Nicholas beamed lovingly at this.
Collie gave a little half-cough, half-laugh, much encouraged in the success of her frankness. She felt modern, and continued excitedly, ‘It’s a question of what you never have you never miss, of course.’
Greggie put on a puzzled air, as if she genuinely did not know what Collie was talking about. After thirty years’ hostile fellowship with Collie, of course she did quite well understand that Collie had a habit of skipping several stages in the logical sequence of her thoughts, and would utter apparently disconnected statements, especially when confused by an unfamiliar subject or the presence of a man.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ said Greggie. ‘What is a question of what you never have you never miss?’
‘Sex, of course,’ Collie said, her voice unusually loud with the effort of the topic. ‘We were discussing sex and getting married. I say, of course, there’s a lot to be said for marriage, but if you never have it you never miss it.’
Joanna looked at the two excited women with meek compassion. To Nicholas she looked stronger than ever in her meekness, as she regarded Greggie and Collie at their rivalry to be uninhibited.
‘What do you mean, Collie?’ Greggie said.
‘You’re quite wrong there, Collie. One does miss sex. The body has a life of its own. We do miss what we haven’t had, you and I. Biologically. Ask Sigmund Freud. It is revealed in dreams. The absent touch of the warm limbs at night, the absent —‘
‘Just a minute,’ said Nicholas, holding up his hand for silence, in the pretence that he was tuning-in to his empty tape-machine. He could see that the two women would go to any lengths, now they had got started.
‘Open the door, please.’ From behind the door came the warden’s voice and the rattle of the coffee tray. Before Nicholas could leap up to open it for her she had pushed into the room with some clever manoeuvring of hand and foot like a business-like parlourmaid.
The Beatific Vision does not appear to me to be an adequate compensation for what we miss,’ Greggie said conclusively, getting in a private thrust at Collie’s religiosity.
While coffee was being served and the girls began to fill the room, Jane entered, fresh from her telephone conversation with Tilly, and, feeling somewhat absolved by it, she handed over to Nicholas her brain-work letter from Charles Morgan. While reading it, he was handed a cup of coffee. In the process of taking the cup he splashed some coffee on the letter.
‘Oh, you’ve ruined it!‘ Jane said. ‘I’ll have to do it all over again.’
‘It looks more authentic than ever,’ Nicholas said. ‘Naturally, if I’ve received a letter from Charles Morgan telling me I’m a genius, I am going to spend a lot of time reading it over and over, in the course of which the letter must begin to look a bit worn. Now, are you sure George will be impressed by Morgan’s name?’
‘Very,’ said Jane.
‘Do you mean you’re very sure or that George will be very impressed?’
‘I mean both.’
‘It would put me off, if I were George.’
The recital of The Wreck of the Deutschland started presently. Joanna stood with her book ready.
‘Not a hush from anybody,’ said the warden, meaning, ‘Not a sound.’ — ‘Not a hush,’ she said, ‘because this instrument of Mr Farringdon’s apparently registers the drop of a pin.’
One of the dormitory girls, who sat mending a ladder in a stocking, carefully caused her needle to fall on the parquet floor, then bent and picked it up again. Another dormitory girl who had noticed the action snorted a suppressed laugh. Otherwise there was silence but for the quiet purr of the machine waiting for Joanna.
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand. sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade… .
8
A scream of panic from the top floor penetrated the house as Jane returned to the club on Friday afternoon, the 27th of July. She had left the office early to meet Tilly at the club. She did not feel that the scream of panic meant anything special. Jane climbed the last flight of stairs. There was another more piercing scream, accompanied by excited voices. Screams of panic in the club might relate to a laddered stocking or a side-splitting joke.
When she reached the top landing, she saw that the commotion came from the wash-room. There, Anne and Selina, with two of the dormitory girls, were attempting to extricate from the little slit window another girl who had evidently been attempting to climb out and had got stuck. She was struggling and kicking without success, exhorted by various instructions from the other girls. Against their earnest advice, she screamed aloud from time to time. She had taken off her clothes for the attempt and her body was covered with a greasy substance; Jane immediately hoped it had not been taken from her own supply of cold cream which stood in a jar on her dressing-table.
‘Who is it?’ Jane said, with a close inspective look at the girl’s unidentifiable kicking legs and wriggling bottom which were her only visible portions.
Selina brought a towel which she attempted to fasten round the girl’s waist with a safety-pin. Anne kept imploring the girl not to scream, and one of the others went to the top of the stairs to look over the banister in the hope that nobody in authority was being unduly attracted upward.
‘Who is it?’ Jane said.
Anne said, ‘I’m afraid it’s Tilly.’
‘Tilly!’
‘She was waiting downstairs and we brought her up here for a lark. She said it was like being back at school, here at the club, so Selina showed her the window. She’s just half an inch too large, though. Can’t you get her to shut up?’
Jane spoke softly to Tilly. ‘Every time you scream,’ she said, ‘it makes you swell up more. Keep quiet, and we’ll work you out with wet soap.’
Tilly went quiet. They worked on her for ten minutes, but she remained stuck by the hips. Tilly was weeping. ‘Get George,’ she said at last, ‘get him on the phone.’
Nobody ‘wanted to fetch George. He would have to come upstairs. Doctors were the only males who climbed the stairs, and even then they were accompanied by one of the staff.
Jane said, ‘Well, I’ll get somebody.’ She was thinking of Nicholas. He had access to the roof from the Intelligence Headquarters; a hefty push from the roof-side of the window might be successful in releasing Tilly. Nicholas had intended to come to the club after supper to hear the lecture and observe, in a jealous complex of curiosity, the wife of Selina’s former lover. Felix himself was to be present.
Jane decided to telephone and beg Nicholas to come immediately and help with Tilly. He could then have supper at the club, his second supper, Jane reflected, that week. He might now be home from work, he usually returned to his room at about six o’clock.
‘What’s the time?’ said Jane.
Tilly was weeping, with a sound that threatened a further outburst of screams.
‘Just on six,’ said Anne.
Selina looked at her watch to see if this was so, then walked towards her room.
‘Don’t leave her, I’m getting help,’ Jane said. Selina opened the door of her room, but Anne stood gripping Tilly’s ankles. As Jane reached the next landing she heard Selina’s voice.
‘Poise is perfect balance, an equanimity …’
Jane laughed foolishly to herself and descended to the telephone boxes as the clock in the hall struck six o’clock.