so often ask after you, I thought-«Any day suits me.»
«Monday?»
«Fine.»
«Good. Then eight o'clock at my place. By the way, shall I invite Grey-Pelham? He won't bring his wife, so it should be all right.»
«Fine. Fine.»
«And I'd like to make a lunch date with you.»
«I'll ring you. I haven't got my diary.»
«Well, don't forget about the party, will you?»
«I'm writing it down now. Thank you so much.»
As I put the telephone down someone began ringing the doorbell. I went and opened the door. It was Priscilla. She marched past me into the sitting-room and immediately began to cry.
«Oh God, Priscilla, do stop.»
«You only want me to stop crying.»
«All right, I only want you to stop crying. Stop crying.»
She lay back in the big «Hartbourne» armchair and in fact stopped. Her hair was in ugly disorder, the darkened parting zigzagging across her head. She lay back limply, gracelessly, with her legs spread and her mouth open. There was a hole in her stocking at the knee through which pink spotty flesh bulged in a little mound.
«Oh Priscilla, I am so sorry.»
«Yes. Be sorry. Bradley, I think you're right. I'd better go back to Roger.»
«Priscilla, you can't-«
«Why not? Have you changed your mind? You were saying so much I should go back. You said he was so unhappy and the house was so awful. He needs me, I suppose. And it is my home. Nowhere else is. Perhaps he'll be nicer to me now. Bradley, I think I'm going mad, I'm going out of my mind. What's it like when people go mad, does one know one's going mad?»
«Of course you aren't going mad.»
«I think I'll go to bed if you don't mind.»
«I'm sorry, I still haven't made up the spare bed.»
«Bradley, your cabinet looks different, something's gone. Where have you put the water-buffalo lady?»
«The water-buffalo lady?» I looked at the gaping empty space. «Oh yes. I gave her away. I gave her to Julian Baffin.»
«Oh Bradley, how could you, she was mine, she was mine.» Priscilla gave a little moan and the tears began to flow again. She started to fumble vainly in her bag looking for a handkerchief.
«You couldn't even keep that for me.»
