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private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a café will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It’s already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself. But communion of souls was Anna’s special subject. Also, Anna had a taste for tragedy which made me nervous. She always had her eye lifting for heavy drama. She took life intensely and very hard. Whereas I think it is foolish to take life so, as if you were to provoke a dangerous animal which will break your bones in the end in any case. So when Anna went to France to sing French folksongs in French night clubs I said to her vaguely that I would look her up when she returned, but she knew I wouldn’t and I knew she knew. That was some years ago, and I’d had a peaceful time since then, especially at Earls Court Road.
    When I left Dave’s I walked to Shepherd’s Bush and boarded an eighty-eight bus and sat in the front seat on top, and some of the reflections which I have recorded above were passing through my mind. It’s not easy to find someone whom one has mislaid for years in London, particularly if she belongs to the sort of milieu that Anna belonged to, but clearly the first thing to do is to look in the telephone book. So I got off at Oxford Circus and went into the Underground. When I left Goldhawk Road I had no intention of looking for Anna, but by the time I was passing Bond Street it really seemed that there was nothing else in the world that was worth doing. Indeed, it was unclear to me how I had managed to exist without her for so long. But I am like that. For long times I settle down, and in these times I would not stir a finger to lift a guinea a yard off. When I am fixed I am immobile. But when I am unfixed I am volatile, and then I fly at random from point to point like a firecracker or one of Heisenberg’s electrons until I settle down again in another safe place. Also I had a curious faith in Finn’s intuition. It often happened that Finn made some unexpected suggestion which when I followed it up turned out to have been just the thing. I could see that the Earls Court Road phase of my life was over, and that that peace of mind was gone beyond recall. Madge had forced a crisis on me; well, I would explore it, I would even exploit it. Who can tell what day may not inaugurate a new era? I picked up the London phone book L to R.
    The phone book told me nothing; I wasn’t surprised. I then rang up two theatre agencies who didn’t know Anna’s whereabouts, and the B.B.C., who did but wouldn’t say. I thought of trying to get hold of Sadie at the Belfounder studio, but I didn’t want Sadie to know that I was looking for Anna. I suspected Sadie of having been a little sweet on me at one time; at any rate she was always rather unpleasant in the old days about my being fond of Anna, although I know that some women regard all men as their personal property, and I thought it possible that she wouldn’t tell me where Anna was even if she knew. Anyway, since Sadie had become so famous I had seen nothing of her, and I didn’t imagine that she would welcome any attempt on my part to renew the acquaintance, particularly if she had been aware that I had been aware of what I conjectured to have been the state of her feelings. By now it was about opening time. It seemed useless to start ringing up the night clubs at this hour, so there was nothing to be done but to work Soho. There is always someone in Soho who knows what one wants to discover ; it’s just a matter of finding him. Also there was always the possibility of my running into Anna herself. My fates are such that as soon as I interest myself in a thing a hundred accidents happen which are precisely relevant to that thing. But I rather hoped that I wouldn’t meet Anna first in a public place, for my mind had already begun