«Don't be silly,» I said. «You're being childish.» Pigeons, unsure whether it was day or night, were walking about near our feet. I looked at the pigeons.
«Your love must be very-what's the word-solipsistic if you don't even imagine or speculate about what I might feel.»
«Yes,» I said, «it is solipsistic. It's got to be. It's a game I play by myself.»
«Then you oughtn't to have told me about it.»
«We agree on that.»
«But don't you want to know what I feel?»
«I'm not going to get excited about what you feel,» I said. «You're a very silly young girl. You're flattered and thrilled because an older man is making a fool of himself about you. Possibly this is the first time this has happened to you, and doubtless it won't be the last. Of course you want to explore the situation a bit, probe your feelings, fake up a few emotions. That's no use to me. And of course I realize that you'd have to be a good deal older and tougher and cooler than you are to be able to drop this thing at once as you ought to do. So you can't do what you ought to do any more than I can. What a pity. Now let's get away from these blasted strawberries. I'm going home.»
«Bradley, how old are you?»
The question took me horribly by surprise, but I replied instantly, «Forty-six.»
Why I told this lie is hard to explain. Partly it was just a bitter joke. I was so absorbed in prophetic calculation of this evening's damage, of how much more awful the pains of loss and jealousy and despair would now be; to be asked my age was somehow the last straw, the last dash of salt upon the wound. One could only jest. Anyway surely the girl knew my age. Also however in another part of my mind was the idea: I am not «really» fifty-eight, how can I be. I feel young, I look young. There was an immediate instinct for concealment. I was in fact about to say forty-eight, and then hopped onto forty-six. That seemed a reasonable age, acceptable, right.
Julian was silent for a moment. She seemed surprised. We turned into Bedford Street. Then she said, «Oh, then you are a little older than my father. I thought you were younger.»
I began to laugh helplessly, wailing softly to myself, how funny it was, how exquisitely insane. Of course young people do not reckon ages, do not perceive temporal distance. Over thirty it all looks much the same to them. And I had this deceptively youthful mask. Oh funny funny funny.
«Bradley, don't laugh in that horrible way, what is it? Please let us stop and talk, I must talk to you properly tonight.»
«All right, let us stop and talk.»
«What's this place?»
«Inigo Jones giving us another chance.»
«No one has ever been sick for me before,» said Julian.
«Don't flatter yourself. It was partly Strauss.»
«Good old Strauss.»
I was sitting Egyptian style, square, with my hands on my knees, looking away into the darkness where the shadow-cat had made himself a play-fellow out of the stuff of the night. A warm hand came questing lightly over my tensed knuckles. «Don't, Julian. I really am going in a minute. Please try to make it easy.»
She withdrew her hand. «Bradley, don't be so cold to me.»
«I may behave like a fool, but that's no reason for you to behave like a bloody bitch.»
