Looking back on his interview with his father, it seemed as if he had gone through it in a dream, as if he had inclined the scales in a moment of unconsciousness; and a certain fatalism, a sense of being carried by larger forces, had also prevented him from worrying about how his suggestion would be received and whether it would be adopted. The good news was conveyed laconicaIly, and the cheque with the briefest note in Hugh's neat writing, Dear Randall, please find enclosed — But what his father's emotions and opinions about the matter really were Randall no longer cared. He felt as if he had killed his father. The sensation was not unsatisfactory. He was himself the more increased.
He jumped into a taxi and told the driver to take him to Jermyn Street. It was still early in the day. Arrived there, he went into a shop and ordered six shirts of very fine striped flannel. The assistants treated him with a special deference, almost with a special love. It was as if they knew. Everything is going to be different now, thought Randall, from now to the end of my life, everything is going to be quite different. He left the shop in a state of ecstasy verging on coma. Even the image of Lindsay was dissolved in a big golden consciousness, vast and annihilating as the beatific vision.
He entered a pub, smiling uncontrollably, and absorbed two double whiskies into his nebulous floating being with as little consciousness of what was going on as an amoeba swallowing its prey. He began at last to wonder where he would have lunch, and gained sufficient contact with his surroundings to enable the names of Prunier and Boulestin to flicker attractively before him. He decided on Boulestin and, found himself without apparent transition sitting in the murky and distinguished gloom of that establishment eating a magnificent piece of steak. The claret, which had appeared magically with the steak, was chateau-bottled. The waiters murmured about him like cherubim about the risen Lord.
It was after lunch when he had been somehow transported to a Renoir landscape which was a heavenly version of Hyde Park that the curious idea came to him of going to call on Emma Sands. This idea brought him rocketing back to earth. But he stood thereupon like a giant. He would go and see Emma, he would go and triumph over Emma: and it would be the lifting of a burden, the breaking of a chain. The perfection of his condition lacked only this.
Since Randall had set in train the events which were to bring to such a spectacular outcome the practical thinking recommended by Lindsay, a curious silence had fallen between the lovers. It was as if they were, during the count down holding their breath. And when Lindsay had announced to him that she was going to Leicester to pay her annual visit to her mother, no significant looks had been exchanged although they both knew perfectly well that they were entering a sacred and dangerous time. Randall had told her nothing f his plans, though he was well aware that his prophetic bearing, a certain glorious stricken look in the eyes, must sufficiently have proclaimed that he had plans. He had not heard from her since she left, except for a postcard, and he did not know whether she had seen the news about the Tintoretto in the paper, and whether if she had seen it she had understood it. Above all, he did not know if she had spoken to Emma.
This doubt, once it came to him, was sobering and painful. He had, in the last days, during his symbolic assassination of his father, during his trance-like pursuit of the golden grail, rather lost sight of Emma. He had in the end lost sight even of Lindsay. Like the mystic who pursues the great other only to find at the last that there is only Himself, Randall, through the very labouring of his spirit, had entered a region of beautiful solitude. All the same Emma existed, and with what authority, with what horrible contingent power, he suddenly felt as he neared the raucous whirlpool of Hyde Park Comer. He felt himself in the mood for another assassination.
There was a flower stall outside St George's hospital, and he paused there. Roses. The long-stemmed neatly rolled and elongated buds affected him sadly. They were more like City umbrellas than flowers. They were scarcely roses, those skinny degenerate objects, meanly and hastily produced by a coerced and cynical Nature for a quickly turning market, and made to perish unnoticed by bedsides, or to be twisted in the nervous hands of girls in long dresses. And Randall was for a second blind to the outer scene as he saw the hillside at Grayhallock turning purple and lilac and pink with an abundance of plump formal Centifolia and Damask. All the same, with a sort of gloomy relish, he bought a bunch of the poor unscented London roses; and then thought after all that they were like little girls' breasts, small and pointed. But that made him remember Miranda. He hailed a taxi.
It was almost his usual tea-time, his usual time of going to see Emma and Lindsay'. His usual time, that is, in the old days. He was staggered, as one in the first days of a war, to feel how far off already those old days were. The old days were gone forever, and never again would he enter that drawing-room to find the two together, busy with their embroidery, and the tea-trolley thrusting its side into Emma's voluminous skirt. He thought of this with awe, with a certain curious sadness, and with ecstasy. Now it was war.
As he rang Emma's bell he thought: but she will have to answer the door herself. And for a moment he felt a thrill of compassion which almost made his errand seem improper. But the next moment, when Emma stood before him, there was nothing but the old fear, attraction, puzzlement and hostility, which had once together composed a sort of enchantment, but which now rose up, grim, separate and unadorned.
Emma did not seem especially surprised to see him. She said, 'Oh it's you, Randall, good, and shuffled back to the drawing-room, leaving a trail of Gauloise smoke behind her.
Randall followed. Without Lindsay the room was empty, weird and he read as if for the first time that he had never seen Emma without Lindsay. He had never seen Emma alone.
He laid the roses down on the little table with a gesture of donation. Emma had sat down in her usual chair and was regarding him with a lively yet sombre expression. She said, 'How very sweet of you, my dear. And how especially sweet of you to pity my abandoned state. Would you like some whisky? With my gaiety girl away I haven't had the heart for tea.
Randall was penetrated again by a demoralizing sense of pity. He wondered whether he should drink her whisky or not. He decided that a murderer need not boggle at an error of taste, and set out two glasses. He thought, does she realize that it's the end?
Emma went on chattily, 'I'm a dreadful old malade imaginaire, but I do feel really helpless without someone to look after me. I've been spoilt, of course.
Randall poured out the whisky and brought it to her. As she was just taking another cigarette he produced his lighter and offered her the flame. Their hands touched, and he felt her eyes upon him, dark and inquisitive. Seeing her without Lindsay was somehow obscene, it was seeing her as bare and terrible: pitiable too but terrible. And he thought, she has brought me here, she has drawn me here, witch-like, out of London, it is she who has summoned me.
Emma was watching him. Her frizzy hair had a tangled unkempt appearance as if she were becoming already a neglected old woman. Her skirt was covered with cigarette ash, and an overflowing ash-tray strewed cigarette ends at her feet. But her ferret nose pointed at Randall like a dagger and her mouth narrowed slowly with an irony and humour which were a menacing prelude to a smile.
'I had such a charming postcard this morning, from her I mean, Emma continued. But she uttered the words absently, as one whose attention is elsewhere.