"Anyway, that's what James thinks he's got to go and do."
Catharine sat on for a few moments, then rose to her feet.
"I think I'll go and see James now," she said, and went.
"I hope it works," said Leonard.
"Brian, you didn't tell the people at the hospital any of that, did you?"
"Of course not. I got by on bluff and luck. I talked about international crises and secret weapons and spies. The luck came when they telephoned Whitehall and my master was out. There was only a junior on the desk and I soon settled him. Even then I don't think I'd have managed it if the doctor hadn't made the mistake of admitting that there wasn't any likelihood of Catharine's health suffering by this trip. I'm afraid she was very bewildered until I got a couple of minutes alone with her. What a marvelous girl she is. She'll bring it off if anyone can."
"Brian, what will happen when your master finds out what you've been up to with the ambulance and everything?"
"He'll be so angry he won't be able to speak. For a minute or two. He'll speak then all right."
"Don't you mind?"
"Well, it had to be done, hadn't it? And I've got the sack anyway. Already."
Leonard picked up his sherry bottle and uncorked it.
"Brian."
"Yes?"
"If you've got the sack, can you stay the night?"
"Oh yes, please, Lucy."
By now Catharine was with Churchill. After some effort, she arranged things so that she was able to put her arms round him and take his head on her lap. Twice she raised him so that his face was near hers. Both times she looked into his face very longingly, though without managing to see in it more than she could have recognized at first glance. She felt not at all sure of being able to do what she had found she must do. When she spoke, she tried to use her mouth and lips so that they would put the words into exactly the right shape to penetrate the barrier of his hearing and reach him, reach the person she knew was there.
"Dearest James. I haven't got to tell you who this is, have I? Because all the most important part of you doesn't need to be told. It couldn't ever forget. Little James. We said it was all right to say that. You've always listened to everything I've ever said to you. You're to go on listening now.
"First there's me. I've had the operation. It all went off all right. Everybody's very pleased with me. I'm afraid there are bits of me missing now. But that's something you're not going to mind as much as all that. Not as much as you expected to. There's not everything gone from there. And they've promised me it isn't going to look horrible. I believe them, because they're very good. You don't know how good they are. Now they say I've got to have a lot of treatment which I shan't like at all. I'll have to keep going to hospital for a few weeks while I'm having it. But that's all right, because you'll be able to see me the rest of the time. Yes you will. You're going to. And they say I've got a good chance, because they took it so terrifically early. That's thanks to you, that they managed to do that. A good chance. You gave me a good chance.
"Now, darling. I know there's more to it than just me. And you're not to mind me knowing it and saying it. There are bound to be some things love doesn't reach as far as, however you look at it. It wouldn't be right any other way. There are things you can't ever do. Like giving people hydrophobia. I've just finished being told all about that. It was all right me hearing, because it's not going to happen. It never was going to. It was just a threat. I know exactly what you've been thinking, because I've been told. Sometimes you have to be told things. That man you were going to put into a little plastic bag and spray with stuff so that he couldn't swallow however thirsty he got. He's been let off. It's not going to be done to him. And that hasn't come about by chance. People have decided not to do it. They never even meant to.
"I remember you talking to me about God and how bad he was. I didn't feel as you did about it, but I saw what you meant. I can see how horrible it must be if you think that God's very cruel and then something comes up that makes you think people have started behaving like him. But when you told me that God had invented all the bad things, and so whenever anything bad happened it was really him who was doing it, you weren't talking to me. I thought you were going off on your own then and now you're trying to completely. You knew very well that it's up to people not to get on with the bad things God has invented for them. It's their job to show they're better than he is. Well, now here they are doing it.
"I know you think that bad things go together. All right, you had reason to. But this time it isn't going to happen like that. It isn't like you thought. There's just one bad thing on its own that you really mind about. What's been happening to me. And even that isn't a bad thing for certain. And if bad things can go together, so can good things. You and me ever meeting in the first place. Think what a good thing that was, and how unlikely. And then us falling in love and going to bed together and going on being in love. I'm not going to let you go mad. When I went mad I couldn't find any reason not to, and that was really why I did. You've got a reason not to. Me. And I know how hard it is not to go mad once you've sort of thought of it. But you're going to manage it, however hard it is even after what I've told you just now. You're going to dare to be sane, James, dearest James, little James. And big James. I love you."
Churchill stirred, opened his eyes, and fixed them on Catharine.
"I know," he said.
Ayscue stood at the lectern of the village church waiting for the end of the Thomas Roughead anthem, Lord, Protect Thou Thy Servants. He had agreed to deliver a short address from this position after the vicar had made it clear to him that, while the accommodation of visiting preachers in the pulpit was probably unavoidable in the course of a regular service, no such obligation existed when a house of worship was being made use of as a concert-hall. He was sitting now rather huddled up in a front corner pew staring at Ayscue, the expression of wondering outrage endemic to his face faintly intensified, it might be, by the memory of some of the verbal turns of phrase in Roughead's song, Airs and Graces, performed just before the anthem.
The concert was going at least as well as Ayscue had expected. Young Townsend had led off very creditably with the far from straightforward C major organ fantasia, and a slight raggedness among the choir altos, noticeable at the start of the first of two extracts from the masque, Hector and Andromache, had quite soon cleared up. Ayscue thought it unlikely that anybody in the audience would have noticed, except no doubt the music critic whom a widely read and respected provincial newspaper had sent to report on the occasion. And this man, from a couple of minutes' chat in the church porch before the concert, had not only seemed pleasant and easy-going, unlikely to attend overmuch to foreseeable shortcomings of this kind, but had professed himself a devotee of eighteenth-century English music. Ayscue thought that if Townsend, Pearce and he could manage the trio-sonata, set down to follow the address, with as much accuracy and decent stylishness as they had shown at their final rehearsal, Thomas Roughead might indeed be launched on the modest posthumous career he deserved.