I will be away for some days – I do not know precisely how long – performing a small task that is, I hope, a valuable one. The task is political and covert, though not dangerous, and will require from me no very particular talents. Of course, in an affair like this there is always the old problem of intentions and consequences – meaning to do good we do harm and must take responsibility for that harm – but the group in whose interests I am undertaking this journey (into the labyrinth?) have a just and urgent cause, and for far too long I have left it to others to act in the world. I have made futility into a fetish, as though nothing effective could ever be done, all endeavour doomed to end in confusion, treachery or failure, an evasion with its origin in that episode from my past of which you already know something, the broad strokes if not the detail. That day long ago when, as a result of my weakness, a young man lost his life. Since then I have never been entirely free of the guilt and sorrow that hour brought to me, and while it may be precisely such difficulties that made a writer of me (the most confessional of the arts) as a man I have been weakened in ways I can no longer accept. I cannot – to borrow an image from Jules Supervielle – go into the garden and just see the garden. There is always an extra shadow. Always, in any silence, the shout that I did not answer.

Do you think, my friend, that it is possible to put things right? To make amends? To atone? The Ancients believed in it. Not just the possibility but the necessity. Or is this some dementia I am suffering from? After all, I cannot run the film backwards. I cannot be eighteen again. So who can be saved? What can be rescued?

No doubt there is something grossly selfish in all of this, but will you believe me if I say it is also us I want to save?

You and I were never the people to spend hours gazing moodily into each other’s eyes. We are sparing with our endearments – it is how we manage our lives together. But let me say this, so that whatever happens, whatever our futures might be, you will have at least some poor idea of how I value you. You have given me ten or fifteen of the happiest moments of my existence. Knowing you, I can never lose faith in life, nor in the sheer generosity of another’s heart. I carry the memory of your face with me now like an icon to be adored secretly among strangers. Trust in this. Destroy this letter. Forgive me.

L.