Tom wanted to say something suitable, something affectionate, for he felt all his affection for his brother suddenly and ardently enlivened by the strange radiance of that look. At the same time he wondered whether George had not at last perhaps, and finally, gone mad. ‘Dear George — ’
‘Clear off, Tom. Go on. Beat it.’
In a moment, although the clear light of the look did not waver, George’s fingers dug fiercely into Tom’s shoulders. Tom turned and leapt across the hall and out of the door which George had left open, he flew down the stairs and tumbled over Greg’s coat and hat which were lying at the bottom. He scooped them up and got himself out into the road and slammed the door.
Then in the sudden silence of the empty lamp-lit street he paused. He stood for a while, dreading to hear a terrible scream. But the silence continued.
‘Come on, kid, you can come out from behind the piano.’
Diane got up and took a step forward. George sat down on the sofa and drew a letter from his pocket and began perusing it. He said, ‘Give me a drink, will you.’ Diane poured some whisky into her own empty glass and thrust it toward him. She continued to stand stiffly, looking at him. George took a sip of the whisky, still reading the letter. Then he looked up. ‘What’s the matter? Oh Tom. Sit down beside me. Why are you so frightened of me? Don’t be. Come, sit down.’
Diane sat beside him and he put an arm round her shoulder. She put her face down on to the sleeve of his coat. ‘I thought you’d blame me about Tom.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, was it? Was it?’
‘No. Like he said.’
‘Well, then. Forget Tom. Give me a kiss.’
George was only slightly drunk. His inability to get the key quickly into the lock was not caused by intoxication but by the ordinary fact that the door was in a dark recess. However, George was certainly in a strange frame of mind.
He had received Rozanov’s violent letter that morning (Thursday). George had not seen either of the local newspapers and was unaware of the public ‘scandal’ concerning himself and Hattie. He gathered something of the matter from Rozanov’s incoherent thunderings, and assumed that Hattie had complained to her grandfather about George’s intrusion and had somehow linked it to the riotous goings-on outside. He also gathered that the Gazette had said that Rozanov wanted Tom to marry Hattie (which seemed so crazy that he did not even think about it). The cause of the letter did not concern George too much. What was important was the letter itself, an entirely new development, a vast new phenomenon in the long history of his relations with his teacher.
When George saw John Robert’s writing on the envelope he had at the first moment hoped that the letter would contain something, he knew not what, to match his wishes, some gesture of gentleness, some gesture of humour or sweetness, almost anything, even reproaches, might, he felt, feed and warm his heart, even perhaps (whatever that might mean) heal him. The brutality of the missive which his trembling fingers drew forth shocked him profoundly. George’s ingenuity at interpreting any word of John Robert’s as a communication or an encouragement was almost limitless, but could not deal with this letter. He was used to the philosopher’s coldness, his sarcasm and irritation. This almost incoherent torrent of rage and hate left George for a while utterly prostrated and defeated, as if he could not survive in a world where John Robert’s ferocious mind existed so to curse him. For the first time a feeling of death touched him. His relation with Rozanov had always been unhappy right from the start, poisoned by jealousy and humiliation and fear and unfulfilled desire, but it had gone on and been, as such unhappy things can be, a source of life, a focus of dreams, a goad, a thorn, not a dagger in the heart. George intuited in that ferocious letter John Robert’s determination to end George absolutely, to exclude him totally, as if indeed he had carried out his expressed wish to kill him. Every previous reaction of his teacher had been something which George could take over and with which he could do something. But with this outburst he could do nothing.
On Thursday morning George considered suicide. He imagined various ways of actually dying in John Robert’s presence, or even arranging for John Robert to be accused of murdering him. These fantasies were not consoling since they too contained the real idea of death; and from this George shuddered away and hid his face. He shed tears. Then for a long time he sat quietly on the sofa in the sitting-room at Druidsdale. He crumpled up John Robert’s letter and tossed it away. Then he picked it up and looked at it again. It was true that he had got past John Robert’s guard; he had, for one moment at least, occupied John Robert’s mind to the exclusion of all else. This was surely a significant climax. It was of course an absurd letter, one which John Robert would regret having written. Suppose George were to reply, harping on that chord? ‘My dear John Robert, I feel sure that by now you regret …’ But that would not do. The letter, absurd as it was, remained an act, there was something irrevocable signalled by that smell of death. George believed in signs. The letter was a sign. Love and death were interchangeable. The letter signalled that his relation with John Robert had reached a final orgasm.
‘It ends so,’ he said out loud. ‘It ends … so …’ And this, such an ending, was in a sense, not an ending. And again for a long time he sat still.
Then it began to be as if his mind, like a boat which has crashed upon rocks, and flown over rapids, had come out in a serene light on to a calm golden lake. He felt his taut and twisted face relax and become smooth. He breathed quietly and deeply. He thought, it is as if I have died only I haven’t died. I live in a life after life where all is changed. Can it be that I have actually finished with John Robert Rozanov, that this has come upon me as a change of being, as a mystery of which I scarcely know the meaning? He stood up. He went out to the kitchen and ate some soup. It was evening. He went out into the warm calm fuzzy twilight air. He walked to the nearest pub, the Rat Man, and here he learnt the news of William Eastcote’s death. And it seemed to him that this too was a sign, that Bill the Lizard had offered himself up as an innocent substitute for George’s death. Love had reached its climax and died in peace. He walked and breathed and felt rising within him the warm inner radiance which Tom McCaffrey had been so astonished to see upon his face.
‘What’s the letter?’ said Diane. She too saw the radiance and was worried by it.
‘It’s from John Robert.’
‘Is it a nice letter, kind?’
‘It’s - let’s say - merciful. Ah, mercy - yes - what’s that? Look, I’m going to burn it.’ George knelt and lighted a corner of the letter at the gas fire and watched it burn on the tiles of the grate.
Diane watched him in amazement.
George returned and sat on the sofa and Diane slipped down on the floor beside him as she often did and put her hands on his knees.
‘Do you love me, kid?’
‘You know I do.’
‘When a man that “Turnips” cries, cries not when his father dies, does that mean that he would rather have a turnip than his father?’
‘You’re in your silly mood today. Are you thinking about your father? You’ve got a funny look.’
‘Funny, yes. I feel I’ve been broken and remade in a moment, well, in half an hour. Something - it’s like a haemorrhage - has broken - inside — ’
‘You don’t mean really?’
‘No, no, it’s like that, only it’s in the mind. Something’s all washed away - washed away in blood — ’
‘Like Jesus Christ.’
‘Yes. Yes. Nothing less would do. I said the world was full of signs today. And Bill the Lizard dead. God rest his soul. So I look strange?’