Tom and Anthea were together, with Peter Blackett who was in love with Nesta and half in love with Tom. Beside them Valerie and Nesta, both worrying about their college exams, were discussing Keynes. Valerie (Aphrodite) was still wearing the long white robe which was her under-dress. Hector came up.
‘The situation is hopeless.’
‘No, Hector, it went very well.’
Andrew Blackett said to Jeremy, ‘Is she still there?’
‘Yes. Not a word to Peter.’
‘Of course not.’
Andrew was wondering whether he should drive straight to Maryville that night and offer his life, his love, his honour and his name to Stella, whose dark beauty he had loved in total secrecy for many years. They would have to emigrate, of course. He pictured himself living with Stella in Australia, and for a second his head swam and he felt quite faint with joy.
Heads of stags and dogs and great crested birds appeared here and there among the drinkers. A shaggy bear came lumbering up to Tom, and revealed Bobbie Benning.
‘Isn’t that thing terribly hot?’
‘Yes, and I’ve got a bloody cold. It’s no joke having a cold inside a bear’s head, I can tell you. Is Scarlett-Taylor here?’
‘No, he’s working.’
Bobbie Benning, still tormented by his inability to teach engineering, and unable to bring himself to confide in Tom or Hector, had elected Emma, obviously a serious scholar, as his confidant but had not yet had a chance to unburden himself.
Hector had been upset earlier in the evening by a difference of opinion with Jonathan Treece whom Hector had, unwisely he now saw, asked to help with the music. Treece had gone back to Oxford in a huff. However, this now seemed a minor matter. Hector was beginning to feel that he would go mad, consigned to his lonely lodgings at 10 p.m. and leaving Tom and Anthea together. ‘Let’s buy some drink and go on boozing somewhere else. Come to my place.’
‘Or let’s go up to the Common,’ said Bobbie. ‘The fair will still be on, won’t it?’
‘Some people were dancing round the stones at the Ennistone Ring.’
‘Some people dancing! Who are they?’
‘I don’t know, someone said all dressed in white.’
‘Druids obviously!’
‘Let’s go up to the Common.’
‘Everyone bring a bottle!’
Tom, laughing, trying on Bobbie’s bearhead, was also in torment. He had not yet written to Rozanov, though he had tried several times to compose a letter. How could he tell that man that he was not attracted to that girl? Of course there were hundreds of ways of putting it: we’ve talked, and though we like each other awfully … we both think we’re too young … She doesn’t feel I’m quite right … we’re just not interested enough … But the awful thing was that Tom was interested, only not in the right way. He thought almost with rage, that bloody autocrat has tied me to her, I don’t want to be but now it’s so hard to undo, I’ve changed. He’s made me think about her so much. I can’t just write a letter and forget it all. It’s inside me, growing like a nasty poisonous plant. It’s degrading to be afflicted like this. She probably hates me. And she frightens me, she seems like an evil maid, a sort of magic doll, bringing ill fortune, a curse, blighting my happiness and my freedom. He’s tied me, and it’s so damnably unfair. But if I get furious with him and write him some awful letter, if I write him any letter, because any letter is bound to be wrong, I shall go mad with remorse. I care about him, I care what he’s thinking, that’s what it’s come to!
Tom was experiencing for the first time in his life (and no doubt he was lucky to have escaped it so long) that blackening and poisoning of the imagination which is one of the worst, as well as one of the commonest, forms of human misery. His world had become uncanny, full of terrible crimes and ordeals, and punishments. He felt frightened and guilty, anticipating some catastrophe which was entirely his own fault, yet also brought about by vile enemies whom he detested. It was no good appealing to reason and common sense, telling himself it was all just a dotty episode which he could put behind him and soon laugh about. Oh if only he had just said no at the start; it was right, it was easy then. Where was his happiness now, his luck, he whom everybody liked so much, and who, once, had liked everybody?
Tom had thought, and there was something childish in the thought, that the day at the sea would somehow ‘cure’ him. The old idea of the family holiday at the sea was replete with innocence and calm joy. He needed to see Hattie again in some sort of ordinary way so as to wash off, as it were, the painful unclean impression of their previous meeting when he had behaved like a cad. But the meeting in the wild garden had been, as it seemed in retrospect, equally horrid. Was it that he wanted to impress her more? He had cut a poor figure. She had held the advantage, she had been cold, superior, almost cutting. There had been no exorcism. And after that he had got into that funny exalted emotional state, which he scarcely understood later, about Christ having been in England. He had tried to write a pop song about it afterwards: Jesus was here, he was here, man, do you hear, he came as a child with his uncle the tin merchant, Joseph of Arimathea, don’t fear, man, do you hear, and did those feet, they did, man, did they those feet, those feet did walk, when he came as a child (and so on). But the spiritual exaltation was gone and he could not get the song right. Then, on that seaside day, there had been the nightmare of losing Zed and Adam’s awful crying which the rescue could not efface. And now, later on, what Tom horribly, and with a sense of degradation, remembered most clearly was what he had seen from the top of the rock and not instantly reported to his companion: Hattie undressing, her mauve stockings which matched her dress, the tops of the stockings which were a dark purple colour, and her thigh above.
‘Time, gentlemen, please.’
‘Have we got enough drink?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To the Common.’
‘The fair’s still on and people are dancing at the Ring.’
‘Can I come?’
‘Wait, I’ll get another bottle too.’
‘I’ve got my transistor set.’
‘So have I.’
‘What about glasses?’
‘Pick them up at Hector’s.’
‘I’ll carry that,’ said Tom to Anthea.
‘No, I’ll carry it, you’ve got your own.’
They came out together into the warm night where there was still light in the sky. Some drunks gathered on the pavement were softly singing, I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men, I will make you fishers of men if you follow me. Tom felt immediately giddy, rather drunk. Anthea took his hand and tears came into her eyes. She passionately loved Joey Tanner who did not love her, and she dearly loved Tom McCaffrey, but as a friend, as a brother.