«May I stay, Julian?»
«Bradley-darling-I'd rather be by myself just now. I feel as if I'd been invaded or-broken-I've got to become complete again and for that-it's better to be alone-just now.»
«Yes, yes.»
«Good night, my darling.»
I kissed her on the brow and then quickly got up and turned the light out and closed the door. Then I went and locked and bolted the front door. Everything seemed possible tonight, even the return of Arnold with the spanner. I sat in an armchair in the sitting-room and wished I had brought some whisky with me. I resolved to stay awake for the rest of the night.
I felt so hurt and frightened that it was very hard to think at all. I felt like simply doubling up over my pain and groaning. What did it look like to her, what would it do to her, my being so exposed and humiliated by her father? Arnold did not need to beat me to my knees with a blunt instrument. He had quite sufficiently defeated me. What did that failure about Priscilla mean? Oh if only I had been given the time to tell her all myself. Would Julian suddenly see me quite differently? Would I look to her like an old man crazed with lust? I must explain that it was not just because I wanted to go to bed that I concealed Priscilla's suicide, that I abandoned Priscilla, that I left her, alive and dead, to others. It was because these things were greater than themselves, because there was a sort of dedication, a sort of visitation, something else to which I had to be absolutely faithful. Would this seem nonsense to her now? Would, and this I am afraid was the most tormenting thought of all, the difference between forty-six and fifty-eight prove to be fatal?
Later on I started thinking about Priscilla and the sheer sadness of it all and the pitifulness of her end. The shocking fact of her death seemed only now to be reaching my heart, and I felt futile ingenious love for her. I ought to have thought about how to console her. It would not have been impossible. I began to feel sleepy and got up and prowled around. I opened the bedroom door and listened to Julian's steady breathing and prayed. I went into the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror. The godly radiance had withdrawn from my face. My eyes were hooded by wrinkles, my brow was scored, little blood-red worms crawled in the dull sallow skin, I looked gaunt and old. But Julian was sleeping quietly and all my hope slept with her. I returned to my sitting-room armchair and put my head back and instantly fell asleep. I dreamed that Priscilla and I were young again, hiding under the counter in the shop.
I awoke to a grey awful spotty early-morning light which made the unfamiliar room present in a ghastly way. The furniture was humped shapelessly about me like sleeping animals. Everything seemed to. be covered with soiled dust sheets. The slits in the clumsily drawn curtains revealed a dawn sky, pale and murky, without colour, the sun not yet risen.
I experienced horror, then memory. I began to get up, felt painfully stiff, and smelt some vile odour, probably the odour of myself. I swung myself to the door, heaving a stiff leg, hanging onto the backs of chairs. I listened at the door of the bedroom. Silence. I very cautiously opened the door and put my head round it.
It was hard to see in the room: the granular dawn light, with the texture of a bad newspaper picture, seemed to obscure rather than promote vision. The bed was in some sort of chaos. I thought I could discern Julian. Then I saw that there were only tossed sheets. The bed, the room, was empty.
I called her name softly, ran into the other rooms. I even looked crazily into cupboards. She was not in the house. I went outside onto the porch and ran all round the house and then out onto the level of the stony courtyard, and down to the dunes, calling her name, shouting now, yelling as loudly as I could. I came back and hooted the horn of the car again and again, making a ghastly tocsin in the empty absolutely quiet twilit scene. But nothing answered. There was no doubt about it. She had gone.
I went back into the house, turning on all the lights, a doom– stricken illumination in the gathering day and searched the place once again. On the dressing table was a pile of five-pound notes, the change from the money I had given her to buy clothes, which I had insisted she should keep in her handbag. The handbag, her new one, which she had bought in the «shopping spree,» had gone. All her new clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe. There was no letter, no communication for me, nothing. She had disappeared into the night with her handbag, in her blue willow-pattern dress, without a coat, without a word, creeping out of the house while I slept.
I got to the road and doubled back towards the railway station. At the little toy station the platforms were empty. A railway man walking along the tracks told me that no train had stopped there during the night hours. I drove on to the main road and along it in the direction of London. The sun was shining coldly and brightly and a few cars were already about. But the grassy verges of the road were empty. I turned back and drove the other way, through the village, past the church. I even stopped and went into the church. Of course it was hopeless. I drove back and ran into the cottage with a desperate feigned hope that she might have returned while I was away. The little place with its open door and its ransacked air and all its lights on stood obscenely void in the bright sunshine. Then I drove the car to the dunes, running its bonnet into a dewy wall of wispy wiry grass and sand. I ran about among the dunes and down onto the beach, shouting, «Julian! Julian!» The climbing sun shone onto a quiet sea which without even a ripple drew its level line along the gently shelving wall of many-coloured elliptical stones. w,, ait, Brad, better let Roger go first.»
Christian was holding my arm in a firm grip.
With his face stiff and his false soldier's tread Roger marched self-consciously out of his pew and back towards the door of the chapel. The brocaded curtains had closed upon Priscilla's coffin, now bound for the furnace, and the unspeakable service was over.
«What do we do now, go home?»
«No, we should walk around a bit in the garden, I think it's customary, at least it is in the U. S. A. I'll just say a word to those women.»
«Who are they?»
«I don't know. Friends of Priscilla's. I think one of them's her char. Kind of them to come, wasn't it?»
«Yes, very.»
«You must talk to Roger.»
«I have nothing to say to Roger.»
We walked slowly down the aisle. Francis, fluttering by the doorway, stood aside to let the women pass, sent a ghastly smile in our direction, then followed them out.
«Brad, who was that poetry by that the man read?»
«Browning. Tennyson.»
«It was lovely, wasn't it? So suitable. It made me cry.»
Roger had arranged the cremation and had devised a terrible set of poetry readings. There had been no religious service.
We emerged into the garden. A light rain was falling from a brightish brownish sky. The good weather seemed to be over. I shook Christian's hand off my arm and put up my umbrella.
Roger, looking responsible and manly and bereaved in smart black, was thanking the poetry-reader and another crematorium official. The coffin-bearers had already gone. Christian was talking to the three women and they were affecting to admire the dripping azaleas. Francis, beside me, was trying to get in under my umbrella, and was repeating a story which he had already told me, with variations, several times. He was whimpering a little as he spoke. He had wept audibly during the service.
«Oh Brad, forgive me.»
«Stop whingeing like a bloody woman. Go away, will you? It wasn't your fault. It had to happen. It was better like that. You can't save someone who wants death. It was better so.»
«You told me to look after her, and I-«Go away.»
«Where can I go to, oh where can I go to at all? Brad, don't drive me away, I'll go mad, I've got to be with you, otherwise I'll go mad with misery, you've got to forgive me, you've got to help me, Brad, you've got to. I'm going back to the flat now and I'll tidy it up and I'll clear it all, I will, oh please let me stay with you now, I can be useful to you, you needn't give me any money-I don't want you in the flat. Just clear off, will you.»
«I'll kill myself, I will.»
«Get on with it, then.»
«You do forgive me, don't you, Brad?»
«Yes, of course. Just leave me alone. Please.» I jerked the umbrella away, turning my shoulder against Francis, and made for the gate.
