‘I’m not a ghost.’
‘You are for me. You had not yet come - but I always knew that if you ever did come you would pass me in a sort of atomic flash.’
‘I am not passing you. I refuse to. Perhaps there was a flash. But isn’t that good? Just be still and look round quietly and you will see you are in a new country.’
‘Yes. It is a country in which we can never be together.’
‘Why can’t we be?’
‘What we have done by this talking is to make it impossibly dangerous to go on - anywhere.’
‘Why do you want to define everything? Philosophers define things. But don’t they sometimes give up definitions?’
‘Don’t argue with me.’
‘I am fighting for my life.’
‘Don’t lie, Hattie, don’t exaggerate.’
‘I’m sorry, I just feel like that, I’ve found you, we can communicate, we understand each other, we’re so close, I mustn’t lose you, I mustn’t - oh it’s so awful - look, I can’t bear this sort of light, please pull back the curtains and put the lamp out.’
He rose and did so.
‘See, John Robert, dear, the sun has risen, it’s shining, the sky is blue, the blackbird is singing, we must try to be happy, why can’t we, since we’re both so intelligent! There, do smile at me.’
‘Oh, Hattie, Hattie — ’ He pulled violently at his short crinkly grey hair as if he wanted to drag it down to cover his eyes. He sat down heavily in the armchair. Hattie was sitting upright beside the table which still bore the remnants of a meal they had tried to eat many hours ago.
‘Hattie, don’t tempt me, you’re like a demon, a devil, the way you go on.’
‘How can you say that? Oh you upset me so! You’re so determined to see it all in that horrible way, you destroy everything, every possibility, out of spite, I think you enjoy hurting me - oh why did you tell me, it’s all your fault!’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’
‘You say we can’t be friends, then let us choose to be something else. You love me. I love you. So why can’t we just be together like that?’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Not like - I mean just like loving people are.’
‘That could only be if the past were different, and I’ve told you we can’t remake the past - it would be a fake, an abomination, we are absolutely and utterly not as we would have been if …’
‘I don’t mean that, I mean just being together and loving each other, there is a way to be together.’
‘There isn’t and you know there isn’t, don’t lie to me, Hattie.’
‘A way to be together, caring for each other, telling each other everything, talking.’
‘You mean like ex-lovers?’
‘Don’t speak in that horrible hard way. I don’t mean like anything except just us.’
‘Angels could do it. Humans not. Our minds lack that degree of particularity. Anyway you don’t love me. Oh you think you do now, but that’s just excitement, because of this unspeakably wicked argument for which I am entirely responsible, because of what you call the drama, and because you’re flattered!’
‘Flattered!’
‘Young girls are flattered by attentions from older men, especially if the older men are famous.’
‘Don’t you lie, that’s a sort of false lying vile speech!’
‘Yes. All right. But I’m probably the first man who has - made advances - and if I’m not - don’t tell me - oh God.’
‘How can you use such language to me!’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean - it’s just - I’m so unhappy.’
‘Oh how can I show you what it’s really like! If you had been my teacher I would have loved you.’
‘If I had been your teacher everything would have been entirely different.’
‘Well, can’t you be my teacher now, somehow —?’
‘No.’
‘Why can’t we make our home together, like you said, you actually talked about it, have you forgotten, about going to California and buying a house for us near the ocean, you said I’d like that, you said you’d keep me with you very much more.’
‘I was mad, I knew it couldn’t be, it couldn’t ever be.’
‘Well, you said it, anyway.’
‘Yes, but that was before I - broke the barrier, leapt the gap - we can’t go back to that.’
‘Why not? Why can’t you try? You’re a free man, not a helpless victim.’
‘I am a helpless victim - I’m pinned down and screaming - can’t you understand, can’t you feel the difference between us now? You’re talking, you’re thinking, you’re being clever, you’re trying this and trying that to make me stop upsetting you. But I’m in a different world, I’m in pain, I’m in the presence of death.’
‘Death.’
‘I don’t mean I’m ill or going to kill myself or anything, it’s just death-pain, parting-pain, bereavement.’
‘No, no, no, it doesn’t have to be. Why can’t we live together in that house? I could be so happy in that house, if we could only live together, you and me and Pearl.’
‘And Pearl - exactly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Oh if only you’d kept silent, we might have gone there.’
‘If I’d kept silent and gone on pretending - I thought I loved you then - but I feel - so much more now - speaking of it brings that about - and so - brings it all to an end.’
‘But why?’
‘You speak of Pearl - could I bear now, after what we’ve both become, to witness even your friendship with Pearl?’
‘But you wanted me to marry Tom McCaffrey.’
‘That was before, before we changed, it was to avoid this.’
‘Can’t we just be ourselves, surely we can live beyond all these things, we, surely we, can do as we please.’
‘Hattie, don’t tempt me, don’t end as a devil in my life, I’ve got to live afterwards with a memory of you.’
‘Why can’t you try to imagine a way?’
‘No, no, not there, we will not go there — ’
‘Where?’
‘There where everything switches and starts to run the other way. No, I will not imagine. You don’t know what you have been to me, what an image of purity and innocence. Of course you don’t know what you’re saying, but just please don’t talk any more. You are innocent now, later you’ll be like the rest. I almost feel I’d like to kill you, simply to keep you as you are now.’
He pushed the chair back violently, but did not rise.
Hattie was sitting very still, her two hands flat upon the table, as she had sat before, just before he revealed his secret. Her face was hotly flushed and her eyes were shining, whether with excitement or tears John Robert could not see. They were both silent for a moment.
Hattie relaxed, rubbing her eyes and falling into a dejected stoop. She said in a dull almost whining voice, ‘Then you won’t want to think of me - as I shall be later on.’
‘No. I won’t want to know - anything about you - later on.’
‘And you call that love. You have no common sense - no decent feeling - at all.’
The words were flat and terrible after their lofty wrangle.
John Robert felt their deadly flatness, he felt with dread the ending of their talk. He said, ‘You have been excited, and stirred, for you this has been an experience, and now you are disappointed. But for me - oh Hattie - I cannot tell you the hell I am in.’
She refused to express pity. She was thinking of herself, of her feelings. ‘You have forced me to feel love for you - that is what has happened - and now you instantly kill it all. You’ve made me feel - so much. Would it surprise you - how much I feel - what I feel - now?’