“How could there be? What chance would a rump have in the G.P.O.?”
“I tell you I saw it,” said Neary, “trying to downface me.”
Wylie told him what happened next.
“Do not quibble,” said Neary harshly. “You saved my life. Now palliate it.”
“I greatly fear,” said Wylie, “that the syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The horse leech’s daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.”
“Very prettily put,” said Neary.
“For an example of what I mean,” said Wylie, “you have merely to consider the young Fellow of Trinity College—”
“Merely is excellent,” said Neary.
“He sought relief in insulin,” said Wylie, “and cured himself of diabetes.”
“Poor old chap,” said Neary. “Relief from what?”
“The sweated sinecure,” said Wylie.
“I don’t wonder at Berkeley,” said Neary. “He had no alternative. A defence mechanism. Immaterialise or bust. The sleep of sheer terror. Compare the opossum.”
“The advantage of this view,” said Wylie, “is, that while one may not look forward to things getting any better, at least one need not fear their getting any worse. They will always be the same as they always were.”
“Until the system is dismantled,” said Neary.
“Supposing that to be permitted,” said Wylie.
“From all of which I am to infer,” said Neary, “correct me if I am wrong, that the possession—Deus det!—of angel Counihan will create an aching void to the same amount.”
“Humanity is a well with two buckets,” said Wylie, “one going down to be filled, the other coming up to be emptied.”
“What I make on the swings of Miss Counihan,” said Neary, “if I understand you, I lose on the roundabouts of the non-Miss Counihan.”
“Very prettily put,” said Wylie.
“There is no non-Miss Counihan,” said Neary.
“There will be,” said Wylie.
“Help there to be,” cried Neary, clasping his hands, “in this Coney Eastern Island that is Neary, some Chinese attractions other than Miss Counihan.”
“Now you are talking,” said Wylie. “When you ask for heal-all you are not talking. But when you ask for a single symptom to be superseded, then I am bound to admit that you are talking.”
“There is only the one symptom,” said Neary. “Miss Counihan.”
“Well,” said Wylie, “I do not think we should have much difficulty in finding a substitute.”
“I declare to my God,” said Neary, “sometimes you talk as great tripe as Murphy.”
“Once a certain degree of insight has been reached,” said Wylie, “all men talk, when talk they must, the same tripe.”
“Should you happen at any time,” said Neary, “to feel like derogating from the general to the particular, remember I am here, and on the alert.”
“My advice to you is this,” said Wylie. “Leave tonight for the Great Wen—”
“What folly is this?” said Neary.
“Having first written to Miss Counihan how happy you are to be able to inform her at last that all the necessary passports and credentials to her precincts are in hand. Hers to wipe her—er—feet on. No more. No word of having gone, no note of passion. She will sit as one might say pretty—”
“One might well,” said Neary.
“For a day or two and then, in great distress of mind, lay herself out to knock into you in the street. Instead of which I shall knock into her.”
“What folly is this?” said Neary. “You don’t know her.”
“Not know her is it,” said Wylie, “when there is no single aspect of her natural body with which I am not familiar.”
“What do you mean?” said Neary.
“I have worshipped her from afar,” said Wylie.
“How far?” said Neary.
“Yes,” said Wylie pensively, “all last June, through Zeiss glasses, at a watering place.” He fell into a reverie, which Neary was a big enough man to respect. “What a bust!” he cried at length, as though galvanised by this point in his reflections. “All centre and no circumference!”
“No doubt,” said Neary, “but is it germane? You knock into her in the street. What then?”
“After the prescribed exchanges,” said Wylie, “she asks casually have I seen you. From that moment she is lost.”
“But if it is merely a matter of getting me out of the way,” said Neary, “while you work up Miss Counihan, why need I go to London? Why not Bray?”
The thought of going to London was distasteful to Neary for a number of reasons, of which by no means the least cogent was the presence there of his second deserted wife. Strictly speaking this woman, a née Cox, was not his wife, and he owed her no duty, since his first deserted wife was alive and well in Calcutta. But the lady in London did not take this view and neither did her legal advisers. Wylie knew something of this position.
“To control Cooper,” said Wylie, “who has probably gone on the booze or been got at or both.”
“But would it not be possible,” said Neary, “with your priceless collaboration, to work it from this end altogether and drop Murphy?”
“I greatly fear,” said Wylie, “that so long as Murphy is even a remote possibility Miss Counihan will not parley. All I can do is establish you firmly in the position of first come-down.”
Neary again buried his head in his hands.
“Cathleen,” said Wylie, “tell the Professor the worst.”
“Eight sixes forty-eight,” said Cathleen, “and twos sixteen one pound.”
In the street Neary said:
“Wylie, why are you so kind?”
“I don’t seem able to control myself,” said Wylie, “in the presence of certain predicaments.”
“You shall find me I think not ungrateful,” said Neary.
They went a little way in silence. Then Neary said:
“I cannot think what women see in Murphy.”
But Wylie was absorbed in the problem of what it was, in the predicaments of men like Neary, that carried him so far out of his government.
“Can you?” said Neary.
Wylie considered for a moment. Then he said:
“It is his—” stopping for want of the right word. There seemed to be, for once, a right word.
“His what?” said Neary.
They went a little further in silence. Neary gave up listening for an answer and raised his face to the sky. The gentle rain was trying not to fall.
“His surgical quality,” said Wylie.
It was not quite the right word.
5
The room that Celia had found was in Brewery Road between Pentonville Prison and the Metropolitan Cattle Market. West