sinister, full of people sitting like ordinary people sure of where they were going, all silent, all watching me, waiting to rise and push me out if I attempted to join their ranks. I was paralysed with terror. Then I clearly saw Rob lying on the bed in the other room, the red one, waiting for me. So I made for the escalator and took the Tube and went back to him as fast as possible. He was not there.
Around midnight there was a tap on the door and in came—that final one. The last one, at last; having known his time would come, and bided it. Selbig was his scarcely ever spoken name, Ernst Selbig, Jewish doctor with a cut-off European past he never mentioned, with eyes like pits and hairy hands … Saint, corrupt saint. Thank God he’s dead too: suicide, just before war was declared … He came to make me cry and make me drunk, and he did both. Oh, how drunk I got and cried, how I soaked his coat! The things I told him … He wished to make me free of his rotting humourless world of wisdom and understanding, of pity for incurable humanity. Ach! Sometimes I think cynics do less harm. He came to tell me Rob would never come back; he came to initiate me into the human condition, into freedom. Oh, I couldn’t understand his mystic bunk … But the more I drank the more it seemed like truth, salvation. Oh, I was drunk. Drunk, drunk … Macerated with the tears of all humanity! As good a way to make an end as any other. Whirling, dissolving with the floor and the ceiling and the mad red roses of Rob’s wallpaper and that dark breathing bulk coming down silent on me with a reek of brandy to invade my free, my free-for-all body … Going, let go, pass out, well over the plunging edge now, all of us bubbles flying, floating all of us, all gone, all drowned together—I, my lost lovers, Selbig … someone moaning.
Not once looking back, Rickie reached his house, ran up the steps, let himself in, slammed the door, called out:
‘Darling!’
There was a pause; then, from the first floor, Madeleine’s voice came down on precisely the anticipated note. ‘ There you are.’ Tense, querulously inquisitive. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Sorry, I was kept.’
‘Do you realize we’ve got to start in ten minutes?’
‘I do.’ I do, you bet I do.
He went on into the dining-room and opened the cupboard of the sideboard. He heard her come swishing downstairs, her voice: ‘Where are you?’ Her head came round the door in a familiar gesture—peering on the threshold, goose-like, stretching her long neck as if to search out the lie of the land before advancing. Exasperating habit. ‘Oh, that’s where you are.’
‘This is where I am.’
She watched him swallow half a tumblerful of whisky, opened her lips, drew in a sharp breath, said nothing. Out of the corner of an eye he took in her appearance, thinking she looked a bit garish: petunia pink evening frock, a colour he disliked, white fur wrap, diamond clips and earrings, make-up overdone, blue-shadowed eyelids between frowning forehead and hard anxious stare. She was beginning to plaster it on, he thought, like all the rest of them. All but one. One pale one. White moth among Painted Ladies, quite out of place in this our life. Brush her off, let her fly or fall … Too late. Can’t be done. Impaled, look, wing-stretched, stiff, a long sharp pin through her … through me, impaling me.
‘Very pretty, very nice. Not quite sure about the colour. Nice, I think. Yes. New?’ Tumbler in hand, he slightly jerked his head towards her.
‘ This thing! Heavens no. Really, Rickie! You’ve seen it half a dozen times.’
Glancing again, he saw her deliberately start to alter her expression, replace it with a patient mildness.
‘What kept you?’ she pleasantly inquired. ‘I couldn’t make it out when you knew— I finally rang the office. I couldn’t get any answer.’
‘Couldn’t you make that out? There’s nobody on the switchboard after five-thirty, have I never told
Around midnight there was a tap on the door and in came—that final one. The last one, at last; having known his time would come, and bided it. Selbig was his scarcely ever spoken name, Ernst Selbig, Jewish doctor with a cut-off European past he never mentioned, with eyes like pits and hairy hands … Saint, corrupt saint. Thank God he’s dead too: suicide, just before war was declared … He came to make me cry and make me drunk, and he did both. Oh, how drunk I got and cried, how I soaked his coat! The things I told him … He wished to make me free of his rotting humourless world of wisdom and understanding, of pity for incurable humanity. Ach! Sometimes I think cynics do less harm. He came to tell me Rob would never come back; he came to initiate me into the human condition, into freedom. Oh, I couldn’t understand his mystic bunk … But the more I drank the more it seemed like truth, salvation. Oh, I was drunk. Drunk, drunk … Macerated with the tears of all humanity! As good a way to make an end as any other. Whirling, dissolving with the floor and the ceiling and the mad red roses of Rob’s wallpaper and that dark breathing bulk coming down silent on me with a reek of brandy to invade my free, my free-for-all body … Going, let go, pass out, well over the plunging edge now, all of us bubbles flying, floating all of us, all gone, all drowned together—I, my lost lovers, Selbig … someone moaning.
Not once looking back, Rickie reached his house, ran up the steps, let himself in, slammed the door, called out:
‘Darling!’
There was a pause; then, from the first floor, Madeleine’s voice came down on precisely the anticipated note. ‘ There you are.’ Tense, querulously inquisitive. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Sorry, I was kept.’
‘Do you realize we’ve got to start in ten minutes?’
‘I do.’ I do, you bet I do.
He went on into the dining-room and opened the cupboard of the sideboard. He heard her come swishing downstairs, her voice: ‘Where are you?’ Her head came round the door in a familiar gesture—peering on the threshold, goose-like, stretching her long neck as if to search out the lie of the land before advancing. Exasperating habit. ‘Oh, that’s where you are.’
‘This is where I am.’
She watched him swallow half a tumblerful of whisky, opened her lips, drew in a sharp breath, said nothing. Out of the corner of an eye he took in her appearance, thinking she looked a bit garish: petunia pink evening frock, a colour he disliked, white fur wrap, diamond clips and earrings, make-up overdone, blue-shadowed eyelids between frowning forehead and hard anxious stare. She was beginning to plaster it on, he thought, like all the rest of them. All but one. One pale one. White moth among Painted Ladies, quite out of place in this our life. Brush her off, let her fly or fall … Too late. Can’t be done. Impaled, look, wing-stretched, stiff, a long sharp pin through her … through me, impaling me.
‘Very pretty, very nice. Not quite sure about the colour. Nice, I think. Yes. New?’ Tumbler in hand, he slightly jerked his head towards her.
‘ This thing! Heavens no. Really, Rickie! You’ve seen it half a dozen times.’
Glancing again, he saw her deliberately start to alter her expression, replace it with a patient mildness.
‘What kept you?’ she pleasantly inquired. ‘I couldn’t make it out when you knew— I finally rang the office. I couldn’t get any answer.’
‘Couldn’t you make that out? There’s nobody on the switchboard after five-thirty, have I never told
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