Bruno’s Dream

”One cannot divorce duty from consequences.”

”Oh all right,” said Danby, standing up abruptly and pushing his chair back. “Shall I go back and tell him you won’t come?”

”Sit down, Danby.”

Danby hesitated, shuffled his feet, and sat down slowly.

”I’m sorry,” said Miles. “I probably sound rather hard hearted, but I want to see what’s involved. I think we might turn the light on.” He pulled the curtain and moved to the electric light switch. Danby gritted his teeth.

Miles was not really very like Gwen, and yet there were details of her face which memory and even photographs had retained for Danby only in a hazy generalized form which were now suddenly manifest in flesh- and-blood clarity: the sharply marked mouth with the deep runnel above it, the brow coming closely down over the intent eyes, the heavy quality of the dark hair.

Danby looked away and looked quickly about the room which was now revealed by two green-shaded lamps. It was a book-lined room, evidently a study. A table was half drawn up under the window, covered with neatly squared-off piles of paper and notebooks and an orderly row of ballpoint pens. The clean open fireplace contained a pyramid of fir cones and was surrounded by William Morris tiles which gleamed in a swirling profusion of blues and purples. Gwen would have liked those tiles. She would have enjoyed collecting the fir cones. There was a vase of daffodils on the white painted mantelshelf, and a small square gilt mirror above it. Here and there a shelf of books had been cleared to display glittering Chinese porcelain, ultramarine ducks, dogs, dragons. Everything looked formidably neat and clean. A donnish room: and yet the flowers and the ducks and the fir cones did not seem quite like Miles. Vaguely, and the thought somehow disturbed him, Danby remembered that Miles was married.

”Quite honestly,” Miles was going on. He had sat down again and was intent on folding pieces of paper and cutting them carefully with a sharp knife. “Quite honestly, I rather dread this operation not only because of what it might do to him, but also because of what it might do to me. I’m rather through with the emotions, that kind anyway, and I’ve got other things to do. Is it all about money?”

”Money?” said Danby. “Good Lord, no!” Or was it? Perhaps after all Bruno just wanted to decide the destiny of the stamps. Damn the stamps, they complicated everything.

”You see,” said Miles, concentrating upon a neat clean severance of a folded sheet. “You see, I don’t know whether you know this, but I’ve been writing to my father regularly for years, and I’ve never had any reply. I rather assumed he’d written me off. This desire to see me is a bit surprising. Is he senile?”

”No!” said Danby. “He has to take various drugs and some days he gets a bit vague and rambles a little, but on the whole he’s perfectly clear-headed. He’s certainly still a rational being.”

”Is he much-changed?”

”Physically, yes. Not in other ways. I suppose you know what’s wrong with him?”

”Oddly enough I do,” said Miles slowly, raising his brooding eyes in a significant way which was very reminiscent of Gwen. “Oddly enough I do. I wrote to his doctor about eighteen months ago. I suppose there’s no new development?”

”No. Just the progress of the-thing.”

They were silent, Danby watching Miles and Miles intently examining a piece of cut paper. “All right. I’ll come and see him. But I think it’s going to be awful. Awful.”

Danby stood up. He felt a strange defensive tenderness for Bruno combined with an acute wish that Miles would offer him a drink. He wanted to be asked to stay, given a drink, somehow comforted by Miles. He would like to have talked about the past. “Bruno has been very brave.”

”I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it. When shall I come?” Miles had risen too.

”Of course he may change his mind when he knows you’re coming. He may funk it.”

”You mean he’s nervous too?”

”Yes.”

”Funny,” said Miles. “I hadn’t really thought of him having any feelings about it, now at all,” and he smiled. Miles’s teeth were sharp and jumbled, too numerous for his jaw and crowded together at the front of his mouth, giving him a wolfish sweet-savage smile which Danby had quite forgot ten. Danby usually despised men with uneven teeth, but Miles’s were rather impressive.

”Anyway I’ll let you know,” said Danby. “I’ll ring up.”

He stood awkwardly. He was taller than Miles. He had somehow forgotten that too. It was the moment for the blessed glass of gin. He thought, if Bruno decides not to see Miles, I won’t see Miles again, except at the funeral. Danby pushed his chair a little further back, which might have been a preliminary to departing or to sitting down again. As he did so he saw a little ball of blue tucked into the depression between the seat and the back. It was a woman’s handkerchief.

”I’ve never met your wife,” said Danby.

Miles gave him a preoccupied look and put his hand on the door.

Danby thought, I must stop him, I want to talk to him about Gwen. If only I could think of something quickly now to say about her. He could think of nothing. He said, “Bruno wants to meet your wife.” Bruno had expressed no such wish.

”Emotions,” said Miles. “Emotions. It’s all fruitless, fruitless.” He led the way down the stairs.

”So you talked about me?” said Bruno suspiciously, looking up at Danby.

Yes,” said Danby in an exasperated voice. “Of course did!” Danby had been extremely irritable on his return from Miles’s house, Bruno could not make out why.

Danby was standing at the window looking out through the undrawn curtains at the lurid darkness of the London night. Bruno was well propped up on pillows. They were both sipping champagne. The whitish scrawled counterpane was covered with stamps and with the dismembered pages of the Evening Standard, on top of which lay the first volume of Soviet Spiders open at the chapter “Liphistiid Spiders of the Baltic Coastline.”

”What did you say about me?”

”He asked how you were and I told him and I said you were longing to meet him and-“

”You shouldn’t have said that.”

”Oh my God-“

”I’m not sure that I am longing to meet him,” said Bruno judiciously.

”Well, make up your mind for heaven’s sake.”

”I can’t see why you’re so upset.”

”I’m not upset, damn you.”

Since the notion of seeing Miles, or at any rate of sending Danby on an embassy to Miles had become a real plan, Bruno had experienced a complexity of feelings. Partly he felt a kind of animal fright at the real possibility of confronting his son. Partly he was afraid of what he might feel if Miles refused to come. There was a possible madness there. Danby had re assured him at the first moment of his return. Partly too Bruno felt a quite immediate and lively sense of annoyance at the idea of Miles and Danby discussing him, perhaps making common cause against him. He imagined, “The old fool wants to see you. Must humour him I suppose.”

”How gaga is he?” And, “How long will he last?” Would they speak of him like that? They were young and uncaged, in the legions of the healthy. He also felt an excited touched surprise that such a complex of emotions could still exist in such an old man. “Such an old man,” he thought to himself until the tears came. He was pleased at these moments when he felt that he had not been simplified by age and illness. He was the complicated spread-out thing that he had always been, in fact more so, much more so. He had drawn the web of his emotions back inside himself with not a thread lost. Well, he would see Miles. It was unpredictable though, and that was scaring.

”Of course I do want to see him,” said Bruno judiciously, “but I feel quite detached about it. You shouldn’t have implied I was frantic.”

”I didn’t imply it. We had a very plain talk.”

”How do you. mean plain? What’s Miles like now?”

”He’s going bald.”

”You never liked him, Danby.”

”He never liked me. I liked him all right. He was horribly like Gwen. He still is.”