”You’re so good, I wish I had your knack.”
”I’m more used to it.”
”What did he say?”
”He said to tell Miles he didn’t mean what he said at the end.”
”You know, I think he thought you were Miles’s wife!”
”I don’t know who he thought I was.”
”He seemed to think you were somebody, he certainly took to you.”
”I do wish we’d known him earlier.”
”Well, that was Miles’s fault. God, I hope I’ll never get like that, I’d rather be dead. Don’t you think there’s a lot to be said for euthanasia?”
”I’m not sure. It’s so hard to know what’s going on inside a very old person.”
”No wonder Miles was stumped.”
”Miles will have to try again.”
”Well, you tell Miles that. You’re good at being firm with him. Wasn’t he cross this morning?”
”Guilty conscience!”
”Danby was thoroughly fed up with him.”
”Yes.” The two women turned into the Fulham Road, their heads bowed to the light rain.
”Lisa.”
”Yes.”
”There’s nothing special going on between me and Danby, you know.”
”I didn’t think there was.”
”He’s a thoughtless impetuous chap but he’s really very sweet. You mustn’t be hard on him.”
”I don’t know anything about him.”
”You’re like Miles, you’re so uncompromising. I think it makes you just a little too severe sometimes.”
”Sorry!”
”Danby’s a very affectionate person and I think he’s a bit lonely. I suspect he hasn’t really talked to a woman for ages. He imagines he’s a bit keen on me, but I can manage him. It’s just the first shock! I know he plays the clown a bit but he’s not a fool. There’s no drama.”
”I didn’t think there was, Di.”
”That’s all right then. You worry so, Lisa, and I know you don’t suffer fools gladly. You and Miles are so alike. I can’t think why you’re both so fond of me!”
Lisa laughed and thrust her arm through her sister’s and gave it a quick squeeze. A little later as they were taking the short cut through Brompton Cemetery Lisa said, “Seeing Bruno like that reminded me of Dad.”
”Oh God. Lisa, I’ve thought about it sometimes, but I never liked to ask you. Were you actually with him when he died?”
”Yes.”
”One hates to think of these things. I’m such a coward, I was very relieved it happened when I was away. Was it rather awful?”
”Yes.”
”Like what?”
”I think one almost absolutely forgets the quality of scenes like that.”
”Was he-frightened?”
”Yes.”
”That must have been terrible for you.”
”It’s like no other fear. It’s so deep. It almost becomes something impersonal. Philosophers say we own our deaths. I don’t think so. Death contradicts ownership and self. If only one knew that all along.”
”I suppose one is just an animal then.”
”One is with an animal then. It isn’t quite the same thing.”
”He was so good earlier on in the illness.”
”He didn’t believe it earlier on, any more than we believe it now.”
”We did try to deceive him.”
”We were trying to deceive ourselves. It was terrible to see him realizing-the truth.”
”Oh God. What did you do?”
”Held his hand, said I loved him-“
”I suppose that is the only thing one would want to know.”
”What was awful was that he didn’t want to know. We’re so used to the idea that love consoles. But here one felt that even love was-nothing.”
”That can’t be true.”
”I know what you mean. It can’t be true. Perhaps one just suddenly saw the dimensions of what love would have to be-like a huge vault suddenly opening out overhead-“
”Was it-hard for him to go?”
”Yes. Like a physical struggle. Well, it was a physical struggle, trying to do something.”
”I suppose death is a kind of act. But I expect he was really unconscious at the end.”
”I don’t know. Who knows what it is like at the end?”
”What a gloomy conversation. Why, Lisa, you’re crying!
Oh stop crying, darling, stop crying, for heaven’s sake!”
16
Danby was standing in the long grass in Brompton Cemetery. It was Wednesday afternoon.
He had gone through the day, indeed the last few days, at the works in a kind of dream. There had been the usual round of small crises which he normally rather enjoyed. The big Columbian press used for printing small issues of posters had broken down and one of the apprentices had tried to mend it with terrible results. The Bingo people had changed their mind about the format when the cards were already printing. The safety hand of the guillotine had gone wrong so that they were breaking the law every time they used it. The lorry delivering the lead had backed into a stack of paper and ruined it. A reproduction of a modern picture in a local magazine had been printed upside down. The expensive new type had arrived for one of the composing machines and the bill was exactly twice the estimate. One of the girls in the packing department had fallen off the ladder into the storeroom and broken her ankle. The elderly eccentric for whom they printed woodcuts had rung up five times about the Japanese paper. The art school from which Danby had been trying to buy an old Albion had sent a representative to discuss the sale.
Danby had left early, handing everything over to Gaskin with a preoccupied indifference which amazed the latter, who thought that Danby would at least be cock-a-hoop at the prospect of getting the Albion, a very beautiful early model which he had long coveted.
Danby had been tempted to have an encouraging quick one at the Tournament or the Lord Ranelagh, which had just opened their doors, but it was better to remain sober and for once he had no difficulty in doing so. Drunk or sober was much the same now. It had been raining and now a faint evening sunlight was making everything glitter. On the other side of the tall iron railings the rush-hour traffic was travelling steadily, hypnotically, along the Old Brompton Road. Inside the railings the uncut grass made the cemetery look like a field, or more like a ruined city with its formal yet grassy streets and squares: Ostia, Pompeii, Mycenae. Big houselike tombs, the dwellings of the dead, lined the wide central walk which showed in a cold sunny glimpse the curve of distant pillars. In quieter side avenues humbler graves were straggled about with grass, with here and there a cleared place, a chained space, a clipped mound, a body’s length of granite chips, a few recent flowers wilting beside a name. Above the line of mist-green budding lime trees there rose far off the three black towers of Lots Road power station.
It had come as no surprise to Danby when Bruno had said to him after she had gone, “That girl looked a bit like Gwen.” Danby had taken in the resemblance earlier, when he had seen Lisa’s head so close to Bruno’s. He had
