He thought, I'll go right away and hide somewhere. I'll buy a flat and lock it up and go. I won't tell anyone where I am. Who cares anyway, except Rose, and she's got her own family now. What a lot of nonsense I talked to her tonight, it was probably the drink, I'm not used to it. I'll tell her not to tell anyone I had that daft idea. Well, she won't tell anyone, she wants it to go away, she probably knows it's bound to. How I wish I could talk to Jenkin. Perhaps this visitation of awfulness is really knowing at last that Jenkin is dead and isn't anywhere. He put Duncan's letter back in its envelope and put it on the mantelpiece, and began to glance at the other letters which he had dropped on the floor. There were two letters for Jenkin. There had been many of those to begin with, now there were fewer. These two were advertisements and he put them in the wastepaper basket. One was the gas bill which he put in his pocket. Then he suddenly felt something like a massive electric shock, ajolt, which for a moment he could not account for and imagined he had actually been touched by some stray wire which had sent a current through him. Or perhaps he was ill, something had given way in his brain. He found lie was looking down at the last of the letters which was lying on the floor at his feet. It was the writing on the envelope which, darting its message into his unconscious mind, had produced this strange shock, and even now, after Gerard had realised that this writing was portentous, perhaps terrible, he did not immediately recognise whose writing it was. Handwriting can tell a tale of joy or of fear well before it is connected with a name. It was Crimond's writing. It was many years since Gerard had received a letter from Crimond, but the script somehow, like a sinister hieroglyph revealed by torchlight in a tomb, took him back many more years, to Oxford, to something, some event, some feeling, too deep now to be uncovered, far away in the dark depths of his mind, and from which the frightening portent derived its original power. Even as Gerard was returned to his present self he felt a sick terror at the sight, a disgusted loathing, and was tempted to tear the unopened letter up into small pieces. He even turned his back upon it and went out to tidy the kitchen, to wash his mug and plate under the hot tap and turn off the light. Then he returned to the sitting room and picked up the letter and opened it. At any rate it was not a long letter. It consisted of only one line. It was an accident. D.
Gerard now took another interval. He went out into the hall, he even opened the front door and found that the rain was less, the wind as ill-tempered as ever. He closed the front door and instinctively bolted it, though he did not always do this. Then he returned to the sitting room and sat down beside the fire and read the note again several times. He sat very quiet while a storm of mixed emotions filled his head, then flew round his head, then filled the room as if with a mass of dark silent swift birds. Human thought is easily able to break the rules of logic and physics, and at that moment Gerard was able to think and feel a very large number of vivid, even clear, things at the same time. He thought chiefly about Jenkin, Jenkin's death and the accident which had caused it, and this presented itself as a topic which he could now discuss with Jenkin. At any rate, as lie put it to himself, how Jenkin doesn't have to be a ghost, he can be himself, only in the past. His being remains absolute. He didn't suffer, Gerard thought, I can really say this to myself now, it was sudden, he didn't know. Gerard had been unable to look at the brief newspaper reports which described a freak mishap, but he had received all impression from hearing people talk. He felt now no urge to go further than that impression. I won't ever ask him, he thought (meaning Crimond), I don't want to know exactly what happened, because it doesn't matter now. At no point did it occur to Gerard to doubt that Crimond's sentence told the truth. To doubt it would have been to consent to soul-destroying madness, the whole of the rational world cohered with Crimond's truth-telling. He could not write such a letter arid it not be true. As Gerard took all this in he not only felt the energy which had seemed to forsake him flooding back in great calm generous waves, he also felt as if" in some way he could not yet master, the whole world had pivoted around him, being the same yet offering him all sorts of different views and angles. As he began to consider these Gerard rose and collected up the scattered sheets of Crimond's book and replaced them in a neat pile oil the sideboard. He walked to and fro across the little room, and it was as if the dark bird-thoughts which had been tearing round and round like swifts had begun to settle quietly on the furniture and regard him with their bright eyes.
He sat once more and looked at the note. I t was evident that Crimond had been deeply disturbed, perhaps tormented, by wondering what Gerard was thinking about his friend's death. He had had to remove that terrible image from Gerard's mind. He had, equally, had no doubt that Gerard would believe him. It had evidently taken him some time to decide to writc however. Perhaps he felt an interval was necessary, perhaps he had been unable to decide what exactly to say. He got it right, thought Gerard. The signature too was significant. Not C. or D.C. but D. Gerard allowed himself to be moved by this and stowed it away in his mind for later inspection. He was now able too, for the first time, to pity Crimond for the terrible thing which he had unwittingly done, and must live with ever after. At least Crimond, by writing to him, had liberated himself from one extra horror, and with that had, and much more, liberated Gerard. The liberation was something huge, but also painful, bringing back in a purer and sadder form his mourning and his loss. Here there recurred in his mind the idea, which had so much tormented him, that, perhaps in a remote past, Crimond and Jenkin had known each other better than he had ever suspected. But this speculation was now to be seen as idle and empty, it had gained its poisonous force from that other poison, which was at last utterly gone from him.
Gerard took off his shirt and trousers and gradually enclosed himself in his pyjamas. There was also the question of how to reply to the missive. That would require some reflection. Crimond would have mitigated his distress by sending it. But he would also expect an acknowledgement. An interval would be necessary, then an equally brief note. I'll think about that tomorrow, thought Gerard. And he said to himself" of course I will write that book, I was pretending something to myself when I imagined I wouldn't, I was sick then, I've got to write it. Of course I'll be fighting not only against those insuperable difficulties, but also against time. Even to get to the start will be a long struggle. But I'll do it, I mean I'll attempt it with all my heart. I'll do it fbrJenkin, now things are clear between us, I can say that too. Christ, how I shall miss him as I go on alone upon that way. I'll start reading Crimond's book again tomorrow and I'll remember all the things Rose said about my being 'bowled over' and 'carried away' and how if I hadn't known the author I wouldn't have noticed the book. I don't think she's right, but even if'she is a bit right it won't matter now, because I see what I have to do, what my job is. And that's certainly thanks to Crimond.