He moved uneasily from foot to foot, the little tentative movements, his whole attitude was one of isolation. The fresh smell of glue reached out. They began to exchange words. There was not very much to say. In the absence of words an uneasiness. It was an occasion of words or embarrassment. There was no alternative. As if there ever was, felt Elyot. Or else there was something in Eden’s reach that was beyond his own. There were the two countries, the countries of different moons, the different languages, intuitive and reasoned. He touched the lid of the glass box. It had become a symbol. It was like the words, the symbols you exchanged, Elyot Standish and Muriel Raphael, the symbols of finite knowledge. The moment in Crick’s workshop was, after all, no verge of discovery, of passing from one world to the other. Joe Barnett denied this, clumsily, with his closed hands.

Joe Barnett stood by the window.

You’re high up here, he said. Funny living at the top of a house.

He watched the distorted bodies in the street, tilted on their various errands.

Well, he said. I’ll be leavin’ you. You won’t be wantin’ to be disturbed.

You wanted to say, no, you wanted to say, there is something, Joe Barnett, that it is possible for us to communicate, as two people, standing at this moment on a common pitch, if only this, the universality of two people, surely, Joe Barnett, it is possible to learn.

It’ll be late, said Elyot, by the time you get to Clerkenwell.

He heard his voice. This was the way it would close, as always, in a closing of words, of doors. He watched the back of Joe Barnett, anxiously making for the passage.

Julia was wiping her hands in the kitchen. She folded them over each other, over and over again, unnecessarily in the towel.

I hope that did someone some good, she said.

Yes, said Joe. There’s nothing wrong in two people passing the time of day. He’s all right, he said.

You’ll be tellin’ me I don’t know him next.

She resented that. Because Julia knew Elyot intimately, whatever difficulty others had. She knew how to alter her voice according to the shape of his back. This was her approach. She could sense very keenly through the shape of things.

Feet were on the stairs now.

Yes, Elyot Standish is all right, said Joe.

Only, he said, only a couple of people can be like a couple of fools at times, it was the room perhaps, the strangeness of a room, that became a strangeness in Elyot Standish. You were warm now, as if your circulation had returned. Listening to feet on stairs, it was a kind of physical warmth. It moved upward with the feet. They approached as if they had a single purpose.

Seems to be someone else, he said.

He was satisfied. He might have exhausted himself in walking or eaten a large meal. Julia yanked the towel on its roller. She longed to manoeuvre people, to restore order in the house.