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'Did my wife tell you that?'

'No. Radeechy's papers told us. As you know, the penalties for blackmail are very severe indeed.'

'It wasn't blackmail,' said McGrath. He leaned back against the door.

'Well, let us say that Radeechy rewarded you for keeping your mouth shut. Frankly, McGrath, I'm not interested in you, and if you will now tell me the whole truth I'll do my best to get you off. If not, the law will take its course with you.'

'I don't understand,' said McGrath. 'I haven't done anything wrong.'

'Come, come. We know you extorted money from Radeechy. I suppose it hasn't occurred to you to wonder whether you were partly responsible for his death? T The?' McGrath came forward and gripped the back of the sofa. He had started to think now and had plumped his face out with a look of upset and peevish self-righteousness. 'He never minded me. He never worried about me. I liked him. We were friends.'

'I'm afraid I don't believe you,' said Ducane. 'But what I want to know now '

'It wasn't blackmail,' said McGrath, 'and you couldn't prove it was. Mr Radeechy gave me money for what I did. I didn't worry him at all, it couldn't have been because of me, you just ask Mr Biranne, he'll tell you what it was like up there at Mr Radeechy's place. I never threatened Mr Radeechy with anything, you couldn't prove it was blackmail, I mean it wasn't blackmail, the old gentleman just liked me, he liked me and he paid me generous like, that's all it was.'

Ducane stepped back. His mind twisted and darted to catch the thing which had been thrown at it so unexpectedly. He controlled his face. He said coolly, 'Mr Biranne. Yes, of course. He was there quite a lot, wasn't he.'

'I'll say he was,' said McGrath, 'and he'll tell you what it was like between me and the old fellow. Me a blackmailer! Why I wouldn't hurt a fly! I was '

McGrath went on protesting.

Ducane thought, so Biranne was lying about his relations with Radeechy. Why? Why? Why?

Fourteen

The three women were walking slowly along the edge of the sea. The smooth sea was a light luminous uniform colour of blue, scattered over with twinkling, shifting gems of brightness, and divided by a thin dark blue line from the more pallid empty blue sky, into which on such a day it seemed that one could look infinitely far. There had been a few natives on the beach that morning, but now they had gone away in the dead time of the early afternoon. On the curve of the open green hillside just inland, like a figure in the background of a painting by Uccello, Barbara could be seen riding her new pony.

Outlined against the pale blue light, the figures of the women seemed monumental in the empty scene. They walked slowly and lazily in single file, Paula first, dressed in a plain shift of yellow cotton, Mary next in a white dress covered with small blue daisies, and Kate last, in a purplish reddish dress of South Sea island flowers. Kate, wearing her canvas shoes, was walking along with her feet in the sea. At low tide there was a little sand at the sea's edge and she was walking upon the sand.

The other two walked higher up, upon the crest of mauve and white pebbles.

Paula was twisting her wedding ring round and round upon her thin finger. She had often felt inclined to throw the ring into the sea, and been prevented by some almost superstitious scruple. She was thinking now, what on earth shall I do? She had just received a postcard from Eric posted in Singapore.

Something about the slow progress across the globe of her exlover appalled and paralysed her. Her first reaction had been one of sheer terror. Yet it was possible that she had a genuine duty here; and in the light of that word 'duty' she had found herself able once more to reflect. Perhaps Eric's mind, wounded and crippled by her fault, could only be healed by her ministration? She need not after all now marry Eric, or become again his mistress, as it had seemed to her in the first shock, and for no very clear reason, that she must. All that was necessary was that she should resolutely confront him, talk to him with reason and kindness, talk if necessary on and on and on. He had gone away too quickly and she had been so cravenly glad of this. She had never understood that situation, she had never really contemplated it, she had shuffled it off. Perhaps if she tried now to understand it and to help Eric to understand it she would do them both some good of which at present she had not even the conception. It was simply that the idea of confronting Eric was an idea of such pure and awful pain that she could not in any way manipulate it in her thought.

I never understood what happened, Paula thought. Everything was so dreadful that I stopped thinking. I never tried to see what it was like for Richard either. If I had I might have tried to stop him from going away. But I hated myself and the muddle of it all so much, I let Richard go just because I wanted to be left alone. I ought to have fought Richard then with my intelligence. Yet it all seemed inevitable and perhaps it was. Is it fruitless to think about the past and build up coherent pictures of how one's life went wrong? I have never believed in remorse and repentance. But one must do something about the past. It doesn't just cease to be. It goes on existing and affecting the present, and in new and different ways, as if in some other dimension it too were growing.

She looked away over the sinister silent blue surface of the Eric-bearing sea. If I could think clearly now, she wondered, about what I did then could I do us all some good? Then she reflected that this 'us all' seemed to include Richard; yet there was nothing further in the rest of time that she could do for Richard except leave him utterly alone. It was Eric, not Richard, whom she might have now the power to help, and she must save her wits from crazy fear by thinking on the problem of how to do it. I must think it all out beforehand, she thought, and I must be in control. Eric could make me do things, that was what was so dreadful. Of course Paula had revealed her trouble to no one. She preserved it in her private heart like the awful bloody arcana of a mystical religion.

Mary was thinking, suppose I were to marry Willy and take him right away? The idea was vague, wonderful, with its sudden suggestion of purpose, of space, of change. It was a surprise idea. And yet why not? Ducane had been right when he said that she had settled down to feeling inferior to Willy. She had allowed Willy to cast a bad sleepy spell upon both of them.

What she needed now was will, some freshness out of her own soul to break that spell. I've never had gaiety of my own, thought Mary. Alistair was gay, the gaiety of our marriage was all his. I am naturally an anxious person, she thought, stupidly, wickedly anxious. Even now, as I walk along beside this blue sea covered with sugary light I see it all through a veil of anxiety. My world is a brown world, a dim spotty soupy world like an old photograph. Can I change all this for Willy's sake? There is a grace of the gods which sends goodness. Perhaps there is a grace of the gods which sends joy. Perhaps, indeed they are the same thing and another name for this thingY is hope. If I could only believe a little more in happiness I could control Willy, I could save Willy.

In fact John Ducane's 'You have power' had already made a difference to her relations with Willy. She could not yet imagine herself proposing marriage to him, though she had tried to picture this scene. Yet, between them, things were changing.

I think I was too obsessed with the idea that he should talk to me about the past, she thought, about what it was like there. I felt that this was a barrier between us. But I know now that I can leap over the barrier, I can come close to Willy and hustle him just by a sort of animal cheerfulness, just by a sort of very simple love. It isn't my business to knit up Willy's past, to integrate it into a present I can share with him. It may be impossible to do this anyway. I must be loving to him in a free unanxious sort of way, even ready to make use of him to procure my own happiness! I already feel much more independent with him. Mary had felt this greater independence as a sense of almost bouncy physical well-being as she moved, differently now, about Willy's room. And she had seen Willy being positively his dear tace she laughed the best laugh she had laughed tor a long time.

Kate was thinking how wonderfully cool the water goes on feeling upon my ankles, a marvellous feeling of something cool caressing something warm, like those puddings where there's a hot cake hidden inside a mound of ice cream. And what an intense heavenly blue the sea is, not a dark blue at all, but like a cauldron of light. How wonderful colour is, how I should like to swim in the colour of that sea, and go down and down a revolving blue shaft into a vortex of pure brightness where there isn't even colour any more but just bliss. How wonderful everything is and Octavian isn't the least bit hurt about John, I know he isn't, not the least little bit, it doesn't worry him at all. Octavian is happy and I'm going to make John happy. He's still worried about Octavian but he'll soon see that all is well, that all is perfectly well, and then he'll settle down to be happy too. How wonderful love is, the most wonderful thing in the whole world. And how lucky I am to be able to love without muddle, without fear, in absolute freedom. Of course Octavian is great. He has such a divine temperament. And then, if it comes to that, so have I. We were both breast-fed babies with happy childhoods. It does make a difference. I think being good is just a matter of temperament in the end. Yes, we shall all be so happy and good too. Oh, how utterly marvellous it is to be me!

Fifteen

'Oh it's you, is it,' said Willy Kost. 'Long time no see.'

Theo came into the cottage slowly, not looking at his host, and closed the door, by leaning his shoulder against it. He moved along the room, setting the bottle of whisky down on the window ledge. He went into Willy's kitchen and fetched two glasses and a jug of water. He poured some whisky and some water into each glass and offered one glass to Willy, who was sitting at the table.

'What's the music?' said Theo.'Slow movement of the twelfth quartet, opus 127.''I can't bear it.'Willy switched the gramophone off.'A consciousness in agony represented in slow motion.''Yes,' said Willy.Theo leaned against the long window, looking out. 'Wonderful binoculars these. Did Barbara give them to you?''Yes.''I can see our Three Graces walking along by the edge of the sea. Each one more beautiful than the last.''Oh.''You know why I haven't been for so long?''Why?''I think I'm bad for you.'Willy was drinking the whisky. 'You know that's not so, Theo.''It is. You need brisk ordinary people. You and I always talk metaphysics. But all metaphysics is devilish, devilish.''There is no good metaphysics?''No. Nothing about that can be said.''Sad for the human race, since we are such natural prattlers.''Yes. We are natural prattlers. And that deepens, prolongs, spreads and intensifies our evil.''Come, come,' said Willy. 'Very few people know of these devilish theories you speak of.''They have their influence. They pervade, they pervade. They produce illusions of knowledge. Even what we are most certain of we know only in an illusory form.''Such as what?»'Such as that all is vanity. All is vanity, Willy, and man walks in a vain shadow. You and I are the only people here who know this, which is why we are bad for each other. We have to chatter about it. You and I are the only people here who know, but we also know that we do not know. Our hearts are too corrupt to know such a thing as truth, we know it only as illusion.''Is there no way out? ff 'There are a million ways out on this side, back into the fantasy of ordinary life. Muffins for tea is a way out. Propertius is a way out. But these are just boltholes. One ought to be able to get… through… to the other side.''You may be right about Propertius,' said Willy, 'but I would like to say a good word for muffins for tea.''Mary.''No, no, not Mary. Mary is something else. Just muffins for tea.''There are muffins and muffins,' Theo conceded. 'But let us take Propertius now. What is the point of all this activity of yours, what are you really after? Senseless agitation, senseless agitation, the filling of a void which for your eternal salvation had much better be left unfilled. Is your edition of Propertius going to be a great work of scholarship?''No.''Is it necessary to the human race?''No.''It's not great, it's not even necessary. It's mediocre, it's a time-filler. Why do you do it?'Willy reflected for a moment. He said, 'It expresses my love for Propertius and my love for Latin. Love needs to be exT-NATG-Epressed, it needs to do work. This may be something which cannot be stated in your devilish metaphysics without being somehow falsified, but it is… an indubitable good. And if there is an indubitable good within one's reach one stretches out one's hand.''Permit me to correct your description, my dear Willy. The object of love here is yourself, this is the value which you attempt with Latin and with Propertius to exalt and to defend.''That is possible,' said Willy. 'But I don't see why one should necessarily know. You are a great one for not knowing things.Let's not know that, shall we?'Theo had left the window and was standing by the table leaning down upon his knuckles and regarding his host. The front of his jacket was hanging open revealing a crumpled shirt, stained brown braces and a dirty woollen vest. From this inwardness of Theo a mingled smell of sweat and dog was beamed across the pile of open books and dictionaries.Willy shifted, rubbing a thin ankle with a small delicate hand.'And after Propertius, what? T 'Another time-filler, I suppose.''Did they tell you about that chap who committed suicide?''No,' said Willy, surprised. 'Who?''Oh, no one we know, as Kate would say. Just some meaningless fellow in my dear brother's office. They're all agog. It's the jolliest thing that's happened since Octavian's CBE. They're keeping it from you, you know why! You're becoming a sort of sacred object to the people down there.'