A Severed Head

Martin, we are flying to America on the eleventh, and we intend to stay there, I shall probably be practising on the west coast, and Honor will be with me at a university job. There is no reason why our paths should cross again; and you will understand me when I say that it will be better for all of us if they do not cross. On reflection I feel sure that in returning to Antonia and mending your marriage you have done the right thing. You have, after all, a talent for a gentler world. I mean of course the right thing for your happiness and for the ultimate needs of your soul. I will not insult you with hollow words about morality. Your freedom from those bonds was what first made me take you as a companion. On what has passed you will not require, or receive, any commentary from me or from any other. Let the dignity of silence cover like the sea an enterprise which partook of madness to an extent which I think even you never realized. I wish you and Antonia well and will never forget that I loved you once. Do not reply to this letter which constitutes, from both of us, a final and authoritative farewell.

I thrust the letter into my pocket and stood quite still for a minute or two. Then opened the sideboard and fumbled for glasses. I went to the cellar for champagne. I only realized after I had got the bottle that I had somehow found it in the dark. I returned to the drawing-room.

The two women broke off their talk abruptly and looked at me nervously to see what I would do or say. I put down the glasses and began to open the champagne in silence.

'Martin,' said Rosemary, 'you're not being angry, are you?' She spoke as to a sulky child.

'Of course I'm not being angry,' I said. 'Why ever should I be angry?'

I could see the two women exchanging glances. I realized then that Rosemary must have known all along about Antonia's relations with Alexander, since doubtless it was at her flat that they met. The champagne cork hit the ceiling.

'Dear heart,' said Antonia, 'don't fret, be still, be still. We all love you, we do.' She came up to pluck again at my sleeve and I gave her a glass. I gave one to Rosemary.

I said, «I shall give you the Audubon prints as a wedding present.' I drank and began to laugh again. They watched me with disapproving puzzlement.

Twenty-nine

My child, I feel as if we two are like survivors of a wreck, who have suffered so much together that they can hardly, thereafter, bear to see each other. It is indeed for some such reason that I have avoided you, and I have felt that on your side the same reluctance must exist to renew a relation which has occasioned so much torment. What has happened to us, my darling Georgie, since that day before Christmas when we lay together in front of your fire like two children in a wood? How much i

M.

I completed the letter and looked at my watch. It was nearly eight o'clock. I decided I had better move to the departure lounge so as to be well installed in some unobtrusive position before they arrived. I wanted to see the last of them.

It was the evening of the eleventh, and I had been at London Airport all day. It had not been difficult to discover when Honor and Palmer were going. They were on an evening flight. And having decided on this course of action some time ago, when the day came I was unable to stay at home. I had sat in various bars and eaten various sandwiches. At last in a desperate effort to distract my mind I had started writing to Georgie; I was not sure if the letter would do, I was not sure if it said what I felt, I was not sure what I did feel. Only in the most abstract possible way was I able to attend to Georgie. I was really conscious of nothing except that soon I should see Honor and it would be for the last time.

I had not replied to Palmer's letter. Of course I had started on half a dozen replies, but in the end it seemed slightly less painful to accept the blow in silence as, what it clearly was, final. I read his letter again and again trying to see just what insight into my condition lay behind it, what possible discussion between the pair of them about how best to finish me off. One might as well have guessed at a conversation of gods. But it was certain that now Palmer knew.

Antonia and Alexander had gone to Rome. I was profoundly relieved when they went. I had moved back with all my belongings to Lowndes Square. The removal men seemed to have got quite used to moving the things to and fro. I did not know whether I would stay there, but I had had to get out of Hereford Square, and had indeed got out on the very evening of Antonia's second revelation. I had of course proved a disappointment to Antonia. I did not know quite how keenly she felt it and I did not at all inquire. I treated her with a mocking friendliness which kept her puzzled, and met her continual affection with continual irony. I could not forgive her and I wanted her out of my sight. I too had become harder and more absolute, and a constant and unmixed sense of my loss kept me so. The talent for a gentler world which Palmer had remarked upon was precisely what had now died in me. It had been at best no very saintly talent; merely a quieter mode of selfishness. Yet I did not once break out, and neither Antonia nor Alexander knew exactly what I was thinking. It gave me a little satisfaction to keep them in the dark.

That the gentle Alexander had so long ago put horns on my head I could not forgive either. This particular treachery had a quality so pure that it seemed almost independent of Antonia. It was as if Alexander had done something to the whole of my past, to years that stretched far back, beyond my marriage, into the nursery, into the womb. That he in whom, more than any other, my mother lived again should so quietly and so relentlessly have defrauded me cast a shadow that was like a scar upon an i