‘It doesn’t bother me,’ Yvonne has said.

  ‘She’ll be after it like a shot, once she gets the smell.’ The nurse has laughed. She jangles the keys inside her pocket.

  ‘We’ll have a walk round, then,’ I tell her. ‘If that’ll be all right.’

  ‘Work up an appetite.’ The nurse gestures at Yvonne. ‘She could do with putting a bit of stuff inside. Turned her nose up, you know, the last few times.’

  Yvonne has stubbed out her cigarette. She’s gone over to a mirror on the wall while the nurse is talking. She runs a lipstick round her mouth, lightly, lifting her head, gazing into the mirror which is set on the wall directly opposite the cupboard. For a while, the lipstick poised, she examines her own expression: the dark eyes set wide apart, the mouth still parted, the broad cheeks, the hair combed down, loosely, across her brow. It’s almost, oddly, a girl’s expression, frank, ingenuous, inquiring. It’s only when the nurse takes the lipstick and asks her if she’s finished that she looks away.

  ‘I’ve brought you some cigarettes.’ I hold out the packet. ‘I’ll put them in your locker.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. She nods her head.

  I go through to the ward. Her scarf and beret are lying on the bed. Her locker door is open. Inside is a carrier bag, a nightgown, a skirt, a blouse, some underwear, several bits of paper, and the torn-up remnants of several cigarette packets.

  I put the two full packets on top of the nightdress and close the door.

  I pick up her beret and scarf, push her slippers, which are lying in the middle of the floor, under the bed, then go back down the ward.

  The nurse has gone. Yvonne has returned to pacing up and down.

  ‘Have you got your coat?’ I ask.

  She’s lit another cigarette. She glances across at me, still dazed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your coat.’

  ‘I don’t need a coat.’

  ‘Don’t you want to have a walk?’ I say.

  ‘Anything. Anything that’ll get me out of here.’

  She carries the cigarette with the lighted end turned in towards her palm. She twists her hand round as she puts the cigarette to her mouth, as if she were coughing onto the back of her hand, or yawning; then she turns to the annexe and the toilets where her coat and her jacket are usually kept.

  Outside a faint drizzle is falling. ‘Don’t go far,’ the matron says, calling, from the door of her office. ‘Dinner soon.’

  Yvonne doesn’t answer. I doubt if she even hears.

  ‘Don’t walk her too far,’ the matron says.

  ‘Do you mind the rain?’ I ask her when we get outside. She walks a little way ahead, her hands in the pockets of her coat. Her head is bowed, her beret pulled over to one side. ‘Do you mind the rain?’ I ask again.

  I catch her up.

  ‘I don’t mind anything.’ She glances round. ‘Did they say we could go out?’ she says.

  ‘Not today.’ I shake my head.

  She nods.

  We turn off along a footpath that leads away from the drive and the main building, past the extensions, to the garden area beyond.

  I can feel the drizzle against my cheeks. I have no hat; I pull up my collar and, like Yvonne, push my hands inside my pockets. She walks ahead, her dark hair sticking out from beneath the beret, neat, slim, compact, absurdly self-possessed.

  ‘I wish I could get out of here,’ she says, suddenly, pausing, so that I hear her clearly as I catch her up. She takes out a cigarette, searching for her lighter.

  She flicks up the flame, shielding it with one hand. In moments of distress, like this, it seems strange she can light a cigarette at all. It’s like putting on the lipstick: odd activities, casual, almost incidental, which, because of their casualness, show up the turmoil going on inside. At first, during my early visits, she’d cried. She’d cried the first time, coming out of the door of the ward, smiling, red-faced, as she might have come out of a room at home, pleased, talking to the nurse; then, the next moment, with the same casualness, as I grasped her arm, she’d begun to weep, hardly aware, like a child, her words lost in a strangled, half-suffocating wail. She’d cried too when I’d begun to leave, standing in the porch, her face inflamed, her dark eyes wet, expressionless. She’d cried then, almost out of habit, at the beginning of every visit, as if she were presenting me her grief, a credential to reassure me that she had, after all, come to the proper place.

  I walk with her more slowly up and down the path. A few vegetables stick up from the clayey, greyish earth; most of the garden has recently been dug. To one side a pile of manure has been spread along the bed of a narrow trench.

  ‘I’ve got a job.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Teaching.’

  ‘What?’

  She walks ahead.

  It’s like walking out a dog.

  ‘I thought I’d get the job …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To keep me occupied.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought I’d get a bit of money while I had the chance.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll need it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Three days a week.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘I said I’d never go there when I saw it. Remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The art school.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The rest of the time I’ve been playing tennis.’

  ‘The women are the worst.’

  ‘Why mix with them?’ I ask.

  ‘You have to. If you want a cup of tea.’

  ‘Can’t you wait till meal-time, then?’

  ‘It’s hours.’

  I shake my head. Yvonne is gazing round her once again. Her eyes are nervously alight; it’s as if she expects a woman to leap out from the ground itself.

  ‘As soon as you take out a cigarette, round they come. Ask to buy one and they haven’t any money. You give them all away then you don’t have one yourself.’

  I wonder, in any case, whether she gives the things away. It’s like her to; and then, having done so, it’s like her to complain.

  ‘Same with tea. Buy a cup and they ask you if you’ll lend them twopence.’

  ‘Twopence?’

  ‘That’s what tea costs,’ she says, ‘round here.’

  She looks up at me, curious, as if she finds it strange I don’t know about the price of tea; as if some integral part of her pain has been ignored or overlooked.

  ‘Twopence. It’s not much. But they never have it.’

  We walk on to the end of the path, turn, pause; Yvonne starts off again.

  ‘Marking time.’

  Yvonne, however, scarcely listens.

  ‘How’s my mother?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘It’s her I feel most for.’

  ‘She’s all right. She’s fine.’

  ‘I could stick it if it wasn’t for her.’

  Her mother visits her on Wednesdays.

  ‘Shall we walk on a bit?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s all the same.’ She shakes her head.

  The cloud, if anything, is thickening. I can see the rain glistening on the top of her beret and along the shoulder of her coat, fine beads of moisture caught by the strands of cloth.

  ‘Should be dinner-time soon.’

  ‘Grand meals they have in here. I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘Do you want to go in, or do you prefer to stay out here?’

  ‘Stay out. The longer I’m out of there the better.’

  For a moment, in fact, she appears quite normal. The look, however, scarcely lasts.

  ‘Maybe next week we can go out and get a meal.’

  I wonder what has happened during the week to make them feel it’s wiser that she stays inside. Perhaps she’s argued with her mother, or grown unduly distressed at seeing her leave. With her, frequently, she behaves exactly like a child, clinging to her, her head hidden against her shoulder while her mother pats her back and tries to kiss her cheek.

  ‘It’s a hell-place, this.’

  ‘Today’s not so good. When the sun’s out it’s always different.’

  ‘You don’t realize. Some of the people. You wouldn’t understand. The sooner I get out of here the better.’ She looks across, almost with the same expression she uses on her mother. ‘They haven’t given you a date, then, have they?’

  ‘They don’t. Not until you’re ready. They usually tell you the day before.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nods.

  Most of the things I tell her she disbelieves, exaggerating her helplessness at times, as if to press the responsibility for her being here directly onto me.

  ‘If they told me to jump off the roof I’d do it. Anything they tell me; anything they tell me to get me out of here.’

  She stresses continually her willingness to co-operate: pills, tests, exercise, meals. At the beginning, she’d done everything they’d asked her. Only recently has there been a slowing down, a faint distrust, as if somewhere her real complaint, her real anguish, has gone unnoticed.

  ‘I’ll never get out of here,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t worry. Just think: all the time, it’s getting nearer.’

  ‘It’s getting near; but it’s not getting out of here that’s getting near.’

  I turn her attention to the plants.

  ‘Do you remember the sprouts we used to grow? We’d go out and get them on a Christmas morning.’ Yvonne moves on again; when I catch her up I see she’s started weeping. ‘Let’s be making tracks. A good meal’ll make all the difference.’

  She nods. We’re walking away from the house. From beyond the trees comes the dull, dual-tone hooting of an engine. The bare trees enclosing the garden are shrouded now in mist. I try to imagine the room, Hendricks, Wilcox; anyone, that is, not concerned with this. My mind, briefly, moves on to the girl.

  I take her arm. I feel her strange compactness.

  We’ve turned towards the house. It’s like holding a piece of stone; I can feel the hardness beneath the coat.

  ‘I’ve felt lost ever since I got up this morning.’

  ‘Let’s get out of the rain and have a bite to eat.’

  ‘It comes on you. I don’t know why. Nothing matters any more.’

  ‘We’ll be all right.’

  She nods. ‘I’d give ought to get out of here, you know. Things go on here I couldn’t describe.’

  We walk on, my arm around her, back towards the house.

  6

  ‘You never came.’

  ‘I had an appointment somewhere else.’

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘I didn’t remember.’

  I can see the car, lurking, some distance up the street. It’s like a salmon, but with the proportions of a whale. There’s some other figure behind the wheel. It wears a chauffeur’s hat.

  ‘We called at the house.’

  ‘House?’

  ‘Your flat.’

  It’s almost dusk; pools of bluish light illuminate the street beyond. Nearer, closer to the flat, the ancient gas-lights erupt like yellow flares.

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘I had the drawings ready.’

  ‘Don’t you think you could bring them in?’

  ‘In?’

  ‘To the college.’

  ‘You could have rung.’

  Her face seems older in the evening light; the grey eyes now have an almost malignant, harried look, the thin-boned features taut and hard, the mouth pulled back in a kind of snarl.

  She’s dressed in a blue windcheater, unzipped, and jeans.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point in bringing them to the college.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘With all the others? It’s better you see them on their own.’

  The car, I realize, has crept a little nearer. The chauffeur, a thin-faced man, is gazing over in the girl’s direction. Perhaps he’s been waiting there some time.

  ‘What about an evening, then?’

  ‘I play tennis in the evenings.’

  ‘What?’

  For a moment, absurdly, I feel I’m with Yvonne.

  ‘We’ve waited hours.’

  The car after some further hesitation, has drawn abreast.

  ‘It’s like an aeroplane; its dashboard lights are on: the glow illuminates the chauffeur’s face. He looks across: long-nosed, the eyes like buttons pressed in on either side. The mouth is thin and wide. His hands are gloved. The breast-pocket of his suit has a narrow pleat.

  ‘I thought if I came myself I could drag you out.’

  Something of the girl returns; unsure, she glances at the car.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘No tennis?’

  ‘Not tonight.’ I gesture round. ‘In any case,’ I add, ‘it’s dark.’

  Perhaps it’s the chauffeur who makes the choice, compelling decisions by his look alone.

  ‘Bennings,’ she says, ‘I think we’re off.’

  He seems uncertain whether he’ll get out of the car. The girl resolves his dilemma by opening the back door herself then waiting while I climb inside. ‘It won’t take long. And Bennings can easily drive you back.’

  I’m not sure, from my view of the back of Bennings’s head, whether, in principle, he approves of this. He doesn’t look round.

  The car moves off.

  ‘How long have you been living here?’ she says.

  She gestures at the house as the car sweeps past.

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Is not at home.’ I shake my head.

  She settles back.

  It’s as if the interior’s hermetically sealed from everything around: the pale lights of the town flash past.

  The road dips down. The buildings darken. We cross the river, pass the point, unmolested, where Hendricks met his fate, and sweep on, through the suburbs, towards the hill-land to the south. The buildings give way to fields, the fields to copses; finally, the road rising, we move out, silently, across a heath.

  ‘How long have you been living here?’ I ask.

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Your first year at the college, then?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I suffer at odd moments, from the impression that this journey, this conversation, is a natural extension of the dialogue I’ve had earlier with Yvonne; at any moment, it seems, the girl might cry, or the car transform itself into that solemn, silent room, with ghosts and gestures that echo, absurdly, some memory of a former life outside. The dashboard light fills the interior with an eerie glow. In the distance, silhouetted against the fading light, a row of mounted figures moves in a dipping line across the heath.

  ‘There’s quite a view of the town,’ she says.

  She turns round in the seat and gazes back.

  Apart from a blur of lights, however, there’s little to be seen.

  ‘Yeh,’ I say. ‘I remember it well.’

  She laughs.

  ‘You’ve not been at the college long?’

  ‘A matter of weeks.’

  ‘Do you like it, then?’

  ‘It’s better than working, I suppose,’ I say.

  ‘What did you do before you came here, then?’

  The eyes, gleaming, turn to mine.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? Didn’t you have to earn a living, then?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The driver’s head has stiffened.

  The girl leans back. She gazes out at the darkening heath; somewhere, close to its summit, a row of lights appears.

  ‘The subjects are sort of horses.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And buildings. The sort of things you see around.’

  Several large buildings, dark, unlighted, have in fact loomed up like bluffs of rock beyond the profile of the heath.

  ‘You’ve been up here, I suppose, before?’

  ‘Often.’

  ‘Often?’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  She laughs.

  Like boulders, the buildings move in towards the road; one or two are sheathed by trees, their shapes now like elongated heads, the twigs and branches thrust up like hair.

  ‘At night it gets quite eerie up here,’ she says.

  ‘I never knew anyone lived up here,’ I say.

  ‘We do. And one or two more.’ She laughs.

  Lights appear some distance from the road.

  The lights of the car, in response, come on. For a moment, the road before us disappears. I gaze out at an illuminated patch of ground against which, in silhouette, are poised the head and shoulders of the man in front.

  ‘If you’d come this afternoon you could have seen around.’

  A pair of metal gates appear.

  She straightens up.

  ‘It’s a bit confusing, coming up at night.’

  A drive sweeps up, curving, towards a lighted porch. The car has slowed. From somewhere close by comes the barking of a dog.

  ‘We’ll see you later, Bennings,’ the girl has said.

  She opens the door as the car pulls up. I stretch across, climb out. The car moves off. A low black edifice confronts us either side of the lighted porch. We climb a flight of steps, the girl in front.

  ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ she says.

  ‘A drink,’ I tell her, ‘would suit me fine.’

  ‘It gets colder up here as well at night.’

  ‘And windy.’

  ‘Oh, the winds haven’t really started yet.’

  She opens the door; a panelled hall is revealed beyond. A bowl of flowers stands on an ancient table in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Most of the house, you see, is old. There are one or two new bits, the kitchen mainly, fastened on the back.’

  A panelled staircase sweeps up, glistening, from the panelled hall.

  ‘If you want a drink we can go through here.’

  The renewed barking of a dog is taken up by several more.

  ‘We’ve got three or four,’ she says. ‘They’re really Mummy’s though, not mine.’

  We enter a long, broad room, similarly panelled, which opens directly from the hall. A coal fire is burning in a low stone grate. ‘We keep that going just to look at really, I suppose,’ she says.

  The furniture of the room reminds me of a club; large chairs and sofas, orientated, vaguely, around the fire.