«Well. I will not allow any harm to my daughter. Be sure of that. Be-warned.»
He went out, closing the front door softly. I was panting with emotion. I ran to the telephone and dialled the Ealing number. There was a pause and then the high buzz of «number unobtainable.» I dialled several times, with the same result. I felt as if I had been cut off by an axe at the knees. I held my head in a violent grip, trying to compose myself and think. The urgency of the need to see Julian seethed all round me, blotting out my vision. I was being blinded and stung to death by bees. I was suffocating. I ran out into the court and began to walk at random along Charlotte Street, then along Windmill Street, then along Tottenham Court Road. After a while it began to seem probable that if I did not take some violent and decisive action soon I would collapse. I hailed a taxi and told the man to drive to Ealing.
I stood under the copper beech at the corner of the road. I put my hand on the close-grained trunk of the tree and it felt absurdly there, complacent with indifferent reality. It was evening now, twilight time, the evening of that same lengthy fantastic eventful day.
The evening was overcast, the dour thick light turning a little purple, the air warm and motionless. I could smell dust, as if the quiet tedious streets all around me had dissolved into endless dunes of dust. I thought about this morning and how we had seemed to have all the time in the world. And now there seemed to be no more time. I also thought that if only I had had the wit to take that taxi at once I might have arrived here before Arnold and Rachel. What was happening? I crossed the road and began to walk slowly down on the other side.
I stood now upon the opposite pavement and regarded the house and wondered what to do. I considered the idea of hanging around until three o'clock in the morning and then penetrating into the garden and using one of Arnold's ladders to climb up to Julian's window. But I did not want to become a nightmare figure to her, a night intruder, a secret man. The greatness of this morning had been its lucid openness. This morning I had felt like a cave-dweller emerging into the sun. She was the truth of my life. I would not become a sort of burglar or pickpocket in hers. Besides. There were so many unknown things. What was she thinking now?
As I stood there in that thick oppressive urban dusk breathing the breath of fear, smelling the dunes of dust, I became aware of being looked at by a figure standing in the long unlighted landing window of the house I was studying. I could see the figure framed in the window and the pallor of the face regarding me. It was Rachel. We looked at each other in an awful immobility of quietness for about a minute. Then I turned away, like an animal from a human stare, and began to pace the pavement, to and fro, to and fro, waiting. The street lamps came on.
After about five minutes Arnold came out. I recognized his figure though I could not see his face. I began to walk back up the road toward the copper beech and he followed, then walked beside me in silence. A close-by lamp-post was illuminating one side of the tree, making the leaves a transparent glowing winy purple, and separating them out with clear shadows, each from each. We stepped into the rich gathered darkness underneath the tree, trying to see each other's faces.
Arnold said, «I'm sorry I got so excited.»
«O. K.»
«Everything's got much clearer now.»
«Good.»
«I'm sorry I said all those ludicrous things-about lawyers and so on.»
«So 'm I.»
«I hadn't realized how little had happened.»
«Oh.»
«I mean, I hadn't got the time scheme. I somehow gathered from what Julian said this afternoon that this whatever it is had been going on for some time. But now I understand it's only been going on since yesterday evening.»
«A lot has happened since yesterday evening,» I said. «You should understand, you seem to have been fairly busy lately yourself.»
«You must have thought Rachel and I were being ridiculously solemn this afternoon about very little.»
«I see you're playing it differently now,» I said.
