since they are germane to events which happened later. They were, I should say, not posterior to my discovery of being in love: they were innate in it and born with it.
I spoke earlier in this rigmarole of my whole life as travelling towards what had now occurred. Perhaps my friend the percipient reader may be excused for having interpreted this conception in the following terms: that all this dream of being a great artist was simply a search for a great human love. Such things have been known, indeed such discoveries are common, especially among women. Love can soon dim the dream of art and make it seem secondary, even a delusion. I should say at once that this was not my case. Of course since everything was now connected with Julian, my ambitions as a writer were connected with Julian. But they were not cancelled thereby. Rather something more like the opposite seemed to be happening. She had filled me with a previously unimaginable power which I knew that I would and could use in my art. The deep causes of the universe, the stars, the distant galaxies, the ultimate particles of matter, had fashioned these two things, my love and my art, as aspects of what was ultimately one and the same. They were, I knew, from the same source. It was under the same orders and recognizing the same authority that I now stood, a man renewed. Of this conviction I will speak more and explain more later.
Nor did I envisage suffering. «I will run the gauntlet of a thousand blows but I will keep my mouth shut.» No. To the pure lover in his moments of purity the idea of suffering is vulgar, it portends the return of self. What I rather felt was a dazzled gratitude. Yet I understood at once in a clear intellectual way that I could not ever tell Julian that I loved her. The details of this certainty (what it involved) became clearer to me later, but it stood flaming in my way at the very start. I was fifty-eight, she was twenty. I could not puzzle, burden and bedevil her young life with the faintest hint or glimpse of this huge terrible love. How fearful that dark shadow is when we catch sight of it in the life of another. No wonder those at whom that black arrow is aimed so often turn and flee. How unendurable it can be, the love another bears us. I would never persecute my darling with that dread knowledge. From now onward until the world ended everything must remain, although utterly changed, exactly as it was before.
The reader, especially if he has not had the experience I have been describing, may feel impatient with the foregoing lyricism. «Pshaw!» he will say, «the fellow protests too much and intoxicates himself with words. He admits to being a thoroughly repressed man, no longer young. All he means is that he suddenly felt intense sexual desire for a girl of twenty. We all know about that.» I will not pause to answer this reader back, but will go on as faithfully as I can to recount what happened next.
I got up and shaved. What physical pleasure there is in shaving when a man is happy! I examined my face in the mirror. It looked fresh and young. The waxen imprint was still upon it. I really did look a different person. A radiant force from within had puffed out my cheeks and smoothed the wrinkles round my eyes. I dressed with care and took some time to select a tie. Eating was still, of course, out of the question. I felt as if I should never need to eat again, but could live indefinitely simply by breathing. I drank a little water. I squeezed an orange, more out of a theoretical idea that I should nourish myself than because of any return of appetite, but the juice was too rich and heavy, I could not even sip it. Then I went into the sitting-room and dusted it a little. At least I dusted a few visible surfaces. As a lifelong Londoner, I am easily tolerant of dust. The sun had not yet come round to the position whence it could illuminate the brick wall opposite, but there was so much sunny brightness in the sky that the room was glowing in a subdued way. I sat down and wondered what I was going to do with my new life.
I spent some time examining the book and culling these flowers. Then hugging it against my shirt, I began to meditate. It had not ceased to be clear that my new «occupation» was not in any sense an alternative to my life's work. The same agency had sent me both these things, not to compete but to complete. I would soon be writing and I. would write well. I do not mean that I thought of anything so vulgar as writing «about» Julian. Life and art must be kept strictly separate if one is aiming at excellence. But I felt those dark globules in the head, those tinglings in the fingers which token the advent of inspiration. The children of my fancy were already hosting. Meanwhile however there were simpler tasks to be performed. I must set my life in order and I now had the strength to do so. I must see Priscilla, I must see Roger, I must see Christian, I must see Rachel, I must see Arnold. (How easy it all suddenly looked!) I did not say to myself, «I must see Julian,» and over that divine lacuna I gazed out with wide peaceful eyes at a world devoid of evil. There seemed to be no question, at the moment, of leaving London. I would perform my tasks and I would not lift a finger to see my darling again. And I felt, as I meditated upon her, glad to think that I had so immediately given her one of my best treasures, the gilt snuffbox, A Friend's Gift. I could not have given it to her now. This innocent thing had gone away with her, a pledge, did she but know it, of a love dedicated in silence to her quite separate and private happiness. Out of this silence I would forge my power. Yes, this was a yet clearer revelation and I held onto it. I would be able to create because I would be able to keep silent.
After I had been brooding upon this truly awe-inspiring insight for some time my heart suddenly nearly fell out of me because the telephone rang and I thought it might be her.
«Yes?»
«Hartbourne here.»
«Oh hello, my dear fellow!» I felt a sort of cordial relief though I could hardly still breathe with excitement. «I'm so glad you rang. Look, let's meet soon, how about lunch-could you manage lunch today?»
«Today? Well, yes, I think I could actually. Shall we say one o'clock at the usual place?»
«Yes, that's fine! I'm afraid I'm on a diet by the way, and won't be able to eat much, but I'd love to see you, I do look forward to it.» I put the phone down smiling. Then the front doorbell rang.
My heart performed the same swoop into emptiness. I scrabbled at the door, almost moaning.
Rachel stood outside.
When I saw her I came straight out of the flat and closed the door behind me and said, «Oh Rachel, how marvellous to see you! I'm just going to do some urgent shopping, would you like to walk along with me?» I did not want to let her in. She might have gone into the sitting-room and sat down on Julian's tiger lily chair. Also I felt I must talk to her unintimately, out in the open air. I was glad to see her.
«Can't I come in and sit down for a minute?» she said.
«I must have a breath of air, do you mind? It's such a lovely day. Come along then.»
I set off along the court and then along Charlotte Street, walking rather fast.
Rachel was dressed more smartly than usual in a silky dress with red and white blotches on it and a low square neckline. Her collarbones, sun-browned and mottled, were prominent above the dress. Her neck was dry and wrinkled, faintly reptilian, her face was smoother, more made-up than usual, and wearing the expression the French call maussade. She seemed to have lately washed her hair which made a smooth frizzy ball around her head. She looked, in spite of parts of the above description, a handsome woman, tired, but not defeated, by her life.
«Bradley, don't walk so fast.»
«Sorry.»
«Before I forget, Julian said would I pick up her copy of Hamlet which she left with you.»
I had no intention of parting with this book. I said, «I'd like to keep it for a while. It's rather a good edition, and I wanted to note one or two things.»
«But it's a school book.»
«Excellent edition all the same. Not available any more.» Later I would feign to have lost it.
«It was so kind of you to see Julian yesterday.»
«I enjoyed it.»
«I hope she hasn't been pestering you.»
«Not at all. Here we are.»
I dashed among the shelves followed by Rachel. «I must buy some more of my special notebooks. I'm going to be doing a lot of writing soon. Rachel, let me buy you something, I must, I'm in a present-giving mood.»
«Bradley, whatever is the matter with you, you seem quite delirious.»
«Here, let me give you these nice things!» I had to load somebody with presents. I collected for Rachel a ball of red string, a blue felt tipped pen, a pad of special calligrapher's paper, a magnifying glass, a fancy carrier bag, a large wooden clothes peg with urgent written on it in gold, and six postcards of the Post Office Tower. I paid for the purchases and loaded the bag with all Rachel's spoil into her arms.
«You seem in a good mood!» She said, pleased, but still a bit maussade. «Now can we go back to your place?»
«I'm awfully sorry, I've got a rather early lunch engagement, I'm not going back.» I was still worrying about the chair and whether she wouldn't try again to remove the book. It was not that I was unwilling to talk to Rachel, I
