trance. We've got to wrestle into some sort of decent directness with each other. It's worth it, isn't it?»
«Yes. Arnold, would you go now? Do you mind? Perhaps I'm getting old, but I can't stand emotional conversations the way I used to.»
«Write to me. We used to write to each other. Let's not stupidly mislay each other.»
«O. K. I'm sorry.»
«I'm sorry too.»
«Oh fuck off, for Christ's sake.»
«Dear old Bradley, that's better! Good-bye then. Till soon.»
I waited till I heard Arnold's footsteps well out of the court, then I rang the Baffins' number. Julian answered. I put the phone down at once.
I thought: What did they say to Julian?
Le knows you're with me?»
«He sent me to you.»
It was the next morning and Rachel and I were sitting on a bench in Soho Square. The sun was shining and there was a dusty defeated smell of midsummer London: oily, grimy, spicy, melancholy and old. A number of tousled and rather elderly-looking pigeons stood around us, staring at us with their hard insentient eyes. Despairing people sat on other benches. The sky above Oxford Street was a sizzling unforgiving blue. Though it was still quite early in the morning I was sweating.
I said thoughtlessly, «Poor Rachel, oh poor Rachel.»
She laughed with a kind of snarl, tugging at her hair. «Yes. Poor old Rachel!»
«Sorry, I-Oh hell-You mean he actually said to you, 'Go and see Bradley'?»
«Yes.»
«But what words exactly did he use? People who aren't writers never describe things exactly.»
«Oh I don't know. I can't remember.»
«Rachel, you must remember. It can't be more than two hours since-«Oh Bradley, don't torture me. I just feel I'm being cut and scratched and ridden over by everything, I feel I'm under the plough.»
«I know that feeling.»
«I don't think you do. Your life is perfectly O. K. You're free. You've got money. You fuss about your work, but you can go away to the country or go abroad and meditate in some hotel. God, how I'd like to be alone in a hotel! It would be paradise!»
» 'Fussing about one's work' can describe a kind of hell.»
«All that's superficial, what's the word I want, frivolous. It's all-what's the word-«Gratuitous.»
«It's not part of real life, of what's compulsory. My life is all compulsory. My child, my husband, compulsory. I'm caged.»
«I could do with a few more compulsory things in my life.»
