And yet, of all the questions put to her in the witness box, these were the ones that upset her most. He picked up a phrase of hers — she had gone to the limit, hadn’t she? Wasn’t killing a child going to the limit? That didn’t upset her: she got back into her evasive stream. Then he said: “After it had all happened. Didn’t you feel cleverer than anyone else, because you thought you had got away with it?”
Again she couldn’t answer. This time she stood as mute as Cora.
“Didn’t you talk it over together? You’d brought off something very special, which no one else could have done, didn’t you tell yourselves that?”
“No. We never said anything about it.”
That, I suspected again, but without being sure, was another lie. It was possible that “going to the limit” had disappointed them, grotesque as the thought might be.
Bosanquet left her standing there quietly, not flying off with an excuse which would smear over the picture of the two of them sitting together, congratulating each other on a scheme achieved. At once Wilson set her going again, fugue-fluent, on her breakdowns, first and second, and we listened without taking in the words.
About an hour later — still heavy after the afternoon of Kitty Pateman — I called at the Shaws’ new house. During the weekend I had rung up Vicky, asking if I could see her: I wanted to get it over, after my talk with Martin, as much for my sake (since I still detested breaking bad news) as hers. The house was in a street, or actually a cul-de-sac, which I remembered well from my boyhood and which had altered very little since, except that there used to be tramlines running past the open end. On both sides the houses showed extraordinary flights of pre-1914 fancy; most were semi-detached in various styles that various human minds must have thought pretty: one stood by itself, quite small, but decorated with twisted pinnacles, and led into by a porch consisting mainly of stained glass. In the patch of front garden the only vegetation was an enormous monkey puzzle. When I was a child, I didn’t notice how startling the architecture was: I probably thought it was all rather comfortable and enviable, because the people who lived there — it was only half-a-mile away from our house — were distinctly more prosperous than we were. One of them, I recalled, was a dentist. It looked that afternoon as though the social stratum hadn’t changed much, a good deal below that of the Gearys’ neighbours, considerably above that of the streets round George’s lodgings. The Shaws’ house was one of a pair confronting one at the end, unobtrusive by the side of the art nouveau and suburban baroque, but built at the same time, front rooms looking over a yard of garden down the street, perhaps six rooms in all. When I rang the bell, it was Arnold Shaw who opened the door. After he had greeted me, his first words were: “This is a long way from the Residence.” He wore a taunting smile.
“That’s just what I was thinking,” I replied.
He led the way into the front room. Vicky jumped up and kissed me, knowing that I had come for a purpose, looking at me as though trying to placate me. Meanwhile her father, oblivious, was pouring me a drink.
“I needn’t ask you what you like,” he said in his hectoring hospitable tone. There was an array of bottles on the sideboard. However much Arnold had reduced his standard of living, it hadn’t affected the liquor.
I gazed round the room, about the same size as our old front room at home. The furniture, though, was some that I recognised from the Residence.
“It’s big enough for me,” said Arnold Shaw defiantly.
I said, of course.
“Anything else would be too big.”
With the enthusiasm of an estate agent, he insisted on describing what he had done to the house. There had been three bedrooms: he had turned one of them into a study for himself. “That’s all I need,” said Arnold Shaw. They ate in the kitchen. No entertaining. “No point in it,” he said. “People don’t want to come when you’ve got out of things.”
He hadn’t mentioned the triaclass="underline" to me, at that moment, it was lost in another dimension. Not noticing Vicky, half-forgetting why I was visiting them, I felt eased, back in the curiosities of every day. It was a relief to be wondering how Arnold was really accepting what his resignation meant, now that he was living it. He was protesting too much, he was putting on a show of liberation. I nearly said, all decisions are taken in a mood which will not last: he would have known the reference. And yet, the odd thing was, although he probably put on this show for his own benefit each day of his life, he was also, and quite genuinely, liberated. Or perhaps even triumphant. I had seen several people, including my brother Martin, give up their places, some of them, in the world’s eyes, places much higher than Arnold Shaw’s. Without exception, they went through times when they cursed themselves, longing for it all back, panoplies and trappings, moral dilemmas, enmities and alclass="underline" but, again without exception, provided they had made the renunciation out of their own free will, underneath they were content. Free will. For one instant, listening to Arnold, I was taken back to that other dimension. Free will. Arnold had, or thought he had, given up his job of his own free will. He felt one up on fate. It was a similar superiority to that which some men felt, like Austin Davidson, in contemplating suicide: or alternatively in bringing off a feat which no one else could do. Just for once, in the compulsions of this life, one didn’t accept one’s destiny and decided for oneself.
It didn’t sound as exalted as that, with Arnold Shaw grumbling about his pension and discussing the economics of authorship. The university had treated him correctly but not handsomely (that is, they hadn’t found him a part-time job): he was hoping to earn some money by his books. His chief work would be appearing in the autumn, he had the proofs in his study now: it was the history of the chemical departments in German universities, 1814–1860. It was the last word on the subject, said Arnold Shaw. I didn’t doubt it. That was the beginning of organised university research as we know it, said Arnold Shaw. I didn’t doubt that either. It ought to be compulsory reading for all university administrators everywhere: how many would it sell? Ten thousand? That I had to doubt a little, and he gave me an angry glare.
Forgiving me, he filled my glass again. Then he said, aggressively, jauntily: “Well, I’d better get back to those proofs. This won’t buy aunty a new frock.”
As he shut the door and I was still amused by that singular phrase, Vicky had come to the chair beside me.
“Have you got any news?”
She was looking with clear, troubled, hopeful eyes straight into mine.
“I’m afraid I have.”
Her face, which had during the past year begun to show the first lines, became clean-washed, like a child’s.
“Have you seen him?”
I shook my head.
“Oh well.” Her expression was sharp, impatient again, hope flooding. “How do you know?”
“I’m afraid I do know.”
“He hasn’t told you anything himself?”
“I shouldn’t come and say anything to you, should I, unless I was sure?”
“What are you trying to say, anyway?” Her tone was rough with hate — not for him, for me.
“I think you’ve got to put him out of your mind. For good and all.”
No use, she said. She had flushed, but this was not like the night when her father broke the news of his resignation, she was nowhere near tears. She was full of energy, and with the detective work of jealousy, easy to recognise if one had ever nagged away at it, wanted to track down what my sources of information were. Had I seen him at all? Not for months, I said. Had I been talking to his friends? Did I know them? Young men and young women? The only one of his friends that I knew at all, I said, was my stepson Maurice. He had been home for the vacation, but he hadn’t said a word about Pat.