THE LAST TIME

I was so grateful to him. For his head bending forward, as he crossed a room, too swiftly. I said that he danced, but he brushed that away. There was nothing convincing in what he said about being "clumsy on the floor", but I answered as he expected me to answer or I did not answer. I can not be explicit in every detail, for his being is so swift in its precision, so rapier-like, so really sometimes wicked in forestalling my intuition, that it seems almost he would baffle, would escape my intuition. He can not do that.

Sometimes we feel that we have no existence; for a moment, in a crowded room, we are not so much alone, as non-existent. He offered me, as it were, a brightly polished mirror, O very old, a priceless dug-up bit of polished silver maybe, worn thin - thin - thin - The handle was polished too, but the fine fretwork of grapes and grape-tendrils was worn away, almost too fine to be called properly a pattern. Yes, it was fine tendrils of grapes, and the leaf and the almost perceptible fragrance of the grape in blossom. There was nothing too beautiful, he seemed to say, to offer me. But I felt my hands, maybe, rather clumsy and I did pray some god, that Easter, that I might not be that.

I did not see him until after Easter for I wanted to say, yes, I will see him. I wanted to see what it was that no one else saw. For sometimes, in a crowded room, we feel not so

2.

much alone as simply non-existent.

Perhaps I flattered myself that nowhere in the world was there a person - so far - who had seen what I saw. I say, I flattered myself. He was like an elk that had broken through the hedges - not broken. That had stepped over a barrier. No, not that. He simply walked into a circle, my own peculiar magic-circle. It was only when he stepped into it, that I realized that I had been alone. That is a very strange moment. That moment -

There was all the world about him. He seemed safe enough in his world. What did he want with me? O, nothing, I muttered to myself, nothing at all. I am a strange woman with a legend and he is curious about my thread-bare pretences - pretences at intuition? He seemed to answer, "you shan't do this? He laughed at my stars, at my names and numbers. "This is all so much nonsense," he said, then he said, "lovely nonsense." He said, "I find you," or he said, "I found you *detraque.*" She, it is true, had asked for that. He was only giving her what she had asked for - nettles, burning and wicked nettles - or thistles - shall we say? I watched myself drawing so far and so far away. I watched myself draw away or I was drawn away. Even as I was drawn away to drown, I held in my hands things from the sea, and a pine-cone that I had swept off the forest floor - that first time, when I saw him like the elk of Saint

3.

Eustachius with the mark of God on his forehead.

Don't you see? I was putting my hands round a candle to
keep it from blowing out. He would run here and there and
everywhere to see himself perfected, to say, "I am a person."
He is not a person. He is an elk, a trout, a hawk. His eyes,
that first time I saw him, turned perfectly gold. It may have
been the lamp of course, and its dull parchment-shade. But in
any case, his eyes went gold. They were eyes simply set in,
and the eyes were all right, were part of all the things that
I had scraped up from the sea-floor, just the eyes were burning,
as if I had turned a corner suddenly in a familiar street and
found myself at the end of the long alley of the banquet chamber
of King Thotmes at Karnak. I knew Karnak. His knees were shaped
like that, familiar from a temple-frieze, as he sat there, and
I - I was expected to sit there, perfectly at ease, at home
with this manifestation and not turn and scream, "You have come
back."

He might have been frightened, he might have gone away.
In any case, it was my job to hold him, to keep him there until
I found out how much of him was able to escape the magic-forest,
the sea-floor. He might get away entirely, no doubt he would
in time, but it was my job to find out if I could be of use to
him. In the meanwhile, he would throw nettles at me. He would
laugh at me.

4.

Everything he did was done in the right way or done in
just the wrong way, in the right manner, the hat or not the
hat, the lounge suit just casually enough worn, this or that
colour and a slight clash (slightly over-done) of a loose
scarf against the blue linen of his shirt. "I have rushed in,"
he said that time, "from Victoria. I was seeing my father off
to Ireland for some fishing." Ireland, father, fishing.¹ A
station.¹ These things revolved round him, with the same face
but different clothes, as if he had manifested rather careless-
ly, casually, this tie, this shirt, even the father, the fishing,
Ireland and the station, an invention. He had invented himself,
he had made himself up. This is the way I argued.

The more perfectly he did the thing in the wrong way, in
the right manner, or simply, for all it was worth, in exactly
the right way, in exactly the right manner, the more removed I
became, the more I watched myself watching. I did not want to
do this. I said, O my dear God, just for once, send me some-
thing that I need not watch, nor watch myself watching. But
God does not do that. He sits me in a chair, a pair of balances
(invisible) on the table beside me. He says to me, "now test
him out," and He says, "and go on smiling with a pinned-on smile,
as if you liked doing it." I was to hold the balances again,
who had thought I had escaped with a little offering of every-
thing I held dear, *any* such nonsense, or "lovely nonsense" as

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he (I mean, this elk-hawk) might have called it. I thought I
was free, just for the sake of freedom in its own dimension.

---

A difficult thing this, to hold oneself as fluid, as sensi-
tive as a sea-plant on the sea-floor, exposed jelly-fish to catch
telepathically or to try to catch, the emanation that flows like
ultra-violet or simply as electric-blue from him, to be aware
and attuned and then all the time to carry on a casual conversa-
tion. He did not, it is true, overtax me in my own room, but he
seemed (I may of course, be wrong in this) to take an impish
delight in watching me at his own table, carrying on a pseudo-
intellectual game of catch-as-catch-can, a sort of intellectual
table-tennis with his friend, Brian. There is nothing wrong
with Brian. Brian is sensitive and aware but, O my God, not
with that under-sea awareness that causes electric-blue to catch
its breath, as it were above a carpet, ("you _will_ have another
glass of sherry"), and mark a trail in the air that I can almost
sense, hours after he has left me. I say, this spreading tentacles
to see what he _is_, is no joke.

Marian was different. It was she who paused, a little
astonished in the doorway, just the slightest bit, I could see,
sensing something that she had sensed before, "another on the
couch, by the fire, with my brother." I seemed to see those

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others, in a moment, in her glance; her youth, her pride would
carry her forward to make the suitable remark, in a shy, brittle
and well-bred manner. But I spared her all that. I was on my
feet, in a little bit of an over-gallant manner; O, I seemed to
feel, don't let her be spoiled by all the things that spoil us;
He was spoiled, scarred somewhere in some battle of the spirit,
I was simply a "Lazarus, come forth", trying to hide the imprint
of the grave-clothes. He was as long and as sparse as a Pharaoh,
and he might deceive a great many people but he could not deceive
me. But she had not died who had not, in that ultimate sense,
lived.

"I met your little dog," I said, very quick and casual,
"one day when your brother asked me in here to do Greek," Why
did I say that? I dragged in the Greek, but it was she who had
stepped down from Olympus and he and I who had crawled out of a
tomb. There might be exquisite and delicate vine-leaves about
his forehead and I might proffer an effect of gallant bearing,
but get it down to dots, he and I were hardly worth the printer's
ink that had marked us in some museum catalogue, 5th dynasty or
Myksos or Shepherd Kings or wherever they might care to place us.
Yet still, for him, there was a chance of some escape, if he
could escape me.

If you find the ultimate, it does not necessarily spoil
other things, or does it? His mind was subtle and indirect. He

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would veer away from me, having one night given himself to me,
with no touch of hand, with no even implied intimacy. Our in-
timacy was taken for granted, as if we had always known each
other, and were now sitting facing each other over coffee-cups,
across a wood-fire, in that room, where I was speaking to him
for the third time. "I have seen you only three times, in life,"
he said the next time when he came to see me. That made the
fourth time. Then I went back and had that famous glitter-and-
sparkle lunch with him and Brian over oefs-en-poche and literary
chatter. That was the fifth time of asking. The sixth time
must have been in my rooms, that is at the moment, vague to me,
but no doubt it will eventually fall into its place. No, the
sixth time must have been when I met his sister, halo-hat, white
gloves, the exact sun-tan shade of stockings of the moment, not
hiding the lyric pride of her divinity. The seventh time, he
must have come back to my rooms again. The eighth time? I am
getting things a bit mixed now, but anyhow the ninth and last
time, was the time he came to dinner.

No, no, the eighth time was the time he came to dinner and
the ninth time was yesterday, when he blew in, for a broken and
distorted hour that had threatened to be only a half-hour and
that left me at the last, frayed and angry, when he swept off,
taking with him what only I had possessed, that now might so
easily be taken go, if I were allowed to let go. But I am not so

6. easily allowed to let go, who lift balances (invisible) beside us, from the table, to weigh his soul.

But it is not so much his soul that I am weighing, as my own; numbers, times, weights, measures, I must get this quite clear. I must find out the exact times, weights, measures. I must run time along its sliding bar, mark now exact degrees, the usual calendar. I must look all this up.

Exactly dates, Friday, March 20. That was the first time. Easter came in between and I put off seeing him so as to "see" him clear. I saw him here, Wednesday, April 15, the second time, almost four weeks later. We did a little Greek, under my reading-lamp.

The third time, the following Tuesday, April 21, I went in to his office, we had sherry upstairs with Brian and then I stayed on alone to dinner. I wanted to understand what I had felt, so I put off writing him till the next week, and saw him the following week, here, Tuesday, May 5. That is when he said, "I have seen you only three times, in life."

I then had lunch with him and Brian the following Friday, the day after his birthday, May 6th. That is the time we had the table-tennis conversation.

9.

Wednesday, May 20th must have been the time he ran in
from the station. I was wearing an evening dress and silver
slippers. That would be six times.

The following Wednesday, May 27th, must be the day I
met his sister, at his house, for lunch. Seven.

June 4th, the following Thursday would be the day he
came here to dinner. Eight.

The following Tuesday, June 9th, was the ninth time, the
last time I saw him.

London
Spring 1935