Yes, Elyot Standish wanted to say, the Elyot Standish who sat upon the edge watching the charade, would have spoken, without the warning of the shadow that participated. Instead, he switched flippantly.

At least the dinners are sometimes good, he laughed. Even in England.

He hated his own voice in the fog, an echo of Gerald Blenkinsop. They were drifting apart in the fog, saying good-bye, it was doubtful if they would meet again. You were always dismissing people. It was seldom you came any closer. You dug the ferrule of your umbrella in the pavement with a cold metallic hatred, walking homeward, as if you wanted also to deny the cold, answering sensuality of Muriel Raphael. In his fury he wanted to possess something, make it answerable, because it was so far distant from the other, the faces of Eden and Joe Barnett discovering a reality, finding a substance for which the symbols stood.

11

The bus toppled into Bond Street taking Mrs Standish on her errand. Shabby to the inquiring eye, grotesque in her effort to appear interesting, the flaming hair, the crumbling face reinforced by rouge and a muscular determination, she could still stare a stranger into believing on second thought she was impressive. At least she had a figure. She sat sideways in the bus, the sideways seat, her arm resting on the window frame, with the assurance, with the smile of one who has a faith in the body. The hour, it was after lunch, together with the motion of the bus, lulled her into an indulgent frame of mind. She smiled to herself. She was contented. She took in the detail of the figures in the street. It was all fresh, invigorating, she let it play on her mind, sensuously, the accumulation of incident.

Mrs Standish was on her way to look at pictures. It was a duty to look at pictures, just as it was a duty to sit through a new and cacophonous piece of music, while her imagination wandered to the renovation of an old dress, the duty was still fulfilled by her presence in the concert hall. Very seldom her devotion and determination failed her. Only sometimes she was faced with her own spuriousness, but that, after all, was a chef-d’œuvre, her one and only, so much more elaborate than a child, so many more years of gestation, endless, endless. So that she was not altogether taken aback. It might certainly have been easier if one had been an out-and-out intellectual. But one hadn’t the gift, or was it only the time? Her mind fastened on poor Connie Tiarks, who had ruined her eyes by reading in the bus. Time, time, or a gift, meandered Mrs Standish on her way down Bond Street, a gift from Aspreys in the days when there were gifts, those little superfluous objects in tortoiseshell and brilliants that made one feel so delightfully, safely feminine. But she jolted herself with an effort out of reach of the material. The tortoiseshell at Aspreys was not to be the stuff of regret. She had come on a pilgrimage that was purely spiritual, namely to look at pictures in a Bond Street gallery.