The lights glowed in Mudd's house-kitchen, bedroom, the standard lamp of the sitting-room. Mudd's car was in the porch. Lydgate could see all this from the road. He parked his car at the foot of the climbing path that led to Mudd's front door and walked up. The loose flints, disturbed, made a noise of distant marching armies. The front door was not locked. Through its glass panels he could see the decorations of Mudd's entrance-hall — spears to which hanks of human hair were glued; a Potok carving of a sullen monkey-foetus playing a severed head like a drum; long brown cream-speckled leaves in a jar. He turned the handle, went in and, in the sitting-room, saw Lydia and Mudd sitting demurely in easy chairs, she with a liqueur glass, he with a tankard. The fan turned slowly, the regulator at its bottom notch. "Oh, Frank," said Lydia, "it's you."
"Yes. You might have told me you didn't intend to go."
"We did go, didn't we, Harry? But there were such a hell of a lot of people."
"Yes," said Mudd. "We just turned the car round and came back here. It's a wonder you didn't see us. We saw you driving down, staring into space. I tooted, but you just went on staring. Have a drink."
Lydgate sat down, looking from one to the other. No derangement in the dress, no flush, no pallor, no stray strand of hair sticking up and pointing like a thumb to the bedroom. What was going on? He took whisky and water from the small boy and said, "Well."
"Well," said Mudd. "Was the show any good?"
"Yes. No. Oh, it was all right, I suppose."
"Good." Mudd, with much deliberation, screwed out his cigarette in a cloisonne ash-tray. ''I'm glad," he said, his eyes on his work, "that we're able to have a cosy chat, just the three of us. You've never been up to see me, Frank, not once since you've been here. I've had the feeling that you don't really like me."
Lydgate spread his lips painfully. "Can you really blame me?" Lydia filled herself another thimbleful of Dom. She said nothing but continued looking at Mudd.
"Well." said Mudd, "I can, really, you know. I've had very good reasons for hating your guts, but I've always shrugged the reasons away. I've always thought you're a good chap but a bit misguided. I've never been unfair to you in our official dealings and I've never said a bad word about you. But I'm afraid you've said a lot of bad things about me."
"Never unfair?" said Lydgate. "The bloody hovel you put me into. The things you did in Shurga. The way you've tried to interfere with my private life."
"For your own good," said Mudd. "You're a valuable man. I've hated to see you go to the dogs. All I've done is to try and chasten you a bit. Now you've been chastened and I think you're a better man for it. If I may say this before Lydia, I've been really sick at heart seeing the way you treated one of the finest women in the world."
"Oh, really, Harry," said Lydia.
"But is that any of your business?" said Lydgate.
"Oh, yes, I think it is. The happiness of people we like must always be our business. Wouldn't you agree there, Lydia ?"
Lydia, sipping her Dom, nodded.
"Ever since I've been here," said Lydgate, slumped in his chair, a slight headache making his eyes close, "I've had the impression that people have been fighting for my soul. God knows why. But if saving my soul involves sweltering in filthy little houses, being degraded and insulted, being made bankrupt because I can't afford bribes — "
"It was in Shurga that you went bankrupt," said Mudd. "Not here. And whose money was that, by the way? Was it yours, Lydia?"
"Some of it was mine," said Lydia. "Not all of it. I took my chance, anyway, or, rather, Frank's chance. I'm not complaining."
"Thank you," said Mudd. "I've always wanted to know that. Poor old Frank. He can't do anything right. But that's all over now."
"You know," said Lydgate, quite quietly, two finger-tips on each closed eyelid, "I've never really wanted much. I'm a man. I have certain needs. I like to be warm. I like to have enough to eat, a little to drink. I have certain other appetites, too. It doesn't seem too much to ask, just to be satisfied. I've no great ambitions. Not like you," he said, opening his eyes to Mudd.
"You condemn yourself," said Mudd. "You like to be warm but you forget that we also have to tolerate the cold. You've forgotten what an English winter's like, you've not been home for donkey's years. You take perpetual warmth as a right, but it's not a right."
"The people living here, born here," said Lydgate, "they take it as a right."
"They're not quite human beings," said Mudd briskly. "Only people of the temperate zones can really be human beings."
"Oh, this is silly," said Lydia. "Arguing about being warm. Is that the only reason," she asked Lydgate, "why you've never been back home? Just because you don't like the cold?"
Lydgate thought. "One gets, out of touch," he said vaguely.
"It would be much more romantic," said Lydia, smiling, "if you told us that you'd never been back because you committed some dreadful crime and the police were after you."
Lydgate looked at her very sharply. Mudd said:
"You talk about appetites. Hunger and thirst are one thing, but surely sex is another. Food and drink have no feelings, but women are human beings. You can't treat a woman like a piece of steak. Except perhaps prostitutes. But you've never been much of a man for prostitutes, have you? Shall I say this, that you've wanted all the advantages of marriage without any of the responsibilities? You've wanted a meal cooked and the floor swept and your beer brought from the fridge and, after that, the machine that's done all these things for you to smile kindly when you go out to have a couple of drinks with the boys, and then be waiting for you, legs open, on the bed, having turned now from a machine to a sort of receptacle. And that's what you wanted Lydia to be."
"Look here," said Lydgate angrily, "what do you know about it, anyway? Damn it, you've always been too damned selfish even to think of getting married. What right have you got to lecture me ?"
"I'm only trying to help," said Mudd patiently. "You're at least ten years older than me, but I still think of you as a child. We want to make a man of you."
"Well, make a man of yourself first," said Lydgate with heat. Then he went too far and said, "It makes me sick, a second-rate amateur jockey setting himself up as a bloody lay preacher." Mudd stood up and said:
"You'd better take that back, Frank. I know all about you trying to get me warned off the course. You said some pretty slanderous things about me in Shurga. I don't like people going round saying that I'm a dirty rider."
"Well, you were. You ought to have been cracked with your own whip. I saw the face of one of the Creole jockeys —"
"Children, children," said Lydia, "this is ridiculous."
"It is," agreed Mudd. He sat down, saying, "He doesn't know what he's talking about."
"All right," said Lydgate. "But you've had that in for me all the time, haven't you? That's at the back of everything. Just because we nearly had you warned off the course. And you have the damned cheek to talk about responsibilities and ideals and morality and Christ knows what. You ought to grow up, little man, you really ought."
"Oh, you're absurd, both of you," said Lydia. "Now, look, can't you forget all about what happened in Shurga and all that you've done wrong to each other here and try to behave like grown-up people?"
"He's been sleeping with you, hasn't he?" asked Lydgate viciously. "Come on, speak out, now that we're being so frank with each other." ('Frank,' he thought; 'Frank Lydgate.')
"I object to that insinuation," said Mudd. "That's slander."
"Oh, Frank, how can you say things like that?"
"Has he or hasn't he?"
"What does it matter to you," said Lydia, with a very sudden bitterness, "whether he has or not? You don't care what happens to me when you aren't actually using me. Except for five minutes every other night, you just don't give a damn. Or," she added, poison in the sugar, "shall we say ten minutes? You're not as young as you used to be."
"Well, if I'm so damned old and so damned ugly and so damned inconsiderate, why the hell did you bother to come back to me at all?"
"You came back to me," said Lydia with her poisoned smile. "Don't you remember? It's only just over a week ago. But, of course, old men tend to lose their memories."
"Don't bloody quibble," said Lydgate, "Why, why, why do you want me at all?"
"That's a question," said Lydia. "Do you ever stop to consider what you're really entitled to as far as a wife is concerned? You're over fifty, remember. You're entitled to a wife grown grey, lined, stringy or fat, past child-bearing, past sex, a nice, homely, matronly body with two pairs of glasses and a knitting-basket. If you'd married at twenty, that's what you'd have now. You're not entitled to me," Lydia shouted. "I'm young, I'm attractive. Harry here even tells me that I'm beautiful." Mudd hung his head, limp in the armchair. "And," cried Lydia, "you have the nerve to be tired of me, to treat me like some little fourpenny piece you'd pick up on the streets of Sydney. Me," she yelled, her eyes wide open. "Me, me, me! You're a stupid, bloody, ungrateful fool."
"All right," said Lydgate. "You still haven't answered my question."
"No." She became quiet, her nose twitching to keep tears back. "It's quite simple. I thought marriage meant something. I thought if you got married the idea was to stay married. I thought if something went wrong with a marriage you just had to try and put it right. I've been thinking about it all this time back in Sydney. I've felt guilty. I couldn't think of anyone thing you'd actually done wrong except not treat me as a human being and sometimes seem to loathe me for being a human being. I thought there must be something wrong with me. Sleeping with other people," she said, "just doesn't mean a thing. I've done it because I've had to do it. I would have screamed if I couldn't occasionally have been in bed with somebody who treated me like a human being. But marriage is different. It's a terrible thing to admit that a marriage has been a failure. I've just not been able to sleep some nights," she said, "with this horrible feeling of guilt. Guilt," she repeated loudly, looking Lydgate in the eye. "Guilt. I don't suppose you know what that word means."
"No," said Lydgate, in loud, heavy, lunatic sarcasm, "no, I've just no idea."
"You've nothing to feel guilty about, Lydia," said Mudd.
"Oh, shut up," said Lydgate and Lydia simultaneously. They turned again on each other. "You," said Lydgate, "can leave me as soon as you like. If it's marriage you're worried about, you can cease to worry. I won't tell you why, but you can. You've no obligation to me whatsoever. You can blame me for everything, every damned mortal thing. I accept the blame, and I'll say that I'm sorry. We can go our own ways, you can try and be happy with somebody else. With Mudd, for instance," he said, doubtfully.
"No," said Mudd, "you can leave me out of it."
"But," said Lydia, "you still happen to be my husband."
"Now," said Lydgate, "listen carefully. Wait," he added. He went over to the sideboard and poured out a very stiff peg of whisky. He came back. "You can hear this, too," he said to Mudd. He drank.
"This," said Mudd, "happens to be my house."
"That's what I mean. Now, listen. Our marriage was never valid. You believed it was, so there's no blame attaching to you," he said to Lydia.
”No, don't say any thing. Just listen. I married in England, in my twenties. I married a woman already in her thirties. Life with her was hell. Physical hell and mental hell. She starved me of everything. She developed some damned stupid idea about keeping the body pure. No, wait, listen. No sex, no meat, no alcohol. It was murder. She came under the influence of some stupid faddist or other. A Eurasian, he was. I told her I couldn't stand life with her any longer. But she was like you, Lydia; she didn't believe in divorce. She prayed for me, yes, she did, kneeling down by the kitchen table, praying loud enough for the neighbours to hear. She wanted me to be pure, just like her. But I was never the pure type. Please, please listen. I ran away from her. I worked in Spain for a time, thought I was free of her, but, believe it or not, she turned up in Madrid on a holiday. She wanted me to come back to her, she loved me, she said, she'd been praying for me night and day. She'd got a bit of money. That's why she could afford to indulge in her stupid fads, that's why she could afford to stay on in Spain, praying for me. Yes, praying for me even in the blasted office, in front of the boss. I had a friend in Tanganyika, got a job there. She found out and turned up in Dar-es-Salaam. I moved to Nairobi, and damn me if she didn't turn up again. It was hell, believe me. Mind you, in a way I was being punished. I'd married her for her money. It's always a mistake to marry for money. Remember that."
"But you got married in Nairobi," said Mudd. "That's in your confidential file. That was bigamy."
"I didn't think it was," said Lydgate. "You see, when she turned up in Nairobi she was already ill with fever. That made her pray all the more. She began to see visions. Of course, she'd no stamina, living off grass and dandelion leaves. Anyway, they put her into hospital and then she was shipped off home. I got a very reproachful letter from this Eurasian friend of hers, saying that he was writing by her death-bed and that everything was my fault. After that I heard nothing. I assumed she'd died. Believe me, I couldn't feel anything at all except an incredible relief. That may sound callous, but consider what I'd been through. On the crest of the wave of relief I re-married. It wasn't very successful, but that's another story. Anyway, we were divorced. I married you, Lydia, in good faith. I believed I was a free man, I'd taken it for granted a long time before that Agnes was dead — "
"What was her name?" asked Mudd.
"Agnes. From the Latin word for a lamb. A lamb is a symbol of purity."
"Go on," said Mudd.
"But one year after our marriage I discovered that Agnes was still alive. Alive and kicking. There's some sort of vegetarian magazine published in Calcutta. Some sort of vegetarian was staying for a time in one of the rest houses — I forget which one. Anyway, he left a copy of this magazine there and, quite by chance, I saw an article. It was called 'Spiritual Beauty Through Herbal Health' and it was written by Agnes Lydgate. What could I do? How would you have felt? What would have happened to me? I kept quiet about it, and can you blame me? Anyway," he concluded, "there you are. We're not married, Lydia, never have been. We've been living in sin."
"But is she still alive?" asked Mudd. Lydia, mouth open, eyes wide, just stared.
"I don't know," said Lydgate. "I've a feeling that she can't be. I've not heard a thing about her for a hell of a long time."
"Did you know," asked Mudd, "that a herbal health faddist was recently eaten up-river?"
"Good God," said Lydgate. "A woman?"
"A man. A Eurasian. At least his name sounded Eurasian. Nobody actually saw him. It was one of these Domingo da Silva sort of names."
"I can't remember," said Lydgate. "I don't think we got any information about him. I would have known the name if I'd seen it. So that's the man who lost his head," he mused.
"He didn't pass through Passport Control. He came from Shurga in the Information Department's plane. The one that sometimes writes the sky-signs. He just passed through. Nobody bothered about him. The U.N.A.'s in a hell of a row about that," he added. "And you, Frank," he remembered, "are in a hell of a mess." Lydia was now crying gently.
"I don't see why. I didn't know I was doing anything wrong."
"You committed bigamy. That's a terrible crime."
Indignation rose in Lydgate. "What do you mean? We're living in a part of the world where some people can have as many wives as they like. Polygamy's regarded as normal in Islam. Bigamy's very small beer. And, besides, I didn't know I was committing bigamy." He felt curiously light-hearted now, having shed a considerable burden. Perhaps Carruthers Chung's bridge parties were not such a bad idea after all.
"Collusion," said Mudd. "Have you told anybody else about this?" "Nobody. And, remember, I've told you in confidence."
"Oh, Frank, Frank," cried Lydia, a small handkerchief at her weeping nose, "how could you? What do I do now?"
"You can marry Mudd here. Or any of the other boys who think you're bonza and dinky-die because they don't have to marry you. You're quite free. There's no need to say anything about anything to anybody. You can go to a registry office with a clear conscience any time you like. With anybody you like," said Lydgate.
"But the scandal. This is such a small place."
"The police ought to be told, really," said Mudd. "If you had any decency, you'd go and tell the police yourself."
"Oh, come off it," said Lydgate. "Would you do it, Harry? Of course you wouldn't. For the time being we can just resume the status quo. Except, of course, that Lydia's house is now mine."
"No, it isn't," said Mudd. "You're a bachelor. You're not entitled to this class of accommodation."
"A bachelor? Come, come. I'm far from being a bachelor. Very far,"
"You'll have to go back to that first house you were in. The second one's been re-allocated."
"Oh, no," said Lydgate. "You can't do that. I'm the official lessee of Lydia's house. I pay the rent. It's in black and white, with no conditions."
"You've got to take your medicine," said Mudd very grimly. "You must go where we send you. But tonight you can sleep at the Dunia Hotel. Send a voucher in tomorrow morning." There was a jolly noise of cars coming up the hill. "Oh, God," said Lydia. "The party. The party," she cried.
"Cheer up," said Lydgate. "You've got a lot to celebrate."
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