«Of course you meant me to read it. It's your vile revenge. I hate you for this forever. You can't understand anything here, you can't understand anything at all-And to think of your having that letter and gloating over it and imagining-«I didn't gloat-«Yes, you did. Why else did you keep it except as a weapon against me, except to show it to me and hurt me because you think I deserted you-«Honestly, Rachel, I haven't given you a single thought!»
«Aaaaah-«
Rachel's scream flamed out in the darkening room, more visible suddenly than the pale round of her face. I saw the disturbed violent agony of her eyes and her mouth. She ran at me, or perhaps she was simply running to the door. I stumbled aside and crashed my elbow against the wall. She passed me like a stampeding animal and I heard the after-sigh of her scream. The front door flew open and through the open street door I saw lamplight reflected in the wet paving stones of the court.
I went out slowly and closed both doors and began turning lights on. The apparition of Francis was still sitting on the stairs. He smiled an isolated irrelevant smile, as if he were a stray minor spirit belonging to some other epoch and some other story, a sort of lost and masterless Puck, smiling a meditative cringing unprompted affectionate smile.
«You were listening.»
«Brad, I'm sorry-«It doesn't matter. What the hell's this?» I kicked the cardboard box.
«I'll open it for you, Brad.»
I watched while Francis tore the cardboard and dragged the top off the box.
It was full of books. The Precious Labyrinth. The Gauntlets of Power. Tobias and the Fallen Angel. A Banner with a Strange Device. Essays of a Seeker. A Skull on Fire. A Clash of Symbols. Hollows in the Sky. The Glass Sword. Mysticism and Literature. The Maid and the Magus. The Pierced Chalice. Inside a Snow Crystal.
Arnold's books. Dozens of them.
I looked at the huge compact mountain of smugly printed words. I picked up one of the books and opened it at random. Rage possessed me. With a snarl of disgust I tried to tear the book down the middle, ripping the spine in two, but it was too tough, so I tore the pages out in handfuls. The next book was a paperback and I was able to tug it into two and then into four. I seized another one. Francis watched, his face brightening with sympathy and pleasure. Then he came down the stairs to help me, murmuring «Hi!» to himself, «Hi!» as he dragged the books to pieces and then pursued and tore again the white cascading sheaves of print. We worked resolutely through the contents of the box, standing sturdily with our feet apart like men working in a river, as the pile of dismembered debris rose about us. It took us just under ten minutes to destroy the complete works of Arnold Baffin.
«How are you feeling now, Brad?»
«All right.»
I had fainted or something. I had eaten practically nothing since my return to London. Now I was sitting on the black woolly rug on the sitting-room floor with my back against one of the armchairs which was propped against the wall. The gas fire was flaring and popping. One lamp was alight. Francis had made some sandwiches and I had eaten some. I had drunk some whisky. In fact I felt very strange but not faint any more, no more little eruptions in my field of vision, no more heavy black canopies descending and bearing me to the ground. I was now on the ground and feeling very long and leaden. I could see Francis clearly in the flickering light, so clearly that I frowned over it, he was suddenly too close, too present. I looked down and noticed that he was holding one of my hands. I frowned over that too and removed it.
Francis who, as I recalled, had by now drunk a good deal of whisky, was kneeling beside me eagerly and attentively, not in an attitude of repose, as if I were something which he was making. His lips were pushed out coaxingly, the big red underlip curling over and the mucus of the mouth showing in a scarlet line. His little close eyes were sparkling with inward glee. His dispossessed hand joined his other hand, rubbing rhythmically up and down his plump thighs on the shiny shabby material of his blue suit. He made a little sympathetic chortling noise every now and then.
I felt, for the first time since my return to London, that I was in a real place and in the presence of a real person. At the same time I felt as people feel who after much ailing become suddenly far more ill and helpless, relaxed into the awfulness of the situation. I still had wit enough to see how pleased Francis was at my collapse. I did not resent his pleasure.
«Have some more whiskers, Brad, it'll do you good. Don't you worry, then. I'll find her for you.»
«That's right,» I said. «I'll stay here, I must. She'll come here, won't she. This is where she'll come to. She could come at any time. I'll leave the front door open again tonight, like I did last night. She can come in then like a little bird coming to its place. She can come in.»
«Tomorrow I'll search for her. I'll go to her college. I'll go to Arnold's publisher. I'll pick up a clue somewhere. I'll go first thing tomorrow morning. Don't you grieve, Brad. She'll be back, you'll see. This time next week you'll be happy.»
«I know she'll come back,» I said. «It's odd when one knows. Her love for me was an absolute word spoken. It belongs to the eternal. I cannot doubt that word, it is the logos of all being, and if she loves me not chaos is come again. Love is knowledge, you see, like the philosophers always told us. I know her by intuition as if she were here inside my head.»
«I know, Brad. When you really love somebody it's as if the whole world's saying it.»
«Everything guarantees it. Like people used to think everything guaranteed God. Have you ever loved like that, Francis?»
«Yes, Brad. There was a boy once. But he committed suicide. It was years ago.»
«Oh my God, Priscilla. I keep forgetting about her.»
«Steve. Don't, Brad.»
«Priscilla died because nobody loved her. She dried up and collapsed inside and died like a poisoned rat. God doesn't love the world, He can't do, look at it. But I hardly seem to care at all. I loved my mother.»
«Me too, Brad.»
«A very silly woman, but I loved her. I felt a sense of duty to Priscilla, but that's not enough, is it?»
«I guess not, Brad.»
«Because I love Julian I ought to be able to love everybody. I will be able to one day. Oh Christ, if I could only have some happiness. When she comes back I'll love everybody, I'll love Priscilla.»
«Priscilla's dead, Brad.»
«Love ought to triumph over time, but can it? Not time's fool, he said, and he knew about love if anybody did, he was bloody crucified if anybody was. Of course one's got to suffer. Perhaps in the end the suffering is all, it's all contained in the suffering. The final atoms of it all are simply pain. How old are you, Francis?»
«Forty-eight, Brad.»
«You're ten years luckier and wiser than I am.»
«I've never had any luck, Brad. I don't even hope for any any more. But I still love people. Not like Steve of course, but I love them. I love you, Brad.»
«She will come back. The world hasn't changed for nothing. It can't change back now. The old world has gone forever. Oh how my life has gone from me, it has ebbed away. I cannot believe I am fifty-eight.»
«Have you loved a lot of women, Brad?»
«I never really loved anybody before Julian came.»
«But there were women, after Chris I mean?»
«Don't say his name, Brad, please. I wish I hadn't told you it.»
«Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise because you don't need the future. I am happy now, I think. I'll write it all down, only not tonight.»
«I envy you being a writer chap, Brad. You can say what you feel. I'm just eaten by feelings and I can't even shout.»
«Yes, I can shout, I can fill the galaxy with bellowings of pain. But you know, Francis, I've never ever really explained anything. I feel now as if at last I could explain. It's as if all the matrix of my life which has been as hard and tight and small as a nut has become all luminous and spread out and huge. Everything's magnified. At last I can see it all and visit it all. Francis, I can be a great writer now, I know I can.»
«Sure you can, Brad. I always knew you had it in you. You were always like you were a great man.»
«I've never given myself away before, Francis, never gambled myself absolutely. I've been a timid frightened man all my life. Now I know what it's like to be beyond fear. I'm where greatness lives now. I've handed myself over. And yet it's like being under discipline too. I haven't any choice. I love, I worship and I shall be rewarded.»
«Sure, Brad. She will come.»
«Yes. He will come.»
«Brad, I think you'd better go to bed.»
«Yes, yes, to bed, to bed. Tomorrow we'll make a plan.»