smelt of dust and damp and disuse and the curtains were half drawn. “This is the drawing room. But no one ever comes in here, as you can see. Please sit down.” He gave Diana a little push and she fell over onto the brown plush sofa, raising a puff of dust which made her sneeze. Nigel pulled the curtains back and let in the cold cloudy afternoon light.
”What do you want?”
”There’s something you ought to know.”
”What?”
”Danby loves your sister.”
Diana stared at him as he swayed to and fro against the window. “I think you are confused,” she said. “Danby scarcely knows my sister.”
”He knows her enough to be madly in love with her.”
”I think you must be mixing my sister up with me. Not that Danby-Anyway it’s nothing to do with you.”
”I’m not mixing you up. He liked you. Then he met Lisa and fell in love.”
”You are mistaken,” said Diana. She began to rise.
”Well, look at this.” Nigel thrust into her hand a much-torn piece of paper which had been reconstituted with the help of adhesive tape. It was a first draft of Danby’s second letter to Lisa.
Diana read it through. Then it fell from her fingers onto the floor. She leaned back into the sofa and stared ahead of her. This was surely a sign. She knew now, and knew it quite clearly that Danby’s love would have kept her from suicide. But now-Lisa had taken Danby too. Diana clutched her handbag, feeling the bottle of tablets inside it. She thought, I will go home, no I will go to a hotel, and do it at once. This is the end. Danby too. Lisa had annexed the world. A tear rolled down her cheek. She had forgotten Nigel’s presence.
He had sat down beside her. “I thought you ought to know in case it made any difference.”
”It makes no difference,” she said, wiping away the tear. She began to get up.
”Wait. I’ve got something else to say.”
”What about?”
”About Miles and Lisa. You mustn’t be desperate.”
”How do you know all these things?”
”Because I am God. Maybe this is how God appears now in the world, a little unregarded crazy person whom everyone pushes aside and knocks down and steps upon. Or it can be that I am the false god, or one of the million million false gods there are. It matters very little. The false god is the true God. Up any religion a man may climb.”
”Let me go,” said Diana. Nigel had taken her by the shoulders.
”You must not be resentful. You must not be angry with them. There must be not a speck of resentment, not a speck of anger. That is a task, that is the task. To make a new heaven and a new earth. Only you can do it. And it is possible, it is possible.”
”Let me go. It’s no business of yours.”
”It is my business. I love you.”
”Don’t be silly, we’ve never met before.”
”We have met. I was painting the railings. I had paint in my hair.”
”But surely that was-someone else-“ Diana put her hand to her face. She felt she must be going slightly mad.
”Besides I love everybody.”
”Then it can’t be love. Take your hands away, please.”
”Why not? Didn’t I tell you I was God?”
”I think you must be mad-or drugged.”
”Maybe. May I call you Diana, Diana? Do you know that you’re rather beautiful?” Nigel began to slide his arms round the back of her shoulders. Diana struggled, but he was amazingly strong.
”Do you want me to start screaming?”
”You won’t scream. Besides, who would rescue you? Bruno? I just want to hold you ever so lovingly while I talk to you.”
Diana, her arms pinioned, tried to get some purchase with her knee. More clouds of dust arose out of the old sofa. Diana began to sneeze again and Nigel’s grip tightened. Tears of helplessness and misery coursed down her face. She stopped struggling.
”There, there, don’t fight poor Nigel, he loves you. You must forgive Miles and Lisa.”
Diana let the tears flow for a while. She was unable to wipe them away because of the closeness of Nigel’s embrace. She said at last, “How?”
”Let them trample over you in their own way. Perhaps they have done the right thing, though they have done it proudly, riding on horses. Their pride has its little necessities. See and pardon.”
”There is also my pride,” said Diana.
”Abandon it. Let it fall away like a heavy stone.”
”It hardly concerns me,” she said, “that they have done the right thing. They have made a great sacrifice. I’ve got to be grateful. But I can’t be. They love each other terribly.”
”Each loves himself more. Their love for themselves and for their own lives left them no other way. They have sacrificed nothing. They have just decided to do what will make them flourish.”
”I can’t discuss this with you,” said Diana. But she did not now try to draw herself away.
”You are discussing it with me, my dear. The terrible thing is that nobody will die of this! Miles will flourish, and you will watch him kindly, as if you were watching a child.”
”They should have gone away together. He’ll resent it forever. He’ll despise me. There can be no love between us anymore. I cannot bear his thoughts, his thoughts about her, his thoughts about me.”
”A human being hardly ever thinks about other people. He contemplates fantasms which resemble them and which he has decked out for his own purposes. Miles’s thoughts cannot touch you. His thoughts are about Miles. This too you must see and forgive. He will be pleased with himself and you will see him smiling.”
”But what about me?”
”That is what they all cry. Relax. Let them walk on you. Send anger and hate away. Love them and let them walk on you. Love Miles, love Danby, love Lisa, love Bruno, love Nigel.”
Diana had laid her head against Nigel’s shoulder. Her tears were drying upon her cheek and upon his coat. “I don’t think I know how to do it.”
”You know how to try to do it. Everybody knows that.”
”It’s all been so mad. Danby and Lisa too. It all seems like a dream now, a nightmare, with nothing clear.”
”It is mostly a dream, Diana. Only little pieces are clear and they don’t necessarily fit together. When we suffer we think everything is a big machine. But the machine is just a fantasm of our pain.”
”It did seem like a machine,” she said. She began to sit up and push back her hair. Nigel had relaxed his hold.
”You see, it is already passing.”
She sat back and looked at him. A bluish-purple bruise covered one side of his face, darkly ringing the half- closed eye. “Whatever have you done to yourself?”
”I ran into a piece of the real world. It can hurt.”
”Poor Nigel-“
”And let me take these away. You won’t be needing them.”
Nigel’s hand, burrowing in her handbag, had got hold of the bottle of sleeping tablets. He lifted them out and transferred them to his pocket.
Diana rubbed her face, smoothing the dried tears into the skin. “No, I suppose I won’t. But I don’t know why. You’ve just talked nonsense to me.”
”Of course, of course. I am the nonsense priest of the non sense god! A false doctor is not a kind of doctor, but a false god is a kind of god, Diana. Let me see you home.”
27
