The crowd grew thinner around them and at last they were almost alone. Pamela’s singing abruptly ceased. Here, in the open, in the cool of the dark night it had suddenly become inappropriate, a little shameful. She glanced anxiously at her companion; had he too remarked that inappropriateness, been shocked by it? But Fanning had noticed nothing; she wished he had. Head bent, his hands behind his back, he was walking at her side, but in another universe. When had his spirit gone away from her, and why? She didn’t know, hadn’t noticed. Those inward fireworks, that private festival of exultation had occupied her whole attention.
She had been too excitedly happy with being in love to be able to think of the object of that love. But now, abruptly sobered, she had become aware of him again, repentantly at first, and then, as she realized his new remoteness, with a sinking of the heart. What had happened in these few moments? She was on the point of addressing him, then checked herself. Her apprehension grew and grew till it became a kind of terrified certainty that he’d never loved her at all, that he’d suddenly begun to hate her. But why, but why? They walked on.
‘How lovely it is here!’ she said at last. Her voice was timid and unnatural. ‘And so deliciously cool.’ They had emerged on to the embankment of the Tiber. Above the river, a second invisible river of air flowed softly through the hot night. ‘Shall we stop for a moment?’ He nodded without speaking. ‘I mean, only if you want to,’ she added. He nodded again.
They stood, leaning on the parapet, looking down at the black water. There was a long, long silence. Pamela waited for him to say something, to make a gesture; but he did not stir, the word never came. It was as though he were at the other end of the world. She felt almost sick with unhappiness. Heart-beat after heart-beat, the silence prolonged itself.
Fanning was thinking of tomorrow’s journey. How he hated the train! And in this heat . . . But it was necessary. The wicked flee, and in this case the fleeing would be an act of virtue-painful. Was it love? Or just an itch of desire, of the rather crazy, dirty desire of an ageing man? ‘A cinquant’ anni si diventa un po’ pazzo.’ He heard his own voice speaking, laughingly, mournfully, to Laurina. ‘Pazzo e porco. Si, anch’ io diventò un porco. Le minorenni—a cinquant’ anni, sa, sono un ossessione. Proprio un’ ossessione.’ Was that all—just an obsession of crazy desire? Or was it love?
Or wasn’t there any difference, was it just a question of names and approving or disapproving tones of voice? What was certain was that you could be as desperately unhappy when you were robbed of your crazy desire as when you were robbed of your love. A porco suffers as much as Dante. And perhaps Beatrice too was lovely, in Dante’s memory, with the perversity of youth, the shamelessness of innocence, the vice of freshness. Still, the wicked flee, the wicked flee. If only he’d had the strength of mind to flee before! A touch made him start. Pamela had taken his hand.
‘Miles!’ Her voice was strained and abnormal. Fanning turned towards her and was almost frightened by the look of determined despair he saw on her face. The Eiffel Tower . . . ‘Miles!’
‘What is it?’
‘Why don’t you speak to me?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I didn’t happen to be feeling very loquacious. For a change,’ he added, self-mockingly, in the hope (he knew it for a vain one) of being able to turn away her desperate attack with a counter-attack of laughter.
She ignored his counter-attack. ‘Why do you shut yourself away from me like this?’ she asked. ‘Why do you hate me?’
‘But, my sweet child . . .’
‘Yes, you hate me. You shut me away. Why are you so cruel, Miles?’ Her voice broke; she was crying. Lifting his hand, she kissed it, passionately, despairingly. ‘I love you so much, Miles. I love you.’ His hand was wet with her tears when, almost by force, he managed to draw it away from her.
He put his arm round her, comfortingly. But he was annoyed as well as touched, annoyed by her despairing determination, by the way she had made up her mind to jump off the Eiffel Tower, screwed up her courage turn by turn. And now she was jumping—but how gracelessly! The way he had positively had to struggle for his hand! There was something forced and unnatural about the whole scene. She was being a character in fiction. But characters in fiction suffer. He patted her shoulder, he made consolatory murmurs. Consoling her for being in love with him! But the idea of explaining and protesting and being lucidly reasonable was appalling to him at the moment, absolutely appalling. He hoped that she’d just permit herself to be consoled and ask no further questions, just leave the whole situation comfortably inarticulate. But his hope was again disappointed.
‘Why do you hate me, Miles?’ she insisted.
‘But, Pamela . . .’
‘Because you did care a little, you did. I mean, I could see you cared. And now, suddenly . . . What have I done, Miles?’
‘But nothing, my child, nothing.’ He could not keep a note of exasperation out of his voice. If only she’d allow him to be silent!
‘Nothing? But I can hear from the way you speak that there’s something.’ She returned to her old refrain. ‘Because you did care, Miles; a little, you did.’ She looked up at him, but he had moved away from her, he had averted his eyes towards the street. ‘You did, Miles.’
Oh God! he was groaning to himself, God! And aloud (for she had made his silence untenable, she had driven him out into articulateness), ‘I cared too much,’ he said. ‘It would be so easy to do something stupid and irreparable, something mad, yes and bad, bad. I like you too much in other ways to want to run that risk. Perhaps, if I were twenty years younger . . . But I’m too old. It wouldn’t do. And you’re too young, you can’t really understand, you . . . Oh, thank God, there’s a taxi.’ And he darted forward, waving and shouting. Saved! But when they had shut themselves into the cab, he found that the new situation was even more perilous than the old.
‘Miles!’ A flash of lamplight through the window of the cab revealed her face to him. His words had consoled her; she was smiling, was trying to look happy; but under the attempted happiness her expression was more desperately determined than ever. She was not yet at the bottom of her Tower. ‘Miles!’ And sliding across the seat towards him, she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him. ‘Take me, Miles,’ she said, speaking in quick abrupt little spurts, as though she were forcing the words out with violence against a resistance. He recognized the suicide’s voice, despairing, strained, and at the same time, flat, lifeless. ‘Take me. If you want me . . .’
Fanning tried to protest, to disengage himself, gently, from her embrace.
‘But I want you to take me, Miles,’ she insisted. ‘I want you . . .’ She kissed him again, she pressed herself against his hard body. ‘I want you, Miles. Even if it is stupid and mad,’ she added in another little spurt of desperation, making answer to the expression on his face, to the words she wouldn’t permit him to utter. ‘And it isn’t. I mean, love isn’t stupid or mad. And even if it were, I don’t care. Yes, I want to be stupid and mad. Even if it were to kill me. So take me, Miles.’ She kissed him again. ‘Take me.’
He turned away his mouth from those soft lips. She was forcing him back across the threshold. His body was uneasy with awakenings and supernatural dawn.
Held up by a tram at the corner of a narrow street, the cab was at a standstill. With quick strong gestures Fanning unclasped her arms from round his neck and, taking her two hands in his, he kissed first one and then the other. ‘Good-bye, Pamela,’ he whispered, and, throwing open the door, he was half out of the cab before she realized what he was doing.
‘But what are you doing, Miles? Where . . .’ The door slammed. He thrust some money into the driver’s hand and almost ran. Pamela rose to her feet to follow him, but the cab started with a sudden jerk that threw her off her balance, and she fell back on to the seat.
‘Miles!’ she called, and then, ‘Stop!’
But the driver either didn’t hear, or else paid no attention. She did not call again, but sat, covering her face with her hands, crying and feeling so agonizingly unhappy that she thought she would die of it.
8
‘By the time you receive this letter, I shall be—no, not dead, Pamela, though I know how thrilled and proud you’d be, through your temporary inconsolability, if I were to blow my brains out—not dead, but (what will be almost worse in these dog-days) in the train, bound for some anonymous refuge. Yes, a refuge, as though you were my worst enemy. Which in fact you almost are at the moment, for the good reason that you’re acting as your own enemy.
