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By Root 413 0

lips were the instruments of this disembodied probing. Two light lines drawn down my chest, a quick tongue against the side of my belly, and my tense abdominal muscles quivered, rippled, liquefied. The probing went lower; no effort of concentration was now required, no need to shut out the world, the liquid sighs and sounds. Judgement disappeared, I was all painful sensation. Flesh, flesh: but my awareness of it was being weakened. I was turned over on my belly. The probing continued, with the same instruments. The self dropped away, layer by layer; what remained dwindled to a cell of perception, indifferent to pleasure or pain; neutral perception, finer and finer, having validity, existing only because of that probing which, growing fainter, yet had to be apprehended, because it was the only proof of life: fine perception reacting minutely only to time, which was also the universe. It was a moment that was extended and extended and extended. There could be no issue; it was a moment which, when release without fruition came and perception widened again, defined itself as an extended moment of horror. It is a moment that has remained with me. After three years I can call it back at will: that moment of timelessness, horror, solace. The Highway Code! Through poor, hideous flesh to have learned about flesh; through flesh to have gone beyond flesh.

But, monstrous, she was in despair. The smile, of hysteria, was replaced by tears; she reproached herself for my failure. I comforted her; at that moment I was genuine. Fat, fat, she said, lifting her breasts, lifting her belly; and I said No, no. She began to smile again; she rinsed out her mouth, made up her face, rearranged her hair. We talked, imperfectly, in her language. She misunderstood something I said. She said, as though replying to a question, ‘During those moments I never open my eyes. I never think.’ I was too moved to speak. I watched her re-erect her body for the café, without disdain or judgement; it was all I could offer her. I walked her back to the revolving door. Less than an hour had passed.

In the hotel that night I was awakened by a sensation of sickness. As soon as I was in the bathroom I was sick: all the undigested food and drink of the previous day. My stomach felt strained; I was in some distress. On the plastic bell-push the chambermaid still stared and the waiter still raced. But it was just past three; the hotel was still. I began to wait for morning. I had not slept well. In a serial dream I had found myself on my back, on my belly, in a London street or tunnel through which red underground trains careered on crisscrossing tracks. Beyond the trains I could see Sally, Sandra, my father, Lord Stockwell, anxious to come to me, who could not move towards them. As I slept and awakened, waiting for the light to come to the fantasy city, known and unknown, memory and the dream flowed together. When the light came I was weak and ill. The stopover was at an end. It was necessary to rise and prepare for another departure.

8

MY arrival was quiet. I was not expected. My stopover arrangements of the previous day had given rise to the rumour that I had disappeared or fled. It was as a private person, then, that I took a taxi to the Roman house. I required sleep. The drive was swift; it was later represented, not unjustly, as furtive. Indeed it astonished me that, on an island where I had needed notice and drama to sustain me, I should now relish privacy. For a little I played with the idea of the impossible, of prolonging this enjoyment by resignation and silence. It was impossible, of course, in the nature of our political life.

I was not allowed to be a private person for long. News of my return quickly spread. In the morning there was a police guard outside my house. The guard was needed. My stopover had frustrated a demonstration that had been arranged to meet me at the airport; public feeling was aggravated. I learned that at this airport demonstration I would have been allowed to make a statement and answer questions; it would have been part of