VI

I have the impression that if anyone had seen us that evening as we wheeled our trophy of love across the crisp green lawns, down the winding gravel paths, through the woods, until we could settle her into the little villa - if anyone had, he would have been tempted to smile at the solemnity and concern written upon our visages.  As for her - why, she was breathing softly but regularly under her parachute silk shroud; you could see that faint rise and fall of her breast as she lay stretched out on the long steel trolley.  She was gradually coming out of the anaesthetic, so to speak.  The last threads had been snipped which attached her to the machines that had been feeding slumbering life into her all these long months; the life which, in due course, she would be free to turn her own uses, to the exploitation of good or evil.  "Today she wakes, today she walks" Marchant had chanted with schoolboy enthusiasm which masked, I think, a concern nearly bordering upon hysteria.  He had worked harder than any of us on the model.  When first her breasts began to rise and fall, her lips to move into the soundless shapes of words, his surprising reaction had been to burst into peal upon peal of laughter, high girlish laughter.  And he was still poised on the edge of a triumphant giggle whenever she gave the smallest sign of responding tot he demands made upon her by the life-currents into which she was entering.  His pink scalp shone through his thin silvery hair; his silver-rimmed spectacles, which gave him a slightly White Rabbit look, steamed over all too easily with emotion.  He had to wipe them in his apron.  It alarmed me, this laughter, I must say.

      I confess that I too felt a nudge of concern and perhaps even horror as she began to take her cues - sorry, it.  She was moving like a planet into camera range, telescope range....

      She licked her lips slowly, tentatively, and her small red tongue flickered over them like that of some marvellous copperhead.  Then she sighed once, twice, but it was a very small boredom as yet.  We had allowed ourselves a quarter of an hour to dress her and conduct her to the little villa where she might wake in surroundings appropriately familiar to her intricate memory-codes.  After all, we wanted her to feel at home, to be happy, just like everybody else.  So here we were, wheeling her away across country with Marchant dressed in the elaborate white intern's coat and Mrs. Henniker tricked out as a nurse.  Myself, I was still a civilian, so to speak.  Marchant was going to play the doctor who by a brilliant operation had saved her life.  As for Mrs. Henniker, she was ashen pale, her hair was glued to her scalp with perspiration.  But she was behaving very nobly.  I had given her a long talking-to about this excessive emotion.  There was no need for it, after all, and there was a risk that the experiment, so delicate in its various contingencies, might be spoiled unless she kept a straight face, so to speak.  "Above all nothing must be said in the presence of the dummy to suggest to her that she is one, that she is not real.  She must not be made to doubt her own reality - because that might lead to some sort of memory collapse; whatever doubts she may eventually have must come out of her own memory-fund and its natural reaction-increment."  Easy to say, of course, but the thing was that she was so damn real that it was difficult not to think of her as a "person" ... already!  And she not walking and talking as yet - the acid test of her mock-humanity!  Yes, she could even read, and by her bed lay the familiar bundles of film papers and weeklies which she would nose through like a dog, quizzing the fashions as she picked her front teeth with a slow fingernail.  Yet, she was typical, as contemporary as a mere man could make her.

      Julian was there at this briefing, if I can call it that, sitting very still with his hands in his lap, listening intently, looking somehow diminished, somehow like a schoolboy.  He too had been showing signs of strain from all this cruel anticipation - symptoms more suited to a young bridegroom than to a grown man playing games with a dummy.  Yet there it was: changing his clothes several times a day, studying himself with sombre attention in mirrors, fussing over the freshness of the carnation in his buttonhole.  I could see that he was going to choose his clothes for the first time meeting with the Ur-Iolanthe with great care, for all the world as if it mattered.  Yet perhaps after all it did to him.  (She would hold out long phthistic fingers towards him, smiling, saying nothing.)

      We had chosen the evening as the best time for her to start; it enabled us to see if our settings were right, by her reaction to nightfall and bedtime and so on.  Iolanthe used to wake punctually at six every morning, and was usually in bed by eleven at the latest every night.  Henniker had promised to re-enact her usual role of nurse-secretary and friend with all the fidelity she could command, and I presumed that she would soon get over her initial worry and take everything naturally; she would familiarise herself with the new Iolanthe in the long run.  It was just a question of the initial awakening.  If the dummy was as "real" as we expected its memory-reaction code would instantly throw up the whole of Henniker's history together with "her own" past - every damned thing.  Yes, from the simple point of view of memory, she would simply be coming back to life after a critical illness - the gap created by the real Iolanthe's death would be filled in the memory of the false one by vague intimations of an illness, an operation, an absence.  Her life henceforth (though we had not made out any elaborate schema to cover the range and scope of her activities: how could we?) - but her life henceforth would be a sort of long convalescence.  At least so we thought.  She was not "coded" or "programmed" forwards.  She was, so to speak, free.

      The little villa in the woods was unobtrusively surrounded by a tall wire fence and entered through a gate.  It was very pretty, set upon a deeply wooded knoll.  The garden was a riot of wild and tame flowers; behind ran a brook and beside it lay an apple-orchard.  It was if anything prettier and more comfortable than the house in the woods which I myself occupied with Benedicta.  Inside this elegant little place  Henniker had arranged all the possessions (they were astonishingly few for such a rich woman) of Iolanthe senior; laid them all out in familiar dispositions to re-engage memory, yet also haphazardly to suggest perhaps that she (who had lived out of suitcases for half her life) was simply on location for some film or other.  But it was beautiful, it was peaceful, the little house.  A fire sparkled in the dining-room with its new novels and bibelots; the Renoir hung upon the wall.  On the small upright piano stood the sheet music of a film-score and a volume of Chopin's Etudes.  Eh bien, the sheets had been aired.  On the bedside table were two novels she had been reading when she, the real one, had suddenly lapsed into death.  (Some underlinings in one.)  Everything in fact conspired to produce a normal setting and atmosphere for this softly breathing Other, lying under her aeroplane silk.  I touched her fingers.  They separated easily, flexibly.  They were warm.

      Marchant had timed it all very accurately.  We unpacked her body softly and slipped on the blue silk nightgown while Henniker brushed out her hair with long strokes (she sighing luxuriously the while).  Then we lifted her to bed.  She smelt the newly-ironed freshness of the sheets with appreciation, wrinkling up a newly-minted nose.  There were also the faint wisps of odour from the lighted joss-sticks which burned in a small Chinese vase.  It was time; there was nothing to do but wait.  Marchant hung over his watch like a demented crystal-gazer, his lips counting silently, a smile upon his face.  "A minute" he whispered.  And then "Ahhh" with a long delicious inspiration the lady woke; the two eyes, bluer than any stone, inspected first the clean white ceiling, and then travelled slowly down to take in our own surrounding faces; recognition dawned, together with that famous mischievous smile which was so warm that it had always suggested a marvellous intimate complicity, even when projected on a screen.  The slightly husky and melodious voice said: "Is it over?  Have I come back, then?"  While she addressed the question to Marchant had long slender arm came out and touched me, grasped my fingers, giving them a tender squeeze of recognition as she whispered in Greek "Hullo, Felix."  Marchant was bobbing and ducking his affirmative and vaguely going through a repertoire of Chinese gestures, shaking hands with myself, as if to congratulate himself for this feat - this living and breathing feat of science, with her china-blue eye and scarlet, rather ravenous mouth.  "It's all over" he said.  "A great success; but you must rest for a while, quite a long while."  She yawned as naturally as a cat and whispered "I feel wonderful Felix.  Doctor, make I go to the loo?"  She had not as yet recognised the blenching Henniker, but now as she turned back the sheet in order to stand up she did, and gave a sharp delighted cry like a bird.  "But it's you - I didn't see!"  In some curious way the very naturalness of this embrace seemed to allay the emotion and anxiety of the older woman.  Perhaps a sense of verisimilitude, of the reality of the flesh and blood, the gesture, released her from a very natural fear - I don't know.  But all at once she looked unafraid again.  "I'll come with you" she said, and accompanied Iolanthe to the bathroom, smoothing her hair with her hand as she sat on the lavatory and gave her little mechanical shiver of pleasure.  "Is it really all over?" she asked Henniker.  "Are you sure?"

      Henniker reassured her gravely and then escorted her back to bed, puffing up the pillows behind her head and smoothing the sheets with her hard scaly hand.  Yes, she had ceased to tremble now.  Marchant played the doctor damned awkwardly, swinging a stethoscope in his hand.  "Well" he said.  "It has all been a great success."  She turned her smile on him and expressed her gratitude by taking his hand in hers.  "I am so grateful" she said gravely.  "I had given myself up for lost, in a way."  We studied her gravely, amazed at what we had done, and wondering a little if she would keep up this extraordinary performance of an understudy who had so thoroughly mastered an intricate part.  I could well understand  Marchant's unease, his desire to get away.  It was like the first impact of falling in love - one paradoxically wants to get away, to be alone, in order to ruminate upon the feeling.  His love was scientific, that was all.  Dolly worked!  Iolanthe was saying dreamily: "When you come out of the anaesthetic it's with a soft bump that you land in the middle of consciousness - like those lovely flying dreams one has when one is a child."  Marchant stood on one leg and then the other.  Finally he took his leave promising to call on her in the morning.  "Henny," said Io, yawning profoundly "O Henny dear, can I eat something?  Something small, a boiled egg?"

      "Of course, darling."

      Henniker retired to the kitchen and left us staring at each other with amusement, yes, affectionate amusement  It was a very unreal feeling indeed.  "I must just see" she said at last "what they have managed to do about my breasts - that was what really worried me and brought on the other, I think."  She got out of bed with a swift lithe gesture and turned her back to me to enable me to help her divest herself of her blue nightgown.  Naked she walked towards the full-length mirror at the other end of the room.  She gave a little crooning cry of relief as she caught sight of the beautiful new breasts the doctors had given her, cupping them in her palms, head on one side like a parrot.  Then she leaned forward and stared intently into her own eyes as if to make some critical assessment of her own looks; then, sighing, turned to me a naked as sunrise and put her arms round me to kiss me lingeringly on the lips.  It was the old affectionate, concerned kiss of Io, quite unbearably real yet utterly without any new sexual connotation.  It was as sister to brother, not as lover to lover; but I was thrilled to have a chance to put my arms about her, to test the smooth flexion of her muscles, to stroke the pearly haunches of my darling, proud as any sculptor to have confided such a thing to nature.  She giggled as she got back first into her nightgown and then into her bed.  "You look so serious" she said.  "Still the same old Felix, thank goodness.  How is Benedicta?" she added with a faint frown of concentration as if she were trying to summon up an image of her face.  "Happy at last" I said.  "And me too.  Everything has changed."  She shot me a cool and rather quizzical look, as if she were in doubt as to whether I was being ironical, or pulling her leg.  Then she said "If it's true, then I'm glad.  It was about time, I must say, that you had a decent break."

      Henniker came back with the long-legged bed-tray on which lay her boiled egg, some nursery bread and butter, and a glass of milk.  I watched with anxiety, for all this she would eat only in her imagination; the plate, the glass, would seem to her quite empty, though all she had done was to cut the food up and mess it about a bit.  But ideally the reflex hand-to-mouth action would satisfy her sense of participation in a natural ritual; one could hardly have denied her that.  (I was reminded of the slow imaginary meals of Rackstraw in the Paulhaus.)  She did her act and leaned back pushing the tray away and wiping her lips.  "Gosh, I'm full" she said, and then "Felix, is there an evening paper?  I want to see what plays are on."  I found one and she consulted the theatre pages with attention, her lips moving.  "I don't know a single one of them" she said, and then looked at the date.  "How long have I been here, Felix?"  I parried this with talk about long sedation and memory lapses and so on.  She wrinkled her brow and wandered through the headlines of the paper before abruptly putting it aside.

      "By the way," I said "Old Rackstraw is dead."  She looked at me with wide-eyed regret for a moment and then turned away to fold up her napkin.  "It's probably for the best" she said in a low voice.  "He was so ill it was to be expected I suppose.  And yet everyone who dies takes a whole epoch with them.  Racky was a saint to me, an absolute saint.  Sometimes quite recently when I thought how contemptuously I had let him sleep with my body - not my me, my you, so to speak - I felt shocked and disgusted with myself.  In a way I owe him everything; he made my name with his scripts.  Felix, do you ever think of, do you ever remember, Athens?"  The words came over with a kind of wild pang, saturated with a sort of forlorn reserve.  "Ah yes, Iolanthe, of course I do."  She smiled and shaking out her hair said: "I tried to reconstruct us in a film at one time, you and me.  It didn't work.  Racky was doing the writing and couldn't get it."

      "I'm not surprised" I said.  "But then why?"

      "Because I do things backwards.  Experiences don't register with me while they are happening.  But afterwards, suddenly in a flash I see their meaning, I relive them and experience them properly.  That is what happened to me with you.  One day by a Hollywood swimming pool the heavens opened and I suddenly realised that it had been a valid and fruitful experience - us two.  We might even have christened the thing love.  Ah, that word!"

      "I took it as it came, with perfect male egoism."

      "I know; I suppose you thought we were just ... what was your pet expression?  Yes, 'just rubbing narcissisms together and making use of each other's bodies as mirrors'.  Cruel Felix, it wasn't like that; why you got quite ill when I left.  Well then, I got quite ill too, but retrospectively, by that Hollywood pool, and within the space of a second; people wondered why I suddenly burst out crying.  Really it is absurd.  Then later I tried to build a film about us in Athens in order to cauterise the memory a bit; but that didn't work.  So I just had to let it dwindle away with the years.  How absurd.  Yes, the film got made, but it was rotten."

      She had spilt egg on her nightgown.  It was so natural, so babyish.  I wiped her with my handkerchief, clicking my tongue reprovingly the while like a nanny.  "Now Iolanthe, please be a good girl, won't you, and obey Dr. Marchant to the letter?  No originality, no tricks, no bright ideas.  You have got to take it easily for some weeks at least."

      "But of course, my dear.  But will you come and see me often, just to talk?  Bring Benedicta if you wish."  She hesitated.  "No, don't bring Benedicta.  I haven't got rid of my dislike of her as yet.  It would make me shy."

      "Come.  Come."

      "I know.  Sorry!  But still...."

      I stood up and removed the tray from the bed.  "I'll tell you more about Racky" she said, settling herself more comfortably in the bed.  "I'll tell you anything, everything.  Now I feel at ease.  Now my career is finished, the company bought out.  I feel a new sort of relief.  I have a little time in hand to do the things I want.  See Bali properly, read Proust, learn to play the tarot...."

      I didn't want to ask her but I had to.  "Tell me, do you feel the capacity for happiness inside you?  Happiness!"

      She considered.  "Yes" she whispered as I stooped to kiss her forehead.  "Yes, I do.  But Felix everything will feel indeterminate until I meet Julian, the author of all my professional misfortunes."

      "How so?"

      "I'm exaggerating of course, but he hangs over me like a cloud, always invisible.  Have you ever seen him up close?"

      "Yes, but only recently."

      "How is he?  Describe."

      "He is coming to see you tomorrow."

      She sat bolt upright in bed, clasping her knees, and said "Good.  At last."  Then she clasped her hands and laughed.  Henniker came in to draw the curtains and remake the bed and I took the opportunity to take my leave.  I was glad to.  This first encounter made me feel week; my knees felt as if they would buckle under me.  I stumbled out into the garden with a feeling of suffocation and relief.  On the way to the car I had a moment of faintness and was forced to lean against a tree for a moment and unloosen my collar.

      On the way back home, at a deserted part of the road over the moors, I came upon the black Rolls laid almost endways across the road in a fashion that suggested an ambush or a hold-up.  As I hooted I recognised Julian's car; his chauffeur replied with a warning ripple of horn like a wild goose sounding.  What the hell?  Julian was in the back of the car.  I got out an opened his door; he was dressed as if he had come from some official reception.  A black Homburg lay behind him on the rack, and in his hands he held a pair of gloves.  The funny thing was that he was sitting with his head turned away from me, stiffly, hieratically.  I had the impression that he may have been trying to avoid showing the tears in his eyes.  Probably false - it was just a fleeting thought.  But he swallowed and said: "Felix - for goodness' sake - how is she?"  The intensity of the question was such as to bring on my shakes.  I climbed in beside him and told him - I fear with growing incoherence - all about her awakening, her naturalness.  "We've done the impossible, Julian.  They talk of portraits taken from the life; but this is liver than any portrait.  Liver than life.  It's bloody well her."  I was shivering and my teeth began to chatter.  "Have you any whisky Julian?  I'm shaken to the backbone.  I feel as if I am getting 'flu."  He pressed a button and the little bar slid out of the wall with its bottles and bowl of ice cubes.  The telephone rang but he switched it off with an impatient gesture.  I drank deeply, deeply.  It was nectar.  He watched me narrowly, curiously, as if I myself were a dummy, astonishing him by my lifelikeness.  "Julian, you wanted this creature and we've produced her, it, for you.  I wish you the densest happiness in the words of Benjamin Franklin.  Her sex is more in the breach than the observance, though technically she could make love, Julian."  It was extremely tactless.  He struck me across the mouth with his gloves.  I didn't react, feeling I had deserved it.

      "You are babbling" he said contemptuously.

      "I know.  It's pure hysteria.  But I tell you Julian that on the present showing the damned thing is as real as you or I."

      "That is what I'd hoped."  Now his little white fingers were drumming, drumming upon the leather arm-rest.  "How much does she recall?" he said.  "Did she mention me at all?  I laughed.  "You still don't realise, Julian; she remembers all that Iolanthe did and more perhaps; we won't know for a while until she has a chance to develop her thoughts.  So far though...."  His eyes looked queer, vitreous; he hooded them with his heavy lids as he turned them on me, sitting there with his brooding vulpine air.  He sighed.  "When shall we meet, then?" he asked in a low resigned voice, as if he might be asking the date of an execution.  I finished my drink.  "Tomorrow, at tea-time.  I told her you would be there."  I got out and banged the door on him.  He put down the window to say: "Felix, please be there; remember we have never met.  This is the first time."

      My nerves reformed by the whisky, I got back into the car, and felt a sudden wave of elation mingle with my exhaustion.  I don't know when I have driven quite so fast or taken so many risks.  I was in a hurry to get back to Benedicta, for better or for worse, in slickness or in stealth....

      It was so natural - Benedicta before the fire reading, with a sleeping kitten beside her, it was so familiar and so reliably real that I was suddenly afflicted by almost the same sense of unreality I had had in talking to Iolanthe.  The comparison of two juxtaposed realities like these gave me the queer feeling that might overwhelm a man who looks in the mirror and sees that he has two heads, two reflections.  But she didn't ask, she didn't question; I simply slumped down beside her, put my head on my arms and went straight to sleep.  It was dinner time when she woke me.  Baynes had unobtrusively set out a tray in the corner of the room on a table which we moved into the firelight.  By now of course I was as ravenous as a pregnant horse and bursting with euphoria.  She looked at me quizzically from time to time.  "I can see it's gone well" she said at last.

      "It's not quite believable yet."  That was all I could say.  We embraced.  I exploded the champagne, laughing softly to myself like a privileged madman.  "Eternity is in love with the productions of Time" says Will Blake.  "You have nothing to fear Benedicta; drink my dear, let us toast reality awhile."

*    *    *    *    *

It could have had its funny side, too, the meeting between Julian and - I suppose - to an objective observer.  I mean that he for his part had dressed most carefully, his hair was neat, his nails newly manicured; moreover he had developed a new and stealthy walk for the occasion, a sort of soliloquy glide out of Hamlet.  He was at pains perhaps to disguise his fear?  Whereas now I had more or less got on top of my own anxiety - the primitive terror that all human beings feel when faced by dummies of whatever kind, representations of hallowed reality: an Aurignacian-complex, as Nash might have called it.  I was indeed swaggering a little in my new-found relief.  Like a young man introducing a particularly pretty fiancée.  I smiled upon my patron indulgently as I led him across the green lawns and down the long gravel paths, Julian snaking slowly behind me, rippling along.  He had brought a small bunch of Parma violets with him as an offering.  But suddenly he threw them away and swore.  I think he was saying to himself, "My God!  Here I am thinking of her as if she were real, instead of just an expensive contemporary construct."  I chuckled.  "You will get used to her, to it, very quickly Julian.  You'll see."

      Henniker was in the room when we arrived.  She pointed; apparently Iolanthe was in the lavatory.  Julian seated himself with the air of someone taking up a strategic position, choosing a chair in the far corner of the room.  At that moment Iolanthe entered and catching sight of him stood stock still smiling her soft hesitant smile with all its shyness welling up through the superficial assurance.  "Julian at last" she said.  "Well!"  And walking across to him took both his hands in hers and stood staring down into his eyes with a candour and puzzlement which made him turn quite white.  "At last we meet" she said.  "At last, Julian!"  He cleared his throat as if to make some response, but no words came.  She turned triumphantly aside and got back into bed with the help of Henniker.  "Henny, let us have tea, shall we?" she said in rather grandiose tones, and the older woman nodded and moved towards the door.  Then Julian from the depths of a recovered composure said: "I don't know where to begin, Iolanthe; or even if there is a place to begin, for I think you know everything by now.  At any rate every bit as much as I know.  Isn't it so?"  She frowned and licked her lips.  "Not entirely," she said "though I have made some provisional guesses.  But now you own me don't you?  I wonder what you plan to do with me?  I am quite defenceless, Julian.  I am just one of your properties now."  His nostrils dilated.

      His upper lips had gone bluish - like someone in danger of a heart attack.  Iolanthe continued in a dreamy voice, almost as if she were talking to herself, recapitulating a private history to fix it more clearly in her own mind.  "Yes, you were always there behind us, sapping us, sniping at us from behind the high walls of the company.  How cleverly you disposed of Graphos too when you found he was my lover; I mean of course his career.  He was very ill of course, that wasn't your fault.  And I kept expecting you to appear so that I could perhaps do a deal with you, plead with you, trade my body, even to save my little company, save my career.  Nothing.  You never did.  Sometimes I though I knew why really; I worked out reasons from what people told me about you - feminine reasons.  Were they wrong I wonder Julian?"

      The artless blue eyes, inquisitive and chiding, rested fixed on his face.  His stirred uncomfortably and said:

      "No.  You know all the reasons.  I don't need to explain at this stage Iolanthe, do I?  You haunted me just as much."

      He spoke gently enough, but at the same time I felt a sort of fury rising in him; after all, here he was being ticked off by a dummy for defections of behaviour towards an all too real (though now dead) Iolanthe!  It was very confusing this double image.  Moreover he could not lean forward and tapping her wrist say: "That's enough now; do you realise that you are just a clever and valuable little dummy, fabricated by the experts of the firm?  You are simply steel and gutta-percha and plastic and nylon, that's all.  So kindly hold your tongue."  He couldn't do that, so he just sat still looking stubborn, while she went on in the voice of reminiscence.  "Yes, when the production company failed, when Graphos died and when my career collapsed and I got ill, I expected some word from you - after all so much of this had been your deliberate design against me.  I was puzzled, thought I might find some sympathy, some understanding of my plight.  But no, you were out to smash me and take me prisoner.  And now you have, Julian.  But for a long time I dreamed about you: about how you would appear one day, all of a sudden, without warning.  Yes, sitting just where you are now, dressed as you are, and a little tonguetied for the first time in your life by a woman's love.  You see, part of my fantasy was to imagine that you loved me.  Now I know I was right.  You do.  Poor Julian!  I do understand, but when Graphos went out the mechanism rusted, broke, and now I have an empty space where the thing used to live."  She gave a short and sad little laugh.  "I grew tonguetied."

      "Tonguetied" he repeated ruefully, seeming somehow put out of countenance.  They looked at each other steadily, but with an extraordinary air of mutual understanding.  Then she said: "But not any more somehow" and a renewed cheerfulness flowed into her.  "I have half recovered from that period and perhaps so have you.  Now there seems to be something else before us - I don't know how to put it, perhaps a friendship?  At any rate something unlike anything I have ever known before.  Julian, do you feel it too?"

      He nodded coldly, critically.  His face betrayed no emotion whatsoever at this somewhat extraordinary speech.  Then she added calmly, with an air of simplicity, a Q.E.D. air, which was completely disarming, "I don't think I can do without you any more, Julian.  It's more than flesh and blood can stand."  It was terribly moving, the way she said this.

      "Of course," he said softly, greedily.  "It's the loneliness.  No, you won't have any more of that, I promise you."

      She extended her long languid waxen hands and he got up to take them and carry them to his lips with swift precision, yet without any trace of deep feeling.  I could see however that the strain of his first interview with Iolanthe was beginning to tell on him as it had on me; he was being slowly flooded by the same unreasonable sensation of gradual suffocation.  Just like me.  We of course were both conscious that we were talking to an experimental dummy; but she, unconscious as yet of her own unreality, was at ease and as perfectly sincere (if I can use the word) as ... well, as only a dummy could be.  What am I saying?  It was an extraordinary paradox, for we were literally worn out by having to act a part while she was fresh as a daisy.  One wanted to laugh and cry at the same time - how well I understood Julian's desire to be gone!  "Now there will be time," said Iolanthe coolly "all the time in the world, to take a leisurely look at everything I have missed in my rush through life.  Later maybe you may help me to rebuild my career once more; unless you think I am too old to act any more."

      He shook his head decidedly and said, "First things first; when you are quite well we shall see."

      "But I feel so well already" she said.

      "Nevertheless."

      At this point Henniker produced the tea and I could see the proconsular eye of Julian fixed upon Iolanthe to admire the excellence of her tea-time deportment.  His alarm had subsided somewhat, the temperature of his anxiety had dropped a little.  Then she added: "In a way we were well-matched enemies ... parricide against infanticide ... no, that is not the way to say it."

      "What a memory you have got" he said bitterly, and she nodded, taking an imaginary sip of China tea.  "Mine is as long as my life," she said "but yours is as long as the firm's, Julian."

      I was in bliss.  A dummy that could forge repartee like this ... better, cleverer than a real woman; because less arbitrary, less real, less feminine.  And yet, on the other hand, the little note of bitterness in her voice was very human, very feminine.  If she were absolutely identical with Iolanthe surely she was Iolanthe?  Obviously we must spend a bit of time to work out the differences between the real and the invented; but if there were none?  Julian was talking again, softly, indifferently it seemed: "Well, you would not join the firm so how could I reach you - for I am more the firm than I am myself in a manner of speaking; what could I bring to you or offer to you that did not bear the fingerprints of Merlin's?  But you refused all my offers, you evaded me."  He paused to take out a cigar and crackle it in his fingers; but then he replaced it in his cigar-case with an air of irresolution.  Her lip curled as she said with a tinge of contempt.  "But now?  I am broken and bridled am I not?  The firm has swallowed my little company.  I am your captive at last, Julian, amn't I?"

      At this a sudden little flash lit up both pairs of eyes, a sudden spark of fury, of antagonism, of sexual fury.  I had not seen this look on Julian's face before.  Then she drawled with her most mischievous air, "I could come to you tonight, Julian, if you wished.  Just tell me where and when!"  He went deathly white at the insult but he eyed her contemptuously, his eyes glittering like those of a basilisk.  He said nothing, and it was obvious that he was not going to say anything.  "Just tell me" she repeated, and I thought she took a sort of savage delight in provoking his male pride thus; surely she knew the sad story of Julian - the fate of Aberlard?  Nevertheless she stayed there staring at him with the same expression of provocation on her face outfacing his silence, trying to discountenance him.  He was absolutely still.  But now I saved the day by putting in a word or two.  "Now.  Now. You are under Dr. Marchant's orders Iolanthe.  Don't forget it please."  It broke the spiteful spell.  She pouted adorably and said "I was only teasing, Felix; just to see how far one could go with Julian."  But she began to pick at the tassels of the bedcover with long painted nails.  I did not particularly care for the note of insolence in her voice: I thought it might be a good moment to make our exit.  I announced that I must leave as I had an appointment and Julian immediately elected to come with me; yet he seemed without visible emotion, visible relief.  I kissed the warm cheek of my angel, and gave her fine fingers a squeeze.  "Until tomorrow" I said, confiding her to the faithful ministrations of Henniker who stood at the foot of the bed smiling tenderly at her; the older woman was by now quite cured of her original fright and dismay.  But she had overcome it in the simple fact of believing in the new Iolanthe - of believing her to be real!  By some simple déclic of the mind she had abolished the knowledge of Iolanthe's dummyhood and replaced it with a fully conscious belief and acceptance of her as a real woman.

      We walked slowly along the gravel paths towards the carpark; Julian was sunk deep in thought, gazing down at his feet.  "I suppose you have a set of experiments to subject her to?" he said at last quietly.  "Yes.  For the time being we are recording her night and day to study the general patterning of the memory-increment apparatus.  I propose later to set her back into the Iolanthe picture by letting her meet a few of the people Io knew in real life - people like Dombey, her agent - just to see how capably she works."

      "I abolished the mate, you know" said Julian quietly.  "I wonder whether it was right or wrong.  You say she could make love this creature?"  I said I saw no reason why not, she had the organs.  "Of course, when she speaks about love and so on, you have to make a sort of mental correction in realising that the words are simply coded into a machine by an echo-master, and in the final analysis simply come out of a metal box."

      "I know," he said "it's weird.  But she is so word-perfect that one wonders if she couldn't live happily with a member of the human species, as a wife, I mean."  The chauffeur opened the door of the car for him but he still stood, shaken to the bottom of his soul by this interview and the possibilities it promised.  "We must be careful not to feel too much affection for it" I said.  It was easily said, I know.  "But you are half in love with her already" said Julian, smiling up at me suddenly, and of course he was speaking the truth - I was mad about my own invention, like every inventor is.  O yes I was.  He went on slowly, thoughtfully.  "And what sort of future do you envisage for her, for it?  Will she ever be allowed out into the world?"

      "Nothing very definite was worked out for her - we didn't know how real she might turn out to seem; she might have been vastly more limited both physically and mentally than she is.  The whole operation was done on spec, Julian, you know that.  Now I think we must really submit her to extensive testing before letting her increase the range of her activities; we must think about her a bit as one does about a handicapped person, which of course she is, because she is only a machine, a love-machine."  I don't know why I used that stupid phrase, it simply popped out.  "I see" he said, frowning at the ground.  "We can begin by bringing the world to her for a while; then if she satisfies every requirement, if she is fool-proof, we can gradually insinuate her into quotidian reality, so to speak; in the end we might accord her an autonomous life of her own, like any other taxpayer, lover, wife or dog."

      He hoisted himself slowly into the car, still sleepy with thought.  "I will see her every day with you until I get over that extraordinary feeling of panic" he said; and then very suddenly: "Felix, if we wanted to abolish her it would be an easy matter wouldn't it?"  I jumped as if he had stuck a pin in me.  "Abolish her?" I cried sharply, and he smiled.  "I'm sorry; but one must think of every possible contingency mustn't one?"

      "Not that one" I said.  "Never that Julian."

      "Well, I am in your hands."

      Slowly the car wound its way down the leafy roads.  I betook myself to the studio to study the schemata that Marchant had worked out for the daily life of Iolanthe in these initial stages.  A masseur who did not know she was not real had turned in a most interesting report on her body which made me swell with pride.  That at least showed no particular anomalies in the disposition of the muscle schemes; he had found her musculature if anything too firm.  He wondered if some predisposition to sclerosis might not be envisaged!  No, in every way so far she seemed to be of a mechanical perfection that eluded all criticism.  Every word she uttered was also being monitored, and playing through this library of speeches one could find nothing disoriented, nothing out of key.  She had a fully grown organ of memory to fall back on as she lived her real life.  Marchant had scribbled a note or two about his visits to the patient.  She had proved very docile and co-operative.  "Too damn real for my liking" he added sardonically.  "I keep almost forgetting she is an It."

      So we embarked thoughtfully and I hope skilfully upon this experiment; but it was hard to shed the feeling of unreality which crept over us as we watched the perfected mimicry of her gestures, heard this highly articulate woman talking, arguing, even singing.  It was a good ten days before we let her out of bed, but finally there seemed little reason to deny her the right to walk about her house and garden.  Julian was away for part of this time, and I had to visit Geneva for a week.  We took it in shifts to attend her levees.  Not did Benedicta react in any particular manner to my absorption in the life of this model - I had not really expected her to; yet her little speech in Athens had filled me with a certain misgiving.  I felt that, like the rest of us, she would get used  to Iolanthe, conquer an initial repulsion and panic, and come to accept her for what she was - an experiment.  But I told her quite candidly what Iolanthe had said about disliking her, and asked her if she would mind waiting a while before risking a meeting with her.  In the meantime the daily life of Iolanthe herself was being gradually filled in at the edges by designedly quotidian events.  For example, we got hold of her agent and invited him  down to see her; now, despite the fact that he was fully briefed about the doll, the impact of Iolanthe was so marked and so faithful to the original which he had loved that he passed out cold upon the carpet and had to be revived.  He was revived, of course, but he was badly shaken.  Naturally we explained this away as relief to find her recovered from her illness.  We tried as far as possible never to let her doubt the reality of herself - to make her self-conscious in the true sense of the word.

      But gradually, inevitably, she began to feel a sense of constraint; after all, she was being pretty closely watched and monitored, and up to now had not been allowed to go beyond the garden fence.  The excuse we gave was of course medical.  But the minute a patient begins to feel better he or she is tempted to throw good advice to the winds.  This aspect of things was a trifle preoccupying; but Henniker was always unobtrusively there to follow her movements.  She reported the fact that Iolanthe had asked if she might go down to the village, and had shown some pique when told that Marchant had forbidden it.  Later she tackled Marchant himself about it, and I must say I thought the reasons he gave sounded somewhat shallow if not downright shifty.  "We are fighting a losing battle" I said.  "She has got through all her tests so quickly, I don't see how we can keep her locked up much longer without arousing her suspicions.  Indeed it might be a good idea to start letting her out a bit, though of course someone will always have to be with her; she's too valuable to lose, or to let get damaged."

      Julian asked to see her alone during this time, and spent many long hours in the house talking to her; I could hear him pacing up and down slowly in her room.  Once I heard his normally low voice raised as if in anger; another time I had the illusion that she was shedding tears.  But there was nothing much to be done.  When I was in Geneva I opened a weekly paper and found a picture of the gambling rooms at Gunters - baccarat in progress; and there to my surprise stood Julian in his dinner jacket, shoulder to shoulder with a bewigged Iolanthe who was watching the play with great interest.  As soon as I got back I rang up Julian and he confirmed that he had taken her out for an evening, with Marchant's consent.  "I can tell you something new" he said.  "She has the devil’s own luck, computer luck you could call it.  We made a packet.  Felix, I want to thank you; I feel extremely happy.  When do you think she can be declared absolutely autonomous, absolutely free?"  I could not really think up an answer to this question.  "It raises one of those bogies, Julian, and I think you've heard enough chop-logic about freedom, specially from me.  How free will she be?  How will her freedom compare with our own imaginary freedom?  Goodness, I can't answer you; the whole thing is still in the realms of pure experiment.  But why should you ask?  Are you in danger of falling in love with my little toy, are you going to ask for her hand in marriage?"  Once again I had slipped tactlessly; I felt rather than heard him grinding his teeth, and in a low voice, almost a whisper, he uttered an obscenity.  "I'm sorry," I added vaguely "but the question just set me off on a long train of thought.  Her precarious freedom against ours ... but we mustn't start taking her too seriously, Julian."  I had the impression that he gave a little groan.  The line went dead.  And that was all.

      But after that gambling outing she seemed to show an increased impatience with constraint, and I began to fear that she might take the law into her own hands.  She said to Marchant, "In the long run you can't deny me my freedom forever.  I have the right to start to rethink out my career, to rebuild it if I decide I would like to."  Then she discovered that one of her teeth had been given a small filling which she could not remember having had placed by her dentist.  It was just a passing cloud, so to speak, and she was easily persuaded that her memory had slipped.  But she was right; when we had another look at the dentist's jaw diagram we discovered our mistake.  "How could I have forgotten," she said "I who live in such terror of dentists?  Ah well, my memory must be failing - it's old age, darling Felix, that is what it is."

      Ten days later I braked the car violently in the middle of the village; there was Iolanthe walking nonchalantly out of the door of the Gold Swan, lighting up a cigarette.  She burst out laughing as she saw my alarmed face.  "I couldn't resist" she said.  "I gave Henny the slip and trotted down for a whisky."  Like the real Iolanthe, who had had so much trouble from her public, she had taken to a brown wig which completely transformed her face.  In this way no fans would pester her.  I didn't know what to say; it seemed ridiculous to chide her.  After all there was nothing intrinsically dangerous or harmful in what she had done - it was just an agreeable escapade for her.  But it made me think.  I had a long confabulation with Marchant.  We wondered perhaps whether it might be time to move her into a large hotel, say, where there would be plenty of movement, plenty of life around her.  Or whether we should buy her a dog - no, but like the real Iolanthe she wasn't keen on dogs because of the infernal quarantine restrictions in Britain.  Well then, what?

      "Felix," she said "I've had a strange feeling growing up inside me that I must change everything - make a break for liberty."  This is what I had been fearing; but she went on in a low infinitely touching tone: "The awful thing is that the inevitable has happened - I always knew it would."  She paused, and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.  She put her hand on my arm and said, "My dear friend, the worst that could happen - I have fallen in love with Julian.  That is what frightens me so much.  I was always ferociously independent, as you know.  I feel now that I mustn't sink any deeper into this adoration.  I must, so to speak, negotiate from a position of strength.  But he won't help to set me free; he wants me bound and gagged, and at his mercy."

      She walked slowly up and down the room with her hands in her armpits, thinking.  On the table lay a fat bundle of five-pound notes and a specimen signature-card form such as bank managers present when one opens an account.  She caught my gaze upon it and smiled.  "I was going to open an account but I've changed my mind.  It's better to have the cash in hand.  Funny thing is that when I'm with Julian, when he bets for me, I turn tremendously lucky.  Did he tell you?  We won a fortune."  She groped for her slippers and sat down in a chair, frowning and preoccupied.  "You see," she said at last "I must envisage some way of remaining myself, of not being engulfed; I've played snakes and ladders with the firm long enough - and at the moment I am snaked out, so to speak, sent to the very bottom of the board.  But I can't stay there; so long as I have health enough and will enough I must try and climb.  Unfortunately this is not what Julian wants.  It makes him angry.  Do you know he even insulted me?  He called me 'the parody of a woman', said I wasn't real, that I had a heart of steel wool.... That sort of thing has never been in Julian's repertoire has it?  Well, it just goes to show that we are both under some strain.  Felix, something's got to change to make it all right between us."  O!  God!

      Naturally all this talk made me feel ineffectual and distracted, for I could not imagine any practical changes in her "life" which might meet with these inherited feelings - feelings which belonged to the dead woman whose mind and body he had foisted upon her in so Faustian a fashion.  "But what?" I said vaguely, noting with another part of her mind that her signature was perfect - I mean that it was unmistakably Iolanthe's handwriting.  No professional forger could have produced such a perfect copy.  "Let's not do anything impetuous" I said in the feebly admonishing tone which would be bound, I knew, to irritate her, to fill her with impatience "until you are quite clear of Dr. Marchant.  Then we'll really go over the whole position.  By that time perhaps Julian will have thought of something; he may invite you away on the yacht, he may take you to the villa in Ischia or Baalbek.  Don't be too impatient and hasty, that is all I beg."

      It was all too easily said, and secretly I rather echoed in my heart the impatient sign that she gave now as she sat, looking into my eyes like some distraught jungle-cat - a cheetah, perhaps.  Nor did I see really why she should not be allowed to travel about a bit provided she always came back.  Of course it would mean that she was out of the range of our monitors, and it was Marchant's expressed intention to do some depth-findings in the memory-code of the doll's "mind" - laborious and perhaps as unfruitful (for the most part) as Nash's depth-analysis which kept people nailed to the horsehair sofa for years on end.  She was talking again.  "I have been very shaken these last weeks by the fact that Julian is so exactly what I knew, dreamed, felt, he would be.  It gives me a strange feeling of unreality - as if he were an artificial man, constructed by my own mind, by my dreams or something.... When he speaks I feel I am listening to someone who  is word-perfect reciting a part.  It is very queer.  But Felix, what a strange mind he has; what extraordinary passions - yet all locked up in steel strong-boxes inside his mind.  He attracts and scares me at the same time."  Naturally this did not surprise me; I knew enough about him at first and second hand to gauge the impact of a character like his upon her.  The real Iolanthe would not have been any different, of this I was sure.  Were they not alike as two signatures, the dummy and the dead memory?

      "He has offered to let me see all my old film successes again - there's a projection room apparently in the labs.  But that also scares me a little bit; at the moment the mirror seems to console me on the score of beauty - perhaps I should say still flatter?  But I don't really know if I am past it all, films, or whether there might be just a glimmer of a chance about recovering my position.  Have you any ideas on the subject?"  I had none, naturally enough.  If she were sufficiently lifelike to live in Claridge's, surely she could act in front of the camera?  What I couldn't say was: "That would raise a capital problem for us - you see, you were once a world-famous screen star, your face was known to the whole world.  But you died!  It would take some explaining if you reappeared and competed for the crown all over again.  You see, darling, it would put us in the jam of having to find an excuse for your being here.  If we told the world you were a dummy you would find out the truth yourself and it would destroy your confidence in yourself, and in the esteem of the world.  In fact, you might very well commit suicide or take to drugs - or adopt any other conventional form of self-abasement.  In some ways, Io, you are all too human, despite the fine firm construction of you; you are still as affectively mentally fragile as any human counterpart."  All this I said in my own mind.  "What are you mumbling about?" said Iolanthe peevishly.  "Reciting the creed?"  I blinked bashfully and stood up.  It wasn't far off the mark.

      As a matter of fact a muddled series of quotations had been bubbling about in my mind, among which was "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord God."  Where that came from I have no idea, I am not well up in Holy Writ.  And then again a line - "freedom, freedom, prison of the free" - from the best of our modern poets. [Lawrence Durrell]  But none of this provided a coherent frame of reference upon which we could base a discussion of her preoccupations.  I had a feeling that everything was beginning to slip a bit; the feeling of ineffectuality grew and grew.  I finished my drink and said that perhaps I ought to be going.  "So you can't think of anything?" she said with a touch of grimness.  "If of course I am seriously ill and likely to die soon, and if you are simply keeping the truth from me...."  It might have offered a way out but in my naïve way I omitted to take the chance.  "Far from it," I said "you are healthier than you have ever been."

      I took my leave, kissing her softly upon her impatient forehead; and I was glad to do so, in order to think things over a bit in the quietness of the cottage.

      In view of this steady development towards some attempt to claim a margin of freedom for herself, I was not unduly surprised to find her sitting in the garden one morning in a bathing costume, half asleep in a deck chair, and radiating a high good humour.  She chuckled with pleasure as she said: "Henniker is not on speaking terms with me.  She is furious, Felix, and swears she will report me to you and Dr. Marchant.  I ask you, report; I was astonished by the choice of word, it belongs to prisons or girls' schools.  And all just because I spent half the day in London without telling her.  I knew she wouldn't let me go - why should I tell her?  And whose permission should I have sought?  Yours?"  As a matter of fact, yes; she should have told somebody.  But I said nothing.  She looked at me quizzically, uncertain whether to scold me or to remain aggrieved, defensive.  "I had to see this new film of Escroz.  He is one of my oldest friends.  So I went.  The bus service is very convenient.  And I was back by seven.  I've sent him a telegram to tell him I am well again.  I'd like to see him if he could get down here."  I made a mental note of this; Escroz had been at the funeral of the real Iolanthe, and may not have realised that she was once more in the land of the living, so to speak.  "How was it?" I said, more to conceal my sense of misgiving than anything else.  "Not too strong," she said "but some lovely camera work as usual.  He's marvellous on atmosphere."

      I coughed.  "I've had a word with Dr. Marchant," I said "and we were wondering whether you would not be happier in a hotel like Claridge's or the Dorchester, with a bit of life and movement around you; you could finish all your tests there for a while and at least get about, shop, and so on."  She was suddenly contrite.  She put a hand on my arm.  "I'm not trying to be a trouble, Felix," she said.  "It's just that everything is going so slowly and my health seems wonderful; and I have been made a bit impatient by these meetings with Julian.  He is coming back from New York on Saturday.  That's all.  A very nominal freedom would satisfy me and cure my boredom for the present; later of course I shall decide what I will and won't do, naturally."  I did not quite know whether to like or dislike the tone of this last sentence.  "You were always an impatient soul" I said, and she nodded humbly.  Then she produced something which, considering the terms of reference, sounded out of character.  "Last night I hardly slept a wink, and had to take a sleeping tablet or two.  I hope it isn't a return of the old migraine I had in Athens long ago.  What a supplice."  Of course it was part of the old memory-code coming back, and from that point of view unexceptionable; nevertheless it hinted at strain of some kind.  She had taken a very strong dose of M.I.S.T.  I presumed the taking was an imaginary act, for the tablet could not by any conceivable manner of means have had any effect on her body as it was then constituted.  "Did you sleep at last?"  She nodded.  "But I had palpitations and nausea and so on."

      Beside her on the lawn lay a long gunny sack full of her fan-mail.  (I had a whole department busy writing nothing else; they were part of our verisimilitude-team, as we called them, filling in and reviving the quotidian life of the Ur-Iolanthe.)  The letters were of course all fabrications; any answers that she wrote back to these imaginary fans came straight back to us for analysis.  Henniker spent a part of every evening taking letters destined for fans and sending out signed photographs and so on.  All this part of her life worked impeccably so far, it seemed.  A mountain of glossy screen-stills lay neatly stacked on the rack above her writing desk with its many pictures of leading men in silver frames.  There was one empty photograph-frame among them which I knew was going to be destined for a picture of Julian (she had asked for one and he had promised to have one sent to her).  But which Julian - that was rather the point?  Yes, which?

*    *    *    *    *

You will appreciate that I am simply recording all this as matter of fact as I can for the record - both personal and scientific, I suppose.  I don't remember being particularly surprised by the dénouement when it started to work out - I mean the sudden fugue and disappearance of Iolanthe; but just about the same time other events started to impact themselves so that when I think back upon this period I see a succession of juxtaposed images rather than a straight chronology of events.  But the whole things led up in a steady series of small surprises to St. Paul's.  Benedicta is sitting beside me following the recording; from time to time I switch off to debate a date or an event with her.  It's taken a hell of a while, and in this summary I am of course dealing with quite a long extent of serial time.  Since Iolanthe disappeared, of course, all our monitoring preoccupations were so much wasted machine-food.  Marchant and I, Julian and Benedicta, we seemed to spend all our time on the phone; and every time it rang it was something to do with her, some polite hint, or a tip-off from a friend.

      But her disappearance was very quietly and confidently planned; Henniker woke up at early light to find herself pinioned to the bed with a length of stout cord.  Skilfully, too, for she could not free herself and had to wait for Marchant's regular morning visit.  Iolanthe was walking about the room chuckling in a rather sinister, disoriented way, and packing two of her pigskin suitcases with the most indispensable articles of wear.  Clothes, wigs, personal notepaper, etc. etc.  She was deaf to the protestations of Henniker who by now was almost beside herself with fury and anxiety.  She tried to get her to say where she was going, but the busy figure would not even turn its head, let alone answer.  She packed with miraculous speed and despatch, still making this queer crepitation.  Henniker gritted her teeth and renewed her appeals.  She wondered whether to scream for help - but who would have heard her at such an hour and in such a place?  Useless!  Once the task was complete Iolanthe drew the curtains and looked out, as if expecting someone, and the thought did cross Henniker's mind that perhaps Julian might be abducting her.  The clock struck.  Quickly, like a master cracksman after a night's work on a safe, Iolanthe made herself a cup of tea and drank it in imaginary fashion.  She came and stood before the pinioned figure of her profoundest human friend, slowly sipping and staring down into her eyes, saying nothing, sunk apparently in the profoundest reflection.  Then there came the sound of a car.  Iolanthe was shaken by little sobs, tiny youthful little sobs, so separate, so painful.  Nor could Henniker now restrain her own tears.  "Iolanthe, don't leave me."  But the mechanical maenad was already humping the two large suitcases to the door, and thence down the garden path to the car.  Later we found that she had simply ordered the village taxi to come for her and take her into the town where she caught the morning train to London.  That was that.  It may well be imagined that this event threw us all into a frightful disarray.  Marchant first flew into the most terrible rage and threw equipment about, and then sat down on a stool and cried.  It was curious what we had come to feel for this creation; one felt a little as if one's heart were broken.

      Julian appeared looking as if he were fresh from hell.  An urgent conference was held; it was first necessary to try and work out the places she might visit, the people she might call on.  But this was a task of the greatest complexity; Iolanthe was a citizen of the world.  Besides, nothing could have prevented her from taking a plane to Paris or Rio - she even had Iolanthe's old passport.  It was necessary to invoke the aid of the police, but on what terms?  Could we ask them to watch the ports and air terminals by saying that she was wanted for some crime - larceny perhaps?  An excuse must be found so that the law could weigh in and help us trace her.  "She must be brought back alive and undamaged" Marchant kept repeating, somewhat absurdly I thought.  Alive!  The police when we finally alerted them were kindly, understanding and very efficient; and we did have a collection of pictures of Io in her various wigs.  But it took a long time to try and formulate a story which might not seem too preposterous; somehow one didn't dare to talk about a dummy which was at large.  Yet there was hope; between the firm itself and the police force we managed to throw out a fairly effective net into which, with any luck, she might stray.

      Somewhere in the real world, freed from the dead sanctions of science, strayed the new Iolanthe, perfectly equipped to mix into the background of people and events without raising the smallest suspicion that she was not as others were.  But it was a blow, and there was no disguising it; moreover until we were sure of her whereabouts, or indeed of her fate, we had no stomach for anything else; we had concentrated so deeply upon her that all other work of the firm seemed suddenly stale, profitless.

      She went to see her agent who reported the fact at once to Julian; but though we tried we could not trace her.  However it proved that she had been in the London area and was still travelling about incognito in a wig - apparently fully aware that if her fans recognised her she risked being compromised with us.  She was clever and agile.  We could not watch all the cinemas and all the theatres, but we managed to keep an eye on some of them, and in particular those where likely films or plays were being put on.  She was signalled as coming out of the Duchess one night; but if it were she, she slipped through the net once more.  Other sightings were reported from various parts of the country now, as if she were moving about fairly quickly.  Harrogate was a likely one - she had always liked Harrogate.  But again we were too late.  One day she even walked into the firm, though nobody saw her, and left a note on Julian's desk.

      He seemed disinclined to let anyone see it, and we did not press him; but it contained no news of her whereabouts.  It was simply about their relationship - so much he vouchsafed in a low voice.  I must say that since her disappearance Julian seemed to have aged very much; he walked with a stoop, his hair seemed whiter, and his suave swarthy features appeared more deeply lined; this touched something profound in Benedicta, and her sympathy for his ... well, his plight ... made her demonstrate a new warmth and affection for which he seemed deeply grateful.

      Ipswich, Harrow, Pinewood: these visitations were all characterised by the same deftness, the same unerring choice of time; the same cool disappearance.  There seemed nothing to be done.  Perhaps we would never find her again; she had so perfectly integrated with reality, one supposed, that there was hardly any need.  Was there nothing to be done, was there nothing which might lure her back?  Julian!  He had been told to write to her, but she gave no address, so he was constrained to imagine that she meant him to put a notice in The Times which he dutifully did, imploring her to come back to him.  But she contented herself with  ringing him up once from Dover to say that she was going to Paris.  That she was very happy.  That she missed him, and all of us.  That she would come and see us all after she had experienced a number of unspecified events which were of great importance to her.  She visited a producer in Paris for a moment, and telephoned to Nury the film star, who thought she was a madwoman impersonating the other Iolanthe.  By the time we heard of this she had vanished again.

      Then one evening, one dark and rainy evening I found myself in Chatham, in a dockside street, walking back from some appointment or other in the harbourmaster's office.  A sordid drizzly evening like the bluish street lamps casting a greasy glow in the darkness like disembodied heads.  I was picking my way through the slime and wet of the broken pavements when the swing doors of a pub flew open and a woman walked out on the arm of a young sailor; in the bar of light thrown by the open door I saw them turn, and I was at once struck by some small singularity of pose in the way the woman turned her head.  "Iolanthe!" I gasped with delight, with ecstasy I might say; for when she turned her head I saw that it was indeed she.  But she screwed up her face into a vile simian expression and pretended not to recognise me.  I advanced towards her in my usual naïve and ineffectual way - feeling tolerably sure that when she recognised me she would at least greet me.  What to do?  Somehow I must try and capture her, make her see reason; perhaps if we had a talk.... I took off my dark hat so that she might recognise me the more easily.  But still she wore this common expression, and then in broad cockney she said: "What the 'ell do you want, sonny?  I don't know you."  The impersonation was so good that for a moment I almost doubted; she had blacked out a front tooth which gave her whole face a gap-toothed lopsided look.  I hesitated and made as if to put my hand upon her arm; whereupon she cried again in this baroque cockney accent, "Lemme go, will yer?"  And the young sailor turned all gallant and stepped in between us to deliver a blow which hit me between the eyes and knocked me flying.  They walked on unhurriedly, arm in arm; at the end of the street she paused under a street lamp to look back and give a coarse little laugh.  Then they turned the corner and disappeared from view.  I scrambled together all the papers which had flown out of my briefcase on to the pavement, and nursing my eye followed them.  But by the time I reached the corner they had vanished.  I did not tell Julian about this unsuccessful encounter, I don't know why; but yes I do.  In the afternoon paper of the following day I came across an item which reported the discovery of the body of a young sailor in Chatham; there was nothing very unusual about it except that it was standing up in a doorway.  But these things happen almost everywhere, and all the time.

      Then late at night Julian suddenly appeared at the cottage, holding in his hand the buff telegraph form which announced the death of Jocas.  We sat for a long time in complete silence, staring in the fire.  I don't know what hopeless regrets, what formless memories, stirred in the mind of Julian, but for me it was as if we were looking down the long curving vistas of the Turkish capital towards the origins of Merlin's - towards the blue waters of the gulf, the masts, the walls, the coloured kites floating and tugging against the sky.  I was reminded of someone saying something about each death marking a  whole epoch in one's life.  Was it Benedicta or Hippolyta?  So Jocas had gone!  The thought had a heavy resonance; even when one had forgotten his existence or had passed months without consciously thinking about him, he had always somehow been there, a swarthy presence that represented the weird complex of colours and sounds which made up the patchwork quilt of the Eastern Mediterranean.  An old benign spider, sitting at the centre of the Merlin web.  How pale Julian looked, and suddenly how vulnerable!  "Zeno was out in hid prediction, but only by a couple of months" he said with a kind of melancholy zealous calm.  "Things are changing around us" he added.  "And all this business about Iolanthe - that has been a blow, I don't deny."

      "Has she written again?"

      He shook his head slowly and said softly, "Neither has she phoned me.  Goodness knows what has become of her."  Benedicta said suddenly, surprisingly, "She has been here, you know.  I was away yesterday, and Baynes says that she came in and said she would wait for me to come home.  He went up to the house to try and tell someone, to try and phone to Felix; but when he came back she had vanished.  She may have got into a sudden panic at the sound of a car, as it seems that Nash drove up to the house about that time."

      "But how can you be sure it was she?"  Benedicta crossed the room tot he cocktail cabinet and extracted from it a woman's handbag - a rather chic new handbag; she turned it out before us on the carpet, and among the visiting cards and other trivia which identified the visitant was something which gave us all a start.  It was a small pearl-handled revolver.  I thought at first it was a stage prop, but no.  It was a real weapon and was fully loaded.  We looked at each other with surprise, perhaps with consternation.  "What on earth could that mean?" said Julian at last.  "Who could she be afraid of?"  But I had another idea.  "Who could she hate enough to ...?"  For the first time we felt that Iolanthe was starting to behave right out of character.  It was late when we went to bed that night, all of us very preoccupied by these mysteries.