The Book And The Brotherhood

into another. Site-remembered, then felt, her toothache, but it was less acme She took two more aspirins. She was exhausted, her desire to sit and think all night had left her, she felt now, and was grateful for it, simply the need to become unconscious. Shr told herself, come back to reality. I did the only right thing, though I did it so ungraciously and badly. The hurt is to my vanity. We shall go on thinking about Jenkin and whether the impossible was possible. Gerard said that they would never be friends – but they are sure to meet, and one day I too shall see Crimond again, and we shall tremble with shock and then be cool and ordinary ever after; and fie will never tell, never, even under torture would he tell, not only for his own sake, but for mine. So there is a strange sad bond between us that will always hurt us both.

She thought, I wonder if Gerard meant it about our sharing a house, and if it could ever happen? Somewhere perhaps there really is a house where Gerard and I will live together ever after as brother and sister. Then as she got into bed she Megan to wonder to herself where that house mⁱght be. Perhaps beside the river. She had always wanted to live by the river. She turned out the light and feel asleep and dreamt she was in Venice with Marcus Field.

Gerard, feeling unusually drunk, had decided to walk all the way back from Rose's flat to the Goldhawk Road. The timid rain had ceased, and a fuzzy mad moon had risen. The east wind was moving steadily across London. He had brought no gloves and kept putting his hands into his pockets, finding this uncomfortable and taking them out again. The east wind was jerking his hair about and icily fingering his scalp.

What a state Rose had been in, so unusual, what language she had used, words like 'unbearable'. Had they managed later to sort that out, had they sorted anything out, or just created some sort of superfluous unintelligible confusion? Of' course they were friends, their friendship, their bond, was absolute, and she must know that as well as he. Had he somehow done wrong, been lacking in consideration, did she really need reassurance? Perhaps she did, she had less to think about than he had, more time to brood. He felt now that lie had given Rose less than she wanted, said less than he was tempted to say, been ungenerous and cautious. Perhaps she had been struck by a difference between the pressing attentions of the Curtland gang and the way in which he, Gerard, `took her for granted'? 'I've given you my life and you haven't even noticed.' That was a very extreme thing to say. But surely it expressed a mood and not any deep resentment? How could he not take her for granted, was not that in itself a proof of' something absolute? How strange, almost embarrassing, that she had actually spoken of needing a 'pact', something like a promise. It only then occurred to him that Rose had been demanding from him exactly what he had demanded from Jenkin! Poor human beings, he thought, always wanting security, but unwilling to provide lt!jenkin had laughed. Roar had laughed too but, as it were, in the wrong place. Why had she laughed so when he suggested sharing a house, and then later said that this was just what she wanted? Rose was usually so rational and calm. Of course she was annoyed about the book, even jealous of it, but that was another thing. Had the bloody Curtlands been getting at her? Gerard recalled the cunning look on Neville's face when he had said they were taking her to Yorkshire. Was that a thrust of some kind, a preliminary to a battle? There could be no battle. Rose belonged to him, she had always done. He was responsible to her and for her. Of course she could tend her Curtlands. But Gerard was her real family, there could be no doubt about that He thought, I'll reassure her, I'll look after her, perhaps I haven't tried enough to make her happy, but I will now.

He was, as he came near to Jenkin's house, beginning to feel very damp and cold. He had, in coming to live in the little house, intended something, perhaps symbolic but also marking some deep change in his mode of existence, some giving up of worldly goods, some kind of liberating simplification. He had indeed sold many of his possessions, while reflecting ironically that it is not exactly asceticism to sell what you have and put the money in the bank. He had lately begun to feel false in Jenkin's house, as if he were playing at something. The neighbours knew it, perhaps the house knew it too. It was not even a part of his mourning, seeming sometimes even a desecration of it. There was a kind of futile unmanageable pain in living with Jenkin's things when Jenkin was dead. He had not intended to speak to Rose of a house, though the idea had been for a short time in his head. Now he began to feel an interest in living, not where he had been before, but not here either. He needed to create some entirely new scene, and he did not have to play at austerity now he had suddenly acquired such an awesomely demanding aim in life. He did not think that he had overestimated Crimond's book, but whether he had or not he now had to write his own. He could now, thanks to Crimond, see the book that he had to write. He thought, I may indeed be carried away, but I must try my damnedest to get it all clear. As he thought this he suddenly thought of Levquist, of what it had been like to get clear some appallingly difficult piece of Greek, and recalled, and felt now in his guts, that almost sexual shudder with which, arriving at Oxford, he had found himself confronted with an impossibly high standard. He recalled too some words of Valery which Levquist used to quote: a difficulty is a light, an insuperable difficulty is a sun. Well, more often no doubt an insuperable difficulty is an insuperable difficulty. In attempting now to `answer' Crimond he must be prepared for what he wrote to seem, perhaps even to be, merely a commentary on someone else's book. Perhaps indeed all that awaited him was a long and final failure, a dreary fruitless toil, wasting his energy and his remaining time to produce something that was worthless. The words of Augustine quoted by Father McAlister came back to him: before the countenance of God my soul shrivels like a moth. Perhaps he would have nothing in the end but a broken heart, not even contrite!

As he reached the little house it was beginning to rain again, and as he pressed the key into the lock he experienced a feeling of intrusion, as of making an unexpected and perhaps unwelcome visit. The house was extremely cold. jenkin had never entertained the idea of central heating. Gerard turned on the lights and pulled the velveteen curtains and lit the gas fire in the sitting room. He decided he was still hungry, he had been too excited to eat properly with Rose, too anxious to tell her of something great. Of course he had quite failed to convey the book, how right it is, how wrong it is. He thought, it's right because it's about suffering, it's wrong because it's about being true to a future good society. That's the main idea, what the book depends on really – but there's no such thing. Truth can't reach out into the future in that way, as Rose said, we can't imagine the future – and there can never be a perfectly good society – there can only be a decent society, and that depends on freedom and order and circumstances and an endless tinkering which can't be programmed from a distance. It's all accidental, but the values are absolute. That's the simple point about human life with the long explanation. Suppose Rose's 'cold water' were just the beginning of general dismissal of Crimond's book? Of course nothing that happened to that book could affect his. But Gerard realized that he would be dismayed if he got only bad ones! He went out to the kitchen and poured a tin of soup into a saucepan. He found some sliced bread and buttered it while the soup was heating, then brought soup and bread back into the sitting room where Crimond's galley proofs were piled high on the sidebomol guarded by the Staffordshire dogs. He put the plate and the mug of soup on the green tiles by the fire, and as he turned to close the door he saw some letters lying on the mat in the hall He recognised Duncan's writing. He brought the letters in, tearing open Duncan's envelope.

My dear Gerard,

You will have seen Levquist's obituary in the Times. Whoever wrote it didn't praise him enough. That kind of greatness is not the fashion these days I dare say! I feel extraordinarily sad and felt I must write to you. I know you saw him at that terrible dance last summer, and maybe you have seen him since. He was a kind of saint ofscholarship, a special kind of example. Perhaps his life ending made me wonder what Pvr made of mine. What a mess it's all been, and how short the business is really, a topic I've heardyou mention. I conclude that what really matters is friendship, not that overrated love business, but one's closefriends, the really close people who are one's comforters and one's judges. You have always been both to me. May I express the hope that, in all the recent shambles, we haven't lost each other. It seems, here, infinitely far from London. We have bought a house, but address at present is this hotel.

Hope you are writing something. I've given up thought.

Yours

Duncan

Gerard had not seen the Times obituary. So Levquist was gone. He recalled the long room, the big desk covered with books, the window open to the summer night, Levquist's great grotesque beautiful