I would not turn and look at her.

“Before the war I twice played roles somewhat similar to Lily’s with you. She is prepared to do things that I was not. I had far more inhibitions to shed. I also had a husband whom I loved sexually as well as in the other more important ways. But since we have penetrated so deep into your life, I owe it to you to say that even when my husband was living I sometimes gave myself, with his full knowledge and consent, to Maurice. And in the war he in his turn had an Indian mistress, with my full knowledge and consent. Yet I believe ours was a very complete marriage, a very happy one, because we kept to two essential rules. We never told each other lies. And the other one… I will not tell you until I know you better.”

I looked around then, contemptuously. I found her calm vehemence uncomfortable; the madness erupting out of calm. She sat down again, on her throne.

“Of course, if you wish to live in the world of received ideas and received manners, what we did, and what my daughter did, is disgusting. Very well. But remember that there is another possible explanation. She may have been being very brave. Neither I nor my children pretend to be ordinary people. They were not brought up to be ordinary. We are rich and we are intelligent and we mean to live rich, intelligent lives.”

I said without turning. “Lucky you.”

“Of course. Lucky us. And we accept the responsibility that our good luck in the lottery of existence puts upon us.”

“Responsibility!” I wheeled round on her again.

“Do you really think we do this just for you? Do you really believe we are not… charting the voyage?” I stared back at her, then turned away. She went on in a milder yoice. “All that we did was to us a necessity.” She meant, not self-indulgence.

“With all the necessity of gratuitous obscenity.”

“With all the necessity of a very complex experiment.”

“I like my experiments simple.”

“The days of simple experiments are over.”

A long silence fell between us. I was still full of spleen; and in some obscure way frightened to think of Alison in this woman’s hands. As one hears of a countryside one has loved being sold to building developers. And I also felt left behind, abandoned again. I did not belong to this other-planet world. She came behind me and put her hand on my shoulder and made me turn.

“Do I look an evil woman? Did my daughters?”

“Actions. Not looks.” My voice sounded raw; I wanted to slap her arm down, to get out.

“Are you absolutely sure our actions have been nothing but evil?”

I looked down. I wouldn’t answer. She took her hand away, but stayed close in front of me.

“Will you trust me a little—just for a little while?” I shook my head, but she went on. “You can always telephone me. If you want to watch the house, please do. But I warn you that you will see no one you want to see. Only Benjie and Gunnel and my two middle children when they come home from France next week. Only one person is making you wait at the moment.”

“She should tell me so herself.”

She looked out of the window, then sideways at me.

“I should so like to help you.”

“I want Alison. Not help.”

“May I call you Nicholas now?” I turned away from her; went to the sofa table, stared down at the photos there. “Very well. I will not ask again.”

We faced each other.

“I could go to a newspaper and sell them the story. I could ruin your whole blasted…”

“Just as you could have brought that cat down across my daughter’s back.”

I looked sharply back at her. “It was you? In the sedan?”

“No.”

“Alison?”

“You were told. It was empty.” She met my disbelieving eyes. “I give you my word. It was not Alison. Or myself.” She smiled at my still suspicious look. “Well. Perhaps there was someone there.”

“Who?”

“Someone… quite famous in the world. Whose face you might have recognized. That is all.”

Tendrils of her sympathy began to sneak their way through my anger. With a curt look, I wheeled and walked towards the door. She came after me, snatching up a sheet of paper from the top of the desk.

“Please take this.”

I saw a list of names; dates of birth; Hughes to de Seitas, February 22, 1933; the telephone number.

“It doesn’t prove anything.”

“Yes it does. Go to Somerset House.”

I shrugged, pushed the list carelessly in my pocket and went on without looking at her. I opened the front door with her just behind me; and she came down the steps after me. I got in and she stood by the car. I gave her a quick glance up and reached for the ignition key, but her hand stopped my arm.

“I shall be waiting.”

“You’ll have to wait then.” I stared balefully up at her. “Because I’ll see Alison in hell before I come to you again.”

Her hand stayed, as if she wanted to say something more. I stared at the dashboard. The moment her hand lifted I switched on. As I went out of the gate I saw her in the mirror. She was standing there on the step in front of the open door, and her arms were raised in the Ka gesture.

Yet even then I knew I was pretending to be angrier than I really was; that just as she was trying to break down my hostility by charm, I was trying to break down her charm by hostility. I didn’t in the least regret being ungracious, rebuffing her overtures; and I more than half meant, at the time, what I said about Alison.

Because this was now the active mystery: that I was not allowed to meet Alison. Something was expected of me, some Orphean performance that would gain me access to the underworld where she was hidden… or hiding herself. I was on probation. But no one gave me any real indication of what I was meant to be proving. I had apparently found the entrance to Tartarus. But that brought me no nearer Eurydice.

Just as the things Lily de Seitas had told me brought me no nearer the permanent mystery: what voyage, what charts?

My anger carried me through the next day; but the day after that I went to Somerset House and found that every fact Lily de Seitas had given me to check was true, and somehow this turned my anger into a depression. That evening I rang up her number in Much Hadham. The Norwegian girl answered the phone.

“Dinsford House. Please, who is it?” I said nothing. Someone must have called, because I heard the girl say, “There is no one to answer.”

Then there came another voice.

“Hello. Hello.”

I put down the receiver. She was still there. But nothing would make me speak to her.

The next day, the third after the visit, I spent in getting drunk and in composing a bitter letter to Alison in Australia. I had decided that that was where she was. It said everything I had to say to her; I must have read it twenty times, as if by reading it enough I could turn it into the definitive truth about my innocence and her complicity. But I kept on putting off posting it, and in the end it spent the night on the mantelpiece.

I had got into the habit of going down and having breakfast with Kemp most mornings, though not those last three, when I had carried with me a scowl against the whole human condition. Kemp had no time at all for the kitchen, but she could make a good cup of coffee; and on the fourth morning, I badly needed it.

When I came in she put the Daily Worker down—she read the Worker “for the truth” and a certain other paper “for the fucking lies"—and sat there smoking. Her mouth without a cigarette was like a yacht without a mast; one presumed disaster. We exchanged a couple of sentences. She fell silent. But during the next few minutes I became aware that I was undergoing a prolonged scrutiny through the smoke she wore like a merciful veil in front of her Gorgon-like morning face. I pretended to read; but that didn’t deceive her.