The Book And The Brotherhood

`Suitable for women!'

`Rose, it's a very high-minded book, about justice, about suffering -'

`I don't believe it. He wants to liquidate the bourgeois individual, that is the individual, and bourgeois values, that is values! He believes in the inevitability of cruelty.'

`It's a comprehensive attack on Marxism by a very intelligent Marxist, an attempt to think the whole thing through- you'll see -'

`I won't. I might look up ecology in the index, and animals, kindness to -'

`Rose, please don't just mock -'

`You seem to be overwhelmed because the book looks like 'what the age requires', a new synthesis and all that, but if it’s just Marxism rules the world and utopia beyond, that’s not new, it's just the old dictatorship of the proletariat in modern dress – and it's everything that you detest anyway, so why are you so impressed? I don't believe in Crimond's ark, his boat which is going to shoot the rapids.'

'Well, what do you believe in?'

'I think we've got to protect the good things that we have,' 'But really – ahead – what do you see? Catastrophe? Apres nous le deluge?'

Rose was silent. Gerard had got up and was leaning over the back of his chair, his face illumined by a glare of excitement which seemed to Rose something comic, an intensification of his usual zany smile. At last, unwilling to say yes, she simply, nodded.

Gerard turned away and began to walk up and down tit, room. 'Rose, have you got any of those chocolate biscuits?'

'The dark ones, those very dry ones? Yes, I'll get them.'

The table still carried their plates covered in fragments, i I cheese and the plum cake, the apples in a pretty bowl.

'I'm still hungry. I'll have some of' the cake too. Is it Annushka's?'

As Rose, in the kitchen, found the tin with the chocolate biscuits, she reflected that what was enlivening her in tlwi argument with her old friend was physical desire, the debate was, for her, sex, her urgent agonising wish to be in bed with him transformed into repartee, as he said into mockery, jail that, and not the future of civilisation!

Gerard was eating the plum cake, now the biscuits, now attacking the cheese, walking about and dropping crumbs on the carpet. Watching him trampling in the crumbs Rose said in exasperation, 'You keep praising this book, but you say it's all wrong! If it's Marxism it must be. Isn't that the end of the matter?'

'No – no – it's the beginning. When you read it -'

'I'm not going to read it! I think it's a detestable book, I wish it didn't exist.'

'You've got to read it.'

‘Why?'

'For reasons I'll explain in a minute. In a way I wish it didn’t exist, _it w_ill encourage fools and knaves and have a lot of bad results, ye_t I'm glad it exists too, it will force its opponents to think, it shows that people can have, just in this crucial area, new thoughts.'

‘Books of new thoughts are published every week.'

'No they aren't, not pointed at just this spot.'

'The revolution, the greatest in human history. It's just sensationalism, all it will stir up is all our old ideas.'

'Then we must have some new ones.'

'We can't. Oh Gerard I'm so tired.'

'Darling, sorry, don't get sleepy again – I want to tell you -' 'I'm going on a cruise with Reeve and the children, a long ruise, a world cruise.'

'Oh.' This arrested Gerard. 'When?'

'At Easter. Well, not a world cruise, but longish, weeks – I can't remember.'

'Oh. That should be nice.'

'I'm going to see much more of them, I'm going to change my life, I'm going to sell this flat and go and live in Yorkshire.' 'Rose! You're not to!'

'Why ever not? Who's to stop me?'

'I am. Look, all right go on this damn cruise, see your family 11,you want to -'

'Thanks!'

'But just listen to what I'm going to say.

'All right, all right!'

'Wake up.'

'I am awake. I'm sorry to be so dismissive about Crimond's book, I'm sure it's no good, though it certainly seems to have done something to you, but you'll get over it, it's nothing to do with us.'

'We financed it.'

'That was an accident. You'll soon forget it. It hasn't changed your life.'

'It has, actually – this is what I want to explain. This book must be answered, and it can be answered, point by point.' each other, next door, even share a house – why not? I've thought-'

Rose began to laugh. 'Share a house?'

`Why ever not? I think it's a good idea. We needn't be in each other's pockets. But we could meet every day -'

Rose went on laughing helplessly. 'Oh – Gerard – you and I – share a house -'

`Well -?'

`No, no, it's out of the question.'

`All right,' said Gerard, picking up his coat, 'and you don't care for the research assistant idea?'.

`No, I don't!'

`Well, maybe it was a silly idea. I'll find someone. You're tired. What the hell are you laughing at?'

Rose, sitting at the table, was laughing hysterically, covering her wet mouth and eyes with Gerard's fine white handkerchief. 'Ohjust – you – or history – or – something!'

`I'll say goodnight then,' said Gerard rather stiffly, putting on his overcoat. 'Thank you for supper. I'm sorry I made those absurd, as you evidently think them, suggestions.'

`Wait a minute!' Dropping the handkerchief Rose darted to him, she seized the sleeves of'his coat, still damp from the rain and shook him, pulling him for a moment off his balance so that they both nearly fell to the floor. 'Don't be such afool, do you understand nothing? Of course I'll be your research assistant, and of course we'll share a house or live next door or whatever you want – but if this happens we've got to have a pact – it must be like getting married, I mean like getting married, I'm tired of having nothing, I want something at last, we must be really together, I must have some sort ofsecurity – I'll read the book, I'll do anything you want, but I must feel at last – or is it hopeless – oh that book – you're not going to marry Crimond, are you?'

`Rose, are you going mad?'

`You'll want to be with him, to discuss the book.'

`I don't want to see him yet, perhaps not for ages, he may not want to see me, I suppose we'll meet sometime, but we can't be friends – because -' `You're not going to go away – and marry someone c1sc we'll be together -'

`Yes, yes, and you can go on your cruise, but you're not to go and live in Yorkshire.'

`Because you need a research assistant.'

`Because I need you.'

`I'm making you say these things.'

`Rose, don't be so exasperating, you know I love you.'

`I don't know, I know nothing, I live on the edge of