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Handisiden notes /Parthal
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put there just because it wasn't like him at all, a little bit cussed, not
quite healthy, either! A strange bird!
They went downstairs afterwards and sat on the bedroom floor with
the bowl of punch in the middle : - Dick wanted to hear all about Basrah,
and Granville was bubbling over to talk about it.
It was dark now but the curtains were still undrawn and the lamp
on the chest-of-drawers, reddish and mellow, was reflectéd in the window,
making the room seem endless and full of mysterious colours. They were all
sweating slightly if was good, good to be there! This was the homecoming!
How on earth could he expect a conventional homecoming from Pinkie, involving
just the two of them, cooing together in bed - and then what? No, thank
God, they weren't a little couple and never would be! One needed friends,
that was the real homecoming, something total, not just sex and the tiresome
petty marriage-unit of two a thank God they didn't have that! Thank God
they weren't a little couple in a little box! Pinkie preserved him from
that: look what he could have married!. At least, with her, one was in the
world, not suffocated in a deathly marriage-box! She was in trousers this
evening, her feet bare, half-lying on the floor against cushions, exactly as
she was in Basrah when they went to see someone in the student-group, where
they could relax. Her blouse was open low, showing part of her breasts.
Yet - Were her breasts smaller? More inaccessible to him? Not
belonging to him any more? Not wifely any more? And so a sad after-
thought came to chase the first away. But it was quickly swallowed up in
reminiscences about Basrah,
Arey t
bughdad Ad gv
"WETI, 1 did-you enjoy it Pip?" Dick asked him sertousty.
"Not). enjoyed skactly but f
"Interesting?"


rr 83.
"Testr
auxut
Pinkie ehuckled "It never stopped being Bhat! Even the
1 S
bae ! A ku
boredom wds interesting waen tA mousezn
"Yeell
"It wasn't a drizzly English boredom," Pinkie went onsit was *
gaudy, real gaudy
Dick twinkledat her. "It got fight inside you
like a disease!"
worm,' " Granyille cried, "disgusting but'it had something
dramatic about,
something was always going. on inyou!"
"well," Dick said quietly, "it sounds just the place H for a worm
like me!".
"You' d hat te it," Hanni told him.
"I feel it changed me," Granville said - yes, this was what he
wanted to tell. - them! "It isn't a question of hating it or not - all I
know is it changed my life!"
"How?" Dick asked.
"Well, it made life more mysterious! As Pinkie says, even the
boredom! Nothing's plain and ordinary! Do you think s0, Pinkie?"
"Absolutely!"
"It wasn't because Basrah was new to us," Granville said, "because
this sense of mystery didn't grow less as we went on living there but more
do you see what I mean?"
abl tun
Dick nodded quickly/ as. if to say that_so-fer-it was obvious and
didn't need emphasis.
"It. wàs behind everything you did - every little thought! It
never left you! Do you see what Iim saying - it wasn't really a sense
of mystery like you might' get here if vop went insid@-a-chureh, just-for-a
Binta Ga uet trub-


moment, it was there,/all the time, PI liké the air! It'v was the basic thing
about everything! The thing you always got down to! Don't you think
that's extraordinary?"
"If it's true, old sport, yes!" And Dick showed with his eyes
that he believed him earnestly - and yet didn't at all.
"And I felt more mysterious to myself I felt I was less known and
measured up than I'd been here. I began to think of myself - I don't mean
in a deliberate way, I mean I was aware of myself as part of the glow all
round me, do you see what I mean? A created part! And Pinkie was more
mysterious to me than before!" They smiled at her, and Hanni winked, but
he went on breathlessly. "Her body was stranger to me "
He smiled but wouldn't be pushed off his subject. "More distant!
She was more in her own eternity! You could feel this mystery along the
river most
in the evening
in, the lights, and the way the oars went
hearing
into the water without you seeing them! I mean, we knew the lights were
just electric bulbs slung on wires, completely botched up and messy, and the
river stank, and there was a completely horrible chorus of car hooters from
toyor heke wifk
the main street all the time, but it wab all part of a glow, do you see what (
I mean?"
"I had too much of it, Pip," Hanni murmured in her stiff but
confidential way, with an endearing purse of her lips, but I know what you
mean. I She looked at the floor. "I think I do."
"But it's in people's faces as well, Hanni! Don't you think so?
They've got a kind of eternity in their eyes. Something that's not in their
control -- they aren't actually looking lat things, they're more gazing!
That's partly what I mean - - life's not in one's control theré, it's already


made. for you, I mean in a grand way, not made by men but something no man
can control. There's this stirring grandeur in everything - you can feel
it in the dust and filth, and the scars and. pockmarks, and the khamsin
"The wind," Hanni explained to Dick in an unwilling way, as if the -
duss
word struck disgust in her, "thel hot wind, it makes you fell rotten."
"I'll tell you something, Dick, I began to feél my own powérs
there really for the first time in my life!"
Dick gazed at him for a. moment, quite sérious. "What do you mean?"
"I started listening to the created part of myself - do you see
what I mean? - I didn't mind myself as much as I did in England m I didn't (
mind losing my temper if that was on the cards - I mean, the real part of
me took over! I don't know ---!" He glanced a little desparately at
Pinkie. "It's difficult to describe!"
"You mean you didn't have to tame yourself all. the time as we do
here," Pinkie said, with that'neatness she had sometimes.
"That's it! I don't'mean I was wild, I was probably much 'more
peaceful than here, but I was just myself, I wasnit in control of myself
in the old way
I just let go, I let myself be taken in by that extra-
ordinary glowing authority outside, and inside me, too!"
"There are dangers there for Englishmen, " Hanni said softly. "I
know that from my father!"
"Yes, I know what you mean, but I don't miean in behaviour to let
yourself go all'loose, to let the valves go - anyway, I haven't. got valves
that always thréaten to blow. up, I think that's a middle-class thing, I
think a -!i
"All'right," said Dick quietly, "hearing the danger-signal of an
'orang-utang' speech, "back to the subject, Phillimore-Jackson, and don't


rattle your decorations."
"Well," Granville went on, the wind out of his sails for a moment -
'well' was a,telltale word with him,, "I
"The glowing authority outside," Pinkie reminded him, chuckling.
"Yes!" Back again: "For the first time in my life I felt
natural! By surrendering: By letting the life outside me and inside me,
the mysterious part, take over! I could really lift my head up! Like
thé Arabs in the désert. Well, I'd never done that before: I've never
relished just walking and things like that before, not like I did in Basrah!
You know, I really began to find out for the first time what real nat tural
: walking was! Before that, I just seemed to stumble along! We seem all
out of joint in our civilisation: I learned how to walk without hurrying
along, without bending' over all the time to get there, you see, that's the
difference here we're brought up to think that walking is just a means
of getting to somewhere, it's part of a plan and the plan says you sleep now
and after a few hours of sleep you go there or you stay here, it's all like
a. schedule here, it all seems laid down by men, well, look outside the
window and you can see the result of that, in streets and buses running to an
intricate timetable, and newspapers telling you the news from all over the
world, everything running on little plans made by men, to serve men, it's all
man-made, but there you get the other world, and there is another world,
God's world! And I never really knew it existed before! Oh, I thought
it. existed, I imagined it and I dreamed about it! But in Basrah it was
there,as I said just now, it was in the air,'it was the world that lay in
front of you, it was in your food, it was in the way you slept and the way
the palm. trees moved outside the window, it was in the way the drums sounded
across the river and the way men walked, I didn't feel I had to deméan


myself before life all the time as I do here, I didn't have to humble my
own strength all the time, and work on one cylinder instead of eight, and
I bet Pinkie felt the same!"
"Did you?" Hanni asked het with a side-glance, smoking s0 that
the smoke curled up her face like a tiny white snake for a moment.
"Not quite like that, no,' # Pinkie answered with a smile, touching
one of her forefingers with her tongue, in a soft, slow motion, as she did
when she was thinking something over to herself tery privately.
"You know," Granville went on, looking at Dick, "it made me feel
I was looking into the past.. I mean, the past as it: was for this country
as well! I had the sensation that people there were more like what people (
here used. to be than we are!"
"Before industries, you mean?" Dick asked.
"Partly, yes, but industries were only what happened as a result
well, of something getting lost. I mean, those people don't just
believe in God, they don't believe in God at all, I mean God isn't in their
minds at all, they just live in a world which was created by something
completely beyond them, and which controls them, and which has this extra- L
ordinary glow! You see, that's what I mean by this glow -- 1 they perceive
God -- God is this glow that one can smell and see and hear and sleep in!
Do you see what I mean? They don'thave to believe in God, with their
little mihds, they perceive him, or rather they perceive the manifestations
of him, in a tree, the wind, a sound, that sort of thing! They actually
perceive eternity! And I'm saying we used to be able to! But we can't
now: We can't perceive eternity, or the glow, or God, or whatever you like
to call it,, as a simple matter-of-fact or not, as people used to in our
world and still can over there! We have to be lofty about it - we have L


to think
dream 1 believe
make an effort : we have to try and
get beyond the matter-of-fact, or we think we.do!' We've lost the power
to perceive God, or the things of God, directly! We can't believe in God
in the real sense. In the Christian world there can't be a religious
person! There's no such thing! We 'ye all lost thé faculty! That's
what I- feel I found out in Basrah! We can only try!"
"But how can you speak for everybody else?" Hanni asked.
That question always baffled him - - it baffled him that people
could ask it, as if clear feelings didn't have their natural authority, if
they were really clear!
"Oh, I think we can talk for all of life - I mean, if we're
interested in that kind' of truth. There's no other way of finding it out -
ond tal-les
I mean, you couldn't produce tables ànd charts and figures in which such
Set a
things are decided, could-you?" And Hanni nodded quickly, as if her
question had already taken thém into a longer speech than she'd intended.
"And there," he went on, turning again to Dick, "you get the main
difference between Basrah and London, or between Basrah and any western
city. We've made our mark on everything: Do you see what I mean? And
industries are only one of the marks! We've put things under a kind of
plan, under hundreds and thousands of plans that you can see outside, in
any city! We've made the earth for us. You'd think there was nothing
but us on the earth, walking through this huge city! You'd think that
eternity had been put aside in some way
I mean that glow you get in
your daily life in Basrah. I mean, you still, see accidental things
there - a dead dog or cat by the road, half-eaten by carrion birds
"Ucch!" said Pinkie, smiling at pick.
"But still, it makes you realise even with the stink in your


nostrils, what a kind of basic providence life has there! But in our
world we've made everything our business
thè garbage gets cleared away,
there's a kind of mathematical concept over everything, governing every
little hour! Do you see what I mean? I mean, not that you should leave
your garbage out, or your dead dogs', but this in our world is the sign that
we've got everything under control
as if there wasn't anything beyond
us, only men in life, who seem to have created themselves! And that makes
an extraordinary empty feeling in the city -im just men who come from
nowhere and go back to nowhere, without a word of explanation, nothing
splendid in life, nothing marvellous and extraordinary bèyond men that you
can see in the sky, and which brought them into being, and which moves. them
in the evening sometimes when they are sitting round telling a story, or
when they're making love, or when they go out on the balcony at night just
before they go to sleep and feel the breeze and hear something in the
distance ie you get all that out there still, what. we've removed from our
lives - just as if removing the garbage contradicted God, which I don't see
why it should!"
"Well, it must have be'en a terrific experience, that's all I can
say, Pip," Dick murmured in a respectful way.
"But do you see what I mean?"
"Oh, yes, exactly!"
"You see, I listened to life more in Basrah." He was aware,
underneath, of Hanni getting a bit restive - she moved one foot up and
down nervously, and filled her glass again, her lips pursed as when she was
under constraint of some kind. "I was aware of what lay beyond men, the
great spaces, and how these spaces never spoke or showed themselves but
nonetheless brought life into being and draw men back again in the end.


Do you see what I'm saying? Not/that I discovered something for the
first time which is completely obvious to all of us and which was certainly
obvious to-me as well, long before I thought of Basrah, but that I perceived
these spaces for the first time. I felt them! And I never had before!
Or not in that continual, daily way! For the first time I experienced a
world in which men didn't appear to be the authors!" Dick leaned forward, I
about to say something but Granville jumped in before him with an idea that
seemed suddenly to chase the old one away. "In Basrah I saw a world so
marvellous in organisation' that it made me shudder, 8o much more marvellous
in organisation that anything I'd seen men do, so much more marvellous than
all the cities, and all the promises! I knew about that marvellous
organisation before, as we all do, I had glimpses of it even in the country
where I was evacuated during the war, but in Basrah, for the first time, I
lived in it, with my own body and desires - they were part of it as well,
my hands, and, well - He glanced undertainly at Pinkie - "My Bex,
everything!"
"I hope you can, endorse that, Mrs. Granville," Dick said with a
little laugh.
"Well, I think I know what my husband means!" Pinkie said,
chuckling and wetting her finger again.
"Lots of little things changed in my life - - I gave up using the
alarm in the morning, I knew by the light what time I ought to get up, just
as our house-boy did, and I never bustled round my work any more, not as I
used to - I did things more when and as I felt like doing them, and you'd
be amazed I never got anything in too late for Nevinson's deadliness! I
started sleeping in the afternoon -!"
"Yes, that's something all civilised people should do!" Pinkie said.


"I never knew be fore," Granville went on, "that things could
have such a fabulous appearance: Little tiny things like sipping a glass
of lemon tea or walking home as the sun was going down or sitting under
the fan at the Mesopatamia hotel or eating chicken livers at the bar with
Mohammed
"Who's he?" Dick asked, glancing at Pinkie.
"Pip's assistant."
"We used to sit in the bar together while the Kurds from the
mountains were kicking up a shindy in the lounge playing cards - #
"They were real savages, " Pinkie said, "or rather they looked it
they were rather sweet, really! They wore big baggy trousers and kept
daggers in their belts, and they wear little white turbans! Wasn't your
dad an authority on thèm, Hanni?"
"That's right." But Hanni wasn't saying any more.
"One day Hanni i's going to show mé round over there," Dick said,
"especially Kurdistan, near the Russian border."
Hanni laughed. "You won't get me near there! I wouldn't dream
of going back!"
"Well," Granville said, "I can see what Hanni means, it isn't
exciting thère, you couldn't be happy, in our sense, like you could here,
I mean I think life in' England's much more intèresting
I feel excited herel--
for instance, by you two : He smiled lat Hanni and Dick, who made
appreciative little nods, half-burlesque in Dick's case . "There's nothing
like the clearness and light you get in England - nothing dark at all!
There isn't the lightness in the people over there - - I don't know,
everything seems separate from one here, after Basrah, one feels like a kind
of enchanted spectator here, if you see what I mean, it isn't the same world


at all, English people smile s0 much compared with people in Basrah, their
voices seem so full of independence and pptimism, and the feeling you get
is that you can make things all right with a bit of will, if you try!
You see, I think that's Europe, that's our civilisation, it's completely
different from there! In Basrah the voices seem to be coming out of the
past, they feel deep and dark and dusty, they're controlled from somewhere
very deep down, somewhere rather dark and forbidden and concealed, they're
held back in the throat compared with our voices, they're not quite conscious
as ours are. And the eyes are dark and tired, not lit by a quick curiosity
as they are in our world!"
Then he told them about his sense of a shadow passing over him the
previous evening, on the train from the doast, as they came into London.
"It wasn't becausé I felt London was ugly,' " he went on, "Basrah's much
uglier, but I started feeling eclipsed as a person, as a creature, at least
I think that's why I felt a kind of shadow! I wasn't quite myself any
more as I was in Basrah, I don't mean myself as a personality, I mean myself
in my flesh, just in my nerves. Yet it was free here
there was
freedom! - I was freed from myself, in a heady sort of way! Here men's
thoughts have touched everything, that's what you feel. So you don't go
into anything straight, as yourself, naturally! There's some interpretation
waiting for you all the time. Men have made things look safe in our world.
Our movements aren't watched here as they seem to be in Basrah. We can
talk our minds - we can say whatever comes into our heads! Whereas there
you're worrying all the time if you're offending someone by mentioning Israel,
or someone else by mentioning the Arabs! Everything comes down to spite
and division and hatred there, or seems to! But here it's so light, in
Europe! Yet at the same time we've lost another kind of freedom! In


Basrah we had our own lives, as far as the nerves went, we felt strange to
ourselves, we felt created from beyond men! But here we're catered for
all the time by the milkman and the shops and the newspapers and the
buses and the idea of growing older and all the little responsibilitiés
that are supposed to go with every age of life, like a clever little plan
laid down for us by other men before we are born. We don't make our own
lives! Yet we could! In all this planning we could! Here we could!
But it takes time. All we do now is to choose our lives from what the
outside world offers us, we don't really make it! And my question is
whether we can achieve our own lives here, whether one can go through the
day with the same sort of unhesitating physical authority you feel'in Basrah,
do you see what I mean? It might take one years to achieve. Do you think
it's possible?" He paused, gazing at' Dick. "Well?it
"Well," Dick said in a quiet voice, looking at him squarely, "if
I understand you' right, that's about the biggèst problem of the lot for me,
just that!"
"But is it possible?"
"After years, perhaps," Dick went on, "when you're unsteady on
your feet and your hair's falling out and your wife has a young lover or
forty!"
"But you have to change yourself isn't that it? You have to
think things out! Then, perhaps!" By now the women were more or less
out of the conversation.
"You have to surrender, ri Granville added, "learn to surrender to
the rhythm outside, to the silence! And I began to do it in Basrah. I
began to let my feelings decide when I was tired at night and we were talking
to Mohammed by the river - - I didn't look at my watch - a I let. my body


tell me, 'It's time to go to bed. 1 And it was always roughly the samé
time when I went.. Sometimes the body told me nothing and wè wént on
talking all night - nearly till dawn as the air got colder and the sounds
on the river stopped and the call-to-prayer came across the city at about
four, over the loudspeakers. I surrendered there! But' here we're taught
not to surrender! We're taught to look at everything and work everything
out! Our bodies get tired like clocks! We work like clocks! And yet:
you can do the same work, you can do more, without looking at the clock at
all: Like Mohammed! He works to the clock in the sense that he comes in
at the same time every morning - but the deeper time's still alive in him.
When I got out there I started mapping jput every day according to the
appointments book - 60 many people to see, so many letters to write
but for Mohammed the day just unfolded
like the dawn unfolding
opened naturally in front of him and took him with it! Yet he did the
work. And he did it without that awful fatigue of the nerves you get here.
And I learned it, too! Because it' was in the air, all round me! I
surrendered! I surrendered to deeper time and deeper space! And that
means being stronger, being much more of a man, much more supple and lively!
But I:hadn't got the strength in me
it was only because it was in the
air outside. I didn't take it to Basrah. I learned it in Basrah because
it was in the air there. And I want to learn it in myself -- by myself -
to take it wherever I go
it means surrehdering, I know that 4 some
sort of surrender, but I don't know how to go about it, I don't know the
path I should take! I know it'll take a long time! And I've seen that
surrender - - I've recognised it 'here, too
I know it exists here --!
I've seen it in the eyes of the milkman - " The others glanced at each
other - - they didn't know the reference, and he was aware of this but


hurried on just, the same, not caring to explain
"and in my father, too--
in the world where I was born' - there was the same surrender dire - in my
parents
but I've lost it I've been taught to lose it and I've got
to learn it again!"
At the end; when Granville seemed to have exhausted his subject,
but. not his desire to talk, Dick turned to Hanni and asked her, "Well, is
he right about Basrah?"
"He's right except that it's all disgusting and horrifying, yes.
Islam's heartless and cruel and dirty. and petty and vindictive, and you
can't get away from it whatever else you talk about!" She said the words
with a crisp finality - her hatred of that world'was' final. Then she
added in a soft voice, "But I suppose it's all right for an englishman, if
he doesn't stay too long - after all,. he puts a lot of himself into it
a lot that doesn't really exist there.at all - there's no dignity there, (
to start with, you start like a dog and you go out like a' dog, that's what
my father always used-to say. He's a good example - hé talked like Pip
at first, but he stayed 1 there too long, he hated everyone including my
mother by the end. Not that mummy was a Muslim but I suppose she must
have picked up some of the -stink
yes, Pip, I can imagine the déad cats
and dogs by the road, that's what. sticks in my mind from all you've said!"
"Well --- -!" Pip shrugged amiably and smiled at her.
"Pip wasn't saying he liked dead dogs," Pinkie murmured, blinking
protectively in his direction.
"No, not at all," Granville said, "I'm talking more like a person
starved of something, you see! I might agrée with you in the end m I'm
sure I would
we belong tofthe same civilisation
but I'm still
starved. of that sense of providence you get in that other world, for all its


stink a that sense of life being untouched in its created part - the
silence you get - though it's the noisiest place in the world!"
"Well," Dick said, looking sideways at Pinkie. "Pip's among us
again. But I'm for bed -!"
"So am I!" Hanni said, stretching.
Granville let them go without adding anything - they almost
scrambled out of the room, Dick chuckling and giving a last twinkling look
as if to say, 'Catch us if you can, cock!' Of course, Pinkie had offered
them the bed upstairs in the attic room and they accepted a - he was thrilled
that the house would hum with someone else's presence. It was what Pinkie
had always dreamed about in Basrah, as her London life, and she was right!
They would all get up in the morning and have breakfast together, working by
division of labour, Hanni and Pinkie on the food, he on the tea and coffee,
and Dick on the morning paper, since by agreement established two years
before Dick kept out of the way in the kitchen, his work wasn't worth the
mess it made.
But he was also disappointed that they didn't sit there longer in
the way he'd become used to in Basrah. Or rather, not longer, it wasn't a
matter of time, but with a different sort of rhythm, a slower one. t He
remembered the clink of the beads during a pause in the talk, while people
gazed before them,' clink, clink in the dry air, waiting for the talk to
exhaust itself naturally - and silence to-show the way. But no, he was.
back in the world where force was used all the time, where the will suddenly
interposed and found things to do, even when there weren't things to do, in
a kind of shame of surrendering to real outer time. Nothing was left to
the Bilence here, the big rhythms outside had no chance, there was only the
personal will grinding unharmoniously and breaking the evening up, breaking


it inwardly, even without outward signs, breaking it from inside so that )
even 'though people might sit there in exactly the same way as they did in
Basrah yet there was something broken' undernea th, some nervous disturbance
like a little voice saying, 'Well, to bed now, to work now, back to
immédiate life now, back to our will, to a cup of coffee, tea, a drink, a
stroll.' And even though there might have been more tea-drinking in
Basrah, more strolling and perhaps more real work, yet the real inner
silencé was notushattered as it was here.
Bùt it was a good evening. It was good to be back! His first
feeling of foreboding and horror, the night before, was gone
obviously
a left-over from the dark Basrah-world. After all, one didn't stab one's (
sister to death here, with small cuts, if she turned prostitute, one didn't
hang political prisoners by their neck in the main square and leave them on
display for three hours afterwards, the children didn't catch little birds
here and use them as kites by tying their feet to a long piece of string and .
then let them flutter up and down helplessly! No, it was a different
world and he'd better realise it quickly! Thank God a little sanity had
returned to him, 80 soon, after only a day back! Those cars outside, for
instance
he'd really stopped breathing when he saw them from the taxi, his (
heart had suddenly beat 80 fast that he thought his head was going to burst!
Extraordinary!
No, there was péace here.. Order. That took time to learn again.
He had to try and keep out those hot, stampeding thoughts that came to him
Lnr
from - the Basrah-world - things could be talked about here, bring them into (
the light! No shadows, *
no carrion-scandal, no hidden, foul spot!
He felt warmed and healthy and full of life all the way through,
and he bounded upstairs to get Pinkie and himself a cup of cocoa while the


others got ready for bed in the attic room. Hurrah! - Pinkie was putting
on new pillow-cases. Thank God life wasn't thé nightmare one tried to
ambush it into! No, it was more mysterious
the mystery wasn't only
dark, there was light as well! Yes! He boiled the milk and mixed the
cocoa w - the kitchen was so neat and colourful, the light glowed so nicely (
over everything, the boards under his feet bumped 80 intimately as they'd
always done
he was back, back! He could dance round the room! Back
out of the shadows! Hanni was right! Back to people who talked their
lives over - who loved their freedom and other people's! To people who
loved the light! And he bore two steaning cups of cocoa down to the
bedroom.
"That looks good, little mouse !"
"Rather!" he said, putting them down on the mantelpiece.
"I'll elect you king of the cocoa!" she said, banging out the
pillows.
"I wouldn't like it every night," he replied, taking his first sip.
"Would you?"
chinge
"No, it's too sickly! But as a change it's orl right, eh?" She
sat down playfully and pushed out her legs, taking her mug from the mantelpiece.
"Yes," she added, gazing before her, "Basrah's all right as a
dream but what about being/ there?"
"Yes, I've been thinking that too!"
"How can one ever go back?"
"Well, that's the problem!"
And they sat staring before them, leaving the question to look
after itself.


CHAPTER 5.
Thè house was quiet for the-next few days, and his fear that no
guests would come seemed justified agtar/AA. The bell downstairs never
rang, 'no one called oithe Relephone, He even began tomiss he cars het
acen-outside on the 1 ret evening! He wanted to ask Pinkie if she could
au lho ye s L 2 K V
re-instate thgmin. some-way; but there - was 1 silenee between-them-
aswell, not that Itwas Forced or unnatural - they simply had nothing to
say. She did the housework and went shopping; while he sorted out his
things and put the attic-room in order, removing the broken glass and
fixing in brackets for a new mirror. Once or twice the phone rang, but no
voice replied when he pickedfup the receiver/ e suspected that Pinkie was
going outside to make her calls,ate phone-box foudrehecornert but he
rejected the thought because of the quietness with which she did everything,
Baghdal
trg-ta
cooking nice meals as she'd done in Baspab, and otherwise trying on her
clothes or mending something. It-surprised aar hat she ha nocomplaints,
but he ut it dowrt a e
being happy
II in London again. He took
up AAplold habits, going round to the library An the morning to browsé
through travel-books/jand searching the music-brochures for a good concert.
He went to the office to t to renew his contracty But the bead
chick
of he contracteydepartment wasn't there, and in any. case the contract
itself had been mislaid, so he left it. The management was quite casual
about such things. He could easily sign up again once he was back in
Basrah.


They saw more of the Pollockes than before, Gradually his old
friendship with Dick, from the training-school days, started again, They
went down to Hampton Court and Pollocke ushered thèm straight through the
dark flat. to his famous view, as he'd done on their first visit. The
river looked peaceful. It was wide and flat, running quite swiftly, and
the fields on the other side were a vivid green in the last light.
Pollocke was watching him with a little gleam in his eyes, and murmured,
"It's worth coming for, isn't it?" And Granville, remembered Hanni's
complaints about it, nodded in an awkward way.
The flat was just as he remembered it. There was little furniture
and no books that he could see. It was grim and cold. But the river
shone outside and filled the sitting room with light. Pinkie and Hanni
seemed to get on well. They disregarded the view and sat talking over a
gas-fire in the tiny kitchen, at the back of the flat. Hanni confided in
her quietly, sitting stiffly in her chair, talking through her teeth as she
always did. She had a gift of intimacy 1 and one could Bee Pinkie was
lulled and drawn in.
Pollocke began calling at the house after work, sometimes just
ltinh
Whole
for a cup tea before A theatre, land Hanni stayed one week-end alone,
helping. with the meals. She and Pinkie talked about Dick quite a lot -
whenhel waemt theré. They would close the kitchen door, and Granville
would hear their voices, low-pitched. He enjoyed the thought of this
feminine intimacy: It gave the house a safe padwayn feeling. Pollocke
played darts with Glenning, the publicity-man, at a pub in the Commercial
Road, and sometimes they all went there, sitting in the public bar, where
there were long wooden benches anabare wooden tables: It was an
way
ulnv Pinkic,
unimpassioned sort of life and he could find no trace of his first fearak


that firstevening. Yet they were bhere in Vis tissues, asleep-for
the momenta And he n'ever felt really at éase with Pollocke; It was a
strange relation. The talk had to be constructed all the time. This was
Pollocke's manner; it. set the toné. Granville félt hipself under an
obligation when. he was with Dick to present himself, through talk, in a
tidy and clean frame. He rarely said whatever came into his head; when he
did he had a sensel of regret afterwards las if he'd exposed himself naked.
It had been the same at training school. Pollocke would walk palely at
his side, gazing down with his twinkling eyes, affectionate-and whimsical,
and the spontaneous talk was always about to begin:' but it never happened!
They never got beyond themselves. for a moment. Yet at the same time this
effort was a pleasure; beyond it lay a mystery; one day the curtain would
be drawn aside! There was the pleasure of waiting, tremulous and full of
respect for each other.
Irer
Rorfince
t frro
whive Dick
One Saturday they took a boat out from Hanpton Court, juet-the
Hhnns lived
Hae sil
twoofthem, and rowed towards Marlow; in still sun-lit; mistyl weerther.
weik Cy
Cut letuf jolligx AR
Pleasure steamers passed-them and Dick waved his hand in # joliy wayT
making at jour sque AA He-rowed-stonatly, im trtsleeves, shifting
the boat along at quite a pace. And-he-seemed-to-watcheverything as if
it-wore-a-passingyscene only, passing him like the fields and pleasure
steamers, while he was motionless, judging it ali as a good or bad
performance: he was the amused spectator. That was how he listened to
Granville's talk as well, considering/it in a judicious way, from afar.
And thére was something pleasurablé in this, too, because it made one feel
magter of the world, in control with one's mind. Life was the subject of
a. continual mental essay, so to speak; nothing disastrous even real -
could happen. It gave one a heady sense of freedom. At the same time


cudaner.
hiologicel
it wasn't natural.
coslse looked at Dick from the other end of the boat, at his
cooly very light eyes as he squinted against the sun, scanning the banks
hu 7
slowlyr and
mouth wi h
Mis
less clarity than his eyes, bulging slightly, ulk
Les
an odd soft decisiveness aboyt ff. He eould
rem-Diek's
face of what a sort of person he-was.
bea re thin and fair, stirring
a little .at the edges with the. breeze, was like a disguise he'd put on just
that_morning. It hid the lines round his mouth sot that he seemed, to be
faintly_smiling all the ime, though-he probably wasn
same-time
his face-wac-yosthfel
rithow eleulation-er deceit. There was something
Tuay Sage
innocent in his eyesgithey were never sharp, much less fiercea but eed
hag
at-everything with a lingeringr-uminquisitive good will, They were-what
had first struck Granville at
training schoole H e had looked into L
inad
Polle coekeks light-blue eyes, sa-amusedand boyish, and simpa
ee evered
hel me e ki 4 - -
friendship there, though the-frientship had peteradont
5how
They spent all day on the river. Some of the/chumminess - fromf
the training school days came back, and-they moored up at a pub to get
pul
Tll
some beer. e They played croquet on the/lawn.unt:1 it was dark. This meant
Fun
keap se
rowing back without lights. and there was no moon. It was'exeitingg geing
close to the bank ant-thetime, with silence all round. Sometames-they
would-steer/int the reeds by_mistake-and-Pelleeke-would laugh, still
master
they-made-calm Llittle remarks to eachother-all
the time, enjoying the possibilityof- danger. The oars made a softy
hollow splash, and the water trickled off them-as-they feathered back,
Tuy a l.
taak-three-or-four-hmans-arand-they arr ver exhaysted.
E the-shops were
.closed-and-no-one-was-in-Pollocketz
they took a train to Waterloo
sum Itare alax /
and went-home-to Chaworth Road. Hanni was there with Pinkief Just fnisning
imstglhy


a meal, serthere was a ittle party, with Pollocke describing the roun
backin-burlesque-termb Tuobedevere fixedipk This-eventng put thè
ghristening touchto their friendshipr and the four ofthem era now
sobaretogetherg mareor Tessn
IfGranville spoke earnestly-about-anything Polloeke_wouldseem
unmoved and gaze before him_as if saying, "I enjoy your performance, but
I don't necessarily agree with what you say!" The result was that Granville
took to performing a little in his company, preparing his sentences before
he spoke them and turning a nice phrase whenever he_would. And the usual
outlet was humour. They both enjoyed a laugh; it provided a relief from
the-effert.
Age was an. obsession with Dick, He felt the approach of thirty
like a death-sentence. fed press-upexercises in the morning; and
when they-were-on the-river-together-he ingisted on rowing-all the time.
His-hips were slim like a boy's Granville was also aware of his.youth
disappearingy But in Dick it was an acute panic.
"fcantell you,,old sport," he would say softly, GI lie in bed
Drch 3 d,
somet times and sweat,/ just at the passing of old daddy time. I-mow-it's
just a crisis. When Iget over the border, -en-te-the-ether sideof thirty,
it'll be all right, L suppose"
Heweuld-suddenly_go into a dance in the middle of theroom,
flinging-hislegs_ou frantically. as iftrying to jump-back-inte-his
youth. Or he would. leap out_of a chair after being still for some - time
apd-start.pottering about with somethingr -biting Is tip, horrifiedat the
passing.of-tine.
Ua-wontt-motive-the marksofage, or youth, in-Granville,tee.
N fr. yr. Le Par d I
"I swear you look five years younger today7t-he would murmur 9


bokinget hin
ad r tions AL don't ow boroudis/atlp
heve
us 4e wr legs C
And two days ago you lébked-ae-if the hounds of hell were-afteryou!l
And another time Dick said to him, "I canfeel myself slowing up.'
It's a message being flashed to me! You know, the old limbs sink down in
that chair
woof " He madea soft, blowing noise, spreading, his
hands out. "And I'm not getting the same kickout of things! I need
léss sleep, too. Sometimes I get out of bed in the morning feeling like
a wiryord man."
He-always deseribedira-clear-and-succinet-wey-whatever-h-felt.
He made-dmself-sount-ltke-gaother-person,-who-while-ofaaboorhing interest
Dick alway
was also remote_frem-him. Hs gave a map of himself all-theme, ranging
his ufg
over 1 freely, half-amused, juet-as-ene-might-be-amused hy somehody_on
thestreet: And-he-wes-elways still ad cat a + * e en te talked-abeut-himeelf.
He seemed to be listening for signs of new movement in himself, huched-and
hudi
abeorbed. The)phenomenon of Dick walB as interesting for
as it
or2ilste
was for Dick himselfott-vde sbhiraoblectlbetypenthega
S hue, Dich
Hanni Aboregt he said one evening, adding, MAS any woman
dexenbed
you're going to live with should!i He talkedabout how he'd met her first,
baat
Nor.
at the Capthall Avenue office, when she was-deing a temporsty-interprater's
Dich Sa ecl 11
job_there. . dshe looked ghastly, such a bloody school-marm, her eyebrows
ne U
a Vloody
meeting in the middle like some blaek cigara açzens-her-face! Thank Christ
my-secretary doesn't look like
ught: Then 1 wentback formore
he DA d S
the day-a after, like fool! And, well - I le paused-to-amite. It was
- Gr
trow und
a curtously theatrical "she offered me thej cigar and Iikediti ttv was
"Were yorinlove C her?' Granvikle esked-him.
Pollocke was silent, as always/when he was asked a cleaf question,
waiting to give it his open and free consideràtion, then heanswered firmly,


"Had you been in love with anybody elsé?"
And again there was a pause, followed by a firm, "No!"
Another time Dick said his Xife was in two parts, one his work and
the other 'after-work'. He could quite happilydevote himselfto the
after-work only, provided-he got enough sun His work meant nothing to
him, really: He was/at heart a 'beach-boy', he
said.
"That's why I'm conscientious," he said. "It's like doing a
crossword puzzle. I like eyerything in place." He paused, quitestill,
his hands resting easily on his lap and his legs folded. "I suppose that's
why I shall get on. I know I shali! The directors think I'm wizard.
I'm prettycertain I'll beone of them in a few years time. I'm not
handicapped by strong feelings on any of the issues. I keep an even keel."
It didn't sound cynical. His eyes were amused, gazing acrgss
the music-room at Granville, blue and still He was/talking about a
performance, quite simply.
When they were rowing together that Saturday afternoon he suddenty
looked up at the sky with-a-twinkte : and said, deharlie God's putting up
quite a decent show today, isn 't he?n4 Inon V
And-Dick-ulwaysdescribed
strong feeling withmore
delitprato-calm and style than otherwise. On the way back to Wat terloo,
after their longt blind row in the darky he murmured tohim, Awell, I don' 't
know about you, Sergeant-Major, but I was. an ant-heap of nerves in that
boaty. I houghtwe were going to strike amine any miaute. The olaNkneeb
were knecking together like castametsl
He stood to "one siderof his own lifera kind of musing, wistful,
puzzled, ' heroic companion. It was never really atease with Dick, they.


never really got down to anything, but afterwardshe felt the Aops ofme
company.
Aarni
Pinhié
One evening Dick happened to ask if they'd had any servants in Baghded,
a ran There yere the fourof them, with Glenning in thekitchen
upstairs. And Pinkie answered inner extravagant vein laughing, ner 2ipe-
adist. Punkie, told Rer
cried.
Mloprr
Good,
yest. Wehad three,
cookyandaretainer threwn wha lived at the bottom of the garden!"
Glenning appreciated this, chuckling. But/a certain pallor came
over Dick's face; of perhaps it was only that he pursed his lips. He
often. seemed to recoil slightly when she was in an extravagant mood or
talked in a resounding and patriçian way like her father. Servants, as
it turned out, were a sore subject with Dick. Hanni told Pinkie later that
he refused even to have a char in, because if offended his principle that
serving of any kind was wrong.
Aeyyui
In-faot, theyld had threepset vant a An - Bagrahy Bertha, a/girl of
nineteen or twenty, Kath'm, his boy, and Abu' Kath'm who did the washing at
te loy Lo
the back and hardly entered the house.
edd e hear Pinkie 68 alk
Aahni huol hu lihi >trau < e
use sn ae 2ert aslui auo Hae
1io-thie-because- servants-aetually
ghtened her. Bertha was supposed
Issyn a la hancep, cand Helgr Ndu Leselp A Clisilia lon awoyp
to be er personal maid' as well as the cook but Pinkie did nearly all the
Arh, lawad
A tn Jho h 1t3 feec len Than agguiif
cooking and gave-her-long-hours-off-duty Bertha-was-an-Aeeymiany like
Hanni, and-insisted onbeing treated like a lady.
l anted l Aso San
"Ican't beart Bervants hanging round me! Pinkie would say.
ins khoue 2 an
she i a1
a wuf
She-would emill
ee-much,
1 disown-any
Daid.
memsahib attitudes Bertha-might-attribute toner. 20f courserBertha- only
assumed that Pinkie was a fake-memeahib, afrai e assert he reett and she


> wh did Hie
cliures hithis lis do lited
a FzE
dnst a yee-s Caline
- Sarda
5 l
unn Nii refjuiess geneney
t do ary
dusliy Selve
unks ndrd ate do
5 lighicer
lihee
Fiene
battiens
Alo


puton terrific airs. It was awful to see them-tegethery Pintt BLushing
and-Intimtdated, the girl uppi8h and pouting The appearance of Kath'm
Ra feet
at the door in his striped dishdasha, tK bare feet, was enough to send the
Angyr u
Bertha flying out of the rooma He was dirty, she said, and brought bugs
into the houseo which sppotabAtrug smbntontobre hisldark, bake
feat orthe tiles. And Kath'm bore it with a sterny untroubled face, his
eyes twinkling a little. Bertha's familytbible sat on a little table in
the sitting-room with a heavy silver-plated crucifix laid across it, and
she forbade Kath'm to go anywhere near it, much less dust it in his
clumsy way, And when he passed it aomettmes he would give it a quicky
sidelong, glance in awe and hurry on. Bertha had a room next to the diningh
public
room and could have put the bible there, but she wanted itas a/demonstration ) ib,
(of-her-clase-standing as a-Christianand-Pinkie said nothing. It-was
deemed l
effectivo, too, beeause Kath'm) treateg. it as something magical like the evil
eye.
ept
Kathtm was always-tn good humour, ad diacreetand quiet. We
tiptoed upstairs-with-Granville's breakfast inthe-morningr and would smile
had 5o on
at-him with a quick flash of white teetho And-he would
ssing,
Nelsse
as "he _bent t down wi th the tray,/ "Sahib, sahib,-chai wa halib!"
tee with
Non ka
as mstt
at Het he-repeated every merning There was-a-eleer-perfeetlyunderstood
relation_between themegainst Bertha Yet Kath'm never uttered a word
against her
leod,
ced ore thà few words all day.
Pinkie always packed Kath'm off to his hut in the evening, and
likal b
told Bertha she could go to her room. She preterred servipg dinner herself,
even when there were guests. Forthis shoneeded Gmavilletumaganan
Relpiy he
loskip
would. potter around the table like senvant, a
to the distress of his_Arab
friends, He got furious about this but she Baid the pemmity-of-taving
v hs
a A a
Loux-hy,
Herlp
hane
llwa ca 3


sln
The lo
LPip
uatd
Zmr yrtatt
Hesi Pos
e Mld ll dOLn
rea ont
l A
Clai
halib Kaltls,
latke
L ne E
huilly,
uarertk
unld appra
flats-
ult
/ and
Udick
doun
write teatten. k bert JRY
1 faba
beisi
te t deponivid
Sakito sichil tr N mlef
d 3 - -Insde
Jls.
clostiar -
trde
Texattoa iker
Cendr
Uinal:
Buae
t h
U L
1tt
len speur Sp


aud nliraly Ioyne re Puihie L
2 his pnsuce.
Kath'min the houée would be her_going up to bed instead of ehtertaining.
"But shat are servanta for?" he asked-her.
TI can't helpit, Ican'tbear servants round me, that'e ant!"
"But he lovee-serving at tablet"
The loy
ld ha ve loued )s serve du
This was true- Kath'm thought she wasaehamedoof-showing him
the guests' 'Dirty'
Bertha-said-he-wast And-bhe evening Granville
Sa 3
hijhe
found him gazing wistfully in at the dining room window in the cold air,
his nose-preesed-ageinet-the-glase,-faceineted-by the-warm glowimsider
Hr adored
dip
Kathim loved to put/on a clean robe and padj softly across the floor
fetchftat
unexpectedl
tea or coffee as he did during-tte-day if a guest calledk But-Pinkie said
that-werking in the evening wao-tower-time', for which he wasn't paid It
waBa-strangely tame and Bocial attitude for-her, and -
her nature.
The-fact-wag-that she souldn't
responsibility semeone taking
orders Arom-her. She couldf't -bear the idea of ding other peoplets
lives.
And his Arab guests wouldlook on in astonishment. It was frightfui
aib, shame, not tohave seryants about, and they wondered howhe could be
chief in the/T.I.M. office.
Put -still,thiscreated-a-preblem-ofeonseience for Granville-as
Pib
well
e had to work in with the sheikhs, some of them hard,
- vv
greedy,
exploiting men. Once he nearly wrote home for a change of post. He lived
in Ynth o gim lé
like a little king though he was only a clerk. When-he-walked-through
5 L
the-streets sometimes between the dark, ragged,-sallow-people he had an
uncemfortable impression-of-himself-as soigne andwell-wined. Even a clean
shirt and euitfelt toomuch. 1 wasaposition foreed-on-him. The
wher
sholle d tue wuar Hreel
sheikhs and the Aràb and Kurdish businessmen passed by in their Cadillacsy
vaisiny
Fonge and Oldsmobiles, kicking-up the dust, their chauffeurs cursing at the


Trey reednpmite eucule sh k -. Vo Ic
pedestrians. The doctars,lawgers.and government-officiale formed an
impenetrable sink of corruption- There-was-aleoahest-ofsmall, neglected
men with revolvers in their belts whe-weresaidtte-be in the pay of Russia wn
tip
m gwessig
and were prepared Por a communist revolution, which wonld come about during
gTal
one of the annual student riots, And the students read Das Kapital under
eveynr
their deskylids. Then, peopie said, a communist sink of corruption would
replace the present oned
Pib
Hesd had experience of two riots. After the first one, when
Mohammed rescued him from the Mesopotamia Hotel, he framed his letter to
Copthall Avenue asking for a change of posto What the devil was he doing
here getting mixed up in somebody else's quarrels, he Aaked pimefi and
being identified wi th attitudes he'd never had? ie yas fariouen But then
the evening came and he walked with Mohammed down to the
as always,
now that the rioting had stopped, and they gazed across at the glittering
Cuk
minarets on the other side while oars plunged in and out of the dark water
below them in a regular rhythm, patient and unconscious, and he was drawn
pet.
back likosometone-drugged, lulled and delighted, beyond argument or mmentayl
wato
reasoning. The slow, cool wind drove up the river, dispersing the foul
day-smells. They went home and cooked a huge musguf, that tasted like codf Ceu
3 as coblad
waft eala
in the garden, propped it up against sticks, and after themeal they say Sat
clinking beads together in the sitting-room, with the fire dying and the
rush mat making a hissing noise under their feet whenever they moved.
Inthe morning hertold bimsel Af thatthe necessity of his Basrah experience i
for his own development purified and justified his Stay
Quite suddenly, in the grounds of Hampton Court one afternoon,
after they and the Pollockes had had lunch together, he turned to Pinkie


Shoul4
and said, "Suppose I go back to Basrah alone? Shall I?"
Hanni and Dick were a' little behind them. dedlittle ideahow
these words came intohis head. But-they_caueed-her-mo-surprise-
"Yes," she said, gazing loosely into the distance. They were
standing at-the-edge-of theleke, with the massivey red palace behind them.
unmer 1
Then She asked, "Bat What would you do for a-woment" hwe?
Leould go to the brothel, he said artzonce, hoping to catch
Dick's earo but Dichwastissing HanniOmech
To P.uz
Ho-glanced-at-tur. She idn * 1 appear-effended. She-only-smiled
inacrooked-and-e lightly defensivoway. The whole afternoon, still and
dark, with thunder in the distance, was strange, They stood. together/ gay'T
gad-
uad khev
Tooking-before-them at the shining water, and speke-as they-had)no control
over their words atl Dick and Hanni were-near byrarminerm, whispertng
somethingta each-ather; they tended to play lovers rathera lotfor-a
marriedcoupte.
"Iwouldn't mind being out of that atmosphere for a bit,"-Pinkcte
went on. "All those bloody pot-bellied sheikhs
11 She gave a glance
towards Hanni, as if wanting to catch. her attention in the same way as he'd
tried for Dick's. And Hanni did look across at her, blinking. "Like a
pack of old women! They were the ones who did all the talking!"
"Oh, the clerks did it as well," he/murmured, getting more
irritated. Dick also was looking at them now, and it seemed that all four
of them were fixed together in the still afternoon, their wills paralysed
and involved together, enacting a situation out of their control.
"But the sheihks went in for all the male-honoup talk, didn't
they?" she cried. "Calling you 'my brother' and a)x that?"
"WelI," he said quietly, uncertain ofhimself, "you can't laugh


away all honour.' "
"But why male honour? What about my honour as well?" He eyes
wère flashing.
He flared up as well. "But there's some difference between a man
and a woman!"
"Why?" Dick asked in a crisp way. Granville turned round as if
he 'd heard a shot fired, so strange was the new voice, like the cracking
of a twig before a storm. "I Hon't think there's any difference!"
"What?" Granville asked, his throat dry. "No difference between
a man and a woman?"
"No." Dick spoke deliberately, his lips pursed. "Their bodies
are different, that's all."
"But our bodies aren 't separate from us!" Granville. cried,
roused. "They're only an expression, just a part! It's a whole
difference!" The others were silent. "Why don't men have babies, then,
and do the cooking, and everything a woman does?"
"Because they're physically different," said Dick, spacing out
his words slowly and carefully, gazing down at the water.
"Men do cook, " Hanni said, "quite often!"
"So when we go to bed with our women, # he burst out, "we go to bed
with our sisters or friends?"
He had no idea what he meant himself and the others laughed.
Pinkie looked happy again. He stood there blinking and confused, trying
to make sense of his own words and the others laughed even more.
"A body isn't just something you can touch," he went on, trying to
pick up the thread. "It isn't all of a person ' But the argument
was gone.


"Anyway," Pinkie murmured, "all this is only because I felt like
having a dance one night. I suppose you'd have liked me to go and have
some illicit sex with a diplomat one afternoon while you were at work,
like half the other English and American wives! Your male honour would,
have been intact then!"
She only broke the subject again because they were in company.
And it stirred the old fire in him.
"Oh, for God's sake," he shouted, "just because you want a dance
it doesn't mean you have to have one, does it?" His voice drifted across
the gardens. "This male honour started just because men didn't do what
they wanted to all the time!"
"That's because they could do what they wanted to all the time!
And a woman can't!". She wavéd her hand blindly, with her strange half-
smile, that was both defiant and hurt. "If I go and sit in a cafe alone
I've got men staring me up and down, even here - and as for Basrah -- !"
"Oh," he said, "a woman adjusts herself to that all right if she
means business."
"If she's ugly, you méan!"
And there the argument ended. He forced the anger out of himself.
And to judge by the set look on Pinkiels face, making her look older, she
was doing the same.
Then, 1 letér, she squeezed his arm and said witha
a yrue editi
chucklg,
givelyou malenapeurk You're loyet Aije jold Waffle-Waffle.
fud
Kiaffle-Wafflef was. her grandfather; who*d married Aunt Beatrice.
'Aunt' was a courtesy title because Beatrice was. much younger than Waffle-
cand had
qheintly
Waffle, She Masa flashing, red-haired woman with a aharg, ribald wit,
and Waffle-Waffie' 1 was a nevalmane He thought she had grand style and
3 an anrefrera k te 'male honout
Be lalk i Buaghdad.


he/worshipped her. The name Waffle-Waffle came from the way he spoke,
hol Ita Neis war lue euk. w i un Paid un C fm2 wiv
it being almost impossible to understand what he said, Béatrice had had
Itree heallts cluilde
a sonand twa danghters by him, and-now,with the hetp f her SOE Darick,
she ran a finishing-schocl-fer-girle Mayfair
Pinkie was the youngest of a family of nine, Always 'baby Hester'.
Her nurse had always told her, to make her sense of loneliness worse, that
she had 'the mark of the Grysham in her'. She'd-told-thistoall-the
children at-different- times but
tuck
The-merk-of-the
Grysham meant a certain wildness of-temperament
kind-ofnoble
dissipation. that ran in' the family. At the Aldercote hunt balls pokers
were used to open the champagne bottles, the bannisters of the main stair-
de laucy
case were 'saddled'
the men could ride
punko
so that
down them with their shees
yellip
in the 'stirrups, shouting Yoick at-thetupof-theirvoices. Sometimes
daddy
Pinkie's father brought down a chorus-girl pog/tre/mepk-gid or went off
to' Brighton on the non-stop train from Waterloo that everybody called The
Flying. Fornicator. He-wasalso quiet and-eharming. Not-that-Granvilie
had met him. They lived on Carribean island these days.
But he'd seen Aldercote once. Pinkie was born there, but already
in her childhood only part of it was used. The farm was sold up, then the
stables. Nearly the whole of the estate round the house had been shaped
and planted by Gryshams in the last two hundred years. It had' an
unbelievable tranquillity - it was really like a blow, stunning you
suddenly, a terrific, blinding word from a kind of people who no longer
existed on this earth. There were oaks and elms and a lake where wild
duck nested.
av e pars
Her nickname 'Pinkie' came about when she was fifteenas was
during her firstiatudio-party. giren-by-a-friend of her monther'swho


sade
Jay,
tabre
whwr
smoked Russian cigarettes from a long ivory holder and slept in a hammock
slung between two enormous pieces of sculpture. Pinkie arrived in a
Peery
parozysm of shyness ther mouth-working up dedown-helpleosly-and-her-eyes-
L 3
flickering. Afterdt ee * the-othersstertersstarted talking about the paychological
A wen Xe wu u nilin sne he tev mt colaw
meaning of coloursd Yellow-meant-hemosexuality, red-meant soxual
Itpe eotnw
frustrationo if-you-showed great-fondness forthese-celoureyyou were-a
Afrigiatora queerts Then, during a hush, small plump-young-men-with
ared-golden beard Buddenly-tutned to her and asked, "What's your favourite
colour-Mics-Grysham2" To
s Grysham-replied, with a I blushgoing
X h zaid
slowly-up-herneck-while: reyeryhody gazed ber, *Pink - - I thinkto
Everyone laughed. As she usually plushed every minutés anyway the nickname
stuck. Pity was an old-fashioned virtue among these people: hard-faced
bohemians with money in their pockets. They called her 'a flower of the
English aristocracy' - facetiously of course. She was so 'traditional 1 -
a' museum piece! And everything from her soft, half-pained, tragic way of
speaking to her liking Gainsborough must go. Her politeness was 'pompousk.
Once she ingenuously asked the red-golden beard if hellfire was true
and the answer she got was a huge book on comparative religion! It was
all in there, he said - religion wals just primi itive hopes and fears,
nothing to do with us. And a week later he had her in bed. He said she
had the softest and warmest and most yielding little twat of any virgin
he'd deflowered. He tried her later with a cucumber; he wanted her to go
at it less 'sacredly'.
Nigel, her eldest brother, was the one she was closest to. He
was the smell of the countryside for her - real health. And he'd always
been the nicest to her. After the last war he'd put his army annuity and
his family-allowance together and started a retail business in London, and


it turned out well. He evén gave Pirkie a job. - Then he started stables,
bought a place for himself in the country and was called 'squire' by the
local romantics. The work he gave Pinkie, as a kind of traveller for the
firm, on the public relations side, was good for her self-respect. And
she was good at it. That was why she visited the T.I.M. training school,
as part of her job, scouting for young people. She met Granville and
Dick, who were the only people there with 'style', she said.
She didn't see much of Nigel these days. He lived more and more
in the country, and spent a lot of his time hanging round the stables
talking horseflesh. He was a tall, fair-haired man with rosy cheeks and
broad shoulders, his eyes much like Pinkie's except that they were steady
and searching, with a constant smile in them. He had the same rash and
daredevil streak às his father, coupled with Pinkie's softness. The
moment they were together they fell into horse-talk. She played the part,
out of love for him. The mare had a' cold back', Nigel would say, and
was a bit 'fiddle-headed', with a tendency to 'dish'. Or the grey had
'lots in front of him' though he 'grunted under the stick'. "A terrible
high blower!" he would say, and Pinkie would laugh.
There was an indefinable element of unhappiness in Nigel. It lay
under his sunny good will and was even part of it. But he never talked
about himself. Hé only mentioned himself in connection with-something
he'd seen or enjoyed. It was 'unsporting' to be disgruntled or irritable.
A man had to be above that. His first question after he'd had a nasty fall
one day and cracked -his arm wa's whether the mare had béen 'damaged'. He
married late, a girl called Mary who hardly spoke and looked after the
house quietly and carefully.
In the war he was known. as 'Nutty Nigel' because of his forays


alone. Once, when his battalion was dug in for some static battle, in
the Ardennes, he left the trench in daylight and cleared an enemy post
with one grenade. He then sat down with a pipe and started reading
Dryden's translations from Horace. He told someone afterwards that when
his own men found him he was reading the line, 'Tomorrow do thy worst, for
I have lived today', and was thinking that he'd never had such a day and
probably never would!
Not a word more was said between Pinkie and Granville on the
subject of 'affairs'. He found out from' Hanni that the name of the pale
young man he'd seen using the telephone on the first evening was Grove.
But no one else mentioned the name. Nor did Grove appear again. Pinkie
never went out at unusual times. The matter was left unexplored, as
always between them. But circumstances were piling up: there was the
incident wit th the clerk from Kirkuk, there was the beating he'd given her
afterwards, there was the party she 'd just given in his absence, there was
the role of Grove, there was the baby. All these were now barred from
conversation; slowly they were forming an encampment. But sometimes
these things appeared simply bare incidents to him, without a theme behind
them at all; and again he wondered at the extravagance of his own thinking.
He wanted to ask Dick what had been 'going on' in his absénce,
but he didn't want to appear petty or jealous before him, if only because
Dick seemed to regard him as a carefree person. He did try it in an
oblique way. He asked him how hé thought Pinkie was these days; did she
seem 'the same Pinkie' he'd known at training-school? - very objedtive.
And Dick seemed to understand what was in his mind, because he just looked
straight ahead, his lips pursed slightly and his eyes unblinking, and said,


"Yes", then closed his lips as if he never wanted to open them again.
A chill apprehension ran through Granville, because this made it clearer
than before that there was somet thing to hide.
During his talks to Hanni he tried to find out more, but that .was
even less hopeful, because her gaze was more. watchful than Dick's, and
seemed to pick up his moods more subtly; s0 whenever Pinkie came into the
conversation he made it seem that he had no doubts about her, and that on
the contrary there was the greatest confidence between them; he even wanted
to give the impression that he was carefree and tolerant about *affairs'
that would be his position, from the public point of view, if he found out
that there had been any. Also he was afraid that Pinkie was innocent, in
which case his suspicions would sew a bad seed in other people's minds
unnecessarily.
He: thought of the other three as evasive and mute, but he was the
one least capable of breaking into speech.
He learned through Glenning, the publicity-man, that Dick was :
'a one for the girls', and instantly felt a twinge of admiration combined
with disapproval; or perhaps the disapproval was only moral envy y he
couldn't tell. Glenning told him in the pub one evening when they were
alone that Dick had borrowed his fiat the previous week 'to do a secretary';
he talked about it in a genial, amused way as if Dick was famous. for that
kind of thing. When Dick came into the pub later Glenning looked up at
him and said, "That girl of yours
do you realise she left some of her
feathers and an egg behind in my bed?" Dick's mouth fell open for a
moment and he looked frightened, but then he laughed and sat down easily
at Glenning's side, murmuring that he'd always thought the girl 'a bit of
a hen'.


ewenup a d ne
Hanni and Pinkie were together in the kitchen one day at one of
Rean lu tm Ite wext rom hue laughbd cud kepl S uatuny
their tete-a-tetes, with the door closed, when-he happened_topassson-his
waytothe attic-room-ané euddenly-hoard the name "Grove', followed by a
lowering of voices; their voices made a quiet rasping on the air, no more
than a whisper. The idea formed in his head quite conclusively as he stood
on the landing between the two rooms with his heart beating fast and his
mouth open, that she was in love with Grove. He wènt on . to the attic-room
and tried to work on the new mirror, but his hands trembled so much that
he decided to lie downk Their voices were now normal again, a spasmodic
humming on the other side of the wall. He heard Hanni laugh. It was
such a comfortable and easy laugh, so without any conspiratorial note, that
he thought he must be wrong; he tried to reconstruct the sentence in which
Grove' had occurred, but he couldn't remember the other sounds; perhaps the
word had been 'mauve' Also it was possible that they had been talking
kitchen-affairs, and had said 'stove'. But Kitchen-affairs weren't to
the taste of either of them, as he knew! Later Hanni opened the door and
went downstairs to lodk for some cigerettes, and he realised from : the
sounds that. they were cooking something together, perhaps one of Pinkie's
French dishes, 60 that t the word might indeed have been. 'stove'. He got up
again and went on with the mirror, revived more or less, but he couldn't
get the thought out of his mind.
Not for five or six days after his arrival did he touch Binkie.
His raw desire, that had glared at: him in Basrah like the sun itself,
sickly and dangerous, had withered into a kind of local, urban itch. But
umt
the idea persisted. It had become a medical idea, probably a wrong one -
that the glands were full and needed their release whether he felt real


desire or not. So he watched Pinkie with interest, hoping to decoy her.
She was unaware of it, but after nearly a week, seeming to feel a mild
curiosity about him, as the whére had had put his glandular fluids if not
in her, she kissed him in a significant way and they began scrambling about
as they always did when their desires were low, But the flame revived in
him, and slowly the enormous, , pitiless image that had hardly left him for
a: moment in Basrah ret turned, and even united wi th her briefly, untii he
had a shocked, sparse jorgasm that failed to involve most of his body,
touching only nerve-ends, not the centres; he was still wide-awake after
it, and they lay together numbed, sad, continente away from each other.
Pinkie's orgasm was a private event, distant from him. It wracked her middle
for a moment, a small shudder that touched her stomach and died, like an
awful vision that made her close her eyes and screw up her mouth painfully
for a moment, and lose -herself in an infinite sea of self. The act only
confirmed. them in their separateness from each other; it left them with
more desires than before but nothing local.
It was remarkable to him how that Pinkie had ever felt desire for
him. It had always happened when he'd been. away for some time. She gave
the impression of trembling slightly, he remembered, and of being sensitive
to the timbre of his voice. But this desire was always spoiled in the
fulfilment. Usually it died the moment he touched her. But this time
there hadn't even been the. desiré.


CHAPIER 6
Sr haduce hudl Weubly h
te otiv >de ) boudn,
Later in the week, after a quiet 'phone-call, Pinkie announced
that she was going back to her job jat her brother's firm.
He-was-staggered. The firm had moved to the-other side of
London; it-would-mean-travelling" to-Wembley-every-day,-an-hour-or-moret
"He don't need the money,' M he said.
waed
Itt all I
"Oh, I just want a change, Everybody-elseisworking, after all."
"whab-do-yor-meomrfu.
"Wel et OUr Triendsi"
The following Monday she' got up at seven and he made tea for her -
as-onee-shedmadeit-fer him, twe-years-before. She looked néat and
contented, with a spotted silk scarf tucked into her blouse. She wore
her-best-high-heeledsd-shoes-and a tight grey skirt that made her look tall
and slim. She sucked her forefinger now and then, just touching it with
the tip of her tongue, gazing down, as she did when she was making a silent
calculation of some kind. She-was'quite remetefrom-htn. She could have
beena young - eff to her first job, with-a-dance to go to-in-tho-evening.
"I thought you liked being free," he said.
"I do." She gazed down, her face closed to him, and wouldn't Bay
any more.
Ever since then he'a been trembling more or less; he could settle


to nothing; his çlear thoughts were gone. He wa tched her now across the
breakfast table las he'd been watching her for several days past. He tried
to look into her eyes but she turned them away quickly. And when their
eyes did meet het's were blind. She left for the office as if they were
strangers, looking both more of a girl and older, too. Her face was set
like that of a hard-willed young girl; yet even so the softness showed
through, in the texture of her skin.
The beating he'd given her had changed her, he told himself. Had
she said anything to Hanni about it? Had she and Hanni made this feminine
plan together, that she should go to work and leave him isolated? He felt
surrounded by heartlessness; he'd noticed a hard look in Hanni's face as
well, when he was talking about 'male honour' in the gardens of Hampton
Court. But in a moment the idea of a 'feminine plan' seemed absurd.
Only her softness towards him had gone. He sat at the same position in
front of the breakfast table all morning, numbed and half-trembling. But
it was a state that went on underneath, like a natural function of his body.
And it waen't unpleasurable. It was a state of excitement and suspense;
what did the future hold?
After this he was alone in the house most days. Itwas agreeable
atfirst, got used to the idea of her working and it seemed only
another aspect of a. plain and obvious world. She left at the same hour
C C
every morning, and came back, leoking-rather pale and tired in-thoovening
wanting her dinner, which he now prepared for-her. It-continued-tobe
exeitinga There were things to talk aboutse had stories about the
office_end-hoxcHigel was these days. He was coming over to dinner soon,
she said. It made a tremendous differénce to her, being close to Nigel


ghenid,
every day, So-Granvtlte-thonght, Her-eonfidence-came. back and she :
talked more réadily. There-was-a-healthy little flush-in-her-cheeks. and
they were affectionate
with-each_other-as-they-hadn tbeen for
m I I
a year or more., He began to think that her working was à good bargain.
It took her out of herself and he got his privacy. sle idnet lean
him-as-sbald done in Basrah.
But they slept together less. She was tired and' refused him.
Desire wracked and gnawed at him, and sometimes he yearned for her the
whole day much as he'd done in Basrah during the last month there. When
she came back in the evening his approach would be too overwhelming and
direct for her, because he was pent-up. He felt an 'orang-utang' in his
sex, as he'd done on many occasions before. She shrunk from him. The
heat of his hands, his breath, the closeness of his eyes, seemed to panic
her, Usually he knew how to avoid this, and approached her in a quiet,
deliberately unconcerned, light way, not kissing her too earnestly or
touching her too heavily at first. He would fondle her very softly, like
someone' in a dream, while her eyes closed: this aroused her most,. when the
touches were abstract, coming from anywhere, in a dimness, his fingers not
his but detached like things in a dream.' - First this dimness and silence
had to be entered, softly and circumspectly; then her passion grew. He
had to cancel himself out lat first, withholding his breath and his real
passions. That was the routine he'd learned with her.
But now he'd been kept in leash too long. He'd spent hours
thinking about her breasts and hips, inagining voluptuous movements. She
was tired and locked away from him, thin-lipped and perplexed.
But then she suddenly turned to him oné evening after they'd gone
to bed and put her hand between his legs. It was quite like 'Stratford'.


And he was once more quiet; of course,. the desire would build up in him
again, he knew that. He feared it - yet it was all the more exciting,
because he couldn't satisfy it easily,
AyTernon Jm
Hanni heppened to get grafternoon-off-end dropped in one day. rewa
onalfhs
torulis
cooked meal
alne
She
withhim and (they went for a walk afterwards. They'd
Mehone
hever-really-apoken-to-each ather freely before, not in the way thenew
friendshtp-between-the f6ur-of-them-demanded. But this timeshe talked
as he'd seen her talk to Pinkie, inra confiding way, her mouth tense and
half-closed, yet all the moré intimate because ofethat, gevenrasashe spoke.
A certain sadness pervaded her talk. It was alwaye there, like keening.
She seemed to be mourning something,
someone/s disloyalty,. the pain of
béing. misunderstook. She spoke in a monotone, her eyes very still under
her straight, black eyebrows, that t seemed to fix her eyes ina frightened
expression. She was frightened! of England, mostly. And of Dick's
world too. She didn't know how/mich of herself to givé. She was afraid
that if she gave too-muchpeople would think her a poor,-imitating,
colonial sort of person; or a 'family-woman), which Pollocke wouldn't allow
her to be!
Her feet/were tiny, Granville noticed-as-they walked along; she
was like a littlégirl, with an oid burden-of-sadness-that-mado-her stiff,
unjustly
H Srie ttetr ki a
Her mothor Cwas Asayrian_but her father English Hetdbeen a
an a
political officer befere-marriage-end had been sent
the forei Rn office
to Kurdistan on a special mission after the 1914 war, when the Kurds were
resisting the edea of,sharing Iraq with the Arabs: He was a-straight-backed
young-men-at-thnt time and was known to have a way with the Kurdish tribes,
He could trusthimself totheir hospitality inj lonély mountain villages,


at a time rhen a mumber/Opthe-political officers were getting bullets
in their backs. Hemat Hami's mother in Kirkuk andafter their marriage
they Bettled/near-by in avillager
Hanni reminded him of Bertha. They had the same watchful
airy
as if immediate personal dignity was the most important thing for them.
Only when shetalked-soffly-andintimatelywas-she-really-hereelf,
other times, Tespecially-when-there-were-poople-about,she seemedtobe
concentrating-on the form of the conversation and not on what was said.
He told her a-little-about Bertha, K how she deapipatnune/and
Kat'm
hated. it if he/ served at table, whicinbo-didvitnevef Granvil da éating
cakone. And ta hissurgrise Hanni didr't
nerself
as sher usually
id when the Middle East was mentioned.
"Oh,es," " she-replied witha curiously tired kook, touched kith
irritability, "I know her type allright"
"She keeps a bible in the sitting room," Irhid
She-nodded. "We kept a bible,
iv 3 u
tooft
It-had-beem in the family for generations, she-saids and-always
lay on a lace mat - the-eerner-of-the-sitting-room, but without a silver-
plated crucifix. She hated the village where she was born. She described
the tiny front room with its stuffed owl
dassrease andite-hitation-
Englieh furnittre. Over the mantelpieee therek been gilt-framed pictures
of the king and Queen and tha Prince of Wales. It was'a deliberate-rehash
of-Victorian England. 1 He-was. struck by the phrase and-threw her a quick
glance, realising she was morearticulate. than he'd thought.
"That wasn't daddy's style at. all," she added. "It was all mummy.
He started a Arading company and then started drinking. Mummy was horrified.
You know/ she had a kind. of village-hentility. She thought he gat us a badi"


reputation. Which he did. He used to debunk everybody when he was drunk
he used to call them dirty shysters we - in the middle of dinner - and my
mother. used to go absolutely cold as steel! I can see her face' nowt"
But her sympathy was with her mother. Oné could feel that.
She shared that sense of indignity the steel-cold disapproval. It was
in her own life, too, perhaps inherited - disapproval coupled with 'a
sense of personal position. Her father had outraged this, though she loved
him. He was dead now
he died of drink. And her mother still looked
after the trading company, in Beirut.
"Mummy came to England to give birth to me, so that I'd be English, "
Hanni said.. And she sent me to an English school near Kirkuk which was
staffed by caricature-Englishmen. They behaved likea colonial's idea of
and English gent!"
All the time she talked he was afraid that her intimacy would
break any moment, so he said nothing, only nodded and made little exclamations.
In this sort. of life one had to cling to any little bit of intimacy.
But he still couldn't fathom her, he couldnit get near her. No
doubt she felt the same about him. Which of them was the more natural, he
asked himself, if either of them were?
As soon as she was with other people again .her stiffness, that was
more an ancient dignity turned to a modern social use, came back, and
everything he said to her was again like a message flashed across the sea.
Her face hardly movedand she made only staccato little statements; pérhaps
only with Dick was' she really seen.
Dick as good as said this one day.
"I could write volumes about that girl," he said. "She's like
a South Sea island a with the storms thrown in, of course!"


Ae eer peerro is pullryhe 2 nigho
Trom de,
Tuer e
ld d
Jouetti tomel, Aa
Hanni, he added, wasn 't a talker. She was only known through
her silences. "My book, " he said witha charming simplicity which at thè
same time was deliberately not quite. sincere, "would be a. book of silence!"
Once or twice she stayed at Chaworth Road for/ the night, alone,
when she didn't expect/Dick back at Hampton Court/ Apparently, this was
a form. of retaliation. She hever said what/Dick got up to on those
evenings away. But it was easy to imagine. Sex was one of hig big themes -
it went with youth. A1l Hanni said was that it was part of his 'policy of
independence' to stay out all night. She talked about him ratheras she.
talked about her father, çoolly, wit thout apparent attachment except a motherly
kind. Her words left a sting behind them. She said/ she'd learned the
gift of stinging, gossip early in life.
And Granville found himself
burning with, resentment against Dick when she talked, until he pulled
himself up. She always spoke in the same flat, unénchanted voice.
Sometimes-she-and-Dick! looked like perfest strangers together, and
D tald hm
sometimes they were like coung Levers. She satd Dick never allowed a
loving mood, to go on for long: It_soon-made him feel caught. He was
horrified at theidea that she might require all his attentioneg hervala
little like Rinkie inthat And he always hadd device ready for keeping
hirl he a
her at a distance, like arranging 1 fermal Httle dinner-perty,-juet for
the two- of themy at the Caprice or
Berkeléy Grill. He would phone
hep from thé office and make the formal invitation, -sounding_jally-and
facetious, andohe-would
ersell
to imprese-hify
+ they werenew.
lovers In a way she enjoyed, thisg
ne dressing-up wes wee a iett
'woken up'. And.he did wanther to-took-pretty, unliké the horing men
who. took their wives for granted! But, still, tt - was always a jolt:
Bul u wo a foet Kae
- suddenly Bhe-had to behave as if she didn't know him. She-would snileat


him acrees-the-tablor-shining-in-herdresswithth-the-bare-shoulders,and
AV dinnw
Dick would behave as if he'd never seen her before, looking between her
breasts with an-oxciting-misobeme-of distance and familiarity. There was
the sensuous threll of being familiar with a strangert) He-eften,hurt-her
and du U ie
Aer
the end she always admired-him.
Or he would ask her to go down to his parents at Harrow for a few
days, just to make the formal break. And he laid it dowh as a principle
that they must eadh havè at least two evenings a month tol themselves, to go
out where they liked and with whom they liked, and no questions asked. For
mutual happiness she agreed. But she rarely took up her free evenings.
Once or twice, out of loneliness, she tried to interfere with his but he
retaliated at once, with an extraordinary unrelenting thoroughness: he would
spend three or four evenings out in a row without saying anything. A
principle once agreed on must never be broken. This was absolute with him.
She wanted to furnish the Hampton Court flat properly but he
wouldnIt let her. They all began talking about this onel evening and Dick
murmured, glancing qver at him with a smile, "The furni ture'd start staring
at me!" He said he wanted a place that offered no 'definitions' of his
character. So the flat was as bare as possible. A properly furnished
place would make tool full a statement about him, he thought.
When she talked about him Hanni. always made it seem that she
played a meek role, giving in to him for the sake of peace. But behind her
level voice there was quite a hard will. Yet this was only an impression.
Nothing could be verified from her quiet manner.
She had a good rapport with Dick's mother, whom Dick nicknamed
*Lady Godiva' in - his father was 'King Arthur' -iin and often went down to
see them. Erom what she said they felt a shadow of disappointment over


their son. He hadn't gone the way they'd mapped out for him. Dick
was amused and offhand about them. But at the same time there was a
touch of bitterness in his voice, as if they'd played all sorts of
ineffectual tricks on him. His face took on a guarded look when they
were mentioned. He said he called his mother Lady Godiva because the
idea of her riding naked on a horse always 'thrilled' him in an
'Oedipoidal way'; while 'King Arthur' was a good ironic title for a man
who'd 'never attempted anything heroic in his life'.
Hanni seemed to share the disappointment with his mother. Dick
told him one day that she always cane back from Harrow with a knowing look
in her eye, as if she could now see right through him down to his toes.
"This makes her look like the dd girl!" he added, "which gives me
quite a kick! I can then literally fuck my own mother!" And he
spluttered with laughter.
Granville only heard Dick's parents spoken of by their nicknamés.
Hanni used these names as well. Sometimes Dick would call his father
*King' or 'the King', and his mother 'milady'.
"Milady got on the blower to me this morning," he would say, "and
do you know she said she'd just seen me from the top of a bus in High
Holborn and I needed a haircut!"
He would smile but with a little twitch in his lips, as if his
coolness towards his parents wasn't complete. Mostly he talked about them
as distant characters doing some kind lof bad performance. Granville, hadn't
met them and saw them only as caricatures, through him. They were two
mountebanks some of whose fake goods Dick had been tricked into buying; he
knew their game and smiled, but bitterly because they'd caught him. That
was the impression. Nothing they did or said lacked this fraudulent


quality. But when Granville asked him one day why he hated them so much
he replied, "I don't!"
Lady Godiva, Hanni said, was a small, thin woman with a sharp nose
and quick, intelligent eyes, not yet old and still attractive. She was
an Australian and had met King Arthur in Brisbane when she was seventeen.
Their families had been in the same business
hotels. She still owned
a number of them in Sidney and Brisbane, and King Arthur now managed them
together with his English interests, in the same company. He was the sonr
of a modest hotel-manager who had sent him to Australia to learn the ropes
of the trade from the bottom, which he'd done, starting as a bell-boy. He
was a tall, erect, kindly man and had one absorbing hobby, building model
ships. One of his great private disappointments was léading Dick as a
child to one of his most brilliant pieces of work, a vast, gleaming liner
with cabins and lounges that had taken him over three years to build, and
hearing him say, "I hate ships, and that goes for all models of them, too."
Dick had a horror of the sea and couldn't swim a stroke. Much of
his childhood had been spent on boats plying the seas between Southampton
and Sidney Harbour. The journey never took less than six weeks and all
that time he was cooped up with his parents, an only child, in a first-
class cabin. This was usually followed by weeks in a hotel-suite not
A unlike the cabin. They expected him to join the family-business as a
matter of course and perhaps manage the two Brisbane hotels on the spot.
But he coolly took a job in T.I.M. without telling them.
Lady Godiva was completely baffled by Dick but wouldn't admit it
to herself, Hanni said.. She triëd to play his game of cool talk but only
sounded biting and disdainful. Really she'd taught him the coolness,
believing it was true drawing-room style; and a public-school had done, the


rest.
Slowly Granville was getting to know Dick behind the style. He
even began to feel that this style was an urgent makeshift to stem hot tides
of feeling inside. But, like Hanni, Dick rarely showed his hand, On the
surface he did, giving a clear map of himself in conversation, but it was
only a contour map and gave no real sense of the coun atry.
One evening he did show his hand for a moment, They were sitting
in the music-room talking about jealousy, just the two of them. He was at
his favourite game, examining a painfyi and intimate feeling with dauntless
and methodical honesty. As always he sat quite still gazing before him,
smacking his lips slightly while he thought the matter over, half-smiling,
one leg crooked over the other, apparently perféct master of himself, and
seeming to take an enormous relish in the existence of his own limbs, in
everything he did and said. That was perhaps the most compelling and
attractive thing about Dick's company, that/he seemed to take an immediate
physical relish in himself, in her position at the time whether he was
standing or sitting down, in all his movéments, in the way he put the tips
of his fingers together and tapped them against each other ever so slightly,
and in the continual, slow smacking of his lips. This self-sufficiency
made Granville feel quite overshadowed. Dick always seemed to be leaning
back with an audience, while he himself was always leaning forward, trying
to achieve an-audience.
Due
cloe khuy said
But-this trtick time
leaned forward-and Ithe_most confidential
i 1
voice.said, "You know who broke that mirror upstairs, don't you?10 V was
Wny?
*Ididt"
becawe
"Kou-dida't* Granville said-withastonishment.
"Yes," Diek-went-oncoolly, 111 diditwhen I found y chap in bed


with Hanni - naked as wellyo Oh, yes, that-wes-what-Hammi-had told him
the first_erening
he remembered. "Or_ratheryI-didit the second
time-I-found- -him in bed. the first time I stood by the door and made a
quivering Tittle-speech
a a
11 tttle mar-took-absolutely-no-notice
of at-allt I said, "This bed has been offered to myself and my wife for
the night* fwhich-it-had, by Pinkie - you see how principled I am even in
my-rages?), andI gave him ten minutes to fuckoff! Otherwise, I said, I'd
have-to pull him out!"
It was a funny picture, Dick standing at the door talking like
that, and Granville smiled. This seemed an encouragement to Dick and his
face fell into more of a repose; a glint of humour came back into his eyes
as well, as if by permission from Granville. He'd never behaved so
defencelessly before, even years ago at the training school.
"Did you pull him out?" Granville asked him.
"No! The fellow was still there when I got back. So I smashed
the mirror!"
He said he strode acrose the room and to his own horror tore the
mirror off the wall and threw it at the window, wherel it caught the lower
ledge and smashed to pieces.
"As a matter of fact," he added, "while I was tearing it off the
nail. an image of you came into my mind and I thought, Poor old Granville,
I'm smashing his furniture up!' 11
"Oh," Granville said with a amile. "That's all right!"
"I'll pay for it one day."
"No, no, that's damages of war!" They exchanged a friendly,
intimate glancé that was unusual between them.
Bick hadn't, luckily, thrown the thing at the occupants of the bed.


Hanni was sitting up terrified and blinking, her breasts showing over her
petticoat, he said. As for the man, he just stared at Dick with his
mouth open, not grasping what was going on at all. Theri Dick had flung out'
of the house and walked the streets for half-an-hour, his legs trembling 80
violently that he could hardly stand up.
"Were they up to anything?" Granville asked!
"I don't know," Dick said with a shrug and a smile. "But he was
very fat!"
"What does she say?"
"She says $he was drunk and doesn't remembet anything.' "#
"Dobs the idea haunt you, rather?" Granville asked. He was happy
to find that they weren't such different creatures after all.
But Dick asked, "What idea?"
"Her sleeping with somebody else, if she did?"
Dick was surprised. "No! Why should it?" And he went on
talking in a reminiscent tone about how he'd wandered the streets that
night. "By God, Pip, that was an awful feeling
the idea of him up
there !" He gazed at the floor before. him, his eyes gleaming as if he
was telling an adventure story. There was almost a smile. "Do you know
the experience? I think I must have walked twelve blocks that night,
more or less counting the railings as they passed, and all the time that
little room was in my mind! I. kept saying to myself, 'I'll give them ten
minutes more', then I was going to pull the fellow jout. I probably wouldn't
have, thoughi
"Was he there when you got back?"
"What did Hanni say?"


But again Dick had little interest. "wnat did she say?". He
paused for a time, passing his hand vaguely over his mouth, still gazing
at the floor. "Oh, I think she was already asleep."
It was the jealousy. itself that seemed to interest him. He had
an intrigued and baffled expression on his face when he talked about his
own trembling, as if it had come from outside, like something actually
shaking his legs, a complete surprise and also in some way a gift: it showed
what untouched experiences lay in him. He marvelled at it. He seemed to
be marvelling at the fact that he had feelings at all! They really surprised
him - as if they proved his authenticity. And Hanni is role. was secondary.
Yet surely he must love her, to feel the jealousy at all? Granville looked
at his friend in perplexity.
In a moment Dick réturned to his old manner: he decided he wanted
to have a look at the girls at the cafe, in the Commercial Road where they
had wicker baskets on the. walls a he said he liked the waitresses there.
And he leapt out of the chair as it it had just bitten him in the pants.
He left behind in Granville a sense that underneath his lonely style there
was something grand and warm that would be revealed steadily to him in the
next few weeks. Perhaps he would be another real friend like Mohammed.
He was excited at' the idea. Like all men he'd always looked for a friend
but had a handfull of acquaintances instead. He terribly needed the talk
of a man. It gave him confidence and steadied him. Even now he felt he
could face his jealousy towards Pinkie better. Who were women, after all?
Damn them!
Dick and Hanni stayed at the house quite frequently, and were some-
times there for the week-end. Hanni said it was 'heaven' after the
Hampton Court flat. However, there were small irritations between the two


couples. The chief cause, sometimes the scapegoat for the other three,
because he was so helpless, was Dick. When he slept the night in one of
the single beds he left it unmade in the morning, and he rarely washed up
after a meal; he would cook himself eggs and bacon, and leave his dirty
things floating in water. His help in the kitchen was perfunctory, and
he did strictly what he was asked to do, no more, even if it meant watching
a kettle boil ove r while he sat at the table, or letting the joint burn.
The answer afterwards was always, "Well, old sport, I'm. awfully sorry and
all that, but you didn't say anything, did you?" One Saturday he went
shopping as a special gasture, engineered by Hanni, and returned to the
house with almost nothing: he had read 'lèg of lamb'. in Pinkie's list as
'quarter of ham' for some reason, sp that there was no joint for the week-end;
and he said he 'couldn't find' the regetable shop. Also he swung on a
chair in the kitchen one evening until it broke. Granville found Dick's
blindness to detail a romantic quality, and his own irritation at it petty
and watchful.
Sometines Pinkie and Dick seemed to be in leagué together, sitting
over crossword-puzzles or a game of chess fefhoucsl And sometimes Hanni
and Pinkie seemed to be conspiring against 'the spear-side', as Dick called
himself and Granville. Most of the irritations were unspoken, quickly
forgotten in-a-emile or friendly-eup-ofsoffeeinthe-kitchen. Pinkie
and Granville, as a couple, had a standing criticism of the other two a
as a couple: they 'crept off' to bed too soon, and didn't 'club in' to make
an intimate little dinner-party together; their company was always on the
point of being wirhdrawn, it seemed; they were 'nervous'.
There- were odd comings and goings all the time. Hanni would call
at the house and Pinkie would leave with her soon afterwards; then Dick


would call, after they'd gone, and seem surprised not to find them there,
and leave immediately as if he knew where to find them. Or Pinkie would
call from the office towards the end of the afternoon and ask if Hanni
had come over, then omit to leave a message for her in case she did come
over, saying it was 'all right', they were sure to 'meet up" somewhere.
Or the three of them might return to the house together late' in the evening,
saying they'd all met 'by chance' in town. He had the impression of a club
they knew, or a house similar to this one, only with a'more flowing
clientele. It excited and horrified him at the same time.


CHAPTER 7.
Pinkie was given an office of her own at Wembley, as assistant
to the P.R.0.; it was quite a promotion and came from Nigel's staff, not
from him. Now and then it involved her in taking someone to lunch or
dinner. - She no longer travelled for the firm, but, she said, she might
have to spend a week-end away in Manchester or Birmingham. Hè wondered
at this. It sounded like the screw being turned. Her face was set as
she said it, in a deliberate way, her teeth gritted. She looked tired in
the evenings, her face always drawn into a mask, and they never went out
together now. The house grew quite lonely. Or perhaps it wasn't the
house but the fact that only he, of all the people they knew, had time for
wayward thoughts. Everyone else was governed by schedule. He felt he
carried no weight in their company and began to wish for the end of his
leave.
Dick came in one evening and said he was getting the managership
of the South American department in a few weekb" time, Apparently, he
thought Hanni had said nothing to anyone. His eyes glittered in a fixéd
was as if he was torn between his own achievement and a sense of shame.
Usually one didn't get a managership until one was thirty-five or forty,
especially in T.I.M. where things were a bit conservative. He didn't seem
at all happy. Hanni kept glancing at him. She also was an a strange mood
these days.
They were all sitting in the kitchen and Hanni murmured to Pinkie


between her teeth, "Look at him!" Dick was swinging on his chair
nervous habit of his -- a with his hands in his pockets and his head rather
sunk down. "He hates the idea!" She gave Dick a dry side-glance.
"He was all right when somebody else was giving the orders. It made him
feel young. But now he's going to have people calling him sir."
And she chuckled, puffing at a cigarette. Dick had a remarkably
clean look, as often on days when he felt uncomfortable. His hair was
neatly brushed and he was pale, with a youthful, purged look in his eyes.
His hands were manicured; he had them done every fortnight at the same shop
in the City: he said the girl touched his fingers gave him endless chances
to explore her character and also look down her blouse - one day he would
ask her to meet him somewhere.
Hanni's eyes. were narrowed against the smoke of her own cigarette,
and they seemed to blaze with anger. Pinkie smiled, in a private
understanding with her. She had put her handbag on the floor, having just
come in from the office, and was powdering her nose, pursing her lips as if
afraid to see herself in the little mirror.
"He's afraid he's going to get like his father," Hanni went on,
trying to provoke him out of his silence.
And Dick did speak after a time, still swinging on his chair,
gazing down, his voice very quiet.
"Well," hè murmured, "you ought to know."
"Why are you so scared of responsibility?" she asked him immediately,
her eyes fixed hard on him.
But he relapsed into silence again. Hanni pursued the subject
coolly.
"Of course, it means you'll be getting a better screw, doesn't it?"


she went on.
Dick nodded, in silence.
"And we don't want that to happen! You'd: rather go on with the
old screw, wouldn't you, and have the freedom?"
"Yes, I suppose I would," he replied in a tired way. "The
problem of youth, you know!" he added bitterly.
Pinkie laughed. "You'd better be careful, old cock, or you'll
find yourself furnishing. your flat nicely!"
"Yes," Hanni said, also laughing. "He might find himself tied
down to a comfortable armchair!"
"Probably," Pinkie went on, "he's just like his dad really, only
he doesn't want to fall into it too fast."
This was too much for Dick. He hissed at her, "Shut up!" And
the women laughed in a defensive and triumphant way, at having provoked
him; their voices were harsh.
"What's wrong with your dad?" Pinkie cried, her lips trembling as
always when she: , was reprimanded.
Dick coolly got up from his chair and left the room. Later
Granville saw him glance at himself'in the mirror downstairs on his way
out, his face delicate and troubled. He turned and saw him.
"I hate any. comparison with my dad," he said almost in a whisper.
Granville noddéd and emiled, wondering if he meant it as a joke, but Dick
walked out with a. perfectly straight face, little aware of him, it seemed;
and a moment later the downatairs door closed.
Afterwards Pinkie said that Dick looked exactly like his father.
She 'd got this from Hanni. Perhaps it explained the beard, she said: it
was a sort of distress-signal; he was 'marooned in his body'.


When they all met again the following week-end there was more
irritation, to which Granville was only a spectator. He noticed more and
more that their quarrels left him a stranger.
Dick happened to say, "Oh, by the way," addressing Granville,
"I always spit a Pip in old Nevinson's eye when I can, you know, just to
let him know what a fine chap you are."
Nevinson, being the head of the Middle East section, was important
for him, though they'd never met.
And Pinkie was suddenly' annoyed.
"I bet you do it carefully!" she said, flaring up.
There was silence and Dick's lips tightened just as they'd done
before. He fixed his eyes on her and murmured, "No, I don't."
"Well, I can't imagine you laying it on very thick, in case you're
proved wrong -- I
"No, and I can't imagine Nevinson listening if I did?"
Granville was forgotten for a moment. They were fixed on each
other.
"Well, good old Dick!" she cried. "You're nothing if not
judicious!"
Dick turned to him and said quietly, his eyes full of dislike,
"How do you stand this woman every day?"
"Why is it you like keeping things under your hat?" she asked,
trembling again.
"I suppose because I'm cagey:" he replied.
"Well, it's no surprise to me that some of your clients are
speechless when they walk in your office. You give them the willies,
old-chap!"


"I don't think you've been in my office or spoken to any of my
staff," he replied, again in a quiet voice, his back erect. There was
something white-hot and cutting in him when he was stirred sometimes.
Both Dick and Pinkie had to go out to dinner later and Hanni told
him when they were alone that Dick had annoyed Pinkie by 'keeping something
under his hat' that was important to her. Gragville couldn't understand
what this was and-tried to get to the bottom of it. But she was evasive.
Yet her dark, protective gaze told him that one day she would explain: at
least, she 'd made it clear that there was something to explain.
There was good news for him. Glenning said he'd heard he might
be getting the Beirut office! This was because Nevinson didn't like the
way things were done there; he preferred Granville and thought he had a
better rapport with the Arabs. Of course, this was promotion. Beirut
was considered a gem in the foreign sections at least as far as the 'sweat-
jobs' were concerned, being the 'Paris of the Middle East.'
This brought him and Pinkie closer together for a time: That
evening, as they were going 'to bed, they began talking about it, and without
warning the intimacy of their very first two weeks together, when they'd
met at Reading, enveloped them again.
"Isn't it wonderful about Beirut?" she said.
"We could have one of those lovely houses by the sea!"
"That's exactly what I thought!"
"When do you think it'll be?" she asked..
"Soon, I hope."
He switched off the light and got into bed at her side.


"It'll be lovely moving there," she said quietly.
He was surprised how soft her body felt at' his side -- quite
different from that first evening, when she'd felt angular and also frail
to his touch, distant from him, in her own strange sleep, without the
necessary blood for intimacy. Now she was soft and yet firm, with a kind
of invisible plump wholesomeness of the flesh.
Out of this sudden intimacy they drew everything that was possible
for a change. They kissed each other sweetly and softly, like children,
again and again, their lips wet,and they clung to each other in a gentle way,
not exploring each other's bodies but locked together mildly, their breath
intermingled, in a closeness of perfect health. It was quite different
from 'Stratford' - it was what their love should have been when it wasn 't
'Stratford'. They came almost at the same moment, mildly and completely,
sunk into each. other with this unpausing sweet intimacy. Her orgasm never
wracked her whole body
it was always local, as if limited naturally,
half-broken from childhood, made too secretive for the natural-functioning
world. But at least they were together, in sweetness. They fell asleep
at once, staying in the same position all night, her right leg crooked over
him and' her flimsy nightdress in a bundle round her waist, like a thick
silk band under her breasts, making them swell. It was like being in a
region underneath life, full of warm, shadowy touches that weren't even
definite enough to be known as touches; and next day they were both clear
and happy-looking.
They went on the river again at Hampton Court, this time the four
of them. It was a lovely, still day and he felt drowsy and content. The


reeds on either side were dry and tall, stirring slightly in the breeze.
They'd taken out a punt but were using canoe-paddles instead of a pole
because the.water was too deep. Hanni and pinkie were lying at the
bottom of the boat'sunning themselves while the men paddled quietly side
by' side. They left houses behind them and came into perfectly silent
countryside. Before them in the distance there were hills, smooth and
bright like a marvellous cloth, and on either side there were fields with
hedges, at their own level, so that they seemed to be gliding silently
through the earth. Granville felt quite rid of his' problems now. He had
no extra desires.
And as if' a sense of what he was thinking had entered Dick the
question came from his side, "I should think Basrah's a bit of a dump,
isn't it?"
"Well "
"I mean, politeness aside!"
He hesitated. "Yes, I suppose it is."
Their voices echoed a little across the river.
"Of course, you have to put a good face on it and all that,"
Dick added.
This wasn't Granville's feeling at all and he wanted to explain
what the faxcination of Basrah was for him. - 1 But Dick had already looked
away and was addressing something to Hanni who lay behind them with her
eyes closed, getting a bit flushed from the sun. This had happened quite
frequently in the last few weeks: Dick would ask a question and then show,
by turning away to something else, that it was really thetorical. Meanwhile
the words rushed to Granville's mouth and he was left feeling like a man
with nowhere to put his vomit.


Pinkie opened her eyes and murmured, "Do you remember that fish.
we cooked in the garden?"
"It's a kind of cod," she addéd to Dick, who was gazing at the
water with a genial expression. Then she chuckled: "Of course, it did
taste a leetle of burned wood!"
"Oh, well," Dick said, making his noiseless laugh, "bedouins can't
be choosers, cân they?"
There was more pleasantry and Granville stomachéd his words,
letting the heat go down slowly. He found it easiest to talk to Dick,
and closest:to the style of talk that existed between the four of them,
when his feelings were at a nimimum. As long as he kept a check on himself
it was all right, but if he let himself go he was left with a feeling of
regret or constricted stomach.
As the pleasantry went on
now it was about a 'ghastly' dinner
Dick had been to the previous week e the lovely day began to darken for
him. He wanted to laugh and did, and also he was content. But the fields
looked dwindled to him and he had a sense of dryness and surfeit, as if
everything round him was fixed and dead in its position. A casual and
bland style existed between the four of them in which sustained ideas were.
impossible. One just had to learn how to leap from one thing to the next,.
never dipping too far. The moment a tone of sustained interest came into
his voicé the conversation dropped a kittle. This wasn't Dick's doing;
not wholly. He thought it might have something to do with the company being
- nexed, two men and two women, so that.a compromise-style was achieved,
neither the sustained intimacy of women's talk nor the enquiry of men's.
The style, flippant and selective, though not always flippant, was the only
one they could all have together. Yet it wasn't natural to any of them.


Dick imposed it as an açt of will, so deep now that it was second nature.
And Hanni was tense, kéeping back her spontaneity, grippèd tight inside.
Only Pinkiè had the style. in her flesh; it wasn't a strained or unnatural
or jarring element in her, nor did it involve mental surveillance. She
lay at the bottom of the boat wit th her eyes half-closed, listless, the
touch of a. smile lingering on her mouth. A selective conversation, ranging
quickly over many subjects, never committed to any, was natural to her.
Going deep would be like a bréach of delicacy. It was. a light curiosity
that touched on things and departed. She and. Dick were similar in this,
while Granville and Hanni were similar in their silent withholding of the
battalions of truth, though Granville was always looking for a breach in
the enemy-line to pour them- through.
Pinkie knew naturally how to select and range over subjects, and
what was permissible and what was not. Discretion played no part. She
could be as rash as she liked but style lay in her flesh, not limiting her;
but the very form of her being. In her quiet moods she would sit with a
reminiscent gaze, talking casually, rather in a dream, and évery now and
then she would touch the tip of her forefinger with her tongue in a delicate,
slow, gliding movement; still gazing before her, while préparing to talk
again, as if to indicate the turn of her interest. After she and Granville
had been away from each other for some time she would lap up all his
information afterwards in one or two sittings, leaning back, her gaze upwards,
asking one question after another in the most economical way; but without
mental alertness, only following her curiosity with a casual, dreamy
obedience. She hadn't. done it this time, though. She asked nothing about
his last month in Basrah. It seemed that Mohammed and . the Cabala and the
club-room at the United Kingdom Compound where she hated going so much - -


all the things she would. naturally want to know about - were now dead in
her memory.
The four of them ended up at the pub with the lawn where he and
Dick had played croquet once. This time also it got dark. The évening
was warm and exciting, with yellow lights on the other side of the river
and the sound'of grasshoppers. There were young couples playing croquet,
their voices drifting between the trees, laughing. The sun went down in
a Vast red blaze, making the flat water glow like a lantern spread out.
How lovely it was! London seemed many miles away. The perfect silence
of countryside began to fall all round and their voices became hushed in
the air. How could he bear to return to Basrah? Pinkie was close to him,
her shoulders brown from the sun, strong and dark in the last shadows.
Then they paddled slowly back to Hampton Court, but this time thèré was a
moon and everyone was drowsy from the beer and heat. His arms were burned
whère he'd rolled up his sleeves, and he noticed that Dick's face was
flushed deep and his hair bleached slightly at the front. He could see his
beard as they paddled, whisps of it silhouetted like a thin bush against
the moonlit bank on the other side.
"Penny for your thoughts, sea-scouts," Dick murmured.
"I'm remembering last time when it was dark."
"Oh, yes!" And Dick began telling the other two in a comical
way how they'd battled their way back home. "How Captain Granville and
I brought her in that night I shall never know," he said. "But we did!
And there's not a crew between here and Southend Pier could say better!"
His voice was like a soft chant in the night, as they driftod
slowly along, thecwomen chuckling in the darkness now and then. He had
an: impression of each of their consciousnesses drifting in the darkness


far from each other, so that the set' forms of the day - their bodies
and the glances they gave each other and what they said - appeared like
an irrelevant world, or rather a partial one. Dick 's voice, and the
darkness that was like an unsubstantial dust all round them, and the
gradual tipping and rocking of - the boat, were the relevant world, of which
the set forms were a part we needed in order to move and see and set our
wills at work These forms were like gestures.
Underneath the gestures what were their consciousnesses like?
It was so difficult to tell. How did,they differ from each other,
essentially? What was Hanni like, really? What were Pinkie and Dick
like, for their saying more than Hanni made them no clearer in the end?
What did this 'really' mean?
Beople were so separate these days! The
bare physical world lay outside each one; and each consciousness was in
isolation, lacking the common joining factor of an outside world, which was
silent and indifferent, like the moonlit bank that passed them now, without
familiarity for them - ondy a scene like a film, which would be called
'beautiful', detached from them. And each of their consciousnesses lay
Iloating in this unsubstantial and indifferent dust of-hight as they
drifted smoothly along.
Only someone outside a consciousness could say what it was like,
for we couldn't see into the endless depth of our selves. Between self and
gesture where did the truth lie? The gestures were so difficult to judge
for someone, outside. Even Pinkie he couldn't divine. He knew her only
where there were no longer any gestures, when they were lying in bed at
night, he curled round her, so that even their limbs were like the
unsubstantial dust, joined together. And then during the day the gestures
began again, and they perplexed each other.


Did his own consciousness differ essentially from those of the
other three? Was the discipline to withhold themselves that he noticed
in Dick and Hanni in him as well? Was theirs the typical consciousness
of the new world he had inherited through education? Was it second nature
to. Dick or Hanni? Or was, it second nature only to Dick? - Was there an
ancient sense of. style in Pinkie that could accommodate itself to this
new consciousness while not really belonging to it? For Dick's style was
a mental one; it wasn't part of the flesh as her's was. He thought that
perhaps Dick had the most typical new consciousness of all of them.
His mind asked these questions in a state of dreaming and he was
too sleepy to answer them. It intrigued him. He came' from a. different
consciousness from the one he knew now
it wasn't enough to sày a
different world, as if we all shared the same kind of consciousiess. This
was the basic fact from which all his questions and problems. came. Was
his own consciousness divided a incomplete through knowing two worlds
instead of one?
He felt that the others, though perhaps not Hanni, had a whole and
undivided consciousness while he didn't, however distorted their consciousness
might be. His task was to think his problems through in order to attain
to a similar wholeness: he- didn't want to be divided. The others weren't
divided in their perceptions as he wab. In hearing. and seeing and. smelling
Dick didn't doubt that he was simply hearing and seeing and amelling as
othert.men always had done everywhere and always would. That was Granville's
conclusion, after seeing his gestures and hearing him talk. i There was
: something undoubting in Dick which he himself didn't have; not in the
matter'of will or desire but in. consciousness." Nor ingideas, - only. in
: consciousness, the dumb consciousness.. For Granville there was always the


problem of definition, underneath all the other problems. It wasm't only
that this was a difficult world but that he had first to decide on what he
was to take as 'the world'.
His thoughts were vague like the water and he reserved them for
another time, hoping he would be able to catch their vague flavour again.
He went to the office quite often these days and had several chat ts
with Dick there. But they were still not at. ease with each. other. Dick
was so watchful and alert. 'Does. he want to get back to his work?'
Granville always asked himself as he stood by Dick's desk. Was he ashamed
of having a visitor outside the strict office-schedule, in case a director
walked in? Dick covered his nervousness wi th a bland style and genial
glance, keeping his movements as cool and slow as he could; he seemed
morbidly aware of the immediate situation - the exact time, the work that
lay on his desk waiting to be finished, the impatience or otherwise. of his
secretary on the other side of the door. He seemed unable to take flight -
from himself. So no real talk was possible.
One Saturday Granville woke up slowly and realised she wasn' 't.
there. At first, as he roused himself, he had the usual drugged sense of
being melted in with her, without touch or real physical sensation of any
kind, then he began, to realise that his arm was lying on the bed itself,
not on her hip. He moved it, to discover whether it was'an illusion, then
he shifted it further across the bed to find out if she'd only altered her
position. But she was gone. He was aware that the "phone-bell had rung,
and at once he was wide-awake. She'd got out of bed hurriedly to answer
it; he didn't remember her getting out as a real event but as something that -
had taken place inside his own body, a change of feeling. He felt mortally


cold all of a sudden and was nearly trembling. It was difficult to hear
what was said on the phone from the bedroom, but sometimes a word or two
came up the well of the stairs. He strained forward to listen, raising
his head from the pillows, but the effort had the result of making a rushing
wound in his ears which blocked out everything else, and he lay back again
quickly, his eyes starting out. of his head. Was she at the telephone?
Then he heard her. There was a movement on the stairs. Distinctly, he
heard her say, "But he's only been here a few days, darling! How can I -?"
And then the words wère lost. His heart was beating fast, like air bounding
in his chest. He was really trembling now, so much so that the ends of
his fingers were tapping against the sheets in a most absurd way and his
teeth were chattering! The alarm hadn't gone off yet; it must be quite
early. He couldn't hear any more. A bus passed in the distance, at first
a lonely sound to him, then comforting because it suggested. the massive
indifferent machine outside. Then he heard her leave the telephone and
walk upstairs to the kitchen. There was the familiar sound of the tea-caddy
as she opened it, and the sound of the kettle as she put it heavily on. the
stove. He became calmer; the feeling of mortal coldness became fixed in
-him as his trembling grew less. He was aware of an odd, twisted sense of
pleasure in himself, at having arrived at an essential point of self-
destruction which made any licence of behaviour permissible. He could do
what he liked, always in that rigid, half-trembling state! The pain would.
become fixed and hard inside him, pale. He tried to think of what_she'd
said, again, as the wooden boards upstairs moved, making their familiar bump
in' the middle. The words now seemed. to him different. He might have
beèn mistaken! This thought came to him in" an insipid, cajoling. wayfhe
rejected.it, but it wound its way back like ivy. He appealed to. his.


memory again, but that failed him. Perhaps the words had been slightly
different. Why should they be referring to him? Why not to someoné at
the office? But one doesn 't say darling in that case! The office wasn't
open yet. Anyway - Saturday - no office! His mind fought hard in the
confusion. He would go upstairs and confront her with it. But he couldn't
be sure. She might turn round and give him an astonished look, as if to
say, 'His mind's not right!' He had. to keep his. sanity! But he had
heard the words! Yet he couldn't repeat them to, himself.
And, then, why should he worry? There was this thought at the end
of all such reasoning. Suppose she turned round and said, 'I call lots of
people darling! Why do you have to be so formal?' Exactly! Why was he
hanging on a little word? Why did he want to be a thinking little insect
all the time? She was an abandoned sort of person, of course! She said
'darling' to her friends! They even kissed each other sometimes! He'd
kissed Hanni, Hanni had kissed him, Dick had kissed Pinkie
what was the
matter with him, exaggerating and storming all the time? People could be
affectionate with each other:
But at the same time he knew that the words had been said, and he knew
what they meant: as a blank, rigid presence in his mind; like the figure of
Death waiting at the end of the corridor. His confusion only' took away his
power to act on what he knew. He knew he'd benunable to say anything to her.
-He'd watch her carefully for any tell-tale sign, and ask oblique questions,
or show by his grimness that he was aware of what had happened. But
spéak no: How terrible it was to be locked in silence all the time!
"But he couldn't bear to show his heart naked to her. She might ridicule
him; or she might flutter her eyelashés and say, 'I don't know what you're
talking"about, Pip!' : She might go and tell Grove! Or Hanni, or Dick!


'He's so frightfully jealous, ! she would say, 'I really can't do a thing,
even call somebody darling over the phone!' To hell with her! His
feelings turned full circle. What the devil did he care where she took
her body? It was intimacy he was after. She spoke about her freedom.
She needed freedom! Like a spoiled child asking for more sweets -
'freedom' : Not hie, of course! He was the spectator! She was on
show, with her precious body! Of course, it suited her vanity no end!
It gave her dramatic qualities, too! She was so hunted and hemmed-in,
don't you know, by a domestic life she detested! Not for her the kitchen!
Oh, no! Shè wanted freedom, love, affection! And in all this precious
bloody talk she didn't give him one tiny thought. She was alone! She
was alone when she made love to him, yes! She shut her eyes! Her body
was being adored!
So he decided to keep quiet. He couldn't bear the way Dick or
Hanni might look at him: as if he had a sickness! 'Poor old Pip!'
She'd said it so beseechingly a a 'darling': He couldn't believe
it! Her warmth was still in the bed. It was impossible she should get
up, straight from this warmth, and say 'darling' without at least lowering
her voice! He only remembered her tone now. So beseeching! As if there
were aeons of suffering in her. Poor Pinkie! She sounded weighed-down
with sorrow, exhausted.
He went upstairs, calmer, washed-out before the day had started.
She was getting tea busily, her face showing nothing. As she poured the
hot water into theppt he heard the alarm-beli go downstairs. If the
atmosphere had been normal between them they would have referred to that
to1 being up so early, before the alarm. But neither of them spoke.
Wasn't that suspicious? he asked himself.


All day the sentence she'd spoken, or might have spoken, came back
to him, sometimes étark and sudden, sometimes not in the form of words at
all but as a sickening turning sénsation in his stomach. That evening
after she returned he couldn't bear it any longer. They were sitting at
the kitchen table eating a cold dinner she'd mocked up, in silence. They'd
hardly sàid good evening to each other. Again there was no one else in
the house. And he suddenly tipped the table up so that the milk fell over
and the coffee-pot, after a few seconds of ambiguity, followed it, crashing
on to the floor. He sprang up, trembling with rage. She was at once
pale, her mouth open, a terrified expression in her eyes. At the same time
he slammed his fist down on the table.
"Get out!" he screamed. "Get out of this house!"
She couldn't get her breath properly, fixed in her chair, staring
up at him. "For God's sake," she whispered, "what's the matter?"
And now, even as he was trembling, his cheeks flushed, it seemed,
absurd! She was simply Pinkie again, frightened by his shouting!. All
his previous thoughts were absurd - an exaggeration. She was so
frightened and taken aback by him that it seemed she must be innocent!
What a fool he was making of himself! Suddenly tipping the table up and
standing there like an ape, for no reason! Yet there were reasons: he
reminded himself of the first evening, when he'd walked up the stairs with
his cases to find a party going on - the kitchen in filth m a smashed
mirror next door: that was how much she cared for him! There were reasons,
oh, yes! And his fury came back. Also there was that word 'darling':
it flashed into him
across his middle - like a flame,. hurting
frightfully.
"What are you sitting there for?" he shouted. "If you' want to go


out why the hell don't you?"
"Who said I did?" she asked breathlessly.
"Oh, Christ! You're like a cat on hot bricks!"
His eyes drilled into her, and she looked down and closed her
lips, palely, as if giving up the effort to speak. So he tried to drive
his words deeper - to hurt her and thus evoke feeling in her. But he
wouldn't mention that 'darling', or say what he most feared. He wouldn't
mention Grove. He knew quite well what the limits were: he would only
insinuate and attack.
"Why don't you drop all this being a wife, for Christ's sake?
What do you want to keep it up for, all this smiling and putting on the
right face like a bloody puppet!"
So it wént on. The attack was general; all she heard was black
condemnation: noting specific. He was trying to get a confession out of
her, but in such a roundabout way that she couldn't give it to him; because
he feared too much wat the confession would be! So equally he was trying
to establish her innocence! In a way she was doing what he wanted her to
do by not speaking.
He stood there flushed, the ends of his fingers moving as they'd
done that morning. "You bloody abortionist! You killed that child,.
didn't you?" He suddenly found himself saying this.
He was completely beyond himself, bent down over her, the veins
sticking out of his neck. "You did, didn't you?"
And even in the heat of this moment it occurred to him quite
clearly that he was asking this question only because he knew she was
innocent and only wanted her to say no! It was only a good way of making
her feel a sting from him a perhaps plead with him to stop - if only


she'd plead!
But she sat there pale and gripped in a panic-stricken silence.
He began calling her a slut; a dirty whore, a mean crawling vegetable,
until in the contrariness ofhihuman nature he almost burst out laughing
at the way his words came tumbling out! But she couldn't see this.
She could only see the grim face. Then underneath his: fury-cum-laughter
he began to feel panic much: like calm, tremblingly taut a as he suspected
that she agreed with him, and condemned herself, and could do nothing about
it! She was in love! He felt like crying out, with- tears in his eyes,
'Oh, Pinkie, you're in love! In love! Please don't, please don't i--!',
like those wounded men in battle who pleaded with . the shells. She was in
love! But his. mind at once dismissed it, in a blind stroke. In love!
She began crying, and as always when this happened his anger
disappeared, as if it broke the rules of the game. .
"Stop crying," he murmured.
Once he'd said in Basrah, "I wish you never cried when I shouted
at you! I want you to be strong and stand up to me. Why don't you
contradict what I say? Why don't you shout back?"
But she always gave in - : lowered her head and cried like a child.
The usual intolerable pity filled him like dust in his throat: She reminded
him of a bear they'd seen together in Kurdistan, chained to a pole bèhind
a landowner's house. A Kurdish solicitor called Khalid Beg with whom he'd
become quite friendly, a tall, straight-backed man with blazing, fair eyes,
had taken them along. When the servants approached the bear with long
poles it began to whimper in. a most pitiful way, knowing what was coming,
the poles were always twisted in the skin of his neck; one could see how the
fur of his neck was all worn away. The cruel little bastards! Everybody


was most amused except him and Pinkie. Every day this torture was enacted
for visitors. Pinkie's little, "No, don't do it any more!" made them all
laugh. Now she was like the bear. He remembered how the creature had
lowered his head in a submissive way, bowing to the awful god of pain.
He felt abashed and horrified at himself, as if he'd.been one of those
grinning little servants. He was tired and hollow. He looked out of the
tiny window at the roofs and the dim sky. It wasn't quite dark yet.
"Shall we go for a walk?" he asked quietly.
She sniffed and looked up slowly. "Yes, fine!" she said, already
bright.
They walked in the streets by the river, between the closed,
silent offices. There was hardly a soul about. He put his arm in hers
and they strolled along in a leisurely way, quite tired. They passed
the Port of London building with its huge pillars, like a massive, arrogant
temple dedicated to folly, and then the Tower, lying in a dip, a truthful
shadowy hump in the dubk. The river gleamed under the lights, rolling
slightly. The, air was quite warm, with the touch of a breeze, and there
were clouds; there might be a storm. Even by the river there were few
people, and the buses were mostly empty, in the lull before the theatres
finished.
They, passed a group of tall Victorian houses with arched windows,
now divided into apartments. One of the windows was open at the bottom
and they could see a dimly-lit room with gaudy, scarlet wall-paper, like
a huge tapestry slung round all the walls; and three or four people were
sitting there, drinking something, raising cups to their lips and talking.
It looked so calm. They hardly seemed to move at all. The room had a
high ceiling with a chandelier hanging down and a large gilt-framed mirror


on the wail. It might be a club-room of some kind. It was too gaudy,
perhaps, for a private room. It was like having a glimpse into the
nineteenth century; there was such a sense of interior and warmth, that
madé the present epochs seem naked. 'How wonderful to sit in a room -like
that with' a friend!' he thought. He imagined the silence that would fall
between their sentences, and the way they would gaze up at the ceiling,
leaning back, in reflection. Life would be ordered. There would be the
quiet assurance of being understood by someone, and of looking at the world
from a distance. The buses would go by outside, a friendly voice from the
world. There wouldn't be scenes like the one he and Pinkie had just had.
Women would be more separate from mén, in their own world, with the friends
they loved and the particular tone of conversation that belongs to each sex.
There wouldn't be all this confusion and mixture of opposites. He would
make coffee for his friend, on a little gas-fire of his own perhaps; he
would pick down a book from one of his shelves. At the end of the evening
he would see Pinkie, and she would have been in' her world, too, and come out
with her femininity freshened and glowing. If only she yearned for a
woman's friendship as he did for men's! But it was always "I don't think
I like women, really." In Basrah she told him, "I prefer the company of
men! They're so much freer than women, and they're not jealous. Women
can be so bitchy!"
He had wanted her to see more of women in Basrah. He'd told her
it was a wonderful opportunity,to see inside the harems. ' She could then
tell him about it! Mohammed had a whole family of sisters whom he would
never meet, - why didn't she go and see them? She went once and then
refused to go again. She said they were so frightfully dull. Three of
them, believe it or not, hadn't seen' the front gate of the house from the


outside! The two older ones were allowed to take a turn round the city
with their mother in a closed car with the blinds down once a day, seeing
but unseen. . On the other hand, they were by far, the happiest creatures
she'd met in her life! When she'd asked them what they did all day they
told her they rode their bicycle round the garden and fell off; talked
about their brothers, listened to the wireless and 'played games'! But
she wouldn't go back. She said she needed the company of men for its
'bigness and lack of trifles'. A friendship with a woman, she said, was
a mariage de convenance between two vanities. (This, he thought, was what
she seemed to have contracted with Hanni.),
"That looks cosy," he said, pointing to the room.
"Cosy?" she asked. with a quick, affectionate glance at him. "It
looks hideous, darling!"
"Well, the furniture. That mirror!"
"What do you mean?"
"It takes up half the wall! I think our place is much nicer."
"Yes, so dost, really: ButI thought with the river and all
those lights - "
"Yes, the river's lovely! I wish we were nearer the river.
We ought to look for a house down here."
There was something very quiet in her. It was a quiet of the
soul. He glanced at her, surprised. She was so intact,. as he'd never
known her before! Usually her face had a kind of natural, born, bramatic
loneliness; she had a slightly drooping mouth and a downward gaze. But
this was gone. She'd been.silent, under his attack as usual, but this time
he felt his words hadn't got. to her heart, to hurt her as much as even she


would have liked! She had her own life now, separate from him. Was
that it? He was aware of her as a separaté person at his side, with a
new dignity. She seemed taller even, and was gazing before her in a level
way. There was an undauntedness in this gaze which he hadn't seen before.
He felt he'd been shouting at a third person
not her at ail. And only
the third person had wept.
She hadn't really kissed him since his return. She pecked him
on the lips, that was all. Even the second or third night, when they'd
had an orgasm, she kept her lips closed. There were those sweet kisses,
"on the night he'd heard about his promotion to the Beirut office, but even
then she'd kept her mouth more or less closed, he remembered he hadn't
felt her tongue! It occurred to him that someone might have asked her to
do this a never to give him her tongué again! He imagined the words,
'At least, if you have - to sleep with him, don' 't let him do that!' How
suddenly these stunning thoughts. came!
And equally comeone might have said to her, 'Do you mean to say
you'd have his child, and give it suck?).. He put his arm closer in hers,
wearily, and she hugged him to her for a moment. They walked home in
silence, like children.. The next morning when he got up he went straight
to the mirror and looked at himself. 'Am I disgusting?' he thought. He
gazed at his rather heavy, bleached eyebrows and the tiny white lines round
his eyes causèdrby squinting in strong sunlight. His face had lost - by
a mere breath of a change - - its weathered look. He looked closer but
could tell nothing. But all' at once he found himself vindictive-looking,
his eyes buried deep in his head, his brow heavy with too much frowning,
his chin pushed forward in perpetual rejection. Was it true? He
couldn't tell what he was really like! He turned away from the mirror and


went slowly upstairs to the kitchen, feeling he had.no substance, his
footsteps echoing through the house. His pride was dashed. He couldn't
forget how intact she looked! He slouched about the house all day, hardly
able to lift his eyes, in shame at being himself. His' body didn't fit and
he hated it. He couldn't settle to anything and couldn't face going out.
In the mornings now he woke with a heavy, damp, still sense of
unworthiness. He couldn't tell what the root ofit was! It had been
going on, he thought, to a greater or lesser extent for years, and now it
was an overwhelming suffocating presence on top of him in the morning! It
was a flat rejection of his whole personality. It was an unpleasant
physical sensation
at times completely identified with his body: a pain,
a sort of fever, a nasty taste in his mouth. Sometimes he woke up in the
middle of the night with auch a complete sense of condemnation a a terrible
dankness, like a cave
that he thought he hadn't the life-energy to go
on living anothér minute; and then the feeling cleared, and he couldn't
understand where it came from! It rose out of his sleep like a steam.
He was at a full-stop in his being: what was this total helplessness
he had even with his wife? and with. Diçk and Hanni? Why couldn't he be
easy with them ab he observed they were with each other?. Or were, they?
What was the world they had which he couldn't share? Did that wofld exist?
If not, why did his imagination requiré it to be created? Was it to do with
his own divided consciousness? Was it that he found himself in a world
where he didn't belong, so that he needed future training? Could they
understand each other while he was condemned to stand in bewildered detachment,
one foot among them and one foot in the other world of his childhood? Was
he responsible for his own state? What had- he done that was s0 wrong?
He tried to wrack his brains: 'What have I done wrong?' Ynyrbevaanted
To Ra4l


to cry in despair, had hè left that first world he knew?


pgn
Srotg
Auro
orls
Illy
sel ASEN
BOOK III
ethy
CHAPTER 12.
Paul
Péople started calling at the house again, and a group even
began to form; with the house as its centre. Glenning, the publicity-man,
was almost a daily vieitor now, Some of the other faces he'd seen that
first evening re-appeared; there was the young girl Dick Pollocke had been
talking to; her name was Lucy, and she always came with a girl-friend nick-
named 'Ginger'. The two of them sat in the music-room together, long-haired
and quiet, sometimes with a book, sometimes just sitting in silence. And
he himself came and went casually. It was quite pleasant. The young man
called Gerald with the agreeable smile also came sometimes: the plastics-
firm he worked for was not many yardé:from the T.I.M. place, and often he
and Pollocke walked over together.
For some time there were repeated phone-calls in the day which
came to nothing when he answered them. He would pick up the receiver and
say "Hullo", then there would be silence, followed by a slight click at the
other end. It got on his nerves and the idea became fixed in his mind that
it was Grove trying to get through to Pinkie, though why Grove didn't know
she worked in Wembley he couldn't explain: Onë day he shouted into the,
silent phone, trembling, "Stop it, you bloody fool, stop it!" He. remembered
afterwards how his voice had echoed up the well of the stairs in the empty
house, like someone else's voice, rasping and strange; it sounded like
someone bound 'and gagged, and 8hou uhy tumgh
Tugs


He heard nothing more of the offer of the Beirut office,) which
Glenning had told him as more of less a certainty. Clearly it wouldn't
happen before he went back again. In a way that was a relief: he would
be in the office again with Mohammed at his desk on the other side of the Hwe
room, with the fans whirring and sunlight streaming between the shutters; cue
it was quite a happy image, and it seemed to him that he could actually
hear the silence
lan
of that office, with its special tone, as if the sunlight ne
alme
was pressing on the roofs outside, like a huge brass weight that came down
harder and harder as the day want on; and behind the silence there was
always the cacophony of car-hooters from the main street, in the distance.
He ought to be getting his' ticket back and wondered whether to shorten his
leave by a week and take a boat all the way instead of flying: the voyage
would calm him again. He noticed that he already assumed Pinkie wouldn't
be coming. But he told himself that she would follow him after a month
or so.
Pinkie came and went from the office. Several weeks passed
without a single new event. But though he thought of going to a travel-
bureau and getting his ticket it didn't seem quite serious. He couldn't
imagine going back. Usually if something was certain to happen he could
feel it in some way, and imagine the circumstances.
Sometimes several of them went together to a new cafe in the
Commercial Road where there were wicker-baskets on the walls for flowers,
and a fisher's net draped across the ceiling in a chic manner. Pinkie
was subdued as he'd never seen her before, but-etill + with-the-intact Iook
that-aroused-hia curiosity- $he gave way. to all his suggestions. They
went shopping together, apa otherwise she seemed quite content to stay
frow
He put it down to their getting a good many visitors. The' door


cus alway.
dovastaire was open most of the day, , as Nshe Mkedit He took walks
by Wapping docks and the Tower,
went to concerts quite frequently,
efy
tak
Qr/ne/would stroll/ /down to the ahoreditch library and-get out psew
travel books. The house was tidy again, apty/ the mild weather held. He
e as
te close Sex-lils
began to wonder how he would/eave this light, clean life, with the ie
pleasurable undertone of menace, insorshoptlantime.
There was a lot of coffee-drinking in the kitchen, and he enjoyed
it in a mild way, especially the fong hours talking to Hanni sometimes,
when she felt in a confidential mood. But it was a vacuum, Underneath,
it was all frightful. Yet his face mustn't acknowledge this. Nor must
his talk. He was the same as the others, keeping his real self in
reserve: it was the polite thing to do.
scnred
He asked Pinkke one evening, "I feel frightened sometimes - is
everything all right?"
Her coming and going was somechanicall Shomadea Clustomary
stiffblink ofher eyes, with a loose gaze for a moments and she said,
"What jdo you mean, Pip?", in the same surprised-and slightly breathless 3 ey
tone as when he'd-asked-his-queetion-about 'affairs' that first Levening,
He gave
One bad to-be sure-of-onets facts.
3 A
K wnld Scared di
Hanni got furious at one of Dick's escapades. She had come to
stay the night with Pinkie, rather than go back to Hampton Court, and
she'd rung up Dick at the office to say so. "Oh, I'm sorry about that,
darling," Dick said over the phone, "go to bed early and get a night's
rest.- Your eyes are beginning to show the strain." The three of them,
Pinkie, Hanni and Granville, were sitting in the kitchen drinking wine
after dinner when she suddenly laid doyn her glass and said, "I'm going


to Hampton Court, and I think I'm going to find something interesting
when I get down there!" They laughed and told her not to be a fool,
but she got her handbag at once and left the house. And next evening
she called in and told them what she'a found. She walked into the flat,
she said, and found it in darkness but knew he was there because she
could smell the Turkish cigerettes he smoked when he was seducing a
woman. She pushed open the door of the front room and switched on the
light, and there was Dick with a etunning and 'Juno-esque' girl, sitting
on a sofa-in front of the 'view' with the window open at the bottom.
He'd just undone her blouse and had slipped her petticoat-straps off her
shoulders so that her breasts were showing. He was just about to bend
down and kiss one of her nipples when she put the light on, she said.
The girl quite calmly pulleddher straps up again and closed her blouse,
and said, hardly turning round, "What unexpected guest have we got?"
Dick looked terrified and said, "It's my wife! Won't you meet?" He
got up and was just about to make the introductions e Hanni said she
was glad to find his fly-buttons were done up, at any rate when she
walked towards them in a fury and shouted at the girl, "Get out of my
flat at once!" The girl got up with a haughty expression - she really
was magnificent, and Hanni felt a little twinge of admiration for her -
and said in a casual way, "Yes, of course : I expect you want a little
word with your husband, don't you?" After she'd gone Hanni began more
or less chasing him round the flat. She filled a huge flower-bowl with
water and calmly tipped the lot over his head. And while he was trying
to wipe himself off she started slapping him round the face at a furious
rate. As he said afterwards, she was really hitting the girl - and
he'd accepted the blows on this basis, which made them seem lighter!


He looked-bluenext-dayr-and-hada slight cut on-his-upper lip. By
fiyeo*clock in the morning. they'd talked' themaelves-out-and-then.had
the'most enermons_screw! ever. o Hanni said it was wonderful dealing
with a man after he'd been caught in flagrante delectis mi you could
kick him, pour water over him and really go to town e as you never could
etau he llert 5 las).
otherwise; ther you could really 'milk* him, For several days afterwards
she was mute and narrow-eyed, and woa answer/ none of Dick's questions.
He gave her flowers and took her to the theatre, but she couldn't forget
Leynd uud
how magnificent the girl had been.
Granville thought he felt a glow of admiration for Dick. He
told himself that Dick was asserting the only freedom left in life. The
spell of the flesh! That was the only thing left! So he went to the
office and found Dick just coming out of a board meeting. "What a
wonderful fellow you are!" he said with the frivolous, sparkling glance
which was now taken for granted between them, and which he really thought
idiotic. And then, while Dick was smiling back at him, with the same
little sparkle, he realised that he didn't know why he'd come to the
office, that he hadn't wanted to, that he didn't belong here, that he
didn't know what had happened to his life, that he was whirling round
giddily in other people's lives which they had made! So he promptly
made up a reason for coming bahe he wanted to look up the contracts
department (ah, yes! - another little twinkle ia after more money, eh?)
and dashed out of the building. Why didn't he find a woman? Through
loyalty to Pinkie! And she was probably with Grove, at this minute!
But he refused this-"thought at once: Yet she probably was! But suppose
she wasn't? 'He faltered again. And so his resolution failed him, which
it didn't do in Dick. He didn't have Dick's pluck to enter the mystery


and risk everything with his own hands and his own life. He was always
hanging. back in thought!
One évening Dick gave' ' him one of his little speeches about sex.
"You know, I'm quite à methodical person,-but by God there's no method
as far as sex is concerned, is there? You can't bookit in advance, can
you? I'd say I really wanted sex apout; wéll, once a week, not more
I mean the rear McCoy, not titillation and all that caper! Not often
for a thriving male, isit? But I bet Don-Juan didrttdo much better,
blli ive eveup 14 3 niud
for all-his escapadestu Reethoros clienta from South
America had some sort-of aphrodisiac powder, from 'a root or. something,
which he said made you red-hot. We had him down to Hampton Court to stay,
then I came back one night and found he'd been putting the stuff in Harni's
Granpkile Laugheds UWaat happenedtun
OWell, of course, I told him to leave. the house and never darken
ttu
S Itie Jhole
my towels againYo Bur
engya Ite glamal
ths & hou 2 W!
As time went on Pinkie became nore and more matter-of-fact. It
seemed to be the result of working at the office. She was tired when she
came back, and anything too personal, any intimate discussion of their
life, seemed absurd to her, perhaps because it was outside the working
schedule. He tried to summon up courage to ask about Grove, but didn't
for fear of getting an honest answer.
Aiph
Helmadenher breakfast every' morning, and usually prepared dinner
a te 3 1 &
lubz wort
when- she eame ack at nightr She was kept out by) business on Fridays dol ehus
until midnight or so. She said Friday was the night when the different
departments at Nigels firm got together, first a committee-meeting
and then oyer dinner. But he phoned her once during this committees
lichic
- L tue
hs L,
Pip diiie enr


meeting, in the early part of the evening, and there was no replys Sshe
said afterwards that this was because
secretariés
line,
the
had gone honepteu
and
Mao
adding that as a matter of fact she'A seen the light flickering on the
operator's switchboardfputboo"gatseda Bithe didntt belteteiits One
week-end she went off to Nigel's house in Wiltshire and came back looking
wased gul.
paloland mote-tiredthathan_boferer He dared-notask her-why this was
beçause it mightindicate-tisat he-suspected-her ofnat actually going,
but-sperding two days in bed with Grove!
It occurred to: him when she talked that she'd been listening to
someone else's voice and, being impressipnable, had absorbed this voice
as her own. He tried to divine what sort of person this was. He
thought it was a small person 1 there was an unusual note of envy and
bitterness in her sometimes. It wasn't the voice she'd had all these
years. And secondly it seemed to him that she was absorbing middle-
class arguments about life. This was pérhaps where her matter-of-fact
tone came from. He wasn*t alone with her any longer; there was this
third person. She was now in the habit of getting up suddenly during
a conversation and changing the subject, whereas before she'd always
stuck at a' thing and not let hér mind interfere. She now seemed to have
learned a social manner of avoiding dangérous and continuous themes.
One evening she said in a crisp way that didn't belong to her, "After all,
there's more in life than thinking out one's personal problems, you
know!" She was beginning to use the vodabulary he'd first recognised
in Sussex! It was peculiar to hear her |say how 'sonsitive' somebody
was, and she stunned him by. saying just defore they went to bed one
evening that she found his 'philosophy' interesting. His mouth fell
open and he put out his hand slightly as if to catch hold of her in her


disguise, but in a second she was the feal Pinkie again.
He found he could get on quite well if he read the newspaper
every morning, saw two 'or three people during the day and made sure that
there. was at least one event from the day before that he could talk to
them about. - This made the obligatory outward conversation possible.
Real talk was out of the question. Dick was the only one who did it,
with his girls. - He'd found a way of doing it inside the system of work
and city-life all round them - - and.hats off to him*, thought Granville.
They couldn't make their own lives any more: they could only make new
actions. The job at the office, their newspapers, the hurried sound
in the streets, drew them all further and further into the system,. and
the only satisfactory thing to do was to lean on the system and forego
all thought. and self-responsibility. There were laws, and one wasn't
likely to break them. One could leave everything to the outside world
and never communicate one's real self to other people; there was a comfort
in this; the cycle of happiness and pain, the natural rise and fall of
life, didn*t. seém to apply any more. There was a numbed but safe
consistency. No one was sufficiently alone to be in control of his life
any more.
He always thought he was about to get inside Dick and Hanni, to
a true intimacy, but it never happened. He could sée Pinkie: he could
feel her existence. But they were closed to him as perhaps no other
people had, been in his life. Their silence always felt like a with-
holding of something that could or should be said and was actually in
their: minds. He had a constant sense of suppression in their company,
and of mental surveillance, with remarks relèased by policy, after strict
eensorship. They. were sometimes nicknamed 'the poltergeists' perhaps for


this reason.
When he had a quiet talk with Hanni the deadlock was broken for
a time. She got several' afternoons off and came to the house. The
walked in Kensington Gardens and sometimes bathed in the Lido. He was
quite glàd to be with her, as if to convince her that he had no unusual
feelings towards Pinkie and that his life was going along amoothly. - He
wanted her to have no fixed conclusions about him. So each time they
walked together it was like a bid for freedom - from a preconceived
judgement on her part. It always seemed' that a subject was being
avoided: was it Pinkie? But théir tone was intimate. They laughed and
talked quite gaily, yet he was nèrvous all the time. He had the
impression that his life was wearing down slowly. Why couldn't hé speak
to her clearly about what he feared? Because he didn't want to show
himself in weakness: And why didn't he want to show himself in weakness?
Because whether he liked it or not suffering was weakness in the society
they'd made between the four of them. When Hanni went down with 'flu
Dick stayed in the Hampton Court flat as little as possible, and only
made a feeble éffort at nursing her. He would look at her and say quite
candidly, "I can't understand how I ever made love to you. You look like
a railway porter!"
'It was always pleasant at the Lido. There werè some lovely days.
He yearned for something new to happen, an éscapade like Dick's, and also
he had àn optimistic sense that his life would change soon. The hot
sunlight that drenched éverything gave him this confidence. He talked
to Hanni about Basrah at some iength, but whenever it seemed possible
that he would launch into one of his 'speeches' - a when he leaned forward
slightly and began flaring in front of him - ishe would repeat, "Mm, mm,"


in a. frantic way, nodding all the time, as if to tell him that she knew
everything he. was going to say and so he needn't say it.. She had a
horror of him boring her, it seemed; and anything that was the slightest
departure from practical statements of fact carried this threat. But
there was a pleasure in this for him: it was nice to choose little
atatements carefully, rather in Dick's. candid style, like, "I think
Glenning comes round to us for what he misses in his own home, don't you?"
And then she would tell him. a little anecdote about Glenning à how he
ohce left his wife in a waiting-room at Norwich station and only remembered
her when he stepped off the train at Liverpool Street! Glenning's wife
was so stupid that all she wanted was to have babies, she said. She and
Glenning were always 'on the job', it seemed - for instance, they would
dress each other in impeccable outdoor clothes and then during a
deliberately formal conversation undress each other again little by little,
until they were on the bed together. His wife would ask him questions
about the office like a secretary.. "How are woollens doing these. days?"
she would ask. "Oh, not too bad!" he would say as he slipped off her
skirt, "A two-percent rise this week!"
Hanni would go from one anecdote to another in her chanting voice,
chuckling now and then. "Dick was at it last night," she would say,
"and every time he pushed I did a loud fart! He said it was like
conducting a Sousa march!"
But. he had the impression that talking like this hurt her as well.
She hadn't a naturàl, flowing ribaldry. She flickered her eyelids in
a pained way.
She would complain about. Dick in a monotonous voice, tight-lipped
and brooding; underneath, she seemed concerned about him, in an irritated,


maternal way. Sometimes it seemed that she was talking about Pinkie
as well, while mentioning only Dick's name: : she would turn to him as if
he knew what she meant already, through Pinkie. They began to share a
grievance. Dick and Pinkie had what they called the 'blind* quality, of
pursuing their own pleasures whatever happened, and stepping across other
people as if they weren't there; they didn't notice small details; they'd
both been spoiled in childhood in one way, and yet not spoiled in another--
deprived of something! They didn't know what it felt like to be someone
else'. But this left him and Hanni with an uncomfortable feeling that
they themselves were only more ethical because they were inactive, and
that the other two had more pluck. It rendered thèm spectators of the
other two, which wasn't flattering to the pride.
Behind Hanni's panicky mm, mms there was always the implication
that one day - a not now,because this wasn't the time or occasion - d she
would reveal all the thoughts and facts and values on which she based her
silent appraisal of things and her pre-knowledge of what he was going to
say: but as with Dick the time never came; it was never the occasion!
Yet he always believed she had the power to tell him. And he concluded
that what he was about to say had no interest for her, and curbed himself.
So, despite the growing intimacy between them, he felt the same edge of
stiffness as always before; there was always the tremulous frontier where
they doubted each other and had to rehearse their statements, and force
their faces into a smile. Much was due to her fear of him; Pinkie said
. she didn't like the way he 'glared' at her sometimes.
Hanni gave the impression of a' dark and rather deadly calm,
something held very deeply inside her, timidly from the world but also
obstinate. Yet she always answered him anxiously, whatever he asked her.


She was always trying to oblige; but there was still this locked reserve
in her. More and more he was silent with her unless he had something
grimly factual to say.
But he preferred it to being alone
his norves played such
tricks on him. One afternoon, in the silent house, an unaccountable
terror caught hold of him. It was about a quarter to four and he'd just
finished eating. He got up to carry the dirty plates to the sink -
there was the swish of a passing bus in the distance, and an aeroplane
throbbed overhead. He ran water into the bowl and slipped the plates in.
But he didn't wash up, only turned away absently, his hand still on the
water-tap.
Then this unbearable nervous tremor started in him. He held his
breath, listening for the sound of the downstairs doors But nothing came.
His stomach actually seemed to quake and quiver, sending out shafts of
t horror all through him, and a foreboding darkness approached him, like the
slow, hot breeze he had felt that same afternoon in the street below,
flowing past him. witha solemn, Ominous movement. The silence had become
grim and hollow, like the silence round a dead person, He moved a foot,
and the boards creaked under the linoleum as if. only a dead wind had
stirred them, nothing human.
He'd begun to think about Pinkie: he realised this wm it wasn't
a thought so much as the shadow of herself that had passed over him! She
must have done or said something against him at that moment w twenty
miles away;: close by, it didn't matter! He believed in these ghostly
connections between people. He saw her hand sliding gently down the
face of -
But the picture faded. Yet perhaps he had the impréssion
or had he planted the impression? ie of a young man's face, pale and


smiling while Pinkie's hand made its cruelly suggestive, delicious,
stroking motion?
Yes, she was always out these days! A hot dread spread over him.
He ran downstairs to the bedroom and flung open the wardrobe door. Her
best coat was gone! Her best coat! Her best summer coat! But what
did that mean? Nothing! Her shoes, then - her shoes
He tore
out all the r heaped shoes in a frenzy
her best shoes, where were they?
Or her handbag - le her black handbag, for the evenings - that would
prove something! He kicked the door closed again, crushing the frail
shoes and the piles of old stockings and silk scarves together, and
rushed next door. There! But no, the handbag wasn't in its usual
place, on the bookshelf, close to the piano, close to his precious
granophone we : Yes, she had wanted to look elegant this afternoon!
He stood in the middle of the room panting and staring down at
the carpet. He felt a giddy trembling so violent that his legs hardly
seemed able to support him any more.
The door opened suddenly and Hanni was standing in the doorway,
calm and still. He turned round with astart, gaping at her.
"Whatever's the matter, Pip?" she asked.
"Oh Dim hullo!"
Hé smiled. His heart was still beating fast. She looked round
the room slowly.
"Is anything wrong?"
She came further into the room and at that moment he raised his
hand, unawares, to touch his nose. She saw it trembling éver so slightly.
The light from the street shone up into her eyes as she turned towards the
window, making them seem darker than they were, a deep, mottled colour, nearly


an absolute black. Not a sound came from the street.
"No," he murmured. "Why?" Then he added at once, to make
talk, "Have you just cone?"
He stood with his legs astride, not knowing what to do with his
hands until she spoke again.
"What about some coffee?" she said.
"Yes maia fine!"
She turned to go upstairs and gave him a quick, searching look.
His trembling ceased and the colour came back to his face. As hé
followed her up the stairs awkwardly he felt much like a child, hanging
his héad.
She glanced out of the kitchen window, at the roofs near the
river.
"It's a wonderful day," she said. "Have you been out?"
"Just down the road, that's all."
She turned to look at him, slowly, still seeming to wonder.
"Shall we go to the Lido, Pip?"
They left right away, not troubling about the coffee.
That afternoon, after they'd been swimming, a sudden change came
over him: he was aware of the sunlight over the lake in front of them as
a glinding yellow flash across the sky spread out to infinity, and
including in one moment all his life; it was a révelation of stupefying
hope, in which he felt his whole future contained in goodness, and resolved!
All the bad things of his present life would go. But even now, at this


moment, he was free!
For the first time since his return he had an excited sense of
the city round him,and a sense that it didn't matter what his life was
or what happened at home, because of all the other activities that were
open to him every day, as one member lost in a mass of others, without a
name as far as suffering went. He kicked out his leg involuntarily,
dripping with water, in a happy spasm of freedom, already celebrating the
future, and he looked at Hanni with a relieved smile. He would do something!
He didn't know what yet, but he would do something to change his life.
Let him spend all the money he had, for instance - he could take the
other three to a club! Already a fortnight had passéd. How slowly the
city teassèrted its hold on him! Of course, he was a Londoner - why
hadn't he realised that before? The spirit had gone away from hima He
could go out into these streets as he'd always done in the past, and lose
himself, as if life was eternal and he was walking up and down the span
of eternal time, looking in at the lighted shop windows! He made no
specific proposal of action to himself; something would turn up; the club-
idea was only momentary, a suggestion. But he was quite certain that, now
he was in a fit mood, his life would change. He dragged Hanni into the
water again, whooping and laughing, and they splashed together under the
diving board. She blinked at him, delighted and wondering. He'd shaken
Basrah off! He'd found himself! And after two or three swims up and
down the enclosure they went in again, puffing hard, and threw themselves
down on the grass, where the trees were. "The water seems to do you
good!" Hanni panted. He got a sudden dazzling impression of her, as
someone he, did know after all. The long grass was extraordinarily vivid
against the slight darkness of her skin. It all looked so strange under


the treest in the middle of a city, with people's white skin against the
grass, in. the shade of tall trees, with therbright light draining through
the leaves in speckles, and here and there a negro, stark black, with
glowing shite eyes and teetha And there were sunshades, red and yellow,
with prams and also blankets spread out.
"Are you ever ashamed of being lonely?" he asked her suddenly,
gazing at her in a very direct way, but too fresh from the eater to care.
As she dried herself, panting, she looked up, first with the slightest
blink; as if reservation would take hold of her again and chill everything,
and said, "Yes, sometimes!" It gave him such a sense of relief to ask an
honest question, not simply a prepared question in an honest style! In
that. moment everything seemed humbug that people talked, a nervous humbug
imposed by the city. She didn't move for a little time. For a moment
he thought she was going to take her little reply back by saying something
clever or facetious, but as. if she knew what he expected of her she
had such a gift for that wishas she went on drying herself quietly, with
some little grief in her eyes as ihe looked down at the grass, lowering
her head to rub the towel against her neck. He felt lazy and lay down,
looking up at the trees. And she seemed suddenly relieved to be out of
his scrutiny. She'd said to Pinkie at the training-school, years before,
that he was the sort of person who tried to 'pin you on to a board' for
his collection of "butterflies'. Pollocke had said that was absurd.
But he wondered now if in a silent manner she'd passed beyond that
mistrust. The sun was still shining on the water in a great yellowness,
flung lavishly over the trees and bushes on the other side of the lake,
and he became happy again at the thought of the dusty, hot streets that


began at the edge of the park, and the cafes that would be filling with
people about this time, the first tàxis of the evening-rush that would
turn the corner at Queen's Gate, the musty smeil of beer as the pubs
opened, and the dark interiors that seemed to wait : for the évening to
come * and for dusk to fall! He thought of these things in quick succession,
in an ecstatic mood anointed in this yellowness, a magnificent, dazzling
splash that extended to the outermost spaces of reality in a vast sunset.
How strange that he hadn't felt properly in the city until now! All
those painful little thoughts at the house would be gone. He would be
able to stand his full height. That was what they meant when they said
'old Pip' - T a: gay and recklese sort of person, not this little thinking
insect!
"Why did you ask that?" Hanni said.
"I don't know!"
The words were out of his mouth before he knew where he was. He
was about to go on, to' say that he deduced the sort of life she led from
the one he led. He wanted to break the silence that had hung over his
life since his return ia talk about all the intimate fears that had been
playing at his mind, and the misery he'd sunk into, and the fact that he
saw nothing before him in the future, not at least as far as Pinkie went;
and how he'd felt the weight of an accusation on him after his return',
that he'd sent away -all Pinkie's friends from the house, and that he felt
he represented a shadow over her life, and how thankful hè'd been that a
group had re-formed, even though it was without Grove! And 'Grove' a -
But he couldn't do it. He Iet the moment pass. And she blinked,
recording everything so minutely with her fàce as she always did, as if
she'd felt the breath of his revelations pass over her and then die away


again beforé they could turn to speech. So they vere back again in
deadlock! Yet she seemed satisfied with his "I don't know!" and his
laugh afterwards, that sounded hollow to himself. And they were too
tired and hungry from the, bathing to want to talk any more a The moment
had passed.
People. were beginning to pack up their things and leave. The
stillness, that had muffled everybody's voice and turned what they said
into a whisper, was broken. now. The traffic from Knightsbridge sounded
like a wind in the distance, level and unchanging, representing the city's
preparation for evening. The other side of the lake looked like a coast-
line very far away. Perhaps he endowed her with more strength than she
had, and also perhaps she feared his expectations of her! Perhaps they
were all doing that to each other! But still he couldn*t bring himself
to speak. She picked 'up the cloth bag she 'd brought with her and. they
walked across the park towards the road. He was aware of her as a kind
of little sentinel at his side,always armed, smooth, brown and slim, her
eyebrows meeting in middle like a frontier across her face, a black,
negative line. The tufted grass stretched away before them, and the
trees clustered together, beginning to contain the first shadows of the
evening. He looked back as they plodded across the sand of Rotton Row,
at the sky, for a last glimpse; dusk was just stirring, like a vast shroud
of dust trouched with red getting closer and closer to the earth. It
fell so lightly, little by little, that it might be a breath of air,
given substance, almost making a stir that could be heard. Their shoes
made a quiet swishing, noise in the grass, much like the countryside,
except for the level roar of traffic that drew nearer.
When they got back he bought a dozen bottles of wine and rang up


Dick to tell him to come over for a little party. Dick was quite pleased -
"I see Pip's getting back into his old form," he murmured, but added that
he couldn't manage it, as he was having dinner with 'an important contact
on the distaff side'. În a lower voice he asked, "Is Hanni there?" and
when Granville said yes he added, "Tell her I'm giving a talk on freé
trade at the local Y.M.C.A." Y.M.C.A. meant 'You're My Choice All right' a
so Hanni told him afterwards. It was Dick's private language and
indicated that he would be taking a girl out - probably the one she'd
caught him with at Hampton Court, she said - but wouldn't be unfaithful to
her. She didn't Beem annoyed, and they drank a tumbler of wine together.
There was quite a jolly evening after Pinkie came home. They made a
punch, combining the wine with brandy and lemon juice, and Glenning called
in after theatre-time with a few others. Lucy and Ginger came. It gew
into a party. There were the usual records, including one that had
always stirred him called 'The Creole Shake'. And Dick came in after all
at about midnight with a sorry expression: the girl got a slap-up dinner
out of him, he said, and then went straight home afterwards, almost without
looking at him again! Hanni was delighted, and Dick danced with her
again and again, not even pausing when there was no music; his body tight
against hers and his head lowered on to her shoulders, so that he seemed
to be whispering messages in her ear.
Thus, Granville gave his first party since his return, on his own
initiative. This made a great difference to Pinkie - that he'd done it
himself, unexpectedly. She gave him a kiss on the neck similar to the
first she'd ever given him. He'd found his feet again! Of course he'd
been a jolly person two years before! That was what they meant by 'Pip'!
It was like coming back home to himself after a long absence. And the


other three looked wonderful that evening, so clear and cheerful: how
ungrateful he'd been to neglect them! The nightmares'were fihished.
What did it matter, all this absurd calculation as to who was being loyal
to whom? He had a glorious sensation of being alone and free and also
happy, an extraordinary combination; he even felt close to Dick's dandyism!
That would need practice. For the - first time since his return Basrah seemed
not to havé been his own experience at all.. And it had all happened
through a yellow flash across the aky in Kensington Gardens that Walsh
would have called 'mystical':
During the party he got tipsy and sat talking with Hanni again.
Dick had gone into the bedrocin where some of the others were, sitting in
candlelight, with the gas-fire on. There was a great din and bustle,
and the air was think with smoke, though all the windows were open.
Pinkie was at the phone and he had a stirring of his old fears, but they
were gone when she returned to the room looking as gay as before.. The
street was quite still outside, and their noise echoed across it. He
wondered if there'd be a complaint from the neighbours, but there wasn't.
Hanni was confidential, as always at a party, and she asked him again
what his question had meant that afternoon. "Why did you suddenly ask
me - that?" she said. They eat on the divan while people pushed past
their legs, trying to dance. It wasn't a true confidence between them.
He perceived this through his clouded brain. It was Dick's style
this cool probing, not hers. But he joined in the game. And, as before,
he tried to lay himself bare.
"I was deducing something from myself,' # he said.
"What
that you're ashamed?"
"No, no!" Again the words were out of his mouth like a reflex-


action. "I mean being lonely!"
She puffed at her cigarette slowly, her eyes narrowed. "In
what way?"
"I suppose as we all are!"
Again his spirit had failed him, or rather the spirit simply
wasn't there, while she moved hardly a muscle, gazing straight before her.
What had he meant that afternoon? He hadn't an idea! He hadn't a
thought in his head! How could he begin to talk about all those
complicated little puzzles of intimacy? Where would he begin? He hadn't
Dick's gift! She nodded after his last remark, her eyes almost closed
against the smoke of her cigarette in their characteristic way. a
"Yes, we're all rather lonely, I suppose," she said, finishing off
a conversation that had contained nothing.
He would have replied to this but a clear thought refused to come
into his head. With drinks inside him he was only fit to dance or play
the fool! He was suddenly in a whirl of self-consciousness. He tried
- again with Hanni: why shouldn't he mention Grove now? Why not ask what
Pinkie did on Fridày evenings? Why not talk about how he yearned to
make love to Pinkie sometimes and she yawned in his face? That was the
honest style he should learn. The words were there! But he couldn't.
His mouth was fixed. The drinks only hel.ped to paralyse him. He whirled
round in his thoughts, and couldn't escape them. Thank God his leave was
ending soon, at any rate! Suddenly he had a sharp sense of regret, that
he had indeed laid himself bare to Hanni, in the short sentence he'd
uttered, and that she had him caught now, and that he hadn't done justice
to himself in those few words, and so had made things doubly worse! 'Oh,
why had he talked? A flush began to rise up his neck. He was caught,


caught! It felt as if his limbs and insides were transfixed and held
still, without a flow.of blood through them. The longer the silence
lasted between them the more he accused himself!
Happily for his feelings Hanni went on talking, but about Dick.
At once the horrid whirl of his thoughts ceased. Dick, she said, was
frightened of going mad. Granville felt he understood this very well
at the moment! She said she was often worried about. him. Dick would
sit still for hours in the most uncanny way, without doing anything, or
he would get up and prowl round the room with his head buried in his
collar. He'd told her once that if he had the chance of jumping out of
his own body into somebody else's he'd take it with pleasure, and risk
being ugly or lame for the rest of his life! He hated the passing of
time, she said. The moment never came when he felt really himself and
enjoyed it; well, there were moments, perhaps a day, a wonderful summer's
day, but it didn't last; and the passing of time meant a perpetual loss
of opportunities. She seemed to understand him very well, talking softly,
as if it was herself. The emptiness all round us appalled him, she said.
Sometimes he couldn't see how human beings had managed to fill the earth
up with objects enough to make it look tempting. Of course he was
frightened of getting old; that followed. That was why he had affairs
and was always thinking about women. He had a 'thing" about breasts;
he told her they made him feel he was 'floating on the face of eternity'.
It was much more that 'sort of thing', she said, than the actual kissing
and the actual women that interested him. Hè always said. he enjoyed
sleeping with her much better than with anybody else; and that it was
'getting better and better with time'. But there was always this othér
quest, which had to do with his vanity. Yet vanity wasn't the right


word; he wasn't vain. But he had to be reassured, and she couldn 't do
it on her own; no one woman could do it. She had asked him the previous
day why, if he felt empty, he didn't give up the Hampton Court place,
which couldn't be emptier. Why didn't they move into London, where
neither of them had ever lived? And he said he couldn't bear the idéa
of being 'classified' as he would be if he lived in London: if he lived
in the City he 'd be 'well, nondescript'; Chelsea was 'arty-bohemia';
Kensington was 'faded genteel'; Notting Hill Gate was 'plain squalid';
Westminster - that was the one district he wouldn't mind living in,
"and the one place," Hanni added, "where the rents are fabulous, of
course!"
The party ended at dawn, and there were the four of them left,
sitting over breakfast in the kitchen as a grey, cloudy sky began to
rise outside, like a new presence steeling through the window and changing
all the furniture with soft touches. Dick jumped up and gave a ridiculous
account of how Pinkie ate, She had an acute dislike of being wa tched
over her food, and Dick watched her deliberately, until she laid downt
her knife and fork slowly and murmured, "Look here, Pollocke, attend to
your own bloody rations or I'll that that supercilious grin off your face!"
At once he jumped up and gave a kind of speech. "Every morsel is weighed
up and rolled about the mouth," he cried, "every taste-bud is on the
qui vive as with quick, exploring movements of the mandibles she opens
up new layers of taste for the enslaved salival juices! Then, with a
last salute, the dignitaries of the mouth lining the route in panoply of
office, she flings it down to the cellars of the stomach where restive
hohemians lie in wait over candlelight, reeking with yesterday's garlic!"
His beard wagged up and down in the most comical way, and he didn't pause


for a moment, as if he'd rehearsed it. He once told Granville that at
school he'd been famous for this sort of thing. He had a peculiar
burlesque vigour and extravagance in which his coolness disappeared.
Life was easier in the next few days. He went to the cafe more
often, and didn't feel obliged to leave when he'd drained his cup, but
hung on reading or talking to people. Or he walked in Kensington Gardens.
He'd gone back to his old life, or s0 he told himself. But he couldn't
recollect what his old life had been! He'd been more or - less in harmony
with Pinkie then e that was one thing he remembered. But still there'd
been something feverish undernea th - always.
He was rarely in his toom now. His day had quite a routine.
He read the paper over breakfast, after Pinkie had gone, and then went
down to the bedroom to make the bed and write letters or read; then he
went out for a coffee. He happened to look at himself in the mirror more
closely than usual one morning and noticed that the skin round his eyes
was' very pale, and that his cheeks had lost their colour. He no longer
had that weathered look.
In the music-room he happened to pick up a medical encyclopedia
of Pinkie's that was lying on the coffee-table. This was the book that
the young man with the ginger beard, at the time of her first studio-party,
had seduced her with. Ginger-Beard had opened it at the venéreal section
with' its diagrams and lurid illustrations of the sexual parts, and he'd
discussed it all with her so unambiguously that the act itself,. when it
came, seemed only the demonstration of dead hypothesis. And the pages
fell open naturally at these sections now. The first thing Granville
saw was a description under the word SYPHILIS. Ther tertiary stage was


particularly frightful. It had the effect of blindness or madness, and
could be inherited; the child of someone in the tertiary stage might be
born blind. It sounded just like the state he and the other three had
fallen into. The effect of blindness, and it could be inherited! And
it was infectious in all its stages, incubatory, primary, secondary and
tertiary! . The last was incurable! It sounded quite like old Dick!
Incurable! They were blind, and nearly mad: mute and blind! Mad. and
mute and blind!
He remembered something about Dick: it was the nature of his
anger; one couldn't call it real anger. It didn't come out properly, as
Walsh 's hadn't. When he'd got furious with Hanni and Pinkie a few weeks
before, just after his promotion to the South American office, he only
went white round his lips, and his voice had cracked. It wasn't an
anger that suffused all his body and made him flush, in a healthy flow.
The anger didn't do him good. He had no voice to be angry with
physically couldn't raise his voice, it seemed! He was rational even in
his flesh. The anger was physically prevented, as if the necessary
vocal chords were missing. He could become steely, his eyes glassy and
his lips pale, or else indignant in a plaintive manner that was nearer
his gentle nature. But the anger was always checked in a pre-conscious
manner; the check was already there, in his flesh; it was a conflict and
diétortion already accepted by the flesh, and. written into his body; 8o
that it had become a white-hot flame, destructive, with a dangerous licking
edge, that flashed through him and then abated, usually, in silence; this
was what 'anger' was in him. The middle part of the body constricted and
pulled itself in; it didn't expand with a greater flow of.ease than before.
As in Walsh, there was nothing righteous or handsome about the anger. It


really did border on hysteria - - if it had come out it would! have been
hysteria!
And Granville was beginning to feel the same thing in himself,
as a shadow, perhaps through the remorse hé felt after anger. There
would be a spurt of sourness inside him, really like a gland spraying a
kind of acid round his guts - he remembered it at the Lido, in the
moment when Hanni had seemed about to disregard his question. This
sourness seemed to him yellow. He'd never known it before. Was this
the first organic sign of what Dick had leamned as a child, in his glands
and tissues?
He looked back at some of his own 'outbursts' with mild astonishment.
Would the same consciousness grow in him until by the end of his life it
was 'tertiary' as wéll? until it had formed in his tissues, without
surface manifestations - for the first bright-red, open chancres of I
syphilis disappeared early?
In this respect he and Pinkie were distinct, at present, from
Hanni and Dick. When he or Pinkie blew a valve they really let themselves
Pinkie screamed at the top of her voice; their blood flowed better
afterwards. Hanni was the same as Dick, though perhaps only on the
surface; only a very slight, dangerous flush mounted her cheeks, and her
eyes showed a glinting, relentless light. He had the feeling that if
Dick had tried to behave like Pinkie and really let himself go, some
frightful meanness and spitefulness would have been the result, and this
he couldn't afford to let happen. The same might be true of Hanni,
though she was too hidden a creature for one to be sure. But Pinkie,
at any time in her anger, could be stopped. She didn't have that gleam
of relentlessness or blind refusal of life. In Dick anger meant the


severance of connection with other people, but in her it meant a warmer
connection; she was showing her connection.
And a smile brought her round at once. Nursing a grievance,
scheming to avenge it, were unknown to her.' Hanni's angers, on the
other hand, lurked as wounded afterthoughts. :inkie said that Hanni had
a genius for creating 'undercurrents': people would sometimes quarrel in
her company for no reason.
So they all inheri ted blindness and madness, one way or another.
Would it go on, the legions of disease spreading all ovér the wcrld
through education, until everyone was tertiary? Blind and mad - the
whole world: They were planning huge schools in England; it would happen
in Africa, Russia, in Asia and China! The senses would go mad!
"Yet he didn't feel this would happen. The middle-class road was
at the end! The spirochete of education wouldn't take! The body would
be too stout and resistant.
At the end of these half-feverish reflections he began to feel a
ridiculous hope, like standing before an immense golden plain on a hot day,
tose Krom
with hardly a movement in the air, in a silence that cameont-of the earth,
like the future being laid before him in one visible reality: a plain
that' stretched placid and flat as far as he could see! It had something
to do with his own life, with the hope he'd begun to entertain in .the last -
few days, and with the yellow flash across the sky at the Lido.
When Pinkie asked him, "Aren't you getting your ticket back?" it
was quite a shock.
"Yes, I must see to that!"
He'd begun to think that réality had changed! But how could she
bear him to go alone? Hè refused to tot up how many days he had left.


He bought four tickets for a performance of /"Hamlet' he'd read about,
with a new actor named de Cloud, which the papers said was a pseudonym
- Aickels
and should be pronounced 'de Clue'. Thex were for the following week,
and he had the illusion that it would help conceal the reality that he
had five days left and had made no plans!
Suppose he had children? What living sense could he pass on to
them? His father had given him à living sense - but what had he got?
Education had withered it away! He felt panic-stricken, wanting to
strike out the years.
The garden in Abbott's Road had breathed for his father. Like
a great beast with its paws tucked up, purring! But not for the son!
Let him try to make that garden breat the - let the son try! No! It
was only a garden among others for him. One - on that precious little
map of life his school had given him! The trees were group-trees, the
leaves and bushes group leaves and bushes! Types, universals - not the
breathing presence itself! Not the only garden in the world!
So he couldn't pass it on. He could only pass on admonitions
about life, and advice. - Children remember your being, the way you looked
into the garden at dawn,sipping your hot cup of tea : Not your advice.
He thought this with an absolutely sucken spirit, his head down,
quite motionless, his breath almost gone.
Pinkie's brother Nigel came over for dinner one evening and they
set up a table in the music-room with candles. Nigel looked worried and
kept moving his knee rhythmically under the table. He seemed to feel out
of place. Dick wandered in with Hanni and they all sat having a drink.


The four of them made gay conversation for Nigel's benefit, exaggerating
the closeness between them, but this only seemed to make him feel excluded.
He looked robust, with massive shoulders and a bald, weather-beaten brow,
with wisps of blond hair, his face still soft and young, his eyes with
the usual blazing and selfless curiosity. But this wasn't his circle.
He gazed at Dick, blinking. He tapped his foot, his eyes strained, and
left early. Pinkie said he was tired these days and had such a lot of
work on his hands. He'd found his wife couldn't have children and this
was a great blow to him, or so she thought - she'd heard it from one of
her sisters. She and Nigel hadn't ragged each other as they usually did
when they were together; they only did it in, the country, when they felt
really at home. But there'd been the intimate glow of respect in her eyes
when she looked at him over dinner. It had made the music-room look too
small.
Granville was troubled afterwards, wondering what was wrong with
the house to make the man feel so ill-at-ease.. He couldn't see things
clearly any more, and so he couldn't tell what Nigel's private worry had
been or. what effect the house had had. Nigel sent a polite little letter
two days later from Wiltshire thanking them for an 'unusual' evening.
The music-room had looked fabulous: all its colours had stood out vividly
rlghis
against each other, like a tropical garden 14tup. Did Nigel mean that?
tageli
Abe .ley
Granville would spend two or three hours in this room in the evening when
else wur
there was no one in the house, simply absorbing its brightness and variety:
it was beginning to fill up with voices, now they had people in night after
night; sometimes he enjoyed it better sitting there and remembering them
in silence than actually being with them. The house wasn't weird for
him as it had been the first evening.


Granville began to perceive something in Hanni i that she liked
to be thought busy and in demand. She liked to appear suddenly in
evening dress saying she'd just been to a first-night, or that she was :
about to go to 'the most wonderful party'. Sometimes : she seemed to enjoy
making Pinkie feel left out, which wasn't difficult. "Really?" Pinkie
would reply, her mouth drawn down. in a sorry way, "I'd have' given anything
nl unly
to go to a party tonight!" fet she may have been to one,the night before.
The parties she wasn't invited to were always the best onesh and Hanni was
Hah
aware of hef weakness.
But there were also, times when : Pinkie was invited out and Hanni
wasn't, and then she took her revenge, Bometimes by asking her round for
a drink 'beforehand' - by saying beforehand' she aroused Hanni's
curiosity. It was a grim feminine game. But slowly they were forming
an alliance - "If you can't beat 'eim, befriend 'em - " Pinkie told him
one day din "is a sound feminine principle!" They would scheme to get
each other invited out, and keep a strict balance-sheet to see that not
too much credit was given on one side.
If Granville met someone unusual he found he hurried home to tell
Pinkie, with the same triumph that Hanni showed when she was called to the
telephone by a stranger. Pinkie would-question him closely, gazing down
with a slight compression of her brow as if trying to choose in her mind
whether to accept or reject what he said. She was like an examiner in
the social mysteries - . she could recognise something false at once. Her
fundamental question was, "How did you meet them?" Everything hinged on
that. And it always turned out that he'd'met them through some perfectly
ordinary circumstance
at. the office when he was with Dick, or sitting


in the cafe with' Glenning or Ginger; it was always through someone they
both knew well - confined to the. little group of people she knew he
knew. It made him feel like a child, offering her things of small
Momenk
magnitude. She listened to him squeamishly, and when she'd broken his
story down to its ordinary elements she showed both relief and disappoint-
ment relief that no fabulous event had taken place without her, and
disappointment that she wouldn't find a key to the fabulous through him.
Any
And the most superb new contact always turned out to be a. man Athad
not very different from other men! She had a primordial snobbery, not
towards a lower social class but towards aly lonely people. Sometimes
when she came in and found him sitting in the bedroom alone, huddled up in
an armchair - it might be without a book, gazing in front of him . she
made a little gasp and hurried away.
Bhe brudhi
Hanni was different. When he-was/alone she would come-in-and talk
tohim, curling up on the floor, smoking slowly, with movements that were
at once rigid and graceful. Her dream of the fabulous social event had
more simple vanity than Pinkie's. She and Pinkie eagerly discussed new
contacts with each other, shutting themselves up in the kitchen. He was
present at some of these investigations. They were harsh and clinical,
gome
laying the other person bare, until a humourous caricature emerged. It
was like clever journalism. There was no hint of the other person 's
living presence, only his actions and phrases and the farcical situations
he got himself into. All men were a little funny. Pinkie was always
describing them as 'pompous'
He began to be careful not to show himself too much, in case the
others took him for granted. He left the house sometimes when he knew
that she and Hanni were coming in together, so that he could return an


hour later and give the impression that he'd been away all day.
He waited for parties and evenings-out for the deadlock of life
to be broken; "the affection between the four of them welled up in a
crowd of people. This was really how their friendship was kept going: it
went from one public event to the next! There was always the exciting
dressing-up beforehand, when Hanni would arrive from the office with a
little attache-case full of her things and take a bath and then start
dréssing in one of the rooms downstairs, with the gas-fire on. The house.
would feel warm, and a scent of bath-salts would float into the rooms.
Sometimes he would have a drink with her while she pored over her toenails,
clipping them and painting them, always talking in her quiet voice, that
had such powerful intimacy and steadiness in it, through tight lips, as
if her face were a rock. Pinkie would also come down, and they would sit
on the floor by the gas-fire, safe in the knowledge that they would be
going out as a group, already gay, and so needn't feel nervous of the
crowd later. "We always go to good parties," Pinkie said once, "because
even when they're bad we make them good!" They were 'good' people to
invite.
At a party Dick would 'go off', keeping to the side-rooms if thère
were any, until he'd found a girl. Pinkie would get extravagant and dance
recklessly, Hanni would drink quietly at the beginning and dance with
style, then go wild at the end of the evening, though never with absolute
abandon. Each party was a marvellous landscape with new races of people,
and they would catch each other's eyes across this expanse and wave or
wink with an intimacy they could never really get alone. In a crowd they
were always a family, but free and exciting, gloriously unknown to each
other. Dick would slip over to him and confide something, usually about


one of the girls: "I say, you see that one with the bald head and the
twitch,/ don't you? I've been trying to shake her off all evening! I
thought of giving her your address!" Then he might make his loud, dusty-
sounding. laugh, like Huh!
But the following day it was always the same as before,. with
thoughts withheld and the conversation stylised and disjointed. It
wasn't that they held things back really
the more intimate the talk,
the better: but there had to be a special tone. You couldn't show fear
or misgiving. The other person might get ashamed of you. People who
) iten
came to the house found them hard and offhand
those who weren't hard
and offhand themselvest
Hanni told him why Pinkie had got s0 peeved with Dick a few weeks
before, about him always 'keeping things under his hat'.
"She wanted Dick to do something for Grove at the office," she
said quietly. "And he refused."
The name was like a blow, smack in the middle of his face! She
spoke steadily - she even said 'Grove' without blinking an eyelid. And
he tried to stop the hot trembling that seized every part of his body like
a sudden wind. At the same time he knew she was helping him, in a
strange way. She was putting out a hand to him but smg
Pinkie had wanted Dick to recommend Grove's firm in some way, she
went on, and Dick had refused
of course! (a smile, here) - out of
principle! Because Dick just didn't believe the firm was a good one.
What was Grove's firm? He daren't ask her! He sat there smiling
and he even found himself asking, "Now which one was Grove?"
His heart was beating at an enormous rate, and he tried to prevent
his eyes staring out of his head in a telltale way. The trembling had


concentrated itself in his middle, and for some minutes he didn't hear
a word she said.
Ah, Grove worked in an advertising firm - he heard that! Here
he jumped in - and changed the talk at once with something idiotic
about how public-relations was getting a racket these days. He didn't
know what he was saying. But she refused to, be budged. She went on to
say, with the Bame quiet. voice, like a nurse, that Grove worked mostly in
the evenings, getting round the clubs, and that his only free evening was
Friday.
Friday! He almost feli off his chair and went deathly pale, his
lips dry and puffy. Friday evenings! He remembered Pinkie's face when
she'd told him about the light on the operator's switchboard, she 'd
blinked quickly. Had she blinked? It was all so ghostly, this putting
together of memories! And again he made a quick remark to cover up,
though in a terrible unsteady voice.
He spent the rést of the day trembling, his insides surging up
and down, his face flushed, and when Pinkie came in he wouldn't talk to
her. But she was used to his by now and put it down to his thinking out
some 'problem'. Gradually over the next few days he got back to normal,
with the new information absorbed into the rest of him, to replenish the
hidden nerve-war.
He also thought he remembered Hanni saying wa - but it. only came
to his consciousness now Soe that Pinkie's uncle, Lord Maimbury, was giving
Grove some help - offering to draw him in as a subsidiary to his own.
firm, perhaps? Or was that dreaming? Of course! But yet the words
were clear before him -.out of the shadow of his unheard conversation


with Hanni.
A letter came from Mohammed. 'My darling Mr. Granville,' it
said, 'a woman was murder in the souk yesterday, she has beeen in my.
house, my dear, how are you, Mr Tomlinson from Port of Beirut made inspect
your office, I give him good tip for the Races outside 7-2, we sweat, my
darling, I am your brother, give my humble satisfactions to, Mrs Granville,
I love you too much; Yours faithfully, Mohammed Hadawi." He smiled,
but it was remote; he didn't trouble. to show it to Pinkie. A woman was
quite often murdered in the area of the souk, because that was where the
brothels were, along a tiny alleyway guarded by the police. He'd seen
Mohammed's signature many times before but it struck him with no
familiarity now. The words stuck in his mind - - 'Mr. Tomlinson made
inspect your office'.


CHAPTER 13.
It suddenly occurred to him that this inspection of his office
was unusual. He was frightened. Why had it taken place? Did it
usually happen when someone was on leave? He asked Dick and.he didn't
know.
If it was true that he was going to get the Beirut office it
seemed funny that Tomlinson, about to. be displaced, should be allowed to
inspect his! Or perhaps Tomlinson was being sent to a different theatre
of operations altogether? But he'd been in the Middle East ever since
the war and was quite an authority: it seemed unlikely! Or perhaps they
were thinking of sending him to Basrah, as an exchange with Granville.
But he couldn't imagine Tomlinson tolerating that - it would be a
severe reduction of rank; he'd met him once or twice and he seemed a
capable-enough person, tall spectacled, rather brisk and sharp. Also
he had an Arab wife, from Cairo - - a not a Christian Arab, either; it
helped matters with some of the sheikhs.
He thought of writing to Mohammed about it and asking him what
Tomlinson had said. What files had he looked at? Did he have the
proper authority? But it occurred to him that he didn't need authority,
since the Beirut office looked after the whole of the Middle East and it
was only Tomlinson's kindliness and tact that had allowed him to assume
otherwise. He was troubled. Perhaps they knew - at the London office -


what was in his mind about going back to Basrah: its unreality for him,
and so forth! Perhaps they knew he hadn't booked his passage yet.i But
how absurd! How on earth could they know? He wrote two or three drafts
of a letter to Mohammed, sitting in the bedroom almost a whole day to
compose it. Then he screwed it up. Of course it was usual for an
unsupervised office to be inspected! He wondered at the unsureness of
his thoughts. Inspections were even a matter of courtesy. Tomlinson
was the nearest English representative to Basrah; he'd been asked by the
London office to fly over and see how things were doing under Mohammed;
he might. have done it on his own bat, even.
And Dick confirmed this the same evéning. He said it was always
done. The dark thoughts left Granville and he couldn't imagine how he'd
succumbed to them so easily!
He realised next day, in the afternoon, that he hadn't phoned his
parents since his return, and that, too, was like waking up from a dream.
He always rang thein a few hours after he got back from a visit somewhere
even a visit of a : few days inside England. And now, after two years e
But he hadn't phoned them, he told himself, because his life was bound and
strung down with ropes in distress - - blind!
Now, however, the time had come. He could'see before him better.
The optimism that had filled him at the Lido was still there. And he saw
in the future, appearing gradually from the dimness, a face - someone he
hadn't yet met i thrilling, and of a light, dazzling mystery he couldn't
describe. He couldn't make out the exact features: but every now and then
the face, quite alone, in space, would come before him, distant and yet
clear, and gaze at him calmly, with a suggestion of sweetness, thoughi
there wasn 't precisely and expression at all; the face was always still,


it never turned aside or looked at anything else; it was even perhaps
guarding and watching over him. He had the impression of dark hair and
dark, steady eyes, but he wasn't sure if this was an image that had come
from his sense of her steadiness or not; for it was a woman. He stood in
the music-room thinking about her, this face that gazed at him steadily
and with such calm and sweetness, so small and clearly defined, with no
ambiguities, and he almost stretched out his hand - - yet there was no one!
The sunlight poured through the window on to the carpet; the house was
empty and there was the hushed sound of traffic in the distance; nothing
had happened in his life - hé had no more friends than before, he was in
as great an emptiness as before, the rooms and the silence of the house
were the same; but he had this sense of fullness and events preparing
themselves!
In this mood he hurried down the stairs to the second floor and
picked up the phone before he could think about it too much, and slowly
dialled his parents' number. And as the number rang he had a picture of
Abbott's Road for the first time since his return, vivid and quite still,
as if the houses were painted, and all at once it seemed impossible to him
that he'd managed to live all these years without Abbott's Road! What a
comfort it would be to go there! He imagined the glowing dark cloth on
the table with the thick pile, and the soft light that came in from the
garden, distilled by the trees and the bushes and wooden fances, and the
glittering greenhouses, with the elm-trees that always made a long whispering
sound when the wind bent their branches a little. A white cloth would be
laid over the thick one about this time, for tea, and the bowl of flowers
in the middle, on a lace doily, would be removed to the sideboard. There
would be the clink of cups and saucers, and the hushed sawing sound as his


mother cut the bread in perfect and equal slices; the clock would tick 'on
the mantelpiece and make its modest little chimes that always quavered in
the silence for a moment afterwards, at every quarter, while the kettle,
begani to hiss in the scullery outside. It was a real place! There was
no self down there all the time - only consciousness: you weren't
stranded in an area of flesh and bone, but one hour flowed into thernext
beyond your body, lost and unwatchful! Yet he'd been frightfully lonely
down there m more stranded thàn elsewhere - - s0 cut off, in a desert
of slate and stone, so silent and melancholy: that was what he feared!
He remembered the deserted years when he was at high school - when
sometimes he'd had to pinch his skin to prove himself on earth and not a
pure, floating spirit, never talking, with no one to talk to, without future,
lost in a boundless universe! Abbott's Road was cut off - but what from?
From a life-giving root! Yet his childhood still lay there, from very
long ago, intact. At one moment it was a bleak and melancholy prison
for him, offering no thoughts, no friends, no future for him at all
only its silence of a world cut off; and then, another moment, it was the
only safe place he knew! One could let one's thoughts flow down there.
He didn't have to pull his face into - 1' agreeable expressione:
He realised how automatic his control of facial expressions. had
become over the years, since he'd left Abbott's Road. When Pinkie walked
up the stairs he nearly always tried to undo any frow there might be on
his face, and raise his eyebrows a little, lift the corners of his mouth
in the suggestion of a smile, in case she gave him a sharp look and asked,
"What's the matter with you this évening?" Their faces never found their
true repose. Basrah had been a wonderful holiday for him in this respect:
every face lay in its own repose, stern and glaring, not having reached a


consciousness of its effect on others - its importance as a counter in
public relations.
His mother came to the phone and answered in a soft boice, touched
with enquiry, as if from a great distance. The enquiry was slightly
worried. "Who's that?"
"It's Philip!"
"Philip? Well, s'help me God!" Her voice was animated at once,
and as always she said 's'help-me-Gord', in one word. "When did you get
"Oh, Bome time ago a God knows what I've been doing ever since
it feels like a few minutes!"
"I wondered when you were going to phone! I said to dad this
afternoon, I said, he must be home now! Well, s'help mè God!. Talk of
the devil; eh? Well, how've you been keeping?"
"Oh, all right! How are things with you?"
"Well, dad's had a bit of a cold but apart from that things haven't
been too bad." She always had a superstitious reserve. against saying -
things had gone very well: he imagined her at the other end, plump and
slightly flushed in her cheeks, with eyes a little pinched with worry..
Her voice was always soft and passive-sounding over the phone, and she
seemed to be gazing at things from a safe vantage-point, coolly and remotely,
in a place where she wasn't likely tc be noticed, and with a certain sadness,
as if an enormous pageant was passing her by.
"Is dad still getting out in the garden?"
"Oh, yes, trust him!" She paused a moment, waiting for him to
speak. There was.always this effort at first, to reach the other world.
The language was. s0 different. Then slowly he would begin to feel at


ease: he would feel all the struggles in his mind, its sharp girders and
struts, falling, while he laid himself open with a pained, unwilling
relief.
She spoke again: "How's Pinkie doing, all right?"
"Oh, yes,. she's fine! She's going out to work again now, you
"Go on, is she really? What, in the same job?"
"Yes, she thought she'd had enough of sitting round doing nothing!"
"Did she?" his mother asked.: "Why ---" she chuckled, "did she
do a lot of that out there, then?"
"Well, there was plenty of work, one way and another, but we had
somebody to do the cleaning and everything!"
"Yes, I remember you saying in a letter you had plenty of help in
the house. So she's gone back to the office, has she? Some people don 't
know when they're lucky, do they?" she added with a laugh.
"Have you been sleeping all right?" he asked
"Oh, the same as usual
I've never been famous for sleeping,
have I?" He could imagine her smiling at this moment,. with a quick
intelligent glance after it. "I drink a glass of stout last thing at
night - - the doctor said it might do me some good, but it doesn't seem
to make any difference!" She paused. "Pinkie came back with you, did
That was one of her divining questions: these were mostly
rhetorical, because for some reason she knew the truth already.
His voice. faltered, and he hoped it wasn'tnoticed. "No, she
came beforehand."
"Oh, yes? I expect she had the house to get ready and all that


Bort of thing, did she?"
"Yes, there were dust-covers. all over the furniture, and she had
to air the sheets and everything!" He said the first words. that came
into his head, quite panic-stricken for a moment.
"Did she, really? I thought you let the place out!"
"No, we gave the key to Pinkie's brother, don't you remember?
And he' used it when he wanted to?" He felt an impatience familiar from
his childhood of not being understood quickly enough - - as the two worlds
in which he'd lived had grown further apart.
"Oh, yes,' #f she said, "that's right", in the slightly hurried way
she had when she felt a gulf of some kind. "I remember now. " Then she
added in a more direct voice, some of its pleasantry gone, "I would've
liked young Pinkie to come over for dad's birthday. We gave him ever
such a nice party!"
"Good God, was it his birthday?". Caught!
"Yes. - oh, go on, I tell you once a year and you never remember!
I think we'd drop through the floor if we ever got a birthday-card from D
you, let alone a present! We'd fade out!"
"I'll try and remember next year!" he said with a laugh. Why did
a year always seem such a frightfully sort time?
"Yes," she replied, "try is about all you will do, I expect
but as to sending us a simple card, well, as I said to dad the other. day,
it's never happened yet and there's no reason to think it ever will!"
"When's your birthday, then?" he asked with another laugh, but.
abashed.
"Weli, if you promise to keep it a secret it's September 15th #
"But that's quite soon!"


"Don't you worry about that, old son, it's long enough for you
to forget all about it and then swear black's white I never told you!"
"Well, was it a nice party?"
She chuckled. "Well, thanks for your interest!" Then she was
serious again. "Oh, it was really nice, Philip! You know, I think people
really enjoyed themselves. It isn't often you can say that, is it?"
She seemed to narrow her eyes thoughtfully, and a strange sophistication
came over her, of an inherited kind, with nothing deliberate about it.
"Of course, you can never really tell, can you, when you're running round
with sandwiches and cups of tea and that sort of thing, looking after
everybody? We had ever such a lovely cake - - I went round to Hemmings
and ordered it the week before. I thought, well, they're just as good
as uaking it yourself, and you don't have all that bother with getting all
the ingredients and mixing and all that nuisance. I don't mind doing it
at Christmas time but what with getting the drink in as well and, you
know, little presents for dad, I thought, oh, blow it, I'll go down to
Hemmings and see if I can get one on order! And, you'd be surprised,
that cake was one of the best I've ever tasted. It was lovély! Well,
people came up to me and said, this is a lovely cake you 've made,
Mrs. Granville a so it just shows you, doesn't it? Sometimes you take
a chance and they let you down, then at others you strike lucky!" She
laughed softly. "They kept on asking what I'd put in it and all that sort
of thing. Of course, I never said anything. I thought, well, if you
want to think it, think it - - I'm not saying anything! I thought, I'm
the only one who knows where I got it, so why worry?"
"You haven't got a bit left for me, have you?"
"Well, I saved a couple of pieces for you and Pinkie, not that you


déserve it, though!"
"How old was dad -i sixty-four this time?"
"Sixty-five. I thought, oh, well, we'll give the poor old
bugger a party!"
"Did he enjoy it?".
"Did he? Trust him! He got soused and couldn't roll his r's
as per usual! I think he had a better time than anybody else! Well,
he never was slow at having a good time, was he?"
"What about you, when's your sixty-fifth coming up, is it next
"Oh, don't say that, son! I've got two more years to run yet!
But I don't suppose anybody'll give me a party. Some people wondered
why we made such a fuss about him being sixty-five, but I thought, well,
we didn't do anything when he was sixty, or when I was sixty for that
matter, so why not? I think you need a good party now and then, -don 't
you? It sort of loosens you up!"
"I'm sixty-three in September. It makes you think, doesn't it?
Time doesn't stand still!"
"I always think of you as about sixty all the time - - both of you!"
"Well, I wish we could stay there, old son, but we can't, can we?
It's all right when you're young, but when you get to our ripe old age
the years start running like little rabbits.. It doesn't seem two years
since you and Pinkie went out there, does it?" She paused. "Well,
Philip, how do things suit you out there?"
"Oh, quite well!"
"Is the work interesting?"


"I expect you've had some interesting experiences all round,
haven't you?"
"Lots, yes! It's a very nice atmosphere out there e you know,
in the office m 11
"Is it really? Well, that's the main thing, ien't it, if you've
got nice people round you in your work?"
"Yes! I've got a very good assistant. I don't know what I'd
do without him!"
"Go on! He's a real good worker, is he?"
"Yes, He's an Arab."
"Is he really? Well, that's really lucky, isn't it? You can
never tell what sort of person you're going to get, can you, especially if
you're . a foreigner yourself?"
"No. I might have got a completely dishonest person, and not
knowing the language it might have taken me a year to find out, suppose
he was fiddling the accounts or something like that!"
"That's right! Then you'd have to take thé buck back yourself,
wouldn't you?"
"And there's another thing, when you go away and leave the office
you do know you're leaving it in good hands, don't you?"
"Oh, I could go off for three months and not worry - well, it'll
be two months when I get back this' time!"
"Well, I bet there's not many people in business can say that,
is there, especially abroad like that?"
He was afraid she would ask when his leave would be over. 'In a


week or so'
he couldn't bear to say it! But she said nothing.
"He saved me from a riot once," he went on, talking about Mohammed.
"Go on, did he, really? What, were you in the middle of it or
something?"
"Well, I was in a hotél, and they were throwing bricks through
the window."
"And he walked right through it all and took me out to his car,
and they didn't say a word!"
"Didn't they, really? Well, it just shows you, doesn 't it?
Goodness gracious me! I dare say they had a respect for him, didn't they,
and thought, well, any friend. of his is a friend of mine, sort of thing?"
"Yes, that's right. Anyway, they didn't. try and throw any bricks
at me!"
"Still, it's a nasty experience, isn't it? Do they get real wild,
"Oh, yes, they scream and cry when their blood's up - you know,
when there's a real riot!"
"No, do they, really?"
"I saw a young chap with tears pouring down his face - he was
shouting about the government or something! You ought to have seen him!"
"Go on! They get so worked up they don't know what they're doing
En.f
any more, I suppose?"
"That's right!"
"I expect you felt damned lucky to get out of it alive, didn't you?
A jolly good thing this Arab was decent, wasn't it? Did he know 'you were
there, then, or did he come in by accident?"


"No, he knew I was therè because I left the office about an hour
before to see a client, and I told him where I was going. So when I
didn't turn up he put two and two together."
"Well, s'help me God! There aren't many like him, are there?"
"No! Of course, everybody knows when there's going to be a riot.
Usually, anyway. They always go on round the cclleges. "
"Do they, really? What, the students?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Oh, and this time they thought they'd have a go at one of the
hotels, did they? I don't know! Of course, it would be just when you're
in there, wouldn't it?"
"Well, mostly English and American people stay there, so they
thought is was a good place to throw bricks at, I suppose."
"Why, did they. want to get nasty with - the English, then? I
suppose if the truth was told they. get so frantic they don' 't know what
they want to do!"
"Well, it's little wonder they rict, really, considering the way
they're. treated!"
"Why, aren't they treated right, then?"
"Well, most of the people are half-starved. And you ought to
see the money the rich ones throw away!"
"Go on! It's pure greed, is it? Well, those people deserve
what they get, don't they? And I suppose they think you're in with them,
do they?"
"Yes, But I don't think they'd touch a foreigner; really. It's
funny, ien't it? They'1l set on their own policemen, but I bet if I
walked out into the street they might jeer at me, but they wouldn't hurt me!"


"Go on? I expect they think, well, he might be bad, but he's
not as bad as our lot! And from the sound of it they're not far short
of the truth, are they?"
"No! You ought to see how some of the rich ones behave.
Sometimes they won 't let the poor have a doctor, even if they know they'rè
dying. They say they don't want the doctdr to get his hands' dirty!"
"No! Well, that's just wicked, isn't it? I don't know, some
people are the limit, aren't they? Fancy that! Not letting a man have a"
a doctor if he's dying!" And she added, "Oh, well they'll get. their
reward. They don't do things in this country that they used to do,, do
they? The people saw to that. We don't stand for things like we did
in the old days. Well, they say you can take a horse to the water but
you can't make him drink, don't they?"
There was a bustle at the other end, and she said with a laugh,
"Wat tch out for it; Philip
it's just come in from the garden! Old
Nosey!"
"Yes!" There was some murmuring at the other end, and he heard
his mother say in a joking way, "All right, don't push, you'll get there!
Here's your dad, hold on a minute, Philip!"
She moved away from the phone and he heard her shout playfully,
"Why the hell don't you wash your hands when you come in from the garden?
Look what you're doing to that phone!"
His father answered in an elated way, between his teeth, "Go on,
you're always on the grouse!" Then he bellowed into the phone, "Hullo,
Philip! How's things?y


"Oh, all right! How are you keeping?"
"Not too bad! Mustn't grumble! Your mother's always on at me,
of course! She never gives the old man a minute's peace! He heard
his mother say in her rich way, in the background, "Yes, that's right!"
and laugh. His father vent on, "Well, when are we going to see you, son?"
"Some time this week, I thought! I'll fix something up with mum."
"That's right. How's Pinkie, all right?"
"She's fine! I was telling mum, she's gone back to the office."
"Has she really? What's the matter with her, dopey? Does she
like work or something?"
"She seems to, doesn't she? Are you still getting out in the
garden?"
"Oh, yes! I've just been doing some watering downi in the green-
house. Couldn't get down there last week, I had a bit of a cold!"
His mother again said something in the background : "Oh, go on,
don't make such a damned fuss about a snuffle! Anybody'd think you had
pneumonia the way you carry on!"
"Hear what she says, Philip? She leads me a hell of a dance!
Anyway, I just brought in some nice chrysanths, and the gladioli came out
nice this year! Tell Pinkie Ive got some nice bulbs for her to take."
"Well, how are things over there, son? Are you doing all right?"
"Not too bad. I've just been telling mum, the work's very
interesting."
"Oh, well, that's the main thing, isn't it? How does Pinkie
keep out there, all right?"


"That's good. We'd like to see you." And hé added politely,
as if he'd made a blunder, "Both of you." Granville could imagine him
with rather a puzzled expression, blinking, trying to see things properly.
His mother was always talking about his blunders of tact. And often, as
in this case, there hadn't been one.
"I expect it gets nice and hot out there, doesn't it? his father
asked.
"Yes, it certainly does! The sweat pours down your back in the
summer. It's.like leaning against a wet towel all the time!"
"Go on, is it really?"
"There's nothing you can do except sit downstairs in a kind of
cellar all day, and even there it's boiling!"
"God love old Ireland:".his father exclaimed softly. "I expect
it gets you down sometimes, doesn't it?"
"Yes!" Then he said, "I hear they gave you a good birthday party?"
"That's right! I got as tight as a fiddler's bitch, so they told
me! We didn't half have a lovely time! Quite a crowd there was, too!
Mum got a beautiful cake down the road - If
His mother said something, and his father laughed w- "She don 't
like it when I tell the truth! Mustn't tell the truth, oh no: You're
supposéd to Bay she made the cake when you damned-well know she didn't!
Love old Ireland, you ought to have heard the lies about that cake! Your
dad nearly put his foot in it, though! She had to give me a kick in the
shins!" He added, "Still, she put the icing on. That's all she could
do for the poor old bug! They get lazy in their old age, son!"
"That's right!"
"Well, mum wants to talk to you again. So we' '11 be seeing you


shortly, then?"
"Yes, that's right, I'll fix it up with mum."
"Good. boy! Cheerio, then! Give my love to Pinkie!"
"I will: See you soon!"
When his mother came to the phone she said softly, "He's a proper
gas-bag, that man, isn't he? And he's never got anything to say!"
She chuckled. "Except when he can put his foot in it. You ought to
have heard him leading off about this cake at the party, telling everybody
where I got it, I could have killed him! And there was I keeping quiet
about it! Well, when are we going to see you?" she added.
"Why don't you come over for tea first of all, and then we'll
make a date to come over and see you? - What about that?"
"It's all right by me. What's Pinkie got to say about it?"
"Oh, she asked me' to fix something with you."
They arranged a day for the next week, then his mother said in a
quiet voice, "I suppose I ought to have given Pinkie a ring about dad's
party, didn't- I?"
It was in her wondering voice again. "Yes, you should have done,"
he replied, with the sense of surrendering a secret. "She'd. have loved
it! She was here a month before me! !"
There was a slight pause, then his mother said, "What a silly I
was, then, I ought to have phoned up, didn't I?" She spoke slowly, as
if to herself. And.she added, "Well, give her my love when she comes in,
won't you? Shall I bring what's left of the cake over when we come?"
"Oh, yes, would you?"
"All right, then. It'll make the old man think he' 's -having
another birthday party, won't it?".


Then they said goodbye. As he walked away from the phone he
had a sudden warm, tingling image'of the Abbott's Road school on
Sat turday evenings, at the Socials. He could remember the tall jugs of
lemonade on the teacher's desk, and the rows of ham sandwiches. He used
to swing on the bars in the dark cloakroom while the dance was going on,
or creep into the top classroom where his own desk was, silent and dark,
and strange white signs on the blackboard, and maps and rows of untenanted
desks, and windows that pulled down with a cord and made a'clang. When
they got home, about eleven, his mother would unwrap some sausages and
these would sizzle with tomatoes in the scullery for the next half-hour,
while his father put his slippers on and the cloth was laid, and his mother
totted up the takings for the evening in her catering book. He remembered
his shudders of elation on Saturday afternoons when they were sitting in
the cinema at Tatlin Broadway
when he thought to himself, "It's
Social night tonight!", in the darkness. - How extraordinary those shudders
were, in childhood; then they died out!
He felt clean and disburdened, and thoughts were no longer crossing
and fighting in his head. He went upstairs and made himself a cup of tea,
contented, gazing before him.
Once his mother had told him that Pinkie reminded her of Aunt May,
in the lavish, golden style she- had, in her slapdash generosity. There
was Bomething in their voices, too, that was similar a a not the tone
exactly, but a richness that couldn't be described, as if it came from
past generations, like a song with a great ancient depth in it; they had
sing-song voices, floating up and down, far beyond people.


When Pinkie came back that evening he told he'd phoned his
parents. And she said non-committally, "Oh, good!" Before, all the
time they'd been in Basrah, she 'd been tremulously aware of people;
but now she seemed flat. It struck him that this must be the office.
But, on the other hand, she lookdd more peaceful than before, less
sensi itive to every little change' in the outside world; his glances and
moods were of less importance to her.
Their sex was disordered in a new way: it had something to do
with their life together, with this city
not with either of them in
themselves. In. an orgasm he rarely had the sensation of releasing
everything
only the surface-evacuation required by the friction of sex,
not a spasm of his whole being. In Basrah it had been better. Sex had
been more distinct from the sentiments and courtesies of life than here;
it had a raw quality, like the hard sun on the miles of desert outside,
static and unyielding. But here, although the air buzzed with 'sex',
and there were preparatory comings and goings all the time, and escapades,
some hidden damage had been done, and the flow of life in this respect,
as in all others, was interrupted. Just as there was a great system
outside in the streets, throbbing and moving all the time, so a system
took hold of one's sex; sex was no longer the intimate glimpse into darkness
and mystery, the only one vouchsafed in life; one wasn't engulfed - it
was a civic ejaculation: They hardly cried out in the orgasm; the sound
was more like the rush of breath from exhaustion, a kind of cough, as if
they were being wracked, at one removed from the real thing.
In the evening after he'd phoned his parents : they sat. together
for a change, and no one called. The house was pleasantly quiet and he
was glad to have her alone with him, sitting opposite him at the hearth,


reading the paper. A car would pass in the street outside, hushed, making
the roadway crackle slightly, or someone would walk by with quick steps
in' the silence of the evening, while Pinkie rustled her paper, her legs
stretched out. He sat there gazing before him, watching the dusk grow,
quite at peace. It rarely happened these days that someone didn't call.
They made coffee as they'd always done in Basrah, sitting in the kitchen
to drink it. They hardly talked to each other. Their going to bed was
always a comfort. It always cancelled out what had happened during the
day. A peculiar intimacy they could never capture during the day flowed
back into them. She was more or less a stranger to him now, he couldn't
read the thoughts in her face, but he crooked his leg over hers in the
same way every night,, ànd put his arm round her waist, in a dumb, blind,
automatic way, while she crooked her legs up too, and all reserve left her;
they they sank into sleep, joined together in a strange, black, dusty
region where there was no touch or noise. It made them both calm at
once, as if their bodies were independent of' themselves, and only their
minds made the terrible interruptions.
The performançe of 'Hamlet' to which he invited Hanni and Dick
produced a first-class row between the four of them. A peculiar coldness
came over Dick during the first act and he began criticising everything
in a crisp, academic way that annoyed the others. His voice broke
slightly as he talked, with suppressed irritation. Hanni said he was
often like this when he was given a treat: he reacted 'agin'. But
Pinkie said afterwards that there'd been some friction between them
because it was one of Dick's 'evenings-out' periods, when he had the
right not to return to Hampton Court if he didn't want to, and the


invitation had cut across this. At first he'd told Hanni over the phone,
"I'm sorry and all that but I just can't come!" ; but Hanni hadiinsisted
because Granville was going away so soon, and she'd taken his wallet out of
his jacket in the morning, leaving him with just enough money to get to
the office. Then she'd met him after work and dragged him along to the
theatre.
There was a glittering upstairs,foyer where they sat talking;
that was where the row started. And it didn't explode into anything
direct, much less loud, but went on all evening in an underground way, as
if they were all talking about something much more intimate than a
theatre-performance, though they couldn't name it or even talk about it
directly; there had to be a surface-language for it. None of them had
eatén and that made the atmosphere worse. Pinkie had a strained, pale
face, and Hanni's lips were tight-closed. Pinkie enjoyed the performance
and said so: there was plenty of scenery, she said, and plenty of 'odd
noises off', instead of all the 'bare-bones' productions you were dished up
with nowadays, with a bit of 'twisted iron' representing a throne and 'a
trill on the clarinet' for the forest of Arden. The actor de Cloud
wasn't up to much, she said, but you could hear what he said and he had
a respect for the verse, which was also rafe these days. She said it in
a rather rasping way, clattering out her words, her chin lifted with a
show of self-confidence, and perhaps this annoyed Dick. She knew 'Hamlet'
more or less by heart, and said she'd read it, like most of the other
tragedies, a score or so times before she was sixteen: Shakespeare and
animals had been her childhood passions! Dick also fancied himself on
Shakespeare, from a more academic angle. And he challenged her.
"I don't think he's got a respect for the verse at all!" he said.


"Oh, and what -?" Pinkie began.
Dick cut her short with a brief, devastating glance, his lips
making a strange little shiver before he spoke. "It's not what I think,
either! It's what I can prove."
That started it. It waan't at all like Dick to say this sort of
thing, and the others at once assumed that he was looking for a row.
Pinkie made a grim, unsteady guffaw, and .cried, "Really""
Granville's temper was up because of the tone Dick had taken.
He didn' 't think de Cloud was as bad as all that, he said - there was
nothing clever or fâncy about him, anyway. This was in the interval and
the bell went before Dick could say any more. They walked back to their
seats in the circle in a grim file - more or less in the order of their
indignation, Dick first, his lips white, then Pinkie, her head lowered
in the prowling way she had when she was on the defensive, then Granville
followed by Hanni, who was the calmest of them all.
The moment the curtain wenti down at the end of the play Pinkie
turned round to Dick as if there'd been no interruption in what they'd
said and asked in a loud voice, "Well,. what have you got on your mind, if
you can put it in a decent way, that is?" It was in her patrician' tone,
when she gazed at a point to one side of the other person or at his foot,
her lips pouting. Dick sat looking firm but not a little, scared: for a
moment they were like two children with a lovable power of intimacy as
they sat side by side, their faces small and refined, their eyes with
the same light-blue transparency, flickering and sensitive, terribly aware
of every little change in the other person. Hanni or Granville could have
stopped the quarrel at any moment by saying something pleasant, but they
left the others alone in the field. There was a grim intimacy between


Dick and Pinkie that was baffling a which was perhaps why they didn't
interfere. They stuck at each other as if séttling another score. The
rest of the audience trickled out of the circle, leaving them sitting
alone, until the house-lights went down and an usher asked them to go.
The usher spoke without ceremony and this nettled Pinkie further. She
was about to answer back and cause a scene when Dick said quietly, "Now,
then, take it easy!"
Dick said he'd heard Hamlet say 'enseamed' as a word of two
syllables when it should have been three; and also precedent' had been
pronounced the modern way, whereas the emphasis should have been on the
middle syllable. He also disliked the way de Cloud emphasised 'master'
in 'master the devil' in Hamlet's. third speech from the end. The
argument went on at home in Chaworth Road, in the music-room; Hanni and
Dick came back by habit - the argument gripped them all together so
much that parting was unthinkable. No one mentioned that the last train
to Hampton. Court had gone. It was quite usual now for them to stay the
night, together or alone.
fi "I mean," Dick said, "look at the way that fellow talked to the
players, flinging his arms about! He did everything he was telling them
not to do!" Then he added, "It just didn't come off!"
And Pinkie brushed aside everything he said like a fly. He was
amazed at her confidence. "It came off for me all right!" she cried.
"'Come off'! What do you think he was trying to do - sell you something?"
Pinkie was mocking him, really. She sat there smiling, though
defensively, with a little flickering of hér eyes, her chin moving up and
down. - She gazed across the room at him with narrowed, disbelieving eyes,
as if everything he said was a cheap and obvious little ruse. The


atmosphere got worse and worse. The more she cracked the performance up
the more: Dick picked: on a little. error of text - if it was an error,
for no one could remember exactly what had gone. on. He spoke crisply,
holding back,, quite still in his chair, gazing across at the open window
where Pinkie' and Granville were sitting together on the divan. And Hanni
would say. without the slightest not of interest, "I thought Hamlet's.
soliloquy at the graveyard was well-done, didn't you?" or "The decor for
the play-within-the-play was clever, don't you think so?"
All the unresolved elements in their friendship welled up in
the argument, indicated only in a tone of voice or hostile glance, like
ghosts walking between them. The silence was full of things that hadn't
been said in the last few weeks, with the strange comings and goings in
the house. What did Dick know,about Pinkie's doings, on Friday evenings
for instance? Why was there this intimate struggle of hatred between
Dick and Pinkie? What went on in Hanni's mind? What did she do on the
nights Dick went out - did.she have lovers.as well? What did she know
about Pinkie which she didn't pass on to Granville? What did Pinkie
know about Hanni which she didn't pass on to Dick? What sort of friend
was Dick - this occurred to him like a stab in his middle - to tell
him nothing, never to put out his hand to. help - to see the marriage
going down before his eyes - to see him falling from blindness to
blindness knowing what Pinkie was doing - seeing what he was hiding
from himself - but what was Pinkie doing?
All these thoughts jostled about and fought in. his brain while
the talk went on about Hamlet. Were the others doing the same? Did they
all accuse each other of something; but the presence of a third person
made it impossible for them to say it? Was Hanni against Dick in her dry


little arguments about Hamlet because of the evening he'd had with the
Juno-eeque girl? What was the pattern underneath? When would he know?
Sometimes he felt that Dick could have thrown a knife at him, sitting on
the other side' of the hearth, his lips pale; his own eyes, glaring at
Dick, might hàve said the same! It reminded him of the time in the
Hampton Court gardens, when there'd been a stormy silence in the sky and
all the leaves had been still: they had all been gripped together in the
same uncanny enmity that was beyond any one of them! Whose purposes
were they serving? How did these moods arise? What was the plan
underneath?
They all trooped upstairs and had a bit of supper, with cocoa,
and tempers were better after that. Dick smiled across at Pinkie, his
eyes fluttering, and said, "Weli, I think you win on points." Outside
there was a flat, empty silence as if the streets had been fixed there for
centuries, growing naturally, and couldn't be disturbed, but were waiting
for something unspecified to happen, tensely, hushed, not allowing even
the sound of a bird. Not a car passed in the distance; there was the
sound of a train once, slowing down at a station. And across the sky
there were flashes, probably from the trains.
Granville's part in the discussion was to attack Dick or rather,
that was how it was taken. He compared Dick's way of arguing with
Pinkie's, and leaned forward across the kitchen-table talking indignantly,
his chin thrust forward 'and his eyes staring out of his head with an
urgent expression, seeming to appeal to Dick at the same time as scolding
him.
*Pinkie talks because she loves the play and she's live in it and
she 's taken Hamlet seriously and she's frightened by it and it moves her


and makes her think about her own life and her own struggles!" he cried.
"But when you say 'old Bill Shakespeare' and 'young Hat thaway's husband'
and all that sort of thing you. make him sound small and weak and limited
as if all he did was sit down and think up clever little plots for people
like you to come and sniff at! Whereas what he did was wait,for God to
move him and pass through him, and Pinkie knows this? She knows the
wonder of God in'a person: All you seem to see in Hamlet is a text and
a story, and 60 you make the play seem dead - look at the way you talk
about it when you say 'that graveyard stuff' and 'the get-thee-hence gambit'!
You make it: seem impossible that a man wrote it with his whole life and
80 there's hothing sacred in it for you, you don't believe in. men, that's
why, you,don't respect. them, you don't see anything sacred in them! That's
how Hanni talks, :too 1 - she isn't interested in the play mich, I don't
see why she should be but apparently she does, she seems to think we'll
put her down as: a fool if she doésn't say something! But when. Pinkie talks
about Shakéspeare you feel he's somebody fabulous, not fabulous in a
social way but just in himself, like when she said, 'He must have been
such a sweet man!" But that's'too soft .for you, isn't it, you think
you've got to be cleverer than that, you've got to say. something clever
and hard that shows how your brain's been working!"
He spoke in a rush, without. noticing the changes in Dick's face.
He paused at the end, waiting for Dick to, take him up and challenge him.
But he didn't. There was just silence. Dick looked up at him with a
peculiar. smile, his eyes flickering in a more uncertain way than usual,
and murmured, before. getting up to go to bed, "Well, thanks a lot!"
Granville sat there with his mouth open as they trooped out of
the room
the words seemed to have poured out of his mouth without


his knowing, and he tried to recollect what they had been. He went
downstairs behind Pinkie like someone not quite responsible for himself.


CHAPTER 14.
The following week he'd just come back from a walk and was
standing in his room alone, beginning to think that his optimism and
hopes were unfounded and that the yellow flash in the sky had meant
nothing d that he may as well return at once to Basrah, without waiting -
for his leave to. end, when there. was. a knock on the door and Dick put
his head round the corner. It was late in the afternoon and he must
have come straight from work. They were silent for a moment and Dick
smiled.
"Hullo, old sport! I've been looking for you everywhere. But
you'd broken camp!"
"I've been out for a walk."
Dick came in and closed the door. He was in one of his neat,
sparkling moods when he walked with rather tripping steps and there was
a special brightness, and flickering. scrutiny in his eyes. He said he
was getting off early the. next afternoon and wanted to introduce Granville
to a few of his friends. Granville asked, "Who?", with his mohth open.
Dick replied in an. ambiguous way - they were friends he kept to himself,
he said, since a part.of one's life had to be 'uninvestigated', didn't he
agree? And Granville said, "Oh, yes, I do!" quickly, and thought to'
himself that agreeing was as far as he ever got: but Dick actually did
something:
Granville's heart turned over wit th excitement at the proposal.


This was his release - the cause of the yellow flash!
"The operation's marked top secret, captain, 11 Dick said.
"Oh, yes, of course!"
They were to meet at a place called The Marquis a few hundred
yards from Covent Garden, the Kingsway side, at four o'clock the next day.
He was to go in as if he owned the place and ask for Mr. Pollocke;
then he'd probably be shown downstairs. It wasn't 'a brothel or anything
boring like that,' Dick added. Granville listened in a rapt way, gazing
at him with admiration.
"It's a farewell gift!"
"Thank you!"
"Rather like an Arab showing you his wives, I suppose: blood-
brotherhood and all that caper," Dick. said with a breathless laugh. He
added before he went, "Don't forget - top secret!"
The brief visit felt staged, in Dick's manner. He. could hardly
believe it had taken place, once the house was silent again and the door
downstairs had closed. How absurd! A place called The Marquis! But
this time the exaggération had come from someone else and he had to believe
it! He had the sensation of being swept along and only seeing his life
vaguely, as something that happened beyond him, in a ghostly fashion,
while he tried to find a theme in it.
Pinkie had asked him again when he was leaving and he'd said,
"Well, at the proper time, of course", as if it was all in hand. She
asked then, "Are you flying?" and he said quickly, "Yes!" She seemed
satisfied and went about quietly, it seemed to him with a new resolution.
He remembered the face that had appeared to him a few days before, clear,
gazing at him with dark eyes, quite alone, surrounded by nothing - by


white clouds, perhaps: suppose it was coming to him now? He was so
excited that evening that he put on his scratched record 'Creole Shake -
five or six times. Pinkie came in and he tightened his hold on himself
and helped with the dinner in a matter-of-fact way. Then there was
another piece of news. Dick rang up from Hampton Court and said that
'in the excitement of the chase' - he'd forgotten to tell him that he'd
heard at the office that morning that he, Granville, was going to be asked
to put in a report about Basrah. His heart did another turn, this time
with dismay at the words 'put in a report', which sounded menacing to him.
But Dick went on to say that they were organising the Middle East network
under Nevinson and they wanted his ideas onrhow it should be done. In
other words, it was most flattering, and Granville said, "Well, I hope it's
true!" Dick had got it from his own secretary, who, he said, 'apart from
having a splendid pair of teats has sharp ears as well!'
Next day he woke early and got up at once, an hour or more before
the alarm usually went off. The first milk-delivery hadn't passed and
there wasn't the usual dull roar of traffic in the distance, on the other
side of the roofs. He heard sparrows chirping in the gables, and the
rough little squawk of a starling. It felt as if the city wasn't inhabited
any more. Pinkie was lying half on her stomach, quite asleep, her arm
hanging down towards the floor, almost touching it. They always kept
the curtains closed at night because of the light from the street-lamp
opposite, and as usual it took him some time to see where his clothes were.
They threw them in a heap on two chairs when they went to bed, and sometimes
on the floor. His clothes were always in a frightful state. 'He was hever
in time for the laundry and usually he had to wash out his shirts himself.
He needed. new socks and undersear. Most of his good stuff was in Basrah


and all he had for today was his tropical suit, which might be a bit
chilly. As he dressed he decided to wash out his shirts that day, hoping
that he had a clean one in his drawer. He watched her in the dimness:
she always seemed to be listening to- something when she slept, quite.still,
so childish and wholesome. He went to the door and made surel as he did
everycday, by automatic habit now, that the latch clicked home when he
closed it. The music-room looked harsh because the curtains had been
left open and a cold wind was coming from the top of the window. There
was no sun today and it was quite cold. He glanced down the street
where nothing stirred. It had a fixed and mortified look: the steps
leading up to each house were deadly. symmetrical, and the ramshackle cars
still had their tiny parking lights on; the pavements seemed to. sparkle
dully in : the raw air. He shivered and rubbed his hands together. As he
went into the lavatory he reminded himself that in a few hours' time he'd
be looking into Dick's 'aninvestigated' world. All of a sudden it was
too much for him! He wouldn't be able to do it! He had an overwhelming
sense of nausea. The world was too much -- he couldn't go through with
it! Soon the buses would be going by every few minutes in the distance
and the shop-shutters would go up in the Commercial Road. People would
begin walking by outside, and the ramshackle cars would leave their places
with a grind. Windows would open and mops would appear, shaking the dust
off. The world would get tired in a few minutes. Again the sense of
total unworthiness afflicted him - he was unfit to be seen by other
people, even to the pores of his skin - - it was an unworthiness right
down to his living tissue; it bred in him and exuded from him like a
vapour! The thought of going out was unbearable. But at the same time
there was warmth and excitement, growing. It was a grim combination of


expectation and fright.
He sat over breakfast for an hour, then took a cup of tea down -
to Pinkie. He lit the gas-fire and sat over it, waiting for her to
stir in the darkness. He enjoyed the morning silence - it was like a
last refuge from the day before him, like a, farewell to himself, to his
intimacy. She roused herself and whispered drowsily, "Thank you", and
began sipping her tea; it was a pleasant sound. Everything could be
trusted at this hour; after that the untruths started and one's.own eyes
weren't a safe guide any more, as the world came awake. He must be at
The Marguis at four o'clock; there were lots of dust-bins outside the
door, Dick had said, and it was in a kind of back-lane.
Pinkie went to work with a beltless red overcoat trailing from
her shoulders and a little rouge on her lips. It was Friday, a fàct
which entered his already excited state as an additional disturbance.
There was a light-blue scarf round her neck, light for cool summer weather,
transparent, like the vague blue of her eyes. He put it out of his mind:
he would try to keep to the city-identity he' 'd discovered.at the Lido
with Hanni. He would reject suffering, feeling chill but nevértheless
strong. Just before she went she glanced at him, still sleepy, and then
turned as she usually did to look for her bag. It was on the floor' of
the music-room, by the chair where she'd sat the previous evening, and as
she bent down to pick it up her coat looked like a cloak for a moment:
she had the look of someone dominant and gentle from the past. He wanted
to cry out, 'Stay here today : don't let me go out!' But she'd already
gone to the door, after giving him the usual little peck on his cheek,
that was like an intimate voice in his ear, regretful and sisterly, as a
sister's kiss might be before a long journey.


"I don 't think I'l1 be back for dinner," she said.
He heard her close the door downstairs, then he strolled into
the ba throom. There was powder in the wash-basin, and a few towels were
crumpled damply together on the side. of the bath. The rubber mai t was
dark with stains and mud. The house wasn't very well looked after
these days. Pinkie was at work all day andathen there were the usual
visitors in the evening; they left a pile of washing-up behind them.
The younger girls like Ginger didn't seem to know how to handle a dish-
cloth or a broom. Lucy said that she'd always thought an egg fried in
its own juice, until Pinkie showed her you needed fat. "Of course, *
Glenning said one day, "I believe that sort of cow isn't.even good for
the bed!"
He got down to washing his shirts in the bath, and threw in a
pullover for good measure. After. that he did the towels and the rubber
mat, scrubbing at the latter with a floor-brush. He quite enjoyed it.
Then he went back into the bedroom, leaving it' all to dry. Pinkie's
wardrobe door was open, with a. scarf lying outside. He picked this up
and put it in one of her drawers, then tried to close the wardrobe. Some
old high-heeled shoes were in the way, and he had to heap everything up
inside to get the door home. He then tried to write a letter to Mohammed,
asking how things were going at the office ahd telling him to get the
files in order for the report he would have to make, but he was too
excited and couldn't settle to it.
The morning. passed in this way, and he wandered from room to room,
quite as if it was a last visit. There was a troubled and yet ecstatic
feeling at the pit of his stomach. For a time he gazed out of the


window, leaning on his desk. The sound of the traffic seemed to indicate
tremendous preparations outside, as always, and as always the clinax
never came. He was too excited to eat much lunch but made himself some
eggs with toast, and drank two or three cups of tea. Afterwards he
started to change. And suddenly he realised there were no,clean shirts.
His drawer was more or less empty. He'd washed the only two presentable
ones! What a fool! There were two white ones screwed up a ballat the
bottom of the clothes-basket in the bathroom, but it was too late to bring
them to life. On the other hand.one of them wasn't too dirty, and he
rushed upstairs to get it ironed. It would take him quite half-an-hour
to reach town, another fifteen minutes to find the place, perhaps; and
there was little more than an hour! He waited for the iron to get hot,
andiin the meantime rushed down downstairs again to have a look at his
tropical jacket. It would be decidedly cold, but there was nothing else
for it. The excitement was growing in him all the time. 'What the
devil's the matter with you?' he thought. 'Are you. going back to child-
hood?' It reminded him of the Abbott's Road days, in the time, of the
so-called giddy fits. He was all at sixes and sevens, the skin. of his
face prickled nervously, he was sweating. The jacket felt extraordinarily
light as he put it over his shoulders. But it would help him later,
perhaps: it would make him feel morè of a visitor than he was - just off
back to the Middle East; more detached.
This jacket was badly creased where he'd flung it down some
evenings before, and he decided to give it a touch of the iron. He had
a horrified sensation that he would miss Dick. The release - And
Dick wouldn't repeat his offer; he would book his passage back: Death!
The shirt couldn't be rushed, though he did only the collar and part of


the front, ànd the cuffs. It wasn't likely that they'd ask'him to itake
off his jacket! When he got it on it was a sight. There were crinkles
everywhere. But when he slipped the jacket on as well 'it wasn't too bad.
He needed a damp cloth for the jacket, afraid that without it he'd give :
the material a polished look. 'But he didn't have time. He'd risk it.
The effect waen't too bad! At any rate, the creases couldn't be seen
any longer. There was a dirty spot above one of the pockets. and he was.
just about to open the drawer of his desk to get out the little bottle of
petrol for cleaning stains when he realised that the bottle he had in
mind was in his desk in Basrah. He dashed out of the honse. There was
quite a long walk to the bus-stop, but if the traffic wasn't bad he'd' ge't
through in less than twenty minutes, on the bus. He ran to the end of
the road and remembered with horror that he'd left the iron on, and then
ran all the way back. It would be quite risky to leave it on, despite
the asbestos under the iron; Hanni had done it at Hampton Court once and
had returned to find the ironing board just ready to burst into flames.
Well, he'd certainly be late now! Dick would probably be gone. He
wouldn't get there before half-past four. He was gratified that, because
of the running, his jacket 'was none too light; it helped him get to. the
bus-stop faster! Sweat was pouring out of his arm-pits, and there was
a' dark stain on eàch side of his jacket which reminded him of the dog-
days in Basrah. He liked travelling by bus, and felt calm the moment he
got on. He must learn how to conquer the city; this was his thought as
he settled into his seat!
The Marquis was in a sombre place. A back-alley gave on to a
bombed site where there were deep cellars open to the sky like an
excavation, and . on the other side were the grim backs of buildings, dark


and tall, with windows of different shapes, some of them patched up with
cardboard. The lane was cobbled, with ruts and pools of water. And
there was a vague painted sign, The Marguis, in front of an iron door like
the backstage door of a theatre, with the dust-bins Dick had mentioned
piled high with refuse, their lids toppling off. He pushed this door
open and couldn't see anything inside. Nor was there a sound. The
throbbing of the traffic in the distance ceased. He realised that he
was standing immediately in front of a thick curtain and that this was
blocking his view. He pushed it aside, making it rattle from the brass
hoops above, and saw before him a dimly-lit, shoddily elegant and plush
little bar with deep armchairs and round mahogany tables. There didn't
appear to be any windows, only a great fan in the ceiling which reminded
him of the Mesopotamia Hotel - the small bar where journalists used to
meet. Behind the bar itself, among bottles and shining glass mirrors,
there was a pale, tired-looking girl reading a picture-magazine, quite
rapt in it, so much s0 that she didn 't look up when he came in.
"Good afternoon," he' said.
She looked up slowly. Her pallor was extraordinary; it. seemed to
enter her fingertips and her eyes, like a total state of being. Yet she
was pretty, and her smile was gracious and kindly. But after she'd said
"Good afternoon" in reply she looked. back slowly to her magazine again
and went on reading. He waited, and then slowly she looked up again,
this time with her eyebrows raised in a questioning way.
"Yes?" she asked.
"Is Mr. Pollocke here?"
"Yes, they're all downstairs." And she returned to the magazine
once more with the same slow motion, imbued with her strange total pallor.


He pushed through another curtain which presumably led downstairs and
saw a flight of wooden steps with a russet light at the bottom, and from
there came the murmur of voices. At once a drum started, making him
jump, and he saw the edge of a chequered table-cloth, then a stone pillar,
like that in a Roman temple but more slender. What on earth had he come
into? He walked down and entered a kind of restaurant with a dance-floor;
a rehearsal wâs taking place; there was a small band, and mostly dark
girls in tights or beach trousers, and a tall, young Arab with long hands
directing them all. Granville looked round for Dick and found him at a
corner table with a muscular-looking dark girl, who' was holding his hand.
Dick turned round quite casually and said to him, "Oh, Pip, come and join
us, they're getting ready for a hair-dance, believe it or not!" He sat
down and Dick didn't trouble to introduce him to the muscular-looking girl,
nor did she pay any attention to him. "There's a girl who whirls her
head round at a terrific rate," Dick went on. "It's really marvellous!"
"Do you always come here?" Granville asked. It was like seeing
into the back of Dick's mind, into the darkness and mystery. He was
intrigued and spell-bound.
"Oh, quite often, when I can get the afternoon off."
"But it's like Basrah, not somewhere in London!" There was even
a fan in the ceiling, the same shape as those in the Mesopotamia hotel.
Most of the girls were Arab a Morrocan or Algerian. The dimness of
everything, the heat and loudness were the same. "It's like one of the
cabarets in Basrah!" he added.
"Yes, I thought it'd take you back." Dick was quietly proud, and
gave him a gleaming look sideways, keeping hold of the girl's hand.
Granville began to feel at home and stretched out his legs. There


was no light where they were sitting but a strong yellow glow from the
stage. There were arguments' going on between the tall young man and one
of the Moroccan girls, while the others changed or combed their hair or
practised steps. He gazed at them: She dtill couldn't properly believe
it and kept turning and glancing at Dick, to make sure it was him.
Dick spoke to him in a quiet voice, without looking at him, "You
think I'm a rum bird, don't you? Is that what you're thinking?"
He was at a loss for a reply, then said, "Well, you certainly lead
your own life!"
"Don't you believe in that?"
"Oh, yes, absolutely!" He said this in a piping voice, and one of
the girlsby the stage peered into the darkness to see who it was from a
moment.
"What about a drink?" Dick asked, still without looking at him.
There was a waiter in a white jacket whom he called over with "Joe!" and
Granville now saw that there was a tiny lighted bar similar to the one
upstairs. Out of an absurd desire to give himself the impression that he
was in Basrah
without the pain of being separated from Pinkie - he
asked for arak when the waiter came, though he never touched the stuff in
Basrah. To his surprise they had it, and the other two, Dick and the
muscular-looking girl, followed suit. He heard Dick explaining to her
that his friend was 'from Basrah', and she leaned forward to glance at him
in the dimness for a moment, then leaned back again. When the drinks came
Dick said he liked the pepperminty taste and touched glasses with him -
"Well, old sport, here's to a good trip, and be careful how you go in the
old casbah!"
The 'hair-dance' was extraordinary. It was done by a thin wraith


of'a girl, dark and quite small, with masses of black hair let down to her
waist. Being almost naked as well, with a flimsy brassiere and knickers
of frilled black silk, she had a starved and defenceless look. Her
shoulders were sharp like knuckles, and she hunched them as if cold.
A nas
"Jesus,' " he heard the muscular-looking girl murmur to Dick, "why don 't
a goed meal!
shë get some flesh on her bones?", She spoke with a cockney accent, in
the mild, tender, soft-voiced way that often went with it in a woman.
The long-haired girl walked in a hunched way, as if scurrying away from
something, but the moment she danced it was different. Most of the noise
bPack
was made by the drums, which got faster and faster; a negro bent over them,
sweat pouring down from the top of his head, which was bald and strangely
wrinkled, and he gave the impression of trying to beat the life out of
something, with a dead, fixed look in his eyes, his teeth gritted together.
There was a pianist also, trying to make himself heard. The girl danced
alone at first, her hips revolving and her arms held out stiffly, rather
like the gypsy women he'd seen when a sheikh gave a party. The idea,
apparently, was that the young Arab, with an odd grinning expression in his
face, very taut and hard-skinned, should gradually bring her to life, or
wake her from sleep, for her eyes were closed as she danced. Her revolving
became faster as he weaved his way round her, staring into her face with
a fixed grinning look that seemed to be natural to him, and she bègan
stamping her feet as if under his spell. There was something of the faun
about him, with the cloven hoof, except that he was harder, without soft
movements; Granville could see the Arab in him it was in the fixity of
his movements, and the shining darkness of his eyes, flickering but not
really changing. The girl stamped and pushed her head back, her hands
pressed down at her side now and her body taut. There was a mounting


violence from the drum, and the whole room seemed to shake with it, but
then the girl began to droop and grow limp, subsiding until she'd gone
down on her knees. The real hair-dance started here. Her fair fell
round her face and shoulders in dense strands, while the young man
continued to weave round her, glaring into her face, his back bent, so that
he seemed to be trying to fly in an ungainly way every time he took a:
little leap round her. As he did this her head began to revolve, at -
first slowly; her neck seemed extraordinarily flexible, and her head turned.
quicker and quicker until her hair was flying round like a fan, quite
disembodied from her, it seemed, not even recognisable as hair, but simply
a dark shadow whirling round at the top of her head at a terrific rate.
One caught a glimpse of the whites of her eyes every time her head went
back, but otherwise her face was a dark blur; only her eyes flashed like
a quick.disbiewhitesandistaringyyeveryasecond or so. The drum was so
loud that the floor was trembling, and the drummer had become so frantic
that it was impossible to see that more he could do to satisfy himself
except fling the sticks in the air and break the drum up with his hands.
J ade.
But her persisted with the sticks, delicately, too, as one could see if one
looked at his hands closely as they quivered and fluttered over the drums;
he shot his arm out and contracted itat a tremendous speed, and he made
the rhythm seem composed of mary contradictory rhythms inside it, jagg-dly
opposed to each other but making up a unity, like sudden claps of thunder,
dominated by the delicate thrusts of his arms and his still, bent body
that was like a rock behind all the movement. The drum-beats stumbled
over each other with sharp crashes, and stopped, then, after a moment of
dead silence, started again ina headlong way, like heavy things tumbling
down one after the other.


It was impossible to imagine after a time how the axis underneath
the whirling shadow of hair could be someone's head, and there was something
horrible in this, because it seemed that at any minute her head might fly
off like 'a ball. She vas quite another person. * The defenceless look
had disappeared. She seemed to be asserting something in her own life,
with a tremendous ferocity, driving her head round with the same relent-
lessness as there was in the drummér, so that her body seemed only the
vehicle of a maddened will. She made the young man weaving round her
look much the lesser creature, and even the sense of hardness and fixity
in him disappeared; he was soft at her side. When the dance came to an
end she jumped up and flounced off the floor as if she'd won a personal
battle with them all, then she stood wiping herself down with a towel at
the edge of the stage, gazing into the darkness with a pouting, resentful
expression. Slowly the naked and helpless look grew on her again,, and
once more one could see how. the bones of her shoulders were like little *
knuckles, painfully sharp, and her crouching manner returned. Underneath,
still, was an awkward power of survival, that showed in her walk as she
kicked out her legs, hurrying along, slightly, crouched, her eyes squinting
a little with apprehension.
"Well, how did you like it?" Dick whispered. He nodded
enthusiastically, without speaking. "I've seen it before," Dick added.
He said that most of them were Morocéan, from Spanish Morocco, and the
drummer was a Nubian. Apparently, hé took drugs. The pianist was also
Negro, but he came from Nigeria or the Gold Coast, Dick didn't know which.
The drummer's skin was terribly wizened for a young man 's, and behing his
brown colouring there was something ashen-grey, especially in his lips,
which were cracked like parched earth and perpetually open; his eyes, when


he looked up drowsily now and then, were yellow and bloodshot. The
pianist, a rather clerkly young man with glasses, got up from his stool,
stretching, and Granville heard him murmur to the drummer as he gazed down
at his drowsy figure, "You kind of sleepy, man? But the drummer made
no reply, and the pianist laughed easily. There was a lot of arguing
among the firls, and voices. were raised now the band had stopped. "Hey,
you better watch your feet :
Then there would be clapping laughter.
"Your feet swell up to twice their size when you dance! What you got in
'em, springs?" Dick said that the girl who'd done the hair dance was
called Joy Celeste; that wasn't' her real name, and nobody seemed to
know what her real name was. "They're a mixed bunch - students, all
sorts," he said.. He thought the hair-girl's real name was Makboula.
But one must never use it: she flared up or cried, or something. She had
a room off the Strand and appeared not to live with anyone, but she was
always talking about 'dad', though 'dad' had never appeared. She'd been
born in Cairo and brought up in Tangiers, "and as oyou know," Dick added,
"dancing over there's like street-walking over here."
"Is she Muslim or Christian?" Granville asked, for no reason that
he could see.
Dick burst out laughing. "Don't be academic!"
The muscular-looking girl leaned forward. "What was that word
you used?" she asked.
"Epidemic,' # Dick said at once. "I was talking about your syphilis,"
whereupon she knotked him playfully on the hand. He turned to Granville
again, "This is Alice. Have you met?" They nodded to each other.
"She never touches men, do you, Alice? Because she's got a snake. It
makes up for everything. Isn't that true, Alice?" She nodded and


smiled. Hèr legs were muscular and short, thrust out under her in a
tom-boy fashion, and she had a pugnacious ease of manner, combined with the
softness of voice he'd noticed already, with a laughing, casual look in
her eyes. She had short hair like a boy's and full, round cheeks with
a slight flush of health.
"Is that true?" Granville asked in his clergyman's piping voice,
leaning forward. "Have you got a snake?"
"Yes, that's right!"
He was no wiser, and turned to Dick for help. "Has she?" he asked.
"Yes, she winds it round her neck at the night-clubs, makes it
dance and all that caper, kisses it and touches it up and runs it between
her legs. They love it!"
"It comes when I call it," the girl said. "*Sidney, Sidney!"
And it comes right up and starts climbing!"
"That's right!" Dick cried with a laugh. "You ought to see the
show, Pip! There's a wonderful lot of hanky-panky!"
Alice was born in London, Dick went on, "the son of a fish-monger";
she laughed and hit at his hand again, crying "You're always taking the
Later they all assembled upstairs, and the pale girl behind the
bar, whom Dick called Joyce, came to.life from her magazine. She poured
drinks slowly and carefully, biting her lower lip with concentration, and
lifted the glasses on to the bar with great attention, careful not to spill
a drop. Dick was on speaking terms with her, too. He told Granville
when they were sitting down that she got through one magazine a day and
let everybody know when she was a bit tipsy at the end of the evening that
she was waiting for her 'Romeo'.


Joy Celeste came over to join them, and there was a tremor of
fear in Granville as he stood up to shake hands with her. Shaking
hands wasn 't the thing to do, it seemed, and she took no notice, only
sat' down at his side, looking up at him with slightly frightened surprise.
"What did he stand up for?" she asked Dick. Granville was still hivering
above her in an equivocal state, beginning to wonder whether what poise
he'd managed to keep so far would break down; but Dick said, "He's been
like that for years, old girl! He gets.up and sits down every few
minutes. It's a joint in his arse. It formed just like that, from
nowhere, and the doctors couldn't do anything for him! He gets up to
avoid it squeaking - that's when it's not going through a farting
phase; he has to stay at. home then. Take no notice, he'll come down
again soon enough!" The girls laughed and, laughing as well, he sat
down, recovered from the giddy embarrassment into which he'd fallen without
them seeing. 'Test No. 1', he thought, 'initiation by fire and water!'
And having got through the first moment he .felt easy. "Now let me get
you all a drink," he said. It was like passing safely through a barrier
into a fresh world. He sat back in his chair, beaming at them. And
again it was arak. The hair-girl looked surprised when he suggested it.
He told her he'd been in Basrah, and she looked more cheerful; it gave
them eomething to: talk about, and the other two drew their chairs together,
to whisper and peck at each other's cheeks. He noticed she had wide-set,
very black eyes, deep in her head, and her cheek-bones were high and
prominent. She leaned forward when she talked to him, with a strained,
squinting look as if she was trying to see something on the table more
clearly. She'd plaited her hair up, which gave her a more starved and
.staring look than before. She began talking about. her 'dad', as : Dick


had told him, and how they'd come from the Hejaz, and what a fine man
dad was, a trader who knew 'every port along the coasts of Adrica'.
She said 'mother' had adored him and had always said that he put finer
clothes on her back than any other man she'd known or heard tell of.
She talked in a light voice, her eyes squinted, gazing at the table
fixedly, like someone reading from a fairy-tale. She seemed to be both
remembering it and also telling the story for the first time. He
congratulated her on her dance, and she said that it was 'all right',
only the drummer annoyed her. The rhythm wasn't quite right, she said.
With an oddly meek expression, her shoulders more bowed than before, so
that she seemed ever smaller and frailer, with her bony, sallow face and
anxious eyes, like those of a starved child, she added that twenty years
before he, the drummer, would have been serving at her table; being a
Nubian, and 'fitting the little shoes on my feet'; 'dad' had always taught
her that if you gave 'thosé people' an inch they took a mile! But as she
drank the arak she became more cheerful, and unbent her shoulders a little.
She smiled and told him that the pianist, who was a medical student, was
in love with her, and always followed her home to her place at night,
after they'd finished at the club. He didn't do it in the hope of going
in with her, but to protect her, because it was always about three in the
morning by the time they came off the stage. And he never spoke to her;
wasn't that wonderful? Granville asked why the pianist didn't speak if
they were in the same dancing troupe together and saw each other everydday.
She said in a little voice, "It's pure love, I suppose!" He couldn't tell
if she was joking or not. The moment she said it she pushed her glass
across to Dick and said, "That milk appeals to me e The same again, please!"
When she'd been supplied again he began talking about the desert.


Did she know the feeling in the morning, he asked, especially in the
spring when the air was brilliantly clear and cool, and all the buildings
shone like coral, at least in the district where he lived, the feeling
of having a great thriving_power in her legs when she walked, and a feeling
of readiness for the day? She blinked in a completely puzzled way, and
he thought that perhaps a trace of a smile passed her lips. But she
continued bent over the table, her arms on the sides of her chair, gazing
before her. The arak was working on him.
"Do you know what I mean?" he cried, flinging his arms out so that
the other girl, sitting with Dick, flinched for a moment. "When walking
along is a terrific sensuous enjoyment? When you feel you're really
springing forward! All your body relishes the movement, doesn't it?"
Dick and one or two people at the bar looked across at him. "I've never
known that fefore," he went on, "not such perfection of activity! When
you're free, in your body! It was like walking into a new sort of world
every day, all sparkling and clear, and yet being perfectly safe
you
know what I mean, without the risk of the journey, and feeling lonely and
strange in a place, but every day that marvellous novelty, of your senses,
I mean you felt it at the tips of your fingers, and breathed it in, and
had it in your toes as you walked along! The sky never seemed a long
way away there as it does in England, at least on a cloudy day! One
could imagine that sky spreading over the. desert outside the city
you see what I mean? I could see the edge of the desert from my balcony
oh, wonderful! I used to gaze at it for hours on end sometimes in the
morning when I didn't go to the office, if it was spring and the heat wasn 't
too bad, and it used to shimmer out there! Have you ever been to Basrah?"
he added breathlessly.


She uttered a quiet, "No," and took a long sip of her drink.
He sat back and breathed in happily, while she piked about in her
bag for something and at length pulled out a nail-file and began doing
her nails. "Yes,"" he said, "you feel quite unknown to yourself there!
For the first time in my life I felt I was actually living in the sky
"Where?" she said, screwing up her face.
"I mean in the silence all round the earth, not snatching at it
and going nervously to and fro from mèn to the silence and back again,
as I'd done before! Every day I felt I almost touched something -
goldèn - sparkling!"
She pointed to his glass. "I think you'd better go easy on that,"
she murmured.
They all laughed and drank another arak. Dick was waving his
arms about, calling, "More snakes!"
In a funny-looking little group, bumping into each other, they.
vent off to Soho. It was colder now and he felt the thinness of his
tropical jacket. i He put his arm round the hair-girl's shoulders,
swinging along. The muscular-looking girl at Dick's side was steady and
quiet. How marvellous it all was, to be actually with people, to be lost,
to have no careful thoughts and no suspicions! The hair-girl walked with
jerky little-steps at his side like someone in an endless distraught
argument with a voice inside her that was never revealed to other people.
She had the wame way of gazing in front of her as before, only now at the
pavement, seeming to search for something.
They went to an underground place called the Gare St. Lazare which
Dick knew, approached by a narrow, unlit corridor and then a wooden S
staircase. It seemed that only members were allowed in, and Dick wasn 't


a member as he'd thought. The hair-girl pushed forward to a little grill
by the entrance, from where they could hear a screeching band and the
sound of talk. A young man was sitting in the darkness behind the grill
with a heavy, pale face and dark eyebrows, and his expression was one of
final' and unapproachable boredom; his eyes didn't alter by,a flicker as
he talked. He and the hair-girl knew each other, apparently. She hadn't
paid her subscription. It was only five shillings, so Dick paid it.
She pointed out Granville to the young man behind the grill and said,
"He's just come from Basrah!" He showed not the slightest interest,
only nodded while counting out the change from a pound note. He put
down a ten-shilling note, then counted out the rest in silver and coppers,
putting them in neat little piles. The hair-girl leaned towards the
grill and said in a complaining voice, "That's right, give us all your
small fuckin' change!" And the young man's face, slightly sweating,
became animated for' the first time: "He gave me a note? Everybody's
giving me notes tonight!" Then he returned to his former deadness of
expression and pushed the money, in three neat little piles on top of the
ten-shilling note, carefully under the grill, giving it a last reminiscent
look as if he'd actually created.it.
Inside there was bedlam, at least for the first few yards. A
saxophonist was standing on the playform, his head back and sweat pouring
down from his chin in the most grotesque way, making a high-pitched
wailing note while everyone else, in the band leaned or lolled in a drugged
state and clusters of people round the platform made swooning movements
and raised their. eyebrows as the notes went higher and higher. When
Joy Celeste walked past the platform the saxophonist did a miraculously
quick bow and blew a raspberry after her through his instrument, then


: swung up again and went on with the high swooning notes. She took no
notice and walked jerkily through the crowd on the dancing floor to where
the tables were. One or two people tapped her on the shoulder in a.
familiar way, but she took no notice of them. He vondered that so many
people knew her - she was so frail and scurrying as if she only knew
how to avoid contact; yet they' were familiar with her, in a kindly way,
and seemed quite to expect that she should take no notice of them. He
saw that the dark walls all round were painted with signs like Baggage',
'Wanted on Voyage' and 'Reserve', and in huge white letters there were
the words INFORMATION and DEFENSE DE PISSER. They ate what the place
could offer, eggs and sausages, and sat on drowsily recovering from the
arak. There was a night-club called The Daybreak where both the girls
had to dance after midnight, and thè hair-girl said she had to hurry home
and see 'dad' beforehand.
Dick and Granville got back to Chaworth Road about midnight and
found no one at home. A tremor of fear threatened to pass through him
on account of Pinkie, that she hadn't come back; but he quickly checked
himself as they half-stumbled up. to the kitchen for a last cup of coffee.
After all, he had his own life now! They sat in silence on either side
of the table, gazing before them; he felt that all his limbs had expanded
and that a glow had come into him; how, could he ever have felt unworthy?
They were the same limbs as before, yet they breathed properly now!
Dick slipped off to bed, and Pinkie came in just before one odclock.
She was in an unusually direct and brazen mood. She asked him
with darkening eyes and a slight smile, looking at the ground, when they'd
last had sex; and he replied in an obedient way, like a boy, "Oh, about
a week ago, I think"; and he laughed, expecting her to do the same - to


cover her own embarrasament at such a question. But her face didn't'
change. Instead, whe walked in to the bedroom, her red coat still on,
trailing behind her like a cloak, her eyes strangely level, with a
menacing light in them, and said, throwing down her bracelet on his desk,
"Well, what about some, now?" She didn't switch the light on, and un-
dressed slowly, lowering her straps so that her breasts suddenly showed
in the dimness, heavy and, shining,. and her hips were bare and round.
And after they'd got into bed she took sex from him in a silent, unabashed,
business-like way. he'd never known in her before. It excited and over-
powered him as if he'd been a boy in puberty. She had a mild air of
assault. Also he could smell the strangeness on her. He knew, for the
first time,' with his body, as a quite. silent consciousness, that bhe'd been
on a bed with somebody else. Also there was an undue wetness, and he
had the seift bodily impression that he was mixing his orgasm with
someone else's, perhaps with two or three. It was a new form of sex for
them. It marked a new path, with different excitements. Usually he
would murmur endearments to her which always seemed unduly lofty to him
afterwards, but which nevertheless had seemed to excite her. This time
he didn't, and in the silence between them a certain hard relish formed
that had never existed before. There was also a suggestion of pain for
him - something that bowed him down. But in future there would be
this silent directness - nothing voluptuous or abandoned, each of them
in isolated state, fulfilling their needs. - Yet it wasn't like the former
separateness that was more or less an advanced masturbation: the silence
now joined their needs together, and they were at one removed more from
themselves than from each other. It was a glimpse of future things.
The aftermath of sex was increasingly one of total inner collapse


for him. The world was grim and heavy
almost touching the senses,
its presence final and devastating, so that nothing light seemed possible
any more. There was only darkness. The silence was a death-silence.
This happened- more and more. It was like ejaculating his torn heart
each time, a little more.of it, so that he was horribly deprived, and felt
given over to enemies, who were un-named and in frightful proliferating
hordes, his body abandoned utterly to them.
Ah, he had his own life now! His own secret! 'Let everything
deteriorate,' he thought again, as he'd done the first evening, when he'd
stood by the window Beeling thé breeze touch his face like an intimate
brea th. Yes, mystery would come back into their lives; with danger, its
friend. Yet the thought of somebody else's flesh was a blasphemy against
hers. It stirred in him the old compassion towards her! Now the
familiar prison of touch and smell was going to be broken, he knew it.
His certainty, though only his brain asserted it, brought down on him an
uncontrollable nervousness as if his organs inside were collapsing, Only
in sleep was he close to her. Habit closed the usual shroud over them.
They were together for a moment when they woke up each morning, in the
first unguarded drowsiness, before the awkwardness and reserve of the day.
The image of the hair-girl kept occurring to his mind. He was
content to sit for two or three mornings in his room simply remembering
the events of that evening. He put together everything Dick had siad,
the laughter, the shape of the bar in the. dimness of the russet lights at
The Marquis, the harsh white walls of. the Gare St. Lazare. He went over
it againgaid-again. He'd ascertained the hair-girl's address, from Dick.
Her face becamea constant factor in his mind, motionless and perhaps not


quite alive. He remembered her deep eye-sockets, like shadowy discs,
and her high cheek-bones; and how her hair had gone round like a fan. He
couldn't tell if he was bringing her to mind deliberately or whether she
was really an influence on him. It was pleasant enough to have someone
to think about! Pinkie couldn't see his thoughts. Was the hair-girl's
face the one that had appeared to him? But Joy Céleste didn't gaze at
him as the image had. And. shé was surrounded by many people - a shadows -
vague movements; he couldn't tell precisely! She was gazing at a point:
before her, at the table, her eyes screwed up. He remembered her talk
about 'dad'. He imagined 'dad' tall for some reason, with a tiny, bald,
wizen head like the top of one of those wooden nails found in antique
furniture. "Dad' lumbered slowly about the place with heavy feet but
said little; and he' always had his hands in his pockets.
The weather became downcast and more chilly, so that fires were
necessary, and a frighténing political crisis' broke; involving, of all
areas, the Middle East. It concerned Rubath, a small and-wealthy sheikh-
dom living on oil-divividends. A 'plot against the sheikh's life had been
uncovered, and foreign agents were supposed to be at the bottom of it.
That was the first news, in ominous tones. Then twenty foreigners were
expelled from the country, and among these was an attache of the Russian
legation. It was a rash move for a tiny sheikhdom. Moscow at once
sent a threatening note, accusing the sheikh of being in the hands of
'western influences' and of making libellous charges. There was a real
set-to, and extra editions of the 'evening papers came out.
British troops were requested by the sheikh from the Aden
protectorate. That was the cause of a further outcry; the sheikhdom was
in 'Britain's pocket', and the English aide-de camp' of the sheikh was


supposed to be thé political mind behind the expulsions. The sheikh
came out with a' statement that a Russian spy-ring had been uncovered, and
that a communist 'shadow-cabinet' had been ready; also some high-ranking
officers in the army were involved, but they were nationalists and not
in the communist campi it seemed that everybody was against the sheikh.
America was keeping out of it, not wanting to be identifièd with 'colonial'
policies.
He read the papers anxiously, and people started arguing about
the pros and cons. Glenning said. the British would be fools to send any
troops, but the danger was that the Russians would then step in and put
up a puppet government there. Every headline was about the crisis.
Pinkie asked him if he'd booked his air-passage back, and, not to tell her
a lie, he said, "Why? You getting worried about my safety?". with a smile.
And she gave him a glance as if he'd. just taken a manly devil-may-care
attitude -- the kind of look she might have given her brother Nigel.
There was a loud argument one evening in the kitchen between
Pinkie and Dick which he thought at first was political, but it was about
a money transaction: Apparently, they'd shared expenses for the party
Pinkie had given the evening before Granville's arrival. He was amazed -
how hardy and resistant they both were. They. weathered each other's
insults 'so calmly. Dick had wanted the party mainly to get to know the
girl called Lucy, Ginger's friend; her nickname in the group, Granville
now learned, was 'Linger-Longer'. Linger-Longer was unwilling to go out
with Dick alone, but she looked on Pinkie as respectable, because she was
married and owned a house. But the only was Dick could persuade Pinkie
to have 'school-girls' at a party was to suggest helping with the money;
she'd insisted on fifty-fifty!


"An expensive way of finding out," said Dick, "that the girl, nice
enough in other ways, had the whole thing built-in and was really a
transvestist colonel!" He added to Pinkie, "But I've always been a good
loser. - Name your price!"
"You know bloody well what that party cost, you mean bastard'"
Pinkie said.
"Well," Hanni put in quietly, chuckling, "it was a bit ambiguous---"
"Why?" Pinkie looked crestfallen at her interference. Then
they went into the arithmetic of it, with Pinkie working out the sum on
paper. At the end of the sum there was more bitterness.
"Oh, all right, forget the whole bloody business!" Pinkie cried,
throwing down her péncil.
"It's perfectly simple," Hanni said, "he pays you half of that."
And she pointed to the sum.
"But that's only half the boose, and we had food and Christ knows
what else, apart from the breakage :" She gave Dick a hard glance.
"Yes, Mr. Pollocke, the breakage!"
"I only agreed to pay half the boose," Dick replied. And he
stuck to it. Pinkie had put her seal on the transaction. by not complaining
before,-he saidhe-poittwas. nowhtwo-months'too late!
Pinkie lost and Dick paid the sum; and the bad feeling passed over
slowly. -But it led Pinkie to accuse Hanni of 'stirring up an atmosphere'.
She said that Dick would have paid up like E. lomb if she hadn': been 'at
him". Hànni denied this, smiling quietly. And Pinkie wént. on to say
that it was about time Hanni left her 'village' and came out in western
civilisation for a change, where people spoke their minds. Hanni went
mute and didn't appear at the house for two or three days. This gave


Dick a chance to renew his attentions to Linger-Longer, because she
appeared only at the house, with 'Ginger', never at the clubs or even
at the cafe in Commercial Road. Dick sat on the arm of her chair in the
music-room, talking to her softly, and one could see that slowly she was
taking a new attitude towards herself, under his influence. She came
to the house looking tidier as a result, with her hair really curled.
instead of being just done up in a ribbon. Then Pinkie and Hanni appeared
one day, brought together again by one of those silent féminine miracles
they'd met somewhere in town by accident! This was followed by new
confidences' between them, inevitably, and Hanni heard what had been going
on at the house between Dick and Linger-Longer. But she only laughed.
Dick had managed to get the girl,out, after all; they were to go to the
theatre together.
British troops were sent to Rubath after all, and Moscow sent a
note, more restrained than the previous one to the sheikh, to London.
The headline this time was 'Sheikh Digging. In'; there would be 'an
international show-down', the papers said; the time had come to put a stop -
to Russian encroachments by means of 'technical advisers' into the Middle
East. It looked bad. The sheikh was confined to his palace, with his
bodyguard. But there was still no sign of sympathetic trouble in Basrah
or anywhere near by.
There was now every reason why he sould prolong his leave. His
life had just begun to construct itself on an exciting basis; also in
deference to his parents he ought to stay -- he really couldn't dash off
without going over to see them at least once, and there wouldn't be time
if he did go back; and he must know something definite about Pinkie,
which he didn't yet; and there was this crisis - it wouldn't be very


comfortable sitting in Basrah while it lasted, even though there were no
students in the city. He could ask for extra leave on compassionate
grounds. He thought with a smile that he couldn't very well go along,
to Nevinson and say, 'I think my. wife's sleeping with somebody else. Will
you give me another two weeks to make sure?'
But that day something quite remarkable happened
for him,
mystical. After this, he thought, how çould we doubt that we lived in
a kind of sky, with all sorts of strange happenings we knew nothing about
going on round us, with an order behind: them we couldn't foresee?
It was a letter marked Express' from Nevinson confirming what
Dick had said. They wanted a report from him on the Basrah office, in
view of the reconstruction of the Middle Eastern facilities that would
be taking place over the next five years. It had occurred to them, the
letter went on, that the files in London would be more useful to him
than those in Basrah, and therefore they had decided to ask him to -
prolong his leave,. which would count as normal duty from the time of the
expiry of his official leave, for another month, in order to prepare it!
They had taken this decision with the crisis in mind as well: they had
information that British personnel might be asked to leave Basrah soon
as a precaution, in any case. They would let him know further, but
the extra month would give hima breathing space, and it was hoped that t
by then the crisis would have blown over. If the situation permitted,
Tomlinson of the Port of Beirut would fly over and see how things were in
the Basrah office. A secretary would be put at Granville's disposal in
London, also a smali office in the Middle East department for a.week,
during which time he might like to go through the files. Would he care
to drop in to - arrange the disposal of these files? He would be expected


to 'give, full rein' to any suggestions for changes which might be in his
mind; and meanwhile they didn't believe he need suffer any anxiety about
his office in Basrah, it could quite' well run on its own steam for a
few weeks, especially as this was the time of the worst heat; 'Steam is
probably the right word for it!' Nevinson wrote. Granville was thrilled
with the chatty tone. What a compliment! He make a report
and
suggest changes! It might even be true, he now thought, that he was
going to get the Beirut office,, as Glenning had said! The letter ended
hoping that this didn't interfere with his plans and repeating that the
month wouldn't count as official leave. He vent out and bought a bottle
of wine at once, and drank it at one sitting, alone in the house, Then
he phoned Dick and told him everything. It made him sound really in
charge of his own life; he could talk with a level voice about how he was
going to stay on in London, and with the same level voice later he might
suggest to Dick another evening at The Marquis! He now had the official
stamp to take a holiday he'd meant to take in any case! He told Pinkie
when she came in, and she looked at him with a new air of belief, as if
she now knew why he'd been circumspect about his passage back; she asked
him what sort of man Nevinson was in a tone that suggested a special,
professional relation between the two of them. "What about the air
ticket back," she asked, "you can get that chenged, can 't you?" She had
a more penetrating look as if trying to find out whether he 'd actually
bought it; she was quite still for a moment, her eyes set on him. "Oh,
that'll be easy enough!" he said, and turned away.
There was also a money-problem which was now solved. The parties
and casual evenings at the house had cost quite a lot, even with Pinkie
earning as well. They rarely got through an evening without buying a


bottle or two of wine. But now he'd be able to go along to the office
and.a ask for an advance on the month, instead of waiting to collect it
at the bank in Basrah; what plans had he had for money, supposing his
leave had expired and he'd simply stayed on? He didn't know!
Providence had extended a helping hand. Also.he'd be getting his
overseas allowance in the normal way - that would pay for a drop of
'overseas wine', too, he thought. Yes, a very nice time was about to
be had by our little clerk!


CHAPTER 15.
He wrote to Mohammed asking him what the feeling was like in
Basrah, and whether he thought there'd be rioting. He wondered what
information Nevinson had got hold of, about the possible withdrawal of
British personnel. The papers said that the sheikh's English A.D.C.
some papers called him 'Rubath's public relations officer' -- was a close
personal friend of the sheikh and the latter never took an important step
without him. He was theishèieikh's mind; his name was John Creed, and an
edi torial said it was strange to think that 'a private tutor' - this was
how he'd got to know the sheikh, teaching him English had 'precipitated
the world into a major crisis, and that this could at any time become a
war'. Journalists tried to get statements out of Mr. Creed but unsuccess-
fully. He stayed in the palace with the sheikh. One paper said that
there was 'mounting American feeling' against Mr. Creed. A London paper
had a cartoon of an Englishman dressed up as an Arab looking out of a
palace-window on to rows of guards with fixed bayonets, and underneath
were the words, 'The Sheikh of Rubath de-Creed a state of emergency."
Cases of champagne had been seen going into the palace and a paper asked
how far, since strict Muslims were forbidden liquor, this was 'in the
interests of the sheikh's. religious Creed.' (Some people said Creed had
been converted to, Islam).
Then some of the rebel-officers were exécuted at the sheikh's


orders after a perfunctory trial. The papers argued about whether
Creed was behind this, and some of them said that the British government
should be pressed to exercise more influence on the sheikh, since they
had put troops in the area, and to help get Creed out. But that was
impossible because Rubath was an independent state, and Creed was in the
sheikh's private employ. People also suspected that the government was
behind Creed in a subtle way, and that Creed had been against the
executions and after hours of argument with the sheikh had got the
concession of perfunctory trials, so that at:least the public-relations
side would be covered. There was a little rioting all over the country,
but British troops held aloof and left discipline to the local police and
to loyal elements in the army. An illegal newspaper was started by a
rebel faction in Rubath and surprised everybody by its first issue because
it was 'moderate' in - tone. The editor was said to be a doctor, one of
the best surgeons in the country. This put Russia on the side of the
angels, and America tried to join the angels quickly, with a statement of
'horror' at the executions. The British were left holding the baby, and
the clamour from Moscow grew now that the chance of a war with America
was less. There was a demonstration outside the British Embassy in
Moscow. The illegal newspaper in Rubath called for a parliament,
universal suffrage and the right of habeas corpus; it used the terms of
English liberalism, not the words shared between Russia and America -
1 democracy', 'freedom', 'anti-colonialism '. People said Creed was behind
this, too!
There was another note from Moscow like an ultimatum. It said
that measures might have to be taken to protect 'democratic elements' in
Rubath; this, the papers said, was a threat to start a long war by means


of 'volunteers' from Russia, which would turn the whole of the Middle
East upside-down. This threat to the oil-fields suddenly brought
England and America' closer together, and there waa a joint note from them
that Rubath would have to be, protected.
Granvillé bégan to hope that it' would all peter out with Russia
not wanting to risk a. war with America, and America not wanting to risk
the oil. It was now a moral question, one paper said, as to whether
the revolt in the army was a sincere movement of reform, as the illegal
newspaper suggestediit was, or something provoked by Russian agents.
The British had never recognised the possibility of social change and
had clung to the sheikh unreasonably; they had snubbed and pooh-poohed
the liberal-minded people and this had left the best part of the country's
talent well outside the area of government. People had virtually been
forced into the rebel-camp, if not forced to take Russian advice and perhaps
Russian money and arms. How big a part Mr. Creed had played in that
nobody knew. 'His silence, the paper added (the journalists really seemed
to hate his silence more than anything else) was fast becoming an 'insult';
but perhaps he was 'busy' with the cases of champagne that had arrived.
Russia suddenly started massing troops along her Persian border.
It looked as if there was going to be the usual feinting and' marionette-
play of a crisis, with troop-movements and the recall of ministers from
holiday. London looked different. There was a cold wind and the skies
were darker, giving the streets a frightfully bleak look. The newspapers
were coming out in extra editions, sometimes. with a few lines of mediocre
news dressed up in sensational headlines. There were piles of them all
over the kitchen. Either Granville brought one in or Dick or Glenning
did. It felt as if the insidé of life had been taken out, leaving the


shell. Little things like getting up in the morning and making a cup
of tea felt hollow and irrelevant; there was always this greater thing
going on outside, like a vast sheet held up against the sky, kéeping
out the light. Yet the whole thing was being played out in thé mind.
Nothing altered. - Everybody went to the same work every day and did the
same things. Nothing looked different. Yet the thing was going on,
it was mounting, in its ghostly fashion.
Hanni had to work overtime - the Middle East section, she said,
was working round the clock. She brought her things to the house and
stayed in the bedroom downstairs; sometimes she camé in after midnight,
sallow and exhausted. She said there was. a real possibility of war;
everybody was worried and they were thinking of calling up the emergency
reserve. Granville wondered whether he was one of these, and tried to
imagine what it would be like in the arny again. It might be a relief,
discovering the open air again; and the closeness of death that put life
in the proper place along the span of space and time, not in the usual
false light of civic peace, s0 that it got back its mystery. He couldn't
believe it would happen, and yet he could; everyone seemed in a doped
state, believing nothing and everything. Hanni said that the door of
10. Downing Street opened and closed dozens of times an hour, with
messengers running in and out. She knew for a fact that reinforcements
had been. sent to the Middle East, but it was hush-hush; they were embarking
at Southampton now for Malta and Cyprus. In a way, she said, she was
enjoying it. There were endless cups of tea in the office, and people
joked all the time. There were all sorts of little surprises about
people's characters; a man she'd thought stiff like a piece of clockwork
had brought out a bottle of whisky one evening and was always flirting


with the secretaries. He was taking Hanni herself out soon. This was
the first intimation, for Granville, that she entertained thoughts of
going. out with other men. Dick smiled when she told him',. - and christened
the, man 'Joe Clockwork'.
There were long political arguments in the kitchen, which the
women sat through in silence, looking pale, the life drained out of them.
Irritation started between Dick and Granville again: they always seemed
to be on opposite sides. When the argument got rough Pinkie would put
her hands up to her ears and say,. "Why can't you argue without shouting,
- for God's sake?" This was addressed particularly to Glenning and
Granville. The young man called Gerald with the pleasant face, came
round ane evening and said he was volunteering for the army: it would
'make a break', he said. But later he found one couldn't volunteer just
for a crisis, and five years in the army would have been a longer break
than he was looking for. He began coming round every evening, and drank
as he'd never done in his life. As quickly, however, he stopped and was
once more - the pleasant young man who came to the house once a week or so:
and he said his threat to volunteer, apart from giving himself a 'scare'
had got him a rise at his plastics-firm.
For Dick the crisis was clear. The sheikh vas an unjust and
backward ruler; the rational thing to do was to remove him. "But what
about the Russians?" Granville asked. Dick said without hesitation,
"If the Russians get the upper hand, good luck to them! But I doubt if
they will.". He said that' perhaps 'destiny' required the Russians there,
in the Middle East; it was doubtful if the reform movement in Rubath
could have existed, or the illegal newspaper been published, without
Russian help.


"But suppose it produces less civilised government?". Granville
asked him.
"It' couldn't," Dick replied. "At least another government wouldn't
cut off people's hands for stealing!"
"It might," said Granville.
"I' don't think' so," said Dick. He added that he didn't believe'
the Russians were behind the revolt, but hé did believe the British were
behind Creed. He said' he based this on the fact that the Middle East had
been an area of British influence for more than a century, and that Russia
had always been kept out. But sometimes in zones of influence people
fought for a just government, and this was what they were doing'in Rubath.
Granville's answer was that it had nothing to do with justice or,
indeed, with any ideals!
"What is it, then?" Dick asked him.
"I'm surprised to see you supporting nationalists and military
men!" he replied. "Where does that fit in with civilised government?"
"I didn't say I believed in nationalism! I don't necéssarily
say people ought to govern themselves," Dick said. "All I say is that
they should be governed as they want to be governed."
"The people aren't involved ataall!" he said. "Where do they
come in?"
"Ultimately they're involved."
"They're all sitting quietly in their villages, half-starved!
Don 't you' believe it! It's never the people who start these movements!"
Granville decided to take this as the opening theme of his report
for T.I.M., for which he 'd been casting around in his mind. A middle-.
calss was coming into existence in the Middle East - doctors, lawyers,


teachers, army-men, civil servants; the political slogans were the same
as those which accompanied the rise of any middle-calss - in Rubath
they were the same as in England over a hundred years ago. The 'people'
had nothing to do with it. The leaders of the riots were atudents
usually, and they were supported by the officer-class. The 'people'
were attracted to middle-class politics by the promise of a higher living
standard. That was all.
He didn't quite Bee yet what.the connection was between this new
middle-class, of whom Mohammed was one, and T.I.M. but it had resolved
some of the confusions in his mind. He didn't offer it to Dick as an
argument. For one thing, he didn't want them all to cry in a chorus,
"Oh, for God's sake! That word 'middle-class': Can't you give it a
rest?" And for another thing he didn't want the idea exploded; he wanted
to make it stronger first. So he argued with Dick without bringing up
his main reserve.
Dick said that England's day was over as far as the 'big political
plums' were concerned, and that this would make England a nicer place to
live in. The big imperialists these days, he added, were the Americans;
they would cash in from our discomfort in the Middle East, and they were
the other cause of it - - apart from Russia - in any case. Glenning
said to this that the last thing America was was an empire. He said
that America had a temporary hold on' the western world because of the
collapse of so many countries in the war
but that wouldn't last,
America had no serious aspirations abroad because she was too busy 'trying
to produce a new type of human being'.
The arguments got more and more abstract between the three men
until Hanni and Pinkie put a stop to it with the biggest party they'd ever


had in the house. There was dancing, and much else, in every room, and
it went on until dawn Saturday morning, with couples sleeping in each
other's arms in the corridor outside the music-room.
Hanni discovered that all the time she'd been sleeping at Chaworth
Road Dick had been entertaining Linger-Longer down at Hampton Court: he
confirmed that Linger-Longer couldn't even cook andegg; he said there'd
been tripe in the kitchen and she asked him if it was 'a foam-rubber seat
for the car'; not that he had a. car. "That's right," he'd told her,
"I'm partial to foam-rubber seats! - Ford turns out a very tasty one, with
mashed potatoes and Brussel sprouts!" Believe it or not, he said, she
was a daughter of 'the proletariat': she'd told him that until she was
fifteen she'd thought tea came straight out of the tap and only had to be
boiled up. "How her mum managed to hide the facts of the kitchen from
her I don't know," he said.
"What about the other facts of life?" Hanni asked in a dry voice.
"How does she manage with those?"
Dick hesitated, giving her a long, twinkling look, and replied,
"With a few more evening-classes she wouldn't be too bad."
Pinkie said afterwards that Dick had fewer escapades than he
claimed credit for: he only liked the 'atmosphere'. Linger-Longer wouldn't
dream of letting a man touch her, she said. But Dick told him the
opposite, in confidence. He said she'd taught him 'a few tricks', anyway:
"Women always get other women wrong in that respect, old sport."
Unexpectedly, Creed came into the news again. He had the hotel-
room of an English hournalist searched and his telegrams and carbon-
copies of his articles photographed. He even authorised the police to


usé his name when they forced their way in. It was a very Middle Eastern
thing to do,and there was an outcry at once
the freedom of the press
had been violated! Then the public-relations office' of Rubath, which
meant Creed published the text of a telegram from the journalist's
newspaper which asked for violent stories wherever possible, and.if they
had a six-element so much the better. *Anything with blood in it;" the
telegram added.
Creed then put out that he would talk to the press in the palace,
but he would read a prepared text and not answer questions. Everybody
wondered what this meant. Would' he say something to tip the balance of
crisis? Perhaps he would offer terms to the revels or announce his own
résignation - it was known that he was no an embarrassment to the
British government. But the first reports were uninteresting. The
morning paper said that Creed had provided the 'uncolicited information'
that journalists had arrived in Rubath from all over the world by air and
that they had 'nore or less taken over' the only two hotels in the country,
the Rubath National and the Tigris. "After this courageous sally into
common knowledge', the paper said, 'he then told the conference that
certain eye-witness accounts put out by journalists had been. written in
the bar of the Tigris Hotel.
Most of the papers said no more than this, but Dick came in with
the whole text of Creed's speech. No wonder the papers were furious!
Attacks on Creed had already started. Dreed had said that the so-called
eye-witness accounts had grown out of a scrap between a policeman and a
native due to a donkey in the middle of the main street, and this had been
built up into a major riot. A crowd had gathered, some of the police had
thought it was political and fired some shots in the air; this in turn had


excited the crowd. Creed said the news was always being built up in this
way. The bar of the Rubath National hald most of the 'so-called respectable
correspondents, who usually called themselves, I think, Diplomatic
Correspondents', while. the Tigris had the 'tabloids' - the two bars were
doing better business than at any time in the last. twenty years, 'since
I, in fact, advised the sheikh to put them up.' The chief of police had
reported to him that not one of these journalists had been present at a
demonstration or skirmish in any part of the country. Anyway, Creed
said, these demonstrations took place too suddenly to allow correspondents,
'slowed-down by pints of boose 1 $ to get to their. cars and drive ten, twenty
and sometimes fifty miles. 'They come out here with their degenerate bloody
faces,' he said, 'and think they can size the situation up in a couple of
minutes when they can't even talk the language and have never even set
foot in a Middle Éast country before! They think they can tell me how
the place should be run when they haven't got a serious bloody thought in
their heads, when. they can't hardly read a book, and when they're never
alone! They haven't been trained for anything, they live on a lot of
bloody tittle-tattle, and they're the people forming opinion, as it's
called, all over the world! No wonder politics is a cheap and nasty
public-relations racket! And if I'd laid on my public-relations properly
and handed you boose free of charge, you'd have all been eating out of my
hand by now, the whole bloody lot of you!' The paper said Creed had
stumbled into the vernacular - - 'can't hardly read a book' - - perhaps
because his education at Oxford had been 'curtailed'; this was a polite
paper, and its personal attacks had to be oblique. It meant that Creed
had been sent down for homosexuality. 'And all those right-thinking
people in England,' Creed had continued, are in fact the dupes of a lot


of drunken bloody wash-outs ---! Well, 1 he cried when there were
interruptions, 'even if you're not all drunk you should be, to sluice out
the rotten thoughts in your brains! This crisis would have died down a
week ago if it hadn't been for you lot! Rubath is the same as any
Middle East country; no worse and a good deal better than some, and
everything'd be all right here if you people' hadn't settled on us like a
lot of bloody blowflies, to make money out of us, and without boobies all
over the world to take your dirt sefiously you wouldn't be able to do it!
And I can tell you how most of you get your news, too, in case the rest
of the world doesn't know : He seid that nearly all the news came
from Rubath native reporters, that meant natives of Rubath. 'Every time
a stone goés through somebody's window there's a story,' he said, 'and
you 're all sitting in the bars slopping the whisky down your gullets
waiting for the stuff to come in. What a moral life! And you've got.
the guts to hand out morality in your daily newspapere! Ied like to see
any of you spend a week in this palace - - I mean off-season, when we
haven't the pleasure. of entertaining riff-raff from all over the world -
without going off your nuts from boredom and loneliness! Well, I've
stuck it for twenty years and I've enjoyed it. I respect these people,
and I admire the sheikh. Well,' he went on, 'I'll tell you about thèse
native reporters.. There was one little skirmish last week that was
prettily staged by the interested parties and the story all about it got
through to the Tigris bar before it actually happened. These Rubath
reporters are an even more illiterate and unscrupulous lot than you!
They 're the sons of doctors and lawyers who wanted their children to
inherit a better world ww well, they did, they got their better world,
they've lined their pockets out of the misery of the people! And I can


tell you these boys know no more .about the lives of ordinary people in
this country than you arrant knights of the Tigris bar do! Two of them
have got- a school certificate which any bloody fool could pass at the age
of fifteen! And one of them hasn't got anything! I know, because I
taught "em-myself. You may have noticed that their mistakes in grammar
are the same as mine. Well, some of you might have noticed - the
diplomatic correspondents; the others, I suppose, phone their stuff
across to save themselves the shame of putting it down on paper! Those
reporters, I repeat, are ley-abouts and raggamuffins, and I should be. very
surprised if any of them had a thought beyond this evening's 6ex!"
Creed ended by saying that the receipts of the two hotel bars
were umparalleled, and that since he had shares in thesé hotels himself
he wouldn't come off too badly. He was thinking cf setting up a fund
for the religious conversion of journalists everywhere to Islam. There
were interruptions all the 'way through his speech, but he showed no
awareness of this and spoke through a microphone, with a stout bodyguard
standing in front of him. The laughter was sometimes uproarious, and
at the end some of the journalists sang 'For he's a jolly good fellow!'
When he'd finished talking he got up abruptly and without another glance
at them strode through the beads of a doorway and was lost to sight.
It didn't command the headlines. Creed was a minor figure now.
Dick read the speech out, swinging in his chair, and everyone enjoyed it
immensely. It was the first real human voice of the crisis, breaking
through the bleak, metallic sheet of the daily news that Hid the light.
Pinkie and Hanni were thrilled by it, and laughed and clapped their hands.
The papers treated it like a music-hall joke. A few papers published
amused biographical notes about him with a malicious undertone. He was


now a Muslim. He was teetotal and he spike fluent Arabic ae but in
the way these things were mentioned they didn't seem virtues.
Apparently, Creed had sent a note along to 'one of the most combre
diplomatic correspondents', as he called him, in the Rubath National, after
the press-conference, saying that in view of the money they were putting
into his' pockets via the hotel-bars, would they take into consideration
as well that he had shares in some of the local brothels, and perhaps
patronise them under a police-escort which he would be glad to provide?
This wasn't reported in the papers; Dick brought it in, having got it
from somebody in the Middle East department. Journalists had nick-named
Creed 'the queen of Rubath', he said.
A' letter came from Mohammed. He said there had been a few quiet
arrests in the last few days and that there were more police on the streets
than he'd ever seen before. The communists were biding their time; they
were plentiful and armed. One day they would strike, he added. There
was a heavy police-guard outside the Mesopotamia and also the British
consulate. But otherwise nothing had changed. He went to the garden of,
the Mesopotamia as usual in the evening, and sat swinging in one of the
hammocks: 'I miss you too much, my dear, "he added? a man and his son
had come to Basrah from a village a hundred, miles away, on foot, and found
the daughter of their family working in a brothel, and to 'wipe out the
dishonour' they had made her walk along the railway track leading towards
home and followed behind her, then given her little cuts in her back with
daggers all the way, until she collapsed and died. He said everyone was
talking about Rubath and Mr. Creed in the cafes. The Arab saying, "All
Englishmen are spies' was repeated everywhere. There was no doubt that


Mr.- Creed was a spy for the British. 'I thank God you do not come back.
It is too safe.' He meant 'unsafe'; this was a peculiar error he always
made, omitting négative prefixes. He said that at the trials of the
rebel-officers in Rubath the defense-lawyer had been in the pay of the
public prosecutor, and that they were both 'lovers' of Mr. Creed. The
last time Mohammed was in Rubath he lost 'two month at poker'; he always
measured money by, his monthly wage, at least when he talked to Granville,
calling thirty pounds 'one. month', sixty pounds 'two month' and s0 forth.
iMy dear," he would say, "I think I spend one month on one outsider this
afternoon. I have one good tip!"
There were fluent attacks on the government at meetings held in
London. One of the labour party leaders asked what had happened to the
plans set forth by the so-called Home Office in Rubath five years ago -
plans for the building of at least fifteen schools and.another hospi tal,
for the establishment of a doctor in every village that had a population
of over five hundred people, and the irrigation of large areas of the
desert to relieve the appalling high disease and mortality rate in the
rural districts. What had happened to the money set aside for this
purpose from the vast oil profits made by the sheikh? He had evidence
that nothing whatsoever had been done! It was little wonder, he said,
that some army officers were after the sheikh's blood! Were the British
government prepared not simply to stand by and watch it but actively
condone it, and to support with 'arms the murder of men whose only crime
had been a sense of social justice such as was accepted everywhere in
Europe as elementary and unchallengeable? Was Britain going back instead
of forward? And in whose name? In the name of the British people, who
had not less than a hundred years before fought for all these rights that


Rubath was now claiming, and won them? What mandate had the British
government for its conduct?
Dick showed him this speech, but Granville shrugged it off. The
tone annoyed him. It was the usual slick indignation you read nowadays.
He stuck to his guns, in the, kitchen-arguments, flowering silently.
'Ginger' asked him why he took such a pukka sahib attitude. - He felt
lonely and misunderstood: his skin prickled as if he was under imminent
physical attack, and he couldn't look at the others calmly when politics
came up. He kept repeating that it wasn't a matter of morals at all;
it was just a matter of one group fighting another. But morality did
sometimes come in. The police fired on children one day.
In nearly all the kitchen-discussions England was in the wrong.
And he took this for granted * it did seem natural that England should
always be in the wrong. 'England' meant different things at different
times - sometimes it meant bad weather, at others war-time restrictions
which were still lingering on, sometimes bad colonial policies, at others
stiffness of character. It was a static descriptive term, pejorative,
automatically so, as if everybody would naturally understand the inference,
'England'. He'd become so used to it that when Linger-Longer and Ginger
talked like this in the crisis he found it natural. But what was going
to happen if England was frittered away like this all the time? What
would happen to their little group in the kitchen, and the language they
talked? It was almost like a change of consciousness in him! He was
awed at himself, with puzzlement and shame, at his nev position. One
didn't defend England! Defend something impregnable? The inference
was that she could withstand endless criticism! But how long could that
go on for? How much frittering away would she be able to bear, in her


heart, from her own people? Hanni said one day that England had been
the 'fairyland' of her childhood, when she was living in Kurdistan, and
Pinkie replied that she couldn't understand how anybody could possibly
regard England as a fairyland, with a laugh! But Hanni replied that it
still was partly for her, especially when she walked round the streets of
London alone, or stayed in the country. "Oh," Pinkie said to this as if
it was quite a different subject, "the country's lovely."
With so much eaten away abroad, how much of this tiny island
could be eaten away from inside as well? It wasn't a matter of politics.
It. was a matter of touching the heart and soul again, and listening, to
find out what they were. 'England! was a convenient whipping-post for
rising people at home and abroad, and for the country which now controlled
the western world, America. It even produçed a little reflex of shame
to have a sense of concern.
The castigation was now comnon speech. It was a kind of easy
journalese - 1 even Linger-Longer and Lucy went in for it. It was
fancy-dress thinking, and went well with wine and flirting in the kitchen
and staying up late. The talk made it seem that being English was
something separate from what thèy all were. Ginger claimed she was
Irish: anything foreign added a bit of colour! Foreigners had the right
to propose themselves to other people as Arabs, as Frenchmen, as Cypriots
or Chinese. But being - 'English' didn't mean the same. What was going
to happen to the world if all sense of place, if the heart and soul of
the birth-place was left to die in people, and a dream of 'abroad'
substituted? In that case no place would have a real heart after a time;
you wouldn't be able to visit anywhere in the world and say it was a place!
Being English in Pinkie's sense, when she said it in a certain


tone, meant 'pompous' or 'stiff', it meant the hard-driving class that
had once managed affairs. When she was intimate and gay she never
thought of calling herself English: she apparently had no nationality then!
But her laughter was English; her light eyes and her way of listening,
her. face quite open to anything that might be said, in deference, seeming
unsure of herself; and her sureness underneath, that made her pout her
lips and look patrician' as Dick said; and her fair skin, her long easy
stride: these were English: He could tell now what Mohammed and the
clerks meant when they had called her - 'the English.flower'. And the
independence of heart when everybody leaned forward in the kitchen arguing
and shouting was English. as well; why did they want to deny it? What
deeper did we have in us but place, which meant country? We could do
the silliest things, with apparently no meaning at all, but place endowed
them with meaning! Pinkie and Dick and Ginger would all stick out a mile
anywhere abroad as English people. Then surely they had to stand by
themselves, in their Englishness, at some point? That would be logical
if they believed in Arabs doing so!
He askéd Dick oncé, "Does England mean anything to you, really?"
"How do you mean?" Dick looked at him closely, with flickering
eyes. "In connection with Rubath and all that, do you mean?"
"In a 'way, yes."
Dick was abrupt, turning away frcm him. "I wouldn't live in any
other country in the world, I can tell you that much. Listen f! He
turned back to him with an unusual sternness. "It's you who're always
off and about, isn't it? I tell you, I'd never be able to stick Basrah
like' you. Well, draw your own conclusions. What do you want me to
wear the Union Jack round my shirt-cuff?"


He felt contrite. But still his argument persisted in silence.
We'd got to connect it all up with our ideas again, this sense of our
country. We couldn't go on picking away at the fabric without knowing
what we were picking away at: We'd got to avoid the power-talk of the
past; we mustn't 'believe' in England, as if it was separate from us;
we'd got to find out what it was, inside our veins. We couldn't just
leave it to expand or wither away. We had to know
We had to find out
where our civilisation had come from: We couldn't leave it to flow
through us, hoping for the best. And he didn't know where it came from
any more than Dick did; he took it for granted in the same way; he left
it uuntended' We had to look into it again, and recover oursselves; see
what we had lost; we had to know what journeys had been undertaken and
where they had led us.
The crisis was a respite from the usual nervous life; thinking was
permissible a everybody was doing a little bit of it, and the usual raw
air of uncontained desires in the house, the strange comings and goings,
the oblique look in Pinkie's eye, the hint of Grove in the background -
'Grove', 'Grove', it was a special hollow, doomed sound for him - were
abated for a while.
It focussed his interest and he even got down to writing the
first pages of his report. He outlined the idea of a new class having
come into being in the Middle East, without using the word 'class'. The
more education there was,' he wrote, the better the standard of living for
professional' people, and the more chance there was of riots. The
students did most of the shouting; they were the ones who in a short time
would also be professional' people; they demonstrated because they felt
that their future life offered no place for their ideas. Now a trading


company had to identify itself with them in some way. It could start
by treating its own Arab employees better; he then went on to compare
Mohammed's salary with his own. He made a table, comparing the wages of
clerks in England, taken from civil service statistics, and the wages of
clerks working for TII.M., as an average. He thought it quite clever.
The table had a professional look!
He also said that the Arabs would have to go through their
'nineteenth century'. This would cut across religion; the Koran would
no longer be read. It would cut across 'divine privilege'. Nothing
could prevent it; and so a trading company might as well help it. The
'nineteenth century' meant an administered 'plan of life', that is, life
stemming from conscious acts of mind, not from conditions that were passed
on and inherited blindly. But he struck it all out. It sounded
opportunistic. And it lcoked mystical after the tables of wages. Also
who was he to be helping the 'nineteenth century'? To hell with it!
He put the report aside.


CHAPTER 16.
The crisis was like war being declared for a few days; everybody's
thoughts were mobilised. The books he'd got out of the library were
unread, and he no longer thought of going to a concert. He read the
papers from cover to cover. 'Opinion' came in from all over the world,
like a collective, headless creature. There was public opinion, military
opinion, Arab opinion, official opinion, popular opinion (which wasn't
quite public opinion), and informed ppinion. It seemed to be a way of
describing what a few people, or perhaps only one person, had said, without
naming him; 80 that the style and an infallible ring as if an all-seeing
eye had written it, with special access to all the thoughts people had
everywhere. Since, partly because of the clamour of the press for
immediate news, the real negotiating between the governments was going
on in secret, by telegram and over the phone, there was little to report,
the language was getting emptier and emptier, the sound and style of all-
seeing authority was getting more and more shaky.
Glenning said he'd heard from somebody high-up in the foreign
office that America had given a warning to Moscow, secretly, that they
were seriously prepared to fight for the Middle East; and thus any further
developments would just be publicity-stuff', because Russia didn't want
a war. The publicity-stuff' could take several forms. For instance,
Moscow might demand that British troops be vithdrawn from Rubath, if she


got the notion that America was pressing for it as well; then it would
look as if the presence of Russian troops on the Persian border had
Erightened Britain off; which would be valuable publicity for the Russians.
He added that also the British might hang on in Rubath to save their faces;
they might already have made an agreement with the Americans to this
effect. The press, he said, had 'cooked their goose' since the war,
through their. headline mania; government etatements everywhere were more
and more publicity hand-outs. Because of the press, he said, a
government could do any wickedness if it got its public relations right.
There was a rumour that America wouldn't support England in a
showdown. There'd been a statement from Washington questioning the
desirability of the sheikh of Rubath retaining Creed as his advisor; this
was interpreted as a warning to England that she must 'go it alone'.
Again Russia renewed her pressure; there was a second demonstration
outside the British Enbassy in Moscow. There was a possibility of England
being isolated! The papers sounded alarmed. Suppose America and
Russia came together with a mutual agreement on the Middle East? No,
that was out of the question, one newspaper's 'informed opinion' said;
but another newspaper's informed opinion' said the opposite. What
public opinion' and 'popular opinion' thought now didn't matter; it was
a question of survival! There was an increasing 'demand' for the
withdrawal of British troops from Rubath. There were statements from
politicians all over the world to that effect. There were sober statements,
indignant statements, wise and considered stat tements, and statesman-like
statements. Some politicians made them to win andelection; some to keep
their oppositions quiet; some to court 'Arab opinion', or available
opinion anywhere; and some because nearly everybody else was doing it. 7


And some were dragged into it at the last minute, by a 'public outcry' at
their silence.
There was a second American statement questioning whether the
sheikh wasn't in a sufficiently strong position not to need foreign help
in his country; here were two negatives, which made the sense ambiguous
at first sight, but the papers interpreted it as another warning to
England to get out of Rubath and suffer the loss of face as well. Glenning
stuck to his line that it was publicity-stuff: America wanted to keep up
its publicity,as an anti-colonial power in case it got into colonial
trouble of its own, for instance in the Panama canal.
Englishmen had to be careful where they walked in Arab cities, the
papers said. There was no case of violence but one or two people had
been surrounded and jeered at. He wondered, with a timid feeling,
whether Mohammed would greet him as a friend again. Politics filled the
air; for the time being English facesabroad were vulnerable with politics!
He was glad he hadn't gone, by the. grace of God. He remembered.seeing
one of his own clerks in the riot outside the Mesopotamia hotel from
which Mohammed had rescued him, and how this man who had taken tea with
him only the morning before had scowled and stared into his face as he
passed with black, blind eyes swimming with hatred, almost like desire;
Granville's sensation was an animal one, ofibeing-possedsed momentarily
by another creature, in its claws, about to be eaten - there was a
breath of horror and fear through his body but at the same time a passive,
paralysed fascination that made the body soft, in obedience to the bleak
sightlessness in the preying beast's eyes. And the following day they
again had tea together, and the man appeared not even to remember the
incident.


'To hell with it!' he thought. He'd stay in his own country!
He wasn't going to go out there to provide his clerks with another face
to work off their hatred on! No, no! He'd got a life of his own. He
found. himself getting indignant even with Mohammed, and had to remind
himself that Mohammed hadn't said a word of the subject.
It also rankled with him that he couldn't go to Dick with a clear
argument which would give all the pros and cons of the matter. Where did
he stand? Was he for or against British troops remaining in Rubath? Was
he for or against the sheikh of Rubath? Yes or no? Well, it couldn't
be stated so simply! All right
as a concession, yes: against; if the
press was. interested one could have put it out to the press - yes;
against! Very well, then, since you are against what about the British
troops in Rubath? Now the British troops - : Yes or no? But it
couldn't be treated so simply! So it went on, hammering all day.
He said to Dick that he hated all this 'moral indignation'.
"Don't you think moral indignation's justified," Dick asked him,
"when people are. shot without trial and that sort of thing?"
"Yes, but --!" The number of times he'd said yes-but in the
last few days! "This reform movement isn't to get rid of one set of
people because they're wicked and put in another set because they're
good!" Dick was silent. "Why," Granville went on in a lighter voice,
"do you think it is?"
'Yes'; there it was. And all he could say was 'no'!
A friend of Pinkie's called Elizabeth Bewley-Patton phoned her
up and told hèr that she'd heard this might turn into a 'big show'. Her
husband was high-up in the Admiralty.


"It looks as if you won't ever be going back to Basrah, " Pinkie
said to him.
He noticed she said 'you' again. "Oh, I don 't know," he replied.
"It'll probably blow over!"
In the middle of all this his parents came over. It was a
relief. They were the first sane voices he'd heard for days. Slowly
as they sat there he was brought back to a sense of place, anchored again,
with intimate thoughts. It was all distant for them, the crisis
the world outside Abbott's Field had always been distant. The moment
they came into the doorway downstairs he felt a new flush of life. He'd
asked Pinkie to get off early from the office, and she was upstairs
getting the tea. Also Hanni, to his surprise, said she'd come, and
return to the office-in the evening.
They stood there smiling at him, the street behind them, and he
was aware at once that his usual life in the house was in a certain rhythm,
slow and halting, in a numbed silence, and that theirs was quick, with
the throb of life in it and a silence as well, but silence full of change
and motion. There was a sense of bustle, but of life, not of the heavy
will or mind forcing the pace; it was the exciting rustle of a, dress before
a party, not the important sound of status and power; it was the rustle
of intimate life, as in childhood. For a moment he felt like a child
as he stood there greeting them, as if caught up in their arms again,
his breath taken away!
He bent down to kiss his mother'as she stepped into the dark hall,
and she murmured with a smile, her cheeks flushed, "Come on, about time


we saw a bit of each other, isn't it? What've you been up to all this
He shook hands with his father, who said quietly, "Nice to see
you again, son."
There was a richness in their voices, lulling and enchanting,
that at once embraced him, making room for all the tiny unspoken things
in a creature, the hidden follies and scrapes, and brought the world down
to glances and the warm flow between people, to the actual moment alive
between them. How exciting it was to be having tea! The kettle would
make its special little whistle when it boiled, and the electric fire
would glow in the hearth, and the carpet in the music-room, the deep
armchairs and the divan, the little coffee-table and the long curtains
would suddenly appear extraordinarily luxurious and comfortable, as he'd
never seen them, before! There was a glow inside things, just as there
was in Abbott's Road. It wasn't that they made tea-time important by
flurry; but that any moment between people was the top importance.
Usually when there was tea in the music-room it felt as if a time-limit
had been set on the proceedings and. that at any minute people would be
up and off, back to the routine of life from which this had been a brief
and by inference illusory departure. Or someone would be clever and
amusing: that would 'give tea its meaning! Or soméone important would
call and tea was given a special, spurious social glow, that passed muster
in the middle-class world for the glow of life! But it was never exciting
in this way, for itsélf, without any reference beyond the actual moment
to what people's status was outside, or to their cleverness of talk, or
even to the talk whatever it was: the talk flowed frox the moment, as
the silences did, too; it was the glow of the moment itself that counted!


His father still had his keen and yet. dreamy gaze. His mother
was a little greyer, perhaps; that was all. She gazed at him for a
momeht with shrewd, dark eyes, and then they all started upstairs:
"Well, son, how are you keeping?" came his father's voice, with
its keen, inquisitive edge, from behind him.
"Oh, all right, thanks! Are you all right?"
"Not too bad!" his father cried. Then he added in a tone that'
meant a leg-pull, "Bit too much work in the house, that's all!"
"Go on,, I like to hear you talk," his mother said, taking up the
tone in an acknowledged, ritual manner. "Anybody'd think he was a poor,
hard-done-by creature, wouldn't they, Philip?" Granville laughed. She
puffed at the first landing and leaned on the bannister for a moment.
"Blimey, you've got some stairs here, haven't you?"
"You're getting old, that's your trouble!" his father said, coming
level with her. "Here, give us your arm!"
"Now wait a minute, don't go s0 fast - - what's the matter?"
His father pulled at her arm jokingly, and winked at him. "Have
to help the old lady sometimes!"
His mother had plump cheeks and a little line at the corner of
- her mouth as if from setting her chin in a determined way; her eyes were
tired but her old, divining "look was still there. Wisps of grey hair
came over her brow. His father' had put on his Sunday best, with a
trilby hat over his eyes, and black, polished shoes.
"Pinkie at home?" camé his father's voice again. This time
there was the smallest hesitation. in his tone.
"Oh, yes! She's upstairs getting the tea ready."
"That's right. We could just do with a cup of tea! How 's


she keeping, all right?"
"Oh, yes, she's fine!"
"Keep her in order,.do you?" his father asked with the suggestion
of a laugh.
"That's right! They need it, son, you take it from med."
"Oh, listen: to that," his mother said, glancing at him as they
struggled up the stairs,"quite the little tyrant, isn't he?"
"Well, who's the boss, then?" his father asked.
"I know who does the housework, that's all I know!" She smiled
at Granville. "Of course, they don't think that's real work!"
"Who does the washing-up, then?"
"Al1 right, all right, just because you do a bit of washing-up
once in a while!"
"Once in a while? Cord ---!" 'He gasped in an exagerated way.
"I like that! Every dinner-time, you mean!" his father added, just as
Pinkie came down to meet them, full of smiles.
She stretched her hand out to his father first. "Hullo, there!"
"Hullo, my duck, how are you?"
She looked tall and robust, towering above them from the landing
above. His father grasped hold of her with a hearty movement, almost
pulling her over, and gave her a smacking kiss on her lips. Her eyes
lost their vagueness for a moment, blazing slightly from the quick,
overwhelming contact.
"How are you, my girl," his father repeated, gazing into her eyes,
"all right?" -
"Fine, thanks! Are you all right?"


"Oh, not 60 dusty! Getting old, you know, that's all!"
Then Pinkie kissed his mother and said, "Hullo, Mrs. Granville,
how are you?"
"All right, thanks, dear. You look well!" There was a. quiet
confidence between them. "How do you like it out there?"
"Oh, it's lovely," Pinkie said in a mild voice. "Sun all the
"From what Philip was saying there's a bit too much of it at
times, isn't there?"
"Well, it gets unbearable about this time of year. Last year it
was ghastly!"
"Was it, really? Still, you both look well on it, anyhow!"
They walked into the music-room.
"Well, this hasn't. changed," his father murmured, eyeing everything.
"I expect you're glàd to be back in a way, aren't you; Philip?"
"Oh, yes! It's nice to be back in these rooms again, I'd almost
forgotten what they looked like!"
"That's.right, you do, don't you, when you've been away all that
Pinkie told them about the report he'd been given to do, and the
extra leave.
His father laughed. "Cord, I bet you're sorry, aren't you, son?
Another month's leave?"
"Yes, it'was quite a surprise!"
"Take it easy while you can," his father said. "That's my motto!"
And when they were seated he went on, "And what does the old country look


like after two years?" He smiled across at Pinkie. "Not so, dusty, eh?"
"Not too bad!" She smiled, too. "I could do with more of it!"
"Of course you could!"
"It's funny," his mother said, "you can have all the comforts in
the world, can't you, but if it's not in your own country it's never the
same, really, is it?"
"Hark at who's talking!"-1 his father cried. "What do you know
about it? You've never been abroad, have you?"
"No, but " She glanced across to Pinkie. "It's obvious,
isn't it? It's never going to be the same if it isn't your own. country,
is it?"
"Well, it isn't for me," Pinkie replied. "I don 't think you
really relax if you're abroad all the time."
"That's right." She turned to his father. "See, clever dick?
You don' 't know everything!"
He laughed. "No, nor do you!"
His mother put her hand-bag down by the side of her chair, near
her left foot, as she always did when on a visit. It looked so comfortable
lying there: it suggested an exciting visit to him, from childhood
association. She bent down and opened the clasp, then felt inside for
a tiny frilled handkerchief she always carried, and deftly wiped her lips
with it. He remembered she d always: carried a little bag of cachous at
one time, in the shape of tiny hearts and stars, coloured bright red and
yellow and blue, to suck.
"Well," she said, settling herself again after she'd put the
handkershief back, "we've been having some funny warther lately, haven't
we? Sumny one minute and cloudy the next. Talk about August! It's


more like December, isn't it?"
"Yes," Pinkie replied, "we started using fires again last week."
"So did we!" his father said, crooking one leg over the other,
his head back. "I said to mum, come on, I said, let's get that fire
alight, it's chilly in here!" He added with reminiscent surprise, "And
it was, too."
"Then we didn't have any' wood to start it," his mother murmured,
looking at Pinkie again confidentially. "Well, you don't think of it in
the middle of summer, do you? Still, we got it alight somehow, with
some old scraps!"
"Of course," his father said, "at one time we used to light it
regular in the summer to get the water hot, didn't we?"
There was a pause. "What do you mean, at one time? Anybody'd
think it was twenty years ago to hear you talk?" his mother cried.
Pinkie chuckled, hearing the familiar approach of an argument
between them.
"Well, how long ago was it, then? his father asked, a determined
and yet baffled expression on his face.
"How long do you think it was?" she asked quietly in return.
"Ohk about five years, I should think," he replied, winking at
Pinkie because he was really doubtful about this.
"Five years?" She shifted in her seat. "You must be crackers!"
"Well, it's four. Young Philip was home, I know that!
"What, when we had the heater put in?"
"Don't talk rot, for Christ's sake!"
"Well, didn't he come down and say, they'd put the, wrong switch


on or something -?"
"Oh, no." He looked lame and added in a soft voice, "That was
young Will, wasn't it?" This was Granville's, eldest brother.
His mother shook her head and chuckled, turning to Pinkie: "I
don 't know - this man! I've never known anybody get his dates and
years mixed up like him! Anyway," she added, looking across at him again,
"he didn't say anything about the switch being wrong, he said they ought
to put it outside the ba throom door instead of inside, so we could writch
the water on without going in every time, and it's safer."
"Yes, well," his father said, going headlong into the argument
again, "that's more than three years ago, I bet!"
"What?" She leaned forward, to deliver her thrust slowly. I "That
was last year, soppy date!"
"Last year? Will wasn't home last year!"
"What do you mean, Will wasn't home?"
"What I say!"
Pinkie was enjoying hersélf thoroughly.
"When was Will home, then?" his mother asked in her quiet tone
again.
"Will?" He sounded as if the name hadn't been uttered before..
He looked sheepish for a moment, pausing. Then he murmured, "Two years
ago, wasn 't it?"
"Two years! It was last yéar!" -
"Don't talk rot!"
She shifted in her seat again, beyond her patience. "It was
last year, I tell you!"


"Last year? I can remember that heater over the bath two
Christmasses ago, anyway? What are you talking about, last year?"
"You can remember what?"
"That heater over the bath the Christmas before last!"
"Oh, you can, can you?" She winked at Pinkie. "Well,you're a
marvellous man, because that heater wasn't even manufactured two years
ago. It only came out last year."
"What?" She imitated his 'bark', as she always called it.
"Just think it out!"
There was a pause. And then, as always at the end of one of
their arguments, his father said quietly, his eyes raieed in puzzlement,
"Oh, yes, that's right. Will got home on my birthday, didn't he? I
was sixty-four, wasn't I?"
"And when was that?"
"Last year."
"The bell's rung at last! she.said with a laugh. "He always gets
there in the end, even if you do have to drag him!"
Granville was always the official tea-maker of the house, and as
he was going upstairs to do it, Pinkie having prepared all the other
things, his mother said in the tone of protective intinacy she always used
when he was a child, "Make it nice and strong, won 't you, duck?"
Hanni came later and helped, moving round the room with a plate
of cakes, smiling and listening attentively to everything his parents
said, but saying little herself. It seemed a nostalgic pleasure for her.,
She made extra sandwiches and cut the crust off so that they looked most
professional, and she arranged them round the plate on a paper doily in


a little design. Pinkie let. her more of less take over.
Granville put two heaped teaspoonfulls of sugar in his own tea.
and his mother at once exclaimed, "Good God Almighty! The way you pile
it in! You're drinking toffee, my dear!" She turned to Pinkie:
"You ought to have seen what I used to spend on sugar when these boys
were kids! Talk about sweet tooths!"
"Yes, we've never taken much of the stuff ourselves, have we?"
his father said quietly. ."Never moré than half a teaspoon."
"No, it's funny. You'd think they'd take after you, wouldn't you?"
Pinkie nodded and murmured, "Yes", in her bored way, very alowly,
her eyes gazing into the distance. It was becoming a strain for her.
He only hoped she'd last out: she could be so rude sometimes, getting up
and going off to paint her lips or something, in her room. She always
refused to make a false effort. And, indeed, this room where they were
sitting was made for raw desires, and cleverness, and arguments on long
summer evenings, and secret, unfaithful dreams, and bottles of wine on
the coffee table, leaving the same round stain each time, and sombre
thoughts that were too reflective for Abbott's Road. But the strain wasn 't
in Hanni. She sat there curled on the floor at the foot of the divan,
perfectly at home, like a child.
His mother made a comfortable sigh after her first few sips and
said to him, "Mm, this is a lovely cup of tea, son."
"Yes," his father said, smacking his lips deliberately, "nice cup
of tea!"
Pinkie told them that Hanni had been born not far from Basrah, but
Hanni didn't enlarge on it and from there they went on to the crisis.
The crisis! He'd forgotten it! And now it seemed to have lost its


sting.
"It looks as if they want to damned-well start another war,
doesn 't it?" his mother said.
"What do you think, Philip?" his father asked. "Do you think
there'll be any trouble?"
"No, I'don't think s0. These things usually blow over, don't
"Well, I always say they make these damned crises to keep the
people on their toes," his mother murmured. Then she asked in a higher,
more .open tone, "Doesn't that affect you going back, Philip?"
"I haven 't heard anything yet," he said. "I shouldn't think so.' #t
"Well, you don't want - to go out there and get mixed up in one of
those riots again, do you, Pinkie?"
"I suppose it's the old story, isn't it?" his father said.
"Keeping the people down, then wondering why there's trouble."
"That's right."
"They can keep their wars as far as I'm concèrned, anyhow," his
mother murmured.
"They. certainly can! One's enough for me!" Pinkie cried, waking
"Well, we've been through two, and as far as I can see they didn't
bring anybody any good, either of them."
"No, we don't want any more of that lark in a hurry," his father
said. "Cord 'blige me," he added reminiscently, gazing at the floor,
"those raids wé used to get!"
"Go on," his mother cried with a laugh, changing her tone, "what


do you know about it? You were asleep all the time!"
"Asleep?" his father asked with a smile. "I don't know what
you mean, dear. You know the trouble I have sleeping!"
""Yes, that's right! The way he used to snore through them raids,"
she went on to Pinkie. "I used to shake him - 'Come on, wake up,
there's something coming down on top of us!' I used to get: scared out
of my wits. Not him! He used to wake up all dopey and say,, 'What's
the matter? Why the hell don't you let me sleep?"
"Well, a man needs his sleep, doesn't he, Pinkie?"
"Not like you sdeep!" his mother cried. "Talk about snore!"
"That's right, she used to wake me up in the middle of the night
when we was down the cellar and say, 'Stop snoring! I - can't hear the
bombs! 1I1
"Oh, I did use to get frightened! I used to listen to the
whistles and think, 'I wonder if that one's. for us!' And there was he
snoring all the time!"
"Well, what's the use of worrying, that's what I say!"
"I used to say in the. morning, 'That was a terrible raid last
night,' and he'd say 'What raid, I didn't hear anything!"
He felt a pleasant drowsiness as their voices went on quietly,
so protective, as in childhood, taking over from each other smoothly.
The street outside, bare and bleak in the chill wind, was remote from
them, and the low, dazzling-grey sky. His father's shoes reminded him
of the heavy boots that the men had once worn, carefully laced up and
polished; the silence had always throbbed in those days, as it was doing
now. All the sounds outside had had an intimate tone, as if they belonged
to the warm, enclosed room and weren't foreign and impartial as they


usually were.
He imagined leaning over the table in Abbott's Road
reading about the crisis: the heavy, black headlines would seem to
describe an angry state of affairs over the roof-tops and far away, like
something in the sky; the sky was of such importance there - it brought
80 much from the outside world; there were the storms, the flashes from
the trains passing in the distance, the voices over the radio reading the
news - the bombers that had come in the- war, the searchlights, the
flaming aircraft that sometimes floated down in the night making a howling
sound that turned the sky. into a kind of domed hall where there was no
distance! Why hadn't he gone over to Abbott's Road for a visit? He
had a moment of panic. He'd left it too late! There was only a month
left. He ought to be going down there more and more. Supposing his
parents died, he'd never be able to go there again; his roots would
disappear; the tiny house would go to someone else! He had the sense
of trying to snatch at something. He was trying to snatch something
across the division in his life. 'When will I get my life straight?'
he asked himself. There was this inertia that clouded his will, clouded
his heart! Where had he been since he left their world? They sat there
unaware of any change in him. He answered their questions and nodded,
feeling ponderous and slow compared with them; how quick their world was!
Downstairs, when they were going, his mother turned to him and
said, "What a nice girl that + Hanni is, isn't she?" He nodded, and then
they kissed goodbye. He'd be coming over to see them, in the next week,
or perhaps the week after. And Pinkie? It depended on her job. She'd
only just managed to get that afternoon off, he said; he invented this
quite freely. But perhaps they'd both come over on a Saturday, when she
was free. They ought all to" go out somewhere, perhaps for the day.


And they waved from the street. "Good bye, son!"
Upstairs there was renewed movement. The usual rhythm was back
again. Pinkie was in the bathroom getting ready to go out, and Hanni
was making herself some sandwiches to eat at the office later that evening.
They were calling out to each other between the two floors, talking about
the man nicknamed 'Joe Clockwork' whom Hanni had been out with the previous
Saturday. He heard her say with a spluttering laugh that 'Clockwork' had
large ears, and Pinkie also laughed. They seemed in charge of themselves
again, after the brief interlude of his parents; there was more crackle
in the house. He returned to it reluctantly, with fatigue. He thought
of his parents arriving back home, perhaps at this moment. They would
open the front door and bustle inside; probably his mother would say, "I'm
dying for another cupof tea, aren't you?" They would lay the cloth
perhaps, take off their shoes and then open the little box by the fireplace
where their slippers were kept. There would be a whist-drive later on,
or a dance at Tatlin Broadway. Soon they'd be starting to get dressed,
washing first, with a dim light in the scullery, then pulling out drawers
and opening the wardrobe in the bedroom upstairs, the thought of a crowded
and smoky hall before them -
Pinkie and Hanni were going out together. It was Tuesday, and -
so, he thought, Pinkie should have no ambiguous appointments ahead of her.
She "said she was meeting someone in the firm to 'check up on something',
and she'd be back for dinner.
The evening paper only made a reference to Russian manoevres on
the Persian border which everyone had expected in any case. The
atmosphere of politics drifted back like a slow foul breath from the street.
Pinkie and Hanni left the house and everything was quiet. His parents'


presence was still in the room. The sounds outside were sad - people's
quick steps and a car brushing past. When it began to get dark he. took
a record from the pile on the floor, behind one of the armchairs. They
were dusty and scratched, and some of them, including his precious
Schubert impromptus, were broken. He stared at the black, shiny
fragménts and was surprised to be feeling no shock or regret. What did
it matter? They were dead objects, without intimacy or touch! They
fitted the ghost-life he was leading: men playing instruments, but unseen,
at another time and place; borne to him by ingenuity, voices coming from
nowhere while the intimate heart lay still, receiving it, alone and at
one remove, staring into space, inert like a bundle of nerves and guts that
had been discarded in the movement of history!
He found 'Fidelio', and happily all the records were intact. He
put on the beginning of the second act and from the moment of the first
note everything changed. He hadn 't put on a real record since his return.
It began to flood through him and opened all his fibres and the channels of
his being. Music! Tears flooded to his eyes. The notes seemed never
to have been made on, the earth; and he seemed néver in his life before to
have heard pure sounds! There was also a perfect, solemn rightness in
the notes as well, as if there couldn't be another arrangement for them
and the order had been made before life started. He waited for the
prisoner in the dungeon to begin his 'Welch dunkel hier!' And then it
began, breaking out in a marvellous-and unbearably beseeching way from the
other notes. He was in a state of collapse and subservience, yet strong
as well, the tears pouring down his cheeks in a rush as if his face had
nothing to do with their activity; but at the same time, again, there
was the order underneath, the total rightness of it all./ The music entered


pain with terrific firmness and insight. He could feel the man leaning
forward in the dark, as in a performance he'd seen at the Graz opera
house a few weeks after the war had ended, when he'd travelled down to
Austria, when everything had been crushed and burdened in war and distaste;
and this same voice had climbed out of the darkness with the same beseeching
distress, crying for freedom! This freedom was like a lover; in the song
there was frightened, tender sensuous yearning for it, for the touch of
her dress, for a glance if that was all she could afford! And Beethoven
himself seemed to be leaning forward as well, through this man, inside his
voice, touching the listener with a clam hand on his knee, in such intimacy,
from the other side of life, comforting and yet always showing you the
darkness unflinchingly, s0 that even in the darkness of the prison there
was order! Thé music poured over him and through all his fibres
'What have I been doing all this time?' he thought! 'Where has my life
been?' For music. always did this as well: it took the strands of your
silent life and drew them together, seeing if they would go together,
trying for the harmony and putting you on the path again. How could he have
gone so long without this purity? Even at the concerts he hadn't caught
this moment: it was always a moment - music was never a static thing
lying before you, never the same, but a moment, a conjunction, caught,
gone! But this was where his life belonged - to this purity! He
meant to keep it! He refused to let it go! If only he could keep it,
the harmony he had in his hands now! Life was so dry and full of ashes!
He couldn't keep it. It died away..
It was only a moment. The end
of the. song came, when the prisoner imagined being free and seeing
Leonora again, crying 'Leonora! Leonora!" in a mounting beseeching
voice like a sexual cry; and all of a sudden Granville had the sense that


music was the light, was in itself the flash across the sky, not sound
any longer but a being that had an endless existence and could only be
glimpsed! The record ended. A record! It was only a record!
The sounds outside came back. He was calm. He didn't trouble
to dry the tears on his face but lét them roll down into his mouth and
dry slowly, making his skin smart. They were 60 dispassionate from him,
like rain on his cheeks, that he had the impression that Beethoven had
shed them for him; Beethoven had taken on his suffering on his shoulders
and shown where the order and strength in it lay, and the rightness.
It didn't seem wrong to suffer! This made him calm.. He felt in, the
thick of life; suffering was movement through it: It must have cost
Beethoven such pain, he thought. This calm he had now was Beethoven's
gift to him, as pure as the gift from Christ! It was like coming to terms
with his life in its wretchedness; there was an order here, he could feel
the message of it ând received its certainty again. He didn't care if
Pinkie came back early or not; but, as if in reply to his state of
strength, she did come back, with oysters and wine, early, as a treat,
she said! She talked about his parents, and how they always made' her
'feel good'.
The news next day was that there had been more rioting in Rubath,
this time close to the British garrison, and several people .had been killed i
it was uncertain whether by police-bullets or British ones. The British
headquarters there denied that troops had taken part, but all Arab
spokesmen scorned this. The papers talked about an 'outcry' from all
over Asia. It looked as if England had fewer and fewer friends. There
was a big set-to in the kitchen in the evening when everybody assembled.


Glenning said he was sure British troops hadn't taken part, and 'Dick and
the others were against him. One of the girls said there was to be a
demonstration the following Sunday at Trafalgar Square and everybody
ought to turn out. Volunteers were being asked to carry banners, and
she said there was to be a collection for an Arab refugee fund. Glenning
laughed and said it was the first time he'd heard one of her crowd getting
interested in politics. It turned out that the jazz-club she belonged
to had a few people in the labour movement, among them her boyfriend.
He was getting all the girls along. Pinkie asked Dick if he'd known
that Linger-Longer had a boyfriend, and he replied with a genial glance
across the table at her that he'd not only known it but he got a kick
out of it. Hanni hadn't come in at this time, so he could talk freely.
Glenning said that this crisis was breaking up harmonious families
everywhere: men were walking out on their wives. Dick nodded and said
with a perfectly straight face that a woman he'd heard about at the office
had said to her husband, "I forgot to put a pinch of bicarbonate in the
rhubarb,' " and he'd interpreted her as saying, "We've got to dig a trench
and fight it out in Rubath," and had walked out on her at once! There
was also a member of the royal family who'd asked her private secretary
what some ceremony would involve and was told, "Shaking hands all day and
standing, m'm", which she heard as, "The sheikh intends to saay at
Sandringham, I and a suite was prepared at once! Dick rattled all this
out without any hesitation. A préacher in Hyde Park, he added, had
started saying, "I know intimately, and in my youth I was even seduced by,
the shaken creed - : he was going to say 'of materialism', but the crowd
hauled him down from the soap-box at once, having taken him to say 'the
sheikh and Creed.'


Dick was in a good mood and said that whenever he lifted a glass
to his lips he always had a 'fellow feeling' for Creed. He thought of
him - probably 'an old sentimentalist' - festering. in that palace
and calling the sheikh 'darling' at breakfast. "Such a noisy call-to-
prayer this morning, darling - does' it really have to be 8o loud?"
He'd heard that they both had spy-holes called 'Les Voyeurs' in' the walls
of their bedrooms which gave a view of the main guest-room, where they
put anybody 'choice'. Creed would say, "A choice article coming out
from England this week - used to be at school with him - enough was
never enough for that one
just up your street, eh, cheeky-sheek?"
And the sheikh was probably 'a nice enough old boy.' However, Dick added,
if he hadn't been 'by principle' against capital punishment he would have
had both the sheikh and Creed 'tried by an international court-of-law'
and executed if found guilty. This was an astonishing statement coming
so soon after his music-hall act, and Pinkie gave him one of her disbelieving
guffaws. Dick had talked cooly, without unpleasantness.
"I don't believe in executions, " he murmured, "but these boys,
pleasant as they might be, have:incurred the wrath of mankind all right!"
The headlines that morning had created a sensation. One papér
had a single word in massive type, MASSACRE, and underneath in smaller
letters, 'British troops involved?' An anglican minister was to -
broadcast, calling for the abdication of the sheikh. The evening papers
said that a middle-aged man had chained himself to the railings outside
the Rubath legation in Queen Anne's Gate.
Granville was silent most of the time. It was decided that
everyone except Glenning, himself and Pinkie would go to the demonstration
on Sunday. He said he might go as a spectator. Glenning said he


couldn't go because he had his reputation to watch; if that want his
'whole cardboard fabric of self' would go, and it would be the end.of
the 'best little P.R.0. in the City.' Pinkie murmured with a pout, "I
wouldn't dream of risking being run down by a police-horse, on my one
quiet day in the week!"
Linger-Longer seemed never to be quite sitting in her chair even
when she was, or to be quite in the conversation even when she was talking.
But when she cried, "It's absolutely bloody disgraceful!" - referring
to the 'massacre' - she was definite for a moment, quickened with this
passion, that made even her eyes pointed and dark. Usually her gaze
floated over objects, never touching them. Whereas Pinkie gazed rather
steadily into the distance, Linger-Longer's gaze was.always moving. She
glanced at Granville for support and he nodded. He looked across the
room at where the morning paper lay and saw the word again, MASSACRE. But
he felt nothing. What had she derived from this word? What did she feel?
He found himself staring at her, trying to find out. And he kept
consulting himself for his own feeling, but there was none. There was
also a picture in the paper showing a scuffle in the Rubath streets; but
it evoked nothing in him; it showed a bundle lying in the roadway, someone
dead or wounded, and the rest was a blur of smoke from tear-gas. Dick
was quietly vehement, as if he could see the scene before him. Granville
tried to imagine the scene and thus stimulate himself to feelingt but
he couldn't! He felt inadequate, compared with the others. Perhaps the
war had killed pity in him; this thought went through his head. It was
in keeping with the 'orang-utang' image not to feel pity. He tapped
himself continually, so to speak, for a change of emotion; but there was
none. He was dead of feeling. He began to admire Linger-Longer compared


with himself: here was a girl who came to the house several times a week
and sat about like.a pieçe of furniture, more or less discounted,
apparently without a thought in her head, and now she was making a far
better show than he in the matter. of conscience! It made the world feel
safer, that there were people who could be stirred to kindness by a few
words in a newspaper; it meant that if there was trouble consciences like
theirs would come alive ànd put a stop to it! She even seemed to gather
beauty into her face with her passion; the light, vague dignity in her
eyes floated to rest. Hanni came in and was clearly bored by it all,
and got herself some supper, moving round behind the others silently,
edging past their chairs; hé took confidence from her presence; the head-
lines appeared not to have changèd her, either.
Glenning said that even if British troops had taken part it didn't
mean anything: it. wasn't 'official policy'; troops, he said, were always
'young boys', a fact we always lost sight of, and of course they wanted
to hit back when they were hit and sometimes the politicians couldn't
stop them. The others answered that the 'boys' oughtn't to be there at
all; nobody was blaming them in any case; the official policy was wrong
for having. sent them there! Gerald was the only dissentient voice;
from the beginning he'd. been with the aheikh, or at least against Russian
encroachments in the Middle East; he said it ought to be fought out now
because it would have to be fought out anyway; the whole thing was a test
of strength between our secret service and the Russian. But it transpired
he didn't mean secret service Bo much as active political agents; he said
it depended,how much 'appeàl - they had for people, what they promised
them and so forth; and it was a question whether the Russians were
promising them more, or whether the Arabs were more at home with us.


He wasn't scorned by the others so much as blandly disregarded. Linger-
Longer laughed. Gerald had a 'classy' accent and she relegated every-
thing he said to the harmless region of history, where 'blimps', 'pukka
sahibs' and 'jingos' talked. She laughed with genuine enjoyment, which
made Gerald blink and draw back ever so slightly, and the moment he
finished speaking she talked about something else, in the manner of bringing
the conversation back to a serious theme. The sheikh and Creed were
grotesque figures for her, with possible comic, but not conceivably
serious; lives, and she heard Gerald as a voice in the same grotesque
chorus. When he said that the sheikh was responsible for 'one of the
best programmes of social legislation in thè Middle East' she ducked her
head forward and spluttered with laughter, and imitated his accent with a
mock-solemn face - (seeowshaul lugisleeshun!
Dick brickly quoted some figures about the number of malaria
cases actually treated in Rubath and the number estimated to exist -
about 'a ninth of one percent' were treated - and the earning power of
the average peasant which was less in a week than that of a London clerk
in an hour. Granville came in briskly with the argument that in this
case money wasn't. used much in the villages of Rubath and the peasants
out there didn't wear bowler hats to work and take the underground; that
the figures for Rubath were still brobably better than those for most
other Middle Eastern states, including those with nationalist governments
elected by 'the people' and all that. This started the old recurrent
anger between them, a hot flame like a sudden intimate sign, recognised
simultaneously.
"That doesn't justify it!" Dick cried.
"But why don't you talk about all the other states as well?"


"What, all the time?"
"I'm talking about a state of affairs! That's the state I'm
talking about!"
"Anyway I Granville's anger made him flush. "What exactly
are you getting so het-up about? What's all the emotion for?"
Dick's mouth opened with surprise. It was certainly an odd
question coming from Granville: umprecedented, in fact!
"Do you really mean to say," Dick asked him, "that you don't
know what we're getting het-up about?"
Dick's gaze made him feel ashamed, and he faltered. "Well, I
don't, really. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm asking. What is it,
exactly?"
There was a pause during which everyone at the table was still.
"Well," said Dick, "it's because people have been killed."
"But people are always being killed."
"Yes, but this has come to our notice. It represents one set
of human beings being cruel to another set, in the most cynical way. It's
the most frightfully cynical cruelty. Don't you think that's something
to get het-up about?"
He was flushed and pouting again. "No!"
"No?" Their voices were quiet; they nearly all joined in with
Dick. "No?" And Dick put up his hand in a helpless, resigned gesture,
letting it fall again.limply, leaving it to the others to form - their
judgements. "Don't you, really?"
Granville noticed in his eyes, too, a gleaming compassion, soft
and yet direct, light-blue; and again he was aware of shame. But he was


was fixed into an attitude now and he wouldn't budge, in much the same
way as Dick had been in the Hamlet discussion, provoking hostility with
deliberate, self-hurtful defiance:
"Oh, well, Pip, if I didn't know you I'd say you were pretty far
gone. But I do know you and I know what you've just said isn't true!"
Granville was pleased and. flattered but in the interests of pride
kept the pout' and frown on his face; they would have to stay there for the
time being, until he could make a decent withdrawal.
The. discussion passed away' from him and he was left to his own
thoughts. He was disposed to believe that this state of compassion in
Dick was the equivalent of his own 'orang-utang' condition: how much
worthier it was then, to have this mercy in one instead of the blind
rush of feeling he was acquainted with in himself! He lookéd at Dick
again. There is was, a genuine pity like a light in his face! And
confronted by this Granville had the same kind of recoil Dick had had in
the Hamlet discussion when confronted by Pinkie's passion. Which of
their passions would lead to a more ordered world? which would lead to
the greater quietness? He was inclined to say Dick's, There was a
steady line in it; there was.no danger of anyone getting hurt!
But there was a snag here. Every day there were reports of
violence in the paper. Why didn't Dick feel pity every day? He couldn't
possibly do so! Didn't that make it spurious? His pity was a poor
mental thing! But how could that be? Granville had once noticed how,
during a quarrel with Hanni, Dick trembled in exactly the same way as he
himself did with Pinkie; it had given him a wonderfully sweet sense of
equality in the flesh! He only realised now how much he'd always taken
for granted that Dick's feelings were weaker than his. But how could


there be such a gulf between them? There were slow people and quick
people, as there were fat and thin. But they were of one flesh! They
were the same in their kidneys,, their hearts and limbs: how could they
bè foreigners to each other in their feelings? Especially two people
like him and Dick, from the same country, the same Eity? It was. the
same with 'intelligence", the word that had been ringing in his ears
since the Sussex days, one - of the cardinal middle-class virtues: who did
he know who wasn't intelligent? Who of those sitting round the table,
could he say was 'unintelligent'? Not one of them! They were all
quick people; they understood everything that was put to them. Gerald
and Glenning were 'honours men' from Oxford. Who did he know in the
world who wasn't intelligent? He couldn't think of one for the moment;
not even from the past! Everyone in Sussex had been intelligent, including
the Major's wife! Walsh had been intelligent! Intelligence was a
universal quality of the middle-class, it seemed; he couldn't think of
one person, now or in the past, who lacked it! People like Abu Kath'm
were intelligent in another way; one might call it intelligence of the
heart; a little bit of education and they'd be the same as the others!
Where did people differ, then? Where did he differ from Dick?
One could see a passion of steely mental obstinacy in Dick, as
when he punished Hanni for violating one of his evenings-out: three
evenings of loneliness for her at Hampton Court would effect the right
degree of oontrition, and so he'd stayed away for three evenings!
This
was his kind of will - it worked through the mind; but for Granville
this behaviour was impossible; he would have had a sense of betraying his
past and his whole breathing organism, in deliberate self-mutilation; his
will would have worked in a different way, towards trying to persuade


Hanni by words until she was filled. with his conviction like a breath
in her!
He remembered a strange incident at training-school when Dick
had come almost running to him on a Saturday morning and said, "By God, you
know, that Hanni is a marvellous girl! Do you know what she said to me
this morning when we were in bed together? She said, 'If you ever did
something I really hated I'd be capable of putting you out of my mind and
never thinking of you again as long as I lived! #1 And Dick had added,
"Don't you think that's terrific?" As on many other occasions Granville
simply gaped at him. It didn't sound like Hanni at all, even from the
little he knew of her. In those days, when she and Dick were getting to
know each other, she hardly opened her mouth and sat rigid in her chair
like a frightened child all the time, her eyes wide with panic. She was
so clearly trying to show herself worthy of Dick's world, where such
merciless statements were admired! There was such an odd artificiality
of judgement in Dick sometimes; as if the mind had to work alone,
unsupported by the sound testimony of the heart. That incident was a
good example: it showed Dick's will at work, producing a mental world
which Hanni was frightened into joining.
Pinkie said that Dick's work was steadily changing his character
and that he went to the office every morning' saying to himself, "I shall
give this client five minutes, the other twenty," and that, except for
the Brazilian client who took his shoes off 'to rest his feet' and then
took Dick quietly through his album of nude photographs, he conformed to it.
And Granville had always been surprised at training-school to see
how well Dick ordered every day, with a little reading, a visit to town,
a letter to Hanni, a crink and a brief chat in the bar, then bed, to fall


asleep as soon as his head'touched the pillow. There was a marvellous
intactness in Dick that he envied. Granville on the other hand had
floated through the day as if time was a kind of raft and he shipewrecked
on it; he tried to imitate Dick but it lasted half a day at most, after
which his mind relapsed into'its humming state, as little personal as the
wind through the trees. Dick seemed to be in such good control of the
flow of time, while he was ashamed of himself for letting life roll by so
inconsequentially. It was in the way Dick played darts in: the bar
sometimes: he watched the dart-board with cool, delicately glittering eyes
for a moment, and then his pale hand came slowly forward, curving alightly
over the level of his head, and sent the dart in a soft but also direct
flight to the board.
To darts and chess he brought a clean, methodical,
softly devout concentration. He woul.d sit over his chess-board with
his elbows on his knees and his head bowed, quite still, and now and then
he would rub his chin with the tips of his fingers, moving them softly
through the light hair of his beard, without moving his eyes atlall, in a
deep, interior concentration which, it seemed, no one could disturb. One
of Granville's first memories of him was in the library of the training-
school sitting by the fire, writing a letter. Granville had just come
in from a long walk, it being the week-end, and was still in his overcoat,
his cheeks red and smarting from the wind outside. There was no one else
in the room and he was just about to talk when the silence, seeming to
emanate from Dick as he sat there with his legs crossed and his head bowed,
drew him in and stopped his words. It also made him feel sheepish and
redundant. Dick looked up' very slowly, without surprise, and said in a
light murmur, "Oh, hullo, bo'sun," and then went on writing at once. His
eyes were steady, inclined with a genial expression on to the paper before


him, and his lips were closed easily together, while he wrote without
pause in a clear, effortless, scholar's hand, quite unaffected by Granville's
arrival. Dick had made a full stop on the page and paused, looking up,
and there had seemed a chance of speech; but after a few seconds he looked
down again and began writing in the same way as before, in perfectly
straight lines, again without pausing; and for Granville, at that moment,
the most desirable, thing on earth seemed to be exactly what Dick was
doing. But at the same time Dick's harmony wasn't an inclusive thing;
it didn't infect Granville with harmony as well, by a flow of spirit
across the room; on the contrary, it made him feel redundant and useless,
and also upon his dignity, since once having entered the room he had to
make a show of having come in for a purpose, whereas his purpose had been
to talk to Dick. He was inclined to believe now that this was a superb
mental harmony in Dick, and perhaps a state into which Dick could induce
himself at will; but it wasn't a total harmony of self which infected
other people by its presence; it wasn't the harmony of a comfortable man.
As always it stirred Granville to admiration as a new kind of consciousness
which made everything feel clean and safe, at least for the moment,
because it refused to fall the victim of hidden feelings, and seemed to
be making life as it went along. Clear, sunny days always seemed
specially so in Dick's presence; they suited his coolness; he was a
visitor on the earth, choosing all the sights and sounds, strolling in
the: golden air; everything he touched, a book or a clean handkerchief,
had this deft, vivid appearance as if it wasn't joined to reality but
separated by his consciousness into an object called on to the earth by
his own will.
This was clear in Dick's attitude to Creed. In his natural


capacities he liked him; but rational principles made Creed his enemy and
he was prepared to punish him in total detachment.
Ideas weren't the moving power of Dick's life, the cogs and
levers of his progress. In Granville they were: thought moved slowly
through him like a germ, in silence, changed his life - - this had
happened in Sussex and it had just happened in Basrah m there were
continual revolutions in his life that came from thought. In Basrah
germs of thought had started unawares, without him inviting them or
trying to provoke them, and 'they continued naturally where his thoughts
in Sussex had left off, as if there already lay in him an order; and the
climax of this had been the night of the eclipse, which in turn had
changed his life so that now he enjoyed a greater stillness than before
and lived with fewer divisions of will; not that his life was more still
in the outward aspect, not even that he could remember the details of
his thought that night, but he was content to leave it like. this until
his next point of clarity came, confident that his life was moving and
changing silently all the time in the light of that thought, through the
chaos and all the bitter, jagged contradictions every day; he thought
the night of the eclipse would bear fruit in him as action and living
later on, and was moving in him like a germ now, being absorbed slowly,
turned over. and transmuted through all the actions that seemed to him to ie
have no connection with each other..
But Dick's ideas didn't have this life-giving and life-absorbing
quality. They were hheisurely. They fitted the tired hours after dinner,
when there was time for cleverness; or they were penetrating and dissecting t
little thoughts about the ambiguities of life, sex, fears, pleasures.
They came from sitting back a little from life.. They weren't thrown up


haphazardly in the course of action, from underneath; they came from a
quiet act of surveyance. Life had to be safe and reasonably easy for
them to be possible. They seemed separate from the real world that
flowed along. outside, its tumbling events too hot for reflection. They
couldn't be had by someone in distress, or suffering in any way. They
won scholarships, impressed teachers at school, belonged to formal and
stylish behaviour. They were philosophical in the weak, mental sense -
'theorising'. And they produced, if successful, an answer that was like
a plan, fitting the facts.
Granville found that compared with Dick he couldn't properly form
judgements about other people. He could only see the actions: he couldn't
make a formal judgement of another person' 's whole character in a
satisfactory way. If Dick asked him what he thought about someone, say
someone they'd met at the office, he stumbled and said, "Oh, I don't know!
He - "I And there he would stop. Or he would say perfunctorily, "Oh,
he seems all right", when in fact he didn't feel happy about the person
at all; only the fact wasn't clear to him. But Dick would give a succinct
appraisal of the man, which always appeared to Granville exactly right,
so that he wondered. - at Dick's powers of penetration, and his imperviousness
to false charms. Granville would ask himself why he hadn't been brave
enough to venture such a clear ciriticism, to say axactly what he thought
of the man; and he resolved to do BO next time when the occasion arose.,
But when the next occasion did. arise the same thing happened; he hesi ta ted
and murmured something like, "Oh, he's a nice enough person!" Sometimes
he would say, "He gives me a nasty feeling." But he couldn't give a
real appraisal. All he could say was what the other person made him
feel like; he couldn't venture to say what the other person was. He


always wnated to say to Dick, "Well, I don't know, he probably has
reasons for everything he does!" People only had themselves, after all;
they had to get on with what they'd got!
On the other hand, .Dick was much less damning than he was. He
gave a judicious description, Granville went by the state the other
person put him into, and if this was an unharmonious state he blinded off
and. didn't want the other person mentioned again. When he seriously
attempted a complete judgement. he went into a long, wandering speech
examining every aspect of the other person until he reached a few general
ideas. - Granville was swept away in the hot currents of another person's
presence, while Dick kept his mental judgement alive. Granville was
aware of a state of feeling in himself to which no words could do justice;
and when asked what he thought of someone he. understood the question to
be, 'What is this state of feeling in you?' Of course, he hesitated
and stumbled, trying to order his féelings for articulation; he felt a
weight on him, a state close to panic, and he would think to himself, :
"What shall I say? Quickly!. But I must do justice to the other person,
I must make a true statement of the feelings he evoked in me win !" But i
by that time the occasion was gone; he'd only been asked, after all, for
a simple little statement, such as, 'Oh, he's a snob', or 'He looks
dishonest'! This was what he couldn't do. He stood before other people
in something like a dazed and hot state
not an abnormal state at all,
but one which made cool mental activity impossible; especially if the
other person was new to him. Dick was much better-armed against people.
He went. away from offensive people uncontaminated. Also he could give
other people better attention than Granville because he was less dependent
on his immediate feelings towards them, and so could elicit their best


side in a deliberate manner; he' could see himself apart from them.
Granville was aware that, to accommodate himself to the middle
class world, he wouid have to learn - - or he would learn by daily
example - how to do what Dick was doing, more and more. It meant
changing from the Abbott's Road state, which was unfitting for the
world he found himself in now, into what might be called a 'picture-
perceiving' state. One had to have a picture of other people. In the
Abbott's Road world you sat side-by-side with other people, so to speak,
looking not at them but at a-spectacle in front of you - he found he
got on best with other people when they were doing something together,
when there was sonething to: watch, like a theatre: you were aware of the
other person, but not in a mental way. In the Abbott's Road world
people flowed into each other; they were like the countryside
you
didn't have to look at it to know it, you didn't have to see all the
trees and hear all the birds and each breeze that rustled the branches.
Indeed, the more you looked and examined, the less you knew! And this
was what he found in the middle class world; the more he looked at people
the less he knew about them - the more hé talked to Hanni and Dick the
more puzzling they' were for him; their presences didn't flow into him.
Their silences were tense and conscious. But silence in Abbott's Road
was always allowed to flow on, it produced a new mood of its own accord,
a fresh turning-over of the spirit like a breath across the room. The
whole tone of like in Abbott's Road was different; it was another world
like another civilisation, and slowly he had to get used to this new
world, which meant fighting his way through one distortion after another,
but he couldn't go back now, he had no other world to live in! He would
have to learn this new picture-perceiving state which every middle-class 2


person seemed to take for granted as the normal way! He would have to
be strong as well, to keep harmony, informing himself about every step
he took. It was no longer adequate for him to exist in himself, letting
his moods come and go, forming his ideas about other people and their
actions in a flowing way that was simply a continuation of his moods.
Now he had to have a clear picture of other people, deduced, when their
behaviour wasn't clear, from himself. He had to take their interests
into mental consideration, whereas, before, his natural sense of their
presence had done that for him. Now there had to be a conscious sense
of relation. He had to listen to them alertly and then furnish his reply,
in a kind of set give-and-take that wasn't a natural give-and-take of the
heart that came easily, but on a different level, with a different rhythm;
there had to be an acute mental awareness of the other person, as to what
was going on in his mind, and what picture he had of you. Your privacy
was suspended; and the mind took on a planning activity, mapping out the
form of the conversation, trying to find interesting and informative things
to say. But in Abbott's Road the conversation needn't be at all
informative; it could go on in a kind of monologue, one person taking over
from another. In Abbott's Road thinking-before-you-spoke was ungracious;
in this way working class manners were more gracious and subtle than
middle class, and much nearer the aristocratic. The rule in Abbott's Road
was that having silent thoughts behind your words was dierespectful; the mind
throbbed on behind the words in a non-thinking way, as a man's eyes blazed
in a non-seeing way. Talk was a state of being in Abbott's Road, not
mental conclusions. It flowed from the mouth without thought of
performance. But in the middle class world it was like making announcements:
ideally, if you wanted the most attentive audience, your announcements


were factual, well-thought-out and informative. It was like people being
the official spokesmen of themselves. You carried about in your head a
picture of yourself and you decoyed other people's minds into accepting
this picture - of a straightforward person, or casual person, or clever,
or carefree, or poor,' or rich - whatever you wanted to be. And since
the people you were talking to did exactly the same, it was like pictures
meeting pictures, all the excitement of being with people was gone, there
was no aysterious timbre and richness in their voices, no quick, violent,
unknown gaze. Men's faces were like little masks from which they peeped
out defensively. These faces went on in front of the thoughts like a'
dance of the veils, moving about to enchant and conceal and lie.
It: wasn't enough for him in this new world to say 'I like this
person' or 'I dislike that person', and leave it at that, with a feeling
of natural rightness because, after all, he was only talking about his
own feelings! No, now there had to be a judgement. There had to be a
picture of the other person, you had to say if you disapproved of this or
not. That was really what Dick was asking him - 'What quick picture
have you formed of the other person?' 'I dislike him' was now a social
or moral judgement, no longer an autobiographical one. In Abbott's Road
it was autobiographical
that was just how you felt about the other
person, and you left him free. Now you were required to construct the
other person on a little map of virtues and to say if you thought this
little construction deserved life or not!
At once the' authority of your own feelings was dead. That was
the first thing to get a blow when you went into the middle class world:
your own authority.
Did he like Dick and Hanni, really? Not really! He liked


Mohammed - there was the wonderful, drugged state of friendship where
no questions were asked. In Dick and Hanni there was kind of glittering,
mental excitement - which needed a party to come out; it always needed
something else. - Did he trust them? No! Yes! He couldn't tell!
Which meant he didn't!
It wasn't easy in this new world. The other person was always
so hidden. If he - was boisterous you had to consider that he might
really be shy; if stern and reticent, really warm; if charming and
straightforward, really cold. You had to look round all the time a
round the pictures.
Dick always said what volumes he could tell about Hanni, if only
the occasion arose. But these volumes were hidden from others. Perhaps
only when she was alone with Dick did she unveil herself. Wasn't it true
of them all, really? So it wasn't enough to say what you felt about a
person! You might have got the wrong picture: So the brain had to keep
checking and reconnoit tring. He had to consider, for instance, that a
remark of Dick's might mean the opposite of what it said; or that Hanni's
silence for a few days might actually mean noise underneath. Feelings
no longer established facts in a plain and robust way!
With Dick he never really felt himself. He felt quenched. He
was a picture - partialities, a good mind, interesting, likeable -
such a warm person! But the flame was gone. Dick couldn't see it.
The creatures in the fields gave their light, the birds and all
the other beasts. But not men. Not in this world he'd come into.
Men no longer had God in each other.
He felt a quick mental revulsion from Dick. Dick's attitude to


other people was starved! He brought a starved attitude to his clients
at the office - he couldn't invest them with the stature proper to
them Lon- they were 'old' this and 'old' that for him, elbowing each other
pathetically for his attention! The middle class had come to strike the
light out of people!
Dick was starved in sex
he was always afraid it would be
snatched away from him. He was starved in thought - his. thoughts were
thin and mental, without the support of his life and his flesh!
But this was followed by concern. There wac such a frail,
transparent innocence in Dick,. still intact, which had been in his eyes
when they first met, at training-school. He could still remember it -
he could see the light-blueness of Dick's eyes close to him, smiling,
with their confiding twinkle.
He was exhausted? How long would he spend in this frightful
labyrinth?
Gerald brought in a portable radio one evening and switched on
the midnight news. It said to their astonishment that there would be a
special call-up of 'emergency reserve personnel', details of which would
be announced the next morning. There was a great whoop of indignation.
"What bloody fools!" Ginger cried. Glenning was worried. Also the
news.said that the American ambassador had called on the prime Minister
at his own request, and had stayed nearly an' hour. Glenning said that
Russia and America both wanted Britain out of the Middle East to open it
up as a market for themselves. Britain couldn't invest enough money
there or protect it properly. That was the reality, and no good could
be done by calling up troops. Pinkie yawned and went off to bed.. She


said that Nigel had rung her up to say he was going to volunteer if
necessary; he' 'd just had dinner with some of his old buddies from the
war, and they were going to do the same. He said he was doing it because
he was certain there wouldn't be. any bloodshed, and' that there'd just be
'a sort of picnic' in the desert. Pinkie added that he sounded wonder-
fully mellow, and had told her he'd met her friend Elizabeth Bewley-Patton,
who was going to invite her up to her house for a week-end soon if there
wasn't a 'show'. And he'd said she ought to see more of Elizabeth.
Granville had met Elizabeth only twice, briefly. She was a healthy,
bounding sort of person with flushed cheeks and dark, quick eyes. She
was a clear, healthy, sané influence on Pinkie. Her eyes darted on to things
with a dark, careless penetration. She was full of questions always, with
the utmost generous concern. He talk was like a great waterfall,
pauseless and deafening. And there was a robust sexual energy in her; nothing
distorted or held inwards. Next to her Pinkie looked delicate, glittering,
wayward.
The call-up affected only a few people, and hundreds of enquiries
by potential volunteers were turned away at the recruiting offices. A
newspaper said that the country was almost equally divided on the issue.
There were also small demonstrations outside the inactive recruit ting
offices; people carried placards throughcut the hours of daylight past the
doors, calling on everyone to 'recruit' their common sense and 'volunteer'
for sanity.
The following Sunday he went to the demonstration in Trafalgar
Square alone and, so to speak, incognito. He didn't see Linger-Longer or
any of the others. There was an immense crush of people, with primitively-
rigged banners waving about over their heads, "THE CREED OF SLAUGHTER',


'The Empire Is Dead But won't Lie Down', 'Britain Faces Total
Extermination With Stiff Upper Lip', 'Rubath National Health Scheme says
LÉAVE IT TO NATURE', 'Reunion Of British War Heroes To Take Place This
Month In Rubath To Practice Bayonet Drill On Live Women And Children.'
There were mounted policemen on all sides, squashing people into a tight
group here and distending them into a line there, the horses throwing up
their heads and stepping delicately. He got caught in part of the crowd
and was swept along into the square, close to one of the fountains where
platforms had been erected; some people were being pushed on to the
fountain and a young man had taken off his shoes and socks and was
padcling in the water. There was a heady cheerfulness everywhere; it
might have been a royal procession: Policemen on foot shouted out to
the man in the fountain and drew nearer to him, elbowing through the
crowd. Suddenly there would be motion and everyone would shift and move
several yards as smoothly as a. breath, when the mounted police put pressure
on at the edges. It was a warm day, the first they'd had for a week or
more, with high clouds. He saw Indians in the crowd, negroes and a few
Arabs. But mostly there were contingents from local labour parties and
peace-groups. Singing came from various parts of the square, and he
could see a man on the platform conducting; it seemed to be "Cavaliera
Rossa', and on the other side they were singing 'Abode with me' - o
Suddenly a clergyman stepped in front of one of the microphones on the
platform and cried, "Prayer-cards will be issued now! Nearly fifty
thousand prayer-cards have been issued in the last fortnight! In the
middle of the meeting there will be a two-minute silence, during which you
are requested to read your prayer-card and offer it to God," which produced
a slow roar of laughter like wind across the square; he said it. all