I have perhaps not even now sufficiently emphasized how much I was dominated during this time by an increasingly powerful sense of the imminence in my life of a great work of art. This pellet irradiated each of the «frames» of my awareness in such a way that even when I was, for example, listening to Rachel's voice or looking at Priscilla's face, I was also thinking: The time has come. At least I was not thinking these words, I was not thinking anything in words: I was simply aware of a great dark wonderful something nearby in the future, magnetically connected with me: connected with my mind, connected with my body, which sometimes literally shook or swayed under that tremendous and authoritative pull. What did I imagine that the book would be like? I did not know. But I intuitively grasped both its being and its excellence. An artist in a state of power has a serene relationship to time. Fruition is simply a matter of waiting. The work announces itself, emerges often quite whole, when the moment comes, if the apprenticeship has been correct. (As the sage looks for years at the bamboo branch, then draws it quickly and without effort.) I felt that all I needed was solitude.

What the fruits of solitude are, my dearest friend, I know now very much better and more profoundly than I did then: because of my experiences and because of your wisdom. The person that I was then seems captive and blind. My instincts were true and my sense of direction was sound. Only the way turned out to be very much longer than I expected.

The mind, so constantly busy with its own welfare, is always sensitively filing and sorting the ways in which self-respect (vanity) has been damaged. In doing so it is at the same time industriously discovering methods of making good the damage. I had felt chagrined and ashamed because Rachel regarded me as a failed muddler, and Arnold was posing as having, in some unspecified sense, «found me out.» (And, what was worse, «forgiven me»!) Reflection on what had happened was already repainting this picture. I was quite strong enough to «hold» them both, to comfort Rachel and to «play» Arnold. The sense of challenge involved already made my bruised vanity cease a little to droop.

I would console Rachel with innocent love. This resolution and the ring of the good word made me feel, on that momentous morning, a better man. But what rather preoccupied my thoughts was the image of Christian: her image rather than any definite proposition about her. These images which float in the mind's cave (and whatever the philosophers may say the mind is a dark cave full of drifting beings) are of course not neutral apparitions but already saturated with judgment, lurid with it. I still felt in waves my old poisonous hatred of this bully. I also felt the not very edifying desire beforementioned to erase, by a show of indifference, the undignified impression which I had made. I had displayed too much emotion. Now instead I must stare with cold curiosity. As I practised staring at her charged and glowing image it seemed to be dissolving and changing before my eyes. Was I beginning to remember at last that I had once loved her?

I shook myself and closed the suitcase and snapped the catch to. If I could only get started on the book. A day of solitude, and I could write down something, a precious pregnant something like a growing seed. With that for company I could make terms with the past. And I was not now thinking of reconciliations or even of exorcisms, but just of the shedding of the load of sheer biting remorse which I had carried with me through my life.

The telephone rang.

«Hartbourne here.»

«Oh hello.»

«Why didn't you come to the party?»

«What party?»

«The office party. We specially put it on a day that suited you.»

«Oh God. Sorry.»

«Everyone was very disappointed.»

«I'm terribly sorry.»

«So were we.»

«I-er-hope it was a good party all the same-«In spite of your absence it was an excellent party.»

«Who was there?»

«All the old gang. Caldicott and Grey-Pelham and Dyson and Randolph and Matheson and Hadley-Smith and-«Did Mrs. Grey-Pelham come?»

«No.»

«Oh good. Hartbourne, I am sorry.»

«Never mind, Pearson. Can we make a lunch date?»

«I'm leaving town.»

«Ah well. Wish I could get away. Send me a postcard.»

«I say, I am sorry-«Not at all.»

I put the telephone down. I felt the hand of destiny heavy upon me. Even the air was thickening as if it were full of incense or rich pollen. I looked at my watch. It was time to go to Netting Hill. I stood there in my little sitting-room and looked at the buffalo lady who was lying on her side in the lacquered display cabinet. I had not dared to try to straighten out the buffalo's crumpled leg for fear of snapping the delicate bronze. I looked where a line of sloping sun had made a flying buttress against the wall outside, making the grime stand out in lacy relief, outlining the bricks. The room, the wall, trembled with precision, as if the inanimate world were about to utter a word.

Just then the doorbell rang. I went to the door. It was Julian Baffin. I looked at her blankly.

«Bradley, you've forgotten! I've come for my Hamlet tutorial.»

«I hadn't forgotten,» I said with a silent curse. «Come in.»

«You're wearing the boots,» I said.

«Yes. It's a bit hot for them, but I wanted to show them off to you. I'm so cheered up and grateful. Are you sure you don't mind discussing Shakespeare? You look as if you were going somewhere. Did you really remember I was coming?»

«Yes, of course.»

«Oh Bradley, you are so good for my nerves. Everybody irritates me like mad except you. I didn't bring two texts. I suppose you've got one?»

«Yes. Here.»

I sat down opposite to her. She sat sidesaddle on her chair, the boots side by side, very much on display. I sat astride on mine, gripping it with my knees. I opened my copy of Shakespeare in front of me on the table. Julian laughed.

«Why are you laughing?»

«You're so matter-of-fact. I'm sure you weren't expecting me. You'd forgotten I existed. Now you're just like a schoolteacher.»

«Perhaps you are good for my nerves too.»

«Bradley, this is fun.»

«Nothing's happened yet. It may not be fun. What do you want to do?»

«I'll ask questions and you answer them.»

«Go on then.»

«I've got a whole list of questions, look.»

«I've answered that one already.»

«About Gertrude and-Yes, but I'm not convinced.»

«You're going to waste my time with these questions and then not believe my answers?»

«Well, it can be a starting point for a discussion.»

«Oh, we're to have a discussion too, are we?»

«If you have time. I know I'm lucky to get any of your time, you're so busy.»

«I'm not busy at all. I have absolutely nothing to do.»

«I thought you were writing a book.»

«Lies.»

«I know you're teasing again.»

«Well, come on, I haven't got all day.»

«Why did Hamlet delay killing Claudius?»

«Because he was a dreamy conscientious young intellectual who wasn't likely to commit a murder out of hand because he had the impression that he had seen a ghost. Next question.»

«But, Bradley, you yourself said the ghost was real.»

«I know the ghost is real, but Hamlet didn't.»

«Oh. But there must have been another deeper reason why he delayed, isn't that the point of the play?»

«I didn't say there wasn't another reason.»

«What is it?»

«He identifies Claudius with his father.»

«Oh really? So that makes him hesitate because he loves his father and so can't touch Claudius?»

«No. He hates his father.»

«Well, wouldn't that make him murder Claudius at once?»

«No. After all he didn't murder his father.»

«Well, I don't see how identifying Claudius with his father makes him not kill Claudius.»