On the day, so much lamented by Gabriel, when Stella disappeared from Leafy Ridge, she had not set off for London or for Tokyo. She had taken one of Gabriel’s umbrellas (it was raining on that day), and thus concealing her conspicuous dark head ‘like that of an Egyptian queen’, had walked the distance, not great, to my house, not far from the Crescent, and there, one might say, gave herself up. When I use this phrase I simply mean that she came as one at the end of her tether and (let me emphasize) with no special thought in her head except to get safely away from the McCaffreys. I have had, and have, no ‘sentimental’ association with Stella, nothing of that sort is involved. I am considerably her senior. I am, as I said at the beginning, an Ennistonian, and I have known the McCaffreys, though not intimately, all my life, and Stella since her marriage. I think I may say that we are friends, and I do not use the word lightly. And we are both Jewish. Stella came to me as to the nearest ‘safe house’, a place ‘out of the world’, out of the pressure of time, where she could rest and think and decide. She fled from the kindness of Gabriel, and the smallness of her bedroom at ‘Como’, and from Adam, who made her think of Rufus, and from a place where George could find her. She came to me, not seeking for advice, or support in some ‘policy’, but just because she trusted me and knew I would hide her. (She is not the first person I have hidden.) Whether this particular flight was a good idea was something upon which doubt could be cast, and we did, in later discussions, cast it. At any rate, once the door of my house had closed upon Stella, a course of action was set and had to be followed. As Stella put it once, she was ‘in blood so stepped, returning were as tedious as go o’er’.
Stella’s removal from my house, Bath Lodge, to Maryville was my idea. I removed her simply because we had, for the moment, talked enough. Of course I gave her advice; it was impossible in conversations of such intensity not to. She did not take it; but indeed any view which I could form of the matter was tentative. And Stella was no sickly waif, she was a strong rational self-assertive woman who had, as she realized as time went on, put herself in an impossible position. She was paralysed between different courses of action and, with her pride at stake, unable to decide to move; and the longer the silence and the secrecy went on, the harder it was to see how it could be ended. Stella seemed to me in danger of settling down into an idea of being trapped, which the minute discussions she enjoyed with me tended to reinforce. I suggested an abrupt change of scene, and she agreed to go to Maryville, consigned to the care of a much longer-established friend of mine, May Blacken, the mother of Jeremy and Andrew. Stella was fond of May and respected her. The situation as it then was may best be clarified, at any rate exhibited, by a transcription of the conversation which took place that evening after dinner between Stella and me.
‘I see you’ve set out the netsuke, my old friends.’
‘Yes — ’
‘I especially like that demon hatching out of his egg.’
‘You would. You were the only person who really looked at them. I’m glad I rescued them from George, he would have enjoyed smashing them. The idea was certain to occur to him some time.’
‘Have you written to your father?’
‘Not like you said. I just sent a note to say I’d be away in France for a while.’
‘It must have been odd to see the McCaffreys at play.’
‘A shock, yes. It made me feel such a traitor to them all.’
‘Because you’ve taken refuge with the enemy.’
‘Yes. Well, for George everyone is the enemy. But where have I been all this time, what on earth can I ever tell them?’
‘Lies. I’ll think of some.’
‘Don’t be facetious. How loathsome it all is. And I’ve involved you.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m stormproof.’
‘I’ve put myself in the wrong, and that paralyses my willpower. I feel I’m in a steel box or something.’
‘People get out of boxes, it’s often easier than they think.’
‘I can’t see how to get out of this one. Have you any new idea? God, as if you hadn’t other things to think of.’
‘What did you instantly feel when you saw George pass by this afternoon?’
‘So close, so close. Frightful fear, like an electric shock. Then when I saw he wasn’t coming here, an intense desire to run out after him and that was like fear too. He looked so lonely.’
‘You don’t feel you could just go back to Druidsdale, just turn up?’
‘No.’
‘Or write to him simply to say you’re OK?’
‘No. I’m not OK. And he doesn’t care.’
‘Just to have written the letter would be a step. Move one piece and you alter the board.’
‘Yes, yes, like you said.’
‘Any act might change the scene in ways you can’t now foresee, and I don’t see that this one would do harm. I’d post the letter in London. It would make for a kind of vagueness, less intensity, more space.’
‘I know what you mean. But anything I do would commit me and I’m terrified of making a mistake. I can’t do anything until I’ve cleared my mind. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘At least now I’m free — ’
‘I thought you were in a steel box.’
‘I mean I can think about it. I feel I’m poised - like a rocket that might go off different ways. Better to wait.’
‘You regard George as a problem to be solved. Maybe you should relax and give up.’
‘You mean go bobbing back to him like a piece of flotsam, like an ordinary person? All right, laugh!’
‘Why not go to Tokyo?’
‘And tell my father he was right?’
‘Or invite him here. You know how much I’ve always wanted to meet him.’
‘Oh, you two would get on terrifyingly well. Invite him into this shambles? No.’
‘You want to get everything right all at once. Why not fiddle around with the bits? What does May think now?’
‘She thinks I ought to plan carefully how to be happy for the rest of my life! You know, sometimes the thought of happiness torments me. This house reeks of happiness, it drives me mad. Sometimes I’m happy in my dreams. Then it’s as if George was blotted out, as if he’s never been.’
‘Well, why not blot George out?’
‘You said go on a journey, only the journey must be a pilgrimage. There isn’t any holy place for me to go to.’
‘Jerusalem?’
‘Don’t be silly. That means something to you. It means nothing to me. I used to think that if I went to Delphi I’d receive some sort of illumination, but I know now that Delphi is empty too. My holy place is George. And it is an abomination.’
‘I meant to blot him out effectively, write saying you want a divorce, and imagine how he’d curse, and then he’d smile and then he’d cheer. Conceive that he might be better off without you. That would be one way of taking the weight off yourself!’
‘All right, I am self-obsessed. But I couldn’t divorce George. It’s not possible. All that unfinished business.’
‘You want power over him. You want to save him your way. One can’t always finish business, put that picture out of your head. If you can’t decide to leave him, then go back, without waiting for the right time, without knowing what it’s all about and without the intention of fixing or finishing or clarifying anything. You can talk to George, that remains — ’
‘Yes, in a way, but — ’
‘He envies you, he fears you, give up your power.’