I’m goin’ abroad, he said. To Spain.

Somewhere on a white plain, it was the Greco, it was sleep, there was the choice of paths. You remembered, just, sitting across from Joe Barnett in a more conscious present. And you waited, tensed, because something was also happening in yourself, a stirring, had been going on all day, beyond the mist that was Battersea. It was a painful emotion, the acceptance of emotion, the sickness and the ecstasy at once.

There was a time, said Joe, when I could read the papers and keep things in their place. That’s where they belonged, in the papers. It was other people’s business. It was foreign names. Then it got to being part of yourself. You couldn’t keep out your feelings no more. It got mixed up with what you did. I can’t think clear. I got to go, you see? There’s no use, Julia says, there’ll be time enough, and troubles of your own, without fighting other people’s wars. As if you can keep it parcelled out. Because it’s right here, Elyot, sure as ever there’s right and wrong.

Joe Barnett smoothed a situation with his hands, helping out the inadequacy of words. He wanted to take the words with his hands, shape them the way they ought to go. Deeper than these lay the conviction that she had given him, their feet moved still over the grey grass of the common, she planted a conviction with her mouth in the shadow of the gasworks where they stood. It became the right, the wrong, that she said. It became a sickness in the stomach watching the frozen body of a dog.

I see, Joe, Elyot said.

He would speak now, say or not, when there was nothing to be said, when everything had been said or sensed.

There’s a chap name of Halloran, said Joe. Used to see him at meetings. Comes from out our way. He’s in Barcelona now. I got a letter from Halloran, tellin’ me as what I ought to do. He’s an Irishman, but he’s all right. I got to be off to catch my train. Halloran says as there’s a couple of others. We’re going to get together, I expect. Halloran’s given me their names.

He touched his pocket, what apparently was a piece of paper, the letter from the Irish Halloran. Joe Barnett, setting off across Europe with a piece of paper, in his Sunday clothes. Already the train rocked, the light flickered, but there was no moving the intention in a face.

There’s something, Elyot, the face said, something I want. There’s something I thought perhaps. It’s not so easy, he said.

It had gone on hammering, the nights, the not-said, the nights you lay and thought that now. Joe Barnett folded his hands. These were resigned to the impossible. He couldn’t say that he loved Eden. He couldn’t say what was too much. It was something that you knew. It was your own bones.

I haven’t said nothing, he said. You might see her. Soon. You might say. You might say as it’s all right. It’ll always be all right by me. And she’ll understand. There isn’t nothing I’m surer of. It’s just like that. But I got to, he said. It’s one of these things. She’ll know, because – because Eden knows.