His dog, or his parents' dog, in the outback of Ewell. The long streets, the useless grass verge in front, the path, the concrete thirties road with the frayed rubber expansion joints between sections. It must have been summer, yes. Why else would we have been there? Did we go together? I think we must have done, Wendy and I, because she lived near there, Wendy, on one of those depressing pre-war estates where the shops are miles distant, the pubs are dead, when there are pubs, tennis abounds, and the inhabitants believe they are living in the country, refer to Town as the place the husbands go to, which is comparatively a far more civilized place to live, a community in a sense that the Tudor villas never can be. I played tennis often enough with her there, though, that same summer, the first year I knew Tony was also the year of that love, for Wendy, which ruined love for me for years after. She used to try very hard to beat me, I would not let her, would raise my game at the last moment to deprive her, whatever we did I was better at, all she could do in the end was betray me to defeat me that way. Perhaps it would have been better to have let her beat me at tennis, ha. Then I felt she would have despised me, or at least have taken a wrongly superior attitude to me. What priggishness, what a word! But what use are such speculations? Tony and June did not play tennis with us, I do not know whether they played at all, Tony I never knew took any form of exercise, except cricket, which is hardly exercise. I exaggerate, perhaps, but he bowled, did he? Or was certainly a batsman, do I remember him saying he played in some university match for the students? And did June say he played rugby, at one time? But we never discussed sport, remember only one occasion, early in the season, Spurs were having a great run, being on a bus with Tony in this city and seeing crowds flowing away from the ground, he remarking that they had been to the match, the crowds. But he did talk with Zulf about cricket, yes when the three of us were in London, on one of his visits to me, later, much later, at a pub, in the summer, under trees, drinking pints, we were, and they talked for a long while, to my ex-clusion, about test prospects or some such irrelevance. But what is relevant? Where was that pub? It would be good to go there again, to the same pub, not so much for his sake, just the same pub, under the summer trees, out of this cold, today's cold and unchangeableness. Not to go back exactly. His parents' house, for formal tea, his father quiet, but talkative, ha. His mother soft, sweet, all fussing and solicitude. A formal tea. I do not remember Wendy being there at all. Perhaps she was not there. Does it matter? So much of what I rehearse of him involves her, in the early days, for this first year they were not closer, they were associated, they have become more so in my mind. He saw his own parents in London only during vacations, I think, he and June would come down for a few days then, in vacations, or longer. At this one formal tea I remember June was very much the helpful daughter-in-law. Otherwise they were living in this city all the time, and because of his grant being cut he was having to take vacation jobs, or perhaps he would have had to take them anyway. I don't know. Sometimes I did, sometimes I did not. I don't know how I managed either, now, on four pounds a week. We were all very poor. They made us suffer for our learning. That's the way they wanted it. That vacation, I remember he told us at tea, or in a letter, which was it, both probably, that he had been selling rugs door-to-door down workingclass streets in this city, yes, which later came in very useful, the knowledge, to him, when there were race-riots in the city, he was interviewed by reporters, or something, I don't remember, why should I, it doesn't matter, nothing does, it's all chaos, look at his death, why? Why not? Is this sort of experience good for students? Not, surely not, for all students? But that is an academic question, ha, for me, now. Until my son is old enough, perhaps.
Did I see him, did we see them during that summer? What does it matter?
A court off Charing Cross Road, Cecil Court, perhaps, with a pub in it, yes, we must have met them there by arrangement that evening, Boxing Day evening, and kept it from them, Tony and June, that we were breaking up, that this was the last they would see us together, pretending, we were, or I was, rather, that things were as they were before her betrayal, Wendy's, which of course they could not be, I wonder she consented to the pretence, but she did feel some guilt, or felt I felt she should feel guilty. Tony and June sitting with us at a table near the base of a staircase, up which was the Gents', to which I made frequent visits, I must have been drinking pints, then, again, my weak bladder by now known to them, as well, the cause of jokes. And the familiarities I permitted myself with her then, with Wendy, holding her hand, the occasional kiss on her nearer cheek, to keep up the pretence, not to let Tony and June know that we were not lovers, now, into which intimacies Wendy had to allow herself to be drawn, for my sake, or the sake of her guilt, or whatever it was. Or because of her indifference, her pre-occupation. They did not seem to notice anything different, the others. Or perhaps they pretended well, too. Or even better than we did. A Scotch House, it was, plaid on the walls, Youngers'. But there are lots of Youngers' houses. At the Boxing Day ritual lunch we had, with Wendy there, we burnt the tablecoth with sparklers, indoor fireworks, great molten redhot globules burning themselves out on and through the cloth. My aunt and uncle were there as well. Great jollifications. On the Xmas day at lunch, alone with my parents I had wept slowly into my mother's Xmas dinner, the sprouts just right with a nice touch of frost on them, the stuffing herby. My parents' silence. At such moments not solicitude but only solitude. I could not control the tears, did not want to. Called down to Xmas lunch from the room I tried to read in. Only a few days, a couple of weeks, I don't know, before, I had told her how much I looked forward to Xmas with her, the first ever where I would return to the emotional security of childhood, that our love would make Xmas like it was for me before they told me there wasn't a Father Xmas and I had to start giving other people presents back as well. Or some such rubbish. These melodramatic idiotic moments in which life is completely These stale thoughts, this stale.
Writing a poem on the day she, finding the poem, that is, while walking on a refuse tip, filling in the lake of my childhood with rubble they were, eggshells, all the rejectamenta of London. Some of it. Coincidences, while that poem was happening to me she was betraying me. As it later turned out, as I later learnt. I even now forget exactly what it was she betrayed me over, some other man, yes, but I have dealt with that, I do not have to think of that any more, it is past, why does Tony's death and this city throw them up at me again?