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By Root 5687 0

and cross. She and Thomas had planned to walk once right round the park, after that, at perhaps about five, to go to a French film. At the cinema they felt loverlike; they often returned in a taxi arm in arm. Thomas had a notion that, for Major Brutt, the little kid Portia might do just as well—in fact, she might really be his object. But, annoyingly, Portia was not to be found either. Saturday was her free day, when she might have been expected to be about. But having come for her lunch, Thomas was told, she had gone out immediately—nobody knew where. Matchett was said to say that she might not be in for tea. Thomas found he had formed, with regard to Portia, just enough habit of mind to be cross that she was not about on Saturday afternoon.

This accumulating worry made Thomas ask himself what on earth had made him go to the door when he might have stayed playing possum. Had the sense of siege in here oppressed him, or had he, in fact, felt lonelier than he thought? The worry of sitting facing this patient manl Then he gave Major Brutt a quick, undecided mean look. One had clearly got the idea this Brutt was out of a job: had he not said something about irons in the fire? That meant he was after something. That was why he had come. Now, no doubt, he had something soft in Quayne and Merrett's in view—he would not be the first old buffer who had.

Then, Thomas had a crisis of self-repugnance. Twitching his head away, with a shamefaced movement, from that block of integrity in the armchair, he saw how business had built him, Thomas, into a false position, a state of fortification odious, when he noticed it, to himself. He could only look out through slits at grotesque slits of faces, slits of the view. His vision became, from habit, narrow and falsified. Seeing anything move, even an animal, he thought: What is this meant to lead to?

Or a gesture would set him off: Oh, so that's what he's after...... Oh, then what does he want? Society was self-interest given a pretty gloss. You felt the relentless pressure behind small-talk. Friendships were dotted with null pauses, when one eye in calculation sought the clock. Love seemed the one reprieve from the watchfulness: it annihilated this uneasy knowledge. He could love with regard to nothing else. Therefore he loved without any of that discretion known to more natural natures—which is why astute men are so often betrayed.

Whatever he's after, or not after, he thought, we certainly can't use him. Quayne and Merrett's only wanted flair, and one sort of distilled nervosity. They could use any number of Eddies, but not one Brutt. He felt Brutt ought to try for some sort of area travel in something or other—perhaps, however, he was trying for that already. All he seemed to have to put on the market was (query) experience, that stolid alertness, that pebble-grey direct look that Thomas was finding morally hypnotic. There was, of course, his courage—something now with no context, no function, no outlet, fumbled over, rejected, likely to fetch nothing. Makes of men date, like makes of cars; Major Brutt was a 19x4-18 model: there was now no market for that make. In fact, only his steadfast persistence in living made it a pity that he could not be scrapped.... No, we cannot use him. Thomas once more twitched his head.—Major Brutt's being (frankly) a discard put the final blot on a world Thomas did not like.

Major Brutt, offered Thomas's cigarette case with rather hostile abruptness, hesitated, then decided to smoke. This ought to steady him. (That he wanted steadying, Thomas had no idea.) The fact was, the fact of Thomas, Thomas as Anna's husband, was a lasting shock. Major Brutt remembered Anna as Pidgeon's lover only. The picture of that great evening together—Anna, himself, Pidgeon—was framed in his mind, and could not be taken down—it was the dear possession of someone with few possessions, carried from place to place. When he had come on Anna in the Empire foyer, it could be no one but Pidgeon that she was waiting for: his heart had gone up because he would soon see Pidgeon. Then