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Section twenty four. Shuffling the edges
straight, she did up the papers and

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tied the parcel, almost without looking. Sitting beside him, he thought,

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as if all her petals were about
her. She was a flowering tree,

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and through her branches looked out the
face of a law giver who had reached

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a sanctuary where she feared no one, not homes, not Bradshaw. A

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miracle, a triumph, the last
and greatest staggering he saw her mount the

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appalling staircase, laden with homes and
Bradshaw men who never weighed less than eleven

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stone six, who sent their wives
to court, Men who made ten thousand

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a year, and talked of proportion, who different in their verdicts for home

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said one thing, Bradshaw another.
Yet judges they were, who mixed the

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vision and the sideboard, saw nothing
clear, yet ruled. Yet inflict it

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must, they said over them.
She triumphed there. She said the papers

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were tied up, no one should
get at them. She would put them

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away, and she said nothing should
separate them. She sat down beside him

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and called him by the name of
that hawk or crow, which, being

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malicious and a great destroyer of crops, was precisely like him. No one

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could separate them, she said.
Then she got up to go into the

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bedroom to pack their things. But
hearing voices downstairs, and thinking that doctor

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Holmes had perhaps called, ran down
to prevent him coming up, Septimus could

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hear her talking to Holmes on the
staircase. My dear lady, I have

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come as a friend, Holmes was
saying, No, I will not allow

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you to see my husband. She
said. He could see her like a

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little hen with her wings spread,
barring his passage. But Holmes persevered.

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My dear lady, allow me,
Holmes said, putting her aside. Holmes

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was a powerfully built man. Holmes
was coming upstairs. Holmes would burst open

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the door. Holmes would say,
in a funk. Oh, homes would

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get him. But no, not
homes. Not Bradshaw getting up rather unsteadily,

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hopping, indeed from foot to foot, he considered missus Filmer's nice clean

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bread knife with bread carved on the
handle. Ah, but one mustn't spoil

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that the gas fire. But it
was too late. Now Holmes was coming.

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Razors he might have got, but
Riescha, who always did that sort

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of thing, had packed them.
There remained only the window, the large

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Bloomsbury lodging house window. The tiresome, the troublesome and rather melodramatic business of

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opening the window and throwing himself out. It was their idea of tragedy,

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not his or Risha's, for she
was with him. Holmes and Bradshaw liked

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that sort of thing. He sat
on the sill, but he would wait

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till the very last moment. He
did not want to die. Life was

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good, the sun hot. Only
human beings, what did they want?

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Coming down the staircase opposite, an
old man stopped and stared at him.

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Holmes was at the door. I'll
give it to you, he cried,

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and flung himself vigorously violently down on
to Missus Filmer's area railings. The coward

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cried Doctor Holmes, bursting the door
open. Risha ran to the window.

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She saw she understood. Doctor Holmes
and Missus Filmer collided with each other.

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Missus Filmer flapped her apron and made
her hide her eyes. In the bedroom.

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There was a great deal of running
up and downstairs. Doctor Holmes came

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in white as a sheet, shaking
all over, with a glass in his

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hand. She must be brave and
drink something, he said, What was

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it? Something sweet? For her
husband was horribly mangled, would not recover

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consciousness. She must not see him, must be spared as much as possible,

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would have the inquest to go through, poor young woman, who could

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have foretold it? A sudden impulse. No one was in the least to

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blame, he told Missus Filmer.
And why the devil he did it?

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Doctor Holmes could not conceive. It
seemed to her, as she drank the

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sweet stuff, that she was opening
long windows, stepping out into some garden.

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But where the clock was striking one, two, three, How sensible

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the sound was compared with all this
thumping and whispering. Like Septimus himself.

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She was falling asleep. But the
clock went on striking four, five,

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six, and Missus Filmer waving her
apron. They wouldn't bring the body in

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here, would they? Seemed part
of that garden? Or a flag.

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She had once seen a flag slowly
rippling out from a mast when she stayed

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with her aunt at Venice. Men
killed in battle were thus saluted, and

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Septimus had been through the wall of
her memories. Most were happy. She

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put on her hat and ran through
cornfields Where could it have been, onto

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some hill somewhere near the sea,
For there were ships, gulls, butterfli

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They sat on a cliff in London
too. There they sat, and half

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dreaming, came to her through the
bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings,

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stirrings among dry corn, the caress
of the sea, as it seemed to

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her, hollowing them in its arched
shell, and murmuring to her. Laid

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on shore strewn, she felt like
flying flowers over some tomb. He is

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dead, she said, smiling at
the poor old woman who guarded her with

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the honest light blue eyes fixed on
the door. They wouldn't bring him in

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here, would they. But missus
Filmer poo pooed, Oh no, oh,

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no, they were carrying him away. Now, ought she not to

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be told? Married people ought to
be together, missus Filmer thought, But

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they must do as the doctor said. Let her sloop, said doctor Holmes.

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Feeling her pulse, she saw the
large outline of his body standing dark

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against the window. So that was
doctor Holmes. One of the triumphs of

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civilization. Peter Walsh thought, it
is one of the triumphs of civilization,

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as the light high bell of the
ambulance sounded swiftly, cleanly. The ambulance

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sped to the hospital, having picked
up instantly, humanely, some poor devil,

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someone hit on the head, struck
down by disease, knocked over,

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perhaps a minute or so ago at
one of these crossings, as might happen

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to oneself. That was civilization,
It struck him, coming back from the

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east, the efficiency, the organization, the communal spirit of London. Every

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cart or carriage of its own accord
drew aside to let the ambulance pass.

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Perhaps it was morbid, or was
it not touching? Rather the respect which

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they showed, this ambulance with its
victim inside, Busy men hurrying home,

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yet instantly bethinking them as it passed, of some wife, or presumably how

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easily it might have been them there
stretched on a shelf, with a doctor

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and a nurse. Ah. But
thinking became morbid, sentimental. Directly one

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began conjuring up docs, dead bodies, a little glow of pleasure, a

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sort of lust too over. The
visual impression warned one not to go on

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with that sort of thing anymore.
Fatal to art, fatal to friendship.

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True, and yet, thought Peter
Walsh, as the ambulance turned to the

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corner. Though the light high bell
could be heard down the next street,

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and still farther as it crossed the
Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly. It

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is the privilege of loneliness. In
privacy, one may do as one chooses.

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One might weep if no one saw
it had been his undoing, this

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susceptibility in Anglo Indian society, not
weeping at the right time or laughing either.

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I have that in me, he
thought, standing by the pillar box,

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which could now dissolve in tears.
Why Heaven knows, beauty of some

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sort probably, And the weight of
the day, which, beginning with that

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visit to Clarissa, had exhausted him
with its heat, its intensity, and

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the drip of war impression after another. Down into that cellar where they stood,

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deep dark, and no one would
ever know, partly for that reason

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its secrecy, complete and inviolable,
he had found life like an unknown garden,

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full of turns and corners. Surprising. Yes, really, it took

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one's breath away, these moments there, coming to him by the pillar box

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opposite the British Museum, one of
them a moment in which things came together.

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This ambulance and life and death.
It was as if he were sucked

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up to some very high roof by
that rush of emotion, and the rest

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of him like a white shell,
sprinkled beach, left bare. It had

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been his undoing in Anglo Indian society, this susceptibility. Clarissa once going on

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top of an omnibus with him somewhere. Clarissa superficially at least so easily moved

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now in despair, now in the
best of spirits, all a quiver in

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those days, and such good company, spotting queer, little scenes, names

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people from the top of a bus, for they used to explore London and

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bring back bags full of treasures from
the Caledonian market. Clarissa had a theory.

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In those days, they had heaps
of theories, always theories, as

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young people have. It was to
explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction not

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knowing people, not being known,
for how could they know each other?

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You met every day, then not
for six months or years. It was

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unsatisfactory. They agreed, how little
one knew people. But she said,

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sitting on the bus going up Shaftsbury
Avenue, she felt herself everywhere, not

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here, hear, hear, and
she tapped the back of the seat,

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but everywhere she waved her hand going
up Shaftsbury Avenue, she was all that

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so that to know her or anyone
one must seek out the people who completed

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them, even the places, odd
affinities she had with people she had never

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spoken to, some woman in the
street, some man behind counter, even

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trees or barns. It ended in
a transcendental theory which, with her horror

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of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed, for

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all her skepticism, that since her
apparitions, the part of us which appears

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are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us which spreads

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wide, the unseen might survive,
be recovered, somehow, attached to this

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person or that, or even haunting
certain places after death, perhaps perhaps looking

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back over that long friendship of almost
thirty years. Her theory worked to this

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extent, brief, broken, often
painful, as the actual meetings had been,

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what with his absences and interruptions.
This morning, for instance, in

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came Elizabeth like a long legged,
cult handsome dumb just as he was beginning

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to talk to Clarissa. The effect
of them on his life was immeasurable.

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There was a mystery about it.
You were given a sharp, acute,

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uncomfortable grain, the actual meeting horribly
painful, as often as not, yet

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in absence, in the most unlikely
places, it would flower out, open,

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shed its scent, Let you touch, taste, look about, you

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get the whole feel of it,
and understanding after years of lying lost.

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Thus she had come to him on
board ship in the himalayas suggested by the

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oddest things. So Sally Seaton,
generous, enthusiastic goose thought of him when

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she saw blue hydrangers. She had
influenced him more than any person he had

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ever known, and always in this
way, coming before him without his wishing

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it cool, ladylike, critical or
ravishing, romantic, recalling some field or

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English harvest. He saw her most
often in the country, not in London.

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One scene after another at Burton,
end of section twenty four, read

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by Hannah Drma, London, twenty
fourth of October twenty twenty one. S