«Sssh, you'll wake Priscilla. The emotion rubs off on the women, but the source of the emotion is you and Arnold, you're crazy about each other-«I am not homosexual, I am not neurotic, I know myself-«Oh all right,» said Francis, suddenly changing his posture and turning away from the fire. «All right. Have it your own way.»
«You're just inventing this out of spite-«Yes, I'm just inventing it. I am neurotic and I am homosexual and I'm bloody unhappy about it. Of course you don't know yourself, lucky old you. I just know myself too bloody well.» He began to cry.
I have rarely seen a man crying and the sight inspires disgust and fear. Francis was whimpering loudly, producing suddenly a great many tears. I could see his fat reddened hands wet with them in the light of the gas fire.
«Oh, cut it out!»
«All right, all right. Sorry, Brad. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I expect I just want to suffer. I'm a masochist. I must like pain or I wouldn't go on living, I'd have taken my bottle of sleeping pills years ago, I've thought of it often enough. Oh Christ, now you'll think I'm bad for Priscilla and boot me out-«Stop making that horrible noise, I can't bear it.»
«Forgive me, Brad. I'm just a-«Try to be a man, try to-«I can't-Oh God-it's just the bloody pain-I'm not like other people, my life just doesn't work, it never has-and now you'll throw me out, and, oh God, if you only knew-«I'm going to bed,» I said. «Have you got your sleeping bag here?»
«Yes, it's-«
«Well, get into it and shut up.»
«I want to have a pee.»
«Good night!»
WL here's Arnold?»
«Gone to the library. So he says. And Julian's gone to a pop festival.»
«I sent Arnold that review. Did he say anything?»
«I never see him reading his letters. He said nothing. Oh Bradley, thank God you've come!»
I hugged Rachel in the hall, behind the stained glass of the front door, beside the hall stand, next to the coloured print of Mrs. Sid– dons which I could see through the red haze of her hair. Still imprinted on my eyes was the vision of her broad pale face as she opened the door, crumpled into an ecstasy of relief. It is a privilege to be received in this way. There are human beings who have never been so welcomed. Something of Rachel's age, of her being wean. no longer young, was visible too and touching.
«Look, come upstairs.»
«Rachel, I want to talk-«You can talk upstairs, I'm not going to eat you.»
She led me by the hand, and in a moment we were in the bedroom where I had seen Rachel lying like a dead woman with the sheet over her face. As we came in Rachel pulled the curtains and then dragged the green silk counterpane off the bed. «Now, Bradley, sit down beside me.»
We sat down rather awkwardly side by side and stared at each other. I felt the roughness of the blankets under my limp hand. The welcoming image had faded and I was rigid with confusion and anxiety.
«I just want to touch you,» she said. And she did touch me with her finger tips, lightly touching my face and neck and hair, as if I were a holy image.
«Rachel, we must know what we're doing, I don't want to behau badly.»
«Guilt would interfere with your work.» She lightly closed my eyes with her finger tips.
I jerked away from her. «Rachel, you aren't just doing this to spite Arnold?»
«No. I think I started thinking about it, somehow out of self-defence, and then that awful time, you know, in this room, you were here, you were inside the barrier as it were, and I've known you so long, it's as if you had a special role, like a knight with a charge laid upon him, my knight, so necessary and precious, and I've always seen you a little as a wise man, a sort of hermit or ascetic-«And it always gives ladies particular pleasure to seduce ascetics.»
«Perhaps. Am I seducing you? Anyway I've got to perform an act of will. Otherwise I shall die of humiliation or something. I feel it's a holy time.»
«This could be a pretty unholy idea.»
«It's your idea too, Bradley. Look where you are!»
«We are both conventional middle-aged people.»
«I'm not conventional.»
«Well, I am, I'm pre-permissive. And you are my best friend's wife. And one doesn't with one's best friend's wife-«
«What?»
«Start anything.»
«But it's started, it's here, the only question is what we do with it. Bradley, I'm afraid I do rather enjoy arguing with you.»
«You know where arguments like this end,»
«Between the sheets.»
«God, we might as well be eighteen.»
«They don't argue now.»
«Look, is all this because Arnold is having an affair with Christian? Is he having an affair with Christian?»
«I don't know and it no longer matters.»
«You still love Arnold, don't you?»
«Oh yes, yes, yes, but that doesn't matter either. He's just played the tyrant for too long. I must have new love, I must have love outside the Arnold-cage-«I suppose women of your age-'
«Oh don't start that, Bradley.»
«I just mean, naturally one might want a change, but let's not do anything-«
«Bradley, with all your philosophy, surely you know that it doesn't really matter what we do.»
I reflected. «Yes.»
«Well, you must stop being. Oh my dear, don't you see that this is somehow the point? I must see you unafraid. This is what being my knight is. That will really let me out. And it will do something great for you too. Why can't you write? Because you're all timid and repressed and tied up. I mean in a spiritual way.»
This was close to what I had thought myself. «Then are we to love each other in a spiritual way?»
«Oh Bradley, look, enough of this argument, let's undress.»
All this time we had been sitting sideways facing each other, not touching, except when the tips of her fingers lightly tapped my face, then the lapels of my jacket, my shoulders and arms as if she were putting a spell upon me.