left hand to his breast. It’s theatre, he said to himself, just theatre. But the power of the scene had already made him its actor and he found himself raising the pistol, feeling for the trigger. It was all idiotic, but it was also awful, a grotesquerie, a piece of obscene unworthy mumming. Get it over with, he thought. Instinctively he turned the gun away from the slowly advancing but still distant figure of Will, and lowering the barrel in the direction of the river he pulled the trigger.
The leap of the gun, the deafening noise of the report, over laid another event. A green glass bottle which had been lying upon the mud at the very edge of the water disappeared into fragments with a high splintering clang.
Danby stood quite still, the echoes of the report still roaring in his ears, and stared at the bottle. So the pistol had been really loaded after all.
He dropped the pistol, which was wreathed in white smoke, and it fell with a dull thump into the glistening greyish mud. He stooped to pick it up again and saw straight ahead of him in the enclosed dome of golden luminosity the still advancing figure of Will. Danby tried to think. He said to himself, I must do something quickly, I must stop him, it’s all a mistake. He tried to move, but his limbs seemed too heavy to stir. He stood paralyzed, watching with fascination as the figure with the pointing pistol grew larger. Yes, he was wearing a mauve shirt. A mauve shirt.
Danby thought, supposing this man kills me. He wants to kill me, he wills my death. I should have known it wasn’t play acting. But he must know that I’m harmless, I didn’t mean to hurt him, I must explain it’s a mistake, I mustn’t die by mistake. Who would understand? He raised his hand. He tried to move his foot but it seemed to be rooted in the mud. He stood there with a raised hand, like a signal, a totem. The rain was increasing.
Will had reached the line of driftwood and stopped, pointing the pistol with care. There were about thirty yards between them.
He must be stopped, thought Danby, I must call out to him. But his body had become rigid with fear and expectation of the impact of the bullet. His mind seemed to float above him in some other sphere. He saw himself lying dead on the bank of the Thames with Will’s bullet in his heart. He thought, I am dying for a girl I didn’t love, I am dying because I failed to love, I am dying just upon the brink of love. I was not worthy. He tried to will to move, to sidestep, even to stand sideways as Nigel had advised. But he could not stop staring at Will, who was still taking aim, clear and detailed in an ellipse of bright vision.
”No, no, no!” Something black had shot across the centre of the scene, something capering, agitated, Nigel waving, shouting, spreading out his arms. He capered in front of Danby, dancing in the gravelly mud, his feet spraying pebbles.
”Get out of the way, damn you!”
As Will shouted Danby rushed forward and seized Nigel around the waist. They swayed together. Over Nigel’s shoulder Danby could see the steady pointing pistol. Danby crooked his foot round Nigel’s ankle and threw him stumbling to the ground. Will shouted again and fired.
As Danby heard the bullet whistle past his head the explosion loosened his limbs and he sat down heavily on the stones. Nigel was lying full length. He gazed on Danby. Then his eyes closed and there was an expression of bliss upon his face. The echo of the shot died away and there was a curiously intense silence.
Danby reached out to Nigel’s shoulder with the intention of shaking him, but he had no force in his arm and remained leaning there, staring down into the swooning beatific face. There was a sound of crunching footsteps.
Will, the still-smoking pistol hanging limp at his side, said, “Which of you have I hit?” His face was white, his mouth open and shuddering.
”Neither of us, fortunately for you,” said Danby. He began to get up.
”Nigel, Nigel-“ Will fell on his knees beside his brother.
Nigel’s eyes opened. “Hello, Will. I think I’ve been in heaven.”
”Are you all right, you bloody fool?”
”Yes. But look. I spy police.” A uniformed figure had appeared on the next wharf, which belonged to the cattle- cake mills. Somebody was distantly shouting. Danby turned about and began to walk in the opposite direction along the slippery shore. Then he decided it was silly to walk and began to run. The mist was lifting and he could see through the light now rather luminous curtain of rain a line of barges, the outline of the bridge, and the surface of the river smoothed and pitted with rain.
The water was lapping the base of the brick wall below the churchyard. The strand was coming to an end. Danby’s feet splashed in the water. He heard shouts behind him. He plunged in deeper, wildly splashing, and then with a sudden sense of blissful release gave himself to the Thames, losing his footing and falling forward into the deeper water. He began to swim towards the line of barges. He passed under the stern of the last barge and the shore behind him was blot ted out.
Now there was a sudden peace and silence. Danby swam slowly, breast stroke, scarcely stirring the surface of the quiet water. It did not seem cold. The still-flowing tide took him gently with it. He felt a strange beatific lightness as if all his sins, including the ones which he had long ago forgotten, had been suddenly forgiven. The mist had lifted and the rain was abating. A little pale sunlight began to glow from behind him, and he saw that a perfect rainbow had come into being, hanging over London, bridging the Thames from north to south. Danby swam towards it. He swam under Battersea Bridge.
28
It was raining, raining, raining. Adelaide stood in her bedroom with the light switched on. She felt frightened. It had been dark outside for so long now that it was hard to know if it was evening or night. The rain had darkened the whole after noon. Her watch had stopped. It must be night by now.
There had been another flood warning. But there had been so many and nothing had happened. The darkness was just so hard to bear and that continual violent rain battering the windows. The house had become terrible to her. It was as if it had been taken over by an evil spirit. She could not bear even to look into the kitchen. She feared Nigel, she feared Danby, she feared Bruno. She was afraid that Bruno would suddenly start to die when there was no one there but herself. The others came and went mysteriously. Perhaps one day they would go and not come back. She wanted to go herself, she had packed her bags days ago, but she had no will to move herself and nowhere to go to.
I can’t stay here, Adelaide kept thinking, I must go to a hotel. But she did not want to spend her money on a hotel. She had never stayed in a hotel in her life, and did not know how to choose one to go to. She thought, I must find another job. But the idea was nightmarish. She felt utterly incapable of working, of seeing new people. She felt incapable of living any more. She had at last understood that the person she had always loved was Will. That jerky violence which had so plucked at her nerves now merged magnetically with the sovereign forces of her own nature. She responded, she submit ted, but too late. The years with Danby seemed an insubstantial dream. She should have recognized this lord out of her childhood, she should never have questioned his authority over her. Beside that brute reality the charm of Danby faded to a wisp. Adelaide had forgotten her love for Danby. It seemed to her that she had been kind to him for some other reason which she could not now understand. She had ceased to feel animosity against Danby, though she was still very anxious not to meet him. She did not feel that he had used her unjustly. Her sense of being, through her new indifference to him, Danby’s equal, had removed all sense of grievance. Her anger was against herself, for her frivolity and her blindness. She had had him at her feet, the only one, for years and years, and now had lost him utterly.
Adelaide sat on the edge of her bed crying. She had rehearsed in her mind a hundred scenes of reconciliation, of throwing herself before him and accepting his anger and receiving his forgiveness. But she knew really that it would be profitless to try to see him, she knew him well enough. He was capable of assaulting her, hurting her, and this would have none of the splendour of imagined violence. It would be ugly, humiliating, final. She had thought of asking Nigel to intercede for her, even of asking Auntie. But for all she knew Will detested Nigel, and she dared not go near Auntie for fear of an encounter with Will. She had written him a let ter. Please forgive me.1 know now I love you. But it looked unreal, flimsy, utterly unlike the terrible force which she now felt rising up underneath her heart. She had posted the letter just for something to do, as an unbeliever might light a candle in a church. He would
