«Oh everything's inside. That's the trouble.»
«I don't know what you mean by 'inside.' But you seem to be speaking as if it were all an illusion, as if you could leave me.»
«I suppose it could be interpreted like that.»
«But we've only just found each other.»
«We found each other millions of years ago, Julian.»
«Yes, yes, I know. I feel that too, but really, ordinary really, since Covent Garden it's only two days.»
«I'll meditate on that.»
«Well, meditate properly. Bradley, you couldn't leave me, what nonsense are you talking.»
«No, I couldn't leave you, my utter darling, but you could leave me. I don't mean anything about doubting your love. It's just that whatever miracle made us will automatically also break us. We are for breaking, our smash is what it's for.»
«I won't let you talk like this. I'll hold you and silence you with love.»
«Mind out. This is tricky light for driving in.»
«Will you stop a minute?»
«No.»
«Do you really think I could leave you?»
«Sub specie aeternitatis, yes. You have done so already.»
«You know I don't understand Latin.»
«A pity your education was so neglected.»
«Bradley, I shall get angry with you.»
«So we are quarrelling already. Shall I drive you back to Ealing?»
«You are deliberately hurting and spoiling.»
«I am not a very nice character. You must get to know me some time.»
«I do know you. I know you inside out and backwards.»
«You do and you don't.»
«Do you doubt my love?»
«I fear the gods.»
«I fear nothing.»
«Perfection is instant despair. Instant despair. Nothing to do with time.»
«If you despair you doubt that I love you.»
«Maybe.»
'Will you please stop driving?»
«What can I do to prove that I love you absolutely?»
«I don't see that you can do anything.»
«I shall jump out of the car.»
«Don't be silly.»
«I shall.»
And the next moment she had.
There was a sound like a small explosion, a puff of air, and she was gone from my side. The door gaped, cracked open, swung and slammed back. The seat beside me was empty. The car careered onto the grass verge and stopped.
I looked back and saw her in the half-light lying in a dark motionless heap by the side of the road.
I have had terrible moments in my life. Many of them came to me after this one. But this was, seen in retrospect, the most beautiful, the purest and the most absolutely punishing.
Gasping with terror and anguish I got myself out of the car and ran back. The road was empty and silent, the air filled with atoms of darkening blue, defeating the sight.
Oh the poor frailty of the human form, its egg-shell vulnerability! How can this precarious crushable machine of flesh and bones and blood survive on this planet of hard surfaces and relentless murderous gravity? I had felt the crash and crunch of her body upon the road.
Her head was in the grass, her legs hunched up on the verge. The moment of stillness when I got to her was the worst. I knelt beside her, moaning aloud, not daring to touch or move that perhaps terribly damaged body. Was she conscious, would she in a moment begin to scream with pain? My hands hovered about her with a condemned tragic helplessness. I had a very different future now as I ineptly questioned that inert and scattered being that I did not dare even to fold in my arms.
Then Julian said, «Sorry, Bradley.»
«Are you badly hurt?» I said in a grating breathless voice.
«Don't-think-so-' Then she sat up and put her arms round my neck.
«Oh Julian, be careful, are you all right, is anything broken?»
«No-I'm sure-not-Look, I fell onto these humpy cushions of grass or moss or-«I thought you fell on the road.»
«No, I just-grazed my leg again-and I banged my face-ouf! I think I'm perfectly all right though, it just hurts-Wait a moment, let me just try moving-Yes, I'm perfectly all right-Oh I am sorry-I took her in my arms properly then and we held onto each other, half lying among the little mossy grassy hillocks beside a ditch full of white flowering nettles. The creamy moon had become smaller and paler and more metallic. Darkness began to thicken about us in the dense air as we held each other in silence.
«Bradley, I'm getting cold, I've lost my sandals.»