Part 69 (1/2)

He had not so far said a word about it to anyone in the place. The two seniors changed in the sketchy cubicles, and emerged almost at the same moment in swimming trunks. There seemed to be no one else in or around the pool that day, though the ebbing and flowing of table tennis were audible through the part.i.tion.

'I say, Stephen. What's that thing on your back?'

Stephen stopped dead on the wet tiled floor. 'What thing?' 'It's a bit peculiar. I'm sure it wasn't there before. Before you went away. I'm extremely sorry to mention it.'

'What's it look like?' asked Stephen. 'Can you describe it?' 'The best I can do is that it looks rather like the sort of thing you occasionally see on trees. I think it may simply be something stuck on to you. Would you like me to give it a tug?'

'I think not,' said Stephen. 'I am sorry it upsets you. I'll go back and dress. I think it would be better.'

'Yes,' said Mark Tremble. 'It does upset me. It's best to admit it. Either it's something that will just come off with a good rub, or you'd better see a doctor, Stephen.'

'I'll see what I can do,' said Stephen.

'I don't feel so much like a swim, after all,' said Mark Tremble. 'I'll dress too and then we'll both have a drink. I feel we could both do with one.'

'I'm very sorry about it,' said Stephen. 'I apologize.'

'What have you been doing all day?' asked Stephen, as soon as he was back and had changed out of the garments currently normal in the civil service, casual and characterless. 'I hope you've been happy.'

'I found this on the roof.' Nell was holding it in both her hands; which were still very brown. It was a huge lump: mineral, vegetable, who could tell? Or conceivably a proportion of each.

'Your father would be interested.'

Nell recoiled. 'Don't talk like that. It's unlucky.' Indeed, she had nearly dropped the dense ma.s.s.

It had been an idiotic response on Stephen's part; mainly the consequence of his not knowing what else to say. He was aware that it was perfectly possible to attain the roof of the building by way of the iron fire ladder, to which, by law, access had to be open to tenants at all hours.

'I could do with a drink,' said Stephen, though he had been drinking virtually the whole afternoon, without Thread even noticing, or without sparing time to acknowledge that he had noticed. Moira, the coloured girl from the typing area, had simply winked her big left eye at Stephen. 'I've had a difficult day.'

'Oh!' Nell's cry was so sincere and eloquent that it was as if he had been mangled in a traffic accident.

'How difficult?' she asked.

'It's just that it's been difficult for me to make the arrangements to get away, to leave the place.'

'But we are going?' He knew it was what she was thinking about.

'Yes, we are going. I promised.'

He provided Nell with a token drink also. At first she had seemed to be completely new to liquor. Stephen had always found life black without it, but his need for it had become more habitual during Elizabeth's illness. He trusted that Nell and he would, with use, wont, and time, evolve a mutual equilibrium.

At the moment, he recognized that he was all but tight, though he fancied that at such times he made little external manifestation. Certainly Nell would detect nothing; if only because presumably she lacked data. Until now, he had never really been in the sitting room of the flat since his return. Here, the new tendrils on the walls and ceiling struck him as resembling a Portuguese man of war's equipment; the coloured, insensate creature that can sting a swimmer to death at thirty feet distance, and had done so more than once when Elizabeth and he, being extravagant, had stayed at Cannes for a couple of weeks. It had been there that Elizabeth had told him finally she could never have a child. Really that was what they were doing there, though he had not realized it. The man of war business, the two victims, had seemed to have an absurd part in their little drama. No one in the hotel had talked of anything else.

'Let's go to bed now,' said Stephen to Nell. 'We can get up again later to eat.'

She put her right hand in his left hand.

Her acquiescence, quiet and beautiful, made him feel compunctious.

'Or are you hungry?' he asked. 'Shall we have something to eat first? I wasn't thinking.'

She shook her head. 'I've been foraging.'

She seemed to know so many quite literary words. He gave no time to wondering where exactly the forage could have taken place. It would be unprofitable. Whatever Nell had brought in would be wholesomer, inestimably better in every way, than food from any shop.

As soon as she was naked, he tried, in the electric light, to scrutinize her. There still seemed to be only the one mark on her body, truly a quite small mark by the standards of the moment, though he could not fully convince himself that it really was contracting.

However, the examination was difficult: he could not let Nell realize what exactly he was doing; the light was not very powerful, because latterly Elizabeth had disliked a strong light anywhere, and he had felt unable to argue; most of all, he had to prevent Nell seeing whatever Mark Tremble had seen on his own person, had himself all the time to lie facing Nell or flat on his back. In any case, he wondered always how much Nell saw that he saw; how much, whatever her utterances and evidences, she a.n.a.lysed of the things that he a.n.a.lysed.

The heavy curtains, chosen and hung by Elizabeth, had, it seemed, remained drawn all day; and by now the simplest thing was for Stephen to switch off what light there was.

Nell, he had thought during the last ten days or ten aeons, was at her very best when the darkness was total.

He knew that heavy drinking was said to increase desire and to diminish performance; and he also knew that it was high time in his life for him to begin worrying about such things. He had even so hinted to Arthur Thread; albeit mainly to startle Thread, and to foretoken his, Stephen's, new life course; even though any such intimation to Thread would be virtually useless. There can be very few to whom most of one's uttered remarks can count for very much.

None the less, Nell and Stephen omitted that evening to arise later; even though Stephen had fully and sincerely intended it.

The next morning, very early the next morning, Nell vouchsafed to Stephen an unusual but wonderful breakfast - if one could apply so blurred a noun to so far-fetched a repast.

Stephen piled into his civil service raiment, systematically non-committal. He was taking particular trouble not to see his own bare back in any looking gla.s.s. Fortunately, there was no such thing in the dim bathroom.

'Goodbye, my Nell. Before the weekend we shall be free.'

He supposed that she knew what a weekend was. By now, it could hardly be clearer that she knew almost everything that mattered in the least.

But, during that one night, the whole flat seemed to have become dark green, dark grey, plain black: patched everywhere, instead of only locally, as when they had arrived. Stephen felt that the walls, floors, and ceilings were beginning to advance towards one another. The knick-knacks were de-materializing most speedily. When life once begins to move, it can scarcely be prevented from setting its own pace. The very idea of intervention becomes ridiculous.

What was Nell making of these swift and strange occurrences? All Stephen was sure of was that it would be unwise to take too much for granted. He must hew his way out; if necessary, with a b.l.o.o.d.y axe, as the man in the play put it.

Stephen kissed Nell ecstatically. She was smiling as he shut the door. She might smile, off and on, all day, he thought; smile as she foraged.

By that evening, he had drawn a curtain, thick enough even for Elizabeth to have selected, between his homebound self and the events of the daylight.

There was no technical obstacle to his retirement, and never had been. It was mainly the size of his pension that was affected; and in his new life he seemed able to thrive on very little. A hundred costly subst.i.tutes for direct experience could be rejected. An intense reality, as new as it was old, was burning down on him like clear sunlight or heavenly fire or poetry.

It was only to be expected that his colleagues should shrink back a little. None the less, Stephen had been disconcerted by how far some of them had gone. They would have been very much less concerned, he fancied, had he been an acknowledged defector, about to stand trial. Such cases were now all in the day's work: there were routines to be complied with, though not too strictly. Stephen realized that his appearance was probably against him. He was not sure what he looked like from hour to hour, and he was taking no steps to find out.

Still, the only remark that was pa.s.sed, came from Toby Strand, who regularly pa.s.sed remarks.

'Good G.o.d, Stephen, you're looking like death warmed up. I should go home to the wife. You don't want to pa.s.s out in this place.'

Stephen looked at him.

'Oh G.o.d, I forgot. Accept my apology.'

'That's perfectly all right, Toby,' said Stephen. 'And as for the other business, you'll be interested to learn that I've decided to retire.'