she had said to Miles. “She certainly wants to suffer,” Miles had replied. “That isn’t quite the same thing.”
”She’s a mystic,” Diana had concluded. “She wants to be nothinged.”
”She is certainly a masochist,” Miles had agreed.
I am middle-aged, thought Diana, looking round the ballroom at the dreamy couples who were so far from young. I belong with these people. The novelty of Lisa had worn off. Had Diana now reached an age where there had to be, at last, one novelty after another? Was this a kind of wickedness? She could not feel it. She could only feel an excited sense of rejuvenation and funniness in the unexpected advent of Danby. Of course she had thought about Bruno and she had thought about Danby, only imagining him quite unreflectively in terms of Miles’s picture. Even after Miles’s recent interview with Danby she had listened quite simple-heartedly to Miles’s exclamations about that fat dolt and that grinning buffoon. She had not expected to be instantly captivated. The sheer surprise of it was life-giving. Danby’s smooth brown humorous face, his drooping crest of white hair, his strong confident smile, hovered in her mind as she told Miles, in somewhat curtailed terms, of Danby’s visit, and while she listened in silence to Miles’s stream of sarcasm. The images accompanied her to bed.
”The contact of bodies is the contact of minds.”
”You are a philosopher, Danby.”
”Think of all the ridiculous years we haven’t known each other.”
”I feel I’ve known you for ages.”
”I feel that too. I think we’re each other’s type. Yes?”
”Maybe. You’re someone I can be entirely light-hearted with without feeling worried. It’s not so easy for a woman of my age to take this kind of-holiday.”
”Light-hearted. You don’t mean frivolous, cynical?”
”No, light-hearted. You make me laugh.”
”Well, that’s all right. Let’s have a love affair.”
”No, Danby, nothing like that. I love my husband. I’m permanently hooked.”
”Oh. I think it’s rather bad form for a woman to say that when she’s illicitly dancing with another man.”
”I’m afraid it’s true, my dear.”
”Let me pay you the tribute of saying that your remark has caused me pain.”
”Let me pay you the tribute of saying that I survey your pain with pleasure.”
”We might get somewhere on that basis.”
”No, no-“
”You said no last time and then yes, so I’ll go on hoping.”
”Don’t. I’m glad you wanted to dance with me, that’s all.”
”That isn’t all, since we’re here together in this awfully deliriously wicked place.”
”It is rather an image of sin, isn’t it.”
”Let’s give the image some substance then.”
”Have you got anybody, Danby?”
”A girl, no.”
”You’re not queer, are you?”
”Good God no! Diana, you make me feel quite faint!”
”All alone?”
”All alone. There was someone, but she went to Australia.
I mope.”
”Poor Danby. But really I think one’s thoughts and feelings are not all that important.”
”Mine are. I am thinking and feeling that I want you. What are you going to do about it? You realize that you’ve led me on?”
”I’m nearly fifty. It doesn’t apply.’
”I’m over fifty. It does.”
”Don’t make difficulties. Just for the moment really I feel young again.”
”It’s the music. This place belongs to the past. It’s something to do with movement, repetition. I feel young too, timeless, rather.”
”Timeless, yes. You’re very attractive.”
”Then what about it?”
”No, no.”
”You aren’t going to tell Miles and then write me a note saying you won’t see me again? I shall really make difficulties if you do that.”
”No, of course not. But it must all be quiet and formal and romantic.”
”Those seem to me contradictory terms. You mean chocolates, flowers-?”
”I mean a sort of romantic friendship.”
”Men aren’t good at romantic friendships. I want you in bed.”
”You aren’t really in love with me, I’m not really in love with you. We’re just captivated.”
”We can’t tell yet about being in love. And anyway what’s wrong with being captivated? I’m not all that often captivated, I can tell you!”
”We care for each other with the less good parts of ourselves.”
”Now you’re being philosophical. May I see you home?”
”No.”
”Miles won’t be there, it’s too early.”
”No.”
”Diana, I’ve just got to be alone with you for a minute. I want to kiss you.”
”No.”
11
“Nigel!”
It was three o’clock in the morning, the terrible slough of the night time. Bruno had been dreaming. He dreamt that he had murdered somebody, a woman, but he could not re member whom, and had buried the body in the front garden of a house in Twickenham where he had lived as a child. People kept coming and staring at the place where the body was buried and pointing to it until Bruno noticed with horror that the shape of the body was clearly visible through the earth, outlined with a reddish luminous glow. Then he was in a law court and the judge, who was Miles, was condemning him to death. He woke up with a racing heart. He felt sudden instinctive relief at knowing it was a dream before he realized a moment later that it was true. He was condemned to death.
The room with its curtains closely drawn was pitch dark, but he could just see the time on the luminous dial of his watch. Bruno reached out to try to put his light on but could not find the lamp. It must have been moved from his bedside table to the table beside the window. Adelaide sometimes did this when she was dusting and forgot to put it back. Nigel had put the light out for him at eleven o’clock. Bruno lay with one hand pressed to his heart. His heart was jumping and missing beats like a runner who runs too fast and constantly stumbles. There was an acute pain in his chest in the region of the heart and a sense of constriction as if a wire which had been passed round his chest were being drawn tighter and tighter. He moved his feet feebly inside their cage, thinking he might get up and find the light, but he felt too weak to move. Then an agonizing cramp seized his left foot. He tried to rub it against the other foot to ease the pain. He thought, it’s come, the time of prostration, of overwhelming weakness, of bedpans. The time of the dressing gown. Only, how odd, he would not be needing the dressing gown any more. The dressing gown would be a spectator awaiting its hour. But this was absurd. He had often felt weak before and it had passed off. Life is a series of unpleasant things which pass off. Except that there is one last one which doesn’t.
Bruno made an effort to restrain his tears. Odd business, trying to restrain tears, he said laboriously to himself. They live somewhere there at the back of your eyes, you can feel them moving in there like animals. Then there is the weak defeated pleasure of the warm tide rising, the water overflowing onto the cheek. The tears were a little relief. He moved his hand with difficulty and touched his cheek and took his salty finger to his lips. He thought,
