‘Hello you two, you’ve found each other, good.’
‘He’s told me a lot I didn’t know about the relation between Purcell and Gay,’ said Hector to Tom.
‘How’s the masque going, Hector?’
‘Terrible. We’re having trouble with the chorus of animals. And we need a counter-tenor.’
Emma’s leg kicking Tom met Tom’s leg kicking Emma.
‘Oh,’ said Tom, ‘but surely there aren’t any any more? Besides, who likes that funny noise? It’s like what Shylock said about the bagpipes.’
‘I don’t care for that weird falsetto myself,’ said Hector, ‘but the music needs it. Jonathan Treece says we can make do with a tenor.’
‘You’re freezing,’ said Emma. ‘Go and dress or go back in one of those holes.’
‘Yes, well - have you seen Anthea, Tom? No? Well, I’ll stay a bit. Good-bye. We’ll settle the Irish question another day.’ Blue, he shuddered off.
‘We bloody won’t!’
Tom said, ‘Here comes my mother.’
Alex, also dressed, came brightly up.
‘Alex, this is my friend Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor. Emma, my mother.’
‘I’m glad to meet you,’ said Alex, ‘I’ve heard such wonderful things about you, I hope you’ll come and see me, Tom will bring you. Oh hello, Gabriel. This is my daughter- In-law Gabriel. What’s the matter?’
Gabriel, distraught, her wind-chapped face rawly framed in a tight cotton scarf knotted under her chin, had found a pretext to run out to look for her Indian. It had occurred to her that she had despaired too soon. The man might not have left the Institute. He might have gone to swim. The text (a favourite of Bill the Lizard) occurred to her, ‘in so far as you do it unto the least of these you do it unto me’. The bearded Indian even looked a little like Jesus Christ. She had been tried and found wanting.
‘Yes, I know Mr Taylor, hello. I’m looking for an Indian man with a beard, have you seen one?’
No, they had not.
‘Well, I’ll run on - sorry to - well, good-bye — ’ Gabriel ran on, her medium-high heels slipping on the thin pale-greyish layer of snow on to which the small papery flakes were still uncertainly descending. She began to peer down into the stews.
‘My daughter-in-law is so quaint,’ said Alex, ‘we all love her. Well, auf Wiedersehen.’ In black boots and fur coat she strode away.
‘I wish you would tell your family that my surname is Scarlett-Taylor.’
‘What did you think of my ma?’
‘Very good-looking. What wonderful things have you told her about me?’
‘None. She seems to have taken a fancy to you.’
‘She doesn’t want you to marry,’ said Emma, whose quick suspicious mind had grasped this idea in a flash.
‘My marriage seems to be on everybody’s mind.’
‘Coo-ee, coo-ee!’
‘That’s my mother calling Ruby.’
‘You mean her servant? Why there’s that girl again.’
Hattie and Pearl, red-nosed and very much the worse for the weather, were passing by in the direction of the exit. The temperature, which had just fallen another degree, had opposite effects upon their appearance, making Pearl look about forty, and Hattie about fourteen.
‘Coo-ee, coo-ee!’
Ruby appeared, carrying Alex’s bag.
‘Hello, Ruby,’ said Tom, ‘who are those two girls who have just gone by?’
‘That’s little Miss Harriet Meynell and her lady’s maid. I must fly.’
Emma began to laugh. ‘Oh God!’ He thrust his hand into his pocket and felt his mother’s letter. He drew it forth and held its fragrance against his face while he continued to laugh.
George McCaffrey entered the Ennistone Rooms through the little octagonal ‘Baptistry’ which enclosed the big glowing bronze doors from which one descended to the source, and which also constituted the quickest direct route from the Promenade to the Rooms. The Rotunda, or ‘Baptistry’ as it was more popularly called, had two doors, one on each side, which were normally kept locked. Sometimes, however, because of maintenance work, one or the other might be found open. For George on this day (the afternoon of the day recorded above) both doors stood open so that he was able to pass from the Promenade to the Rooms without having to pass the ‘Porter’s Lodge’ or Reception at the front entrance of the Rooms. He paused in the Baptistry to inspect the big studded doors, a silvery gold in colour, from behind which steam was continually seeping. (This steam was whisked away by a fan situated above.) George felt the doors. They were hot. He turned the large brass handle and pulled. They were locked. He went on, padding quietly, into the Rooms, entering by a door marked private into the main downstairs corridor.
It was quiet in the corridor, or so it seemed to George as he stood there listening to his heart beat. In fact there was a steady background drumming sound which was the noise of the hot water eternally discharging itself into the boat-shaped baths in the bathrooms of the individual rooms. However, if the doors of the rooms were kept shut, this sound was diffused into a deep vibration which soon ceased to be consciously audible. George stood a while experiencing this vibration which seemed so much in tune with his own heart-beats and the vibration of his whole taut being.
He walked on a bit, his feet softly printing the deep furry carpet. When he reached the door of number forty-four he stood and listened. There was only water noise within. He knocked softly. Nothing. Could his knock be heard? Should he knock more loudly? Should he enter? He turned the handle very gently and pushed the door a little. Nothing, except that the water noise was louder and the sulphur smell stronger. He pushed the door a little more and peered in. The room was lighter than the dim corridor, obliquely touched by the sun, and almost dazzling for a moment by contrast, even though a curtain had been half pulled across the window. George saw first a table piled with books and papers, then the bed and the great form of the philosopher lying upon it. He was asleep.
George released his breath and quickly, after a glance behind him along the empty corridor, slid into the room. The noise inside the room was considerable since Rozanov had left his bathroom door open. George closed the outside door. He was not unduly surprised either to find Rozanov in, or to find him asleep. John Robert lived by a rigid timetable which involved early work and late work and a deep sleep of about an hour’s duration in the afternoon. (This sleep, he maintained, enabled him to live two days in the space of one.) He was lying, now, upon his back and snoring. George stood, his hand upon his heart, gazing. Then he moved quietly forward.
No young swain of twenty, as it might be Tom McCaffrey, as he approached the half-naked slumbering body, carelessly relaxed, of the young girl (figured perhaps as a shepherdess) whom he adored, could have felt a greater excitement than did George in thus surprising John Robert Rozanov asleep. John Robert was clothed, but with his shirt open and the waist of his trousers undone. He was not inside the bedclothes, but lay on top of them with the crumpled white bed cover pulled up roughly as far as his knees. One shoeless foot, clad in a thick blue woollen sock, protruded. One hand lay upon his chest, the other was extended, palm upward, over the edge of the bed, extended toward George in what looked like an amicable gesture. George studied the open hand. Then he looked at the sleeping face. John Robert’s face did not look calm in repose. The open moist lips, through which the slightly bubbling snore emerged, were still urgently thrust forward in the dominating moue which was their customary expression. The closed eyes, in their stained hollows, were slightly screwed up. The cheek-bones still protruded upon the flabby face, and the furrows on either side of the large hooked nose were like violent scourings. Upon the forehead, above which the frizzy grey hair had not yet started to recede, the flesh rose soft and pink in little regular pipings between the deep lines. A dirty grey stubble covered the chin and the thick much-folded saurian neck. Only the chin seemed weaker, less formidably decisive. George realized with a little shock the reason for this. John Robert had taken out his false teeth, which were to be seen glinting upwards in a shallow white cup upon the bedside table.