A Severed Head

'How is Antonia?' said Palmer.

'Very well,' I said.

'I doubt that,' said Palmer, 'but she will recover. Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. She will forget soon.'

'You demon,' I said. 'You speak as if you were not, yourself, in the least involved.' I spoke dully, however.

'No, no,' said Palmer. 'Don't misunderstand me. I was very carried away by your wife, very carried away indeed.' He sneezed again and said 'Damn!'

'Have you succeeded in forgetting how charming she is?' I asked.

'Do you want me to?' said Palmer.

'Leave me out,' I said.

'Dear boy, how can I?' said Palmer.

'That's the trouble,' I said. 'No one can leave me out. Yet I don't fit in either. Never mind.'

'Why did you come?' said Palmer.

'Just so as to close the matter. Antonia likes things neat.'

'By «neat» do you mean tidy or pure?'

'Tidy. You flatter yourself, by the way. Elle ne vous aime plus. But your cooperation is needed to make an end. How exactly you do it I leave to you. These subtleties are in any case your province.'

'Does Antonia want to see me?' said Palmer. I looked at him closely. His clever eyes were upon me. His hand moved slowly to jettison a handkerchief. The darkly shadowed cheek seemed to suit him, suggestive of some half remembered picture of Dionysus. I thought, he is sure I have told her. I said, 'No.'

Palmer watched me a while and then sighed and said, 'It is better so.' He added, 'How are you, Martin?'

'Dead,' I said. 'Otherwise fine.'

'Come,' said Palmer, 'tell me, tell me.' His voice was caressing and persuasive.

I was surprised to find myself braced as for a resistance. I said, 'Nothing, nothing.'

'What do you mean, nothing?'

'I mean, no loose ends.'

'You are a liar, aren't you,' said Palmer.

I stared at him. It seemed impossible that he should not know all that was in my mind. I wondered what Honor had told him. I said, 'Palmer, I came here to take leave of you, on behalf of Antonia, and to arrange to remove the things which she left here. May we keep our attention on those two matters?'

'I've had her things packed,' said Palmer. 'That will be dealt with. But do you seriously intend to stay with Antonia after all this?'

'Yes.'

'You are most unwise,' he said. 'You should take this opportunity to part. It will be far better for both of you – and harder later. I speak quite disinterestedly, of course.'

'Clinically,' I said. Some deep attentive thing within me responded to his words as to a longed-for summons. But I continued, 'We are not going to part. And anyway it's our business.'

'Your marriage is over, Martin,' said Palmer. 'Why not recognize it? Wouldn't you like to talk it over with me? Indeed if you like «clinically». I don't mean necessarily now this minute, but soon. I feel sure I could help you.'

I laughed. 'For the first time since I met you I find you capable of stupidity.'

Palmer looked at me with the deliberate gentleness of the professional doctor. I noticed that behind his head the row of Japanese prints had been replaced. He said, 'What seems to you my stupidity is simply my need. We don't want to lose you.'

'We,' I said, 'for heaven's sake?'

'Honor and I,' said Palmer.

I tried very hard, deepening my frown, to let my face reveal nothing. 'What would not losing me consist in?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'Why should we be able to define it beforehand? Let me be simple. I think it is important for you both that you should leave Antonia. You want to leave Antonia; and this is not a moment for placating your very abstract sense of duty. On the whole, «do what you want» costs others less than «do what you ought». You will destroy Antonia slowly if you stay with her. Be resolute. And don't be ashamed to accept help. The psyche abhors a vacuum. Honor and I are going away soon to travel, far away, and for a long time. Nothing real detains you. Come with us.'

I looked at the ground. Palmer had a talent for making me feel that I was going mad. I had never heard speak more clearly the voice that says 'all is permitted'. And with that 'all is permitted' came also 'all is possible', and a vision of Honor, somehow, somewhere, after all, existing in my future. I looked up again and saw that, coming from the door behind Palmer, she had entered the room.

I rose, and for a second I wondered if I should faint. But then, holding the back of my chair, I saw myself confronting them as a prisoner confronts his judges. This made me harden and I breathed and sat down again, staring.

Honor was dressed in a high-necked black garment of which I could not remember afterwards whether it was a silk dress or an overall. Her arms were bare below the elbow. She stood behind Palmer, whose relaxed body seemed to glow with awareness of her, and they both observed me, Honor with her head lowered and her shining band of hair falling forward to frame her eyes. She stood behind Palmer like a captor, and the voluptuous curve of his relaxed body spoke the word 'victim'. I felt I ought to turn away.

'I've asked Martin to join us,' said Palmer. He was watching me with a broad half-smiling face, as one might watch a struggling fish or a fly.

'Are you mocking me, Palmer?' I said. I could not look at Honor.

'Don't fall below your destiny, Martin,' said Palmer. 'As a psycho-analyst, I don't of course imagine that freedom is to be won by convulsive movements of the will. All the same, there are times of decision. You are not a man to be bound by ordinary rules. Only let your imagination encompass what your heart privately desires. Tell yourself: nothing is impossible.'

I laughed and rose to my feet again. 'You are mad,' I said. 'Do you really imagine that I could live, for however short a while, with you two, that I can even go on knowing you two? Am I to take this seriously?' At this my eyes met Honor's over Palmer's head.

In that instant a communication passed between us, and even as it did so I reflected that it was perhaps the final one. I did not imagine it; she gave me a very slight shake of the head and a curtain came down over her eyes. It was a decisive and authoritative farewell: in the pain of which, as I received it, I also knew for certain that she had not talked about me to her brother. It was our first and last moment of intimacy, vivid, but concentrated to a solitary point. I looked back instantly to Palmer.

I said, 'We have finished with each other.'

'In that case,' said Palmer, 'since we are going away for good, I doubt if we shall meet again.'

'Then good-bye,' I said.

'As you choose, Martin,' said Palmer, 'as you choose.'

Twenty-five

'He was terribly depressed and disappointed,' I said, 'but as you can imagine, very clear-headed. He told me to say you're not to worry about him and that he'll recover in time. He said how grateful he was to you, how he hoped he hadn't hurt you, how he wished it had all been possible. He was brave though. He said he had to accept your decision and that it wouldn't really have worked. But he said it was a marvellous attempt and he wouldn't wish it undone.'

We had been over this a number of times. 'I wonder how I know that you're lying?' said Antonia.

It was breakfast-time, a late breakfast-time, on the next day. Antonia and I, still in dressing-gowns, were sitting on over the cold toast and coffee. It seemed that neither of us could move. She was pale, listless, and irritable. I was exhausted.

'I'm not lying,' I said. 'If you won't believe what I say, why do you keep asking me?'

Now that the taboo had been broken Antonia could talk of nothing but Palmer, endlessly remaking her relationship with him retrospectively.

'Whatever he said he didn't say that,' said Antonia.