Suddenly George erupted from the room, stood a moment, then began to run towards her. This dreadful running made Diane utter a little bird-cry of helpless terror. She flattened herself against the wall. George approached her like a terrible huge deadly animal, not like a lion so much as a towering gorilla, a huge ape with immense swinging arms. As he approached her he raised an arm as if with one blow he would sweep her from his way. Diane sank to her knees and closed her eyes.
‘Kid, kid, get up, don’t be frightened.’
In a moment he had lifted her and held her sobbing against him.
‘Stop it, don’t make a noise, let’s see if that door’s still open, yes it is, good, go now, go home — ’
‘I’ll go - I’m sorry - I’ll go.’
‘Look, you go on first - I’ll come after - I’ll be with you in half an hour - go, go, stop crying, you silly baby!’
Sobbing now with joy, Diane made her way home.
Clothed again, Diane lay upon her sofa in the elegant (though not entirely comfortable) pose which George liked. She had put on her black silky dress and her glittering metallic necklace with the long teeth which George called her ‘slave’s collar’. George in his light-grey check trousers and his pale blue (finely striped with dark blue) shirt, which he still wore unbuttoned and untucked, walked about the room, picking his way, kicking the stuff on the floor out of his path. He walked fast in the small area as a man might walk in a large area, or as a strong wild animal might move in a small cage, walking with unnecessary energy, turning round abruptly, jerkily, at the end of every few steps. Diane looked up at him anxiously, her brief joy still smouldering, fear and panic again at hand. His movements made her feel tired and full of foreboding.
George, having reached the piano, picked up a little black metal monkey, very small, which Diane had had with her in her wanderings since before she could remember. The little things, her substitute children as the man had unkindly said, were, like magical charms which survive into another scene to prove that one did not dream the previous one, proofs to Diane’s unconscious mind that innocence existed, her innocence and no one else’s. George too responded unconsciously in much the same way to the presence of the little things, old and new, which were a visible extension of Diane’s soul. He respected them. Now, however, he frowned at the little monkey because it reminded him of one of Stella’s netsuke.
He put the monkey down and opened the piano and struck two notes. (He could not play the piano any more than Diane could.) ‘The call of destiny’. He turned and looked at her and smiled showing his little square teeth. His eyes, so wide apart, looked rather mad. It had never occurred to Diane that wide apart eyes looked mad. His eyes glowed and gleamed with imminent laughter, but the laughter did not come. He seemed to be in extremely high spirits.
‘Hello, kid.’
‘Hello, darling. Long time no see.’
‘Hey nonny nonny. No? OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Thank God you’re here.’
‘I’m always here. I wish you were always here.’
‘Oh me - the plough has passed over my back and I have survived. But it is no matter.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Anything, everything. However, it’s going to be all right.’
‘What is?’
‘Anything. Everything.’
‘I wish I thought so. Do sit down and hold my hand.’
‘I see my way through, I see the light shining beyond, Eternity’s sunrise.’
‘Am I there - in the light?’
‘You? Why are you so self-centred?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Yes. But it’s your job not to be. What are you for but to be the eternal forgiver? You are God in my life.’
‘A powerless God.’
‘God must be powerless. Christ was powerless. He didn’t save himself.’
‘You don’t believe in religion, you’re making fun of it.’
‘I believe in something, but I’ve forgotten its name. Pure cognition. What happens when you unlock the subject from the object? Then there’s no more subject. That’s when all is permitted, and why it is.’
‘Oh what nonsense - come and sit beside me and hold my hand.’
‘I can’t, I’m too restless, tiger, tiger, burning bright — ’
‘George, I do want to be with you in the sunlight one day, in the open, not secret and sort of shameful. I’m prepared to wait, I could wait and wait and be happy so long as I could really hope that one day we could be properly together …’
‘Aren’t you prepared to wait anyway?’
‘Without hope? Oh - but do say — ’
‘Say what?’
‘Oh - George - you know — ’
‘The clock struck one, the mouse ran down. It’s nearly one.’
‘George, I know I’m not supposed to - but now we’re together again - you must let me talk and say what’s in my heart — ’
‘Talk, talk, talk, it’s a free country.’
‘George, you’re not going back to Stella, are you?’
‘Have I been away? She has.’
‘George, where is she?’
‘How do I know?’
‘You haven’t done anything to her, have you, I mean you haven’t hurt her —?’
‘Why ever should I?’
‘Oh - I don’t know - because of - well, maybe because of me - or — ’
‘Hurt Stella, because of you?’ George paused, making his brown eyes round in his round face and opening his mouth in an O.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that, I just wondered about Stella, everybody’s wondering — ’
‘Fuck everybody.’
‘Do stop moving about like that, you’re manic. I mean, you might want a change, anybody might, you might want someone else.’
‘I saw that girl, Harriet Meynell, Hattie they call her.’
‘Professor’s Rozanov’s grand-daughter?’
‘I saw her in her petticoat with her hair streaming.’
‘Where, how —?’
‘I saw her through binoculars at Belmont. You know she’s at the Slipper House. She looked - oh — ’
‘What?’
‘Pale. Undamaged.’
‘Ah - not like me. You’re not falling in love with her?’
George paused beside Diane. ‘No. But I’d like to — ’
‘You leave her alone — ’
‘I have my duties.’
‘You mean to Stella?’
‘There are duties in the world. Kinds you don’t dream of.’
‘You’ve got me. I suit you. I love you. No one else does.’
‘Every woman in Ennistone loves me, I could have any woman I wanted. I could have Gabriel McCaffrey, tomorrow, this evening, I’d just have to wink, she’d come running.’
‘She wouldn’t!’
‘She would. Oh never mind, as if I cared. Sometimes I feel so tired. But it will be all right, kid.’
‘For us two?’
‘You don’t know what it’s like to think of one person, one thing, day and night.’
‘I do know! I think of you day and night.’
‘That’s just subjective. I mean something - metaphysical.’
‘Between us it’s not metaphysical, is it?’
‘You are a rest from metaphysics. But you aren’t real either.’
‘Why am I not real? Oh George, I want to be real. Is Stella real?’
‘Leave Stella. I told you.’
‘I wish you would.’
‘Shut up. Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Don’t let me be utterly cast away and lost, I don’t want to be lost — ’
‘Lost, stolen or strayed, a girl no longer a maid, I had her and I paid, I bought her and she stayed, so goes it in the trade.’
‘Oh George, be serious, be quiet with me — ’
‘Don’t forget you’re my slave. Aren’t you, kid, dear?’ He sat down at last beside the sofa and took hold of her little brown hand.