weekend at the tower, Jean had gone out early to pursue a plan she had evolved to dam the stream and make a pool or pond. Duncan was to come and help her after the breakfast which she would soon return to make. The tin was shining. Duncan stood at the window of their bed- nom, the upper room of the tower, and looked out between the silky green flanks of the mountains at the glittering triangle of blue sea. The sky was cloudless, a lark was singing, a -swallow was singing, the stream was murmuring. They still constantly said to each other when they were in bed: listen to the stream. He could see his wife below, her trousers rolled up, standing barefoot in the stream, bending down, then straightening up, then waving to him. There was all the paraphernalia of complete happiness, that happiness of which he so well knew himself to be capable: only he was in hell. He waved back. He turned into the room, blinking from the sunshine and the dazzle of the sea, and looked at the disordered bed where They had slept together. They had long ago stopped hoping for it child. They had been to doctors who had offered different useless explanations. Then he saw something at the side of the ctirving room, on the floor, a little thing or shadowy quasiililtig lying there upon the boards against the wall of dark lightly uneven stones. He went over to it and picked it up. It was light and pale and insubstantial. He closed it in his hand mid his heart beat very fast and he sat down heavily on the low divan bed. He could feel the hot blood rush to his face and up to his brow. He opened his hand and held the little thing in his palm and examined it. It was a ball of what might have been dusty fluff, but was, he saw, human hair, reddish hair such as a person, a man, might draw off the teeth ofa comb, after he had combed his hair, and idly let fall upon the floor. No one came to the tower to clean or dust or deliver goods or mend, no one had a key to the tower except him and Jean. This was not his or Jean's dark hair which he held in his hand, it was Crimond's red hair.
Jean called from below that breakfast was ready. Duncan put the hair ball into his pocket and went downstairs and listened smilingly to Jean's ideas about her pond. He ate a boiled egg and went out and helped her to move some stones and dig a hole and watched her delight as it filled with water. Later that morning he announced that he had to be in London for two days later that week. When the time came Jean drove him to the airport as usual. When she had left him he bought some sandwiches and hired a car and drove it by a roundabout route toward a place upon a hillside which he had already, studying the landscape, determined upon where there was a thicket of gorse and a fallen tree covered with ivy just upon the crest, and a clear view of the tower in the valley below. He parked the car and climbed the hill to his viewpoint and crept in behind the tree where the tall growth of ivy had woven a screen, and peered through the ivy leaves and through a hazy flowery gorse, shifting about until he could sit, leaning against the tree trunk, and see the tower and the bumpy track which led to it. He took his field glasses from their case and hung them round his neck and waited. He felt a hideous tormenting excitement. Nothing happened, no one came. The ivy was in flower and very many bees were walking and flying over the yellowish flowers with their spotty stamens. The dark powdery smell of the ivy mingled with the coconut smell of the gorse. By now it was afternoon. The sun shone, he took off his jacket, he sweated. His body was heavy and gross, he was short of breath and panting. Soon what he was doing became so loathsome to him that he had to get up and go away.
He drove the hired car south along the coast road as far as Wicklow and booked into a small hotel. The hotel had no bar or restaurant so he went into the pub next door and began drinking whiskey. He found the sandwiches which he had brought so long ago at the airport and ate one and drank some more whiskey. He took Crimond's hair out of his pocket and looked at it. Of course he had thought it possible that someihing serious was going on; vague speculation is life, positive Hoof is death. Well, he thought, postponing his certainty, I haven't
He began to feel self-consciously miserable and ill-used in a way which for a time brought consolation. He saw himself I here, hunched up, a big dark man with a mat of dark crinkly hair and a big red glowering face, getting stupefyingly drunk among a lot of Irishmen (of course there were no women in the bar) who were all getting stupefyingly drunk too. He thought,
The next morning he woke up very early feeling like a sick dying animal. He had a pain in the stomach and a pain in the head and a dry shrivelled mouth and his whole body wits heavy and aching and smelly and fat. Through the flimsy torn curtains cold daylight filled the window. He lay for a whilr almost whimpering with self-pity with his head under the bedclothes. Then he suddenly sat up and stood up, dressed without washing, paid his bill, found his car, and set off back northward. There was a cold white light at the sea horizon pressed down by a low ceiling of thick grey cloud. Curtains of rain could be seen descending ahead, yet from somewhere the sun managed occasionally to shine illuminating the grey wall of cloud and the vivid green hillsides and brightly coloured trees. Upon the farther mountains on his left segments of rainbow came and went. He drove very fast. He had a violent headache and a dark iron pain in his diaphragm, boiling particles and flashing lights skidded above the focus ofhis eyes as he frowned intently upon the flying road. His reflections of last night, his not sure, his why bother, his ignore it, his merciful camaraderie with other sinners, all that was gone. He felt himself, sitting upright in the car and dominating his body's wretchedness, as a black machine of will, a vindictive machine black with misery and rage, powered by one intention, to find and destroy. He no longer entertained any temperate delaying sense of uncertainty, no haze of doubt now gentled his mind. Uncertainty had been a restless torment, but certainty, clarity, was a hell fire from which, in which, one ran screaming. All this he thought and felt as he drove so urgently fast along the wet shining road with the frenzied windscreen wipers hurling aside the now persistent and increasing rain.
When he turned off the main road into the lanes which led toward the tower he began to feel faint and had to stop the car and lean his head upon the wheel. He thought he might be nick. He wondered if he would be able to go on. The rain was lighter now, more like a driving mist, the clouds were higher, dir still invisible sun was making an intense greyish light in which the grass at the little field beside him shone violently green. He got out of the car and stood in the rainy air with his head bowed forward, breathing open-mouthed. He thought, I ism mad, I have become temporarily insane and must someIsow stop myself. He felt as if his hate, without ceasing to be lime, had been changed into pure fear. Too much could li.ippen, terrible things could happen which could change his whole life, he could destroy the world, he had that power now, it) destroy the world. He thought this, knowing that he could tint now check the engine which was driving him on. He stood upright and saw nearby a stone wall, and a horse and a cow looking at him. The rain had stopped. The horse had come over to the wall. He thought he might eat a sandwich, he still had some left, he might go over and stroke the horse, that would be a sensible sort of delay, would it not, to stay quietly l here with the horse and the cow. He got into the car and drove on. He said to himself, there will be no one there and I can drive on into Dublin and go to the flat and
