A Severed Head

Eight

Liverpool Street Station smelt of sulphur and brimstone. Thick fog filled it and the great cast-iron dome was invisible. The platform lights were dulled, powerless to cast any radiance out into the relentless haze, so that the darkness seemed to have got inside one's head. Excited, strangely exhilerated by the fog, obscure figures peered and hurried past. One moved about within a small dimly lighted sphere, surrounded by an opaque yet luminous yellow night out of which with startling sudde

I had got the car out early in case I should get lost on the way. However, flaring fog lights all along Piccadilly and Holborn had kept me crawling steadily on, and I had arrived in fair time. I had already inquired how late the train would be, which no one seemed to know, and had inspected the bookstall at length and purchased a cheap edition of a book about jungle warfare in Burma. I was now sitting in the comparative brightness of the buffet sipping some rather cold tea. I shook out my scarf, which was damp and soggy. I could have wrung the moisture from it. I was chilled to the bone and so dejected that it was almost laughable. With that I felt more than a little mad.

The scene with Antonia had left me stiff and weary, as if I had been beaten, or had come a very long way. I was by now in a state which could only be described as being in love. Yet it was a strange love, whose only possible expression was my acquiescence in her will to keep that thread unbroken between us. At the same time, to consent to this was torture and I felt the tender bond like a strangler's rope. I was confounded by the utter impossibility of violence. Yet violence, veiled with misery, moved within. What most appalled was the sense which I had so clearly had when I was with Antonia of my need for her, my need for them; and what I now abjectly craved was to see Palmer and to receive from him some impossible inconceivable reassurance. I was their prisoner, and I choked with it. But I too much feared the darkness beyond.

I looked at my watch. It was five fifty-four, still too early for a drink. I got up and went out to inquire again at the platform where the train was due. Still no one seemed to know how late it would be, and I stood about for a while with my coat collar turned up, breathing the thick contaminated air. It pressed down into my lungs, cold, damp, and filthy, doing me no good at all. The place was an image of hell. I wondered if I would recognize Dr Klein. I could not recall her face, and could conjure up only some generalized image of a middle-aged Germanic spinster. I remembered being disappointed at her lack of any resemblance to Palmer. Otherwise she had seemed so true to type as to be without special points of interest. I took a gloomy satisfaction in performing the disagreeable task of meeting her. To be icily and inconveniently here, suffocating on this railway station and faced with the discomfort of a long wait: this was after all the only thing I could do just now to spite Antonia and Palmer. It was for this moment my only weapon. Also it passed the time.

I bought an evening paper and read about how many people had been killed already by the fog. The time was five fifty-nine. I began to think about Georgie and about our meeting tomorrow. I could find somewhere in my heart a warm germ of gladness at the thought of Georgie. Yet I was terrified of seeing her too. I could not at present face anything in the way of a showdown or argument about fundamentals with Georgie. I had been as it were too completely reabsorbed into Antonia. I could think of nothing but Antonia. The pressure upon me of Georgie's needs, any requirement that I should now imagine her situation, would be intolerable, and I felt sick at the thought. Yet I did want to see her. I wanted consolation, I wanted love, I wanted, to save me, some colossal and powerful love such as I had never known before. 'That train's coming in now, sir,' said the ticket collector.

The roar of the unseen train reached a crescendo and then died to a rattle and its nose became visible at the near end of the platform. People began to materialize very rapidly at the barrier, and I concentrated on my, as it now seemed impossible, task of recognizing the person I was to meet. Several middle-aged women passed by with strained preoccupied faces and rapidly vanished. Everyone was hurrying and everyone looked ill. It was the Inferno indeed. I began to cough. Dr Klein would be looking for her brother, and I supposed I might identify her by her own searchings and hesitations. But I would have to do it quickly, for if she wandered even a few steps away from the barrier she would be lost in the fog.

When Palmer's sister did at last appear I recognized her at once. The face came back to me with a rush, as so often happens when what one ca

I said 'Dr Klein?'

She turned towards me and glared. She had clearly no idea who I was.

I said, 'I am Martin Lynch-Gibbon. We have met before, though you may have forgotten. Palmer asked me to meet you. May I carry something?'

I noticed that she was hugging a lot of small parcels, which gave her something of the air of a mid-European Hausfrau. When she spoke I expected a thick German accent, and was surprised by her deep cultured English voice. I had forgotten her voice.

'Where is my brother?' she said.

'He's at home,' I said. 'He's got a cold. Nothing serious. I'll take you there at once. The car is just outside. Here, let me take this.' I relieved her of the largest parcel.

As she handed it over Dr Klein gave me a keen look. Her narrow dark eyes, which seemed in the strange light to be shot with red, had the slightly Oriental appearance peculiar to certain Jewish women. There was something animal-like and repellent in that glistening stare. She said, 'This is an unexpected courtesy, Mr Lynch-Gibbon.'

It took me a moment to apprehend the scorn in this remark. It took me by surprise, and I was surprised too how much it hurt. It occurred to me that this was the first judgement I had received from an outsider since I had officially taken up my position as a cuckold, and I was irritated to find that, for a second, I minded cutting a poor figure. It certainly might seem an odd moment to be ru

Outside the fog was as thick as ever, and it took me some time to get the car into the street. The baffled headlights glowed, tiny futile balls, in front of a wall of darkness which their beams could not pierce. We began to proceed at a walking pace along Cheapside. In order to say something I asked, 'Was it foggy in Cambridge?'

'No, not foggy.'

'Your train was very punctual. We expected it to be late.'

A grunt was the reply to this. I said to myself, I don't care what this object thinks of me. The fog came steadily over us in waves and it was extremely difficult to see where one was on the road. People had abandoned their cars here and there by the pavement, and there were a great many obstacles to avoid on the left, while on the right the headlights of approaching vehicles only at the last moment materialized out of the thick darkness. To keep straight along the narrow cha