‘As if that was easy. You should know.’
‘You’re the particular principle of order he rejects. That’s as important as the particular religion one doesn’t believe in.’
‘You flatter me. That sounds like a rational link. There are links, but they are deep and awful.’
‘Yes, I know. Do you mind if we go over one or two things again?’
‘No. All right, you ask the questions.’
‘And you forgive me?’
‘One has to forgive the executioner. Not to would be fearfully bad form. You told me to keep off tranquillizers and endure it all, I am enduring it all, it hasn’t made me wise.’
‘About Rufus — ’
‘It isn’t Rufus, it isn’t Alan or Alex or Fiona or Tom - not those old theories - not really - it’s something aboriginal.’
‘I’m talking about you, not George.’
‘Oh, I know you’ve got a theory there too. All right. Rufus’s death was my fault, it happened in a second, due to my carelessness and stupidity - and then I couldn’t get in touch with George, he wasn’t at the Museum, I had to wait until he came home to tell him, I sometimes think I died during that wait and everything since has been a dream of life. Of course I feel the loss of Rufus every second, that death is the air I breathe, I relive that accident … But that it has got mixed up with … George and … that’s extra …’
‘Yes.’
‘It was impossible to talk about it afterwards, we didn’t talk about it to each other or to anyone else. George never asked for the details and I never told them, except for saying it was my fault and saying, oh - very vaguely - what happened. He never said anything. I’ve never looked, even glanced, into the depths of how George felt, how he blamed me in his heart — ’
‘Perhaps less than you imagine.’
‘How he accused me, what a process he set up - these words don’t fit - it’s ineffable. And then later on people began to say it was his fault, they even hinted it was deliberate, they believed terrible things - and I didn’t say a word. And now if I shouted “I did it” they would still think it was him. How can I leave him after that?’
‘Because he took the blame.’
‘No, no, those words are too feeble, I tell you it’s ineffable, it’s absolute, it’s like being damned together, tied together and thrown into the flames.’
‘Isn’t this what must be undone?’
‘Theories, theories, you keep looking for a key, even this isn’t fundamental. Yes, he “took the blame”. It has made him worse.’
‘I think it has made you worse.’
‘You think I should forgive myself.’
‘And him in the same movement. Guilt and resentment often get mixed up together. You deeply resent - whatever it was he did - to protect himself - from that terrible thing. You said the other day that he “lapped it up like a cat lapping cream”. I remember that curious phrase.’
‘Did I say that? Of course that doesn’t describe it. His heart was utterly smashed - Rufus was - well, you know - for both of us — ’
‘Yes.’
‘What I meant was that at once George began to make it all into something else, something awful, against me - oh, to protect himself, as you just said. But to mix up that awful pain with vile spite and malice and absolute misrepresentation and lies - that sort of deep determination to change what really is into a horrible machine to hurt somebody else - that’s the activity of the devil - it corrupts everything, everything.’
‘But you see it both ways round.’
‘Exactly. It was my fault and I kept silent about it - I kept silent first because it was too terrible to speak of, and later because - because it wasn’t anybody else’s business and I couldn’t — ’
‘You couldn’t stoop to counter the vile things people were casually saying about George — ’
‘Yes. It would simply have made them talk more, they would have said I was shielding him, they would have loved it. But because of - the thing itself - and the silence - I am to blame. So in a way George is right and can tell himself so. But the way he has made it into a weapon against me - sort of silently, malevolently - is so awful - it’s a caricature of any real condemnation, it’s the opposite, it’s the exact opposite of the response which love and pity would have made.’
‘So objectively you are guilty and George is right, only as he works it he’s absolutely wrong.’
‘Yes. And what you call seeing it both ways round is part of the torment. It’s warfare, it’s hell, hell is this sort of warfare.’
‘You spoke of George’s “determination”, but what about yours? You see him as acting silently and malevolently. This is the picture which you have worked upon. No doubt George moves instinctively, as we all do, to save himself. So he makes something of the matter. But so do you. He can’t afford love and pity. But it seems you can’t either.’
Stella was silent for a moment, reflecting. ‘If I believed that such springs could flow - but all my strength goes into not being destroyed. I don’t want to become a machine of misery and hate. I want to stay rational. Just trying to think clearly about George is the best I can do by way of love and pity and such. You don’t think he’s likely to kill himself?’
‘No.’
‘Suicide has always seemed to me so abstract. No one could wholeheartedly do it.’
‘We are abstract beings and rarely wholehearted.’
‘I know you respect suicide because of Masada.’
‘Oh don’t speak of that. Suicides are often acts of revenge, or proofs of omnipotence.’
‘That sounds like George. But no, I don’t see him as a suicide either. A lynch mob might kill him one day. Yet inner violence is a power, like magic, people fear it.’
‘He’d be protected, hedged!’
‘Yes. Like a king.’
‘Like a king, which he has to be since you’re a queen. You once said you felt like a princess who had married a commoner. “It tells in the end”, you said.’
‘Did I? The things I say, and you remember them all!’
‘Don’t be too busy with those pictures. It is good to declare a blankness now and then. We are not anything very much, not even machines. You imagine that your thoughts are rays of power. Simple actions may be a better way to just views.’
‘Simple actions — ’
‘Undertaken in a light shed from outside, some ordinary faith or hope, nothing clever.’
‘You are preaching humility again! Like going home. If I could see that as a duty - but I can’t. I can’t walk into the dark. I’ve got to have a picture, I’ve got to have a plan. You still don’t think Diane Sedleigh is important?’
‘A toy, a divertissement. You aren’t worried about her?’
‘Yes. But I understand what I feel about her, it’s plain and wholesome compared with the rest. I used to think he might kill her. I believe he was with her when Rufus died. You don’t think George is simply mad?’
‘No.’
‘Or epileptic?’
‘No.’
‘Electric shocks, all that?’
‘No.’
‘But you think it’s dangerous, this waiting, this letting time pass? I’ve become obsessed with “letting time pass”, I can’t arrest it, I can’t use it. I used to classify it all as “an unhappy marriage”, but it isn’t, it’s vast. Of course his having no job makes it worse, he can sit and have fantasies. He imagines awful things. He used to tell me, centuries ago.’
‘Were you together in that?’
‘You mean, was I fascinated? Yes, before I started to — ’
‘Fear him.’
‘Hate him, or whatever it is.’
‘And you are still fascinated.’
‘It’s closer than fascination. I am George. Suppose I went back, would I be safe?’