The thought of Nick, once it came fully upon him, began to eat up Michael’s consciousness; and about three a.m. he almost got out of bed to set out for the Lodge. He resolved to see Nick early the next day. With a sort of relief which at a deeper level was almost pleasure he felt that the catastrophes of the last days had as it were opened the pathway between him and Nick. At moments it almost seemed as if they had been designed to do that. To be able now so dramatically to see Nick both as criminal and as afflicted made it essential at last to destroy the barrier between them. Praying for him now, Michael felt once more the elusive sense that God held them both, and held in some incomprehensible way the twisted strands of their concern for each other. Michael knew now that he must talk to Nick. In this extremity he must act fully the part of what he was, Nick’s only friend at Imber. After so much that was appalling, no harm could now come of this, and the simple duty of speaking frankly and openly to Nick was finally set before him. Michael asked himself uneasily whether this duty had not in fact been set before him for some time if only he had used his eyes; but he left the question unanswered, and suddenly secure, relieved, positively glad at the thought of speaking with Nick tomorrow he fell into a sweet sleep.
The next morning opened with a full programme of cares and anxieties. Michael left the dispatching of Catherine to the Straffords, assisted by James, while he coped with further telephone calls, including one from the Bishop, who had been reading the morning papers and who was anxious that Michael should draft a letter to The Times designed to remove certain misapprehensions. It was nearly eleven o’clock before Michael had a moment to raise his head. When at last he felt that he could escape he left his office and set off down the steps and across the terrace. Nick had declined to travel up with Catherine. He had in fact not been pressed to by Margaret Strafford, who held a theory that Catherine was better without her brother for the moment; but he had announced in rather vague terms that he would follow her very soon. Michael expected to find him at the Lodge, probably in the company of the whisky bottle. He did not imagine that Nick would have the resolution or the sheer powers of organization required to leave Imber quickly.
As he emerged on to the terrace and saw how blue the sky had once more become and how warm and colourful the sunshine, he felt a stirring of hope and a sense that the horrors through which they had all passed would be dissolved and blotted out. All would yet be well. And as this sense of hope and of a healing providence came upon him he recognized it, without any distress or misgiving, as inextricably mixed up with his old old love for Nick and the sheer joy of being once again upon the path that led towards him.
“Oh Michael, wait a moment!” said Mark Strafford from behind him.
Michael stopped and looked back, to see Mark leaning over the balcony above him.
“James wants to see you,” said Mark. “He’s in his office.”
Michael turned about. He had no wish to see James just now but with an almost automatic reaction he put first the claim of James’s summons. The other matter was already seeming to him like a self-indulgence, a piece, after all, of his own private business. He came back up the steps. James’s summons. As Michael climbed the stair to James’s office he reflected that it was unusual for James to summon him in this way. When James wanted to see him he usually looked for him and shouted his business out wherever Michael was to be found. He reached James’s door, knocked, and went in.
The room was not large and was practically empty of furniture. A rickety table of much scored oak was James’s desk, with two canvas garden chairs, one on each side. Letters and papers filled boxes on the floor. Behind the desk a crucifix hung on the wall. The floor was unstained and uncarpeted, and the ceiling webbed with cracks. The resonant autumn sunshine showed abundant dust.
James was standing behind the desk as Michael came in, and running his hands again and again through his jagged dark hair. Michael sat down opposite to him, and James slumped back into his canvas chair, making it groan and bulge.
“Catherine got off all right?” said Michael.
“Yes,” said James. He avoided Michael’s eye and fiddled with things on the desk.
“You wanted to see me, James?” said Michael. He felt preoccupied and in a hurry.
“Yes,” said James. He paused and fiddled the things back into their original position. “I’m sorry, Michael,” he said,“this is very difficult.”
“What’s the matter?” said Michael. “You look upset. Has anything new happened?”
“Well, yes and no,” said James. Took, Michael, I can’t wrap this up and you wouldn’t want me to. Toby has told me everything.”
Michael looked out of the window. He had again the strange sensation of déjà vu. Where had all this happened before? In the silence that followed the world seemed gently to crack about him, its appearance unchanged yet ready now to fall to pieces. Disaster is not quickly apprehended.
“What did he tell you?” said Michael.
“Well,” said James, “you know, what happened between you. I’m sorry.”
Michael looked up at the crucifix. He could not yet bring himself to look at James. A quiet feeling of exasperation, which oddly accompanied his sense of total ruin, kept him sane and calm. He said, “Very little happened.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” said James.
In the autumnal distance there was the sound of a gun being fired. Michael’s mind reverted in a dazed way to Patch-way and the pigeons. That real world was now very far off. He wondered if there was any point in giving James his version of the story. He decided there was not. Excuses and explanations would be out of place; and besides, he was without excuse. He said, “All right. You’ve learnt something about me, haven’t you, James?”
James said, “I’m terribly sorry,” twisting his things about on the table and pausing to examine his hand.
Michael looked at James now. In spite of the cell-like appearance of the room, dear James was not well framed for the part of Grand Inquisitor. Almost anyone else would have got some shred of satisfaction or interest from the scene. James got none. Watching his expression of pain and misery and his fidgeting Michael pictured for a moment how James must see him: the enormity of the crime and the disgusting and unnatural propensity which it revealed. James was right of course. Plenty had happened.
“When did Toby make this confession to you?” said Michael. He tried to calm his mind, to think about Toby instead of himself. To think about his victim.
“The night before last,” said James. “He came to my room sometime after eleven o’clock. He’d been wandering round in the rain and was frightfully upset. We talked for hours. He told me all about the bell business too, I mean the other bell, and how he planned it all with Dora and how they pulled the bell out of the lake. But we didn’t get along to that until the early hours of the morning. We spent such a long time on you.”
“That was good of you,” said Michael. The exasperation was gaining ground. “What did you say to Toby?”
“I was pretty serious with him,” said James. He looked at Michael now with a level stare. A tiny flame of hostility flickered in the air between them and was gone. “I thought he’d behaved foolishly, even in some ways badly, in relation to both you and Dora, and I told him so. After all, he’d felt badly enough about it himself to take this rather drastic step of making a confession – which I must say I thought a very sensible and admirable thing to do. And it had to be met with the seriousness which the case deserved. Anything else would have been too little.”