Ah, but he was mocking me! Didn't I know it, and didn't everyone else know it?

  It seemed to me that I was faced with a circle of jeering faces. I don't suppose for a moment that that was so. Although I had no warm friends in Seaborne, people on the whole respected me. I was Seaborne's only author and my photograph had been in the London papers. 'A dull dog. How he manages to write those books I can't think,' would be the verdict.

  I am sure that they did not look on me with mockery, but it was part of the fate that now had me in charge that I should fancy their hostility, that it should be almost as though I were back at school again, back at the baths with my enemies uncovering my nakedness.

  So I was at my worst, sulky and uncourteous when Tunstall led me up to the little bar and insisted on my drinking. I refused, of course, a cocktail.

  He looked at me humorously and addressed the laughing crowd. 'You'd never think, would you,' he said, 'that Jacko is my best friend? He has all the virtues, I all the vices. He is a very serious highbrow author. I'm a common cheap painter.' (His hand was round my neck.) 'All the same, the best friendships are between opposites.' (He was a little drunk already. I could smell his breath.) 'We've been friends all our lives, haven't we, Jacko? And will be friends to the end. Aye, and beyond the end, too. Into Eternity. I drink to you, Jacko, and will forgive you for once for drinking my health in tomato juice.'

  I look back now to that party and, in the light of later events, feel that it was a kind of phantasmagoria with everyone a little out of drawing, larger than life–size. I've noticed, too (many others have noticed the same), that in any gathering of human beings you can, with a very little exercise of the imagination, see people as animals—the wolf, the fox, the snake, the rabbit, the horse, the parrot, the faithful dog. I had a sense that they were pressing in upon me and soon would begin to bark, to whistle, to snarl.

  To one person at least my discomfiture was apparent, for little Leila Tunstall arrived, detached me from the others, led me to two chairs in the corner of the room.

  'Don't you worry about me,' I said, more comfortable at once. 'This is what I like—to sit in a corner and not be noticed.'

  'It was too bad of Jim,' she said. 'He's so fond of you, but he doesn't seem to understand you a bit. Then he likes teasing people.'

  She gave me a sudden quick look: 'You know—you mustn't think me rude—you're VERY like a brother of mine in the East. In looks, voice—it's astonishing!'

  But I was thinking of Tunstall.

  'He likes teasing ME, you mean,' I answered. 'And I don't take teasing well. I get self–conscious and stupid. What I'd LIKE would be to sit here and watch people all the evening and not speak to anyone. That's dreadfully unsociable, isn't it?'

  She was watching her husband. I could see that she was worried.

  'Jim thinks such a lot of you,' she said. 'I believe you could have some influence over him. He wants a friend just now. He's disappointed with the way things have been going, and then he drinks too much and—' She stopped, feeling perhaps that she was disloyal.

  'I wouldn't say all this except to a real friend of his.'

  I wanted to say that I wasn't a real friend, that I hated him and always had done. But of course I couldn't say that to her, especially when she was so kind and gentle.

  It was then that I noticed someone I had never seen before. A woman. She was very handsome, bigly built, a blonde, holding herself superbly, dressed rather nakedly. She had daring laughing eyes, and plainly defied the world.

  'Who is that?' I asked.

  I saw at once that Leila disliked her. Leila's face had that deformed look now—somewhere a little twisted—was it the mouth, the cheek? When she looked like this you were sorry for her and loved her. You knew she would have been very unhappy had she not been too courageous to allow unhappiness.

  'Oh, that? That's Bella Scorfield.'

  'And WHO is Bella Scorfield?'

  'Ah, no. You wouldn't have realized her yet. She and her mother have come to live here. They have taken a little house—Middlewood— not far from Shining Cliff. A desolate, lonely place I'D think it, and Mrs. Scorfield is a permanent invalid. Jim insisted on my paying a call—a strange woman—looks like a corpse—lies in bed all day working at chess problems and reading mathematics. Or so Bella told me. Bella doesn't seem to mind. She has a car of her own. She's—what shall I say?—a bit of a rip. She told me the other day—she likes to confide in me, I can't think why—that she had only a few years to have a good time in and she'd make the most of it. So I asked her why she had chosen this dull little place and a house miles from anywhere. She gave me a queer look and said that you could often have a better time in a dull little place.'

  'You don't like her,' I said.

  'No, frankly, I don't.'

  'I hate her at sight,' I said.

  To that Leila replied:

  'What a funny man you are! To look at you one would think you were as quiet as a mouse. But when one gets to know you a little one finds you are full of intense feelings—about people especially.'

  'I'd say exactly the same about you.'

  She flushed a little, then answered very quietly: 'There ARE some things about which one feels intensely, of course.'

  I wasn't permitted to keep my quiet corner for long. Tunstall was soon very merry. It would be untrue to say that he was drunk; he was flushed and noisy and reckless. It became, in fact, very soon a noisy party. Tunstall had that effect on people; he shook them out of their caution, and especially if there were drinks there to assist him.

  And I that evening was his continuous butt. Why, WHY did I not have the wisdom to slip away and go home? Again and again I was tempted to do so, but I did not wish to abandon Eve (she would not have cared, perhaps, if I had). I loved her that night, it seemed to me, as I had never loved her before. How her unattainability stirred my blood! Ah, could I but have been assured that when I touched her arm with my hand she would turn round and, seeing that it was I, would look at me with surprised love. I have caught that look between man and wife, and oh, have I not envied them!

  She would not have cared had I gone—and yet I stayed. They danced. We went upstairs to supper, and it seemed that Tunstall could not let me alone. 'Where's Jacko?' he would cry. 'Jacko! Jacko! Where's Jacko?'

  'Your master wants you,' some woman, laughing, said to me. How humiliated I was! How desperately I hated his going with me upstairs, his hand on my arm!

  We were pressed about with people, and yet at one moment I had a strong impulse to push him on his soft stomach with my sharp elbow and so send him reeling backwards, losing his balance with a cry, tumbling down those sharp–edged wooden stairs, breaking his fat neck perhaps…. At that my heart seemed to stop. It appeared to me that I looked out from the very soul of Tunstall himself and saw that fallen, twisted body and the crowd with faces like cambric masks and sharp clown noses, peering at it. I had indeed stopped. He pushed me up the stairs, his hand pressing the small of my back.

  'Come on, Jacko! Don't you want your feed? There's ginger–beer, you know—plenty of ginger–beer!'

  They did the thing very well. We all sat down to supper at a long table, lit with candles. He sat me down between himself and Miss Scorfield. His knee pressed against mine. Once he laid his hot sweating hand on the back of mine. He leant across me and talked of me to Miss Scorfield almost as though I were not there. He seemed to me to be already on excellent terms with her. I did not look at her, but, in my senses, I was conscious of her half–bare bosom, her naked back, some rose–scented perfume, the heat of her body, the abandonment of her soul.

  'You've got to be friends with Jacko, Bella, or you won't be friends with me. He's my better half, always has been since we were at school together.'

  'It wouldn't be difficult to be YOUR better half, Jimmie.'

  'Ah, that's what YOU think! It's more than you'll ever be, Bella, old girl.'

  This seemed to them a tremendous joke, and they laughed like anything, he with his hand on my shoulder, his crimson flushed face staring straight into her body. It was almost as though he possessed her in front of my eyes.

  After supper we danced, played bridge, gossiped. The silly Parrott girl insisted on staying beside me. Didn't I think Jim Tunstall really AWFUL? He couldn't leave a woman alone. How his poor wife was humiliated! And his drinking. Of course if he went on like that his painting would soon go to pieces. In fact she had heard that in London …

  I put an end to this, saying that we had just enjoyed a jolly good supper at his hands, and that it wasn't in the best of taste to slander him. She gave me a viperish look.

  'You know what you are, John Talbot. You're a hypocritical prig. You know that you hate Jim Tunstall like poison and always have. You wouldn't be past murdering him if you could get away with it safely. He's been laughing at you all your life, and if there's one thing you can't stand, it's being laughed at. And I'll tell you another thing. Watch Eve and your dear host you're so keen on defending. I wouldn't put it past the two of them.'

  With which she walked away, pleased at having disturbed me. As indeed she had, for, at that very moment, looking across to a window–seat near the piano, I saw Eve and Tunstall close together; Tunstall was talking eagerly. Once he put out his hand and touched hers. Eve sat, quiet, beautifully composed, but quite suddenly, as I was staring at them, she laughed, looking up into his face. She gave him a smile—of impudence, daring, adventurous excitement—how should I describe it? The importance of it was in the fact that she had never, in all our married life together, given me such a smile.

  You know how in a second of time you can change from good health to ill. You are perfectly well, buried in gardening or letter–writing or reading. You are comfortably settled in the rational normal world. An instant, and we've changed all that! You are trembling, shivering, heated, sick. So it is, I found then, with jealousy. When I saw the smile that Eve gave to Tunstall I became, in that moment, a jealous lunatic.

  I showed my lunacy during the walk home. When one is in love and the other feels friendship but not love, one plays, whatever happens, a losing game. There is no safe time for protests, appeals, tears. The other is securely armoured with indifference.

  I behaved like a fool on that homeward walk. Like all jealous people, I knew, at the very moment, the fool that I was! 'Say nothing. Be gay, indifferent. Pretend not to care.' That was wisdom. But I loved her too dearly, and jealousy is a cataract that rushes one's boat over the swirling falls.

  I abused her for flirting with Tunstall. I said that he was a man with a monstrous reputation. I said that she had disgraced myself and our child by behaving so before the Seaborne gossips.

  Then she was really angry. For the first time in our lives together she was really angry. Her voice had a hard edge to it that I had never heard before. She said some bitter things, things I don't doubt that she had long been treasuring in her heart but had been too kindly–natured to declare.

  She said that I was becoming a useless, stupid old maid. She, like the Parrott, called me a prig, and said that all the world thought me one. What kind of life was it for her, did I think, to live with someone who shut himself off from everyone and wasted his life in writing books that no one wanted? I resented, she said, that anyone should have any fun. I was against all human feeling, no one must flirt, or drink, or dance. She liked Tunstall. I was absurdly unfair to him and in reality was jealous of him because he was everything that I was not—gay, popular, a real man.

  I broke in then to cry that I hated him, I hated him, I hated him! He was bad, worthless, false to his wife and everyone else. If she, my wife, could like such a man, then she was no wife for me.

  She answered, with a dreadful gravity that struck terror into my heart, that perhaps that was true. Our marriage had been a mistake. She had done all she could. The shop would have closed had it not been for her. Yes. We were not suited to one another. She saw that clearly now.

  At that I was abject. I said that she was right to despise me, that I WAS a prig. I begged her to understand (oh, the miserable self–humiliation of jealousy!) that I loved her so terribly that nothing and nobody mattered to me beside her. I was jealous, yes. I could not bear to see Tunstall touch her hand, to see her smile into his face. Ah, if she would only love me a little—just a little. How I prayed for it, longed for it! I would try to improve, to see more people, to help her in the shop. I would do this, do that. If only she would forgive me for my stupid jealousy there was nothing I would not do. But she would not, just then, forgive me. She was cold in my arms that night, not kind as she often was. Alas, I wept. But my tears did not move her. I could feel that she thought of me, just then, with repulsion.

  Next morning she was kind again.

  Everyone knows what obsessions are. They ride you like demons. They dig their talons into your heart. They accompany you, like slithery fat familiars, in all your daily and nightly doings.

  From the night of Tunstall's party I was thus ridden. I saw two things. I saw Tunstall falling backwards down the wooden stairs on to the floor of the room where the dancing was—and I saw my wife laughing up into his eyes.

  Then followed the episode of the bathe. These were the early days of summer, the beginning of June. To the right of Shining Cliff there was a little beach, Bateman's Cove. At certain tides it was excellent for bathing, having a hard saffron–coloured sand and a steep shelving descent so that you need not wade ignominiously before swimming. Because the path down to it was long, steep and winding, it was less popular than certain more accessible beaches. All the more reason for my pleasure in it!

  One late afternoon I went there alone to bathe. It was an exquisite day of soft milky tenderness, the air warm as a gentle embrace, little movement, the blue glassy water broken quite suddenly with the baby energy of a white–crested wave.

  I was quite alone on the beach. I was half–undressed when I looked up and saw Tunstall standing there watching me. Hugging now my obsession as I did, it did not seem to me at all odd that he should be with me, for he was ALWAYS with me. I could hardly tell whether he were real or wraith. But he was real enough. He had his bathing–towel under his arm.

  'I saw you from above, Jacko. I was going to bathe on Anstey, but when I saw you all alone down there I wanted to join you so badly that I bothered with all that tiresome path. Now isn't THAT devotion?'

  I looked at him almost with friendliness. He had been for some weeks now the constant companion of my mind.

  'Well, what have you been doing with yourself? I haven't seen you for nearly a week.'

  '"The trivial round, the common task".'

  'Don't you talk just like a book? How's your most delightful wife?'

  'Very well, thank you.'

  'Now, there's a woman! Aren't you lucky? We've made fast friends. I hope you don't mind?'

  'No. Why should I?'

  'Well, if YOU dislike me, Jacko, she doesn't. You like MY wife and I like YOURS. Isn't that lucky?'

  He had thrown off his clothes and stood now in bathing–trunks. His body was a white fat. His breasts were heavy. There was thick hair on his chest and even on his shoulders. On the right arm, high up, there was tattooed a mermaid. I was slim beside him, and this was the more emphasized because we were of exactly the same height. I had fancied that I was growing a little stout, but now, looking at him, I was reassured. His red face and hands were in startling contrast with his pale body. In fact, for a moment we stared at one another.

  'Do you remember,' he said slowly, 'when we were kids, and I pulled your shirt over your head?'

  'Yes. I remember.'

  'You minded like anything. You know,' he went on, curling his toes into the warm sand, 'it has always given me a kind of kick when you mind things. Why is that, do you suppose?'

  'I've no idea.'

  'I get a sort of pleasure in seeing you wince. It's like—it's like—pulling your own hair to hurt yourself.'

  I tore myself away from him almost desperately. Nothing so curious as the way he held me! I ran down into the sea. He quickly followed me. He was a good swimmer and so was I. The water was indeed lovely, the advancing afternoon perfection, but all my pleasure was spoilt, I wanted to be out and dressed, and away as soon as possible. When I came out, he came out too.

  As he was dressing himself, he said: 'You didn't stay in long.'

  'No, I didn't.'

  'That was because you wanted to get away from me.'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, you can't. I shall walk along with you to the bus.'

  I said nothing. We dressed in silence. We walked up the path in single file.

  At the top he said:

  'Dear old Jacko. You'd do me a hurt if you could, wouldn't you?'

  I didn't reply.

  'And I'd do you one. But that's because I like you so much.'

  He suddenly began to chatter. He talked all the way to the bus, about himself, his painting, his jolly life. One thing he said:

  'You remember Bella? You sat next to her at supper?'

  'Yes.'

  'Fine woman, wasn't she?'

  'I suppose some men would think so.'

  'You bet they do. I'll tell you about her some time—all about her and me.'

  'I haven't the least desire to hear.'

  'No. That's why I shall enjoy telling you.'

  Looking back now I can see that it was after this episode of the bathe that I moved into a new world. I was not only obsessed, but I was obsessed with an idea—and as yet I was not certain of my idea. You know how it is when you wake of a morning, and are instantly conscious that there is something overhanging your mind. For a second of time you do not know what this thing may be, then it leaps at you—pleasure or pain, terror or anticipation. It was now as though this second of uncertainty was prolonged.

  SOMETHING was there, waiting to dominate me. I was not sure yet what it was.

  About a fortnight after the bathe Tunstall caught me again. This time down in the Lower Town, outside the pub, from whose stomach proceeded the squeak of an amateur and very discordant jazz band.

 

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