«No, but-How bruised you are, your poor arm and your leg.»
«I'm sorry-«
«It's beautiful, as if you'd been fingered by a god, stained with purple.»
«Come into bed, Bradley.»
«Your knees smell of the northern sea. Has anyone ever kissed the soles of your feet before?»
«No.»
«Good. Sorry to be such a failure.»
«You know there isn't any possible failure here, Bradley. I love you.»
«I'm your slave.»
«We will be married, won't we?»
«It's impossible.»
«You needn't scream.»
«Well, why do you say these sort of abstract things that you don't mean?»
«I'm just instinctively protecting myself.»
«You haven't answered properly. You will marry me, won't you?»
«You're quite mad,» I said, «but as I told you, I'm your slave. Whatever you go on wanting will be the law of my being.»
«That's settled then. Oh dear, I am so tired.»
We both were. After we had turned off the light she said, «And another thing, Bradley. Today has been the happiest day I have ever had in my whole life.»
I was asleep two seconds later. We woke at dawn and embraced each other again, but with the same result.
The next day the mist was still there, thicker, still moving in from the sea with a sort of relentless marching motion, passing by the house in a steady purposive manner like a shadowy army bound for some distant hosting. We watched it, sitting laced together in the window seat of the little sitting-room in the early morning.
After breakfast we decided to walk inland and look for a shop. The air was chilly and Julian was wearing one of my jackets as an overcoat, since it had not occurred to her to purchase a coat during her shopping spree. We walked along a footpath beside a little stream full of watercress and then came to a signalman's cottage and crossed the railway and then went over a humpy bridge which was reflecting itself in a very quiet canal. The sun was piercing the mist now and rolling it up into great cloudy spheres of gold in the midst of which we walked as between huge balls which never quite touched us or touched each other. I felt very troubled about what had happened, or rather not happened, during the night, but I was also being made insanely happy by Julian's presence. To torment us I said, «We can't stay here forever, you know.»
«Don't use that tone of voice. That's your 'despair.' Not again.»
«No, just saying the obvious.»
«I think we must stay here awhile to learn happiness.»
«It's not my subject.»
«You mean about our marriage?»
«Yes. Then later on I'll do my exams, everything will be-«Suppose I were much older than-«
«Oh stop worrying, Bradley. You want to sort of justify everything.»
«I am by you eternally justified. Even if your love were to end now I am justified.»
«Is that a quotation?»
«Only from me.»
«Well, it isn't going to end now. And do stop boring me about your age.»
«For all that beauty that doth cover thee is but the seemly raiment of my heart, which in thy breast doth live as thine in me. How can I then be older than thou art?»
«Is that a quotation?»
«It's a damn rotten argument.»
«Bradley, have you noticed anything about me?»
«One or two little things, I suppose.»
«Have you noticed that in the last two or three days I've grown up?»
I had noticed that. «Yes.»
«I was a child and perhaps you are still thinking of me as a child. But now I am a woman, a real one.»
«Oh my darling girl, hold onto me, hold onto me, hold onto me, and if I ever try to leave you don't let me.»
We walked across a meadow to a little village and found our shop and as we began to walk back the mist cleared away completely. And now the dunes and our courtyard were huge and glistening with sun, all the stones, dampened a little by the mist, shining in their different colours. We left our basket beside the fence and ran on down towards the sea. Julian suggested that we should collect some wood for a fire, but this proved difficult because every bit of wood we found was far too beautiful to burn. However we did find a few pieces which she consented to immolate, and I was carrying them back through the sandy dunes to our collecting point, leaving her still on the beach, when I saw in the distance something which absolutely froze my blood. A man in uniform on a bicycle was just riding along the bumpy track away from our bungalow.
I called to Julian that I was going back to the house to get the car to carry the wood, and she should stay and go on collecting. I wanted to see if our bicyclist had left anything. I started off across the courtyard, but in a moment she was calling, «Wait for me!» and racing after me and clasping my hand and laughing. I averted my terrified face from her and she noticed nothing.
When we got to the house she stopped in the garden to inspect some stones which she had placed there in a row. I moved without obvious haste to the porch and went in through the door. A telegram was lying on the mat and I picked it up with a quick swoop. I went on into the lavatory and locked the door.
The telegram was addressed to me. I began to fumble at it with trembling fingers. I tore the whole thing, including the telegram itself, then stood there holding the two halves of the paper together. It read, Please telephone me immediately Francis.
I stared at these deadly words. They could only mean something catastrophic. And the incomprehensibility of this visitation was terrifying. Francis did not know this address. Someone must have found out, how? Arnold presumably. We had made some slip, how, when, what, some fatal mistake. Even now Arnold was on his way here and Francis was trying to warn me.
Julian called, «Yoo hoo!»
I said, «Coming,» and emerged. I had to get to the telephone at once and without letting Julian know.
«I think it's lunch time, don't you?» said Julian. «Let's fetch the wood after.» She was putting the blue-and-white check tablecloth onto the table again. She put the jug of flowers in the centre of the table, from which it was always ceremonially removed as we sat down to eat. Already there were these customs.