‘I’m not sending you.’

‘If you let Rupert have me——’

‘It was your idea, not mine.’

‘Well, you’ll be lonely, won’t you? You won’t find another girl to make things as easy for you as I have. You’re shy, you know—you haven’t much self-confidence with a girl when it comes to the point.’

George said nothing.

‘And you know you’ve messed my life up—the best years of my life. You’ve trailed me around and put a stigma on me—Rupert won’t like that.’

‘But you said he wanted you to go to him.’

‘Yes, darling, he does, but I don’t want to—not very much, that is. Of course he loves me and I could get to love him——’

‘Well, why not?’

‘Because I love you better, oh, much better.’

What a racket Mrs. Buswell was making in the kitchen!

‘You don’t love me,’ George said. ‘You told me so yourself.’

‘I told you so? I never. You must have dreamed it.’

‘Well, if I did, it’s true, and you must go now.’

‘Go? Go where?’

‘Out of this flat.’ And taking her arm George began to propel Deirdre to the door.

‘Oh, but how can you be so cruel? I haven’t anywhere to go to—only my own rooms, that you pay for. Oh, what shall I do? It wasn’t true what I told you about Rupert—he doesn’t want me, and I don’t want him. I only said it because you were so unkind to me.’

‘Get out of here, get out!’

‘How can you turn me away like this, when you’ve been so fond of me and done so much for me? You’ve always been so good and generous——’

‘Get out—get out!’

The door shut out the sound of Deirdre’s sobbing. George sat for what seemed a long time, looking at his knees, then round the room, then at his knees again. Like everyone who has taken violent action he was unable to comment on it.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ he said, hardly knowing whom he was going to see.

‘She’s gone,’ said Mrs. Buswell.

‘I thought she went half an hour ago.’

‘No, she didn’t, she stayed on the landing, outside the door. She rang once or twice but you didn’t hear and I wouldn’t let her in—I said you were resting. Of course she didn’t dare to use her key. I should get it back from her, if I was you. You never know. She’s gone now.’

‘Oh, dear, Mrs. Buswell.’ The ‘dear’ might have been for her, or part of the exclamation. ‘What do you think about it all?’ Somehow he took it for granted that she knew what had been happening.

‘I say good riddance to bad rubbish.’ She looked with compassion at his working face. ‘Don’t take on, sir, she’s not worth it.’

George wasn’t so sure; he didn’t know how to feel, and it seemed incongruous, disproportionate, almost incredible that the emotional experience of three years could be ended by one small act of violence, lasting only a minute.

Much later in the evening, after Mrs. Buswell had gone, he went to the telephone and dialled a number.

‘Can I speak to Mrs. de Sole?’

‘Speaking. But who is that?’

‘George Lambert, Délice.’

‘George? I didn’t recognize your voice.’ Would his voice never be the same again? ‘You are a stranger. Well, when can we meet?’

‘Could I come round and see you now, or is it too late?’

‘It’s never too late to mend. I’m not clairvoyante, but I suspect you want to tell me something.’

‘Don’t be hard on me, will you? I’ve just been rather hard.’

‘On yourself, no doubt.’

‘No, on someone else.’

‘Well done, I congratulate you. But you won’t find me hard—I shall be softer than silk, snow, swansdown, anything you can think of.’

A HIGH DIVE

The circus-manager was worried. Attendances had been falling off and such people as did come—children they were, mostly—sat about listlessly, munching sweets or sucking ices, sometimes talking to each other without so much as glancing at the show. Only the young or little girls, who came to see the ponies, betrayed any real interest. The clowns’ jokes fell flat, for they were the kind of jokes that used to raise a laugh before 1939, after which critical date people’s sense of humour seemed to have changed, along with many other things about them. The circus-manager had heard the word ‘corny’ flung about and didn’t like it. What did they want? Something that was, in his opinion, sillier and more pointless than the old jokes; not a bull’s-eye on the target of humour, but an outer or even a near-miss—something that brought in the element of futility and that could be laughed at as well as with: an unintentional joke against the joker. The clowns were quick enough with their patter but it just didn’t go down: there was too much sense in their nonsense for an up-to-date audience, too much articulateness. They would do better to talk gibberish, perhaps. Now they must change their style, and find out what really did make people laugh, if people could be made to; but he, the manager, was over fifty and never good himself at making jokes, even the old-fashioned kind. What was this word that everyone was using—‘sophisticated’ ? The audiences were too sophisticated, even the children were: they seemed to have seen and heard all this before, even when they were too young to have seen and heard it.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked his wife. They were standing under the Big Top, which had just been put up, and wondering how many of the empty seats would still be empty when they gave their first performance. ‘We shall have to do something, or it’s a bad look-out.’

‘I don’t see what we can do about the comic side,’ she said. ‘It may come right by itself. Fashions change, all sorts of old things have returned to favour, like old-time dances. But there’s something we could do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Put on an act that’s dangerous, really dangerous. Audiences are never bored by that. I know you don’t like it, and no more do I, but when we had the Wall of Death——’

Her husband’s big chest-muscles twitched under his thin shirt.

‘You know what happened then.’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t our fault, we were in the clear.’

He shook his head.

‘Those things upset everyone. I know the public came after it happened—they came in shoals, they came to see the place where someone had been killed. But our people got the needle and didn’t give a good performance for I don’t know how long. If you’re proposing another Wall of Death I wouldn’t stand for it—besides, where will you find a man to do it?—especially with a lion on his bike, which is the great attraction.’

‘But other turns are dangerous too, as well as dangerous-looking. It’s being dangerous that is the draw.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

Before she had time to answer a man came up to them.

‘I hope I don’t butt in,’ he said, ‘but there’s a man outside who wants to speak to you.’

‘What about?’

‘I think he’s looking for a job.’

‘Bring him in,’ said the manager.

The man appeared, led by his escort, who then went away. He was a tall, sandy-haired fellow with tawny leonine eyes and a straggling moustache. It wasn’t easy to tell his age—he might have been about thirty-five. He pulled off his old brown corduroy cap and waited.

‘I hear you want to take a job with us,’ the manager said, while his wife tried to size up the newcomer. ‘We’re pretty full up, you know. We don’t take on strangers as a rule. Have you any references?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then I’m afraid we can’t help you. But just for form’s sake, what can you do?’

As if measuring its height the man cast up his eyes to the point where one of the two poles of the Big Top was embedded in the canvas.

‘I can dive sixty feet into a tank eight foot long by four foot wide by four foot deep.’

The manager stared at him.

‘Can you now?’ he said. ‘If so, you’re the very man we want. Are you prepared to let us see you do it?’