'Did you expect me?'

'No.'

'Didn't you -?'

'You said you were not coming.'

I glanced through the dining-room door. The table was laid for one. The chessboard occupied my place. I got out knives and forks and a glass and one of the sissy place mats that Clifford used and laid a second place on the shining mahogany. I moved the chessboard, problem and all.

I went back to the kitchen. 'I'm sorry I was so bloody.'

'OK.' He smiled, not at me, sweeping the chopped onion into a red simmering mess in a saucepan.

That at least was all right.

I sat down on the chair I usually occupied while Clifford was cooking. I was glad to see him. I needed to talk to him.

'Can I have a drink?'

'It sounds as if you've had one.'

I helped myself.

'I saw Gunnar this afternoon.'

Clifford was interested and turned to look at me though he did not arrest his cooking operations. 'Really? In the office? Did he pin you to the wall, incoherent with rage?'

'I don't think he recognized me - we passed on the stairs - I don't think - after all, he doesn't know I'm there.'

'He does.'

'What?'

'Freddie told him.'

'Oh - Christ! And you told Freddie. That was bloody thoughtful of you, wasn't it. How do you know Freddie told him?'

'Freddie, artlessly chattering at a meeting, said he had told Gunnar about you and Gunnar had said how nice. Come, don't look like that!'

'Oh - Have you seen him?'

'Not yet, as it happens, but I expect I shall soon. He's going to be on the spot as from tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow? I thought it was going to be weeks.'

'Well, it isn't.'

'I'm leaving the office, of course.'

'Why "of course"?' said Clifford, wiping his hands on some ornate kitchen paper and pouring out some sherry for himself.

'Well, obviously. I can't stay around in that place meeting him on stairs and in doorways. I couldn't stand it, and I don't see why he should have to either. Consideration for him dictates my instant departure. Surely you can see that.'

'I'm not so sure. I don't think you should run away.'

'Run is exactly what I'm going to do, run.'

'I think you should stay at the office and sit it out and see what happens.'

'To amuse you?'

'Well, it would amuse me, but not just for that, for your own sake.'

'For my sake?'

'And for his.'

'You're mad,' I said. 'He must want to vomit at the idea that I'm in the building. Oh Christ in heaven, I wish you hadn't told bloody Freddie. If Gunnar didn't know it would somehow be so much easier, I could simply slip away and - '

'I agree with you, as it happens. And I admit it was inconvenient of me to tell the Impiatts, though you understand why I did it. But it does, I think, make a difference that he knows. I think it means that you must stay.'

'I don't see that!'

'If Gunnar had never known you were there or had any special cue for thinking about you, OK. But now that your continued existence has been brought to his attention it would be rather ill-mannered of you to vanish at once.'

'Ill-mannered?'

'Yes. If you whisk away after this little reminder, this little shock, you may be minimizing your own distress, but you will be increasing his. And, if I may say so, I think you are in duty bound to sacrifice your interests to his.'

'What on earth are you talking about?'

'He is a bogyman to you. And no doubt, you are a bogyman to him. You said yourself that he would want to vomit simply at the idea that you were in the building. If you just vanish you produce the nausea without any cure.'

'There is no cure.'

'There may be no cure, but I think it might help him if he were just to see you a bit around the place and get used to seeing you and find that the world doesn't end after all. He might also like to reflect upon the difference between his station in life and yours, it could cheer him up a bit.'

'This is macabre. It wouldn't cheer me up.'

'But the point is, isn't it, that you must sacrifice yourself. It's a tiny little service which you can perform for him, and I think that you ought to perform it, regardless of your own feelings.'

'This is an insane argument.'

'It's a pretty insane situation and, as you say, for the outsider, interesting. What will happen? How will you both behave? The unexciting answer is, I'm afraid, perfectly. Rut this in itself will do a tiny bit of good in the world.'

'You seem very concerned for his welfare.'

'No. I'm just being impartial. As you know I never particularly liked Gunnar in the old days. I was told he had charm, I could never see it. He just seemed to me pretentious and conceited. No, no, I'm offering you what I think is a sound moral argument. I'm not suggesting you should try to talk to each other! Of course that would be impossible. But if you can nod affably on the stairs this may be a good thing for him and even possibly for you.'

'Affably! We will hardly be feeling affable!'

'Of course not. That's not the point. You must just be there, undergo him, let him pass you by. I don't suggest that you stay on forever. But I think you should stay on for six months.'

'No,' I said. 'No.' I could see the force of Clifford's argument all the same, and I hated it. Ought I to 'expose myself' to Gunnar as to a menacing ray? Ought I to stay on to be a spectacle to him, to accept at close quarters, his silent hatred and contempt; and then at last creep away and hide? There was something hideous and frightening about this. But could it be that I ought to do it, could it be that Clifford was right and that this was a sort of small service which I could render to Gunnar, something which I could as it were, after all, give him? And even if it were so, was I prepared to give him anything? Did I not hate him for the damage which I had done him? He had wrecked my life and Crystal's.

'What's his second wife like?' I said, to divert the conversation from this awful channel.

'I don't know. Some sort of fashionable nonentity.'

'Educated?'

'I don't think so.'

'Any children?'

'No.'

I said, 'Crystal is definitely going to marry Arthur, it's fixed. She has said yes. Arthur is glorified. Arthur in majesty.'

'Oh no - ' Clifford threw down the spoon with a clatter.

'Yes. I'm afraid so.'

'You can't let her - oh no, no, no - I didn't take you seriously last time - you must stop it - '

'What can I do? It may even be a good thing.'

Clifford took off his apron. 'Come on.'

'What? Where?'

'We're going round straight away to see her.'

'See Crystal? Certainly not!'

'I want to see the girl who's going to be Mrs Arthur Fisch.'

'No,' I said. 'Sorry. No.'

'We're going to see Crystal.'

'No, we're not. Clifford, don't be an absolute devil. You know how Crystal feels about you. I expect she daren't even think about you now. How could you want to upset her just when she's made up her mind? God, don't you think I hate this too? But I want her to be settled and happy.'

'And do you honestly think she will be if she marries that drip?'

'Yes. Probably. Otherwise I wouldn't let her. Arthur isn't one of the wonders of nature, but he's a decent chap and he loves her.'

'I'd like to stop it,' said Clifford.

'You keep out of it. I mean that. Keep out. Keep away. If Crystal were to set eyes on you now - '

'Why should little Arthur have a virgin? Why should he have that virgin?'

'You are touchingly romantic about virginity.'

'It still has a meaning. In this rotten greedy lolling dribbling world.'

'You promise you won't go and see Crystal or write to her or anything?'

'I never promise. How can I commit my future self?'

'But you won't, will you? It isn't as if you had anything to offer her. All you can do there is destroy.'

'Oh, all right,' said Clifford with a sudden change of mood from enthusiasm to apathy which was characteristic of him. 'It's your affair anyway, I was just thinking about you and if you regard it as marvellous then that's that. She's your property until she becomes Arthur's. It's true that I have no constructive plan. Anyway I daresay it won't happen. Now, as dear Laura would say, a table, a table.'

We sat down. There was some sort of eggs messed around with vegetables. Then some sort of fish messed around with fruit.

'How did Gunnar look?'

'Old.'

'We are all old, my darling,' said Clifford. His lips relaxed. He reached out his hand across the table and took hold of mine.

TUESDAY.

IT WAS Tuesday morning. I arrived very early and took the lift up and scuttled to my place in the window. It was still dark and Big Ben's face was round and bright as if the moon had come visiting amid the towers of Westminster. I cowered in my corner like a frightened animal. I would have liked to barricade myself in.

Tommy's Tuesday letter had arrived from King's Lynn. It was unusual in tone.

Darling, I have been saying marry me for so long you can probably not hear the words. I begin to feel, for many reasons, that I must now make them into a real question and receive a real answer. I cannot respect myself otherwise. I must settle the future one way or another. I know you have deep troubles and I know you need me. Everything is becoming urgent. Unless we seize each other we may be swept apart. Take my hand in the rain and the storm and hold onto it, oh my dear, and let me go with you into whatever is to come. I am close to you and there is real speech between us. Recognize this and the achievement of it and the salvation of it. I must see you soon, there is something we must talk about together. I cannot wait until Friday, there are reasons why. Please let me see you on Wednesday. I will telephone the office on Wednesday morning.

Your own faithful, Thomas My first thought on reading this high-flown epistle was that Tommy must have discovered all about Gunnar and Anne, hence this desire to save me from the storm and so on. Yet how could she possibly have found out? I was developing persecution mania. Would I ever tell Tommy all about that business? No. That was another reason why I could never marry her.

I sat in my safe window and gazed out at the gradually lightening scene. It was another of those bitter yellow days. I wondered whether or not to put in my resignation at once. Last night I had been curiously compelled by Clifford's argument. Perhaps I ought to stick it out and as it were expose or exhibit myself to my enemy. It was an odd idea, but there was some logic to it. Perhaps I ought not to run away but to endure, and let the thing become, through the simple fact that we sometimes just saw each other and nodded (but would we?), that much more ordinary. Would this, not only for him but for me, somehow reduce the nightmare? I had reflected about this after, rather drunk, leaving Clifford's flat. This morning however the whole argument seemed just jesuitical, even frivolous. In any case, much deeper and more awful reasons why I should not leave my job were beginning to come into view.

I made believe to myself that I was tough and sane and on the whole recovered. But I really knew, and knew now with an awful penetration of it into the heart, into the guts, how frail the achievement was. I did not anticipate breakdown or madness. But if I were to leave Whitehall and wander round looking for work and failing to get it, with my money rapidly running out, what condition would I soon find myself in? I remembered, and it felt hideously close, that awful year in the north, the 'chocolate year', when I lay on a camp bed in Crystal's room and pretended to be recovering from physical injuries when really I was battling with my mind. Suppose I were to give up my job and then become, even temporarily, incapable of earning my own living? Suppose I were to fall back into that black terrible slough? The deeper levels of the mind know not of time. It was all still there. It would have needed God to remove it. Even Crystal could not do it. Suppose I could not earn money? Suppose I had to be supported by Crystal? Suppose I had to be supported by Arthur? If I stayed where I was, even if I were to become for a while almost unable to work, I could at least manage, I could get away with it, no one would notice me and I would be safe.

Reggie came in whistling, eating peppermint. 'Hello, Hil. You skedaddled pretty early yesterday, didn't you? Thought we wouldn't notice you'd slunk off! Go to a flick?'

Edith arrived.