“No, it’s much worse now.”
Meredith, crumpling the handkerchief, looking at the studio clock, appeared not to hear. “I feel we’ve gone a long way from the problems of white aggression in Southern Africa. Anyway, here we are, I can’t say at home, but at the end of your personal odyssey. You’re a stranger, you don’t feel involved. You’re involved with an agricultural commune which you consider antihistorical and which you don’t think can succeed. But for you it’s an opportunity for creative work. The human need, as you say. For you work is important. You aren’t too concerned about results. Peter, our time is almost up, and I must ask you a plain question. And I must ask you to answer it, because it is important for those of us who have to live here. Didn’t you think, didn’t it ever occur to you, that the Thrushcross Grange commune was a cover for the guerrillas?”
“It occurred to me once or twice, but I dismissed it.”
“You were wrong. But why did it occur to you, and why did you dismiss it?”
“It occurred to be because I’d read about guerrillas in the papers. But it seemed to me farfetched. I didn’t believe in the guerrillas.”
“What did you believe in?”
“I believed in the gangs.”
Meredith raised his face and for some seconds he fixed a smile on Roche, looking at him above the microphone. Then he turned to the studio manager’s cubicle, pushed back his chair carelessly, and said, “It’s finished. It was marvelous. Let’s get out and breathe.”
Meredith stood up. Roche remained sitting. Meredith’s shirt was wet all the way down: Roche could see the bump of Meredith’s navel below his vest. It was like noticing a secret. Headachy, temples throbbing, not sure why he was focusing on Meredith’s navel, Roche thought: Yes, that was my mistake. I should have looked for that first. That, and the waistband.
In the studio was the amber light of late afternoon. Just beyond the double doors was dim electric light that emphasized the darkness. And it was very cold. The refrigerated air struck through Roche’s wet shirt, seconds before so hot, and chilled him instantly into goose flesh.
The studio manager, in his white shirt and striped tie, was as cool and calm as he had always seemed. The old-fashioned respectability of his white shirt and tie, the smoothness of his very black, hairless skin, the fullness of his pure African features, his heavy broad shoulders, the languor of his manner as he filled the duplicated form pinned to his writing board, the unhurried civility with which he turned to look at Roche and Meredith, marked him as a man from the deep country, perhaps the first of his family to be educated, the first to hold a respectable job in the city. He raised himself in his chair and smiled briefly at Roche and Meredith.
In his soft singsong voice he said to Meredith, “Twenty-two t’irty-five.”
Meredith said, “With the intro we’ll make it twenty-five minutes. We won’t have to hack it about.”
Meredith’s step was springy in the dim, chill corridor.
“It was very good, Peter.”
“Are you going to take out the interruptions?”
“Yes, those will go. You sound worried. I have an editing session tomorrow. The intro will be recorded then. You have nothing to worry about. It was better than you think. In these matters I’m a better judge than you.” His talk was as springy as his walk.
Roche said, “The studio manager seemed pretty cool.”
“Those people hear nothing. They only hear sound and level. They can read a book or write a letter while they’re listening.”
When they were getting into the elevator, which hissed and felt very cold, Roche said, “I’m sorry I said that about the gangs. Can that be taken out?”
“Why? I thought that was very good.”
“I was thinking about that boy’s mother.”
“But it’s true. She knows it’s true. And it’s what people here need to be told.”
Roche didn’t want to say any more. They came out into the lobby. The policeman with the rifle stiffened; and the big middle-aged brown woman half rose from her chair.
Outside the light was soft. But they stepped from the air-conditioned building into heat, rising from the black, newly laid asphalt forecourt. No view of the hills and the sea from here, only the tops of a few royal palms against the sunset sky: charcoal streaks, dark-red rainless clouds.
A great exhausted melancholy came to Roche: the sense of the end of the day, a feeling of futility, of being physically lost in an immense world. Melancholy, at the same time, for the others, more rooted than himself: for the studio manager, the man from the country, for the policeman with the rifle and the woman at the desk who were both so deferential to Meredith, melancholy for Meredith: an overwhelming exasperation, almost like contempt, confused with a sense of the fragility of their world.
Meredith said, “Am I taking you back to Sablich’s? Is your car there?”
“No, Jane’s using it today.”
“I’ll drive you home.”
They didn’t talk. As soon as they were out in the streets and people began to look at them, Meredith appeared to remember his earlier uncertainty; and his excitement abated. Roche’s melancholy subsided into concern about what he had said. He thought he had managed well, except for that slip at the very end, when he had spoken about the gangs. But as they drove through the populous flat areas of the city, one or two lights coming on in the open stands at crossroads, as they climbed up to the cooler air of the Ridge, he remembered other things; and what had seemed to him, in the suffocating studio, a logical and controlled performance appalled him more and more. Meredith had gone far; he wondered now that he had allowed Meredith to go so far. Roche felt he was coming out of a stupor; in that stupor he had trapped himself. And by the time they came to the house he had begun to have the feeling that a calamity had befallen him.
The car was in the garage.
Meredith, already less uncertain up here on the Ridge, in the growing dark, away from the crowds, said, “Jane must be in. I’ll go in and greet her.”
Roche didn’t take Meredith in through the garage door. He led him across the lawn, past the ivy-hung, rough-rendered concrete wall and the picture window, to the front door, which was little used; through the hall into the almost empty back room, used for nothing; and out onto the brick-floored porch.
Jane was there, in trousers and blouse. The evening paper, a glass of lager, cigarettes, and her blue lighter were on the metal table.
She said, “Hello, Meredith.” She barely turned her head; her voice was casual.
The city below was in darkness. But up here the light still lasted. The hibiscus flowers glowed.
Meredith smiled, that smile at once self-satisfied and wounded.
Jane said, “How did it go?”
Meredith said, “It went very well. Peter’s worried, but he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
Jane said, “Peter talks very well.” She spoke neutrally, stating a fact.
Meredith sat down heavily in one of the metal chairs and picked up the newspaper. Jane looked down at the dark city: lights coming on.
“We ranged far and wide,” Meredith said. “We talked about mutual acquaintances.” He folded the paper and dropped it on the table. “So you’re leaving us, Jane.”
Adela came through the back room to the porch. Jane raised her head and looked at Adela.
Meredith said, “I hope we haven’t frightened you away.”
Jane said, “Adela?”
Adela, not looking at Jane, stood beside Meredith’s chair. She bent softly, deferentially, toward him and said, in a coaxing voice neither Jane nor Roche had heard her use, “Mr. Herbert would like to use a beer?”