They arrived with a lot of depressing objects; a lot of their smaller broken toys, and I think they all had a bit of mud on their feet. Nobody could possibly be pleased to see them. Nobody was. They dropped things it was hard to see the purpose of. You couldn’t imagine why they’d bothered to pack them. You couldn’t imagine why they’d come at all.

Monica was haughty and Cynthia was abstracted and everybody else was embarrassed, so I kissed them all—except for Monica, naturally—and I lit a cigarette to take the taste away. I wished I was away. I wished I was lying in the sun, drunk somewhere, with somebody terribly, terribly witty and clever, trickling oil into the small of my back. I don’t know why people cling so to life when it is so seldom pleasant. But perhaps I exaggerate. No one would want to live for long in the vicinity of Derek and Cynthia, but there were other forms of life around. I think I had been drinking too much again. If I went on it wouldn’t be long before the horrors got me. I should have to get back to the sun. Who should I take with me? No, not Robert. Not yet. I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him enough to let him rub oil in my back again. I reflected that I hadn’t spent a sober night since I had arrived in England. Not good enough, Lili. There was no real cure for the horrors. You had to go on, trying to drink rather less, until they went away. But what if they never went away? Then you died, I suppose. Died in the dark, screaming at the black wings to go away, screaming for your mother and the monkey your father brought you. Screaming that you hadn’t meant it, that you never meant to destroy anything—not even yourself. Oh God.

I said to Monica that I found Derek and Cynthia acutely lowering to the spirits, hoping she would also feel sufficiently down to suggest a drink. This was the right thing to say. We went into the drawing-room and after a while I felt better.

Cain and Abel had their supper in the kitchen and Eve put them to bed. She stayed up there with them and Derek also went up early. I didn’t think about that. I had drunk enough by now to persuade myself that Monica had been lying about her ex-husband for I didn’t want to spoil the whisky by gazing at the devil’s feet. Derek made me think of the devil’s feet. I was getting drunk again, and where was Robert? Abishag the Shunamite had also gone early to bed. At least I supposed she had. Yes, of course, she had. I wasn’t drunk enough to imagine she was rolling round in the garden with my husband who had to have an eye kept on him. Nor in the summerhouse.