Dr Roach came out into the hall. He said, ‘Oh Tom, dear chap, you’re here, that’s good, that’s good.’
Dr Roach came forward and detached Anthea, who was now quietly sobbing, and propelled her into the drawing-room. She sat down on the sofa covering her face. He said to her, ‘Sit quiet with Tom. I’ll bring you a draught.’ He said to Tom, ‘He went off peacefully about an hour ago. He didn’t suffer at the end. He knew us. He said, “Pray always, pray to God.” Those were his last words. A saint if ever there was one.’ There were tears in the doctor’s eyes. He went out of the room.
Tom sat down beside Anthea. He knew now that William Eastcote was dead. He hugged Anthea, murmuring, ‘Oh darling, darling, don’t grieve so, I love you so much — ’
The doctor came back and gave Anthea a whitish drink in a glass. She stopped sobbing and moved a little away from Tom and drank the white stuff down slowly. Dr Roach, with a hand on Tom’s shoulder, said, ‘I’m glad you got to know so soon. I made several telephone calls - the news must be flying around. What a wonderful life, that’s what we must say to ourselves, mustn’t we. How terribly we shall all miss him. But what a wonderful life, what a wonderful man, not just a comforter but a living evidence of a religious truth. Anthea dear, hadn’t you better lie down upstairs for a while?’
Anthea, raising her face all reddened and swollen by weeping and brushing back her hair which was wet with tears, said, ‘You must go now, you must go to Miss Dunbury, I would be so glad if you would go to her. I’ll be all right now Tom has come.’
‘How good of you to remember Miss Dunbury. Well, I will go. Tom will look after you. And I’ve asked Dorothy to come in.’ (Dorothy was Mrs Robin Osmore.) ‘I’ll come back later this evening.’
When the doctor had gone Anthea said, gabbling as if there were something she had to explain or apologize for. ‘You see, I went back to York on Sunday and I didn’t know how ill he was, I mean, I knew he was very ill, but I didn’t expect this, and then the doctor rang up, and thank God I arrived in time to - to say goodbye.’ Tears overwhelmed her again and she leaned against Tom’s shoulder.
Dorothy Osmore came in. Even at this moment she could not see Anthea without thinking with exasperation of Greg’s failure. She was an upright good-natured woman but she could not help also, with a quick flicker of her thought, reflecting that Anthea must now be very rich.
Dorothy said to Tom (the sight of whom with Anthea displeased her), ‘There now, I’ll look after her.’
Tom stood up. Anthea rose with him and took hold of the lapels of the overcoat. She said, ‘Tom, I shall never forget that you came to me this evening. Oh Tom, may all be well. I’ll pray like he said, and you pray too. Let’s meet again soon. Good night.’
Anthea had returned to York full of the problem of Joey Tanner whom she vainly loved. She had not expected her uncle’s death. She had missed all the scandal about the Slipper House party and knew nothing of it. She spent much of Monday composing a letter to Joey saying that she knew he would never love her, and she would not see him again. On Tuesday she sent the letter off. On Wednesday she received the doctor’s call. Now she knew that her feelings about Joey, and indeed about everything else, were as nothing compared with the everything of William Eastcote, his goodness and the mystery of his death. She felt an intense wailing grief for which the only salve was that vanished goodness which she would now press forever to her heart.
Mrs Osmore, showing Tom out, recognized Gregory’s coat and hat. Outside in the dark street where the yellow lamps had been put on, Tom thought, Oh God, why did I not come to William Eastcote sooner, why did I not visit him and talk to him and ask him to guide me? Just telling all that stuff to him would have brought out the truth of it. Then he thought to himself, I too will never forget that I was with Anthea on this evening. Then he remembered his awful dark messy misery. He thought, I ought to see Hattie, but that’s impossible. I feel so mad, so bad, so crazy, so cast out. I won’t go to the Slipper House. I’ll go and see Diane. I’ll ask her about George, about that night.
At about the time when Tom, having braved the streets in disguise, had got so far as The Crescent, John Robert had at last made up his mind to go to the Slipper House.
Late on Wednesday he had, after all, in spite of the inadequacies of language, written an intemperate letter to George, the purpose of which was to ensure that John Robert would never have to see or hear of George again. This letter contained wild phrases such as ‘I would like to kill you’, and vituperation in the style of ‘fake fantasy villain, mean weak impotent rat, incapable of evil but spewing out the sickening black bile of your petty spite’, and ‘faux mauvais, the execrable taste of your contemptible schoolboy pranks merely expressive of your own realization of your mediocrity’ (and so on). Coldness and inattention had failed to get rid of George. The intemperate letter was to signal unambiguously that this policy had now ended. The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future. After completing his violent exorcism, John Robert dodged out to a nearby pillar-box and posted it. He needed to feel that he had thereby finally finished with George and could forget him.
On Thursday evening Tom and Rozanov actually passed each other in The Crescent, Rozanov bound for the Slipper House, and Tom for Diane’s flat, but both were so completely blinded by their thoughts that they failed to notice.
Nesta, who was sickened by the sight of women afraid of men, would have had a seizure had she been able to overhear the conversations which took place on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between Pearl and Hattie.
In fact in this interim, during which neither of them left the house, a number of different theories were mooted by the beleaguered girls as mood succeeded mood. Hattie was often the more sanguine of the two. One reason for this was that whereas Pearl had studied the Ennistone Gazette article minutely, Hattie had glanced at it and thrown it away in disgust, and the horrible exact wording of it was not imprinted on her mind. Pearl had destroyed it promptly after it flew across the room, and Hattie’s remarks later showed that her understanding of what had been said and implied was mercifully vague. Another reason why Hattie was less perturbed was that she knew John Robert a good deal less well than Pearl did, and was inclined at more cheerful moments to think that he would ‘just find it funny’. His non-appearance (they expected him hourly) was then attributed to the fact that ‘he had forgotten about it all’. It was also of course possible that he had not seen the Gazette article, but the girls agreed that it was probable that some malicious busybody would make sure that the philosopher was informed.
Although Hattie kept saying that it would ‘blow over’, she was very anxious that Pearl should not leave her alone in the house. There was plenty of food in store and no need for Pearl to go away. As the conversations went on, Hattie was inevitably infected by Pearl’s anxiety, even though Pearl did her best not to communicate it. Then for a while she would keep asking Pearl for reassurance. ‘He can’t blame us, can he?’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘No one suggested it was our fault, did they?’ ‘No.’ Then Hattie would say, ‘He’s never coming. Let’s go to London. Come on, I want to go to the theatre.’ ‘The theatre?’ ‘Let’s go to London, and stay in a hotel.’ ‘Hattie, we can’t!’ ‘Why ever not? We’re free, aren’t we?’ The girls would then look at each other and laugh, or wail. They also discussed and dismissed the idea of writing an ‘explanatory letter’. The thing, thought of in that way, was inexplicable. Besides, there was always the small blessed possibility that he was unaware of the whole thing. The notion of walking round to Hare Lane was never seriously considered.