Judith by Nicholas Mosley Page B

this, that I was talking to the Professor. I felt as if I were still at the top of a long steep slope. I would have to move out of the hostel. I thought I might shout – Help! Here I come!
    I had the bunch of keys under my pillow as if they were some life-line that had been thrown to me by Oliver.
    Well, there are some coincidences that are more coincidental than others, aren’t there?
    By morning Krishna had not come to my room. I thought – That’s that: and a mercy anyway.
    I got out the bunch of keys.
    There were one or two things that did not quite make sense about the previous evening. Oliver and I had stood by thewindow overlooking the river; he had said ‘Promise to ring me in the morning!’ The keys had a label with the address on it. Keys were a Freudian sex-symbol weren’t they? They were also some symbol of death. Keys were to heaven or to hell: at the top and bottom of the staircase.
    I thought – I know how Oliver would operate: he is like me.
    Rock bottom is not always a metaphor; not at least when you hit it.
    Had he not said that his wife and his girlfriend had both just left him?
    I thought I should ring Oliver as soon as possible.
    At first Krishna was in the entrance hall where the telephone was; then he went down to his room. Oliver’s number was engaged. Then Krishna came up from his room.
    I thought – Hurry: you must hurry.
    You sometimes know what is happening don’t you? even when you can’t put it into language.
    â€“ There are the guns and the tanks in the streets outside the theatre –
    I dressed and went out of the house and ran to a call-box. When Oliver’s number was still engaged I asked the operator to check to see if there was anyone talking on the line. There was not. I thought – Hurry; it is proper to hurry. Then – Or is it just that for once I feel straightforwardly needed?
    I went out of the call-box and looked for a taxi.
    I had no money for a taxi. I thought – Either Oliver will pay, or if he does not, then there may well have been an excuse to have taken a taxi without any money.
    I told the taxi-driver the address that was on the keys and the taxi went up to the West End. I thought – To heaven or hell, what is the difference? The building where Oliver had his flat was another large Victorian apartment block with turrets and battlements and towers. I felt as if I were a knight approaching where a sleeping beauty was lying. I asked the taxi-driver to wait. By the door there was a column of bells with numbers and names against them: there was no name against the number of Oliver’s flat. I rang, then let myself in with one ofthe keys. There was a rather grand hallway with a lift. Oliver’s flat was on the top floor.
    I thought – It is with the drama, or the being needed, that you feel powerful, elect, perfect?
    I went up in the lift. On the top floor there was a landing with two doors to flats; a passage went along to another door with glass in it which gave on to what looked like a fire-escape. I rang the bell by the door of Oliver’s flat; I knocked; then I used the keys to go in. Inside the flat there was an extraordinary heat; it was like the engine-room of a ship; there was a passage which went past the open door of a sitting-room – this had packing-cases on the floor and dust-sheets over the furniture – then there was a kitchen and a bathroom on the other side of the passage and at the end a door which seemed likely to lead to a bedroom. Through this there came a scraping noise. It was like the creaking of a ship – one of those ships, perhaps, from which the crew have mysteriously disappeared. I went in. Oliver was lying on the bed on his back wearing the white shirt and black trousers he had been wearing the night before; his hands were folded across his chest like those of a crusader. The scraping noise was coming from his mouth, which was open: the noise was his