a thread around it. Now the woman had opened the window and put her hand into the web, destroying its beautiful symmetry. The spider retreated. The captive fly dangled from a thread.
”Too late. Bring them here both. In the mug, the cup.”
The woman detached the fly into the mug and with more difficulty captured the spider in the cup. She brought them both to Bruno.
The fly was struggling feebly, moving its legs and its head. Its wings had already been crushed up against its body by the circling thread. The spider was agitated, trying to rush up the slippery side of the cup. The woman kept moving the cup with a light circular motion against the direction of the spider, so that it kept falling back again to the bottom. After a while it was still.
”Such a fat spider.”
”You’re not afraid,” said Bruno. “Most women are afraid.”
”I’m not afraid of spiders. I rather like them. I like flies too.”
”It’s a sad thing. Look at the cross, big white cross on her back. In the Middle Ages they said she was holy because of the cross.”
”Do you think we’d better kill the fly?”
Bruno considered. They had interfered with nature and were now at a loss. “Yes. And put the spider back.”
The woman dropped the fly onto the floor and stepped on it. She carefully reintroduced the spider to the web. The spider ran straight into its bower, cowering back so as to be almost invisible.
”Leave the window open, please.”
The warm early summer air filled the room. The smell of dusty streets, the special smell of the Thames, a sort of fermented rotting yet cool fresh smell, were mingled with a vague scent of flowers.
What do they feel, thought Bruno. Had the fly suffered pain when its wings were forced back and crushed by the strong thread? Had the spider felt fear when it was in the tea cup? How mysterious life was at these its extremities. And yet was the mystery less when one returned from the extremities to the centre? Perhaps if God existed He would look down upon His creation with the same puzzlement and ask, what do they feel?
But there was no God. I am at the centre of the great orb of my life, thought Bruno, until some blind hand snaps the thread. I have lived for nearly ninety years and I know nothing. I have watched the terrible rituals of nature and I have lived inside the simple instincts of my own being and now at the end I am empty of wisdom. Where is the difference between me and these little humble creatures? The spider spins its web, it can no other. I spin out my consciousness, this compulsive chatterer, this idle rambling voice that will so soon be mute. But it’s all a dream. Reality is too hard. I have lived my life in a dream and now it is too late to wake up.
”What was the other thing?” said Bruno.
”What other thing, my dear?”
”The other thing.”
If only one could believe that death was waking up. Some people believed this. Bruno stared at his dressing gown hanging on the door. He never used it now since he did not leave his bed, and it had hardened into folds which were every day the same. How well he knew those folds. It seemed to be getting taller, larger, darker. Even the sunshine did not dispel that darkness now. The pity of it all, thought Bruno. I’ve been through this vale of tears and never seen anything real. The reality. That’s the other thing. But now it’s too late and I don’t even know what it is. He looked round him. The sun shine revealed the terrible little room, the faded stained wall paper with the green ivy design, the dull puckered doorknob, the thin Indian counterpane with its almost invisible spidery arabesques, the row of champagne bottles getting dusty in the corner. He could not drink champagne any more now. And the dressing gown.
Tears came out of Bruno’s eyes and ran down over the bones of his face and into his beard.
”What is it, dear heart? Don’t cry.”
”I can’t remember, I can’t remember”
It’s something simple really, he thought. Something to do with Maureen and Janie and the whole thing. One sees now how pointless it all was, all the things one chased after, all the things one wanted. And if there is something that matters now at the end it must be the only thing that matters. I wish I’d known it then. It looks as if it would have been easy to be kind and good since it’s so obvious now that nothing else matters at all. But of course then one was inside the dream.
”Does it work backwards?” said Bruno. “It can’t, can it?”
”What do you mean, my dear?”
The woman was holding his hand again, sitting close up against him on the bed. He felt no sexual desire any more. The fear had killed it.
”If only it could work backwards, but it can’t.”
Some people believed that too. That life could be redeemed. But it couldn’t be, and that was what was so terrible. He had loved only a few people and loved them so badly, so selfishly. He had made a muddle of everything. Was it only in the presence of death that one could see so clearly what love ought to be like? If only the knowledge which he had now, this absolute nothing-else-matters, could somehow go backwards and purify the little selfish loves and straighten out the muddles. But it could not.
Had Janie known this at the end? For the first time Bruno saw it with absolute certainty. Janie must have known. It would be impossible in this presence not to know. She had not wanted to curse him, she had wanted to forgive him. And he had not given her the chance.
”Janie, I am so sorry,” murmured Bruno. His tears flowed. But he was glad that he knew, at last. The dressing gown had moved forward towards him and was standing at the foot of the bed.
I believe he’s going, thought Diana. Oh why have I got to suffer this?
Bruno had been talking a kind of nonsense for days and intermittently crying. He could scarcely eat and all power of movement seemed to be leaving his body. The limp shrunken form lay inertly under the counterpane. Only in the head, only perhaps in the eyes, there burned with a fierce almost violent strength the flame which was so soon to be put out.
Diana held onto his hand, which just perceptibly returned her pressure. He was blinking the tears away from his eyes. Diana put up her other hand to brush his cheek. He had not the strength now to raise his hand to his face. How strange it was that when almost all the other functions of the body had dwindled and fallen away into the hand of nature the eyes had not surrendered their mysterious power to manufacture tears.
Diana felt the tears rising into her own eyes, and she drew her free hand back to mop them. Her tears and Bruno’s were mingled on her cheek. She had come to love Bruno so much in this terrible time.
If Bruno went now Danby would feel very bad about it. He and Lisa had gone away for the night. Diana had persuaded them to go. Then Bruno had suddenly begun to sink.
It seemed to Diana that Danby and her sister were scarcely sane. They both seemed to be drunk with ecstasy. The physical change in Lisa was so great that Diana could scarcely recognize her as the same person. She looked not ten but twenty years younger and more beautiful than she had ever looked in her life. She laughed almost all the time, with a new laugh which Diana had never heard before. Or perhaps it was that throughout the years she had just forgotten the sound of Lisa’s laughter. Had she and Danby been to bed together? Lisa’s appearance left the matter in little doubt. Their attempts, in that house of death, to conceal their felicity were touching and unsuccessful. They could not help presenting a picture of life at its most explosively robust and hopeful. They could not help presenting a spectacle of triumph.
Miles’s indignation had been extreme and comic. Her perception of the comicality of Miles in this situation had been one of the things which had helped Diana herself to bear it. It had been some time before Miles would even believe what Diana was telling him. He regarded it as impossible, as strictly contradictory. He stared at Diana with wild amazed eyes. It was all a mistake, she would find that she had been mistaken, she had certainly got it wrong. For nature so preposterously to err… When at last Diana did succeed in persuading Miles of the truth of what she said, that Lisa was not leading a dedicated life in India but was to be seen riding about Lon don in Danby’s new sports car and dining with Danby at riverside restaurants, dressed in extremely smart new clothes, Miles gave himself up to a day of rage and execration. He cursed Danby, he cursed Lisa. He said it could not possibly last. She would be sorry, my God, she would be sorry! He announced himself irreparably damaged. The next day he was silent, frowning, concentrating, refusing to answer Diana’s questions. On the third day he said to Diana enigmatically, “It’s all over now,” and returned to work in the summerhouse. It was another week before Diana,
