He had plenty of them before he reached the village called Tambourne. Plenty of fine old women in black-beaded bodices, one button always missing where the strain came over the breasts. Plenty of young live-stock being shifted up and down the line. Plenty of the porters’ family party. Plenty of a plate of macaroons locked alone in a glass box in a deserted refreshment room.
Plenty of superb trees, and white nettle-scented dust. At the inn called the Star at Tambourne, plenty of regret for Nanna’s fine darned linen and china tea. A night of stars and bats came very slowly. Once out of the wood and away from his relations he asked himself why in Christ’s name he had come to see old Mr. Tracy. An ancient of days was living a stroll away from him at Tambourne House. He fetched the cup from his suit-case and put it on the red baize parlour table, a dumb circle of pale green. Why couldn’t the thing speak? Just once. Dumb was the word for it. He got rather tight all by himself, but without inspiration. He would have to go and call, have to go call. All up that yellow drive by himself.
She was alone next morning. Philip had gone out to meet a Jew whose favour they were nursing. She had refused, felt she no longer cared if he mismanaged it. She had not spoken since an hour after Scylla had left, and in that hour they had said worse things to each other than they had said to her. But Philip, who had almost cried with fear, in the morning was not dissatisfied. One does not leave the gutter without a few knocks. He had his own plans, his own adventure. Hoped from his heart Scylla was marrying the man. That would get them out of his way for good.
Lydia sat at her writing-table, without her mask, either of love or make-up. Her head, still disfigured, did not belong to this age. She wrote:
She went out herself and posted it to Tollerdown.
Once, down South, one of the boys had called Scylla “bird-alone.” They had all asked for names. Picus had been cat-by-himself. Felix,
Felix sobbed in the taxi: “Can’t you see we are all damned.” And that love and death were one.
They had considerably enlivened the cabaret, a sentimental infamy, its men and girls drunker than the clients. Among their slobbering, rapacious familiarity, the three appeared like drunk young gods. And Felix, a young king receiving his subjects, was courtly to the fawning, swarming band of both sexes in changed clothes. Proud of his companions, unconscious that he was paying for the party, he did not know that Boris owed money there, how he balanced the chance of being dunned with his worth as conductor of a rich client, and hoped that his debt would be put on to Felix’s bill. A thing he would not arrange. He had not yet come to that.
Round their table moved the herd of painted animals, Felix’s subjects, their tongues parting their lips for what they might get out of the flower-skinned, sapphire-eyed boy, who looked at nothing but Boris. Black briar-rose, he called him, who saw Felix an absurd young splendour. Felix noticed him strange, observant, a moon-baby. Not how the infant was putting two and two together. Nor would he have cared, lifted above any complex of the shopkeeper to be paid in any kind of thanks.
It was the American, later, who developed an intoxicated conscience about Felix when, in the taxi, romantic metaphysics and song gave way to hysteria. He cuffed him roughly into place. Unfortunately, Felix’s head broke a window, and all he did was lean out and cry: “I want to suffer as you have suffered, Boris— Police! police!”
