If only they had gone away, thought Diana, I could have survived. Of course it would have been terrible. She tried to imagine the house suddenly empty, deprived of that dear familiar animal presence. They had lived together for so long like animals in a hutch. But all she could feel was the hollow misery of her irrevocably transformed marriage. “Things will never be the same again, never.” But if they had gone, she thought, then all the energy, all the pride, all the sense of self would have been on the side of survival. I would have wanted to show them and to show the world how well I could survive. I would have felt less bitter. I could have sought for help and found it in other places. As the wife, retained, triumphant, I can appeal to nobody, least of all to myself. Every way I lose. She has taken him from me, she has destroyed our married love, and I have no new life, only the dead form of the old life. They have acted rightly, and just by this I am utterly brought low. My pain and my bitterness are sealed up inside me forever. I have no source of energy, no growth of being, to enable me to live this hateful role of the wife to whom they have together planned to sacrifice their great love. I am humbled by this to the point of annihilation. Sooner or later Miles will begin to speak about it. He will speak kindly, gently, trying to make me feel that his love for me is something real. But I saw that thing, their love. Miles and I never loved so.
They had decided not to run away together. But supposing Diana were to run away, and leave them to each other? Was there somehow somewhere here an issue from the circle of her pain? Almost blindly she considered it. She might go abroad somewhere leaving no address. But they would scarcely believe that she had gone for good. They would search for her lovingly together. In any case Diana had no money and no skill to earn it with. With a conscious sense of madness she even considered going to Danby. If she went to Danby would Miles and Lisa then feel convinced, released? Diana had kept, during all her awful preoccupations, the idea of Danby in reserve. She had retained a feeling for him, gratitude, affection, a sense of him as a holiday from Miles. Here at least there was a new place of love. It had struck her as odd that Miles had said nothing to her about Danby’s drunken visit. Doubtless his own agony had rendered Danby’s activities invisible. Yet did it really make any sense to run to Danby? He might simply not know what to do with her. It would end in a muddle which would merely reveal her as, after all, irrevocably and slavishly attached to Miles. Was there no other way?
Diana looked at the bottle of sleeping tablets and then looked back at Bruno. He was a little propped up, as he had been when he was talking to her, the head fallen sideways. It was not easy to tell, even when regarding him full face, when his eyes were open and when they were not. Perhaps he was quietly watching her now? Diana turned back to him and moved to the side of the bed. Holding her breath she leaned over him. His eyes, amid the pudgy folds of flesh, were tightly closed, the little sighing breath issued from the mouth, the moist red lower lip extended and retracted rhythmically with the breath.
Diana stood in the middle of the room halfway to the door and looked out of the window at the plump grey folds of cloud which were passing in a rapid seething surge behind the chimney of the power station. A sick fear rose up in her throat. She had the power to blot out all the suffering years. She had loved Miles, she still utterly and agonizingly loved him. But was not the future now simply the long grey time of the extinction of love? He would never forgive her because of that sacrifice. And she would never forgive him. They would watch each other grow cold. But if she quitted the scene, if she went, utterly went, she would be the preserver of love: his love, hers, Lisa’s. Was not this, so plainly and for all of them, the answer and the only answer?
Diana caught her breath and almost staggered. She moved to the door and picked up the bottle of sleeping tablets. She opened the door.
A lanky dark-haired man was standing on the landing just outside the door. “Oh!” said Diana. The immobility and sudden closeness of the figure seemed menacing and uncanny.
”I beg your pardon,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was listening to see if anyone was with Bruno.” Diana closed the door and slipped the bottle of tablets into her handbag. “I was talking to him but he fell asleep.”
”My name is Nigel. I’m the nurse. Nigel the Nurse. I sup pose I should say the male nurse, the way people say women writers, though I don’t see why they should, do you, as more women are writers than men are nurses. Wouldn’t you agree?”
”I’m afraid I must be going,” said Diana. She began to go down the stairs.
However before she could reach the front door Nigel had darted past her into the hall. He now stood with his back to the door. “Don’t go just yet.”
”I’m in a hurry,” said Diana.
”Not just yet.”
She stood uncertainly, facing him. His face was very bland, almost sleepy, as he leaned floppily against the door with arms outspread against it. She felt confused and alarmed. “Get out of the way, please.”
”No, Mrs. Greensleave.”
”You know who I am-“
”I know you well. Come in here a minute, I want to speak to you. Please.”
He took hold of the strap of her handbag and tugged her gently in the direction of the front room. The room smelt of dust and damp and disuse and the curtains were half drawn. “This is the drawing room. But no one ever comes in here, as you can see. Please sit down.” He gave Diana a little push and she fell over onto the brown plush sofa, raising a puff of dust which made her sneeze. Nigel pulled the curtains back and let in the cold cloudy afternoon light.
”What do you want?”
”There’s something you ought to know.”
”What?”
”Danby loves your sister.”
Diana stared at him as he swayed to and fro against the window. “I think you are confused,” she said. “Danby scarcely knows my sister.”
”He knows her enough to be madly in love with her.”
”I think you must be mixing my sister up with me. Not that Danby-Anyway it’s nothing to do with you.”
”I’m not mixing you up. He liked you. Then he met Lisa and fell in love.”
”You are mistaken,” said Diana. She began to rise.
”Well, look at this.” Nigel thrust into her hand a much-torn piece of paper which had been reconstituted with the help of adhesive tape. It was a first draft of Danby’s second letter to Lisa.
Diana read it through. Then it fell from her fingers onto the floor. She leaned back into the sofa and stared ahead of her. This was surely a sign. She knew now, and knew it quite clearly that Danby’s love would have kept her from suicide. But now-Lisa had taken Danby too. Diana clutched her handbag, feeling the bottle of tablets inside it. She thought, I will go home, no I will go to a hotel, and do it at once. This is the end. Danby too. Lisa had annexed the world. A tear rolled down her cheek. She had forgotten Nigel’s presence.
He had sat down beside her. “I thought you ought to know in case it made any difference.”
”It makes no difference,” she said, wiping away the tear. She began to get up.
”Wait. I’ve got something else to say.”
”What about?”
”About Miles and Lisa. You mustn’t be desperate.”
”How do you know all these things?”
”Because I am God. Maybe this is how God appears now in the world, a little unregarded crazy person whom everyone pushes aside and knocks down and steps upon. Or it can be that I am the false god, or one of the million million false gods there are. It matters very little. The false god is the true God. Up any religion a man may climb.”
”Let me go,” said Diana. Nigel had taken her by the shoulders.