The Book And The Brotherhood

fear?

Duncan had taken care not to announce his return to any of' his friends. At that time Gerard, Jenkin and Rose were all in London, Gerard in the Civil Service, Jenkin teaching in a polytechnic, Rose working for a magazine. The news of course got round quickly enough that Duncan had resigned from the service, then that his marriage was in trouble, then that the third party was David Crimond. Gerard, the first to hear from a friend in the Foreign Office, rang up Jenkin, then Rose, neither of whom knew anything. Rose said she had thought it odd that she had not had a reply to a letter she had written to Jean, for they kept up a frequent correspondence. Gerard, who kept up more intermittent communication with Duncan, also now noted that he had not heard. Jenkin hardl^y ever wrote to anyone. Gerard took it on himself to check the now more numerous sources of information and concluded that what was rumoured was true. It was obviously not a situation for telephone calls. They were in any case not used to chatting by telephone. Gerard said they must do something, make some gesture. After writing it out carefully in several different drafts he despatched an immensely tactful letter to Duncan in Dublin where he thought (not having imagined so prompt a departure) that his friend still was. Rose wrote a letter, also tactful, but very brief and quite unlike Gerard's to Jean. Both letters 'said nothing', only indicated they had heard something and were feeling upset and sympathetic. Jenkin sent a postcard to Duncan saying: Be well. LoveJenkin. He chose the card with care (it was a peaceful landscape by Samuel Palmer) Alld enclosed it in an envelope. These missives in due course lound their way back to Duncan's London club where he regularly picked up mail, wondering when he would hear again from Jean. Rose, Gerard and Jenkin were meanwhile constantly in touch, and met to discuss the situation at Gerard's house in Notting Hill. (By this period, Robin Top-glass was married and gone to Canada.) They were unanimous in being inclined to blame Crimond. They then started lo compare notes about him, repeating that they must not be iiilluenced by their distaste for his politics. They concluded that his extremist militant socialism must show something about his personality, that he was a 'fey', unpredictable person. They agreed that though they had liked and esteemed him at Oxford, they had never really got to know him. They were genuinely worried about Jean and Duncan, but speculation was inevitably interesting. These conversations (during which they constantly said, 'Of course we don't know the facts!') were inconclusive, but from them dated Rose's positive dislike of Crimond which became important later on. Meanwhile no one seemed to know where Duncan was.

Later, after the welcome verdict from Moorfields, when Duncan, who had heard nothing more from Jean and had not written to her either, was more positively attempting to put his life in order, he found himself bitterly regretting that he was now left without ajob. At this point, not because of this regret but because he felt that the time had come, he at last wrote a note to Gerard, simply giving his address and asking him round fora drink. By now Duncan had given up hotels and had rented a small flat in Chelsea where he had been leading a crazy solitary incognito existence. What passed at this meeting was never later on divulged by either of them. In a way, little passed, but the meeting itself was momentous. Duncan gave Gerard a brief general account of what had happened, omitting the drama at the tower. According to this account, Duncan, having gradually realised that Jean was in love with Crimond and that they were probably lovers, had come into possession of evidence (he did not say what evidence wid Gerard did not ask) that they actually were lovers, and had soon after been told by_,jean that she proposed to leave him, Since then, apart from a letter confirming that she was living with Crimond and had no intention of coming back, he haul heard nothing. Gerard naturally wanted to know a good deal more, but naturally did not press for it. The occasion was also important for Duncan because he was able to 'try out' his damaged eye upon an important witness. In fact Gerard failed to notice the odd eye, and had to have his attention drawn to it by Duncan's reference to 'some eye trouble'. They got a bit drunk together and remembered, though they did not mention, the time when they had been lovers after Sinclair died. Gerard, without audibly bemoaning Duncan's hasty resignation, which he could not see to be necessary, raised the question of ajob. Teaching? No. Politics? Certainly not. Why not the Home Civil Service? Duncan, after indicating that he was 'done for', 'fit for the dole queue' and so on, agreed that this was not a bad idea, transfers from the diplomatic field to Whitehall did occur, and although he had so abruptly 'cut the painter' a sympathetic view might be taken. A short time after this he entered the Civil Service, not in the department which he would have chosen, but in a quite sufficiently promising and interesting post.

The fight in the tower had taken place in June. After Duncan had acquired his new job he had sent a letter to jean saying that he loved her and hoped she would return. This was in August. He received no answer. He was still getting occasional letters from Dominic Moranty confirming that jean and Crimond were together and becoming accepted as an established couple. Duncan now had even more time and energy to be miserable. He was still attending the eye hospital but the original terrible fears for his eyesight were over, and he had also stopped imagining that he was 'done for'. He had dissaded Rose and Gerard from, admittedly vague, plans for hung something about it' (going to Dublin, remonstrating j1h_.1can, denouncing Crimond and so on). He settled down to despair. For the time, friends and acquaintances thronged hood him, a deceived and abandoned man is always popular, satisfying to contemplate. He was grateful to Gerard and Rose Idjenkin, who genuinely cared. But he wanted, so much Orc than the diversions which they invented for him, to sit alone with his own misery, his grief, his loss, even his jealousy, his obsessional images of Crimond, his remorse and regret, his sick yearning for his dear wife. He wanted to make terms with his unhappiness, to go over and over the terrible past, running dirough every `if only…', until he had exhausted all these ihings and been exhausted by them.

Then suddenly, in November, Jean came back. It was a cold evening, a little snow was falling. Duncan was sitting as usual, with a whisky bottle and book, beside the gas fire in his little flat. The bell rang. It was late, he did not expect visitors. He went down some stairs, turned on a light, opened the front door. It was Jean. Duncan turned at once and began to go back up the stairs to the open door of his flat. He could still irmember, later, the feeling of the banisters as he hauled himself up. He had put on weight, he was tired, he was a little drunk. He heard the front door close and jean's steps behind him. She followed him into the flat and into the sitting room closing the doors. She was wearing a black raincoat and dark green mackintosh hat, both lightly spotted with snow. She took off the hat, looked at it, brushed off the snowflakes and dropped it. Then she let the coat slide off backwards onto the floor. She uttered a little whimpering sigh, looked quickly at Duncan, then turned her head sideways and plucked at the neck of her dress. Duncan, who had retreated to the fireside, stood with his hands in his pockets gazing at her with a calm faintly inquisitive look which did not at all express his feelings. He had felt of course, as soon as he saw her, certain that she was really and truly coming back to him. This was no conference once under a flag of truce, it was surrender. A golden light shone before his eyes and an explosive dilation of his hi.is stretched his breast to bursting. He was ready to cry wilt tenderness, to faint with joy; but what steadied him and dictated the charade, upon which he later looked back with satisfaction, was a sense of triumph. It was a delectable miil well-earned reward. He felt too a release of anger as if now lie could shake her, beat her. Just for these sustained seconds she was at his mercy. This was the unworthy thought which made him able to seem so calm and unmoved. Jean too, before his eyes, went through some steadying hardening transition. Perhaps she had hoped for an instant welcome and to allow her tears to flow. There had been some beseeching in her first glance. Now she frowned, smoothed down her hair, turned to him again and said, 'I expect you want me to make a statement.'

Duncan said nothing.

`Well, briefly, I've left Crimond, that's over, and I'd like to come back to you, if you'd like that. If not I'll go away, now, and we can arrange a divorce or anything that suits you.'

Jean's face was still red from the cold and the sudden warmth of the room, and her chin was wet where the snowflakes had got at it under her hat. She looked down at her raincoat on the floor, and evidently realising that it had been a mistake to take it off since she might be leaving directly, picked it up and began putting it on again.

Duncan had by now controlled himself for so long that he found it positively awkward to set about expressing his feelings, and felt silenced by realising that he had a choice of words. Then, watching her, he said spontaneously, 'What are you doing with that coat? Put it down.'

Jean dropped the coat and Duncan stepped forward and took her in his arms.

Thus ended the first episode of Jean and Crimond and thus began the renewed marital happiness of Jean and Duncan which lasted over many years until the occasion of the summer dance which has been described.

The problem about the book was really a quite separate matter which can be more briefly explained. It was separate, and yet it somehow increasingly wove itself into the fates of the friends, ⁱⁿ and out as the