Unpleasant characteristics she believed long outgrown came back. She spoke loudly in public places in a boastful way, for the benefit of strangers whose opinions did not matter to her.
She actually had to stop herself boasting of past loves to Mary, but had said enough to embarrass both: Mary, whose acute, quick look told Sarah that her condition was being understood. One day Mary remarked, apparently about Roy, who was having a difficult time with his wife and was bad- tempered and morose, 'What we forget is, people know much more about us than we like, and forgive us much more.' Was this a plea for herself?
Music still affected Sarah too strongly. She found herself switching off music on the radio, going out of the theatre when they were doing rehearsals and there was music, closing a window if music floated towards her down the street, because even a banal and silly tune could make her cry, or double up in pain. A workman reslating the roof of the house next to hers burst into the torch song from Julie, or, rather, The Lucky Piece — the song had taken wings because of a radio programme. He was sending it up, straddling the house ridge, arms extended, like an opera singer accepting applause, while his mate, leaning against a chimney, clapped — and Sarah's hands flew of their own accord to cover her ears. She felt the sounds were poisoning her.
From the moment she woke, daydreams had to be pushed away, dreams like drugs. Then, at last succumbing, she could spend hours in day-dreams, like an adolescent.
She was greedy for sweet things, wanted to eat, had to stop herself if she didn't want to buy a complete new wardrobe.
Words that had the remotest connection with love, romance, passion, she believed twisted the same nerve as that weakened by music, so that phrases or words or stories she normally would have found stupid brought tears to her eyes. When she was able to read at all — for it was hard to concentrate — she nervously watched for them, these places on the page, able to see them coming half a page before, and she skipped them, forcing her eyes to bypass or neutralize them.
She bought beauty products which a sense of the ridiculous forbade her to use. She even thought of having her face lifted — an idea that in her normal condition could only make her smile.
She began to make a blouse, of a kind she had not worn for years, but left it unfinished.
Sometimes a conversation, apparently without any intention by her, acquired sexual undertones, so that every word of an exchange could be interpreted obscenely.
But worst of all was her irritability; she knew if she could not outlive it, she was heading straight towards the paranoia, the rages, the bitterness, of disappointed old age.
Stephen cut short his visits and came to London to see Sarah. They walked about and around streets and parks and even went to the theatre. They left some comedy at the first interval, saying that normally they would have enjoyed it.
Susan had written to him. It was a love letter that offered everything. 'I shall never love anyone as I love you.'
'I swear it's that damned music,' said Sarah.
'I was hoping it was because of my intrinsic qualities. But I suppose it does make things easier to stick a label on them.'
This was the same need to snap and snarl that so often possessed Sarah.
'Sorry,' said Stephen, 'I simply don't recognize myself.'
A week later she telephoned him at his home and at first thought she had got the wrong number and had reached someone whom she had awakened. She could hear breathing, and then a mumbling or muttering which could be his voice, and she said, 'Stephen?' Silence, and more difficult breathing, and he said, or rather slurred, her name. 'Sarah… Sarah?' 'Stephen, are you ill? Shall I come?' He did not answer. She went on talking, even pleading, urging, for a long time, but while he did not put down the receiver, he did not answer. She was talking into silence, and her own voice was sounding ridiculous, because she was making the reassuring optimistic remarks that always need an interlocutor similarly cheerful to carry conviction. At last she felt he was not listening. Perhaps he had even gone to sleep, or walked away. Now she was full of panic, like a bird trapped in a room. She had the number of the telephone in the kitchen at Queen's Gift, used for domestic matters, but there was no reply. She sat for a while in indecision, feeling that she ought to go to him at once, but telling herself that if he had wanted her to come he would have said so. Besides, why did she always assume he had no one else to turn to? In the end she took a taxi to Paddington, then the first possible train, then a taxi to the house. She asked to be put down outside the gates, for her sudden uninvited appearance at the house itself would seem too dramatic. The great gates had been newly painted glossy black with gold touches, like the 'highlights' hairdressers use to enliven a hair-do. She went in through an unobtrusive little door in a brick arch at the side. This was like an allegory of something, but she could not think what. In her present condition, signs and symbols, portents and presages and omens, comparisons apt and silly, formed themselves out of a voice overheard in the street, a dog barking, a glass slipping out of her hand and smashing loudly on a hard surface. Her irritation at this unwanted and insipid commentary on everything she did contributed to her bad temper. Now her heart was racing, for she was possessed with the need to hurry, while she felt her trip here to be absurd. There seemed to be no one about. Posters for Ariadne on Naxos were everywhere, and Julie's face was nowhere. Of course: they were trying out this opera. A small cast and delicious music, Elizabeth said. Where was Elizabeth? Not in the vegetable garden, nor with the horses, nor anywhere near the house. And what would Sarah say when she did find her? 'Look, Elizabeth, I had to come, I was worried about Stephen.' (I am worried about your husband.) Elizabeth must at least have noticed that Stephen was — well, what was he at this moment? Worse: he was much worse. After wandering about for some minutes, feeling like a thief or at least an intruder, she saw Stephen sitting on a bench by himself, in full sunlight. He sat hunched, legs apart, hands loosely dangling and folded between them, like tools he had forgotten to put away. His head was lowered, and his face was dripping sweat. A hundred yards away stood the great ash tree, James's friend. Under it was a bench, in deep shade. She sat down by him and said, 'Stephen… ' No response at all. Right, she thought, this is it: I know this one, I've seen it before. This is the real thing, the Big D (as its victims jocularly call it when not in its power), it is the authentic hallmarked one-hundred-percent depression: he's gone over the edge. 'Stephen, it's Sarah.' After a long time, at least a minute, he lifted his head, and she found herself the object of — no, not an inspection, or even a recognition. It was a defensive look. 'Stephen, I've come because I'm worried about you.' His eyes lowered themselves, and he sat staring at the ground. After another interval, he said, or mumbled, in a hurried swallowing way, 'No use, Sarah, no good.' He was occupied deep within himself, he was busy with an inner landscape, and did not have the energy for the outside world. She knew this because she sometimes underwent a much less total version of this condition. She was absent-minded, heard words long after they were spoken, felt them as an intrusion, had to force herself to pay attention, and then spoke hurriedly to get the irrelevance over with. At meetings at The Green Bird, in conversations with colleagues, she had to make herself come up out of depths of an inner preoccupation with pain actually to hear what they said, then frame words appropriate for an answer. But at least she could do it, and she was getting better. Stephen's state was worse by far than anything she herself had known, and the panic she felt deepened.