”Money?” said Danby. “Good Lord, no!” Or was it? Perhaps after all Bruno just wanted to decide the destiny of the stamps. Damn the stamps, they complicated everything.
”You see,” said Miles, concentrating upon a neat clean severance of a folded sheet. “You see, I don’t know whether you know this, but I’ve been writing to my father regularly for years, and I’ve never had any reply. I rather assumed he’d written me off. This desire to see me is a bit surprising. Is he senile?”
”No!” said Danby. “He has to take various drugs and some days he gets a bit vague and rambles a little, but on the whole he’s perfectly clear-headed. He’s certainly still a rational being.”
”Is he much-changed?”
”Physically, yes. Not in other ways. I suppose you know what’s wrong with him?”
”Oddly enough I do,” said Miles slowly, raising his brooding eyes in a significant way which was very reminiscent of Gwen. “Oddly enough I do. I wrote to his doctor about eighteen months ago. I suppose there’s no new development?”
”No. Just the progress of the-thing.”
They were silent, Danby watching Miles and Miles intently examining a piece of cut paper. “All right. I’ll come and see him. But I think it’s going to be awful. Awful.”
Danby stood up. He felt a strange defensive tenderness for Bruno combined with an acute wish that Miles would offer him a drink. He wanted to be asked to stay, given a drink, somehow comforted by Miles. He would like to have talked about the past. “Bruno has been very brave.”
”I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it. When shall I come?” Miles had risen too.
”Of course he may change his mind when he knows you’re coming. He may funk it.”
”You mean he’s nervous too?”
”Yes.”
”Funny,” said Miles. “I hadn’t really thought of him having any feelings about it, now at all,” and he smiled. Miles’s teeth were sharp and jumbled, too numerous for his jaw and crowded together at the front of his mouth, giving him a wolfish sweet-savage smile which Danby had quite forgot ten. Danby usually despised men with uneven teeth, but Miles’s were rather impressive.
”Anyway I’ll let you know,” said Danby. “I’ll ring up.”
He stood awkwardly. He was taller than Miles. He had somehow forgotten that too. It was the moment for the blessed glass of gin. He thought, if Bruno decides not to see Miles, I won’t see Miles again, except at the funeral. Danby pushed his chair a little further back, which might have been a preliminary to departing or to sitting down again. As he did so he saw a little ball of blue tucked into the depression between the seat and the back. It was a woman’s handkerchief.
”I’ve never met your wife,” said Danby.
Miles gave him a preoccupied look and put his hand on the door.
Danby thought, I must stop him, I want to talk to him about Gwen. If only I could think of something quickly now to say about her. He could think of nothing. He said, “Bruno wants to meet your wife.” Bruno had expressed no such wish.
”Emotions,” said Miles. “Emotions. It’s all fruitless, fruitless.” He led the way down the stairs.
”So you talked about me?” said Bruno suspiciously, looking up at Danby.
Yes,” said Danby in an exasperated voice. “Of course did!” Danby had been extremely irritable on his return from Miles’s house, Bruno could not make out why.
Danby was standing at the window looking out through the undrawn curtains at the lurid darkness of the London night. Bruno was well propped up on pillows. They were both sipping champagne. The whitish scrawled counterpane was covered with stamps and with the dismembered pages of the Evening Standard, on top of which lay the first volume of Soviet Spiders open at the chapter “Liphistiid Spiders of the Baltic Coastline.”
”What did you say about me?”
”He asked how you were and I told him and I said you were longing to meet him and-“
”You shouldn’t have said that.”
”Oh my God-“
”I’m not sure that I am longing to meet him,” said Bruno judiciously.
”Well, make up your mind for heaven’s sake.”
”I can’t see why you’re so upset.”
”I’m not upset, damn you.”
Since the notion of seeing Miles, or at any rate of sending Danby on an embassy to Miles had become a real plan, Bruno had experienced a complexity of feelings. Partly he felt a kind of animal fright at the real possibility of confronting his son. Partly he was afraid of what he might feel if Miles refused to come. There was a possible madness there. Danby had re assured him at the first moment of his return. Partly too Bruno felt a quite immediate and lively sense of annoyance at the idea of Miles and Danby discussing him, perhaps making common cause against him. He imagined, “The old fool wants to see you. Must humour him I suppose.”
”How gaga is he?” And, “How long will he last?” Would they speak of him like that? They were young and uncaged, in the legions of the healthy. He also felt an excited touched surprise that such a complex of emotions could still exist in such an old man. “Such an old man,” he thought to himself until the tears came. He was pleased at these moments when he felt that he had not been simplified by age and illness. He was the complicated spread-out thing that he had always been, in fact more so, much more so. He had drawn the web of his emotions back inside himself with not a thread lost. Well, he would see Miles. It was unpredictable though, and that was scaring.
”Of course I do want to see him,” said Bruno judiciously, “but I feel quite detached about it. You shouldn’t have implied I was frantic.”
”I didn’t imply it. We had a very plain talk.”
”How do you. mean plain? What’s Miles like now?”
”He’s going bald.”
”You never liked him, Danby.”
”He never liked me. I liked him all right. He was horribly like Gwen. He still is.”
”That’s why you’re upset.”
”Yes. More champagne?”
”Thanks. But what’s he like?”
”Rather brutal and preoccupied. But he’ll be nice to you.”
”I can’t think what on earth we’ll talk about,” said Bruno. His left hand strayed vaguely over things on the counterpane while the right conveyed the trembling glass to his lips. Champagne still cheered.
”You’d better see him some morning. You’re best in the mornings.”
”Yes. It’ll have to be Saturday or Sunday then. Will you let him know?”
”Yes. May I leave you now, Bruno? There’s a man waiting in a pub. Here’s Nigel the Nurse to take over.”
Soft-footed Nigel pads in and Danby leaves. Nigel’s lank dark hair sweeps round his pale lopsided face and projects in a limp arc beneath his chin. His dark eyes are dreamy and he is many-handed, gentle, as he tidies Bruno up for suppertime. The stamps are put away, the Evening Standard neatly folded, Bruno’s glass of speckled golden champagne filled. again to the brim. Some of it spills upon the white turned-down sheet as the crippled spotted hand trembles and shakes. Such an old old thing that hand is.
”Want to go to the lav?”
”No, thanks, Nigel, I’m all right.”
”Not got cramp again?”
”No cramp.”
Nigel flutters like a moth. A pajama button is done up, a firm support between the shoulderblades while a pillow is plumped, the lamp and telephone moved a little farther off, Soviet Spiders closed and put away. The back of Nigel’s hand brushes Bruno’s cheek. The tenderness is incredible. Tears are again in Bruno’s eyes.