'We aren't on terribly close terms, we haven't seen each other for ages.' It had been idiotic to include Arthur in that little scene, but I had somehow wanted to console myself by shocking Crystal and then leaving her without an explanation. At the same time I terribly needed Crystal to know. Always, all my life, it had helped me to bear dreadful things if Crystal simply knew about them. Even if there was nothing she could do, her loving sharing mind drew off some of the pain. I felt this now as I wondered what was going to happen and what on earth I was going to do about Gunnar Jopling. 'I rather annoyed him at college because I won all the prizes. I expect we shall be quite polite but reserved when we meet. By the way, Arthur, I don't want it known in the office that I know him. This is just between you and me.'

'Of course I won't say a word,' said Arthur. The fact that Gunnar Jopling had won most of the available prizes since college and I had won none must I suppose have occurred to Arthur, or perhaps his asinine tactfulness prevented the thought from becoming conscious. Arthur's mind tended to inhibit discrediting thoughts.

We crossed the road and paused under a lamp post. 'Well, good night.'

'Hilary, it is all right, isn't it, about me and Crystal? You're not against it, are you? If you were - '

I intended to say Oh yes, splendid, but instead I picked up his words. 'Well, what would you do if I were?'

Arthur was silent for a moment and for the first time that evening I looked at his face. It was red and damp and burnished with the cold. 'I don't know,' he said. He looked at me mildly, exuding a sort of quietness.

I looked at him, and his brown troubled eyes, all moist and intent and screwed up against the chill air. His absurd woolly cap gave him a foreign look, and with his moustache he looked like a French soldier in the 1914 War. Then he seemed suddenly to recede. He looked like a ghost. He vanished. I laughed, and still laughing turned away eastward along the Hammersmith Road. It was beginning to be slightly foggy and the lamp posts stretched away down the almost empty road, each one surrounded by a globular fuzz of light.

FRIDAY.

IT WAS Friday morning. It was just about daylight as I reached the office. Fog had swept over London during the night, not one of the thick great fogs, but something more like a sea mist, greyish, not brown, and carrying suspended in its gauzy being cold globules of water which lightly covered the overcoats of early Londoners with a spider's web of moisture which, in the warmth of tube trains and offices, turned the said overcoats into heavy steaming puddings. The woollen smell was once again pervasive, managing to carry with it overtones of dirt and sweat. I left my wet stinking coat on a coathanger in the cloakroom and hung up my umbrella and the cap which was having its first winter outing this morning, and went on to the Room, which was in darkness as usual at this time of day, and turned on the light, bringing the two long neon strips into action. After blinking twice on and off the cold very bright light revealed the Room.

Everything was different. The first thing I saw was that now a carpet covered the whole of the floor. Then I saw that my desk had been put back into the window. Mrs Witcher's desk stood behind mine, and Reggie Farbottom's desk had been placed near the door where mine had lately been. There was even another picture, a print of the Duke of Wellington, hanging on the near wall over Reggie's desk. The Room looked almost cosy. It must have been the carpet.

'How do you like it, Mr Burde?' said Skinker's voice behind me.

I turned round. Skinker and Arthur were standing in the corridor. They must have hidden in Arthur's cupboard as I came along, waiting to witness my surprise. Arthur's eyes were shining. I took in at once what an act of bravery this was on Arthur's part and how much Crystal's love must have inspired him to make him capable of it.

I did not smile. I said, 'I can't have Mrs Witcher behind me looking over my shoulder. Please put her desk back where it was before.'

Skinker and Arthur hastened to move Mrs Witcher's desk and push it against the wall.

'Good. That's all right now.' Then I smiled. (This was for Skinker's benefit. Arthur could sufficiently read my face.) 'We thought you'd be pleased, din' we,' said Skinker.

'I am pleased,' I said.

'I want to see them two's faces when they sees the fetty-comply.'

'Wherever did you get the carpet?' I asked Arthur.

'I went right up into the attics,' he said. 'I don't know whether we're supposed to. I found several rooms just full of oddments, old bits of carpet and broken chairs and stuff. I found the Duke up there too. I hope I won't get into trouble.' The vague idea of 'getting into trouble' dogged Arthur's office life quite a lot. It was a real credit to him that he had faced the danger of it for my sake.

'Thank you, Arthur, thank you, Skinker. I appreciate this.'

Mrs Witcher came in. The three of us watched her in silence. She took it all in, then marched past us to her desk. 'Clever dicks, aren't you!' she said over her shoulder. She sat down.

Reggie arrived. 'I say, who did this?'

'We did,' I said. 'Any objections?'

'Bloody selfish bugger, aren't you,' said Reggie. 'Mean selfish bugger. Isn't he, Edith? All right, little boy, fix it your way.' Edith made no reply. Reggie sat down. We had won.

I moved to the door with my allies. Skinker departed grinning with satisfaction. I went with Arthur into his cupboard. 'Thanks.'

'That's all right, Hilary. I hope they won't mind about the carpet.'

'Of course not.'

'I say - you didn't - last night - '

'Tell you what you wanted to hear. I'll tell you now. Of course I don't mind about you and Crystal. You have my blessing for what it's worth. I've never managed to wish myself much luck. But I wish you two plenty.'

'Oh thank heavens,' said Arthur. I mean, I knew you didn't - but it's jolly good, jolly good to hear you say that. It's the only thing I need to - '

'Make you perfectly happy.'

'Well, yes.'

'That's fine then. Everything's perfect.'

I went back into the Room across to my desk in the window. Big Ben's face, still illuminated, looked at me through the fog. I had missed him.

'I hope you're enjoying your mean little revenge,' said Edith.

'Even then he couldn't do it himself,' said Reggie. 'All he could do was cry until Arthur took over.'

I started to look at a case. Soon the Room would know all about Arthur's engagement. The news would be greeted with screams.

The lights suddenly went out.

'Bloody electricians, fuck them,' said Reggie's voice in the murk. There was a general sound of chairs moving, people emerging into the corridor. Laughter.

'Candles coming!' said Skinker's voice.

I stayed where I was looking out of the window into the grey gloom. Big Ben had been extinguished too. I thought of Biscuit. Who was she and would I ever see her again?

'The candles are rather fun, aren't they?' said Tommy.

London was still in darkness. Tommy had tried to make a little feast out of it. I was the skeleton. I said nothing.

Tommy's sitting-room, with a paraffin heater, was rather cold. She had laid an Indian cloth this evening, yellow with brown commas on it. There were six candles in modern pottery candlesticks. Our supper was fillet steak and salad and a treacle tart which she had made herself. She knew I liked treacle tart. I could not eat. I drank some of the St Emilion. She provided the wine. It tasted foul, but I drank some more. I considered telling Tommy everything. I should soon have to tell somebody. But no, not Tommy. What a bond such a confession would make.

Tommy was looking her most Victorian. It was partly the ringlets. She was looking tired, which suited her. The flickering light brought out the pitting of her face, illumined against a dark background, but did not reveal the colour of her eyes. Her little nose and mouth were wrinkled up with puzzlement and concern and love. Tonight she was wearing a white lacy blouse with a jet brooch in the form of a cross, a long black waistcoat and an ankle-length black velvet skirt, hitched up a little to reveal one delicate calf and one slim ankle in white openwork stocking, and one little velvet slipper. She had small feet. Her silver-ringed hands were busy pushing her trailing hair nervously back over the high collar of the blouse whose pure whiteness the candles were celebrating. Of all this I was, in spite of everything, aware and, in the curious way in which sex can poke its preoccupying presence into almost any state of affairs, I even found her attractive this evening. For me, the tides of her attractiveness ebbed and flowed under no discernible laws. When she did attract me it was a matter of something to be got over with, something which temporarily interrupted the ordinary courtesies of tenderness and kindness. I considered stretching my hand out to her across the yellow tablecloth as she was willing me to do, but I did not. Especially as things were now, I would have to get rid of Tommy.

She was now at her most patient and ingenious. She tried everything, every sort of conversation, every sort of silence. The slice of treacle tart, drenched in cream and quietly soaking lay untouched on my plate. I drank a little more wine and grimaced. I had said nothing about Crystal and Arthur. I could not face Tommy's joy.

'Would you like some whisky, darling?'

'No.'

'What do you want for Christmas?'

'A loaded revolver.'

'What is it - Hilary - dear heart - there's something. And it's not just me.'

'Sorry, Tomkins.'

'You're like a dead person tonight, a zombie.'

'I wish I was dead.'

'Don't speak so, it's wicked. Tell me. Tell me a little. Tell it in an allegory.'

'You are a funny girl. I like you sometimes.'

'I like you sometimes. Tell.'

'I can't, Tommy. I did something very wrong long ago. And I can't get away from it ever.' This was more than I had ever said to Tommy before and she knew it. I heard her little thrilled triumphant intake of breath and I shrank from her.

'Go on. Please. You know I love you. I just want to be you. To be a place where you are - where you spread out and are relieved of pain.'

'I can't be relieved of pain,' I said. 'Sin and pain are inextricably mixed. Only Jesus Christ could sort them out.'

'Let me be Jesus Christ. After all - they say - we can be - '

'No, you can't be, Tomkins, sorry. You're just you. You've made a treacle tart which I'm sorry I can't eat. I hope it won't be wasted.'

'Treacle keeps.'

'You're the little Scottish girl who knows that treacle keeps. My trouble is cosmic.'

After a pause Tommy said, 'Aren't you thinking rather too grandly of yourself? You are just you after all, with the crinkly hair and the crooked face and the odd socks on - '

'That's Laura Impiatt's joke.'

'Why do you bring Laura in here?'

'I don't know. Not because she's relevant.'

'It's Laura. That's your trouble. Laura. Why did you bring her in suddenly?'

'Oh, Tommy, stop - I'm going home.'

'Why did you suddenly mention Laura?'

'I don't know. My mind is wandering. Of course I think too grandly of myself. Who am I to have a cosmic sorrow? Come, Thomas, be kind to me.'

'Do you promise it isn't - ?'

'Yes, yes, yes. Tommy. I must go. I'm very sorry.'

Tommy got up and rushed at my knees in a way she sometimes had. She was kneeling between my knees, her hands fumbling for my hands, her hair, smelling of shampoo (she always washed it on Fridays) tumbling about over the lower part of my jacket. 'Oh little Thomas - '

'My love - oh my love - let me help you - I love you so much - '

'I can't think why. Tommy, we must part.'

'Don't say that like that when we are communicating - '

'We aren't communicating. You are in some kind of rapture. I am as cold as a caller herring.'

'You want me.'

'I don't.' I thrust her roughly away before it should become too apparent that I did. She fell backwards, sitting upon the floor. I got up.

'I hate you.'

'OK, Thomson. Good night.'

'Don't go. Tell me. Tell me what it was you did. Tell me in an allegory.'

I left her. The streets were black except for the little glowworm lights here and there of people making their way along with torches. But there was a celebration up above. The huge brilliant arch of the Milky Way was visible, rejoicing silently in Reason's ear. The stars were so crowded together, they formed the segment of one golden ring. Yet the light they gave was to each other, they seemed not to know of us, and there was no brightness here below. I knew my London blindfold however. I began to walk north. It took me nearly half an hour to walk from Tommy's flat to Arthur's. It was half past ten when I rang Arthur's bell. A moment later I was with him in his little room lighted by one candle. I had decided to tell Arthur the whole story.

I WILL now tell the story which is at the centre of this story, and which it was necessary to delay until the moment when, in this story, I told it. I will tell it now, as far as it can be told by me, truthfully and as it was, and not as I told it that Friday night to Arthur. In telling Arthur I omitted certain things, though nothing of importance, and I doubtless told it in a way which was sympathetic to myself, though, since I gave him the main facts, I could not in telling it excuse myself. I also told it somewhat in fits and starts, with pauses in which Arthur asked questions. And there were details which I filled in later when, in the days that followed, I spoke of these matters to him again. I told him because he was (I now believed) going to marry Crystal, and because he was a gentle harmless being, and because I had to tell somebody, I had to let the monstrous thing out of the sealed sphere which composed my consciousness and Crystal's. It is strange to think that on that momentous summer day in the past when at that party in my college rooms Crystal had cried out 'This is the happiest day of my life', Anne Jopling was actually present. She was there in that room on that day.

I first met Gunnar Jopling when I was an undergraduate and he was a young don in another subject (he was a historian) and at another college. He and my tutor, a mild man called Eldridge, gave a class together on 'French Literature and the Revolution', and I attended this class. It took place on Tuesdays round a long table covered with a green baize cloth in a rather dark room in Gunnar's college. It was one of those rather select classes with a restricted membership and all present thought well of themselves for being there. I was determined to be the star. I already had a considerable reputation as a linguistic polymath.

This was not the first time I had seen Gunnar. The very first time I saw him was across the High Street. He was striding along, wearing his gown, arm in arm with Anne. Someone said, 'There's Gunnar Jopling.' 'Who's the pretty girl?' 'Mrs Gunnar Jopling.' Gunnar had some sort of special reputation, the way some people have for no very clear reason. Of course he was clever, but there were plenty of clever people in Oxford. His appearance was striking, but again not exceptionally so. He was six foot two (an inch taller than me), a big burly chap (he had been a rugger blue and was also a notable boxer), thick straight fair hair and blue eyes and a very smooth glowing pink and white complexion. His eyes were a bright summer blue with a darker mottle, rather striking. He had a Scandinavian grandparent. He was himself English of the English and very public school.

I enjoyed the class and shone, though so unfortunately did others. We were a brilliant lot, we thought. Gunnar was a good deal more picturesque than Eldridge and I wanted Gunnar's good opinion and got it. About half way through the term Eldridge, a dry man but humane, told me that Gunnar had questioned him about me. Eldridge had told Gunnar a little about my background and this had perhaps kindled a mild interest, or so I inferred from the way in which the mottled blue eyes now scrutinized me. I suppose I was generally looked on as a bit of an oddity. There was nothing very special in all this. I sought the good opinion of any don whom I respected. I always imagined that every old Damoetas would love to hear my song. I went later (I think Gunnar actually suggested this to Eldridge) to a class which Gunnar gave on the Risorgimento. I talked to him occasionally after classes, and once or twice when I met him in the street, but he never invited me to his rooms and I never especially coveted this honour though it would certainly have flattered me. When I got my First Gunnar sent a card with 'well done' written in his tiny hand. Then a little while later, when I was elected to a fellowship at Gunnar's college, he sent me a letter of welcome in pleasingly friendly terms which led me to believe that he must have been partly instrumental in getting me in.

An Oxford college is an odd little democratic society. As the fellows run the college, personalities can gain an importance which is far from frivolous. I was well aware (because such things get around) that my election had not been uncontested. There were those who held that I was merely, in the narrowest and dullest sense, a linguist. 'Burde reads poetry for the grammar,' was a mot of my college enemy, Stitchworthy, who had, I was of course rapidly informed, bitterly opposed my fellowship. Gunnar's good opinion must have counted for a lot. When I knew that I had been elected, that the thing that I wanted most in the universe was now mine, I trembled with joy but also with fear. I had fought every inch of the way to where I was, and I could not have done so without having a good deal of confidence in myself as a scholar. However I also knew that I was still very far from the highly desirable condition of having 'caught up'. There were huge areas of ignorance, holes into which I might stumble, lacunae which men like Gunnar or Eldridge or Clifford Larr had quietly filled up during their schooldays without even noticing what they were doing. I was terrified of making some memorable public blunder. And I was, as I entered my paradise, secretly very vulnerable to the sarcasm of Stitchworthy and his friends and correspondingly grateful for the protection of Gunnar's respect.

I settled in. My pupils took me for granted and did not fall off their chairs laughing at the idea of being instructed by me. My colleagues turned out to be less formidable (and also in some cases considerably less brilliant) than I had imagined beforehand. The younger dons made a joke of Stitchworthy, calling him Dame Stitch. I began timidly to decorate my rooms, copying heartily from Gunnar and others whom I imagined to have good taste. I began to make plans to bring Crystal to Oxford and settle her there in some elegant nest and possibly even select some very superior person to be her husband. I also began to draw up a plan for her education, which was now at last to be taken in hand. During this time Crystal and I were both mad with happiness. Crystal was still in the north where she was finishing her course in dressmaking. (Aunt Bill was dead by then, thank God.) She was, I think, a bit nervous about coming to Oxford, in case she should 'disgrace me'. She was not at all concerned about her hypothetical grand marriage, and nor in any serious sense indeed was I. What delighted her most, after my success, was the idea that now I would teach her. I would tell her to read books and she would read them. She would work for me, work to become, for me, a worthier, more useful, more presentable sister.

I began to relax a little bit more into my surroundings, to acquire protective colouration. I bought a motor car. This absolutely delighted Crystal. I was soon on fairly easy terms with most of my colleagues, but without quite making friends. I was still awkward, separatist, aggressive, touchy. Gunnar treated me as his protege in a way which sometimes annoyed me, though he was unfailingly kind. I admired him, I wanted to be friends with him, and yet at the same time I snubbed him. We once nearly quarrelled seriously in fact over Stitchworthy. Stitchworthy, who was also a historian, had written an article for a learned journal concerning Cromwell, in which he had included a discussion of Marvell and a reference to Horace's Epistles. He quoted a piece of Horace and made clear from his remarks that he had misconstrued it. When I spotted this I could hardly believe my luck. I wrote a short dry note designed for the journal in question, pointing out Stitchworthy's howler, and concluding, 'grammarians may or may not read a poem adequately, but those ignorant of grammar are not reading it at all.' I showed this little masterpiece to Gunnar, expecting him to be amused; but he was on the contrary rather annoyed and said I ought not to publish it. He said the note was spiteful in tone and that it was bad form so soon after my election, to attack a senior don in my own college, and crow over his mistakes. He said we were all capable of making mistakes. I thought his attitude was absurd and we parted angrily. I published the note. Gunnar forgave me. Stitchworthy of course never did.

Before this I had met Anne Jopling. I first met her when I was looking over my new rooms, before I had actually moved in. It was July, a blazing hot day, and I was looking out of one of the windows in a mindless daze of happiness, surveying the extremely elegant front quad of my new college, when Gunnar and Anne came in under the archway. She was wearing a flowery mauve dress of some very light veil-like material, with a broad mauve belt. She was very slim. She looked up at the window and saw me and smiled, thereby making clear that she knew who I was. Then she said something to Gunnar. He called up, 'Can we come and see your rooms?' I said yes, of course, please. 'We'll be up in a few minutes.' Then he and Anne arrived with a bottle of champagne and three glasses. 'I thought we should toast your arrival.' I was incoherent with gratitude and joy. It was one of those perfectly happy moments, which must be fairly rare in any life, when good will and circumstance glorify a human encounter. Gunnar introduced Anne, who said she had heard so much about me and had long been wanting to meet me.

Anne is not easy to describe. Her face still seems to me the most beautiful human face I ever saw, although she would perhaps not generally have been thought excessively good-looking. Her face had a secret private inward pure dewy beauty which, to me, blazed forth. Her hair was mousy-brown and straight and cut in a simple sort of bob. She had a large brow and a rather bony face, with slightly prominent blue-grey eyes and a long sensitive mobile beautifully shaped mouth. She never wore make-up. Her skin was very fine, as if transparent, and always seemed very slightly moist. Her eyes had a moist bright look and absolutely shone with intelligence. To say it was 'a clever face' would quite misdescribe it, though of course it was a clever face. It was a shining face, shining with interest and warmth and wit and a benign intelligent curiosity about everything. It shone upon me now as we drank the champagne in my empty rooms on that sunny summer day, and we chattered and laughed and were utterly happy. We were very young. I was twenty-three. Gunnar was twenty-seven. Anne was twenty-five. They had been fellow students. They had a son of four.

I said I hoped I would see them at my party, which was to take place next week in my old undergraduate rooms, the party at which Crystal was so happy, and they said they would come. (It was the first party I had ever given.) And they came and they both went out of their way to be absolutely angelic to Crystal and I could have kissed their feet. I suppose Crystal was a funny little object at that party. I daresay I was a funny object myself. During that long vacation the Joplings, lingering in Oxford, asked me to dinner. Then asked me again. They lived in an untidy large Victorian house in north Oxford, full of beautiful things but not a bit like a museum. Both their families were (as I conceived it then) well off. Their little son, called Tristram, was clever and pretty and well-behaved. (Only I did not like children.) They were obviously very happy. They were extremely kind to me. The Michaelmas Term began, my first term as a college tutor, and I saw quite a lot of Gunnar and Anne, I met them at their house, at other houses, in college.

As an undergraduate I had of course felt, in the mechanical way that men do, interested in the girls whom I saw about me. I joined no societies (I only briefly mistook my love for Russian for a love for Marx) and the sports I practised were exclusively male. Everyone else seemed much better at making friends, of either sex, than I was. I occasionally talked to the girls whom I got to know through my work (a rather clever one attended Gunnar's classes), but they tended to giggle at me and I immediately became offended and withdrew. On a few occasions I even invited girls to tea, but I found it so hard to talk to them and felt so awkward and embarrassed that I thoroughly bored them, and indeed they bored me. And I could hardly ask them to come into my bedroom and lie down without having made at least a little genial conversation first. (Or so I thought. Perhaps I was wrong.) I remained virgin throughout my undergraduate days without feeling the anxiety which so often afflicts men who have been unable to test themselves in this respect. I was far more anxious about my exams. I was busy. Like a knight upon a quest I was dedicated, under orders. I had to rescue myself and Crystal, to get us out of the dark hole in which we had grown up and out into the sunlight, into freedom. I had to win the inalienable advantages necessary for the completion of the rescue. I had to make myself absolutely safe. Until this was done nothing else really mattered much. On that day in July when I stood in my new rooms and looked out of the window I felt that at last I was safe. I had pulled it off. I had done it.