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ROLAND I believe it's clearing. God, but that was a heavy shower! Nowadays they use computers. Hard to see what fun they can get out of sports in which you use computers to work out the position – the exact position of your blows. This rat uses it to aim his blows exactly so they just miss. The wheels of God roll slow, but they roll exceeding small. Slam! Slam! Small! These are so close that I can feel the air hot as they pass. It has started again. You can't just have machines. There still has to be some kind of vestigial brain to programme the computer. The tiny vestigial scrap of human cruelty. Small, vestigial, but tough and resistant like a spore – a spore of malignancy. Where's Robin? ‘They’ must have got him. Ah, the sea at last. The salt marshes and the pee-wees calling and the great clouds billowing past far above. Is the war over? From that warfare there is no release – no release. Daddy! Oh Daddy – stroke me, Daddy! My dear, dear child, my fingers can't reach your sweet face now. Would God I had died for thee! Oh my son, my son: Oh my son Absalom! Past, present and future, all shrivelled up to a nothing – the heart of a computer!
ROSEMARY (twitching a scarf about her shoulders. Is she cold – or embarrassed?) Alice, that will do. Really, these men make one quite uncomfortable at times. Pathetic.
ROLAND Just what I was thinking. I had forgotten I used to be so sentimental.
ROSEMARY I never was. Alice – oh, I see you have recovered.
ALICE For a moment I was reminded of my young days and even of the rather attractive days of young love when Roland and I thought we were in love. I almost believed I would go back to it if I could. Do you remember, what Horace said about Lydia?
ROSEMARY Horses? No, never heard of him. Oh, perhaps I do.