I gave a complicit wave to Rachel and followed the child out of the house. She walked confidently down the court and into Charlotte Street without looking round. The cold sun was shining brightly and I felt a great sense of relief at being suddenly out in the open among busy indifferent anonymous people under a blue clean sky.
We walked a few steps along the street and stopped beside a red telephone box. Julian now wore a rather jaunty boyish air. She was clearly feeling relieved too. Above her, behind her, I saw the Post Office Tower, and it was as if I myself were as high as the tower, so closely and so clearly could I see all its glittering silver details. I was tall and erect: so good was it for that moment to be outside the house, away from Priscilla's red eyes and dulled hair, to be for a moment with someone who was young and good-looking and innocent and unspoilt and who had a future.
Julian said with a responsible air, «Bradley, I'm very sorry I got that all wrong.»
«Nobody could have got it right. Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.»
«How well you put it! But a saintly person could have comforted her.»
«There aren't any, Julian. Anyway you're too young to be a saint.»
«I know I'm stupidly young. Oh dear, old age is so awful, poor Priscilla. Look, Bradley, what I wanted to say was just thank you so much for that letter. I think it's the most wonderful letter that anybody ever wrote to me.»
«What letter?»
«That letter about art, about art and truth.»
«Oh that. Yes.»
«I regard you as my teacher.»
«Kind of you, but-«I want you to give me a reading list, a larger one.»
«Thank you for bringing the water buffalo back. I'll give you something else instead.»
«Oh will you, please? Anything will do, any little thing. I'd so like to have something from you, I think it would inspire me, something that's been with you a long time, something that you've handled a lot.»
I was rather touched by this. «I'll look out something. And now I'd better-«Bradley, don't go. We hardly ever talk. Well, I know we can't now, but do let's meet again soon, I want to talk to you about Hamlet.»
«Hamlet! Oh all right, but-«
«I have to do it in my exam. And Bradley, I say, I did agree with that review you wrote about my father's work.»
«How did you see that review?»
«I saw my mother putting it away, and she looked so secretive-«That was very sly of you.»
«I know. I'll never become a saint, not even if I live to be as old as your sister. I do think my father should be told the truth for once, everyone has got into a sort of mindless habit of flattering him, he's an accepted writer and a literary figure and all that, and no one really looks at the stuff critically as they would if he were unknown, it's like a conspiracy-«I know. All the same I'm not going to publish it.»
«And another thing, about Christian, my father says he's working Christian on your behalf-«What?»
«I don't know what he thinks he's at, but I'm sure you should go and see him and ask him. And if I were you I'd get away like you told them you were going to. Perhaps I could come and see you in Italy, I'd love that. Francis Marloe can look after Priscilla, I rather like him. I say, do you think Priscilla will go back to her husband? I'd rather die than do that if I was her.»
So much hard clarity all at once was a bit hard to react to. The young are so direct. I said, «To answer your
