Of course Mr Hanway wanted Emma to become a professional singer. Emma did not now talk about his work at the university. On the subject of the further future they had both become cowards. Mr Hanway was always suggesting occasions, urging the necessity of public singing as part of Emma’s ascesis. During his first year in college Emma had sung with a consort, and also contributed a solo, at a student musical evening. The amazed congratulations of his fellow students embarrassed rather than pleased him. His unusual talent was by now becoming a guilty secret. He had sworn Tom to secrecy as far as Ennistone was concerned. He continued to practise, but gradually less. At Ennistone he had got up early on two mornings and crossed the common, beyond the gipsy camp, to practise; but had simply felt ridiculous as if he had lost confidence in the whole operation. What was the point? He could not be a historian and a singer, and he wanted to be a historian. Why go on and on training an instrument which he could not use? The sad thing that Emma had lately realized was that if he ceased to keep his voice at its very best he would not want to use it at all. Since that was the future, had he not better embrace it at once? To become a professional singer was out of the question. So he must make up his mind to stop taking lessons. Normally he went every week to Mr Hanway. Now he had cancelled two weeks. He would have to go to Mr Hanway … and tell him … that he would not ever be coming … for another lesson. Which would mean that they would never meet again, since they had no other bond.
He could not do it. He knew that he would go on as usual and say nothing and lie and avoid seeing the anxiety in his teacher’s eyes. Nor could he indeed, for himself, make such a terrible choice, surrender such a joy, such a gift. Not to sing again? It was unthinkable. So there was perhaps no decision to be made after all.
Tom McCaffrey had laid aside his verses and had stood for some time at the window. He could see, not far away, a street lamp making lurid greens among some pine trees in Victoria Park. Beyond was the darkness of the Common on one side and the Wasteland on the other. The feeling of universal love which had so uplifted his heart in the Meeting that morning was still with him. He felt, as he looked out over the sleeping city, the tautness and strength of his youth being as it were dedicated, transformed into a kind of wisdom. He felt like a healer, one who has perhaps only lately become aware of a divine gift, and holds it in reverent secrecy among a people in need. Soon his mission would begin. Some unconquerable feeling, expressing itself as joy, wrought in his body and made him tremble. He remembered Emma’s words, ‘If I had a brother like George I would do something about him.’
Tom pulled the curtains upon the remaining lights of Ennistone and took off his shirt. Looking in the mirror he saw the bruise upon his arm which plainly showed the marks of George’s fingers. He thought, George is drowning, and he held on to me. And Tom felt that the very next day he would go to George and just sit in his presence and utter some good thing, some simple thing which he would be inspired to say; and George would suddenly see that there was one place in the world where there was and could be no enemy. Of course he may curse and chuck me out, thought Tom, but later he’ll reflect and he’ll understand. It must be so. He thought, I’ll see George and I’ll see Alex and I’ll tell them - what - oh it’s like conversion, being changed, being saved, what’s the matter with me? I’ll do them good, I must do, it will simply flow out of me like electricity, a life ray, I’m changed like after an atomic explosion, only it’s all good. Is it something that Mr Eastcote did to me? Not just that, it can’t be. Mr Eastcote was just a sign, it’s God existing, ought I to kneel down?
Tom took off his shoes and socks. He did not kneel down but stood slightly swaying as if yielding to a shaft or stream of force which was coming up from below like bubbles rising blithely through water. He took off his vest and put on his pyjama jacket. He took off his trousers and pants and put on his pyjama trousers. Was he, after this revelation, this showing, this transformation of his flesh into some pure transcendent substance, going simply to bed, to sleep? Looking at his bed, he felt all of a sudden very tired as if he had been walking, working, travailing for a long time, and he knew that if he went to bed he would be asleep in a second. He thought, I won’t sleep, I’ll prolong it. I’ll go and tell it all to Emma.
When Tom got to the door of his room he felt his energy taking the form of an agonizing sense of urgency. He flew across the landing and burst into Emma’s room. Emma, with his bedside light on, had returned to his reading. As soon as he saw Tom’s face he took off his glasses.
Tom said, ‘Emma - oh - Emma.’
Emma said nothing, but he drew the bedclothes aside. Tom, still in the swift impetus of his wafting, came to his friend, and for a moment they lay breast to breast, holding each other in a fierce bruising clasp, their hearts beating with a terrible violence; and so they lay in silence for a long time.
George had once witnessed a brawl in a pub in London. A thug had attacked a man and knocked him down. Now the thug was kicking the head of his victim who was lying on the floor. No one intervened. Everyone stood spellbound, including George who watched fascinated. (He could still recall the sound of the kicking.) Then a girl ran forward and shouted, ‘Stop, stop, oh stop.’ The thug said to the girl, ‘Give me a kiss then, and I’ll stop.’ The girl went to him and he kissed her, dragging brutally at her hair. Then he said, ‘Undress!’ The girl began to cry. ‘Undress, or I’ll kick him again.’ The girl pulled herself away and ran out of the door, and the thug kicked the fallen man again. George, who was near the door, followed the girl out. She was walking along the street audibly crying, wailing. Was she a prostitute who knew the thug, or a friend of the victim, or else a brave bystander? George didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to speak to the girl, he just followed her for a while, excited by the scene, then slowed down and lost her. About a year later he saw her again, in another part of London, and the coincidence gave him a curious kind of fright. He did not follow her on this occasion. Now, yesterday, here in Ennistone, he had seen the girl for the third time. It was near twilight, and George was walking from the library towards Druidsdale, when the girl turned out of a side road and began to walk on ahead of him. George followed her and fear came upon him in the form of a compulsion to run to catch her up and speak to her, although this also seemed impossible. When she turned a corner ahead of him he slowed down. When he reached the corner he saw her walking on the other side of the road. Only now, between him and her, there was another man, a familiar-looking man wearing a black mackintosh. George realized with a coldness which made him almost faint that this other man was himself, and that if he ever saw the face of that man he would fall down and die. George turned and ran back in the other direction, running and running through the darkening streets of the town.
Now in the morning this seemed all like an evil dream, something he desired to dismiss absolutely from his mind without even wondering whether it was fantasy or ‘real’, whatever these terms might mean. He thought he had heard a continued screaming in the silence of the night, composing the silence. He had heard the pigeons saying ‘Rozanov, Rozanov’ in the early dawn. A kind of beastliness possessed George now, a wanton slovenliness, which was necessary to his way of life. The place where he slept downstairs, on a sofa in the sitting-room, had become dirty and smelt like an animal’s lair. He no longer undressed to sleep, simply took his shoes off. He shaved occasionally, not often enough to prevent his face becoming bluish and dark. He rose each day as to a mysterious programme, which misery and bitterness made it impossible to execute. He wanted to see Diane, yet felt that her sentimental pity and her sheer stupidity would make him want to kill her. Sometimes, for a second, he thought about Stella as of something remarkable but unreaclass="underline" clean, shining, made of metal. He walked round to Hare Lane and knocked on John Robert’s door and, receiving no answer, sat down on the pavement.