Messiah

children and the society would be the better for such an arrangement… and there was little doubt that our civilization was moving toward such a resolution. But there were parents who would want to retain their children and children who might be better cared for by their progenitors than by even the best-intentioned functionaries of the state. Would the state allow parents to keep their children if they wanted them? If not, it was tyrannous; if so, difficult in the extreme, for how could even the most enlightened board of analysts determine who should be allowed their children and who not? The answer, of course, was in the retraining of future generations. Let them grow up accepting as inevitable and right the surrender of babies to the state. Other cultures had done it and ours could too. But I was able, vividly, to imagine the numerous cruelties which would be perpetrated in the name of the whole, while the opportunity for tyranny in a civilization where all children were at the disposal of a government brought sharply to mind the image of the anthill society which has haunted the imagination of the thoughtful for at least a century.

I had got myself into a most gloomy state by the time Clarissa arrived, trailing across the lawn in an exotic ankle-length gown of gray which floated in yards behind her, like the diaphanous flags of some forgotten army.

'Your lawn is full of moles!' she shouted to me, pausing in her progress and scowling at a patch of turf. 'And it needs cutting and more clover. Always more clover, remember that.'

She turned her back on me to stare at the river which was as gray as her gown, but, in its soft tidal motion, spangled with light, like sequins on a vast train.

She had no criticism of the river when she at last turned and climbed the steps to the porch; she sat down with a gasp.

'I'm boiling! Tea? Hot tea to combat the heat.'

I poured her a cup. 'Not a hot day at all.' Actually it was very warm. 'If you didn't get yourself up as a Marie Corelli heroine, you'd be much cooler.'

'Not very gallant, are we today?' Clarissa looked at me over her cup. 'I've had this gown for five hundred years. There used to be a wimple which went with it but I lost it somewhere.'

'The material seems to be holding up quite well,' and now that she had mentioned it, there was an archaic look to the texture of the gown, like those bits of cloth preserved under glass in museums.

'Silk lasts indefinitely, if one is tidy. I also don't wear this much, as you can see, but with the devalued state of the dollar (an ominous sign, my dear, the beginning of the end!) I've been forced to redo a lot of old odds-and-ends I've kept for sentimental reasons. This is one of them and I'm very fond of it.' She spoke this last slowly, to forestall any further ungallantry.

'I just wondered if it was cool.'

'It is cool. Ah, a letter from Iris.' Like a magpie she had seen the letter beside my chair and, without asking permission, had seized it and read it through quickly. 'I admire a girl who types,' she said, letting fall the letter. 'I suppose they all do now though it seems like only yesterday that, next to opening a tearoom, one typed, working for men, all of whom made advances. That was when we had to wear corsets and hatpins. One discouraged while the other quite protected.'

Clarissa chuckled at some obscene memory.

'I wonder if Paul can keep Cave from wandering off to some impossible place.'

'I shouldn't be surprised.' She picked at the tea sandwiches suspiciously, curling back the top slices of bread to see what was underneath: tentatively, she bit into deviled ham; she chewed; she swallowed; she was not disappointed; she wolfed another sandwich, talking all the while. 'Poor Cave is a captive now. His disciples are in full command. Even Mohammed, as strong-headed as he was, finally ended up a perfect pawn in the hands of Abu Bekr and the women, especially the women.'

'I'm not so sure about Cave. He…'

'Does what they tell him, especially Iris.'

'Iris? But I should have said she was the only one who never tried to influence him.'

Clarissa laughed unpleasantly. A moth flew into her artificial auburn hair; unerringly, she found it with one capable hand and quickly snuffed out its life in a puff of gray dust from broken wings. She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. The day was full of moths but, fortunately, none came near us again, preferring lawn and trees to us. 'You are naive, Eugene,' she said, her little murder done. 'It's your nicest quality. In theory you are remarkably aware of human character; yet, when you're confronted with the most implausible appearance, you promptly take it for the reality.'

I was irritated by this and also by the business of the sandwich, not to mention the murder of the moth; I looked at Clarissa with momentary dislike. 'I was not aware…' I began in a chilled voice but she interrupted me with an airy wave of her hand.

'I forget no one likes to be called naive… calculating, dishonest, treacherous, people rather revel in those designations, but to be thought trusting…' She clapped her hands as though to punctuate her meaning; then, after a full stop, she went on more soberly. 'Iris is the one to look out for. Our own sweet, self-effacing, dedicated Iris. I adore her; I always have, but she's up to no good.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'You will. You would if you weren't entirely blind to what they used to call human nature. Iris is acquiring Cave.'

'Acquiring?'

'Exactly the word. She loves him for all sorts of reasons but she cannot have him in the usual sense (I found out all about that, by the way). Therefore, the only thing left her to do is acquire him, to take his life in hers. You may think she may think that her slavish adoration is only humble love but actually it's something far more significant, and dangerous.'

'I don't see the danger, even accepting your hypothesis.'

'It's no hypothesis and the danger is real. Iris will have him and, through him, she'll have you all.'

I did not begin to understand that day and Clarissa, in her pythoness way, was no help, muttering vague threats and imprecations with her mouth full of bread.

After my first jealousy at Iris's preference of Cave to me, a jealousy which I knew, even at the time, was unjustified and a little ludicrous, I had come to accept her devotion to Cave as a perfectly natural state of affairs; he was an extraordinary man and though he did not fulfill her in the usual sense, he gave her more than mere lover might: he gave her a whole life and I envied her for having been able to seize so shrewdly upon this unique way out of ordinary life and into something more grand, more strange, more engaging. Though I could not follow her, I was able to appreciate her choice and admire the completeness of her days. That she was obscurely using Cave for her own ends, subverting him, did not seem to me possible and I was annoyed by Clarissa's dark warnings. I directed the conversation into the other waters.

'The children. I haven't decided what to do with them.'

Clarissa came to a full halt. For a moment she forgot to chew. Then, with a look of pain, she swallowed. 'Your children?'

'Any children, all children,' I pointed to the manuscript on the table.

She began to understand. 'I'm quite sure you have abolished marriage.'

'As a matter of fact, yes, this morning.'

'And now you don't know what to do about the children.'

'Precisely. I…'

'Perfectly simple.' Clarissa was brisk: this, apparently, was a problem she had already solved. 'The next step is controlled breeding. Only those whose blood lines seem promising should be allowed to procreate. Now that oral contraceptives are so popular no one will make babies by accident… in fact, it should be a serious crime if someone does.'

'Quite neat, but I wonder whether, psychologically, it's simple. There's the whole business of instinct, of the natural desire of a woman to want her own child after bearing it.'

'All habit… not innate. Children have been subordinate woman's ace in the hole for generations. They have had to develop certain traits which, in other circumstances, they would not have entertained. Rats, whom we closely resemble, though they suckle their young will, in moments of mild hunger or even exasperation, think nothing of eating an entire litter. You can condition human beings to accept any state of affairs as being perfectly natural.'