«I'm not inventing it, it's true.»
«I am not accusing you of insincerity. Just of not having the faintest idea what you are talking about. You admitted to being confused.»
«Did I?»
«The main source of your confusion is fairly obvious. You have liked me, or, as you are gracious enough to say, loved me, when you were a little ignorant innocent child and I was an impressive visitor, a writer, a friend of your father's and so on. Now you are an adult and I am a man, a good deal your senior, but suddenly seen as inhabiting the same adult world. Even leaving aside the little shocks which you have had this evening, you are naturally surprised, possibly a bit elated, to find that we are now somehow equals. What in this new situation do you do with your old feeling of affection for the man whom the child used to admire? Is this question important? In itself probably not. My inexcusable proceedings have made it so, just for the moment at any rate. Startled, amused and thrilled by my idiotic declaration, you have felt impelled to make a counter-statement which is totally muddled and unclear and which you will certainly regret tomorrow. That's all. Here we are at the station, thank God.»
«Was that kiss I gave you muddled and unclear?» said Julian.
«You're going home by train,» I said. «I'll say good night now.»
«Bradley, have you taken in what I said?»
«You don't know what you said. Tomorrow it will seem a bad dream.»
«We'll see about that! At least you've talked to me, you've argued.»
«There's nothing to talk about. I've just been irresponsibly prolonging the pleasure of being with you.»
«Look, I don't have to go now.»
«Yes, you do. It's finished.»
«It isn't. You won't leave London, will you, please?»
«I won't-leave London,» I said.
«You'll see me tomorrow?»
«Maybe.»
«I'll ring up about ten.»
«Good night.»
Without putting my hands on her I leaned down and brushed her lips very lightly with mine. Then I turned at once and went back up the steps into Charing Cross Road. I walked along blindly, grimacing with joy.
I slept, I suppose. I kept being nudged awake by a sort of bliss and then sinking again. My body ached with a painful delightful sensation of desire and gratified desire, somehow merged into a single mode of being. I groaned softly over myself. I was made of something else, something delicious, in which consciousness throbbed in a warm daze. I was made of honey and fudge and marzipan, and at the same time I was made of steel. I was a steel wire vibrating quietly in the midst of blue emptiness. These words do not of course convey my sensations, no words could. I did not think. I was. In so far as any stray thoughts attempted to intrude into this heaven I sent them packing.
I rose early and shaved with majestic slowness and dressed with indulgent care and spent a long time inspecting myself in the mirror. I looked about thirty-five. Well, forty. My recent regime had made me even thinner and this suited me. Faded silky grey-blond hair, straight and quite a lot of it, a large-nostrilled bony nose, not unsightly, granity blue-grey eyes, good cheekbones, a large brow, a thin mouth: an intellectual's face. The face, too, of a puritan. What of him?
I drank some water. Eating was, of course, once more out of the question. I felt sick and shuddery but the
