2

Drew Dixon, attenuated, tall, a smoker of endless cigarettes, stared out of the window at the snow which covered Glandon. He didn’t like the cold. The cold made him feel more fragile than usual. Behind him in his study were the copies of the works of Henry James whom his wife detested, preferring to read romance stories or books about Mary Queen of Scots and Marie Antoinette, historical novels such as she would find on tables at cocktail parties, and which she would glance at in the passing, while adjusting her hair in front of the mirror.

As he stared out at the snow he was thinking of the ending of one of James Joyce’s stories. There was something wrong with these closing sentences, he was sure, there was something wrong with the sound, with the number of syllables. Drew Dixon was wearing a pink cravat; he liked pink and lilac, they were his favourite colours. On the wall behind him was hanging a Victorian painting of an autumn scene. He liked Victorian paintings.

As he looked out he saw his wife coming in from the snow-covered scene. She was wearing a butterscotch-coloured coat with muffs. He often thought how amazingly lovely she was. But he considered her as a work of art. She reminded him of a picture he had once seen on a stamp issued by the post office — some autocratic fine-boned monarch, whose name he had forgotten. Not that he was the kind of person who often thought about the post office. His only remark about it had been, “The post office is an institution that prevents communication. In this it is like language.” He thought of himself as a kind of Oscar Wilde. Except that while Wilde was a very good dramatist he was a very good novelist. Everyone admitted that, even the Observer and the foreign papers. His works had been translated into French and German.

He had very long thin fingers but even in cold weather he wouldn’t wear gloves. He refused to do this, though he had been in the habit of doing so. On this particular day he knew that his wife was in a bad temper. The reasons for this were complex but one of them was that she was the sort of person who was often in a bad temper. He turned back to his typewriter. He had been writing a story about a barbarian who had just caught a young woman, the daughter of a professor, in a post-nuclear world. The event happened in the brush outside the city of the Civilised Ones, the White City. He worked like Flaubert, a page or less a day, sometimes, on good days, two pages. He was very particular about fining his prose down to a minimum. He knew the exact sounds and flavours of words, like his Master. His only trouble was that he didn’t bother about morality: reviewers had commented on this, but in a famous interview given to a school-girlish lady from a magazine, he had defended himself: “In the twentieth century morality is not possible.” He had made a joke about some work of his which had once appeared in a school magazine and about an English teacher who had said that he would make a name for himself in the future.

On the other hand, Dixon had devoted his life to the word. No one could take that away from him. He had refused to do any work other than writing. He hadn’t even been a labourer or a dishwasher, however useful these jobs might appear to the creation of a great novel. He had said, “A great writer doesn’t need experience.” And his wife was in a bad temper. It is difficult to say why she was in a bad temper any more than usual. Most things put her in a bad temper. Today she started a quarrel for no reason at all almost as soon as she entered the house. She went on about her life, about his life, about the existence he led. Why didn’t he ever meet her friends, she demanded. Why did she always have to go out alone? Why did he think himself so superior? Outside, the snow fell, obliterating old prints. He thought she looked very lovely.

It wasn’t until a very long time had passed, while he was thinking about the professor’s daughter and how frigid she really was and whether the barbarian ought to be given a sophisticated language, that he began really to listen to her. “I am leaving you,” she was saying and her face was twisted with hate, or envy. His own face was impassive. All those years of writing had made him cultivate a style, expressionless and animated. She looked exactly like a spitting cat, one of those wild cats that one sees in pictures standing on rocks in the Highlands. He suddenly thought, I don’t really like her. And he was surprised by the thought because he hadn’t considered her so remotely and dispassionately before. He didn’t know where the thought had come from. The snow was still falling remorselessly. He looked out at it and he thought, The snow doesn’t write very well. If he could choose some flakes like words … But the idea faded into the ghastly whiteness. He suddenly heard himself say, “Go to hell.”

She had been going on and on about his being a punk writer and an impossible egotist, and he had said, “Go to hell.” One thing about him, he didn’t have illusions. He knew that he was not yet a great writer but he would perhaps become a great writer, though not with her. He knew that clearly now. He simply didn’t like her. She was always interrupting him, she was always needing attention. She was always going on about things, trivial little things, stupid things. He needed someone else, someone younger, he needed someone who would give him peace. He needed someone who wasn’t always competing with him. He thought, what a stupid bitch she really is.

There was snow on her coat and it was melting in the heat of the electric fire. He needed a fire all the time and the two bars were on. On the floor were little balls of discarded paper, rolled up pages. He looked at his typewriter. It was old and battered. He didn’t like new things. He thought, I have never compromised in anything, certainly not in my writing. I should never have married this one.

Now she was saying something about his unsatisfactory sex life. He was thinking quite coldly, how much money have I got in the bank? He knew that he had ten thousand pounds or so, most of it from a film which had been made of one of his books, called Double Vision though the title of the book was Doppelganger. He was wondering, can I leave this apartment? She can have it. I’ve had enough. Thank God we don’t have any children. That moment was the decisive moment of his life. She had stopped talking as if she knew this. She was looking at him with parted lips. He thought, she has become becalmed. He thought, I shall smash her beautiful face. I shall go out into the storm. An orphan of the storm. He smiled grimly. He was quite handsome when he smiled like that. He said, “I’m leaving.” And at that moment he knew he must go, this was his last chance. If he didn’t go now he would never go. He took the paper out of his typewriter, closed the lid, and putting on a heavy warm coat left the house while all the time she gazed at him in astonishment, in complete silence. He walked across the snow knowing that she was watching him from the window. He was always conscious of other people watching him. He didn’t wave, he didn’t look back. He wasn’t at all angry, only resolved. He thought of the scene as something he might use in a future book. He caught a bus because he didn’t have a car. He didn’t know where he was going but he thought that he ought to get some peace somewhere. He deserved it. He deserved some happiness, he thought to himself. I shall send for some of my books, he thought, when she isn’t in. And he calmly and quite objectively considered what he had done, feeling quite cold, having come out of the warmth. He felt the cold intensely. As if he had left a cocoon. And yet he looked forward to being alone. Perhaps he could finish the book if he was left alone. Perhaps.