Sarah was pleased she was kept on the move. She needed to move, did not want to start yet on the new and better translation of Julie's journals, for which she had a contract. The time was not yet, it would be too dangerous, she must recover completely first.
Often she and Patrick travelled together, and this new phase of their friendship was the pleasantest part of the new regime in The Green Bird. Patrick was as full of newly acquired confidence as Sonia. He was no longer an enfant terrible and had given up his outrageous and gallant clothes because of Sonia's criticisms. 'You are middle-aged, for God's sake,' she had said. 'Grow up.' Sonia had furiously attacked Sarah, Mary, and Roy for babying him. 'Why did you?' she accused. Patrick defended them, saying he had enjoyed being babied, but Sonia wouldn't have it. Enjoyable conversations had taken place between the Four, where Patrick had said his musical was his adolescent act of defiance, enabling him to grow up and become emotionally independent of them, but these had gone on behind Sonia's back. A good deal did go on behind her back and, they agreed, probably always would. Unless her style — her character — changed, surely unlikely. She would never understand why. She was the chief provider of gossip in The Green Bird, particularly her war with Roger Stent. He had confessed he adored her. Would she live with him? She had replied that while she quite fancied his body, the problem was his mind. 'I couldn't face waking up beside you in the mornings.' What could he do to change her opinion of him? he asked, like a knight of old prepared to overcome obstacles for his lady. 'You could stop being a theatre critic for a start. You are as ignorant as a toad.' He confessed his dilemma to her. If he didn't write negative theatre criticism he would lose his job. That was why he had rubbished Julie Vairon. In fact he had enjoyed it. 'How do you know? You never even saw the third act.' She refused to see his difficulties: she had been immediately successful in the first job she had after leaving university. But though pure chance had made him one of the Young Turks, without them what would he be? Merely one of the hundreds of literary hopefuls in London. He was full of conflict. The raucous jeering tone of the Young Turks had now become how people recognized him, but in fact he was a good-natured young man who longed to be a serious critic. Should he write a novel? He was now well known enough to be sure the thing would be reviewed. But how could he write a novel when all his evenings were spent seeing plays? All Sonia said was, 'Oh, for Christ's sake, just get another job.' He asked if he could come and work at The Green Bird. What qualifications did he have? she demanded, and suggested a course in theatre history. His pride would not let him do this. Besides, it would certainly lose him his job. Sonia told him to grow up — as she had Patrick. Meanwhile everyone waited for the next instalment of the drama, confident that Virginia would keep them informed.
The Founding Four met sometimes in 'their' cafe, which had been taken over by 'the children'. Not that they would have dreamed of using this pet name to their faces. For one thing, they had to discuss why it was that Julie Vairon — or Julie — had put an end to the old Green Bird. 'Before Julie' and 'after Julie' — that was how they talked. But they could not come to a conclusion and at last agreed they had been fortunate to have had those years of wonderful comradeship; perhaps, while they were living through them, they had not sufficiently understood how wonderful they were. But now it was all over, and what better could they have done than relinquish the reins to Sonia? It was obvious to everyone else, though not to her, that she was destined to become that recurrent figure in the theatre — a clever, competent woman, impatient of other people's slowness, abrasive, tactless, 'impossible', and as salutary as a thunderstorm. She would always have passionate friends and as passionate enemies.
By early summer Sarah's anguish had lessened to the point that she would say it had gone. That is to say, what remained was mild low spirits of a kind she could match easily with this or that bad patch in her life, but they were as far removed from the country of grief as they were distant from happiness. She stood in a landscape like that before the sun comes up, one suffused with a quiet, flat, truthful light where people, buildings, trees, stand about waiting to become defined by shadow and by sunlight. This is the landscape recommended for adults. Over the horizon, somewhere else, was a place, a world, of tenderness and trust, and she was removed from it not by distance but because it was in another dimension. This was right, was as things should be… but the parallel line continued, of feeling. For if she was removed from grief, she was removed too (her emotions insisted) from that intimacy which is like putting your hand into another hand, while currents of love flow between them.
A strange thing, that when in love or in lust the afflicted ones want most of all to be shut up together in some fastness or solitude, just me and you, only you and me, for at least a year or for twenty, but quite soon, or at any rate after a salutary dose of time, these once so terribly and exclusively desired ones are released into a landscape populated by loving friends and lovers, all bound to each other because they recognize the claims of invisible and secret affinities: if we have loved, or love, the same person, then we must love each other. This improbable state of affairs can only exist in a realm or region removed from ordinary life, like a dream or a legend, a land all smiles. One could almost believe that falling in love was ordained to introduce us to this loving land and its paradise kisses.
She could look now not only at Stephen's notes but at her own. They were words on paper, like Julie's My heart is aching so badly I wish I could put it out of its misery the way you put an old dog to sleep. I simply cannot endure this pain. Words on a page, that's all.
She was delivered, she was over the illness and would not go into danger again. She was not going to Belles Rivieres for the rehearsals, or even the first night, but would try — she promised — to manage the last night. That is, when Henry was safely gone. Jean-Pierre thought she did not want to go because of missing Stephen. Perhaps he was right.