«Hello, Julian. Whatever are you doing?»
«Have you been to see Daddy?»
«Yes.» I reflected that it was just as well Julian was out this evening.
«Good. I thought you'd quarrelled.»
«Certainly not!»
«You don't come any more.»
«I do. Only you're away.»
«Not now. I'm doing teaching practice in London. What was happening when you left?»
«Where? At home? Oh-nothing special-«They were quarrelling so I left the house. Have they calmed town?»
«Yes, of course-«Don't you think they quarrel more than they used to?»
«No, I-How smart you are, Julian. Quite a dandy.»
«It's an exorcism. These are love letters.»
«Love letters?»
«From my ex-boy friend.»
I remembered that Arnold had mentioned rather unenthusiastically a «hairy swain,» an art student or something.
«Have you parted company?»
«Yes. I've torn them into the smallest possible pieces. When I've got rid of them all I'll be free. Here goes the last, I think.»
Taking from her neck the receptacle rather like a nose-bag which had contained the dismembered missives she turned it inside out. A few more white petals flew with the passing wind and were gone.
«But what were you saying, you were chanting something, a spell or such.»
» 'Oscar Belling.' « ш «What?»
«That was his name. Look, I'm using the past tense! It's all over!
«Did you abandon him or did he-?»
«I'd rather not talk about it. Bradley, I wanted to ask you something.»
It was quite dark now, a bluish night gauzed over by the yellow street lamps, and reminding me irrelevantly of Rachel's reddish golden hair adhering to the front of Francis's shabby blue suit. We walked slowly along the street.
«Look, Bradley, it's this. I've decided to be a writer.»
My heart sank. «That's fine.»
«And I want you to help me.»
«It's not easy to help someone to be a writer, it may not even be possible.»
«The thing is, I don't want to be a writer like Daddy, I want to be a writer like you.»
My heart warmed to the girl. But my answer had to be ironical. «My dear Julian, don't emulate me! I constantly try and hardly ever succeed!»
«That's just it. Daddy writes too much, don't you think? He hardly ever revises. He writes something, then he 'gets rid of it' by publishing it, I've heard him actually say that, and then he writes something else. He's always in such a hurry, it's neurotic. I see no point in being an artist unless you try all the time to be perfect.»
I wondered if these were the views of the late Oscar Belling. «It's a long hard road, Julian, if that's what you believe.»
«Well, it's what you believe, and I admire you for it, I've always admired you, Bradley. But the point is this, will you teach me?»
My heart sank again. «What do you mean, Julian?»
«Two things really. I've been thinking about it. I know I'm not educated and I know I'm immature. And this teachers' training place is hopeless. I want you to give me a reading list. All the great books I ought to read, but only the great ones and the hard ones. I don't want to waste my time with small stuff. I haven't got much time left now. And I'll read the books and we could discuss them. You could give me sort of tutorials on them. And then, the second thing, I'd like to write things for you, short stories perhaps, or anything you felt I should write, and you'd criticize what I'd written. You see, I want to be really taken in hand. I think one should pay so much attention to technique, don't you? Like learning to draw before you paint. Do please say you'll take me on. It needn't take much of your time, not more than a couple of hours or so in a week, and it would absolutely change my life.»
I knew of course that it was just a matter of choosing a way of getting out of this gracefully. Julian was already grieving over the wasted years and regretting that she had not much time left. My grief and my regret were a rather different matter. I could not spare her a couple of hours a week. How dare she ask for my precious hours? In any case, the child's suggestion appalled and embarrassed me. It was not just the display of youthful insensibility. It was the sadly misplaced nature of her ambition. There was little doubt that Julian's fate was to be typist, teacher, housewife, without starring in any role.
I said, «I think it's a very good idea and of course I'd like to help, and I do so agree with you about technique-Only just now I'm going to be abroad for a while.»
«Oh, where? I could visit you. I'm quite free now because my school has measles.»
«I shall be travelling.»
«Oh Iliad, Divine Comedy, please. That's marvellous! That's just it! The big stuff!»
«And you don't mind poetry, prose-?»
«Oh no, not poetry. I can't read poetry very well. I'm keeping poetry for later on.»
«The Iliad and the Divine Comedy are poems.»
«Well, yes, of course they are, but I'd be reading them in a prose translation.»
«So that disposes of that difficulty.»
«You will write to me then, Bradley? I'm so terribly grateful. I'll say good-bye to you here because I must just look in this shop.»
We had stopped rather abruptly a little short of the station outside the illuminated window of a shoe shop. High summer boots of various colours made out of a sort of lace occupied the front of the window. Slightly put out by the brusqueness of my dismissal I could not think of anything suitable to say. I saluted vaguely and said, «Ta-ta,» an expression which I do not think I have ever used before or since.
«Ta-ta,» said Julian, as if this were a sort of code. Then she turned to face the lighted window and began examining the boots.
I crossed the road and reached the station entrance and looked back. She was leaning forward now with her hands on her knees, her thick hair and her brow and nose goldened by the bright light. I thought how aptly some painter, not Mr. Belling, could have used her as a model for an allegory of Vanity. I watched, as one might watch a fox, for some minutes, but she did not go away or even move.
Yes, it was time to move. I had felt, during recent months, sometimes boredom, sometimes despair, as I struggled with a nebulous work which seemed now a nouvelle, now a vast novel, wherein a hero not unlike myself pursued, amid ghostly incidents, a series of reflections about life and art. The trouble was that the dark blaze, whose absence I had deplored in Arnold's work, was absent here as well. I could not fire and fuse these thoughts, these people, into a whole thing. I wanted to produce a sort of statement which might be called my philosophy. But I also wanted to embody this in a story, perhaps in an allegory, something with a form as pliant and as hard as my cast-iron garland of roses. But I could not do it. My people were shadows, my thoughts were epigrams. However I felt, as we artists can feel, the proximity of enlightenment. And I was sure that if I went away now into loneliness, right away from the associations of tedium and failure, I would soon be rewarded. So it was in this mood that I decided to set forth, leaving my darling burrow for a countryside which I had never visited, and a cottage which I had never seen.
I also write to ask you, as briefly as possible, a favour. You were of course interested to meet Francis Marloe, who by the weirdest accident was with me when you telephoned. You spoke of meeting him again. Please do not do so. If you reflect you will see how hurtful to me any such association would be. I do not propose to have anything to do with my former wife and I do not want any connection to exist between her world, whatever that may turn out to be, and the things of my own which are dear to me. It would of course be characteristic of you to feel «interested» in probing in this region, but please be kind enough to an old friend not to do so.