John Ducane looked into the eyes of Jessica Bird. Jessica's eyes slowly filled with tears. Ducane looked away, sideways, downward.
He had not left her then, when he ought to have done, when the parting would have been an agony to him. He was leaving her now when it was less than agony, when it was almost relief. He ought to have left her then. The fact remained that he ought to leave her now. He needed this thought to strengthen him against her tears.
He looked up again, past her blurred suffering head. His imagination, already alienated from her room, perceived its weirdness, Jessica's room was naval in its austerity. No homely litter of books or papers proclaimed its inhabitant and the pattern of clean hard colours and shapes was not merged into any human mess or fuzz. If furniture is handy manadjusted objects for sitting, lying, writing, putting, the room contained no furniture, only surfaces. Even the chair on which Ducane was sitting, the only chair, was just a sloping surface bearing no friendly curved relation to the human form. Even the bed wherein he had once been used to wrangle with Jessica looked like a board, its rumpled shame ironed smooth. Formica shelves, impersonal as coffee bar table tops, supported the entities, neither ornaments nor works of art, which Jessica made or found. She wandered the rubbish tips at night, bringing back bricks, tiles, pieces of wood, tangles of wire. Sometimes she made these things into other things. Sometimes they were allowed to remain themselves. Most of the entities however were made of newspaper by a method perfected in Jessica's bathroom at a cost of regularly blocked drains. A halfdigested mush wherein newsprint was still partly visible was solidified to form neat feather-weight mathematical objects with pierced coloured interiors. These objects, standing inscrut ably in rows, often seemed to Ducane to belong to a series the principle of which he had not grasped. They were not intended for contemplation and were soon destroyed.
Jessica taught painting and English at a primary school. She was twenty-eight and looked eighteen. Ducane, round-blueeyed, hook nosed, patchily grey, was forty-three and looked forty-three. They had met at a party. Falling in love surprised them both. Jessica, pale, thin, mini-skirted, with long brownish gold hair tangling over her shoulders or pony-tailed with in-twisted ribbons, presented to Ducane an almost unintelligible thing and certainly not his kind of thing. She seemed to him vastly talented and almost totally non-intellectual, an amalgam he had never encountered before. She belonged to a race of the young whose foreignness he felt and had never dreamt of penetrating. They had made each other puzzled and happy for a while. Ducane made her presents of books she did not read, jewellery she could not wear, and small expensive objets d'art which, placed among her tribal trinkets, took on a truly surrealist air of estrangement. He tried vainly to persuade her to work in permanent materials. She saw him as corrupted, fascinating, infinitely old.
Though Ducane did not fully realize it, his nervous uncertain sensuality needed some sophisticated intellectual encouragement, a certain kind of play, which Jessica was unable to provide. His profound puritanism could not in any case brook a long affair. He had not the temperament to be anybody's lover. He knew this. His adventures had been infrequent and fairly short. He felt a rational guilt too at keeping this young attractive girl for himself when he did not intend to marry her. Ducane, who liked his life to be simple, did not care for concealments and feelings of guilt. In time, the excitements of discovery diminished, he began to find her curious aesthetic more exasperating than charming, and was able to see her less as a rare and exotic animal and more as an eccentric English girl, not after all so young, and well on the way to becoming nothing more mysterious than an eccentric English middle-aged woman. He had then, ashamed of himself for not having had it earlier, the strength to end an affair which he months ago, that he ought to have sett her. tie auowea her tears to move him then and agreed that though no longer lovers they should remain friends, meeting almost as often as before. He was the readier to agree since he was still half in love with her.
There was perhaps in his passion more cunning than he knew, since when he had released himself from his primary guilt he found her freshly charming, contemplated and touched her with an unmarred delight, and half persuaded himself that he had acquired a child, a friend. He became gradually and sadly aware that she did not share his newfound liberty. He had not set her free. She was still in love with him and indeed still behaved as if she were his mistress. Her time consisted of seeing him, waiting, and seeing him again, of presence, absence, presence. She watched him anxiously, muting her love, instinctively afraid of making him feel trapped or guilty. She touched him very carefully with superficial lingering touches as if to extract some essence, some strong salve, to keep her through those empty absence times. The world still came to her only through him. He became aware of a wrought-up intensity of suffering which she could not forbear occasionally to let him glimpse. He began to dread his visits to her for fear of these death's head glimpses. They both became frightened, irritable, quarrelsome. Ducane at last decided that there was only one remedy, the brutal one of a complete parting. He had thought this into clarity. But since he had been talking to her, trying to explain, they were back again in the familiar muddled atmosphere of pity and passion.
'What have I done?»'You haven't done anything.''Then why can't things go on, why do you suddenly say this now?''I've been thinking. It's a totally wrong situation.''There's nothing wrong. I just love you.''That's the trouble.''There's little enough love in the world. Why do you want to kill mine?''It's not so simple, Jessica. I can't just accept your love.''I don't see why not.''It isn't fair to you. I can't keep you cornered? T 'Suppose I want to be cornered.''What you want isn't the point. Be tough enough to see that.''You think you're acting in my best interests?''I know I am.''You've got tired of me, why not say so? T 'Jessica, you know that I love you. I just can't go on making you suffer like this.''I'll suffer less in time. Why should one live without suffering anyway?''It's bad for us both. I must take some responsibility – ''Damn your responsibility. There's someone else. You've taken a new mistress.''I haven't taken a new mistress.''You promised faithfully that you'd tell me if you ever did.''I keep my promises. I haven't.''Then why can't things go on as before? I don't ask much of you.''That's just it!''Anyway, John, I'm just not going to let you go away. I honestly… don't… think… I could stand it.''Oh God,' said Ducane.'You're killing me,' she said, 'for something that's just –abstract.''Oh God,' he said, and got up, turning his back on her. He was afraid that the girl, who was kneeling on the floor in front of him, would throw herself forward and clasp his knees. The violence of his words, of her surprise, had kept them till now facing each other rigidly.Ducane said to himself, human frailty, wickedness in me, has made this situation where I automatically have to behave like a brute. She is right to say why kill love, there is never enough. Yet I have to kill this love. Oh God, why is it so like a murder. If I could only take all the suffering on to myself.But that is one of the punishments of wickedness, perhaps the last and worst one, that even if one wills it one cannot do it.She said behind him, her voice breaking, 'Well, I think there must be some special reason. Something's happened to you – 'The trouble was that this was true, and Ducane was weakened by a sense of the impurity of his motives. He knew the act was right, and perhaps he could have done it as a naked simple act, but the shadows of his own interests confused him.He wanted to set Jessica free, but he wanted even more to be free himself. For what had happened to John Ducane was Kate Gray.Ducane had known Kate for a long time; only lately with that easy shifting of consciousness in relation to the utterly familiar which is one of the privileges of growing older, he had found himself somewhat in love with her and had apprehended her as somewhat in love with him. The discovery brought him no dismay.Kate was very married. He was certain that there was no thought in her lovely head which she did not impart in their long nightly conversations, to her husband. He had no doubt that the married pair had discussed him. He would not have been mocked, but he might have been laughed at. He could hear Kate saying, 'John's a bit sweet on me, you know!' Whatever had so beautifully happened was something to which Octavian was privy. There was, in the situation, no danger.There was no question of a love affair. Ducane could tell Jessica truthfully that he had no mistress and no prospect of one. In fact, following some cautious instinct, Ducane had never mentioned Kate to Jessica, nor Jessica to Kate. He knew that Kate, in her new awareness of him, took him to be fancy free, and that this was an important belief. The irony of it was that he was fancy free. Only now that his feelings for Kate had become more urgent he felt the imperative need to rid himself of this last vestige of an entanglement.What John envisaged with Kate, and envisaged fairly clearly, was something which was new in his life, and in his vision of it there was a kind of resignation, an acceptance of himself as no longer young and no longer likely to marry. He needed a resting point, he needed a home, he needed, even, a family. He knew, without her having said it, that Kate understood this perfectly. She had told him, he had told her, in half passionate, often wholly passionate kisses which they now exchanged quite easily and spontaneously, smiling into each other's eyes, whenever they happened to be alone together. He knew that for Kate there was nothing but joy in the prospect of so caging him. For himself, the relationship would at times be painful, and had already been so. But he could embrace these exact, these detailed pains; and even the pain could be an element in something that was wholly good. Kate's generosity, her happiness, even her love for her husband, perhaps specially her love for her husband, could make a house for John. He liked and respected Octavian, he was fond of all the children and especially of Barbara. He needed to be committed and attached at last and to be able to love in innocence, and he felt certain now that he could commit himself to Kate, and through her to her family and to her whole household. But to do this with a free and truthful heart he would have to end, and end completely, this muddled compromise with Jessica which should never have come into being at all. Kate had never questioned him.When she did he would have to be able to tell the truth. This was the personal urgency which made him feel, as he heard Jessica sobbing behind him, so like a murderer.Ducane got into his car. He sat in the front of the car next to his chauffeur. He felt exhausted and frantic and unclean.He had given way, he had taken her in his arms, he had promised to see her next week. All was to do again.To gain some immediate relief of his feelings he said to the chauffeur, 'It's awful – I mean an awful day – everything has gone wrong.'Ducane's chauffeur, a Scotsman called Gavin Fivey, slewed his brown eyes round for a moment in the direction of his employer. He said nothing. But something to do with the way in which he now gripped the wheel conveyed sympathy, like a firm pressure of the hand.Ducane's father had been a Glasgow solicitor, but his grandfather had been a successful distiller, and Ducane had money. servant. He was aware of the jokes and rumours at his expense which this peculiarity occasioned. But Ducane, who suffered from a physical maladroitness which he connected with his being left-handed, had never learnt to drive, and saw no reason why he should not treat himself to a chauffeur. He had in fact been indifferently served by a number of men who had not lived in his house. Fivey, fairly new on the job, was his first experiment with a servant who lived in.Ducane had been influenced in Fivey's favour by two things, the man's appearance and the fact, discreetly revealed with no further details by the employment agency, that he was a jailbird.Their common Scottishness was a bond too. Fivey had even been to the same primary school in Glasgow that had nurtured Ducane. This revelation, together with the dissimilarity of their subsequent careers, rather charmed Ducane.He had hoped to hear something of Fivey's adventures as a criminal, but so far he had learnt little about his servant's past except for the fact that Fivey's mother, as he announced unexpectedly one day, 'was a mermaid'. 'A mermaid in a circus, you understand,' Fivey had added in his slow Scottish voice.Ducane did not ask whether she was a real mermaid or a fake one. He preferred not to know.Fivey was very unusual to look at. He had an extremely large shaggy– head which made him look like a figure in a carnival, or as Ducane sometimes thought, like Bottom under the enchantment.It was never clear to Ducane whether this feature made Fivey look monstrous or beautiful. His copious hair and long drooping moustaches were reddish brown. His complexion was of a brownish apricot hue and covered with abnormally large freckles so that his broad spotted face suggested that of an animal, a spaniel perhaps. His wide-apart eyes, of a rich clear brown, were slightly slanted and if Ducane had not known him to be Scottish he would have taken him for some kind of Slav. Fivey was still new enough to be, for Ducane who would not have dreamt of discussing his servant with anyone else, an object of private speculation and something of a hobby.Fivey was meticulously neat in the house and could cook two or three dishes. He was taciturn and apparently friendless and seemed to spend his time off in his room reading women's magazines. He irritated Ducane by eating peppermint creams in the car and by singing Jacobite songs, rather drearily, as he went about his household tasks. Ducane thought it possible that Fivey did not realize that he was singing aloud. So far he had not had the heart to reprimand him. He hoped, at least, that the fellow was reasonably contented.Ducane's parents were dead and his only close relation was a married sister who lived in Oban and whom he scarcely saw.Ducane had read history and subsequently law at Balliol, had proceeded to All Souls and had been called to the bar. He had practised briefly as a barrister but he was not enough of an actor to enjoy life in the Courts. He disliked legal wit in serious situations and shunned an exercise of power which he conceived to be bad for his character. In the war he was early posted to Intelligence and, to his regret, spent the war years in Whitehall.He became a civil servant and was at present the legal adviser to the Government department of which Octavian was head. He had maintained his academic interests and was a noted expert on Roman law, a subject on which he lectured intermittently at a London college. He was a busy successful man and aware of himself as a respected figure. People tended to admire him and find him mysterious. Ducane saw his career with a cool eye. He had retained, and now deliberately fostered, the consciousness, as well as the conscience, of a Scottish puritan.He had no religious beliefs. He simple wanted to lead a clean simple life and to be a good man, and this remained to him as a real, and also feasible, ambition.As the Bentley now turned into Whitehall Ducane, thinking miserably about Jessica, felt, not for the first time, a distinct impulse to lay his hand upon Fivey's shoulder. He noticed that he had already stretched his arm along the seat behind his chauffeur's back. The contact, suddenly so vivid to his imagination, would have brought with it some profound and healing comfort. Ducane smiled to himself sadly. Here was yet another of the paradoxes of life. He withdrew his arm from its dangerous position.'Hello, Octavian. You left a note that you wanted to see me.'Ducane put his head round Octavian's door. It was Saturday morning, the day after Radeechy's suicide.'Come in, John, come in. You find us in the soup.'Already seated in Octavian's room were Richard Biranne and George Droysen, formerly a journalist and now a young Principal in the department.Ducane came in and sat down and looked inquiringly at Octavian.'Look,' said Octavian, 'you aren't going to be pleased. Well –shall I start to tell him, Droysen, or will you?''You tell him,' said Droysen.'It's this matter of bloody Radeechy,' said Octavian.Ducane had heard yesterday about Radeechy's death. He had met Radeechy occasionally in the office, but had little acquaintance with him.'Yes?''Well, it's the press as usual. First the press and then the PM. It would happen on a Saturday. Anyway, to tell the tale as briefly as posible, Droysen was around last night in his old haunts in Fleet Street, and it seems that the press have got hold of some sort of story about Radeechy.''What sort of story?''This is what we haven't found out yet, but it sounds like the usual sort of story, at least it's got the two familiar elements, women and money.''You mean blackmail?''Well, it sounds like it. It features a girl who's known as Helen of Troy. I think we can guess her profession. And there's something about «a large sum of money changed hands».That's the phrase, isn't it, Droysen? «A large sum of money changed hands».''Whose hands?' said Ducane.'Don't know.''But they haven't published this stuff?''No, no, it's far too hot. As far as Droysen could gather one of the larger nastier dailies has bought it. A pretty large sum of money probably changed hands there! And now they're sitting on it to see what happens next, and meanwhile every sort of rumour is going about.''You don't know who provided the story?''No, but it's said to have been someone inside the office. Not nice!''Radeechy didn't have access to any secret material, did he?''Well, not officially. But that isn't going to impress anybody.''Have Security been on to you?''Not yet. I telephoned to tell them of course, since they're so mad keen to know every little thing, and they just grunted, but the PM's been on to me.''He'd heard about the story and the rumours? T 'Well, he'd heard something, and I told him the rest and he was not pleased.''It's a bit early to get upset,' said Ducane. 'We don't even know what this story is.''No, but you know as well as I do that politicians aren't concerned with justice being done, they're concerned with justice seeming to be done as a result of their keen-eyed vigilance. Apparently he's already being pressed to have an official inquiry.''Which kind? T 'That hasn't emerged yet, but the point is, this is where you come in.''Me?''Yes. You'd be surprised how well thought of you are amongst our leaders. The wants you to conduct an inquiry,: 'What status would I have?' said Ducane.'Well, thank God you're taking it so coolly, I thought you'd explode! Strictly speaking you wouldn't have any status, that is the inquiry would be a purely departmental one. I would instruct you to inquire and you would inquire. The rest would have to be played by ear.''I see. I suppose quick action is the point.''Precisely. The PM doesn't want this thing to snowball. If we can clear it all up quickly, establish what went on if anything, and demonstrate that there's no Security interest, we can avoid an official inquiry which the PM doesn't want any more than we do.''It's one of those things which it's not easy to demonstrate,' said Ducane. 'If Radeechy had a fishy private life, and if the press keep dropping hints, people will believe anything. It's become a sort of cliche. However, I'll certainly have a go. It doesn't look as if I've got much choice anyway! I suppose there isn't the faintest chance that poor Radeechy was being blackmailed into handing over secret stuff? V 'Not the faintest,' said Octavian. 'You'd agree, wouldn't you, you two?»'One never knows about anyone,' said Biranne, 'but I shouldn't have thought it of Radeechy.''I agree,' said George Droysen. 'And I knew him reasonably well as far as meeting in the office goes.''That doesn't go very far,' said Ducane. 'However it appears he was being blackmailed?''So the tale runs.''And he did shoot himself. Why did he shoot himself?''And in the office too,' said Octavian. 'That does strike me as somehow odd and significant. Why couldn't he shoot himself decently at home?''He was terribly depressed about his wife's death,' said George Droysen. 'You remember she got killed last year, fell out of a window or something. He was quite shattered.''Well, that's a possible motive,' said Ducane. 'He didn't leave a note, did he?''No,' said Octavian. 'That's a bit odd too. He was such a one for writing minutes about every damn thing. You'd think he'd have left us a minute about his own death!''If we could discover exactly why he did it, that should settle the Security point. It looks as if we shall have to find out a lot about Radeechy. Did you know him well Biranne?''Scarcely knew him at all,' said Biranne. 'We just met in the office, and not much even there. No, I didn't know him.''I never saw much of him myself,' said Ducane, 'but I confess I'm surprised about this Helen of Troy story. I shouldn't have thought Radeechy was that sort of chap.''Any man is that sort of chap,' said Biranne, and giggled.Ducane ignored him. 'He seemed to me much more the cranky scientist type. The last conversation I had with him was about poltergeists. He had some theory about their being connected with the water table.''He communed with spirits,' said George Droysen.'After all,' said Octavian, 'spiritualism and magic and all that are connected with sex, always have been. Sex comes to most of us with a twist. Maybe that was just his twist.'Ducane was not sure whether sex came to most of us with a twist. He could not help wondering whether it came to Octavian with one. 'Has he any close family?' he asked.'Apparently there's no one except a sister who's been living in Canada for years.''I'd better see the police,' said Ducane, 'and look over whatever they've got, though I imagine that won't amount to much.Would you see that I'm OK'd with Scotland Yard, Octavian?And perhaps you'd get back to Fleet Street, Droysen, and track down that story for us, and also find out who gave it to the press.''Back to the old pubs!' said Droysen. 'It's a pleasure.''You'd better write me an official letter, Octavian.''I've already drafted one.''Well, put into it, would you, that I can use my own discretion about not revealing anything which I think is not germane to the purpose of the inquiry.''I suppose that's all right?' said Octavian dubiously.'Of course it is. After all, we aren't investigating poor Radeechy's morals. What was his first name, by the way?''Joseph,' said Biranne.'Are you going to Dorset, Octavian?''Certainly! What's more, you are too. There's no point in starting in until young Droysen has done his detective work.''All right. Ring me as soon as you get anything.' He gave Droysen the Trescombe telephone number. 'Well, that's all, friends.'Ducane stood up. Droysen stood up too. Biranne remained seated, looking at Octavian with a deferential air.Ducane cursed his own bad manners. He had become so used to being, in his friendship with Octavian, the acknowledged superior that he had for a moment forgotten that this was Octavian's room, Octavian's meeting, and not his. But his chief feeling at that instant was hostility to Biranne. Once, many years ago, across a partition in a restaurant, Ducane had overheard Biranne talking about him, Biranne was speculating about whether Ducane was homosexual. Cursing himself too for the persistence of this memory, Ducane recalled the particular quality of Biranne's mocking laughter.