Let me take this chance to say that in spite of all differences our friendship is very precious to me. As you will remember, I have made you my literary executor. Could there be a greater sign of trust? However, let us hope that talk of wills is premature. I am just now leaving London and will be away for some time. I hope I shall be able to write. I feel that a most crucial period in my life lies ahead. Give my fondest love to Rachel. I thank you both for your consistent cordiality to a solitary man; and I rely upon you absolutely in the matter of F. M.

Refilling my pen, I began to write another letter, which ran as follows: My dear Julian, it was kind of you to ask my advice about books and writing. I am afraid I cannot offer to teach you to write. I have not the time, and such teaching is, I surmise, impossible anyway. Let me just say a word about books. I think you should read the Iliad and the Odyssey in any unvarnished translation. (If pressed for time, omit the Odyssey.) These are the greatest literary works in the world, where huge conceptions are refined into simplicity. I think perhaps you should leave Dante until later. The Commedia presents many points of difficulty and needs, as Homer does not, a commentary. In fact, if not read in Italian, this great work seems not only incomprehensible, but repulsive. You should, I feel, relax your embargo upon poetry sufficiently to accommodate the better known plays of Shakespeare! How fortunate we are to have English as our native tongue! Familiarity and excitement should carry you easily through these works. Forget that they are «poetry» and just enjoy them. The rest of my reading list consists simply of the greatest English and Russian novels of the nineteenth century. (If you are not sure which these are, ask your father: I think he can be trusted to tell you!)

My very good wishes to you, and thank you for wanting to know what I thought!

Yours,

Bradley

After I had finished this letter and after some reflection and fumbling and excursions to the chimney piece and the display cabinet, I began a further letter which went thus: Dear Marloe, as I hope I made clear to you, your visit was not only unwelcome but entirely without point, since I do not propose under any circumstances to communicate with my former wife. Any further attempt at an approach, whether by letter or in person, will be met by absolute rejection. However, now that you appreciate my attitude I imagine that you will be kind and wise enough to leave me alone. I was grateful for your help chez Mr. and Mrs. Baffin. I should tell you, in case you had any thought of pursuing an acquaintance with them, that I have asked them not to receive you, and they will not receive you.

Yours sincerely,

Bradley Pearson

Francis had, on his departure on the previous evening, contrived to thrust into my pocket his address and telephone number written upon a slip of paper. I copied the address onto the envelope and threw the paper into the wastepaper basket.

I then sat and twiddled for a bit longer, watching the creeping line of sun turning the crusty surface of the wall opposite from brown to blond. Then I fell to writing again.

Yours sincerely,

Bradley Pearson

PS. I should add that I am today leaving London and tomorrow leaving England. I shall be staying away for some time and may even settle abroad.

When I had finished writing this letter I was not only sweating, I was trembling and panting and my heart was beating viciously. What emotion had so invaded me? Fear? It is sometimes curiously difficult to name the emotion from which one suffers. The naming of it is sometimes unimportant, sometimes crucial. Hatred?

I looked at my watch and found that in the composition of the letter a long time had passed. It was now too late to catch the morning train. No doubt the afternoon train would be better in any case. Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children.

I decided that I would send off the letter to Francis and postpone deciding what sort of communication, if any, to send to Christian. I also decided that it was now a matter of urgency to get out of the house and down to the station, where I could have lunch and await the afternoon train at leisure. It was just as well the earlier train had been safely missed. I have sometimes had the unpleasant experience, arriving very early for a train, of finding myself catching its predecessor with a minute to spare. Thrusting the letter to Christian into my pocket I found my fingers touching the review of Arnold's novel. Here was another unsolved problem. Although I was well able to consider refraining from doing so, I knew that I also felt very anxious to publish. Why? Yes, I must get away and think all these matters out.

My suitcases were in the hall where I had left them yesterday. I put on my macintosh. I went into the bathroom. This bathroom was of the kind which no amount of caring for could make other than sordid. Vari-coloured slivers of soap, such as I cannot normally bear to throw away, were lying about in the basin and in the bath. With a sudden act of will I collected them all and flushed them down the lavatory. As I stood there, dazed with this success, the front doorbell suddenly began to ring and ring. part one 45 1 At this point it is necessary for me to give some account of my sister, Priscilla, who is about to appear upon the scene.

Priscilla is six years younger than me. She left school early. So indeed did I. I am an educated and cultivated person through my own zeal, efforts and talents. Priscilla had no zeal and talents and made no efforts. She was spoilt by my mother whom she resembled. I think women, perhaps unconsciously, convey to female children a deep sense of their own discontent. My mother, though not too unhappily married, had a continued grudge against the world. This may have originated in, or been aggravated by, a sense of having married «beneath» her, though not exactly in a social sense. My mother had been a «beauty» and had had many suitors. I suspect she felt later in life, as she grew old behind the counter, that if she had played her cards otherwise she could have made a much better bargain in life. Priscilla, though she made in commercial and even in social terms a more advantageous buy, followed somewhat the same pattern. Priscilla, though not as pretty as my mother, had been a good-looking girl, and was admired in the circle of pert half-baked undereducated youths who constituted her «social life.» But Priscilla, egged on by her mother, had ambitions, and was in no hurry to settle with one of these unprepossessing candidates.

To cut a long story short, Priscilla really got quite «above herself,» dressing and behaving «grandly,» and did eventually satisfy her ambition of penetrating into some slightly «better» social circles than those which she had frequented at first. I suspect that she and my mother actually planned a «campaign» to better Priscilla's lot. Priscilla went to tennis parties, indulged in amateur dramatics, went to charity dances. She and my mother invented for her quite a little «season.» Only Priscilla's season went on and on. She could not make up her mind to marry. Or perhaps her present beaux, in spite of the bold face which Priscilla and my mother jointly presented to the world, felt that after all poor Priscilla was not a very good match. Perhaps there was after all a smell of shop. Then, doubtless as a result of working so hard on her season, she lost her job, and made no attempt to obtain another. She stayed at home, fell vaguely ill, and had what would now, I suppose, be called a nervous breakdown.

By the time she recovered she was getting on into her twenties and had lost some of her first good looks. She talked at that time of becoming a «model» (a «mannequin»), but so far as I know made no serious attempt to do so. What she did become, virtually, and not to put too fine a point upon it, was a tart. I do not mean that she stood around in the road, but she moved in a world of business men, golf-club bar proppers and night-club hounds, who certainly regarded her in this light. I did not want to know anything about this; possibly I ought to have been more concerned. I was upset and annoyed when my father once approached the subject, and although I could see that he had been made utterly miserable, I resolutely refused to discuss it. I never said anything to my mother, who always defended Priscilla and pretended, or deceived herself into believing, that all was well. I was by this time already involved with Christian, and I had other matters on my mind.