'Wouldn't you rather be in here with a woman that loves you than out there in the rain and the storm? Wouldn't you, wouldn't you? Oh you do hurt me so with your vague threatening talk, you're as bad as a gangster, you deliberately spoil our days, you sit here and drink and sulk and spoil, and you won't give me another day, why can't we meet on Wednesdays?'

'You know we can't meet on Wednesdays.'

'Why not? Just because you decree it? I'm sick and tired of living by your decrees. Wednesday isn't a day. Why can't I have Wednesday too?'

'Wednesday is a day.'

'How is Wednesday a day?'

'Wednesday is my day for myself.'

'You're miserable by yourself, you just mope. Don't you, don't you?'

'I enjoy misery and moping.'

'Anyway I don't believe you. You're a proven liar. I don't believe you see Mr Duncan on Mondays. And I don't believe you're alone on Wednesdays. There's some other woman.'

'Oh Thomas darling, don't make things worse by being silly and vulgar and please please take that horrible aggressive look off your face. I'm so tired.'

'Tired! Tired! I'm tired too.'

'You've been doing nothing all day except trailing round the shops buying rubbish.'

'I've been writing my lecture for Monday.'

'Ha ha.'

'And I've been making glove puppets.'

'Glove puppets, God! We're glove puppets.'

'All right. You scorn what I do. I scorn what you do.'

'You don't know anything about it.'

'And there is another woman. It's Laura Impiatt. You see her on Wednesdays. I know her style, she collects men, she's after you.'

'Don't be boringly catty about other women. It makes me feel your sex really is inferior.'

'I'm not catty, and I'm not talking in general, I'm saying about an individual person!'

'That's not an argument, neither is shouting.'

'You make me cross on purpose so as to muddle me.'

'It's not my fault if you think intuitively rather than logically. Women are supposed to be proud of that.'

'If we met more we'd quarrel less. I must see more of you. I'll come to the office.'

'If you do it'll be the last time you see me.'

'When are we going to paint the flat like you said? You said a man was never more innocently engaged than in painting his flat.'

'Tommy, we can't go on like this.'

'I don't want to go on like this. I want to marry you. I want a baby. I'm thirty-four.'

'I know you're thirty-four! You mention it often enough!'

'You've taken years of my life.'

'Only three, dear.'

'You owe it to me.'

'No one owes anybody anything for that sort of reason.'

'You came after me - '

'Be accurate. You came after me.'

'I want a baby.'

'Well, go and get yourself stuffed somewhere else.'

'You talk in a coarse common way, you use hateful rude language, and you do it to hurt me. Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?'

'Oh stop asking these maddening pointless questions!'

'Who's shouting now?'

'You just keep evading my arguments, you won't listen to anything you don't like.'

'I haven't noticed any arguments. I love you. I don't want just any baby. I want your baby.'

'Well, I don't want a bloody baby and I don't want to get married and as you want both it follows that we must part.'

'We can't part.'

'If I could make you believe that we could the thing would be as good as done.'

'That is why I shall never believe it. We're each other's last chance.'

'I may be yours. You're certainly not mine, thank God! Look, Tommy, let me go. Let's have a clean slice not a bloody massacre.'

'You're never nice to me now - '

'How can I be nice when I'm trapped?'

'You aren't trapped or else everyone is. We could have freedom together if - '

'Who said anything about freedom?'

'You did, you said you were trapped.'

'I don't care a fuck about freedom, I don't think there is such a thing, I just don't like the sensation of being trussed.'

'After all, most marriages are second best, and - '

'When I don't want a marriage at all you hardly recommend this one by admitting it would be lousy!'

'I didn't say that, and it wouldn't be second best for me because I love you - '

'I don't want your love, Tomkins, so it gratifies not. I'm afraid this is not one of your clear-headed days.'

'But what's your reason for spoiling things?'

'There isn't a reason! Love can end. That's just one of the horrors of human life. My interest in you was purely physical anyway.'

'Oh you wicked liar! And there is a reason. It's Crystal.'

'It isn't Crystal. Just be careful, Tommy.'

'Is she going to marry Arthur Fisch?'

'No.'

'You won't let her.'

'Be careful. Do you want me to break something?'

'You think you can always defeat me by violence, don't you! Oh you should be so ashamed! I mended that little vase you broke. Look. Things can be mended.'

'Don't try and touch my heart, it isn't within your reach. You talk as if there were just one or two difficulties and if they were fixed we could live happily ever after, but everything's wrong here, everything! God, can't you see the difference between big things and little things? Perhaps no woman can.'

'Who's generalizing now?'

'Don't madden me. I just don't want to marry you, I don't even want to go to bed with you any more, very few human arrangements can last long and this one has run its course. There's nothing more to it, no secret motives, not even anything to argue about.'

'Why are we arguing then?'

'Because you won't face facts.'

'I'll tell you why we're arguing. Because we're bound together. You can't leave me. All you can do is talk about it. If you could go, you'd go. The arguing is instead, so that you can pretend to go and not go. Why don't you face a fact or two?'

'If you want to be shown what going is like - '

'All right. Do you mean that you won't come next Friday?'

After that there was silence, except for the wild west wind rather gently shaking the windows, as if afraid of its own strength, and pattering the panes with little ripples of rain. We had had, before dispute made eating impossible, the beginning of a supper (lamb cutlets and broccoli) and a good deal of wine. We were still drinking the wine. I had taught Tommy to drink. We were sitting at a round table covered by a pretty French table cloth, a brilliant red cloth thickly covered with tiny green leaves. The lamps glowed, perched among the bric-a-brac, it was like sitting in a shop. Tommy's small hand, the fingers covered with little enamel and silver rings, began to crawl across the table towards me. Tommy's question was a jerk of the noose. The situation had its own characteristic hopeless mechanical structure. A lot of what Tommy said was true. She had been a surprise package. After I had despaired of communication this soft-voiced clever little Scot had managed to get through. For she was clever. She argued quite well, she remembered things, one had to keep one's wits sharp, there was even a pleasure in arguing with her about leaving her. There was even a sense in which the argument was, as she said, a surrogate for the parting, at least tonight. With her grammar school education and her extensive vocabulary and her sharp little mind she might have been somebody if the theatre had not done for her. She was gallant and intelligent, she tried to coerce me with her words, not with her tears. We did indeed understand each other and this was rare and now that we had given up the sex act I still enjoyed the word act with her, simply the unusual experience of communicating. Only nothing further followed from this. With relentless authority my own special personal aloneness was calling me away, my own pain was calling me into its privacy, out of this irrelevant scene of minor gratifications. I wanted now to clean the whole business off myself and be done with it. It had become an idle nonsense. And yet: just tonight and because I was so tired I could not say that I was not coming next Friday. The achievement was beyond me.

'I'll come.'

'There you are! You see! You just like a skirmish!' She pronounced it 'skairmish'.

'No I don't. Think about what I said, will you. We've got to end this, Tommy. And it's no good talking about just being friends either. So long as we meet you'll go on loving me, and that's what's so hopeless, especially if you want a child. It's unfair to you.'

'You say that to pretend it's altruism!'

'What the hell does it matter what it is. We're finished. Now I'm going home.'

'You can't go, it's not ten yet.'

'If I stay I'll get angry and smash things. And you've got a cold.'

'I haven't. Go then. I'll see you tomorrow... at Crystal's... won't I?'

Once a month Crystal invited Tommy to a brief drink at six o'clock on a Saturday.

'Maybe. Don't you give that bloody cold to Crystal. If you find tomorrow morning - '

'Oh you do nothing but give orders and lay down rules!'

'Good night!'

I careered away down the stairs, pulling my mackintosh on as I went. Outside it was raining a small cold rain and the street lamps were spilling big blurry reflections onto the wet pavement. I set off walking north. I felt upset and alarmed. And tomorrow was Saturday. I was more connected with young Thomas than I had realized when I had decided, for such excellent reasons, to leave her. Had I ever considered marrying Tommy, stowing myself away as Tommy's husband, an equivalent of the suicide which I could not commit because of Crystal? No. Life does not end even with the most desperate of marriages, it prolongs itself drearily: new occasions for cruelty, a life of crime. I was not as bad as that. Besides, my bonds with Crystal made death by marriage equally unthinkable. Of course I had lied to Tommy at the start. I had implied too many encouraging half-truths, to pave the way to bed. I had got myself into a false position and, I suspected, would not be able to get out until I felt so frenzied by the pain of it that I would be prepared to use an axe. I knew soberly that I had not yet reached the axe-using stage. Meanwhile I could not afford to sympathize with Tommy: that awful withdrawal of sympathy, like our refusal to sympathize with the dying. But I would have to wait a little while yet before I could finally dispose of Thomasina Uhlmeister. There was moreover another factor. For reasons which I shall explain shortly I did not want to break with Tommy until I could see more clearly what Crystal felt about Arthur Fisch.

SATURDAY.

'I SAY, Hilary, that Indian girl was here again last night.'

'What was she wearing?'

'A sort of long blue jacket and trousers with peacocks on.'

I had not noticed the peacocks, but it was clearly the same girl.

'Did she ring the bell?'

'No, she didn't. She didn't the other time either. She was just hanging about.'