'Well, said Lindsay, 'are you satisfied that she isn't there?
It still seemed to Randall eerie and almost incredible that Emma was not in the flat. She hardly ever left it, and the only time he had seen her away from it was at his mother's funeral. He said, 'I suppose I'm satisfied that she isn't here now.
'You mean you think she might have laid a trap for us?
'Yes, said Randall. He thought: or you might both have laid a trap for me. Why, after all, had Lindsay so firmly refused to come to Chelsea? Now that he was passing, as he thought, out of fantasy into reality, the real world seemed a region even more fantastic than the dream palace he had inhabited before. He felt like a favorite slave who bas been kept on cushions and fed on sherbert and who is suddenly put at the gate and told is free. Such stories end with the sword.
Lindsay was very quiet. She stood with her hands behind her, head bent slightly forward. She wore a plain unbelted dress of brown linen which looked like some charming uniform. Her hair still held in the neck of the dress, was beginning to fall forward in two heavy loops on either side of her face. She seemed some young exotic general planning the order of battle. She said, 'Suppose we were to ring up Grayhallock. Would you be satisfied then?
'Oh God! said Randall. He began to pace up and down. He found the idea of Emma at Grayhallock very hard to tolerate. He had been surprised both at her wish to go and at the ease with which she had persuaded his father to take her. Randall, with an eye to his own interests, was of course by no means opposed to, though he was also irrationally disturbed by, a renewal of friendship between his father and Emma. But he was unnerved that the first rite to be celebrated in this revival should comprise a visit to his home. He could not think what it meant. He felt sure Emma was up to something, and, which he felt was indeed irrational, he resented goings-on between his father and Emma the significance of which he was not a party to. He felt himself unjustly robbed of the role of patron; and it was almost as if he were jealous, though quite of whom was not so clear. More simply and immediately he feared and detested the idea of Emma's visiting Grayhallock in his absence or indeed at all; and the thought of her presence there wrung from him a cry of: but those are my people!
It was important that Emma should be guaranteed to be far away.
It was also important that Emma should not know of Randall's visit to the flat. Here he had had to rely on Lindsay. When it emerged that Emma was going to be a. way for a whole day, without Lindsay in attendance, Randall's mind had jumped at the obvious conclusion, only to fall away baffled. There was, to begin with, Lindsay's 'programme'. Randall was quite unsure how far this piece of blackmail would stand up, if they were given a glorious field of hours in which to disport themselves together alone. He knew, confidently, with satisfaction, how much he was desired. But there was another difficulty. He could not bear to go to bed with Lindsay with Emma's permission. To go to bed with Lindsay; without Emma's permission was of course most hazardous and alarming, and the idea of it affected him with a guilty thrill. But to do it with her permission struck him as nauseating; and he had a fear, which increased within him now as he pondered the significance of Lindsay's abandonment of her 'programme', that they had decided between them that he was to be 'brought on'.
It had been essential that Emma should be deceived, and this he had impressed upon Lindsay. They had agreed that Emma should be told that Randall was out of London visiting a dangerously ill friend, how unfortunately, on the very day when Emma was to be at Grayhallock. When forming this plan it had seemed to Randall more than a little unlikely that Emma would believe him capable of putting even the last farewells of a close friend before the pleasure of a day with Lindsay; but Lindsay had apparently produced an extremely circumstantial account and Emma had seemed to be convinced. It occurred to Randall later that Emma's ingenious mind, professionally so used to devising stratagems within stratagems, might, even if she thought the story false, imagine that it covered up, not a day with Lindsay, but a day of snooping about Grayhallock spying on her own activities. Finally he decided there was no knowing whether she believed the story or not, but it was just enough for his purposes that she was not certain he was with Lindsay. With all this the terrible and humiliating suspicion remained that they were both in league against him.
Randall hated the idea of telephoning Grayhallock. He did not at that moment want to believe that Grayhallock existed. The mere notion that one could lift the telephone and conjure that whole world into being at the other end made him sweat and shiver as at some unsavoury piece of magic. Yet as soon as Lindsay had said it he saw that it was essential. It would remove from him the nightmare picture, which of all the gallery of spectres was the one which now most haunted him, of Emma quietly opening the door upon his embrace of Lindsay. He said, 'How should we manage it?
'Easily, she said. 'You get through to the number and give me the phone. I'll ask for Emma. When she answers I'll give you the phone so that you can hear her voice. Then I'll have little conversation with her. It can be perfectly natural and plausible.
'Do we have to have the conversation? Can't we just ring off without letting on who we are?
'No. Then she would guess.
'All right, said Randall after a moment. He picked up the telephone-. He said to the operator, 'Can I have Netherden 28. It's near Ashford, in Kent. Uttering the familiar number in Lindsay's presence felt like betraying a precious secret. Yet there was a certain exhilaration in it too. In the silence that followed Randall felt his heart beating, painful blow after blow, as he stared at Lindsay with widened eyes. The phone began to ring. Then Ann's voice said, 'Hello. This is Netherden 28.
Ann. The scene before him was blotted out and he stood paralysed in the presence of that voice. Of course he might have supposed that she would answer the phone. But Ann. Ann existed now, standing in the dining-room at Grayhallock this very moment holding the telephone and waiting for him to speak. Ann and all her thoughts. Then in a second it occurred to him that simply by saying' Ann' he could make his whole palace of dreams vanish away and end the days of his soft enslavement perhaps forever. If he but spoke her name they would magically disappear, the cushions and the sherbert, the tinkling bells and the gay-plumaged birds, the golden collars and the curving blades. As if to remove a terrible temptation he slowly let the telephone fall to his side.
Lindsay had taken it from him and was saying in her efficient secretary voice, 'I wonder if I could have a word with Miss Emma Sands, if she's with you, please?
There was a pause. Randall began to see the drawing-room again.
Lindsay had spoken to Ann. It was the sort of impossible event which ought to bring the world automatically to an end.
Lindsay thrust the telephone urgently into his hand. After a moment he heard, unmistakably, Emma's voice saying, 'Hello. This is Emma Sands. And after another moment, 'Hello. Who is that speaking? He gave the instrument back to Lindsay.
'It's me, Emma dear, Lindsay. Pause.
'Oh, quite as might be expected. Pause.
'Yes, as it turned out. I hope you had a comfortable journey? Pause.
'Are you alone? Pause.
'I wonder if you know now what time you'll be back? That's what I really rang About.
Pause.
'Yes, I'll do your sandwiches and milk as usual. Be well and bless me.
Pause.
'Good-bye, darling.