‘He is fully occupied with John Robert Rozanov.’
‘So he mightn’t notice me? I hope it’s a harmless occupation. Does that mean I can wait or that I needn’t wait?’
‘You don’t think George ever realized how friendly you were with Rozanov when you were a student?’
‘I wasn’t friendly with him. He just thought I was good at philosophy. And I — ’
‘And you —?’
‘Well, you know John Robert, or you did.’
‘You think you aren’t part of the Rozanov problem?’
‘I hope not. When I saw how besotted George was, I gave Rozanov up.’
‘And you gave up philosophy, in case George realized you could do it and he couldn’t!’
‘Don’t! That was ages ago, before we were married. I was studying George even then.’
‘I recall your saying once that George interested you more than anything in the world.’
‘Anyway I don’t want to be involved with George while he’s involved with John Robert, that would be one Chinese box too many. There is something, if I could only work it out, while I’m waiting. You can’t explain George by the old theories. You might just as well say he’s possessed by a devil. It’s more something to pity, like an illness, or an urge, like sex, like a nervous obsessive guilty angry craving. He knows now he’ll never do anything with his life. He’s a pathetic figure really. If George was in a novel he would be a comic character.’
‘We would all be comic characters if we were in novels. I wish you had gone on studying, philosophy or economics, not George.’
‘Yes. It’s part of that dream.’
‘Of happiness?’
‘I dream I’m back at the university. And don’t say “why not”, don’t say “you’re still young”, don’t say — ’
‘All right. Nothing ever came of those plays George was writing?’
‘Of course not. Didn’t he show you one?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry I lost George. I hate to lose anybody.’
‘If you could have kept him - but it’s impossible. If you had kept George he would have begun to detest you as he detests Rozanov. I think he tore up all the plays. He tore up my novel anyway.’
‘I didn’t know you’d written a novel.’
‘I might have let you see it. You’re lucky.’
‘I hope you’ll write another?’
‘It’s not being able to do anything, to impress anybody - I know you see George as a sort of “hero of our time”.’
‘The powerless man who becomes apathetic and then nasty.’
‘George as a nasty man. That sounds quite soothing. You know George lives in a sort of odd time scheme, as if he were a criminal who had already been punished and set free, although his crimes still lie ahead. He has already paid, and this sanctions his resentment.’
‘The justified sinner going on sinning. You said George felt like a Nazi war criminal at the end of a long sentence, purged by suffering, yet unrepentant!’
‘Yes. He was fascinated by those people. He read a lot of books about them. He’ll never achieve anything now, like studying or writing or anything, but he might achieve some awful act. I’m sure he dreams about it - all his little outrages — ’
‘Like trying to kill you?’
‘Well - he tried in a sense - but — ’
‘He pushed the car.’
‘Yes. I can still see so clearly his hands pressed on the back window, all pale like - like some animal’s — ’
‘And he kicked you after he’d got you out.’
‘I think I resent that more. I did provoke him. I taunted him about Rozanov. If he ever did kill me it would be accidental.’
‘Never mind. Go on. All his little outrages, or “pranks” as his admirers call them — ’
‘Are like - imagery, symbols - like a rehearsal for something he’ll do one day that will satisfy him at last - and then he’ll stop - he’ll be satisfied, or perhaps he’ll be disgusted, he’ll have destroyed something in himself, he’ll be exhausted, weak and pale like a grub in an apple, and the craving will go away.’
‘What stage in this process are we at now?’
‘That’s what I want to work out. The Rozanov thing is an interruption. It’s serious, but in a way that could be divertissement too. It’s fortuitous and can pass. Rozanov will go back to America and George will recover. Then we’ll know.’
‘Whether the thing he’s waiting for - the act that will cure him - has already happened?’
‘Yes. I thought the Roman glass was it.’
‘Yes?’
‘Then I thought that murdering me was it.’
‘Except that you’re still alive.’
‘Yes, but it could be good enough.’
‘And if it isn’t?’
‘He might feel he had to finish me off so as to finish it off. He might see it as a fiasco, as a loss of face, as something that went wrong.’
‘Is that why you wait?’
‘No, it isn’t, that doesn’t make any difference, if I go back to George I take the risk. I just don’t want to go back in a muddle, in an undignified scramble, without a clear head and a policy.’
‘A policy —!’
‘And now I’ve delayed so long I may as well wait until Rozanov has gone back to America.’
‘And if George were cured, “exhausted” as you said, if he were weak and pale like a grub in an apple, docile, would he still interest you? Don’t you rather like the waiting?’
‘Sometimes I feel as if George were a fish I’d hooked … on a long long line … and I let him run … and run … and run … What a terrible image.’
‘What’s that strange music?’
‘There’s a fair on the Common.’
The distant sound of fair music, distilled and sweetened in the warm evening air, faintly and intermittently drifted in the garden at Belmont. Nearer at hand a blackbird, lyrical as a nightingale, was rapturously singing. The ginkgo had on its summer plumage. Its plump drooping branches were like the rounded limbs of a great animal. The garden smelt of privet flowers. In fact the whole of Ennistone smelt sourly-sweet of privet where that valuable shrub was a popular feature.
‘Pearl, I feel frightened.’
‘What of, my darling?’
‘Let’s close the shutters.’
‘It’s too early.’
‘I wrote to Margot.’
‘That’s a good girl.’
‘What a nice paperweight my stone hand makes, look.’
Hattie had placed the limestone hand which she had found in the wild garden on top of her neat pile of letters. She had written to her Aunt Margot, to her school friend Verity Smaldon, and to Christine with whose family she had stayed in France.
‘Did you reply to that impertinent journalist?’
‘Yes, I did that yesterday. Fancy that newspaper knowing that I exist!’ The editor of the Ennistone Gazette had written to Hattie asking for an interview.
‘I hope you said no firmly.’
‘Of course.’
Hattie had had a nasty dream last night which still lingered in her head. In an empty twilit shop she had seen on an upper shelf a small semi-transparent red thing which she took to be a big horrible insect. Then the thing began to flutter and she saw it was a very small very beautiful owl. The little owl began to fly about just above her head causing her a piercing mixture of pleasure and distress. She reached up her hands to try to catch the owl, but was afraid of hurting it. A voice said, ‘Let it out of the window,’ but Hattie knew that this sort of owl always lived in rooms, and would die outside. Then she looked at another shelf and saw with horror a cat sitting there about to spring upon the owl.
‘You’re so restless today.’