A STAGE ON THE WAY

At first, he did not know where the light was coming from. But it moved so delightfully across the ceiling that he did not care. It lapped in waves across the painted boards, a brighter crest, a darker trough, counter-pointing those places where the duck-egg blue paint was peeling and itself made a miniature, three-dimensional ocean. In some ways it reminded him of a model he had seen in Eastbourne Lifeboat Station as a small boy, holding Mummy's hand very tight so that he wouldn't get lost; you put in a penny, and the painted sea heaved, and the lightning flashed and the light-house signalled, and the wrecked ship went up and down, and the breeches buoy went to and fro, and then the penny had run out and it had all stopped and you had to put in another one. He had given a lot of money to the lifeboats. He had been in that storm. He had felt the rain and the wind and been tossed about by the raging canvas sea.

He knew the light on the ceiling must come from water. Its motion was unpredictable and irregular, but circumscribed. It never repeated itself, but it never did anything totally new. He remembered having to translate a piece of Latin in the fourth form (Vergil? who knew?) about the reflection of light on the ceiling from open vessels of water, and the poet compared the shifting light, that moved without apparent cause, and was never still, though the water never spilt, to the movements within the human soul. He must have been going through a sensitive period then, because it made such an impression on him that when he was roped in to take tea with Mother and her friends (he knew he was being shown off, and didn't mind it if they really took an interest, but felt terribly embarrassed if it was just Mother going on about how clever he was, and the rest of them aching to talk about dress materials or how their husbands were coping at the front, or which resort they'd be going to this year, so as to be out of range of the Zeppelins), when he had nothing to do but sit on the sofa and look intelligent while the maid served the sandwiches and the cakes with the tongs, when he'd been scolded with one of Mother's bitterest looks for taking three lumps of sugar just so he could play with those fascinating extending grips that came with the lid of the sugar-bowl, then he would sit back and be quiet and look at the reflections of the tea in the tea-cups on the ceiling, and he was always very disappointed when one of the ladies finished hers and didn't want any more, because it meant one fewer circle of light to observe. In the fifth form, he learnt that what Vergil (or Tibullus, or Propertius, or Catullus) had likened to the deeper currents of the human soul was in fact the result of Brownian motion, a whole lot of atoms just running around and bumping into one another and jostling for position without any very clear notion of where they were going - rather like Lower School playing rugby, the master had said, and got a laugh.

So the light whose source he could not identify came from water. But what water? Where, in fact, was he? Already he had been back twice into his childhood - three times, in fact - would he have to relive the whole of his life, jumping around like a flea or a gnat on the stream, just to find a thread and follow it through to the present time to tell himself where he was and what he was doing? He had been so soundly asleep that all sense of his surroundings had deserted him, together with any knowledge of his immediate activities. He was reminded of those very old people who lose all memory for today or yesterday, but live with shrieking clarity in the minutiae of fifty years before, asking with constant and heart-breaking urgency after the whereabouts of parents who promised to be away for only five minutes and then return for them, but are in fact long since dead and turned to the same dust as the annual wreaths which have adorned their graves for the past quarter-century or more.

Where would he have to begin? Where would he have to plunge his hand into the stream to tickle the trout of remembrance? What fly would he have to use to make the salmon of self-consciousness bite and strain the line of life till it pulled him into his own present? These fishing images that kept on swimming to the surface, were they a clue? He liked watching water well enough as it swirled by or glided smoothly, bubbles rising from the fermenting depths, or fish snapping flies, he was never quite sure which, you always turned your head that instant too late to see and had only the ever-widening rings and ripples to contemplate while you speculated about their first cause and they spent their energy in reaching the bank beside you and died in the reeds and the brook-lime, under the shade of the loose-strife and the calamint, where the rich-foliaged, languid comfrey drowsed and nodded, white and purple. He loved streams, but he was not a fisherman, though he knew his father had leased a rod on many Scottish salmon runs before the War, and come home with his huge catches, wrapped in leaves if it was an autumn holiday in the Highlands, in a cardboard box packed with ice when it was only a weekend that he had stolen from his work and his family. All that was gone now, and his father too, somewhere in France in 1918, and his mother tidied away in a little flat in Knightsbridge, showing pictures of her son to her friends as she poured the tea for them herself and handed round the very thinly cut cucumber sandwiches. No, he was not a fisherman - 'God give thee strength, o gentle trout, to pull the rascal in!' was more his motto.

So who could he have been talking to, to have his mind so full of the finny tribe? Stretches of river came into view, not made for fishing, but made for lazing on in deep-bottomed punts, with bottles of brown ale cooling in the water, and door-step sandwiches with wedges of cheddar sharp amidst the sweet butter. They'd tried fishing, then, with crumbs as bait and the empty bottles as floats, and Herbie Hargreaves, who never let anybody call him your Lordship, had had the knack and landed three fish that he couldn't put a name to but called 'Fenland Flounders', and he'd explained that he really didn't know what went on in the murky depths of muddy rivers, because he'd been brought up beside a chalk-stream, the Avon, and it ran through the back garden, and that spoiled you for any other kind of fishing, because you could see everything that was going on - except of course that you mustn't stand up and get too close, because the fish could see you as well, and they weren't that stupid.

And after that day on the Granta he'd been firm friends with Herbie, who was doing law because he said that with an estate the size of his, and with the family connections he had, it was bound not to be too long before somebody started a court-case to try and take it away from him, and his father had always warned him that lawyers and alligators never let go (he'd explained that they said the same thing about Staffordshire bull-terriers, but it wasn't true - if you poked a couple of fingers up their bums, they let go pretty sharpish, in order to bite the person who was attacking their rear) - alligators and lawyers had funny teeth that hinged backwards, and when once they'd got their jaws on to a thing, they had to swallow it, it wouldn't come out again, and that was why you only ever saw lawyers smiling after they'd swallowed a fat fee, or half of somebody's estate, whichever was the greater.

He remembered telling Herbie he wished he'd met his father, and Herbie said he felt the same - the old boy had gone down on the Lusitania, and all these anecdotes came from his uncles, who weren't terribly respectable, as was only to be expected of younger sons who had to live by their wits. But he had some cousins at The Other Place who were fairly presentable, so why didn't they motor over there and look them up? He'd never tried fishing in the Cherwell - he understood they punted from the wrong end in Oxford, so it probably frightened the fish - but life was too short not to have a go at everything once.

His memory of the drive was indistinct - probably mercifully so. He understood very little about cars, and had no thought of owning one then. His father's death had left him and his mother in what she persisted in calling 'straitened circumstances', though he had always thought it made things very crooked and indirect. They had money, it seemed, but they couldn't actually spend it, because if they did so, they wouldn't have it any more. His mother was determined he should go to Cambridge, like his father before him, but his allowance only stretched to providing cheddar sandwiches and brown ale for picnics, whereas Herbie could be relied on to produce pre-War claret, game pie, venison pâté, Roquefort, and a large number of other dishes with delightful flavours and unfamiliar names. Yet he wasn't a snob about food, unlike Julian.

Julian had been in the punt with them, too, that day. Strange that he should have suppressed that. Julian had leant back languidly, and nibbled at the sandwiches - it was his half-eaten ones that they'd taken for bait, and the extra brown ales that he had disdained had ensured his and Herbie's extra special good mood. It was only through Julian, though, that he'd come to know Herbie at all - Julian and Herbie were both in Trinity Hall and shared rooms in a kind of armed truce, Herbie claiming (out of his hearing) that Julian was employed as his food taster, since he thought one of the cooks, who looked like his great-uncle Mark, was a distant relative and wished to further his designs on the inheritance by poisoning him, together with the rest of the undergraduates at Trinity Hall, as would be immediately clear to anyone foolish enough to dine there. Julian's superior palate, however, was going to save him from the worst, as it had already done when they were at Winchester together.

That information had explained a relationship he would otherwise have found puzzling. He knew Julian because they both studied English (not a choice his mother had approved of, because she saw no financial use in it, but having made him her idol early on in his life, it was too much of an effort for her to change her point of view and leave the position vacant, so she sighed and acquiesced and confined herself to barbed reproaches at the beginnings and ends of vacations). He envied Julian the breadth of his reading and the subtlety of his argument and perception, though at times it seemed his aesthetic sensibility bore too close a resemblance to an easily upset stomach, when he declared that certain authors made him sick, or that some books were positively disgusting, or indigestible, or even stuck in his craw. On the other hand, he had his finger on the pulse of literary life, read all the right periodicals and little magazines (and passed them on, without asking for them back, which was a great help, since they tended to be expensive), already scorned the Georgians, had an ambivalent attitude to D.H. Lawrence, had read Pound while still at school, claimed to understand The Waste Land, thought highly of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, but felt that Saki was trite ('Oh, come on,' said Herbie, who usually absented himself from these discussions to "do some studying", and was found later in his bedroom, fast asleep with a volume of Halsbury open over his face 'to be absorbed by osmosis', 'Saki's just the job - what more do you want from literature than a little story that lasts five minutes and puts you in a good mood before you go to sleep?').

Julian, he now recalled, had come with them to The Other Place as well, which had made it rather a squeeze in Herbie's car, a bullnose Morris Cowley - he and Julian had taken it in turns to sit in the dickie seat, so it was fortunate that the weather was fine. With the hood down, they could talk, but as they were facing in opposite directions, conversation had not always been easy. Julian had been giving him a literary guide to Oxford, and especially Boar's Hill, which Herbie had gleefully misinterpreted.

'You are tiresome sometimes, Herbie, with your jejune insouciance and immature flippancy!' Julian had said. 'Anyway, Roland, let me assure you that there's nothing boring about Graves and his little côterie - Masefield lives up there, too, and I know he's tainted with Georgianism, but I think there's better in him - but Graves, now, - he was out there in France, he saw the worst that modern civilisation can produce, he's seen through that 'civilisation' and knows it for what it is, just like Eliot - the question is whether he'll be able to actually frame those insights in a way which is worthwhile in literary terms, because experience isn't all - in fact it can be a positive hindrance to expression - '

Herbie tooted very loudly - not because he wanted to give anyone or anything a warning - except Julian, for being pretentious. 'Sorry I interrupted,' said Herbie, 'have to have a little poop-poop every now and then, you know, in the blood, part of the skill of driving, knowing when to sound your horn.'

One of Herbie's cousins, both of whom (he had omitted to tell them) were female, was at St Hilda's, and the other was at St Hugh's. The one at St Hilda's was out, so they went round to St Hugh's and burst in on what was clearly an intellectual gathering in the guise of a small luncheon party. Herbie stood it for five minutes before he announced his intention of going to see whether The Turf still served outside hours. Julian looked at his watch and said, 'But Herbie, it's only half-past one!' 'Exactly,' Herbie had replied. 'See you at the Carfax at seven - I shall see if I can track down Julia in the course of the afternoon.'

The intellectual discussions lasted until three o'clock, when two of the girls excused themselves because they had a tutorial; they explained that Oxford was not as lazy as The Other Place and didn't just stop work in the summer. Julian snorted, as if to convey what he thought of the standard of Oxford tutorials, especially in English, where they barely reached the end of the eighteenth century, and considered Byron and Wordsworth modern and daring. Herbie's cousin, Olivia, proposed a walk, in the course of which, she declared, she would defend the honour of her university's conception of English studies. She asked the last of her female guests whether she would like to accompany her and her two Cambridge visitors.

Julian had been offhand about the whole affair, eager to be gone and enjoy the sunshine and get on with a discussion, but he, Roland, had privately determined that he would do all he possibly could to spend the rest of the day in Catherine's company. She was quite tall and dark, with long black hair and a certain angularity to her features. Her eyes were almond-shaped and a wonderful green that he had never seen before. She told him, as they walked along, that she came from a fairly wealthy Jewish family, had attended Westminster School where that rather good composer, Mr Holst, was in charge of music (a little eccentric, especially as regarded an obsession with walking everywhere, but no matter), had been at St Hugh's for two years now reading English, but her real interest was not music (though she sang a passable soprano and was trying to persuade several of her friends to form a group to sing Byrd's unaccompanied masses, motets and madrigals) but art, and especially modern art, and more especially modern French art.

He would have listened to her if she had been discussing methods of sorting potatoes into sacks according to size. There was an energy about her manner, a laugh round her mouth, a smile in the corner of her eyes and a melting kind of eloquence in her voice, which could go deeper than most girls' voices, that totally captivated him. Since, moreover, they genuinely shared their enthusiasms and were, by their natures, both very enthusiastic people, there arose about them a cloud of understanding that shut them off for that afternoon from the rest of the world, so that even now as he lay in bed, still not knowing where he was, but still with the light rippling on the wooden ceiling, he could nonetheless at this remove call up every expression of her face from that afternoon, every pursing of her lips as she queried one of his statements, every shake of her head in laughter or disbelief that let a little white ear peep through her lustrous black hair.

More than that - because that is an ordinary kind of magic in its way - he actually knew what they had talked about: Picasso, Cubism, Braque, the legacy of Cézanne and the older Monet and the half-blind Renoir, painting with a brush strapped to his arthritic wrist and swearing that 'qui sait peindre la chair est un homme sauvé'. He had been surprised by her openness about the nude in art - it was the first time he had ever managed to discuss the human body as an aesthetic phenomenon without embarrassment, sniggering, and the sense that it was all a long way round to talk about sexuality in its dirtiest, most secretive and infantile form. He found his own sexual knowledge and attitudes swept away as quite inadequate and juvenile by everything that Catherine said, and had great difficulty in keeping up with her without confessing his total ignorance and astonishment in some areas, which he was (understandably) reluctant to do.

'How silly of Julian (she had said) not to admit that he really likes men - how much simpler his life would become! Everybody would know where they were, and Olivia could stop imagining that he's going to throw himself at her feet, which would give me a great deal less to listen to in the way of 'girl-talk', which is not that interesting, when all's said and done. I'm sure men-talk isn't any better, though - that is, if they have any, if they actually tell each other about their emotions and don't just invent conquests to boast about.'

'And who do you think Olivia should concentrate on?'

'Almost anybody, really - she's not that clever and not really that choosy. She'll make a splendid wife - I can't change her in that respect, though I have tried. She could go after Herbie, for example - she's on his intellectual level, Julian's far too clever for her, apart from anything else. Yes, Herbie wouldn't be too bad, he's quite sweet really, much more human than Julian. I assume the thing between him and Julian was merely physical and long since over - they certainly don't behave as though they have any kind of relationship any more, though maybe I don't understand these things as well where men are concerned.'

'What relationship?'

'Oh, come on! When they were at school together, of course! It happens all the time! Not to everybody, I suppose,' she added, looking at him with her head on one side, and a little white ear poking out of her hair, 'not even to all the handsome ones - ' she smiled mischievously - 'but I think it's fairly clear here. Why else would they have shared rooms in college? What else could they possibly have in common? There's nothing visible, is there? Don't be worried about Julian, by the way, I'm sure he doesn't fancy you, so you won't have to defend your virtue - that is, if you were going to. He doesn't look at you in the right way - and he listens to what you're saying and argues with it. He wouldn't do that if he were in love with you.'

'In love?'

'Of course in love! Why can't I use the phrase about Julian and you - or anyone he really does fancy - as properly as I could use it about you and me. You don't imagine the emotion differs, do you? You don't think people like Julian are really different, do you?'

'So it's a sign of being in love if you don't listen properly to what people say and don't argue with them?'

'Not always, silly! There are plenty of people who are desperately in love - with each other moreover - and desperately unhappy - and they spend all their time listening intently to what each other says and arguing with it. That's their tragedy. They'd probably do better to just imagine one another's characters and get on with it.'

'I'm listening very carefully to what you say, and I'm arguing with it, and I'm not desperately miserable - well, not yet - and I'm in love with you.'

He thought the confession might have stopped her in her tracks, but she just kept on walking quite briskly on the towpath beside the Cherwell, with the river swirling by them, its waters knotting and unknotting and curling in on themselves again in that mysterious way that middle-sized rivers have, where you can't see any cause for the eddies at all, and it looks like some vast and complicated knitting-pattern.

'Well,' she said, plucking a grass-stalk as she walked, without slackening pace, 'that is nice for you - ' and she laughed ' - no, really - and it's quite nice for me, too - actually - come to think of it - it's very nice for both of us.' And she stopped very suddenly on the tow-path, which had grown so narrow that they had to walk in single file, and he cannoned into her, and before he knew what was happening she had taken him in her arms, and they were kissing. It didn't last very long, because they were both conscious of Julian and Olivia, who were ahead of them, but not really far enough ahead, and whilst not embarrassed, they didn't see why everyone should know their business, so after a few seconds of silence, during which he was very conscious of the rush and ripple of the river beside them as it hugged its banks and slid the tongue of its water along all the holes, depressions and declivities in them, they let go of one another and held hands at arm's length.

'You're right,' he had said, too happy to smile, 'it's very nice for both of us.'

* * * * * * * *

He lay still, and looked at the ceiling, and remembered that moment, the feel of her lips, their mutual embrace, those words in her lovely, low voice. Over the years since then he had grown to distrust all forms of communication between human beings, but he had an absolute conviction that at that moment they had both meant the same thing as they said the same words, and that that was the nearest he would ever come to a true union with anyone. The patterns of light on the boarded ceiling still moved to and fro, like little dancing insects. It seemed less important now to remember where he was, because the specks of light, though they had become more delicate and less intense, reminded him of another illumination, of light that thrust in over the curved folds at the top of heavy velvet curtains and lanced its way in slowly diverging beams across a plaster ceiling whose every crack he had known since earliest childhood.

When he had met Catherine, he had been in his final year. He came down that same summer, still uncertain of what he meant to do for a 'career' as his mother put it, and 'living' as he saw it. Since Catherine lived in Hampstead and he lived in Highgate, they saw each other frequently, and it was in lengthy conversations with her, as they walked on Hampstead Heath or Highgate Hill, or through Hyde Park, or along the embankment, or as they waited to go in to a Promenade Concert at the Queen's Hall, that they mapped out together a plan for his life. He would work in the City for a year at one of those dreadful banks - if possible, the same one that employed T.S. Eliot, just in case the genius rubbed off in the gents' washroom - and save as much money as he could. Then, with that money, they would both go to Paris, and he would become an art dealer - oh, in a small way at first, of course, but there was no limit to what could come of it. He would buy for reasonable prices the smaller works of the up-and-coming young artists and bring them back to London and place them with reputable galleries, and when they sold for good prices (which was inevitable, if the right pieces were chosen, because there were people in London who had taste and money - not many, but some, and it might be that they could find people with money and without taste to buy things as well, through family connections) then the artists in Paris would be grateful to him for bringing their names before the public, and he would be able to organise exhibitions in London and in Paris and would sell works on commission and would become fabulously wealthy. And Catherine would go with him to Paris, because she had better taste than he did and would be more ruthless about driving a bargain with the artists, who weren't starving really, whatever they said, and would just rub their hands and cackle with glee at stumbling on such a gullible Englishman who was so ready to part with his money as a speculation. Oh, and if there were slack times, then he would just dash off a few articles about the French Art World - or she would, because she had the better prose style, but he'd have to sign them, because they always paid women writers peanuts, and Julian, who was editing three or four of the little magazines already under different pseudonyms and hoping the publishers and the subscribers didn't find out, would be bound to publish them, and if he wasn't willing to, then he could easily be blackmailed into it.

He had been overwhelmed by her ideas, and found them all totally convincing. His mother was less impressed, but at least relieved that there was to be no attempt by 'that girl from Hampstead' to make inroads into the sacred Nest-Egg. She received Catherine in a way that was friendly, but distant, as if she didn't believe it would last but also didn't want to have to reproach herself with having been responsible for its failure. Catherine found this manner of being dealt with unpleasant; she told Roland that she would have preferred out-and-out enmity. He, for his part, could not understand that attitude. He felt his mother was being perfectly civil - but Catherine said that it was not civil to harp on about your son's academic achievements for three quarters of an hour before you asked your guest what she was studying at university, and when you had got the answer to say, 'Oh, that's nice, Roland studied that too - ' and then to explain all about Roland this and Roland that for another half hour, without ever asking her any more about what she was doing.

'She loves me, that's all,' he had said.

'So do I - but I don't go on about you all the time, because I have too much respect for myself.'

'Do you think that going on about another person that you love can do harm to yourself?'

'Yes, I do, very much so. I love you because of what you are. But I also love you because of the way I am. If I love you in this smothering way, this all-embracing way, then I'll lose myself, and if I lose myself, then I'll lose you. I wish you could see that.'

'I wish I could see it, too.'

Catherine took to coming deliberately when she knew she could avoid his mother, and they could be completely open with one another. They would go up to his room and talk for hours about art.

One Saturday in the Christmas vacation his mother was going to visit her sister in Broadstairs. Roland cried off, saying that he had to go in to the bank exceptionally for extra work. He took his mother to the Underground and rode with her to the point where their routes divided. Then he caught the Tube back to Highgate, and waited for Catherine. He felt uneasy about these subterfuges, but could see no other way to avoid the other sense of unease that came from the feeling of being spied on that both of them had increasingly when his mother was in the house during Catherine's visits.

He lay on his bed, waiting. When the bell rang, he ran downstairs to let her in and led her up to his room. He got out the latest prints that he'd been able to purchase, photogravure reproductions of early Picassos that he'd found in the Charing Cross Road, and he spread them out on the floor at the foot of the bed. When he turned round to ask her what she thought of them, she was naked, her clothes in a tumbled heap on the floor.

'Sorry,' she said, 'next time we can undress each other, which'll be much more fun, but I was a little nervous, and I really did want to do it, so I thought I wouldn't give myself a chance to back out. It'll all be quite safe. I wrote to that nice Marie Stopes lady, and she sent me some contraceptives in exchange for a donation to her cause, but there aren't very many, so we'll have to be careful, and maybe restrain ourselves sometimes, because I think the maid will notice if I keep on scanning the post for plain brown envelopes every morning. Come here, and let me take off your clothes.'

He drew the curtains, even though the room was on the first floor and not overlooked, since you never knew, and then he went to her. She was very gentle, and knew that he was just as scared and excited as she was, and then they began to make love. They began with touching, just touching, everywhere, even parts that weren't supposed to be in the least erotic, like the nose and the big toe, and then they began kissing, and they kissed everywhere. They urged each other on to give one another pleasure in soft low voices: Here, here. Now there. More, more. More. Again. Again, again. Please, please, please.

They taught each other about giving joy. They learnt while they taught. Their limbs became skilled, their hands became skilled, their tongues became skilled. They licked one another until their mouths were dry and Roland had to steal down to the kitchen and bring up a big jug of water, so thankful that 'economies' had made them dispense with the maid. They drank some of the water, and poured the rest on their bodies to make them slip and slide against one another as they rubbed together. At long last, after all the right preparations, he slid into her and sensed her close around him, and felt that they had become one. They moved together and changed positions, they paused and talked and drank water, and even looked at pictures, and then were overcome by desire again. At last, he came, and then she came, both of them screaming with joy and surrender, and laughing with delight. Then they fell asleep in one another's arms.

Waking from that sleep was a descent from heaven. He opened his eyes and felt himself slipping back into his body that had sweet aches about it from all the unusual things it had done. He recognised them and remembered them. On the ceiling, there was a different kind of light, brighter than it should have been for the mid-afternoon that the clock indicated. The reflection from the jug of water he had brought flickered quietly. He sat up gently and looked at Catherine, asleep beside him, her long black hair lying tangled across her white flesh. He put out a hand to caress her breast and her nipple, but she lifted his arm and put it round her, and muttered that she still wanted to sleep. At that moment, he heard a key turn in the lock, and knew that his mother had come back early. She called his name up the stairs.

'Tell her you've had a migraine,' said Catherine, 'tell her it came on in the Underground, before you ever got to work. Go down now in your dressing-gown. Talk to her for a few minutes. Make her a cup of tea. Then come up and get dressed and tell me what's happening. Try to persuade her to go out for a walk with you - say you need the air. If you can't do that, then get her into the back parlour somehow, or the kitchen, and make some noise to cover me going down the stairs.'

Too numbed by shock to think for himself, he did as he was told. His mother was reluctant to go out for a walk with him, because it had been snowing - that was why she had come back so early from Broadstairs, in case the snow got worse - but he pleaded, and she agreed - 'anything for her boy'. As they left, he realised that since they did not have a Yale latch on their front door, he would have to pretend to lock it, otherwise Catherine could not get out. And he would have to pretend to unlock it again. As ill luck would have it, one of their neighbours came to call just as they arrived home, and said, 'Oh, your front door doesn't seem to be locked, you should be more careful about that, you know, burglaries can happen, even in an area like this.' Roland never knew if his mother had seen Catherine's footprints in the snow on the path, or whether she suspected anything, but it was the end of her visits to his home, except in order to pick him up when they went somewhere together, and even then she preferred to meet him at their destination.

Later on in their relationship, when he wanted to talk about that first time, she refused to do so, as if it had all been spoiled. And yet he could remember so well the folds at the top of the curtains, and how the light leapt up over them and spread itself across the ceiling, and that different, whiter light which came with the snow, the light that was too bright, and forced its way into the sweet darkness they had made around themselves.

He lay still, unwilling to let go of that memory, with all the pain that he knew to be attached to it, but which he had not yet drawn out into his consciousness. He tried to relive the good moments by running his hands over the bedclothes around him, and the first thing his exploring fingers encountered was soft, warm hair and a gently breathing body. He stroked the head that lay beside him, and the spaniel puppy woke up and yawned and began licking his hand. He patted her stomach, and she rolled over and kicked with her back legs a couple of times, and went to sleep again.

He was remembering. Not just what he had wanted to recall, but everything. He knew now that he was sleeping in a large summer-house, because he had wanted to keep his puppy with him, and was not too sure of her house-manners. He had respect for his host's carpets and love for his dog. Which house he was not sleeping in, and where, and who his host was, were all things which, he was sure, would become clear if he just let his mind follow the dancing lights on the ceiling.

He had worked and saved for the whole year, as they had planned. Catherine had got a first in Finals, as expected. His mother had never said a word about her exams or about her results. He and Catherine went to Paris. Within a week, they had become habitués of the Café Montparnasse, on tu-terms with most of the artists who frequented it. Within a month, they were regular callers at Picasso's studio. He gave them small sketches as keepsakes.

They had the sense of being at the front of things. When they woke up in the morning, and Catherine went to open the shutters and let in the light, and when they both stood on the slightly rickety balcony with its ornate but rusty wrought iron balustrade, and looked down over the faubourg, they knew that novelty, excitement and challenge lay in wait for them. There would be a drawing, or a sculpture, that had a new thought in it about the way planes met one another, or the way colours could be used. They saw Brâncusi's Lovers, and said it reminded them of themselves. Everything fell into their laps in the most extraordinary way. Not, as yet, money. But everything else.

He had asked Catherine, then, how she managed to do all these things, because it was clear that it was her energy and her personality which had gained them their entrée to the artistic world. She had replied that it was very simple: her parents had never bothered with her, so she had had all the time she needed to read the books she shouldn't have done and talk to the people she shouldn't have done - but since nobody even bothered to tell her what she should and shouldn't do, she had never been tempted to be stupid and defiant and go along with a 'bad crowd' just because it was bad. So she talked to everyone and anyone, just as long as she wanted to, and then she stopped, and didn't feel guilty about it. And because she didn't feel guilty, they didn't feel offended. It was as simple as that.

They went to parties. They drank more than they should have done. They had rows because of it. Not deeply bitter ones, but petty, superficial ones that took off the top layer of the skin, and were hard to make up, because so little had happened and so much had been said. A graze always takes longer to heal than a cut. He would never have admitted it, but he began to become a little jealous of her, because she moved so easily in those circles, because she understood with so little effort the things which he had to strain to comprehend. They made love less and less frequently, and their love-making became selfish.

They began to drift apart. That was the phrase that came into his head. That was the phrase that he had ready for the curious. That was the phrase that he used to excuse himself all those nights he lay alone in the dark and cried. But it was not true. He was the one who was drifting, and she knew where she was going. Her conversations with the artists became more abstract and more intense. Sometimes she would stay out all night, and only return in the small hours, looking almost ecstatic. He would watch her undressing while he pretended to be asleep. He would feel enormous physical desire for her, but never say a word, only grunt with feigned annoyance when she got into bed, thinking he was somehow punishing her by not wanting to make love, thinking he was punishing her by punishing himself. He knew, with one part of his mind, that he had no reason to be sexually jealous, but with the other part of his mind he knew that it was easier to be sexually jealous than intellectually jealous, and easier to be intellectually jealous than spiritually jealous.

While she was talking metaphysics, he found himself talking hard cash. Once or twice, in order to buy up a really big and important piece that he could sell on to a prominent dealer in London, he found himself compelled to part with something they had bought for themselves at the beginning, or even something they had been given. If she found out and was really upset, he called her sentimental and selfish, pointing out that if it was sold to somebody rich and famous it was much more likely to finish up in a museum and be seen by millions, than if it just stayed in their little back room gathering dust.

After he'd been in Paris for four years, his mother began to realise that he wouldn't be coming back to live at home, so she sold the house in Highgate and moved into a 'bijou flat in Knightsbridge, but however small it may be, there'll always be space for you, darling.' He went back to London, partly to tie up some deals and partly to help his mother move.

When he came back, Catherine had gone. She left a note, quite a long and detailed one, explaining that she was going to India in order to live a simple life and minister to the sick. She found it hard to explain exactly what had motivated her to do this, but at least in part it was the emptiness and selfishness of the life she had found herself leading in Paris. She did not wish to reproach him, or their mutual friends, because that would be facile (especially as she had great respect for the work and beliefs of many of those friends, even if she couldn't entirely share them), however, she had become less and less able to see the activities they were indulging in as fulfilling.

It wasn't (she wrote) just the drinking, or the other indulgences. They were normal, human things, different in different places, but still indulged in by people everywhere. It was the underlying attitude. It was the cynicism and ruthlessness. She had tried that, and found it wanting. There seemed no point in carrying on with it when she knew it wasn't what she wanted. She was very sorry that she was leaving him in this way, because she knew it must come as a shock - though she felt that he ought, in many respects, to have seen it coming. As he would gather from the work she had chosen to do, she was not someone who would willingly hurt anyone. But she had to live her own life, and not someone else's.

Even as he remembered it now, eight years later, he cried. He curled forward with the anguish, and some of his tears fell on Sheba's head. She woke up and pushed her muzzle into his face. She didn't understand the water that was coming out of his eyes, but she licked at it anyway, and he fondled her nose and stroked her and shooshed her down to sleep again.

He couldn't recall clearly now what had been the most painful thing: Catherine's going, and the hole it made in his life, or the embarrassment and humiliation of telling people what had happened. Every time he met mutual friends, he had to choose between several different kinds of torment and self-examination. He could tell them the plain and simple truth, that she had gone to India to minister to the sick, and they would ask questions such as : How long for? Where? Is this a sudden idea? What put it into her head? and he would have to say that he had no answers to any of these queries, and they would be astonished, and then he would have to choose between saying: The bitch left me or I drove her away - neither of which were really true; but then he wasn't sure that he knew what the truth was, and he couldn't really manage to steer a middle course between resentment and self-reproach. If he came down more on the side of resentment, it was because he felt he had been left to make her excuses after she left a party early without an adequate reason.

Increasingly, though, he found the party turning sour. It began with the comments of his artist-friends on Catherine's departure: Well rid of her. Too highly-strung. Too much up there, not enough down here. She was always wanting to be too clever. Le soir, tous les chats sont gris. He assumed they were meant to console him, to bolster his self-respect, but if he had really thought the way their remarks implied, he wouldn't have had any respect for himself. He also found himself upset by the way they treated their own women-folk, models and mistresses. He couldn't find firm enough principles to take a stand on, but he felt uneasy about the dismissiveness, thoughtlessness and downright callousness which were displayed - to say nothing of the way the women accepted it. He wondered if he were being 'too English' about the whole matter, as more than one suggested to him.

In any case, he soon found other things to interest him and occupy his thoughts. In Europe, art was becoming political, even if the French clung to non-involvement. Stalinism was making life unpleasant for the Russian avant-garde who had thought that a Revolution in politics meant a Revolution in the world of art. Roland did what he could to support those who had already emigrated, by organising exhibitions and securing financial aid, and also worked with other committees to get people out before they were put in prison on trumped-up charges. He travelled to Russia twice and smuggled out a large number of pieces which sold for enough money to pay ten train-fares and the bribes of the border-guards.

Then it was Germany's turn, and he found himself smuggling 'degenerate art' over the border into the safety of France near Strasbourg, and, when that avenue became unsafe, via Switzerland, which entailed learning to ski.

He was one of the few people driving towards Vienna in February 1934, and his courage was rewarded with a fine collection of modern socialist art, saved from the workers' flats before they were turned into the strongholds of the uprising and bombarded by the Government's artillery. Many people gave objects from their private collections to be sold in aid of the cause, and he spent quite some time organising funds to be held in Czechoslovakia for the senior Social Democrats who had escaped.

No sooner had Austria settled into its middling benevolent police-state than the Spanish Civil War broke out. This at least stirred the artists he knew in Paris, but they advised him not to go himself - he would be more use administering relief and providing funds. He did more than that - he had reproductions of Picasso's Guernica published everywhere he could, accompanied by a lengthy article in which he discussed the painter's work and development from a political as well as an aesthetic point of view. Picasso took him to task over it, but they agreed to differ, and Roland said that if he, Picasso, would stick to painting, then he, Roland, would stick to writing about it and selling it, and that way there'd be enough money to go round for both of them.

When Germany marched into Austria, and then took over the important parts of Czechoslovakia, and when the major powers let it all happen at Munich, and Chamberlain waved his little piece of paper with his slogan of 'Peace in our time', he thought he deserved a rest from being the art-dealer with a conscience. It was his mother's sixtieth birthday on the fourteenth of December. He took the boat-train to London to spend it with her. She met him at Victoria, called him 'her big boy'and remarked on how he'd grown up. He pointed out that he was thirty-six now, so it was hardly surprising. She said he looked and talked just like his father, who would have been proud of him. Changing in the Knightsbridge flat for the birthday dinner in a nearby restaurant, Roland noticed how true it was. During his first years in France, he'd deliberately cultivated a bohemian image, dressing sloppily, always choosing French fashions, smoking Gauloise, but ever since Catherine had left him he had gone back to being English - sports jackets, cavalry twill trousers, cravats - a real country gentleman. He had laughed at the thought of it.

After the birthday, he thought he would stay around and spend Christmas in the old country. His mother was going to Broadstairs, but so, fortunately, were several other members of his aunt's in-laws, so there wouldn't be any room for him. He promised to see his mother again before he left for France, and decided to renew old acquaintances.

Basically, that meant Julian, since most of his other old friends were in Paris. Their relationship had become cool, since quite early in the Paris years Julian had stopped publishing his articles - at a time when the money was important. But Roland was prepared to let bygones by bygones.

By asking round in the literary pubs, he tracked him down. He'd done a stint for Jack Squire on the London Mercury after his own little magazines folded. From what Roland could recall, this must have been quite humiliating for someone who thought the Georgian poets were a kind of literary Ex-lax. Anyway, after that he'd got a job on the literary staff of the Daily Mail, under Siegfried Sassoon, and that's where he was now. And he didn't seem altogether pleased to see Roland peeping round his office-door. 'So sorry I couldn't place those articles of yours - I do hope you understood, but at the time they were a drug on the market. - I very much liked your piece on Guernica, by the way - '

'You didn't print it or review it, though, did you?'

'Regrettably, Roland, I don't make the editorial policies round here, or things would be different - I don't even think the Literary Editor himself gets to make the policies - advise, yes, make, no - You could say that we should take a stand on a matter of principle, but that would just lose both of us our jobs and who would they hire in our places? Two hacks with no conscience at all who haven't even got a decent style. While we're still here, there's still some sense of standards in the paper, and that's why we stick it out, even though it isn't always easy.'

'Do you still see Herbie? I never bothered to keep in touch with him after Cambridge, but I'm rather curious about how he's turned out.'

'Funny you should mention him - I saw him only the other day, and he was asking about you - well, you know, we were talking about the old days in Cambridge, and your name came up and he asked how you were getting on - you and - er - Catherine, wasn't it?'

'Yes. It was. She left me. Eight years ago.'

'Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't know.'

'No reason you should. No reason you should be sorry, either. She probably knew what she was doing.'

'Hmmm. She was Jewish, wasn't she?'

'I believe her family was. Why?'

'Well, you know, bit ticklish for Jewish people on the Continent nowadays - not too good for non-Jewish people associated with them - '

'As far as I know, she's in India.'

'Ah. Well, to get back to Herbie - I haven't got a lot of time at the moment, Christmas issue to get out, New Year review of selected publications for the past twelve months, you understand - anyway, Herbie has this open house arrangement at Christmas, he usually invites me, but I can't always go - certainly can't this year - but I'm sure he'd be delighted to see you - there's his address and telephone number - and - er - happy Christmas?'

'Julian? Poisonous little worm!' said Herbie over the telephone. 'But I'll be very happy to see you, Roland. And Catherine. Oh. Well, there we are. Oh yes, of course I invite Julian - that's the trouble, when you've made a friend, you're stuck with them, especially if you went to the same school and then were stupid enough to share with them at college. I shouldn't have gone to university, I should have gone to agricultural college, then I'd have known something about what's going on on my estate. Still, I'll make you hear all about it when I see you. What's that? You've got a dog? Bring her with you! The more the merrier! Oh. A puppy. Slipper-chewer? Hmm. It's just that Julia, my wife - yes - you never did meet Julia, did you? Anyway, she has quite strict views on puppies - very proud of her carpets, Julia. I suppose the kennels aren't the place for a sensitive young - no, of course, she might learn bad habits from those rough older dogs - Tell you what, we'll give you a shakedown in the summer-house - clean, warm and dry - and the rest of the house is bound to be packed with all Julia's relatives - and that way you can keep the dog with you, and no harm done to man, beast or Aubusson.'

As Roland had put down the phone, he had suddenly wondered why on earth he had bought the dog. It had been an impulse, he supposed, and it had seemed so long since he had done anything on impulse. He had seen his mother off on the train to Broadstairs, then walked through the City to Julian's newspaper offices. On the way, in one of the back-streets through which he had taken a short-cut, he had found a pet-shop, and in its window a springer spaniel puppy, which flung itself at the glass as he approached, and barked so loudly that the owner came out to see what was going on.

On the way back, though he hadn't planned it, he went through the same back-street, and the dog was still there, as if it was looking out for him, and this time it didn't bark, it just put its paws up on the window and stared at him in recognition and wagged its tail. So he had gone in and said, 'The dog in the window - what does it cost?'

'It doesn't cost anything,' said the shop-owner. 'She does. Prouder than the Queen of Sheba, twice as pretty and four times as intelligent.'

They travelled down to Herbie's together the following evening - earlier than he had intended, but he felt responsible for the preservation of his mother's Knightsbridge flat, and wasn't sure he could guarantee it under the circumstances. He spent the daylight hours in getting to know Sheba better, and in trying to tire her out by lengthy walks through Hyde Park, and over Hampstead Heath, so that she might be less of a handful in the train. In the event, she only disgraced herself once, and that was in the corridor - but he fell fast asleep for the latter half of the journey, and it was fortunate that the train terminated at Salisbury, so the guard could wake him up, otherwise the L.S.W.R. would have sped them both on to Wilton, Sherborne, Yeovil and points west through the star-frosted night.

They took a taxi, since the last train on the Amesbury branch had gone. And by the time they arrived, the household had retired. The butler, round whose legs Sheba cavorted with thankfully (as yet) unmuddied paws, explained that the family was saving itself for the Christmas revels, and showed Roland and 'the young mistress' to their sleeping quarters in the 'Garden pavilion', halfway down the lawn towards the river.

* * * * * * * * *

And thus it was that he knew when and where he found himself: at Christmastime, spending his second night in the summerhouse in the grounds of Herbie's ancestral home, 'the ancient pile' as he called it himself, on the banks of the upper Avon, not far from Stonehenge, but in another world from that stony skeleton of the past on the open plain. He had walked up there early on the morning after his arrival, with Sheba - not at his heels, but half a field away, before or behind, putting up pheasant, chasing rabbits, sticking her nose into cow-pats and rolling in sheep-droppings. He had a long wrestle with her to get a holly-branch disentangled from her right ear. And then he put the lead on, because he knew that they would be coming to the major roads that held Stonehenge in their narrow fork.

It was sudden. The lane he followed had wound gently to and fro like a stream-bed, which it could only be for part of the time in the wettest of winters, caressing the hummocks of the chalk between which it passed, little fields edged with thorn and holly and here and there a yew. It was an intimate landscape, a narrow way out of the wind. Then it rose quickly and pushed him on to the sheep-cropped plain, bending in its tree-shaded last few yards, so that he had no choice but to find his view filled with the stones. Grey on grey they stood, and he stood still to watch them, and to look for the spaces between, to sort them into a pattern that had three dimensions, to perceive the relationships between them, as if they had been one of those works that he walked around and appraised, or picked up in his hand and turned, and sold or wrote about.

But Sheba was not abashed by any old lumps of rock occupying the skyline. She shared his mood for a moment, but then she pulled, she tugged, she wove the lead round his legs, because she was young and had smelt rabbits, and hare, and pheasant, and wanted to go after them. He crossed the road to the stones, which no were no longer the only thing in the landscape, walked through them briskly, with Sheba pretending to be well-behaved and staying at heel, and on the far side of the second road, where wood and field stretched to the horizon, he let her go, and watched her race away to find out what the rest of the world was like.

When he got back to the house, breakfast was ready. He was surprised to find that the empty dining-room was warm , although there was no fire in the grate. He had been expecting the normal English house-party gathering of the guests in front of the only source of heat, their fronts frozen, their rears roasted, while they struggled to eat one-handed from the plates that they held whatever they had selected from the row of silver chafing dishes. The dishes, too, manifested another difference from the norm: they were not kept hot over the usual row of paraffin-burners that imparted a subtle flavour to the contents, so that you had the choice between paraffin kidneys, paraffin sausages, paraffin black-pudding, paraffin scrambled eggs or paraffin kedgeree. He was wondering at the innovation, which he could now see was achieved by an extension to the radiator of the central heating system, when a young girl of seventeen or so walked in and began helping herself to large portions of almost everything in the dishes. She had obviously been out riding, to judge by her costume and the colour in her cheeks. Her mid-length blonde hair was gathered by a band that held it in order just below the back of the hard hat, which she had put down by the chafing-dishes.

'Hallo, are you admiring auntie's toys? Spent a couple of years in the States and got obsessed with the notion of central heating - heats this, heats that, wouldn't be surprised if she tried connecting up the loo seats next - your place is heated, too, the summer-house - otherwise you wouldn't enjoy sleeping there, I can tell you. Oh, blast! Mud and horse-dung on the carpets! That's what my name'll be in this house - mud and horse-dung! I always hate taking my boots off - so much trouble to get them on, so much trouble to get them off - and then I forget.'

'Can't we go and eat breakfast somewhere else? What about the kitchen?' he suggested.

'Well, it is tiled, but we wouldn't be popular - firstly we'd get in the way, and secondly they're even fussier about their floor than Auntie Julia is - I get the impression they really do eat off it. Mind you, there's one place that is officially permitted to get covered in mud and mess.'

'Won't the stable be a little cold?'

'I'm talking about your bedroom.'

'Isn't that a little forward?'

'Not at all - we'll have a chaperone. It's quite impossible to get up to anything with a spaniel puppy around. By the way,' she added, as they walked down the garden, 'my name's Caroline, and I'm from Julia's side of the family. Herbie tolerates me because I'm too distantly related to begin to think of inheriting. I'd have to massacre uncles and aunts with a sub-machine to get anywhere near, and that's not a habit that Aunt Julia's brought back from the States.'

In the summer-house, they sat and chatted about everything and nothing, whilst Sheba gambolled around and was wickedly given pieces of their breakfasts. Then Caroline excused herself - she had to go and get ready for the ordeal of the day, the Reception of the Guests, which would be starting in the middle of the morning, and going on to the early evening, with the most insufferable arriving latest, but that didn't matter because by then they'd all be totally numbed and insensitive. And when they'd reached saturation point with guests, the alcohol would be brought in, until they'd reached saturation point with that, and then they'd all go to bed, and then Christmas could carry on in a normal way, with only those members of the family who were tolerated around, and special guests like Sheba, and anybody she'd cared to invite along.

No sooner had she gone, than Herbie appeared, to give him the guided tour.

'Grounds alone, one and six, house alone, one and six, house and grounds, half-a-crown, a clear saving of sixpence on the separate prices and a preferential position in the queue for tea and scones.'

'Has it come to that yet, Herbie?' he asked, as they strolled along the bank of the Avon.

'Not so far, but it's best to be prepared. We Hargreaves can turn our hand to anything, so long as there's money in it. You know what they say, Noblesse oblige - which translates as Spare us a bob, guv'nor?'

He showed him the gardens, where there were a few very late roses at the top of their stems, and where the winter jasmine had already begun and the Virginia creeper was still hanging on in rags of flame, and the cotoneaster and pyracanthus spotted the flint walls with blobs of red and orange as if someone had been cleaning out a giant paintbrush. The gardens had walks that wound around past old trees choked with honeysuckle, and arbours with gnarled old rose-bushes waiting for the spring, and chopped-off stumps of clematis.

'Your good gardener,' said Herbie, 'isn't afraid to make the place look a battleground in the winter in order to have it flower in the spring. I'd not have the courage to do it, but these fellows have. No compromises. None at all.'

'Julian makes compromises,' said Roland, reflectively.

'Julian? Poisonous toad. No - take that back - toads aren't poisonous. Poisonous worm - er - viper, that's the word. Mark you, the fellow he lives with isn't bad, Catholic communist who works for the BBC - not that I ever listen to his programmes. But Julian - well, I haven't actually seen the black shirt in his wardrobe, but he's always going on about order and discipline and that kind of nonsense - you know, 'the sickness of liberalism'. He showed me some drawings he'd bought a few years ago, terrible mechanical things with men turned into machines. He said it was the way forward, I said I'd like to stay just where I was, thank you very much. I don't mind the idea of progress in the realm of gear-boxes and clutches, but in all other respects they can stop inventing at the level of the indoor flush-toilet as far as I'm concerned.'

They emerged from a small grove of flowering cherry to find themselves on the river bank, and walked along to where a small stone bridge crossed the stream.

'Look at it all going by,' said Herbie, as they stood on the bridge. Leaves, twigs, sometimes a twist of sheep's wool, laced in with the waters, swirling on down past villages and towns to the sea. 'Forgive me for asking, but do you miss Catherine very much?'

'She didn't leave me all at once,' said Roland. 'It only seemed like that. I think she'd been going away from me for a long time, only I didn't notice it. And then, suddenly, when I looked for her, she wasn't there any more.'

'I went flying with Bobby Coalport in 1927 - Julia was against it, you can imagine, but she didn't say anything - well, not too much - she'd already given birth to young Hugh, so we had an heir - you can meet the children later - anyway, we took off from Hendon in Bobby's Sopwith and cruised around a bit to see the wonders of the world, and then his engine started acting up a bit, so we picked out a nice flat field and he put her down. It was Hertfordshire, London Colney, I think, early summer, white umbellifers everywhere, yarrow, wild carrot, cow-parsley, Queen Anne's lace - don't imagine I really know anything about botany, but young Sarah's had to do it at school. I remember the smell, though, because the field was full of them and we drove a great swathe through the lot as we landed.

'Anyhow, Bobby stuck his head under the cowling for a while, and then he said he'd fixed it, but wanted to make sure, so he'd just take her up and put her through her paces, and then he'd land again and pick me up and we'd go home. Well, it was a hot day, and I'd just been lying there, snoozing, while he sorted out the trouble, and I think that was why he didn't just tell me to climb aboard - I looked too comfortable. So, he started her up and took off, and I waved to him and he waved back and he started going up and up in big wide circles, the sound of his engine getting softer and softer, and I just lay back and went to sleep and started dreaming about him flying way up high, where I couldn't ever follow him, and then I must have got nervous about getting back, or something, because I woke up with a start and I thought, he must be up high if I can't hear his engine at all, and I looked round and I couldn't see him. And then there was this almighty crash just beyond the trees, and an explosion. And big flames. And black smoke.

'So I ran to the nearest house - I'd seen it when we flew over and landed - really big place - red brick - nineteenth century - and it was a lunatic asylum. And all the inmates had heard the noise and come rushing out, and they were all running around, with their keepers trying to control them. And I ran up and said, 'It's a flyer, it's a flyer' - and they all looked up, turning every which way to try and see him, and it was no good, because he was already on the ground. And I tried to explain and nobody understood me. So eventually I got into the house and found the matron's office and rang the police and the ambulance. But it had been too late from the moment he took off. He'd gone away from me, and I'd never known it. And they all thought he was still up in the sky, and he was in the earth.'

They stood silently on the bridge for another few minutes, then Herbie led the way back to the house.

'So,' he said, 'these things happen. He was a nice lad, Bobby. Come and have lunch. Julia will want to talk to you.'

At lunch he was introduced to the heirs apparent, Hugh and Sarah, who seemed quite reasonable children, only asking intelligent questions, and not being abashed by the presence of their parents and an adult guest. Caroline was out with the car, picking up more aunts and uncles from the station in Amesbury.

'She likes driving,' said Herbie.

'She likes being in control,' said Julia. 'Now, Roland, let's go and have a chat in the sitting-room. Herbie can greet the guests on his own. After all, I'm related to them for the whole year - the least he can do is make conversation to them for an afternoon.'

Slowly but surely, Roland was coming to relish the way of life he found at Herbie's. Rooms for particular purposes made a great change from the one-roomed flat he had occupied in Paris for the past eight years, staying there barely long enough to sleep before being on the go again, to a café or a studio or a gallery. There was space for a kind of reserve and restraint which was nevertheless not constricting; there was room to be silent.

Julia let the silence fill the sitting-room as they took tea together. But it was a warm silence, not a cold one. It was not broken by speech; speech grew out of it.

'I was very surprised,' Julia began, 'when Catherine began writing to me. We'd known each other at Oxford, through Olivia, but I'd not thought there was anything special in that. One knew all sorts of people at Oxford. She wrote to Olivia first, and heard that I'd married Herbie, and then began writing to me. She stopped writing to Olivia shortly afterwards. I'm not surprised. Olivia positively drips misery and specialises in going after the most impossible men. She could have had Herbie three times over, if she'd wanted - on the whole, I'm glad she didn't. Anyway, Catherine started writing to me in 1928 - I don't know if you realised she ever had written to me. With the later letters, she specially asked me not to tell anyone. I actually had to tell Herbie lies and invent a totally bogus pen-friend.

'She was very unhappy, you know, Roland, and found she couldn't seem to communicate with you any more. She said it was probably because you'd been so close so quickly that you hadn't gone through the normal stages. You hadn't just been friends before you were lovers, so there was only intense understanding or none at all. It upset her dreadfully. And then she began to find her life there in Paris superficial and empty. She always did make absolute demands on herself and others, so I suppose her ultimate decision was the right one for her, to sever all connections with her past life and go off to India.'

'Did you hear from her when she was there?' asked Roland, opening his eyes very wide in an effort to avoid the tears that he could feel beginning to come as he thought of all the love wasted between himself and Catherine.

'Three letters in all. In the first one she wrote that she was absolutely wretched, that she didn't know what to do for the best, but that whatever happened, she couldn't possibly go back, even though she knew that you would accept her and try to make everything as it had been before. She said that it wasn't just because of you and her life with you that she couldn't return, it was other things. She remembered, for example, one party in Paris where it became a game to smash all the crockery in this painter's studio, a big game - by the end of the evening the guests were crunching over the floor - and they were all laughing at the destruction, and she was laughing as loudly as any of them. But in the village in India where she was working, they were so poor and destitute that each family only had one pottery vessel for gathering water and cooking in, and if that was broken they had great problems in acquiring another. That was her first letter.

'In the second one, she said that she had seen through notions of happiness and sadness, that they were mere illusions and that it was a pity she had been trapped and misled by them for so long and in so many ways. She had come through darkness into the light, and knew now that the light was everywhere and that the darkness only came because one shut one's eyes to the light. She had made the great acceptance and was completely at peace.'

'Do you have these letters?' asked Roland. 'Could I look at them?'

'You can have them to keep,' said Julia, 'when I've finished telling you about them. They affected me very deeply at the time I received them - not least because I couldn't imagine why she was writing to me. Here was I, with two small children, helping Herbie to run the estate, visiting his mother in hospital, organising committees, being a do-gooder in a perfectly normal English way, and probably getting up several people's noses as I did so, but basically quite happy with what I was, and here was she, writing me Indian mysticism. I think she wanted someone to know what was going on who wouldn't feel that they had to 'go and do likewise' - but also - and maybe I flatter myself - somebody who'd respect her and her decisions and wouldn't think she'd gone crazy or was suffering delusions from malnutrition. I don't have too many illusions about myself, Roland. I know that I'm basically not very sensitive, but I am quite well-meaning and practical. And if somebody's different from me, I don't take it as an accusation or feel I'm being enjoined to change my life. I think that's why she wrote to me, and not to you - or to Julian, God forbid.'

'Do you think I'm like Julian?'

'Good lord, no! Much more like Herbie, actually. He's a bit soft sometimes. In the head. And in the heart. Anyway, there are the first two letters, and here's the third one. And a photograph. I'll leave you to look at them on your own. They were sent to me - well, you'll see.'

She went out, shutting the door gently. Roland got up and went to the tall windows that looked over the lawn and down to the river. A party of young people had evidently just arrived and were being shown over the house and grounds. Caroline was among them, darting about, pointing, smiling, her body taking on all kinds of expressive postures as she laughed and joked and turned and gestured, and tapped people on the shoulder to make them notice what she was showing them. She seemed to be trying especially hard to win the attention of a tall, thin young man in his mid-twenties with a slightly supercilious air, and a quiff of hair that kept on falling across his forehead, so that he was always shaking his head to get it out of his eyes. Roland left the window, sat down on the sofa, and unfolded the single sheet of thin, poor quality paper that Julia had given him.

Inside, there was a photograph. It was small, two inches by three inches, but quite sharp and precise, even if a little bent and cracked. He recognised Catherine at once, but the angularity of her features was much more stressed, as though the bones of her face were impatient to break through the skin. The dimples of her smile had become hollows and her cheeks were drawn tight as a drum-skin. The old light was still in her eyes, but now it looked as though it was a flame inside, burning its way out through the covering of flesh. She seemed to be wearing some sort of native dress, and her arms and legs were very thin indeed. There appeared to be spots on them, and on her dress, he could not tell if it was a fault in the photograph, or some kind of insects, flies maybe, crawling all over her. Her long black hair had been cut off entirely, and only a short crop framed her head. He put the photograph down, and began to read the letter, which was written in pencil, and quite faint.

I know that I cannot have very long to live, but I am not in the least dismayed by the thought. My work is not finished, but then it is the kind of work that will never be finished. If somebody else comes and does it after me - or if they do not - that will no longer be my concern. It is very important to know what is one's concern. I am very glad that I have found out, and done what was mine to do. It is a pity that my body was not strong enough to do everything which my spirit demanded of it. My spirit was full of demands, but now it has decided to be content. My body made demands when I was younger, and some of those were fulfilled, but not all of them, and some of them not in the right way. But now it has given all its strength and my spirit has given all its strength, and because I have done everything I could do, I am contented.

I am very weak, and can only lie flat and concentrate on continuing to breathe. There is a vessel of water beside my head, and I watch its reflection on the ceiling. It moves constantly. Perhaps there is a draught in the room that I am unaware of, or perhaps it is the water itself that is constantly moving, never still, even when it seems to be so. I do not know where the light is coming from that is refelected on the ceiling. But we never really know where the light is coming from, do we? I think I have discovered that it comes from inside us. My body has forgiven me for what I have done to it. It has given up fighting, because acceptance is best. Acceptance of everything.

The last words were very faint. He moved to the window, to read them in the light, but the young people in the garden were laughing and being noisy, so he folded up the letter and put it, with the photograph, back into the empty envelope that was with the first two letters on the coffee-table. He looked at the post-mark on the third letter, and could not read the place. The date was the ninth of June, 1932. He began to cry, but succeeded in stifling it until he had got to the summer-house and drawn the blinds.

* * * * * * * *

The party's success lay in large measure in large measures. Herbie claimed that only alcohol could bring together in a tolerable and tolerant way: gentleman farmers, stock-brokers, a justice of the peace who believed in bringing back the cat for motoring offences, especially speeding, a garage owner who raced his own cars at Brooklands, a member of parliament, who was really there in his capacity as the owner of a plantation of Christmas trees - the only reliable way to get one with a root that wouldn't shed its needles - and to keep him in order, several ex-suffragettes who were campaigning to have the vote taken away from men (Herbie claimed he'd tried to persuade them to throw themselves under the favourite at Salisbury races when he had a particularly hot tip on an outsider at very good odds, but firstly they'd been quite unwilling, and secondly they'd not been prepared to listen to his account of the jockey's silks, so they'd probably have thrown themselves under his horse, when all was said and done, just because it was in the lead.)

Add to this basic mixture: several lawyers who'd married into Julia's family when no one was looking, a seed-merchant, a dealer in agricultural machinery, a doctor (no party, said Herbie, should be without one), a station-master (who had once held up a train for five minutes on Herbie's say-so, at great risk of his job), the staff on the estate (who were in no way segregated, but also not forced to be with the family if they didn't want to be, and looking at Julia's crowd, who could blame them? - anyway, they started off with beer and cheese and pies in Lower Hall, and the doors were open all the way through to the Beef Wellington and the '27 Mouton) - and then whatever riff-raff the other members of the family chose to invite. Julia's committee-members, for instance. And this year, Caroline's cronies.

He started explaining all this in an expansive way to Roland from his vantage point at the top of the main staircase, and illustrated how large his own measures had been by offering to bet on which one of them could spit right into the middle of the bishop's bald patch (he'd left out the bishop in his first account, but then he was only a suffragan bishop of somewhere or other, or else he'd have had to be down doing his stuff in the Cathedral - if you only work one day a week, then you jolly well have to be there or else). Roland had managed to sponge his eyes back to normality, and then taken Sheba for a walk in the dark before he got changed, arriving at eight, after the rest of the guests had begun with the jollification.

'Charades?!' bellowed Herbie at some innocent little old lady who had made a diffident enquiry. 'Go and see Sir James Iver, M.P. - he's an expert - he plays 'em all year in Westminster. You could do worse than ask the J.P. while you're about it!' he shouted after her, as she went off in a state of mild shock. 'They don't accept our invitations twice!' said Herbie to Roland, in a conspiratorial whisper that carried twenty feet.

'Who's the fellow down there, that Caroline's making up to?' asked Roland, after his third glass.

'Oxford - spoke in the 'This house would not fight for King and Country' debate.'

'Which side?'

'Does it matter? If you speak at the Union, then you want to be a politician, and if you want to be a politician, then the first thing you have to learn is how to do without principles. I imagine he chose whichever side he thought he could make the best speech for - that's where barristers are more honest. They defend the most out-and-out rogues and swear they're innocent, but you know they're only doing it for the money.'

'Herbie!'

'Yes, Julia!'

'Do go and sort out the doctor and the tractor-man - they're having the most terrible argument about unemployment and charity hospitals - '

'I know nothing about the subject, my dear!'

'Nor do they, clearly, otherwise they'd have come to some agreement. All I expect you to do is draw their fire by saying something unutterably stupid, so they can both round on you together. Roland, come and explain Picasso to the members of our Women's Institute. I understand Picasso takes a great interest in women.'

'They take a great interest in him, too.'

'Good - then I'm sure that you will have something quite fascinating to say to us - '

And so it went on - a kaleidoscope of faces, food, drink and conversation, some of it earnest, some of it that kind of badinage which denies that anything can ever be taken seriously. Roland found himself explaining Guernica to a small crowd of estate-workers, who understood a lot better than Julian would ever have done, and when he'd finished and turned away to go and get himself a brown ale, for old time's sake and because he was thirsty, he heard one of them saying, 'But why's the 'orse screamin'?' and another one answering him, 'Wouldn't you bloody scream, if the Germans had just bombed you?'

He talked to everybody, he persuaded the J.P. that abstract art was worthwhile, he convinced the garage proprietor to have murals painted on the corrugated iron wall of his work-shop - one outside for the customers, one inside for the staff - , he urged the M.P. to support increased government aid for the National Gallery, he told the tractor-dealer that Mussolini hadn't made the trains run on time, he'd just changed the timetables, and when that hadn't worked he'd altered the clocks. He got three of the lawyers to agree (no mean feat in itself) that Hitler's persecution of the Jews was both illegal and immoral, and that that gave the rest of the world a right to intervene. He even defended surrealism to the station-master, who was a delightfully literal-minded man, and kept on pulling out his pocket-watch and looking at it, as if he were the White Rabbit, even though he had no other appointment to go to.

At one stage, he heard Herbie complaining from the top of the staircase that the whole of Europe was intending to rush into war, just to decimate the Hargreaves family and reduce the price of his stocks. He shouted up to him that a blockade of England would help farm-prices, and Herbie took the point.

About eleven o'clock, a band of strangely-clad people entered, in cloaks and long-nosed Venetian carnival masks, bringing with them boxes of fancy-dress costumes. They set up lights in the Lower Hall, and a camera on a tripod, and kept on inviting people to be photographed in the character they dreamed of being. 'The camera always lies,' they chanted, as they persuaded one person after another to live out strange fantasies with robes and crowns and jewels, with whips and shadows and lighting from beneath. On the edge of the crowd, Roland heard that sort of art-talk begin which he found himself now so happy not to have heard for a while. He saw the young man from the Oxford Union nodding wisely on the fringes, and then moving forward to join in. He looked round and saw Caroline hanging back, somehow ill at ease in her long dress, looking like a little girl in a frock that was too big for her, whereas she had seemed so much in control this morning. He went over to her and asked her for a dance, because there was someone playing simple waltz tunes over a rudimentary left hand in the music room. He adopted the right position rather stiffly, and they moved around the room, but it soon became clear that neither of them could waltz. She smiled ruefully, and excused herself, and that left him standing alone. The lights flickered on and off, and he heard Julia's voice announcing from the top of the stairs that it was time for the ghost-stories.

He didn't want to hear any ghost-stories. He didn't want to see anybody. He didn't want any more of the party and the merry-making and the art-talk and the photography and the poems through megaphones. He didn't want any more of anything. He had his own dead to think about and come to terms with. He went out into the darkness and the cold air made him suddenly very drunk. The grass of the lawn was covered with rime, except where the heating pipes which ran down to the garden pavilion had melted it. He staggered down this magic avenue and fumbled his way into the summer-house, which was still mercifully warm despite the chill of the night, fell out of his clothes and tumbled into bed. Sleep received him.

* * * * * * * *

Now at last his thinking had come full circle. Now he knew that the light on the ceiling came from the house-lights, reflected by the Avon as it flowed at the end of the lawn. Now he knew that he was snug in the summer-house in the garden, with Sheba beside him. He listened for the noise of the water, which he could just hear, and it reassured him. The party must have calmed down, or else it would surely have been audible. Perhaps they were telling each other ghost stories in the darkness, and that was why the light had changed. Perhaps those old rooms were flickering with candles. Perhaps he should be there.

There was a tapping at the door.

'Come in,' he said, and Sheba pricked up her ears, jumped off the bed, and went tail-wagging to greet the visitor. It was Caroline, in her riding-clothes, but without a hard-hat.

'Hallo,' she said, 'I'm glad you're awake - oh, it's good to be out of that stupid dress - '

'I thought you looked very nice in it.'

'Don't tell lies - I felt terrible - I can't have looked good, if I felt terrible. I don't want people to tell me lies, you know. I wouldn't have thought you were like that. All the others, yes, because they think they know what I want to hear, and worse than that, they think they know what I want. I thought you just treated me as a person.'

'Sorry. I was being grown-up. I don't do it very well.'

'That's the wrong kind of grown-up. That's the talking-down grown-up. There are other kinds. And don't say you're sorry again. I should really just have ignored you, instead of making you feel guilty. I have an idea you had some bad news today.'

'How do you know? Did Julia tell you?'

'No. She's very discreet. But she looked rather upset when she came out of the sitting-room. And I saw you at the window, and how you looked away from us when we were playing around in the garden. You don't need to tell me about it. I wasn't wanting to pry. I just wanted to say - you know - that I'm sad that you're sad, because I enjoyed being happy with you this morning.'

'Thanks.'

'But actually that isn't why I've come sneaking into your bedroom at this time of night. I saw that you were - well - a little drunk - and I thought, poor old Sheba isn't going to get her walk tonight. I see she's already been a little bit naughty in the corner - if I take her out now, we can avoid anything more serious. All right?'

'Absolutely marvellous. You're an angel.'

'Only where dogs are concerned. I won't be long.'

He lay back on the pillow for a moment. Then he rolled out of bed, picked up his dinner-jacket and evening trousers and folded them, grabbed shirt and underwear in the other hand and went across to put them on the chair where his day-clothes already lay. He put a hand in his sports-jacket pocket and withdrew Catherine's last letter. He went back to bed, slipped it out of the envelope, unfolded it and began looking at the photograph.

'Hello,' said a voice at the end of the bed. 'I'm dead. Did you know before Julia told you?'

'No,' he said, not looking up, for fear of what he would see.

'It's all right. You can look at me. I'm no worse than the photograph. I'm sorry I'm not the way I used to be - that is, I'm sorry for you. I'm not sorry for me. No, that's not true either. I'm sorry for the me that was then. I don't think she had enough pleasure out of her body. I don't think you and she did what you should have done. That is, the you that was then. I don't want to blame the you that is now.'

'Am I different now?'

'We're always different. Every moment we're different. Except when we're dead. And even then we can change if people think about us in a different way.'

'Is that why you're here? So that I'll think about you in a different way? Is that what you want?'

'It isn't a matter of what I want. I gave up wanting. I saw through wanting things, even before I died. And after you die, you give up wanting automatically.'

'What about ghosts that haunt places?'

'What haunts places like that is a last wish, not a person. That sort of ghost has a single-track mind and a very limited vocabulary.'

'So why are you here?'

'Because you want me. Wouldn't you have come if I'd wanted you?'

'Yes. You know I would. You should have sent me word.'

'But I didn't want you. Don't cry. Of course I wanted you - then. When I wanted you, I wanted you so badly - and then there was a time when I wanted you, and I couldn't find you behind all the other things that were going on, when I felt you were hiding from me, or being hidden from me.'

'I was, I was - both - both - '

'And then I didn't want you any more. I changed. The change wasn't an easy one. I'm not even sure I wanted to change. I think that if I could have gone back, I would. But I couldn't. Sometimes, one can. The Way isn't always straight, and it doesn't always go in one direction. But when you recognise it, you have to follow it. If you don't, you end up like Julian. Or like Herbie.'

'What's wrong with Herbie?'

'Nothing. But he doesn't have a Way himself. He may be the Way for others, like Julia. Or he may be only a Stage on the Way, for several people. You were a stage on my way. I had to pass through you. I wanted to stay with you, but the Way went on, and I had to follow it.'

'Can a person be the Way for someone else?'

'I don't think so, but then I can really only tell you about my Way. I can sense when other people have a Way, but I don't know where it will lead them. In the end, it's all terribly lonely, because there's only you and the Way, but it's less lonely than anything else, because you can rely on the Way, it doesn't let you down once you've found it, it's always there, even if it makes you do things you don't want to, and after a while you find you want to do those things anyway.'

'What about other people? Can you be with them on the Way?'

'Sometimes. I think that two people's Ways can run together - side by side - not the same, but side by side. But then they both have to know they have a Way. That's why it didn't work with us - you never had a Way, never even dreamt there was such a thing - you had ideas, you had ambitions, but you just stumbled into a Way. After I left you. And even then I don't think you knew what you were doing.'

'Have I got a Way now?'

She stretched out her hands, those terribly thin skeletal hands with the small black spots on them, which could be insects or disease or some flaw in his vision. Those hands which had touched him so intimately so long ago, which had been his first touch of love. He wanted them to touch him now. He wanted that love. But her hands remained far away from him, caressing the air, as it seemed, feeling for his spirit and not his body. She was silent for a long time, her hands motionless now in front of her.

'Yes,' she said at last, 'yes, you have a Way. I can't say more than that. I can't say where it will take you.'

'Thank you', he said.

'You shouldn't thank me. Having a Way may not be easy. It may mean the destruction of everything that you think you value now.'

'Tell me,' he said, 'when I was a stage on your Way, was I helpful? Would your Way have been able to proceed without me?'

Again, she was silent for a long while. As he watched her, she seemed to change, her face seemed to fill out, for a moment he thought he could see her long black hair. She moved her head from side to side, and it was as if her little white ears peeped through it. Then she was still again, and looked as she had done before.

'You were a hindrance,' she said, 'you have been a hindrance again, because you wanted me to be as I was, and I am not like that any more.'

'Do Ways branch and change, or are they laid down from the very beginning? How much choice does one have in one's Way?'

'You make the Way. The Way makes you.'

'Could we have made another Way - together?'

'No,' she said. 'Yes. I don't know. By the time I was sure that I had a Way, I found that it was leading me away from you. I called. I called for you to come with me. But you didn't hear.'

'I couldn't hear.'

'Yes, you're right, you couldn't hear. And I couldn't turn round and go back and get you, because I was already on the Way and I couldn't step off it. But I think there was a time, if we'd both known it, when we could have stayed together for longer, and both found our Ways that went side by side. But never, never think that our love was wasted. When I first went to India, and was in despair, it was the thought of our first meeting and our first love-making that sustained me, because that told me that such moments existed. Absolutely. Somewhere in the universe. And when I found my acceptance, it was just like that first time with you. We gave that to each other, and we both have it for ever, to use for ourselves, and for anyone else that we can help with it.'

'Is that why you have come back to me?'

'Of course. To tell you things that I couldn't tell you when I was alive. To tell you things that you would have misunderstood when I was alive. To help you to see me as a Stage on your Way. Remember the Métro? Remember Sébastopol? Where three lines meet, all at different levels? Who says which one interchanges with which? They all have their aim and destination, and yet at that place they are together. That is what you must learn - not always to think whether you are a Way or a Stage. Because that's the first danger - that's the danger which I didn't avoid with you - I treated you only as a Stage on my Way - I should have tried harder to awaken you - but it wasn't to be. Not while I was alive. So now I'm asking you to make me a Stage on your Way. To use me properly. To bind me into the fabric of the universe. To unite us again, the way we were united once. Accept me,' she said, 'take me, make me yours. Properly. By releasing me. By not wanting to possess me. By knowing that you possess me for ever, and can never lose me.'

'I love you,' he said, 'I loved you then, I still love you now, I shall always love you, forever and forever.'

'Thank you,' she said, 'thank you, thank you.' And she was gone.

There was a tremendous noise of barking from outside. Then a voice said, 'Easy, Sheba, easy!' and the barking stopped. Caroline opened the door of the summer house, and the dog came bounding in, leapt on the bed and began licking Roland's face all over.

'What was going on in here?' asked Caroline. 'She was good as gold all round the grounds, but the moment she came back here, her hackles went up, she started growling - I've never seen the like! And then - well you heard - and so did everyone else, probably! What was going on? You look as though you've seen a ghost.'

'Yes,' he said, 'I have.'

'Can I ask whose?'

'Catherine's. A girl I knew. A girl I loved. A girl I lived with. She left me. A long time ago. Longer ago than I thought. I'd like to ask you a question. Will you come to Paris with me when I go back?'

'That's not the question you really want to ask me, is it?'

'No. Will you stay here with me tonight?'

'Yes. Of course. Move over, Sheba.' She snuggled down beside him, and made herself comfortable. 'Now ask me the next question.'

'Paris. Will you come to Paris with me?'

'I don't think you really want to go back to Paris.'

'Why not?'

'Well, you bought Sheba. You don't really want to keep her in a flat in Paris. And anyway, there'll be war inside a year. Everyone says so. And when the war starts, you'll have to come back to England. And if you take Sheba to Paris, she'll have to sit around in quarantine for six months when you come back, and that's not really fair on her. Her life's not as long as ours. So, even if you do go back to Paris, and I go with you, I won't go for very long. And I won't go to live. I'll come back to be with Sheba, and wait for you to come home and ask me to marry you. Besides which, it can't be so easy to go riding in Paris. Good night. And that's good night to you too, Sheba.'

And she closed her eyes and fell asleep beside him. He lay still again, loving the sound of her breathing, slow and regular, and the warm smell of her skin. He was calmed by it, lulled to sleep. He realised, as he became more and more settled, that Sheba's breathing was mingling with Caroline's, and it made him smile.

He thought to himself: do I really know what I'm doing? Am I a Stage on her Way? Is she a Stage on mine? Will it ever become clear to me? Should I think about that before I do anything? Or should I just act on what I sense inside me, which isn't mystical or ultimate or absolute, but just feels as though it's right at the moment? Isn't that what Catherine meant? And doesn't everything become clear as you live it through? And isn't the only real mistake simply not living, and not being yourself? And isn't that what Catherine came back from the dead to tell me? But I have to understand it for myself, and I have to do it for myself. And in the end the only important thing is love, and admitting that you feel it.

He stared at the ceiling. The house lights had gone by now. The cloudy night gave the steadily flowing river little to reflect. But there was a small circle in the far corner that shuddered a little, and twinkled with that constant motion which is the nearest the atoms that make up our world ever get to stillness.

Just as his eyes closed, he realised it was the reflection of Sheba's water-bowl.

Mike Rogers Milborne St Andrew 22/23.viii.91