«Cause me pain then, I'll bear it gladly, but it must be inside our security.»
«Oh everything's inside. That's the trouble.»
«I don't know what you mean by 'inside.' But you seem to be speaking as if it were all an illusion, as if you could leave me.»
«I suppose it could be interpreted like that.»
«But we've only just found each other.»
«We found each other millions of years ago, Julian.»
«Yes, yes, I know. I feel that too, but really, ordinary really, since Covent Garden it's only two days.»
«I'll meditate on that.»
«Well, meditate properly. Bradley, you couldn't leave me, what nonsense are you talking.»
«No, I couldn't leave you, my utter darling, but you could leave me. I don't mean anything about doubting your love. It's just that whatever miracle made us will automatically also break us. We are for breaking, our smash is what it's for.»
«I won't let you talk like this. I'll hold you and silence you with love.»
«Mind out. This is tricky light for driving in.»
«Will you stop a minute?»
«No.»
«Do you really think I could leave you?»
«Sub specie aeternitatis, yes. You have done so already.»
«You know I don't understand Latin.»
«A pity your education was so neglected.»
«Bradley, I shall get angry with you.»
«So we are quarrelling already. Shall I drive you back to Ealing?»
«You are deliberately hurting and spoiling.»
«I am not a very nice character. You must get to know me some time.»
«I do know you. I know you inside out and backwards.»
«You do and you don't.»
«Do you doubt my love?»
«I fear the gods.»
«I fear nothing.»
«Perfection is instant despair. Instant despair. Nothing to do with time.»
«If you despair you doubt that I love you.»
«Maybe.»
'Will you please stop driving?»
«What can I do to prove that I love you absolutely?»
«I don't see that you can do anything.»
«I shall jump out of the car.»
«Don't be silly.»
«I shall.»
And the next moment she had.
There was a sound like a small explosion, a puff of air, and she was gone from my side. The door gaped, cracked open, swung and slammed back. The seat beside me was empty. The car careered onto the grass verge and stopped.
I looked back and saw her in the half-light lying in a dark motionless heap by the side of the road.
I have had terrible moments in my life. Many of them came to me after this one. But this was, seen in retrospect, the most beautiful, the purest and the most absolutely punishing.
Gasping with terror and anguish I got myself out of the car and ran back. The road was empty and silent, the air filled with atoms of darkening blue, defeating the sight.
Oh the poor frailty of the human form, its egg-shell vulnerability! How can this precarious crushable machine of flesh and bones and blood survive on this planet of hard surfaces and relentless murderous gravity? I had felt the crash and crunch of her body upon the road.
Her head was in the grass, her legs hunched up on the verge. The moment of stillness when I got to her was the worst. I knelt beside her, moaning aloud, not daring to touch or move that perhaps terribly damaged body. Was she conscious, would she in a moment begin to scream with pain? My hands hovered about her with a condemned tragic helplessness. I had a very different future now as I ineptly questioned that inert and scattered being that I did not dare even to fold in my arms.
Then Julian said, «Sorry, Bradley.»
«Are you badly hurt?» I said in a grating breathless voice.
«Don't-think-so-' Then she sat up and put her arms round my neck.
«Oh Julian, be careful, are you all right, is anything broken?»
«No-I'm sure-not-Look, I fell onto these humpy cushions of grass or moss or-«I thought you fell on the road.»
«No, I just-grazed my leg again-and I banged my face-ouf! I think I'm perfectly all right though, it just hurts-Wait a moment, let me just try moving-Yes, I'm perfectly all right-Oh I am sorry-I took her in my arms properly then and we held onto each other, half lying among the little mossy grassy hillocks beside a ditch full of white flowering nettles. The creamy moon had become smaller and paler and more metallic. Darkness began to thicken about us in the dense air as we held each other in silence.
«Bradley, I'm getting cold, I've lost my sandals.»
«Bradley, please. I hear a car, someone will come.»
I got up, burning, and helped her up, and then in fact a car did come by and its lights showed her legs, the blue of her dress which matched her eyes, and a flash of her shaggy brown-gold mane. It also showed her sandals lying together upon the road.
«There's blood on your leg.»
«It's just a graze.»
«You're limping.»
«No, just stiff.»
We walked back to the car and I turned on the headlights and made an intricate bower of green leaves in the middle of the dark. We got into the car and held each other's hands.
«It won't be necessary to do that again, Julian.»
«I'm very sorry.»
Then we drove on in silence, her hand on my knee. For the last bit she read the map by torchlight. We crossed a railway line and a canal into a sort of empty flat land. There were no lights of houses to be seen now. The lights of the car showed how the roadway faded into a stony verge of smooth grey pebbles and vivid green wiry grass. We paused and turned at a featureless crossroads where Julian turned her torch onto the ringer post. The road turned into a stony track along which we bumped at five miles per hour. And at last the headlights swung round and revealed two white gate posts and the name written in bold Italian lettering: patara. The car moved onto gravel and the lights jerked over red-brick walls and we came to a halt outside a narrow latticed porch. Julian already had the key, she had been holding it for miles. I peered at oi our haven. It was a little square red-brick bungalow. The agent had been a trifle romantic. «It's marvellous,» said Julian. She let me in.
All the lights were on. Julian had run from room to room. She had pulled back the sheets of the double divan bed. «I don't think this is aired at all, it's quite damp. Oh Bradley, let's go down to the sea straightaway, shall we? Then I'll cook supper.»
I looked at the bed. «It's late, my darling. Are you sure you're all right after that fall?»
«Of course! I think I'll just change, it's got a bit chilly, and then we'll go down to the sea, it must be just there, I think I can hear it.»
I went out of the front door and listened. The sound of the sea sieving pebbles came in a regular harsh grating sigh from over the top of some little eminence, sand dunes perhaps, just in front of me. The moon was slightly hazed over but giving out a golden, not silvery, illumination by which I could see the white garden fencing, ragged shrubs and the outline of a single tree. A sense of emptiness and level land. Air moving softly, salty. I felt a mixture of bliss and pure fear. After a few moments I went back into the house. Silence.
I went into the bedroom. Julian, in a mauve-and-white flowered petticoat with a white fringe was lying on the bed deeply asleep. Her glowing brown hair was spread all over the pillow and half over her face in a silky network like part of a beautiful shawl. She lay on her back with her throat exposed as if to the knife. Her shoulders, pale in colour, were as creamy as the moon at dusk. Her knees were a little drawn up, the bare muddied feet sideways and pointed. Her hands, also brown with earth, had found each other and nestled between her breasts like a pair of animals. Her right thigh, below the line of the white fringe, was red and scraped in two places, once where she had climbed over the fence, once where she had thrown herself out of the car. She had indeed had an eventful day.