Everything was changed, everything. I was estranged from myself and all that I had once supposed I was. My life up to now had only the weightless density of a dream. When I thought about my past it was like thinking of what someone else had been, someone I had never met but whose history I knew by heart. It all seemed no more than a vivid fiction. Nor was the present any more solid. I felt light-headed, volatile, poised at an angle to everything. The ground under me was stretched tight as a trampoline, I must keep still for fear of unexpected surges, dangerous leaps and bounces. And all around me was this blue and empty air.
I could not think directly about what I had done. It would have been like trying to stare steadily into a blinding light. It was too big, too bright, to contemplate. It was incomprehensible. Even still, when I say I did it, I am not sure I know what I mean. Oh, do not mistake me. I have no wish to vacillate, to hum and haw and kick dead leaves over the evidence. I killed her, I admit it freely. And I know that if I were back there today I would do it again, not because I would want to, but because I would have no choice. It would be just as it was then, this spider, and this moonlight between the trees, and all, all the rest of it. Nor can I say I did not mean to kill her – only, I am not clear as to when I began to mean it. I was flustered, impatient, angry, she attacked me, I swiped at her, the swipe became a blow, which became the prelude to a second blow – its apogee, so to speak, or perhaps I mean perigee – and so on. There is no moment in this process of which I can confidently say, there, that is when I decided she should die. Decided? – I do not think it was a matter of deciding. I do not think it was a matter of thinking, even. That fat monster inside me just saw his chance and leaped out, frothing and flailing. He had scores to settle with the world, and she, at that moment, was world enough for him. I could not stop him. Or could I? He is me, after all, and I am he. But no, things were too far gone for stopping. Perhaps that is the essence of my crime, of my culpability, that I let things get to that stage, that I had not been vigilant enough, had not been enough of a dissembler, that I left Bunter to his own devices, and thus allowed him, fatally, to understand that he was free, that the cage door was open, that nothing was forbidden, that everything was possible.
After my first appearance in court the newspapers said I showed no sign of remorse when the charges were read out. (What did they expect, that I would weep, rend my garments?) They were on to something, in their dim-witted way. Remorse implies the expectation of forgiveness, and I knew that what I had done was unforgivable. I could have feigned regret and sorrow, guilt, all that, but to what end? Even if I had felt such things, truly, in the deepest depths of my heart, would it have altered anything? The deed was done, and would not be cancelled by cries of anguish and repentance. Done, yes, finished, as nothing ever before in my life had been finished and done – and yet there would be no end to it, I saw that straight away. I was, I told myself, responsible, with all the weight that word implied. In killing Josie Bell I had destroyed a part of the world. Those hammer-blows had shattered a complex of memories and sensations and possibilities – a life, in short – which was irreplaceable, but which, somehow, must be replaced. For the crime of murder I would be caught and put away, I knew this with the calmness and certainty which only an irrelevance could inspire, and then they would say I had paid my debt, in the belief that by walling me up alive they had struck a sort of balance. They would be right, according to the laws of retribution and revenge: such balance, however, would be at best a negative thing. No, no. What was required was not my symbolic death – I recognised this, though I did not understand what it meant – but for her to be brought back to life. That, and nothing less.
That evening when Charlie returned he put his head cautiously around the door as if he feared there might be a bucket of water balanced on it. I leered at him, swaying. I had finished the gin, and moved on, reluctantly, to whiskey. I was not drunk, exactly, but in a kind of numbed euphoria, as if I had just come back from a lengthy and exquisitely agonising visit to the dentist. Under the new buzz the old hangover lurked, biding its time. My skin was hot and dry all over, and my eyes felt scorched. Cheers! I cried, with a fatuous laugh, and the ice cubes chuckled in my glass. Charlie was darting sidelong looks at my outfit. Hope you don't mind, I said. Didn't think we'd be the same size. Ah, he said, yes, well, I've shrunk in my old age, you see. And he gave a graveyard laugh. I could see he had been hoping I would be gone when he came home. I followed him out to the hall, where he took off his bookie's titfer and put it with his briefcase on the bog-oak hallstand. He went into the dining-room and poured himself a modest whiskey, adding a go of flattish soda from a screw-top bottle. He took a sip, and stood for a little while as if stalled, with a hand in his pocket, frowning at his feet. My presence was interfering with his evening rituals. He put away the whiskey bottle without offering me a refill. We traipsed back to the kitchen, where Charles donned his apron and rooted about in cupboards and on murky shelves for the makings of a stew. While he worked he talked distractedly over his shoulder, with a cigarette hanging from a corner of his lopsided mouth and one eye screwed shut against the smoke. He was telling me about a sale he had made, or a picture he had bought, or something like that. I think he only spoke for fear of the prospect of silence. Anyway I was not really listening. I watched him glugging the better half of a fifty-pound bottle of Pommerol into the stew. An inch of cigarette ash went into the pot as well, he tried vainly to fish it out with a spoon, clucking in annoyance. You can imagine what it's like for me, he said, actually parting with pictures! I nodded solemnly. In fact, what I was imagining was Charlie in his poky gallery, bowing and scraping and wringing his hands in front of some fur-coated bitch reeking of face-powder and perspiration, whose hubby had given her the money to bag a bauble for her birthday. I was depressed suddenly, and suddenly tired.
He served up the stew, spilling some on the floor. He was not good with implements, they tended to turn treacherous in his hands, to wobble and veer and let things slither off. We carried our plates into the dining-room and sat down at the table under the stuffed owl's virulent, glassy stare. We drank the rest of the Pommerol, and Charles fetched another bottle. He continued to make an elaborate business of avoiding my eye, smiling about him at the floor, the furniture, the fire-irons in the grate, as if the commonplace had suddenly presented itself to his attention with a new and unexpected charm. The lowering sun was shining full upon me through the tall window at my back. The stew tasted of burnt fur. I pushed my plate aside and turned and looked out at the harbour. There was a shimmering flaw in the window-pane. Something made me think of California, something about the light, the little yachts, the gilded evening sea. I was so tired, so tired, I could have given up then and there, could have drifted out into that summer dusk as easily as a breeze, unknown, planless, free. Charlie squashed out a sodden fag-end on the rim of his plate. Did you see that thing about Binkie Behrens in the paper? he said. I poured myself another fill of wine. No, I said, what was that, Charles?