In the end — it was like being young and poor again, with nowhere to take one’s young woman — we dropped in, one by one, into a pub on the Embankment. When I arrived, the lounge was empty and I sat at a table in the corner. Soon Roger joined me. I noticed that, despite all the photographs, no one behind the bar recognized him. Ellen came in: I went and greeted her, and brought her to the table.
She gave Roger her severe introductory smile, but her skin was glowing and the whites of her eyes as clear as a child’s. She looked as though strain and suspicion were good for her, as though energy was pumping through her. Of the three of us, it was Roger who seemed physically subdued. Yet, as I read the new letter Ellen had brought out of her bag, he was watching me with eyes as alert as hers.
The letter was in the same handwriting, but the words had run close together. The tone was threatening (‘you haven’t much longer to make him change his mind’) and, for the first time, obscene. It was a curious kind of obscenity — as though the writer, setting out for a hard-baked business purpose — had gone off the track, had become as obsessed as someone scrawling in a public lavatory. The obsession slithered on, insinuating, sadistic, glassy-eyed.
I didn’t want to go on reading, and pushed the letter away over the glass table-top.
‘Well?’ cried Ellen.
Roger sank back in his chair. Like me, he was shocked, and at the same time didn’t like being shocked. In a deliberately off-hand tone he said: ‘One thing is fairly clear. He doesn’t like us very much.’
‘I’m not going to stand it,’ she said.
‘What else can we do?’ Roger asked her, in a placating voice.
‘I’m going to do something.’ She appealed to me — no, announced to me: ‘Don’t you agree, this is the time to do something?’
In the past minute, I had realized that for the first time they were split. That was why I had been asked there that night. She wanted me on her side: and Roger, as he sat back in his chair, giving sensible, cautious reasons why they had to go on enduring this in silence, believed that I had to be on his.
He had spoken with caution, but without much authority. The words came slowly. As for this man, there was no sign that the threats would come to anything. Let it alone. Pretend they were unmoved. It was a nuisance they could live with.
‘That’s easy for you,’ said Ellen.
He stared at her. It was nearly always wrong, he said quietly, to take steps when you couldn’t see the end.
‘This man can be stopped,’ she insisted.
‘You can’t be sure.’
‘We can go to the police,’ she said sharply. ‘They’ll protect you. Do you know that he could get six months for this?’
‘I dare say so.’ Roger looked at her with a touch of exasperation, as if she were a child being obtuse about her sums. ‘But I am not in a position to appear in a witness-box as Mr X. One has to be singularly anonymous for that particular activity. You must see that. I can’t be Mr X.’
She was silent for a minute. ‘No. Of course you can’t.’
He put his hand on hers for a second.
Then she flared up again. ‘But that isn’t the only way. As soon as I knew who he was, I knew he could be stopped. He’ll crumple up. This is my business, and I’m going to do it.’ Her eyes were wide open with passion. She fixed her glance on me.
‘What do you think, Lewis?’
After a pause I replied, turning to Roger: ‘It’s a slight risk. But I fancy it’s probably time to take the offensive.’
I said it with every appearance of reason, of deliberate consideration, and perhaps as persuasively as I ever said anything.
Roger had been talking sense. Ellen was as gifted with sense as he was: but she was made for action, her judgement was always likely to leave her if she couldn’t act. I ought to have known that. Maybe, with half my mind, I did know. But my own judgement had gone, for reasons more complex than hers, and much more culpable. As I grew older, I had learned patience. The influence I had on people like Roger was partly because they thought me a tough and enduring man; but this wasn’t as natural as it seemed, nor so much all of a piece. I had been born spontaneous, excessively so, emotional, malleable. The stoical public face had become real enough, but the earlier nature went on underneath, and when the patience and control snapped, was still, in my middle-age, capable of breaking through. This was dangerous for me, and for those round me, since fits of temper, or spontaneous affection, or sheer whims, filtered through the public screen, and sounded as disciplined, as reliable, as some part of my character had now become, and as I should have liked the rest of it to be. It didn’t happen often, because I was on my guard: but occasionally it happened still, as on that evening. No one but Margaret knew it, but for days, since the dialogue with Rose, my temper had been smouldering. Like Ellen, I had gone into the pub craving for action. Unlike her, though, I didn’t sound as though I needed it. The craving came out through layers of patience, mixed with all the qualifications and devices of discipline, as though it were the reasonable, considered recommendation of a wise and prudent man.
Yes, I said, we were all being shot at. There were great advantages in absorbing the attacks, in showing passive strength. Made enemies worried about what one had in reserve. But one mustn’t stay passive forever. If so, they ceased to worry, and treated one like a punchball. The whole art was, to stay silent, to select one’s time, and then pick them off. Perhaps the time had come, or was coming. This attack on Ellen — there the man was wide-open. If he had any connection with others, which we were no nearer knowing, it would interest them to hear that he had been coped with; anyway, this was the thing to do. Roger gave up, with only a token struggle. Except in little things, as Caro had once told me, he was the hardest of men to influence. In all our connection, I had scarcely once persuaded him: certainly not over-persuaded him. Sitting there, round the little table, it did not occur to me that I was over-persuading him. I felt as reasonable as I sounded. Almost at once, the three of us were talking, not of whether anything should be done, but of what.
Later on, when it was all over, I wondered what responsibility I had to accept. Perhaps I was being easy on myself — but had it made much difference, what I said that night? Surely it had been Ellen’s will, or more precisely, her desire, which had been decisive? For once, Roger had wanted to slump into acquiescence and let her have her way. He gave the impression, utterly unlike him, of being absent — not from strain so much as from a kind of comfort. He did not even speak much. When he did speak, he said, as though it were one of his most pointed reflections, ‘I must say, it will make things smoother, when we don’t hear from him again.’
Ellen hissed at him like a cat.
‘By God, that’s helpful!’ she cried. She broke into a grin, a lop-sided grin, furious and loving. As for him, he would be absent until he could take her in his arms.
The truth was, I now accepted, that the love was not one-sided. He loved her in return. It wasn’t a passing fancy, such as a man of Roger’s age and egotism might often have. He admired her, just as he admired Caro, and oddly enough for some of the same reasons: for these women were not so unlike as they seemed. Ellen was as upright as Caro, and as honourable: in her way, she was as worldly, though she had more grievances about the world. Perhaps she was deeper, nearer to the nerve of life. I believed Roger thought they were both better people than he was. And, of course, between him and Ellen there was a link of the senses, so strong that sitting with them was like being in a field of force. Why it was so strong, I should probably never know. It was better that I shouldn’t. If one reads the love-letters that give the details of a grand passion, they make one forget that the passion can still be grand.