I awoke to a grey awful spotty early-morning light which made the unfamiliar room present in a ghastly way. The furniture was humped shapelessly about me like sleeping animals. Everything seemed to. be covered with soiled dust sheets. The slits in the clumsily drawn curtains revealed a dawn sky, pale and murky, without colour, the sun not yet risen.

I experienced horror, then memory. I began to get up, felt painfully stiff, and smelt some vile odour, probably the odour of myself. I swung myself to the door, heaving a stiff leg, hanging onto the backs of chairs. I listened at the door of the bedroom. Silence. I very cautiously opened the door and put my head round it.

It was hard to see in the room: the granular dawn light, with the texture of a bad newspaper picture, seemed to obscure rather than promote vision. The bed was in some sort of chaos. I thought I could discern Julian. Then I saw that there were only tossed sheets. The bed, the room, was empty.

I called her name softly, ran into the other rooms. I even looked crazily into cupboards. She was not in the house. I went outside onto the porch and ran all round the house and then out onto the level of the stony courtyard, and down to the dunes, calling her name, shouting now, yelling as loudly as I could. I came back and hooted the horn of the car again and again, making a ghastly tocsin in the empty absolutely quiet twilit scene. But nothing answered. There was no doubt about it. She had gone.

I went back into the house, turning on all the lights, a doom- stricken illumination in the gathering day and searched the place once again. On the dressing table was a pile of five-pound notes, the change from the money I had given her to buy clothes, which I had insisted she should keep in her handbag. The handbag, her new one, which she had bought in the "shopping spree," had gone. All her new clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe. There was no letter, no communication for me, nothing. She had disappeared into the night with her handbag, in her blue willow-pattern dress, without a coat, without a word, creeping out of the house while I slept.

I got to the road and doubled back towards the railway station. At the little toy station the platforms were empty. A railway man walking along the tracks told me that no train had stopped there during the night hours. I drove on to the main road and along it in the direction of London. The sun was shining coldly and brightly and a few cars were already about. But the grassy verges of the road were empty. I turned back and drove the other way, through the village, past the church. I even stopped and went into the church. Of course it was hopeless. I drove back and ran into the cottage with a desperate feigned hope that she might have returned while I was away. The little place with its open door and its ransacked air and all its lights on stood obscenely void in the bright sunshine. Then I drove the car to the dunes, running its bonnet into a dewy wall of wispy wiry grass and sand. I ran about among the dunes and down onto the beach, shouting, "Julian! Julian!" The climbing sun shone onto a quiet sea which without even a ripple drew its level line along the gently shelving wall of many-coloured elliptical stones. w,, ait, Brad, better let Roger go first."

Christian was holding my arm in a firm grip.

With his face stiff and his false soldier's tread Roger marched self-consciously out of his pew and back towards the door of the chapel. The brocaded curtains had closed upon Priscilla's coffin, now bound for the furnace, and the unspeakable service was over.

"What do we do now, go home?"

"No, we should walk around a bit in the garden, I think it's customary, at least it is in the U. S. A. I'll just say a word to those women."

"Who are they?"

"I don't know. Friends of Priscilla's. I think one of them's her char. Kind of them to come, wasn't it?"

"Yes, very."

"You must talk to Roger."

"I have nothing to say to Roger."

We walked slowly down the aisle. Francis, fluttering by the doorway, stood aside to let the women pass, sent a ghastly smile in our direction, then followed them out.

"Brad, who was that poetry by that the man read?"

"Browning. Tennyson."

"It was lovely, wasn't it? So suitable. It made me cry."

Roger had arranged the cremation and had devised a terrible set of poetry readings. There had been no religious service.

We emerged into the garden. A light rain was falling from a brightish brownish sky. The good weather seemed to be over. I shook Christian's hand off my arm and put up my umbrella.

Roger, looking responsible and manly and bereaved in smart black, was thanking the poetry-reader and another crematorium official. The coffin-bearers had already gone. Christian was talking to the three women and they were affecting to admire the dripping azaleas. Francis, beside me, was trying to get in under my umbrella, and was repeating a story which he had already told me, with variations, several times. He was whimpering a little as he spoke. He had wept audibly during the service.

"Oh Brad, forgive me."

"Stop whingeing like a bloody woman. Go away, will you? It wasn't your fault. It had to happen. It was better like that. You can't save someone who wants death. It was better so."

"You told me to look after her, and I--"Go away."

"Where can I go to, oh where can I go to at all? Brad, don't drive me away, I'll go mad, I've got to be with you, otherwise I'll go mad with misery, you've got to forgive me, you've got to help me, Brad, you've got to. I'm going back to the flat now and I'll tidy it up and I'll clear it all, I will, oh please let me stay with you now, I can be useful to you, you needn't give me any money--I don't want you in the flat. Just clear off, will you."

"I'll kill myself, I will."

"Get on with it, then."

"You do forgive me, don't you, Brad?"

"Yes, of course. Just leave me alone. Please." I jerked the umbrella away, turning my shoulder against Francis, and made for the gate.

Flip-flopping rainy steps caught up with me. Christian. "Brad, you must talk to Roger. He says would you wait for him. He has some business to talk with you. Oh Brad, don't run off in that awful way. I'm coming with you, anyway, don't run off. Do come back and talk to Roger, please." o ' r "He should be content with having killed my sister without bothering me with his business."

"Well, wait a moment, wait, wait, look, here he comes."

I waited under the arty lich-gate while Roger advanced under his umbrella. He even had a black macintosh.

"Bradley. A sad business. I feel much to blame."

I looked at him, then turned away.

"As Priscilla's heir--I paused.

His umbrella touched mine and I took a pace back. I could see Christian's live eager face just beyond, watching, with the avid curiosity of the unhurt. She had no umbrella and was wearing a dark green raincoat and a smart black macintosh hat with a wide brim, like a small sombrero. Francis had gone back to the azalea ladies.

I said nothing to Roger, just looked at him.

"The will is very simple, there should be no problem. I'll let you see a copy of course. And perhaps you wouldn't mind returning to me any things of Priscilla's which you have, those jewels for instance, they could be sent by registered post. Or better still, perhaps I could call for them this afternoon at the flat, if you're going to be in? Mrs. Evandale has very kindly said I may call for the things Priscilla left at her house--I turned my back on him and walked away down the street.

He called after me, "I'm very upset too, very--but what's the use Christian was walking beside me, having got in underneath the umbrella, taking my arm again. We passed a small yellow Austin which was parked at a meter. Inside at the wheel sat Marigold. She bowed to me as we passed, but I ignored her.

"Who's that?" said Christian.

"Roger's mistress."

A little later the Austin passed us by. Marigold was driving with one arm thrown round Roger's back. Roger's head lay on her shoulder. No doubt he really was very upset, very.

"Brad, don't walk so fast. Don't you want me to help you? Don't you want me to find out where Julian is?"

"No."

"But do you know where she is?"

"No. Could you take your hand off my arm, please?"

"All right--but you must let me help you, you can't just go off by yourself after all these horrors. Please come and stay at Notting Hill. I'll look after you, I'd love to. Will you come?"

"No, thank you."

"No."

"But where is she, Brad, where can she be, where do you think she is? You don't think she's killed herself, do you?"

"No, of course not," I said. "She's with Arnold."

"Could be. I haven't seen Arnold since--"He came and took her away in the night against her will. He's got her cooped up somewhere, lecturing her. She'll soon give him the slip and come back to me, like she did before. That's all there is to it."

"We-ell--" Christian peered up at me, peeking from under her black sombrero. "How do you feel, Brad, generally in yourself? You know, you need looking after, you need--"Just leave me alone, will you. And keep Francis at Notting Hill. I don't want to see him. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll take this taxi. Goodbye."

It was perfectly simple of course, what had happened. I saw it all now. Arnold must have come back while I was asleep and either cajoled or forced Julian to get into the car with him. Perhaps he had asked her to sit in the car to talk to him. Then he had driven off quickly. She must have wanted to hurl herself from that car. But she had promised me not to. Besides, she wanted no doubt to convince her father. Now they were somewhere together, arguing, fighting. Perhaps he had locked her into a room somewhere. But she would soon escape and come back to me. I knew that she could not simply have left me like that without a word.

I had been to Ealing of course. When I had driven back to London I went to my flat first in case there was a message, then on to Ealing. I parked the car opposite the house and went and rang the bell. No one came. I went and sat in the car and watched the house. Then after about an hour I started walking up and down on the opposite pavement. I could now see Rachel who was watching me from the upstairs landing window. After a bit more of this she opened the window and shouted, "She isn't here!" and closed the window again. I drove away and returned the car to the car-hire firm and went back to my flat. I decided now to remain on duty at the flat since that was where Julian would come to when she escaped. I had only emerged to attend Priscilla's funeral.

The world is perhaps ultimately to be defined as a place of suffering. Man is a suffering animal, subject to ceaseless anxiety and pain and fear, subject to the rule of what the Buddhists call dukha, the endless unsatisfied anguish of a being who passionately desires only illusory goods. However within this vale of misery there are many regions. We all suffer, but we suffer so appallingly differently. An enlightened one may, who knows, pity the fretful millionaire with as pure an energy as he pities the starving peasant. Possibly the lot of the millionaire is more genuinely pitiable, since he is deluded by the solace of false and fleeting pleasures, while there may be a compulsory wisdom contained in the destitution of the peasant. Such judgments however are reserved for the enlightened, and ordinary mortals who feigned to utter them would rightly be called frivolous. We properly think it a worse fate to starve in poverty than to yawn in the midst of luxury. If the suffering of the world were, as it could be imagined to be, less extreme, if boredom and simple worldly disappointments were our gravest trials, and if, which is harder to conceive, we grieved little at any bereavement and went to death as to sleep, our whole morality might be immensely, perhaps totally, different. That this world is a place of horror must affect every serious artist and thinker, darkening his reflection, ruining his system, sometimes actually driving him mad. Any seriousness avoids this fact at its peril, and the great ones who have seemed to neglect it have only done so in appearance. (This is a tautology.) This is the planet where cancer reigns, where people regularly and automatically and almost without comment die like flies from floods and famine and disease, where people fight each other with hideous weapons to whose effects even nightmares cannot do justice, where men terrify and torture each other and spend whole lifetimes telling lies out of fear. This is where we live.

This preludes, dear friend, my apologia, offered to you not for the first time, concerning this love story. The pains of love? Pooh! And yet: the ecstasy of love, the glory of love. Plato lay with a beautiful boy and thought it no shame to see here the beginning of the path to the sun. Happy love undoes the self and makes the world visible. Unhappy love is, or can be, a revelation of pure suffering. Too often of course our reverses are clouded and embittered by jealousy, remorse, hatred, the mean and servile "if onlys" of a peevish spirit. But there can be intuitions even here of a more sublime agony. And who can say that this is not in some way a fellow feeling with those quite otherwise afflicted? Zeus, they say, mocks lovers' oaths, and we may covertly smile even while we sympathize with the lovelorn, especially if they are young. We believe they will recover. Perhaps they will, whatever recovery may be. But there are times of suffering which remain in our lives like black absolutes and are not blotted out. Fortunate are those for whom these black stars shed some sort of light.

I thought this afterwards, lying upon my bed, while Francis padded softly around the house inventing tasks for himself. I lay on my bed with the curtains half pulled and gazed at the chimney piece and at the buffalo lady and at A Friend's Gift. I also felt a violent rage against Arnold, which was a kind of jealousy, a vile emotion. At least he was her father and had an indestructible connection with her. I had nothing. Did I really believe, I was asked later, that on that awful night Arnold had really come back and taken Julian away? I cannot answer this clearly. My state of mind, which I shall in a moment attempt to describe, is not easily conveyed. I felt that if I could not build a pattern of at least plausible beliefs to make some just bearable sense out of what had happened I should die. Though I suppose what I was conceiving was not true death, but a torture to which death would be preferable. How could I live with the idea that she had simply left me in the night without a word? It could not be. I knew there was an explanation. Did I desire her during this time? The question is frivolous.

In waiting time devours itself. Great hollows open up inside each minute, each second. Each moment is one at which the longed-for thing could happen. Yet at the same instant the terrified mind has flown ahead through centuries of unlightened despair. I tried to grasp and to arrest these giddy convulsions of the spirit, lying on my back on my bed and watching the window glow from dark to light and fade again from light to dark. Odd that a demonic suffering should lie supine, while a glorified suffering lies prone.

I shall now advance the narrative by quoting several letters.

I know that you will communicate with me as soon as you are able to. I will not leave the flat for a single moment. I am a corpse awaiting its Saviour. Accident and its own force induced the revelation of a passion which duty might have concealed. Once revealed, your miraculous self-giving increased it a thousandfold. I am yours forever. And I know that you love me and I absolutely trust your love. We cannot be defeated. You will come to me soon, my darling and my queen. Meanwhile, oh my dear, I am in so much pain.

B.

Dear Christian, have you now any idea where Julian is? Has Arnold taken her away somewhere? He must be keeping her hidden by force. If you can discover anything at all, however vague, let me know for God's sake B.

Please reply at once by telephone or letter. I do not want to see you.

Dear Arnold,

I am not surprised that you are afraid to face me again. I do not know how you persuaded or forced Julian to go away with you, but do not believe that any arguments of yours can keep us apart.

Julian and I have talked with full knowledge and understand each other. After your first departure all was well between us. Your "revelations" made and can make no difference. You are dealing with a kind of mutual attachment which, since you make no mention of it in your books, I assume that you know nothing of. Julian and I recognize the same god. We have found each other, we love each other, and there is no impediment to our marriage. Do not imagine that you can constitute one. You have seen that Julian was unwilling even to listen to you. Please now recognize that your daughter is grown-up and has made her choice. Accept, as indeed you finally must, her free decision in my favour. Naturally she cares what you think. Naturally too she will not finally obey you. I expect her return hourly. By the time you get this she may even be with me.

Your objection to me as a suitor has of course deep motives. The matter of my age, though important, is certainly not crucial. You have even admitted to me that as a writer you are a disappointed man. And some part of you has always envied me because I have kept my gift pure and you have not. Continual mediocre creation can sour a whole life. The compromise with the second best, which is the lot of almost every man, is by the bad artist externalized into a persisting testimony. How much better the silence and guarded speech of a more strict endeavour. That I should also have gained your daughter's love must seem, I can well understand, like the last straw.

I am sorry that our friendship, or whatever name one may give to the obsessive relationship which has bound us together for so many years, should end in this way. This is not the place to utter its elegy. If I feel vindictive towards you now, it is simply because you are an obstacle in the way of something infinitely more important than any "friendship." Doubtless it is wise of you to keep out of my way. And if you visit me again, do not bring a blunt instrument with you. I do not care for threats and hints of violence. I have, I assure you, quite enough violence inside myself ready to be provoked.

Julian and I will settle our future together privately and in our own way. We understand each other perfectly. Please accept this fact and cease your cruel and vain attempts to force your daughter to do what she does not want to do.

B.P.

Dearest Old Brad,

Brad (this is the most important part of this letter), I want to say this to you. I wish in a way I hadn't met Arnold so pat on coining back. I like him and I feel sort of curious about him and he amuses me. (And I like to be amused.) But he's a red herring, I guess. I came back for you. (Did you know that?) And I'm still here for you. I go for you in a deep way, I never really gave you up, you know. And in a deep way you're even far more amusing than Arnold. So why not let's get together? If you need consoling, I'll console you. As I told you before, I'm a damned attractive clever rich widow. A lot of people are after me. So what about it, Brad? That little old till-death-do-us-part bit did mean something, you know. I'll ring again tomorrow.

Caring for you, Brad old thing, with much love, The passage above about "waiting" may have suggested that weeks had now passed. In fact four days, which seemed like four years, had passed.

Men who live by words and writing can, as I have already observed, attach an almost magical efficacy to a communication in that medium. The letter to Julian I wrote out three times, sending one copy to Baling, one to her Training College and one to her school. I could scarcely believe that any would reach her, but it was a relief to pain to write the letters and to drop them in the box.

On the day after the funeral Hartbourne rang up to explain in detail why he had been unable to attend. I forgot to say that he had earlier dictated to Francis by telephone a carefully worded message of condolence about Priscilla's death! My doctor also rang to say that my usual brand of sleeping pill was now on the forbidden list.

On the third evening Rachel turned up. Of course whenever the doorbell rang I rushed out sick with hope and terror. Twice it was Christian (whom I did not let in), once Rigby asking for Francis. (Francis went out and they talked for some time in the court.) The fourth time it was Rachel. I saw her through the glass and opened the door.

Seeing Rachel there in the flat was like a bad trip in a time machine. There was a memory-odour like a smell of decay. I felt distressed, physically repelled, frightened. Her wide round pale face was terribly familiar, but with the ambiguous veiled familiarity of a dream. It was as if my mother had visited me in her cerements.

She came in tossing her head with a surge of excitement, a perhaps feigned air of confidence, almost of elation. She strode by me, not looking at me, her hands deep in the pockets of her tweed coat which had been cobwebbed-over by the light rain. She was purposeful and handsome and I flinched out of her way. She took off her woollen hat and her coat and shook them lightly and hung them up in the hall. We sat down in the sitting-room in the cold brown early-evening light.

Rachel smoothed her skirt down neatly about her knees. "Bradley, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about Priscilla."

"Where's Julian?"

"Don't you know?"

"I know she'll come back. I don't know where she is."

"Poor old Bradley," said Rachel. She gave a nervous ejaculatory laugh like a cough.

"Where is she?"