This speech was delivered with a venom which surprised and daunted Harry. He realised how, with a double-think which now indeed seemed naive, he had expected Thomas, while certainly upset, even angry, to be also somehow still his old self, ironical, cool, helpful, sympathetic, full of patient understanding. Harry had come to Quitterne because, as Thomas had discerned, he had to, the need to see Thomas, simply to be in his presence was, now that all was known, overwhelming. He needed the comfort, the relief, of having seen Thomas and found him, even if not actually forgiving, calm, detached, ready for quiet rational talk. But Harry also needed, before finally determining his own strategy, to find out what Midge had said to Thomas, and to do this without letting Thomas know how little she had said to him. He had, since the revelation, been with her and talked to her but without being able to understand her. She was like a wild thing, restless, very disturbed, averting her head, exclaiming rather than conversing. He had telephoned her house on the evening of the revelation but got no reply. He dared not go round for fear of Thomas. The next day she answered the telephone, told him that Thomas had gone to Quitterne and that he might come and see her. He came, full of hope, and found himself sitting with her in the drawing room like a visitor, like a suitor. The shock of Thomas’s arrival still hung in the room, the papers flung upon the table, the door flung open. Harry was already beginning to regret that he had not stayed and faced Thomas at once, though he realised too that he would have been paralysed and, terrible to admit it, ashamed. If he had stayed he could at least have got, what he now felt sadly without, a general idea of the situation. It was only when he saw Midge again that it occurred to him to wonder whether she had told Thomas about Stuart. He hoped she had not, he hoped and sometimes felt sure that ‘the Stuart thing’ would pass, perhaps very soon, and that all would then be just as he desired, as he had in his imaginings pictured the time ‘after Thomas knew’: Midge in shock, shedding tears of relief, running to Harry, staying with him, settling at last into the joy and rest of being entirely his. With anguish he stared at her, studied her, as she walked about the room, sighing and disordering her hair. She told him, without being asked, that after Thomas’s departure she had gone round to Stuart’s lodging and found him gone, the room vacated, no address left. When Harry rang in the morning her first question had been about Stuart, whether he had come home. When Harry came to her she let him take her hand, but asked him how she could find out where Stuart was, who could she ask? She showed, as she flung about the room, no consciousness of Harry’s distress, his grief, his fear, his need for reassurance which now he dared not voice for fear of prompting some awful dismissal. It was better, for now, if she accepted his presence as that of an old friend, someone with a right to be there, almost like a doctor. At any rate she did not at once send him away, and twice exclaimed in the course of what was virtually a staccato monologue punctuated by his soothing murmurs, ‘Oh Harry — Harry — ’ as if she felt he could help her somehow; and this gave him hope. ‘Thomas has gone.’ ‘Where can I find Stuart? I could ask his friends.’ ‘What have I done, oh what have I done.’ Harry said things like, ‘Do be calm, don’t worry, I’ll find Stuart, don’t worry about Thomas, just rely on me, don’t forget me, everything will be all right.’ He said nothing about his intention to visit Thomas. Once or twice he framed and reframed in his mind the question: what did Thomas say to you? What did he do? But he did not utter it, it was too awful a question to intrude upon her extraordinary state of mind. During this time, and when he saw her again the next day, he formed the view, and there was some comfort in it, that she was actually temporarily insane; and in his double-think image of his meeting with Thomas he included some unimaginable conversation wherein he consulted Thomas about Midge’s health.
Another idea which had hovered in Harry’s head as, in an anguish of haste once he had realised he had to see Thomas, he drove too fast along the motorway, was that there was to be a reconciliation scene. Harry would dominate the interview, sympathising with Thomas who, having lost his wife, had understandably run away. In this posture Harry could admit a degree of guilt and could even, in some carefully worded formula, ask Thomas’s pardon. After that they could talk like men of the world. But now, as he looked across the desk at Thomas’s face and heard the tone of Thomas’s voice, such gestures were impossible. It was war. So Midge had told Thomas she no longer loved Harry. Or had she? Thomas could have invented that. And had she told him about Stuart?
Harry replied, ‘It’s not true that Midge no longer loves me, that’s your invention. Why do you keep referring to her as your wife? Her name is Midge. And why did you run away from London if you really believed that she wanted to stay with you? What you say doesn’t make sense. I had a long talk with her yesterday and again today. Of course she has been in a state of shock, but she’s getting over it, she is deeply and permanently in love with me, which perhaps is something you can’t imagine. She was never really in love with you, she was never really married to you. She and I have discussed all this of course, I know what things were like, I know everything. She was always afraid of you. That’s why we had to tell all those lies which I detested so. All right, we were at fault there and we’re sorry. With me she’s a different being, she’s happy, she’s free, you wouldn’t recognise her. You’re a psychiatrist, you must know when someone’s unhappy, you have seen how restless and resentful and discontented she was. With me she’s at home. You must realise you’ve lost her, don’t fight it, let her go, she’ll go anyway, she’s gone. You ran off and left her because you realised she wanted to be with me and you couldn’t stand it. You’ve given in, you’ve surrendered, you recognise that she’s gone for good, she’s mine. I didn’t want to say all this, I wanted to be generous, even to say I was sorry, but you’ve forced my hand. She’s said so many things about you which no one who loved you could possibly utter, she said you were cold, without any tenderness, without any humour, she said you neglected her, you bored her — ’
‘Those are lies,’ said Thomas, ‘foul contemptible lies.’
‘They aren’t actually. If you really thought she’d left me why did you go? Why did you leave her, why did you leave Meredith, you don’t even seem to care about him. She’s right, you’re cold, you don’t deserve that wonderful woman, I think you don’t really want her, why don’t you face it? Good God, you’re supposed to be good at conducting interviews with disturbed people, you don’t seem to be doing very well with this one. Of course you’re the victim this time, you’re the patient, don’t you see, you’ve got nothing to say.’
Thomas, red in the face, sat still, staring at him, visibly trembling. Then he drew in his lips and lowered his gaze and took off his glasses. Harry thought, I’ve won, I’ve won her, she’s mine! He’s speechless with rage but at least he’s speechless. Perhaps he does want to get rid of her after all, why didn’t I see this earlier, why didn’t I believe it — I’ve won, I’ve won!
With deliberation but quickly Thomas, pushed his chair back and opened a drawer in his desk. Harry sprang to his feet.
At that moment something happened in the room. A brown flurry crossed it diagonally and recrossed it drawing quick jagged lines in the air. There was a soft whirring sound, then a loud bump. A robin had flown in through the open window, flown about, and then crashed against the glass.
Thomas leapt up, he said to Harry, ‘Close the door.’
The bird was beating its wings painfully against the window-pane. Thomas attempted to open the window wider, but the sash was stiff. Harry said, ‘Mind him, mind him.’ The robin flew away from the window and began rapidly circling the ceiling, occasionally thumping its frail small body against the walls. Harry came to help Thomas and raised the window a little further. The bird, after fluttering for a while in a top corner of the room, fell down onto the floor behind a pile of books where it stayed ominously still. With an exclamation of distress Thomas began to pull the books away. Harry kept saying, ‘Oh go out, go out, that way, that way.’ A
s the books began to collapse round about it the robin rose again, collided with a wall and came to rest on top of a cupboard, looking down with its bright brown eyes. Then, with an air of decision, it flew downward and out through the window, and with a graceful movement of freedom swooped, then rose and perched on the copper beech tree, looking back toward the house.
‘I was afraid he might get caught in the sash,’ said Harry.
Thomas drew the window down a little, then closed it. Not looking at Harry he said softly, ‘Go away, go away.’
Harry said, ‘Were you reaching for a gun?’
Thomas after a pause said, ‘No, of course not.’
‘Thomas — ’
‘Go away.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Thomas made a gesture as of taking note of the statement and opened the door. Harry went out. The sound of his car followed almost at once. Thomas stood still a while, then opened the window again and let in the song of the birds.
Later he wandered downstairs and out into the garden, crossing the uneven grey pebbles onto the grass. He walked on a little into the edge of the wood where the light green haze still showed the blue sky and distant rhododendrons were blurred with mauve and pink. He thought, how typical of Harry to imagine I was reaching for a gun when all I wanted was something to clean my glasses! But if he still thinks I was, let him. He lives in a world of romance, romanticised violence. The gun idea, Thomas reflected as he walked along a path between the dead flowers of the bluebells, was in a way a right one. I could have killed him at that moment. Why? Of course what he was saying was nonsense — or was it, was all of it? It was a stream of the most deadly and awful insults. But I couldn’t reply, I couldn’t say this and this is untrue because — and I couldn’t just shout I love my wife, I won’t give her up. Violence seemed the only response and for me it was impossible. He was right, I had nothing to say, he was simply winning. Good God, I might have burst into tears. As he thought this he found he was still trembling with anger and shock. That robin was providential. Also, though whether this was a good thing or not Thomas was not able to decide, the incident had enabled Harry to say he was sorry and Thomas, at least, with a wave of his hand, to receive the utterance.
Already the red-brick wall of the Shaftoes’ house could be seen through the greenery and Thomas turned back as he always did at this point. How to its depths his life had changed he was now beginning to understand. Would he have pure quiet free thoughts ever again? He felt intense piercing unhappiness. Not despair, the weakness and relaxation of despair would have been a relief. He felt alert, active, capable of decision, but in anguish.
The word lachete came into his head, a word he had always felt to be more expressive than the English ‘cowardice’. He said to himself, je suis un lache. Why had he abandoned Midge, left the house, left Meredith behind? Harry was right to pick on this as a winning point. It now seemed just as clear to Thomas that he ought to have stayed as it had seemed then that he had to go. Had he left to save his dignity? Or because he was afraid that disgust at Midge’s treachery might make him hate her? Could he hate her as, just now, he hated Harry? It was a terrible thought. He had run away from her as from his own violence, so as not to find himself detesting the sight of her. Suppose he were to go back now and find her gone, fled, would he not have himself to blame? But of course she would not leave the house so long as Meredith was there, Meredith would, simply by his existence, counsel her well. It never occurred to Thomas to wonder whether Meredith might take sides against him. He did wonder how and for how long what Meredith had seen would affect, perhaps embarrass, his relations with his father. Would they ever speak of it? How endless and horrible the consequences were.
Thomas had been waiting for Harry to come. Harry had come and something had happened. Now it was Thomas’s move. He thought, I ought to go back to London and be with Midge. I need to know whether Stuart has actually killed her love for Harry, as she said he had. Such a thing was possible, and though Thomas had never seen anything quite like it he had seen similar things, he could see how it might ‘work’. He wondered if he should go and see Stuart. If Stuart was, with whatever results, a ‘temporary craze’ for Midge, it might be wiser to leave him alone for the present. Or was Thomas simply reluctant to appear before young Stuart in the role of the husband of the woman who loved him? Surely Stuart would act with sense and discretion, probably just run. Or would he? Was it conceivable that, however inadvertently, he might encourage her? I’m a calculator, he thought, a manipulator. I set things going and leave them, such as sending Edward back to that room. I’m a careless gardener, I plant something and go away. I said the ‘right things’, that is the clever things, to Midge and left her to digest them.
As he came into sight of the house a large car drew up on the gravel. For just a moment Thomas thought it must be Midge, come running back to him, and he felt a shock of joy. Then a familiar figure wearing a trilby hat stepped slowly out of the car. It was Mr Blinnet. Oh God, thought Thomas, this breaks every rule in the book. He ran forward.
Edward was standing outside Railway Cottage. The sun was shining and a slight haze, a sad rather dusty golden afternoon haze, hung over the flat land. Perfectly still in the windless light, white cow parsley and mauve blooms of tall grass hung above the railway cutting. A mass of little bright blue flowers were growing at Edward’s feet: their name, long forgotten, flashed into Edward’s head: germander speedwell. A large For Sale notice was propped up in the yew tree. The window which Edward hard broken on his previous visit now hung wide, a little off its hinges. He climbed in, his foot sinking into the damp spongy surface of the sofa which had been moved against the window. Rain and storm had evidently entered, and even in summer sunshine the room smelt of mould and the cold of unuse. Most of the furniture had been removed leaving the sofa and a couple of broken chairs and a worn rug. He crossed the room, hearing his feet sound on the bare floor, and looked into the bedroom where the old iron bedstead remained upon which Jesse and Chloe had once so warmly lain wrapped in each other’s beauty. He returned to the main room. The place was bare, rotting, ruined, soon to be overtaken by weather, by nature, by fungus and green intrusive shoots. As Edward stood and listened he fancied he could hear the soft murmur of this intrusion, the yew tree scraping against the window, the ivy lifting the slates, the insects working deep inside the wood. He shuddered and let himself out of the door, closing it carefully behind him. He pushed the broken window back into place, jamming the warped wood. Then he descended to the level of the track and set off again, trying to recall the map and ignoring the path to the right which led to Seegard and along which on that fateful night Sarah Plowmain had trotted to lead Midge and Harry to their doom.
The grassy track went on, curving gently, becoming as it proceeded more overgrown with nettles and clumpy sorrel. It also began to rise slightly and Edward could feel under his feet the hard stony surface on which the grass was growing. The cutting fell away and he could see, turning to look back, fields of shimmering reddish barley, and beyond them an extraordinary tract of colour, a yellow which exuded itself in intense powdery light seeming to make the summer sky behind it dark by contrast. This must be the fields of rape which Ilona had spoken of. The colour reminded him of something: it was the violent terrifying yellow of Jesse’s abstract pictures. As he turned and went on he saw, rising above some trees not far away, the tower of Seegard. He was now bearing to the right upon a snake-like eminence, walking a little above his surroundings upon a low embankment on either side of which the earth was marshy, dried mud with watery cracks irregularly covered with wiry marsh grass. Small ragged willows, elders and hazels still obscured the view ahead and the soft warm hazy air, gently vibrating with light, flickered in Edward’s eyes. The flat creamy flower-heads of the elder, covered with bees, exuded a strong smell of Seegard wine. He had hastened from the station to the bus, and then directly from the road along the rail track to the cottage, keeping well away from Seegard. He had had
little to eat and felt empty and a little giddy and the sound of the bees seemed to be resounding inside his empty head. He was carrying his jacket and sweating in the heat of the afternoon. Then suddenly, passing out of the trees, he saw the sea appearing quite close to him on his left, a calm glittering light blue; and when he stopped in a new silence he could hear it very quietly touching the shingle. A faint cool air came from it, too gentle to be called a breeze, but giving relief from the inland torpor. Edward reflected later that if on that very first day when he was looking for the sea he had simply trusted his own sense of direction and his knowledge that the railway coted the shore and must lead to it, had he not stopped at Railway Cottage, he would not have met Brownie, and would not, on the day of his ‘hallucination’, have been in such an agitated hurry that he did not stay to understand what he had seen; might indeed have been with Jesse that morning, so that Jesse would not have left the house and become lost … Thoughts which it was better not to think.
In spite of the sick frightened preoccupation with which he travelled Edward could not help feeling eased by seeing the sea and stepping down off the grass onto the clean stony shingle, the brown smoothed flints of the sea shore of which Ilona had told him. He marched over the crunching stones, then stood a while and watched the small waves breaking, affectionately pawing at the land, and heard the faint rhythmic swish of their fall and the grating sound of their withdrawal. Black and white oyster-catchers were running along the verge of the water uttering their trilling fluty cries. But he could not enjoy the sea today, it filled him with loneliness and foreboding and sorrow, and the clear curving line of the horizon did not inspire in him its usual magisterial calm. Today the sea’s magic was other, alien and dangerous in the sunshine, its blue very cold. He went on, first beside the water, then returning to the raised bank of the railway which was easier to walk on. After a little while he could see the beach ahead of him crossed by a stone wall and a line of white broken water stretching out into the sea. This must be the little harbour of the ‘fisherfolk’ Mother May had mentioned, whose village ‘fell into the fen’ after the great storm and flood which also put an end to the railway. The harbour when he reached it seemed almost intact, both piers, one straight, one crooked, enclosing a space of calm water where some terns were fishing. The shattered remains of the station platform appeared suddenly beside him but of the village itself he could at first see no trace. Then gazing about he began to discern here and there whole large fragments of stone walls, leaning over at strange angles as in mediaeval pictures of destroyed cities, surrounded by watery pits and overgrown by ivy and wild buddleia. Edward did not pause, however, indeed he had now begun to run, as he could see the river estuary not far ahead.