And on my part I must add that, returning to these novels after many years, I find his stature has increased. He is no great major novelist, taking all society in his grasp, and he never pretended to be. But among the uniquely individual minor novelists of our age, he is a master.

J. B. PRIESTLEY

The First Part

CHRISTMAS TRAVEL

Why so pale and wan, fond lover,

Prythee, why so pale?

Will, if looking well can’t move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Prythee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?

Prythee, why so mute?

Will, when speaking well can’t win her,

Saying nothing do’t?

Prythee, why so mute?

SIR J. SUCKLING

Chapter One

Click!… Here it was again! He was walking along the cliff at Hunstanton and it had come again… Click!…

Or would the word ‘snap’ or ‘crack’ describe it better?

It was a noise inside his head, and yet it was not a noise. It was the sound which a noise makes when it abruptly ceases: it had a temporarily deafening effect. It was as though one had blown one’s nose too hard and the outer world had suddenly become dim and dead. And yet he was not physically deaf: it was merely that in this physical way alone could he think of what had happened in his head.

It was as though a shutter had fallen. It had fallen noiselessly, but the thing had been so quick that he could only think of it as a crack or a snap. It had come over his brain as a sudden film, induced by a foreign body, might come over the eye. He felt that if only he could ‘blink’ his brain it would at once be dispelled. A film. Yes, it was like the other sort of ‘film, too – a ‘talkie’. It was as though he had been watching a talking film, and all at once the sound-track had failed. The figures on the screen continued to move, to behave more or less logically; but they were figures in a new, silent, indescribably eerie world. Life, in fact, which had been for him a moment ago a ‘talkie’, had all at once become a silent film. And there was no music.

He was not frightened, because by now he was used to it. This had been happening for the last year, the last two years – in fact he could trace it back as far as his early boyhood. Then it had been nothing so sharply defined, but how well he could remember what he called his ‘dead’ moods, in which he could do nothing ordinarily, think of nothing ordinarily, could not attend to his lessons, could not play, could not even listen to his rowdy companions. They used to rag him for it until it at last became an accepted thing. ‘Old Bone’ was said to be in one of his ‘dotty’ moods. Mr Thorne used to be sarcastic. ‘Or is this one of your – ah – delightfully convenient periods of amnesia, my dear Bone?’ But even Mr Thorne came to accept it. ‘Extraordinary boy,’ he once heard Mr Thome say (not knowing that he was overheard), ‘I really believe it’s perfectly genuine.’ And often, instead of making him look a fool in front of the class, he would stop, give him a curious, sympathetic look, and, telling him to sit down, would without any ironic comment ask the next boy to do what he had failed to do.

‘Dead’ moods – yes, all his life he had had ‘dead’ moods, but in those days he had slowly slipped into and out of them – they had not been so frequent, so sudden, so dead, so completely dividing him from his other life. They did not arrive with this extraordinary ‘snap’ – that had only been happening in the last year or so. At first he had been somewhat disturbed about it; had thought at moments of consulting a doctor even. But he had never done so, and now he knew he never would. He was well enough; the thing did not seriously inconvenience him; and there were too many other things to worry about – my God, there were too many other things to worry about!

And now he was walking along the cliff at Hunstanton, on Christmas afternoon, and the thing had happened again. He had had Christmas dinner with his aunt, and he had gone out, as he had told her, to ‘walk it off’.