The Book And The Brotherhood

`What question?'

`About the book!'

`Oh, the book.' Rose felt like saying, damn the book. She just wanted the book to be over, she had had enough of it. Perhaps that was resignation too.

`You haven't asked what I thought of it. After all, what do you imagine I've been doing all this time?'

`Well, what do you think of it? That it's no good, it'- nonsense? Gerard, it doesn't matter now – that at least finished with, isn't it?'

`Oh dear.' He said it ruefully, like a boy. 'Rose, let's havr some whisky. No, don't get up, I'll get it. I say, let's get drunk, I want to talk to you so much, I want to talk and talk. Here, drink this, it'll wake you up.'

When Rose took a sip of the whisky she did suddenly feel more alert.

`You're the first person I've talked to, the first person I've seen since I finished it, that's why I haven't answered the telephone or been anywhere, I had to be by myself, to read it carefully and slowly, I just had to stay locked up with that book.'

`But is it any good? It must be a crazy book full of obsessions.'

`Yes, in a way it is.'

`I knew it – all that time and all that money to produce a madman's fantasy. It must have been dull, madmen's fantasies always are.'

^`Dull? No, it nearly killed me. It will nearly kill me.'

`What do you mean? You're frightening me. I thought somehow it would hurt you -'

, Dangerous magic? Yes.'

`What do you mean yes?'

`Rose, the book is wonderful, it's wonderful.'

`Oh no! How awful!'

`Why awful? Do you mean I might die of envy? You know, I think I might have done, at the beginning, when I began to see how good it was, I had such a mean contemptible feeling of being disappointed!'

`You hoped you cou^ld dismiss it, throw it away – I wanted you to do just that.'

`Yes, yes, I felt put down – you know we got so used to thinking of him as crazy, unbalanced, and of course bad, unprincipled – cruel, like the way he treated Duncan at the dance.'

`You mean taking his wife?'

`No, I was thinking of his pushing Duncan into the Cherwell – that was something so ugly and gratuitous – not that we know what happened of course – Rose, do you remember how Crimond danced that night?'

`I didn't see him.'

`He was like a demon, it was like seeing a god dance, a destructive, creative powerful thing. We've all been so obsessed with closing our ranks because of the harm he did to Duncan -ever since the business in Ireland we've undervalued Crimond. We've thought of him as unsuccessful and shabby, and surly, like a dog prowling around outside – and then as our politics diverged so much, and that really did matter -'

`And still matters.'

`Yes, I'll come to that in a moment, we began to add up Crimond to be generally no good, wrong morals, wrong politics, irresponsible, vindictive, a bit dotty- How could such a person write a good book?'

`But you think he has.'

`Rose, it's an extraordinary book, I'm quite carried away -I'm sure I'm not wrong about it.'

`And not envious?'

`A bit, but that doesn't matter, admiration overcomes envy. One should be inspired by something good even if one disagrees.'

`So you disagree?'

`Of course I disagree!'

Gerard was not exactly tearing his hair but pulling his hands through it as if' he wanted to straighten out its glossy curls lock by lock. His face, shining with light as it now seemed to Rose, was like a beautiful comic mask. She was touched, but more deeply disturbed and frightened, by his emotion, which she could not yet understand.

`So it's good, and of course, you disagree, but at least it's finished. You've read it – and there we are.'

`No, we aren't there – not where you think -'

`I don't think anything, Gerard. Do calm down. Will you review it?'

^`Review it? I don't know, I don't suppose anyone will ask me, that's not important -'

`I'm glad you think so. Have you told Crimond you like it, have you seen him?'

`No, no, I haven't been in touch with him. That doesn't matter, now, either.'

Rose felt some relief. She was disturbed by this excited tall, about that dangerous book. All her old fears of Crimond were alert, that he would somehow damage Gerard, that the book itself would damage him, at the very least because he would be made unhappy by envious regrets. There was also, and she felt it now like the first symptoms of a fell disease, her fear of sonic amazing rapprochement whereby Crimond would revenge him self on her by making friends with his enemy and taking Gerard away. She wanted the book episode to be over; fist Gerard, moved by his generosity from envy to admiration, to discuss the thing, and praise it, and then forget it, and everything to be as before, with Crimond, the surly dog, at a safe distance.

`I imagine not everyone will like the book.'

`No, they won't, some will hate it, some I'm afraid will love it.'

^,You evidently don't hate it as it seems to excite you so! I can't believe it's all that interesting, a book on political theory. After all there are hundreds of them.'

`Rose, it's brilliant, it's all that we thought it might be when we decided it was worth financing it. It's all we hoped – it's also all we feared, later on that is. It will be immensely read, immensely discussed, and I believe, very influential. It's odd, I can remember now, which I'd somehow forgotten, what we felt about Crimond all those years ago when we thought what it remarkable man he was and how he'd be able to speak for all of iis, for us. Of course it isn't at all what we expected then, it's more than that, and it's not what we want to hear now, though we have to hear it.'

`I wish you wouldn't keep talking about 'we' – just speak for yourself – you keep on imagining there's some kind of brotherhood, but we're scattered, we aren't a band of brothers, just solitary worried individuals, not even young any more.'

`Yes, yes, dear Rose, how well you put it -!'

`You're interested in the book because you know about it, because you know Crimond, because you financed the thing. If it was by someone you'd never heard of you'd ignore it. What's so good about this horrible book?'

`Why do you think it's horrible? You mustn't. It's not just another book about political theory, it's a synthesis, it's immensely long, it's about everything.'

`Then it must be a mess and a failure.'

`But it isn't. My God, the man's learning, his patience, what he's read, how he's thought!'

`You've read and thought too.'

`No, I haven't. Crimond said I'd stopped thinking, that what I'd been doing all my life wasn't thinking. And in a way he was right.'

`That's absurd, he's an absurd man. What will he do now the book's over, fade away? Go off to Eastern Europe?'

`Oh he won't go to Eastern Europe, he belongs here. Maybe he'll write another equally long book refuting this