Free Purposes of Love by Mary Renault Page A

two.”
    “That’s kind of you. I didn’t realise you had one.”
    “Sort of Heath Robinson one. Every time they patch it up they give it six months, like a chronic heart. But it still does fifty. Lives in the alley just behind.”
    As they walked round to it she said, “I don’t remember if I told you how much I like the flat. We were talking so hard when we came in.”
    “I thought you did. Anyhow I’m glad you like it. I think I was rather more pleased by what you didn’t say.”
    “What were you nerving yourself for?”
    “‘Poor man, who looks after you here?’”
    “I didn’t see anything to justify such rudeness. Did you really think I would?”
    “No. Still, it was pleasing actually to hear you not saying it.”
    “By the way, what were you doing before you came here?”
    Mic’s mouth straightened. “Starving rats,” he said pleasantly.
    “What?”
    “Viner’s Breakfast Vitamins. I was in what they courteously called the Research Department. It sounded rather good on paper. I went straight there from Cambridge; I—didn’t want to wait about for a job. They were very proud of their Research Department: they used to have sketches of us in their advertisements, holding up test-tubes to the light. Not photographs fortunately; they got film extras for that.”
    “Where did the rats come in?”
    “We used to feed Viner’s latest Vitamin to one batch, and starve another batch as a control. Then they could publish the vitamin content, you see. Of course I’d done a certain amount of the same thing at Cambridge, for more varied and useful purposes. But after a time I began to see rats in my sleep—thin ones, with runny eyes and staring coats. You wouldn’t know, unless you’d seen it, how unpleasant vitamin deficiency can make an animal look. Even a healthy rat can pall as a matter of fact. … Anyhow, when I heard of this job at rather less than half the money. I jumped at it. One needs to feel one’s existence has some justification, even if it hasn’t. That door will shut, if you slam it hard. Let me.”
    It was certainly a very old car, but with a marked and pleasing personality, like a mongrel dog’s. Mic humoured its eccentricities with apology, but evident affection.
    “Well, at least while I was there I got the car, such as it is, and a fairly good gramophone and some records. You’re coming again to hear it, aren’t you? Delius, Handel, Beethoven, all out of rats with beriberi and rickets.”
    Vivian was entertained, till she happened to look round, and saw in his face what seemed the settled bitterness of a much older man.
    “Well, the ones that got the vitamins must have enjoyed life. … I suppose I came here for some sort of justification too, but I can’t claim to have found it. After all,” she said in sudden rebellion, “why should we feel we must earn the right to exist? Sometimes I think the happiness—being reconciled, and sufficient in oneself—is the only justification.”
    Mic took a corner too fast. “The gospel according to Jan,” he said.
    She was moved, for a moment, to tell him that her mind was not entirely clothed in Jan’s cut-down ideas; but though he was smiling, he looked so desperately unhappy that it ceased to matter. She only said, “I doubt whether Jan would claim paternity for it.”
    They had reached the gates. Collins, coming back on duty with some friends, saw them, exchanged glances with her group, and hurried on, big with a silent pregnancy of future words. Vivian reflected without emotion that she would have told the whole hospital by this time tomorrow. Mic had noticed nothing; he was unfastening the door, which had stuck.
    He had provided her, she found out, with seven minutes to change in. She returned to the ward with a feeling of aeration; of seeing things from different angles and in slightly altered tinges of colour. Although Sister was in charge that evening she felt no anxiety about her work; there was, even a kind of relaxation