'But you will come tomorrow?
'Certainly not. Not tomorrow or the day after or ever.
'Emma! Hugh rose: 'You can't behave like this. If you weren't going to be kind to me you shouldn't have let me see you. I must see you again. I insist.
Emma looked up at him, toad-like, her shoulders humped. 'Yes, I remember you, she said. 'I remember those touching accents of the deprived child. The world has a strict obligation to be kind to Hugh Peronett. But I didn't particularly want to see you, it was your idea. I am happy here. I have all I want. I have my happy family. As for insisting, you know perfectly well that you are in no position to insist.
'I don't know what you mean by your happy family, said Hugh, 'but I do know that you are being deliberately cruel to me.
'You were deliberately cruel to me.
He looked down at her cold face, and his hands moved weakly, gesturing the judgement away. He felt its injustice passionately. It was she who was the cruel one. And he felt that these words, these strugglings, had occurred before. 'Ah, if you just want to punish me — but you can't — not after so long. Anyway you can, if you see more of me, do it much more beautifully.
Emma laughed. 'You can still startle me with your moments of intelligence! Anyway, I didn't say I wouldn't see you, I only said I wouldn't come to your flat.
'So — you might see me — here, for instance?
'Not for instance. Just here. But I'm not sure. I'll think about it.
'Now you must go.
'But I shall want to talk to you — properly. I shall want to talk to you-alone.
'Why don't you say what you mean? I had to adopt Randall, I had to let him in. It has worked beautifully.
'I'm not sure if I want to be — adopted — into your family, said Hugh. 'It's —
'You're not being asked, said Emma.
Yes, it was the old love and the old pain. He had forgotten the extent to which, before, he had quite simply been her slave. He said abjectly, 'When can I come?
'I'll think whether I want to see you again. I may decide there's no point in it.
'And you won't come to Brompton Square?
'No. Then suddenly she said, 'Would you take me to Grayhallock if I asked?
Hugh was surprised, shocked, pleased. He said, 'Certainly, I'd be delighted to. But the next moment he felt that his willingness was a betrayal of Ann. He ought not, surely, to display her abandoned condition to the cold curious gaze of Randall's protector. And it was almost as if he felt that if he allowed Emma to come there she might put a spell on them all. The people at Grayhallock, what was left of them, were after all his family.
'I'll think about that too, said Emma. 'Now do go. I keep asking you to go and you pay no attention. Those children will be back any moment.
He approached her. He wished before leaving to startle her into a moment of warmth; for he had the impression, and he looked forward to reflecting on it, that she was concealing at least some pleasure at seeing him again.
She said, 'I suppose I owe it to you after all that I turned to the consolations of art! Her laugh, as she looked up at him, seemed more nervous.
She watched him with raised eyebrows as he knelt down slowly and awkwardly beside her chair. As he looked at her now in silence he felt again, as he had felt when he entered the room, that miraculous sense of her being which made a solitude; only this time it was a solitude where only she was. It was he who was absent. Surely this was love. Still looking he groped for her hand.
She drew in a long breath. After a moment she whispered, as if to conceal the words even from herself, 'Ah, you should have been braver then. Shouldn't you? Shouldn't you?
He said 'Yes' with so full a heart that he could no longer face her.
He lifted the dry, stained, bony hand towards his lips. It smelt so strongly of nicotine that he could not prevent himself from inhaling in an ecstasy of memory before he kissed it.
Chapter Thirteen
'SQUARE one, said Randall.
Lindsay laughed.
They were sitting side by side in a big Edwardian pub near the comer of Church Street. The door stood open to the dusty sunny road, and the endless line of traffic. Their hands were clasped under the table.
'I wonder how my father is getting on with your —’ said Randall.
The final word presented insuperable difficulties.
'I hope excellently, said Lindsay. She had her big bland wide face turned towards him.
He did not look at her, but let his delighted attention wander about the pub, noting a pair of very young lovers, also holding hands, a Chelsea pensioner, two aged crones and a Teddy boy. About all these people a glory shone. Randall was experiencing somewhat the emotions of a dog suddenly presented with the Sunday joint; and indeed he looked, with his expression of rapturous doubt joined with apprehension of a higher and inconceivably beneficent yet also dangerous world, positively dog-like.
He said, 'Do you really mean that? Her tender, intent, ironical gaze gently toasted one side of Iris face.
'Of course I do, said Lindsay. She squeezed his hand with an increasing pressure, digging in her finger nails..
Randall winced. 'She shouldn't have let us out, should she? he said. 'I mean, it puts ideas into our heads. We ought to have been sitting together on the sofa and being referred to as «the young people». He turned his wrist against Lindsay's hand until her grip relaxed.
'Ah, she trusts us!
'But she's wrong to trust us, isn't she? said Randall eagerly. He turned for a moment to face Lindsay. The big, intent, slightly mocking yellow eyes were very close to his own. He could not search their speckled depth for images of victory or flight. Joy and humility confused him utterly.
'That's up to you, boy, said Lindsay. She gave his hand another squeeze and withdrew hers. The pale eyes widened a moment with an intensified mockery and were withdrawn too. Randall now studied her profile. The lips and cheeks were moulded with a spiritual complacency which made him faint with delight. Just so arrogantly self-filled would an angel look in repose.
'Well, it's up to you too, my queen, said Randall. 'You want to be — taken, don't you?
'If you're brave enough to take me. Not otherwise. Otherwise I'm very well off as I am, thank you. She spoke with a little-girlish satisfaction.
Randall sighed. This was the point they had got to the last time, just before Emma had so obligingly swallowed them up. 'But you've got to help me to be brave. Don't let us have a vicious circle here.
'I'm afraid I'm not going to help you, said Lindsay. She spoke judiciously. 'But I expect I shall watch your struggles with sympathy. She laughed.
'They are struggles, you know, said Randall. 'I wonder how much you really imagine them? You know how I feel Ann now as a dead weight. Yet at the same lime I'm terribly sorry for her. And I'm hideously — connected with her. It's odd how that connexion survives any real relationship. And it seems to go out into everything. The roses. Even the bloody furniture!
Randall spoke sincerely. He knew that there was a world of difference between a secret liaison and a public rupture, and he feared the latter in a dozen ways. Yet there was also in him, and it seemed at times to shiver through him like a shaft of light, a pure desire for destruction, to smash everything to bits. He worshipped the purity of that urge. He wished he could explain to Lindsay how important it was to him that she should let her wildness play, as it were, upon him. His tiny purity yearned to her immense purity as to the ground of its being, and he struggled with her wordlessly as a mystic struggles with his God.
'How you manage your wife is your affair, said Lindsay. 'I don't want to hear about it.