to time, now towards Palmer, now towards Honor. These two seemed to have their attention centred on their young companion. They leanecj forward solicitously, making a trio of heads, and now one hand and now another reached out to pat their charge upon the shoulder. It might have been two parents with their child. Georgie herself seemed over-excited and dazed. I observed her plump face and her uncertain movements. Something was dulled in her. Perhaps it was that glow of independence which I had so much loved, which had made her, for my particular depraved purposes possible. For all her protestations, I had never enslaved Georgie. She was, I conjectured, enslaved now. She kept fumbling in her bag, and at last in response to some laughing inquiry of Palmer's brought out her passport and a long coloured ticket which she laid on the table. It was only then that I realized that she was travelling too.
As they sat there talking and laughing, bathed in an almost unbearable glow of significance, they seemed like actors, and I half expected everyone else to fall silent so that their words might become suddenly audible. I had prevented myself so far from looking especially at Honor. I looked at her now. Her lips moved and smiled but her brow was gathered. Her face was strained and sallow and I recalled how she had looked when I first saw her in the fog at Liverpool Street Station with the drops of water upon her hair. She looked to my eyes of farewell touchingly mortal, as she had looked then, her demon splendour quenched. Only now I could see, in her ugliness, her beauty. It was almost too much. She was hatless, and kept passing her hand through her hair to smooth it back behind her ears. The oily black strands kept falling forward again; and from time to time I saw her full profile as she spoke to Georgie or Palmer. Her curving Jewish mouth, with its natural red against the yellow tinge of the skin, was fixed in a stiff smile, while the hand moved and moved. She looked very tired.
'WILL PASSENGERS FOR FLIGHT D 167 TO NEW YORK PLEASE COME FORWARD TO THE EMBARKATION DOOR,' said a superhuman voice. 'HAVE YOUR TICKETS AND PASSPORTS READY PLEASE.'
Everyone sprang up, and in the shock of the moment I rose too I had not noticed the time. It was too cruel. There was a little flurry as Georgie dropped her handbag and Honor picked it up for her. Then the trio moved forward together. Palmer in his soft tweed travelling-coat looked clean and bland like a big bird. He looked, it came to me, a man in triumph. I could hear his youthful laughter; and as if picked out by a spotlight I could see his hand slip through Honor's arm. The grip closed affectionately as he drew her along beside him.
I had thought, once, that I might have run forward to her. But they were already as remote from me as persons seen in a film. I saw them take their places in the queue. All I could see now was Honor's dark head, and her shoulder pressed against Palmer's. I knew that I could not wait to see them go through the door. It was like witnessing an execution. I turned away from them and walked towards the escalator.
Thirty
I turned all the lights on. I was back at Lowndes Square and it was even now only a quarter to ten. The scene was as I had left it in the morning, my camp bed unmade, a few rugs askew on the floor, cigarettes and water and aspirins beside the bed, an overflowing ash-tray, and yesterday's evening paper. I stared at these relics. I went over to the window. Down below I could see the lights of the cars as they passed in endless procession and wheeled round into Knightsbridge. The street lamps lit up the striped trunks of the trees. The pavements were damp and reflected the yellow light. It must have rained today. I could not remember.
I pulled the curtains, using the cord at the side in the way Rosemary had insisted I must. The problem of the pelmets was still unsolved. I turned on the electric fire. The central heating was not quite sufficient. I examined the Carlton House writing-table and noticed another scratch which had appeared during the latest move. I licked my finger and dabbed it. I went out into the kitchen and looked vaguely around for something to eat. There was a tin of Bath Oliver biscuits somewhere which Rosemary had brought. I took off my overcoat and felt in the pocket of my jacket for some matches. I found my letter to Georgie which I read again and then tore up. I found the matches and lit a cigarette. It appeared that I had run out of whisky again. But perhaps in any case I had had enough alcohol for one day. I took a milk bottle from the fridge and poured some milk into a glass. The Bath Olivers were on the shelf where one would expect them to be. Rosemary had evidently laid in a store of expensive-looking tins. That was kind of her. I put the biscuits and the milk on to a tray. I took off my jacket and returned to the sitting-room in my shirt sleeves. Perhaps it was rather hot after all. I sat down on one of the Chinese Chippendale chairs with the tray at my feet.
After a discussion with Antonia in which she had been tearful but vigorous and I had been flippant but listless, we had agreed to divide the set of Audubon prints between us. A terrible energy pervaded Antonia at this time and it tired me extremely to be with her. In a frank unassisted attempt to select the prints which I liked least she had taken what seemed to her the dullest ones, which were the ones in fact I liked best; the nightjars, the puffins, and the great crested owls. The gold-winged woodpeckers, the Carolina parrots, and the scarlet tanagers now stood in a dusty row against the wall and I tried to wonder where I would put them. They seemed meaningless without the others. I looked about the room and saw that Rosemary had put the Meissen cockatoos one at each end of the writing-table and I got up to put them together. They were better so. Then I decided I would drink some wine and I went back to the kitchen. An emergency rack had been fitted into one of the cupboards. The rest of my wine was still at Hereford Square. That was another problem. I pulled out a bottle at random. It weighed pleasantly in my hand like a familiar tool or a weapon. I saw that it was Chateau Lauriol de Barny. That seemed suitable for a libation of farewell. I opened the bottle and returned to the sitting-room where the light were painfully bright. Rosemary had not yet had time to get me any lamps.
Of course I was still in a shocked state. I noticed my trembling hand, a tendency to shiver, a chattering of teeth. I poured out some of the wine. Having been in the warm kitchen it was not in too bad heart. I recalled in my mind the red stain spreading on Palmer's carpet. But the wine itself was innocent, empty of memories. This was as it should be. It was after all the first moments of some entirely new era. I supposed I would survive. I would find some new interests and revive old ones. I would get back to Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus. I tried to think these thoughts but they remained intolerably abstract, while a pain in my body told me what was real. I pictured myself indeed as a survivor. There had been a drama, there had been some characters, but now everyone else was dead and only in me a memory remained of what had been; and perhaps mercifully that memory too would fade, as in some crazed old prisoner who cannot recall his sufferings and does not even know that he has been released. I
