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Ducane got up and walked about the room. The scene had certainly been cleared. Fivey gone, Judy gone, Bira
His eyes were watery and yellowed. His nose was shiny and red from the sun. He wanted somebody, somebody. He needed a shave, He said to himself, an era of my life has come to an end. He reached for some writing paper and sat down and began to write.
My dear Octavian,
It is with great regret that I write to tell you that I must tender my resignation…
Thirty-eight
Will I faint when I see him? Paula wondered.
It was idiotic to meet in the National Gallery. He had suggested on a postcard that they should meet beside the Bronzino.
Paula had been touched. But it was a silly Richardesque idea all the same. If he had sent a letter and not a postcard she might have suggested something else. As it was she felt all she could do was send another postcard saying yes. Fortunately there was nobody about at this fairly early hour except an attendant who was now in the next room.
Paula had arrived too soon. As Richard, with characteristic thoughtlessness, had suggested an early morning meeting, she had had to stay overnight at a hotel. She did not want to stay either with John Ducane or with Octavian and Kate. Indeed she had not told Octavian and Kate. And she needed to be alone. She had not slept. She had been unable to eat any breakfast.
She had sat twisting her hands in the hotel lounge and watching the clock. Then she had to run to the cloakroom thinking she was going to be sick. At last she rushed out of the hotel and got into a taxi. Now there was half an hour to wait.
I might faint, thought Paula. She still felt sick and a black canopy seemed to be suspended over her head, its lower fringes swinging just above the level of her eyes. If that blackness were to come rushing down her body would twist and tilt and she would fall head first down into a dark shaft. She felt the vertigo and the falling movement. I'd better sit down, she thought. She moved carefully to the square leather-cushioned seat in the centre of the room and sat down.
The violence, the violence remained between them like a mountain, or rather it had become more like a dreadful attri bute of Richard himself, as if he had been endowed with a menacing metal limb. Odd to think that. It was Eric who really had the metal limb. Had that scene in the billard room made Richard impossible for her for ever? She had never really thought this, but she seemed to have assumed it. Without it she would never have left Richard. With it she had not even wondered if it was possible to stay. Was it reasonable, was it not mad, to find this thing so important, so as it were, physically important?
Paula stared at Bronzino's picture. Since Richard had appropriated the picture she had deliberately refrained from making any theoretical study of it, but she remembered vaguely. some of the things which she had read about it earlier on. The figures at the top of the picture are Time and Truth, who are drawing back a blue veil to reveal the ecstatic kiss which Cupid is giving to his Mother. The wailing figure behind Cupid is Jealousy. Beyond the plump figure of the rose-bearing Pleasure, the sinister enamel-faced girl with the scaly tail represents Deceit. Paula noticed for the first time the strangeness of the girl's hands, and then saw that they were reversed, the right hand on the left arm, the left hand on the right arm. Truth stares, Time moves. But the butterfly kissing goes on, the lips just brushing, the long shining bodies juxtaposed with almost awkward tenderness, not quite embracing. How like Richard it all is, she thought, so intellectual, so sensual.
A man had appeared in the doorway. He seemed to materialize rather than to arrive. Paula felt great force pin her against the back of her seat. He came quickly forward and sat beside her.