The Book And The Brotherhood

appeared, indeed, as a lonely revolutionary hunter: a view which, on later estimates, did him less than justice.

Years passed during which Crimond continued to receive a salary which set hⁱm free to indulge in political activity which his 'supporters' increasingly disapproved of, and to write, or pretend to write, a book which, if it ever appeared, must exert a dangerous and pernicious influence. It became more difficult to feel that this was simply a matter of keep' ^rig a promise, and began to be thought of as a ridiculous, irrational, intolerable situation about which something must be done. This was the state of indecision which Crimond's second abduction of Jean Cambus seemed likely to bring to a head.

At about the time when Gerard was asleep at the kitchen table at the house in Notting Hill, and Duncan, in Kensington, war dropping Jean's slippers into a wastepaper basket, Tamar Hernshaw in Action, was sitting in a state of appalled misery facing her mother Violet. The flat was small and extremely dirty. Violet's bedroom, where the bed was never made, was full of the plastic bags which she compulsively collected. They were sitting in the kitchen. The floor was littered with newspapers, the table was covered with used plates, milk bottles, sauce bottles, pots of mustard, pots of jam, crusts of bread, bits of old cheese, a squeeze of butter in a greasy paper, a pot of tea, now cold, made for Tamar, who had not touched it. The discussion, which had been going on now for some time, had begun to repeat itself.

'I can't get a job,' said Violet, 'you know I can't get a job!'

'Couldn't you -?'

'Couldn't I what? I can't do anything! Even if I could get a part-time job as a waitress – we need big money, not scraps of what I could earn by killing myself slaving! You keep telling me I'm not young -'

'I don't, I just said -'

'Everything's gone up! You live in a dream world where you don't think about money. All right, it's my fault, I wanted you to have a good education -'

'I know, I know, I'm grateful -'

'Well now's the time to show it. Everything's gone up, rates, taxes, food, clothes, the mortgage – God, the mortgage, you don't even know what that is! We can't afford the telephone, I'm having it disconnected. And feeding you as a vegetarian costs the earth. You drift along as if everything will always be ordered to suityou! But I'm in debt, I'm seriously in debt, if we don't do something drastic we'll lose the flat.'

'I've got a grant,' said Tamar, restraining tears, for she was Inning to see that the situation was hopeless. 'And you know I can live on practically nothing – I don't need any clothes and -‘

‘You'll get anorexia again if you aren't careful, it isn't fair to I can judge what's fair to me!'

'No, you can't. You've had good years at the university enjoying yourself -'

'Can't we borrow from Gerard – or from Pat and Gideon -'

'I'm not going to go crawling to them, and I'll never forgive you if you do! Haven't you any pride, any respect for me? And hat's the use of getting even more into debt?'

'Or I could borrow from Jean -'

'From her? Never! I detest that woman – Oh I know she's your idol, you wish she was your mother!'

'Look,' said Tamar, though she knew this was even more out of the question, 'they're rich, Gideon is anyway, and jean they'd give us the money.'

'Tamar, don't make me sick! You don't imagine I like wiling you all this – I hoped I wouldn't have to. Please try to face reality, and help me to face it!'

'I can't give up Oxford now, I must do my final exams or the whole thing's thrown away – it's now or never -'

'You've got a funny idea of education if all you care about is a bit of paper to say you've passed an exam! You must have learnt something in two years, surely that'll do you, anyway it'll have to!'

'But I want to go on – if I get a first I can get another grant to stay on and do a doctorate – I want to really study, I want to be it scholar, I want to write, I want to teach – I must keep going now – later on is no good.'

'So you want to be Doctor Hernshaw, that's it, is it?'

'I won't cost you anything -'

'You're costing me something all the time by not earning! That money Uncle Matthew gave us has all gone -'

'I thought it was invested.'

'Invested! We can't afford investments! I've had to spend it – to buy your expensive books and that ball dress – and now You've lost your coat and that grand shawl someone gav, you -'

`Gerard gave it to me -'

`And you lost your partner, can't you get anything right? At least now you can sell all those books – Don't look like that, and don't say I'm trying to ruin your life because I ruined my own, I know you're thinking that. I know they've said it to you -'

`No

`Well, they will now.'

`It's only a year to wait, can't we wait? I must do my exams -'

`You can pick it up later, you could go on studying at evening classes, lots ofpeople do that. They say it's better to be a mature student anyway.'

`Oxford doesn't work like that, you can't just drop in and out, you have to keep straight on, it's very difficult to be there at all and the exams are very difficult, you have to keep on studying ever so hard, I can't leave now, it would spoil everything, I'm ready now, I've been working very hard, I'vegot it all in me – my tutor told me -'

`You mean you'll forget all those facts? You can mug them up again. You'll do better after you've been out in the real world, you'll probably see it's a waste of time anyway. You're just infatuated with Oxford, you think it's all so impressive and grand – but what has university education done for that lot, Gerard and his precious friends, except make them into prigs and snobs and cut them off from ordinary life and real people? Don't you realise thatyou are becoming a snob?'

`If I go on and get that degree I'll be able to get a better paid job and earn more money -'

`Tamar, you haven't understood, you haven't been listening. I can't afford to keep you any more. I can't afford to keep anything any more. I owe money, if I don't pay it I'll be in a law court. I can't earn it. You must. It's as simple as that.'

They sat silently looking at each other across the table. Tamar had hastily taken off her ball dress and was now barefoot in a shirt and jeans. The two women, for Tamar though she seemed so childish was indeed a woman, presented it marked contrast. They were so unlike that it might have been imagined that Tamar sprang, like Athena, out of her Imlier's head without female assistance: her vanished unknown father who did not know that she existed, and about whom, especially when she lay awake at night, she so often mid so ardently thought. She was exceedingly thin and had Ptullcred from anorexia nervosa when she was sixteen. The i1iinness of her face enhanced her eyes which were large and mournful and wild like those of a savage child, both fierce and Irightened, and were of the greenish-brownish colour known its hazel. Her thin silky hair which was straight and cut to the earlobe and parted at the side was ofa matching brown colour, not exactly mousy, a sort of dulled yet lively woody brown with intimations of green, the colour of trunks of trees, of ash trees or cherry trees or old birch trees. Her legs were long and diin and being shapely could be called slender. Her neck was thin, her nose was short, her hands and feet were small. Of her youthful breasts, small and exceedingly round, she thought little, though a few discerning persons had thought much. Her complexion was pale and clear, her cheeks flushing faintly, her rye lids delicate as if transparent, as was her neck.

Violet was in more obvious ways handsome and was, as Rose Curtland had remarked, still an attractive woman, which was not very surprising as she was not much over forty. She was taller than her daughter with a fuller finer figure, she wore her chestnut hair (now discreetly tinted) in a fringe, her ryes were markedly blue. She was short-sighted, and when she put on (as rarely as possible) her big round spectacles she could look clever and slightly stern, like a shrewd bossy office woman. Her beautifully shaped mouth, which could also look stern, a stern