Chapter 24 - Page 2

the likeness, was the magisterial certainty with which
his physical peculiarities were all recorded and subtly
exaggerated.

Denis looked deeper into the book. There were caricatures of
other people: of Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith; of Henry
Wimbush, of Anne and Gombauld; of Mr. Scogan, whom Jenny had
represented in a light that was more than slightly sinister, that
was, indeed, diabolic; of Mary and Ivor. He scarcely glanced at
them. A fearful desire to know the worst about himself possessed
him. He turned over the leaves, lingering at nothing that was
not his own image. Seven full pages were devoted to him.

"Private. Not to be opened." He had disobeyed the injunction;
he had only got what he deserved. Thoughtfully he closed the
book, and slid the rubber band once more into its place. Sadder
and wiser, he went out on to the terrace. And so this, he
reflected, this was how Jenny employed the leisure hours in her
ivory tower apart. And he had thought her a simple-minded,
uncritical creature! It was he, it seemed, who was the fool. He
felt no resentment towards Jenny. No, the distressing thing
wasn't Jenny herself; it was what she and the phenomenon of her
red book represented, what they stood for and concretely
symbolised. They represented all the vast conscious world of men
outside himself; they symbolised something that in his studious
solitariness he was apt not to believe in. He could stand at
Piccadilly Circus, could watch the crowds shuffle past, and still
imagine himself the one fully conscious, intelligent, individual
being among all those thousands. It seemed, somehow, impossible
that other people should be in their way as elaborate and
complete as he in his. Impossible; and yet, periodically he
would make some painful discovery about the external world and
the horrible reality of its consciousness and its intelligence.
The red notebook was one of these discoveries, a footprint in the
sand. It put beyond a doubt the fact that the outer world really
existed.

Sitting on the balustrade of the terrace, he ruminated this
unpleasant truth for some time. Still chewing on it, he strolled
pensively down towards the swimming-pool. A peacock and his hen
trailed their shabby finery across the turf of the lower lawn.
Odious birds! Their necks, thick and greedily fleshy at the
roots, tapered up to the cruel inanity of their brainless heads,
their flat eyes and piercing beaks. The fabulists were right, he
reflected, when they took beasts to illustrate their tractates of
human morality. Animals resemble men with all the truthfulness
of a caricature. (Oh, the red notebook!) He threw a piece of
stick at the slowly pacing birds. They rushed towards it,
thinking it was