I became aware that someone was standing beside me. Julian said, «How are you feeling now, Bradley?»
I began to walk away from her, fumbling for my handkerchief. I wiped my mouth carefully, trying to cleanse it within with saliva.
I was walking along a corridor composed entirely of cages. I was in a prison, I was in a concentration camp. There was a wall composed of transparent sacks full of fiery carrots. They looked at me like derisive faces, like monkeys' bottoms. I breathed carefully and regularly and interrogated my stomach, stroking it gently with my hands. I turned into a lighted arcade and tested my stomach against a smell of decaying lettuce. I walked onward occupied in breathing. Only now I felt so empty and so faint. I felt that I had reached the end of the world, I felt like a stag when it can run no farther and turns and bows its head to the hounds, I felt like Actaeon condemned and cornered and devoured.
Julian was following me. I could hear the soft tap-tap of her shoes on the sticky pavement and my whole body apprehended her presence behind me.
«Bradley, would you like some coffee? There's a stall there.»
«No.»
«Let's sit down somewhere.»
«Nowhere to sit.»
We passed between two lorries loaded with milky-white boxes of dark cherries and came out into the open. It was becoming dark, lights had come on revealing the sturdy elegant military outline of the vegetable market, resembling a magazine, a seedy eighteenth– century barracks, though quiet at this time and sombre as a cloister.
Opposite to us the big derelict eastern portico of Inigo Jones's church was now in view, cluttered up with barrows and housing at the far end the coffee stall referred to by Julian. Some mean and casual lamplight, itself seeming dirty, revealed the thick pillars, a few lounging market men, a large pile of vegetable refuse and disinte– rating cardboard boxes. It was like a scene in some small battered Italian city, rendered by Hogarth.
Julian seated herself on the plinth of one of the pillars at the lark end of the portico, and I sat down next to her, or as near next to her as the bulge of the column would allow. I could feel the thick filth and muck of London under my feet, under my bottom, behind my back. I saw, in a diagonal of dim light, Julian's silk dress hitched up, her tights, smoky blue, coloured by the flesh within, her shoes, also blue, against which I had so cautiously placed my own.
«Poor Bradley,» said Julian.
«I'm sorry.»
«Was it the music?»
«No, it was you. Sorry.»
We were silent then for what seemed ages. I sighed and leaned back against the pillar and felt a few more tears, late-comers to the scene, quiet and gentle, come slowly brimming up and overflowing. I contemplated Julian's blue shoes.
Then Julian said, «How me?»
«I'm terribly in love with you. But please don't worry about it.»
Julian whistled. No, this does not quite convey the sound she made. She let her breath out thoughtfully, judiciously.
After a while she said, «I thought perhaps you were.»
«How on earth did you know?» I said, and I rubbed my face and dabbed my lips with my wet hand.
«The way you kissed me last week.»
«Oh really. Well, I'm sorry. Now I think I'd better go home. I'll be leaving London tomorrow. I'm very sorry to have spoilt your evening. I hope you'll excuse my animal behaviour. I hope you haven't dirtied your pretty dress. Good night.» I actually got up. I felt quite empty and light, able to walk. First the flesh, then the spirit. I started to walk away in the direction of Henrietta Street.
Julian was in front of me. I saw her face, the bird-mask fox-mask very intense and clear. «Bradley, don't go. Come and sit down again, just for a moment.» She put her hand on my arm.
«Come back. Please.»
I came back. I sat down again and covered my face. Then I felt Julian's hand trying to come through the crook of my arm. I shook her off again. I felt determined and violent, as if at that moment I hated her and could kill her.
«Bradley, don't-be like that-Please talk to me.»
«Don't try to touch me,» I said.
«All right, I won't. But please talk.»
«There's nothing to talk about. I have done what I swore to myself I would never do, told you about my condition. I don't have to emphasize, I think you must already have gathered, that this is all rather extreme. I shall tomorrow do what I should have done earlier, go away. What I do not propose to do is to gratify your girlish vanity by a display of my feelings.»
«Bradley, listen, listen. I'm not good at explaining or arguing but – You see, you can't just unload all this onto me and then run off. It isn't fair. You must see that.»
«I'm beyond fairness,» I said. «I just want to survive. I'm sure you feel a curiosity which it is natural to try to gratify. Even perhaps politeness suggests that one should be a little less abrupt. But I honestly don't care a hang about considering your feelings and all that. It's possibly the worst thing I've ever done. But now it's done there's little point in lingering over a post-mortem, however much satisfaction you might derive from it.»
«Don't you want to talk to me about your love?»
The question had a striking simplicity. I was clear about the answer. «No. It's all spoilt. I endlessly imagined talking to you about it, but that just belonged to the fantasy world. I can't talk love to you in the real world. The real world rejects it. It's not that it would be a crime so much as-absurd. I feel quite cold and-dry. What do you want? To hear me praise your eyes?»
«Has telling your love-made your love-end?»
«No. But it's-it's not-it has no speech any more-it's just something I've got to carry away and live with. When I hadn't told you I could endlessly imagine myself telling you. Now-the tongue has been cut out.»
«I-Bradley, don't go-I must-oh help me-find the right words-This is important-And it concerns me-You talk as if there was nobody here but you.»
«There is nobody here but me,» I said. «You're just something in my dream.»
«That's not true. I'm real. I hear your words. I can suffer.»
«Suffer? You?» I got up with a sort of laugh and set off again. This time before I could take more than a step or two Julian, still sitting down, had managed to capture one of my hands in two of hers. I looked down into her face. I willed to pull my hand from her, but somewhere between the brain and the hand the message got lost. I stood looking down into her urgent face which seemed to have hardened and aged. She gazed at me, not tenderly but frowning with intent, the eyes narrowed into thin questioning rectangles, the lips parted, the nose wrinkled with some sort of delicate fastidious doubt. She said, «Sit down, please.» I sat down, and she released my hand.
We looked at each other. «Bradley, you can't go.»
«It looks like it. Do you know, you are a very cruel young lady.»
«This isn't cruelty. There's something I've got to understand. You say you're just concerned with yourself. All right. I'm just concerned with myself. And you did start it. You can't just stop it now when you decide to. I'm an equal partner in this game.»
«I hope you are enjoying the game. It must be pleasant to feel blood on your claws. It'll give you something nice to think about when you lie in bed tonight.»
«Don't be beastly to me, Bradley, it isn't my fault. I didn't invite you to fall in love with me. I never dreamt of it at all. When did it happen? When did you first begin to notice me in that way?»
«All right, I dare say I can trust your discretion. But I must now ask you to release me from this unkind and unseemly inquisition.»