The Book And The Brotherhood

rose-bud, had lately begun to droop a little. The expression which in Tamar's face was sad, was in her mother's more positively resentful, even bellicose. As they now tensely stared at each other the similarity between them was, in their fierce concentrated expressions which mingled guilt and fear and old familiar misery, at its most evident. Violet had plenty to be bellicose about. She had been dealt a rotten hand by fate, or, to use an even more painful image, had stupidly thrown away such good cards as she had. As an illegitimate child with a feckless drug- addicted rarely visible father, she certainly had a bad start. Her mother had resented her existence. Violet, well aware of the baleful repetition, resented Tamar's existence. An important difference was that whereas Violet and her mother had quarrelled endlessly and bitterly, Tamar and Violet did not quarrel much. This was, Violet knew, no credit to her but was largely because Tamar was, to her mother, it 'bit of an angel'. This angelicness was at times a consolation, but more often a source of guilt which increased Violet's sense of being ill done by.

She had left school at sixteen to get away from her mother. She lost touch with her mother and was pleased to learn later that she was dead. After her father's death his family made serious attempts to help her, but she kept aloof from them. She worked as a maid in a hotel, saved up and did a typing course, worked as a typist. When she was twenty she was beautiful and had various unsatisfactory lovers. At this stage she made some serious mistakes. She rejected someone whom she should have seen as a promising suitor. Perhaps, she thought later, she was simply not in love, and was still too young to realise that a solitary penniless girl cannot afford the luxury of marriage for love. Her most lasting mistake was of course Tamar and the wandering Scand. As Violet had frequently explained to Tamar, she would have been promptly 'got rid of if her mother had had, at the crucial time, enough money to arrange it. This was in the old days when such abortions were illegal, secret and expensive, and there was no respected 'right to choose'. Violet was not able to choose and Tamar was unchosen and often made to feel so. The story ran that Violet, not even willing to think of a name for the unwelcome brat, let her be christened at the registry office by the registrar, a lay preacher who suggested 'Tamar' and his secretary, who offered her own name, 'Marjorie'. Tamar received a decent school education at the expense of the state and proved to be clever and very industrious. Violet was pleased when she went. to Oxford, but was envious, and jealous too when Tamar lirgan to know some men and could be presumed to have lovers. Violet was also able to value her daughter's docility, her desire to please, her quiet acceptance of a very limited way.4 life. Several sums of money had been, secretly, accepted from Uncle Matthew, but money offered by Gerard and Patricia was rejected with scorn. Tamar was allowed to accept Christmas presents however, and the cashmere shawl, from Gerard, was one of these.

'I could get a job in the long vacation,' said Tamar. 'Sorting letters in a post office? No! You must work properly, you must get us out of debt, you must keep us out of debt, you must settle down to being the breadwinner from now on!' 'Can't we just wait -'

'No, we can't! I've done enoughforyou!' said Violet, voicing the thought at which Tamar was arriving. They looked at each,other for a second with faces made similar by misery and anger.

Tamar smoothed her face. She knew it was no use trying to rxplain to her mother the difference between a university education and being a mature student going to evening classes. It was now that the precious gift must be seized. She had already learnt so much, more than she had ever dreamt herself capable of, and that was just the beginning of the metamorphosis which was now to be so brutally cut off. She saw t hat the loss was terrible, no less than the loss of her whole life, file instant substitution of some sort of tenth-rate life for the one to which she had looked forward, to which she felt she had a right. Restraining her tears she tried to take in that there was no alternative to surrender. She knew how little money there was, and she believed what Violet said.

The telephone rang. Violet left the room. From where she %it Tamar began spiritlessly piling the dirty plates together on I lie stained cloth and assembling the jars and pots which never left the awful table into an orderly group. She entertained for a %econd only the traditional thought, which lived between I hem like a folk idea, that her mother had ruined her own life and was intent on ruining her daughter's. Tamar had early understood the huge dark mass of her mother's bitterness, she had seen how it was possible to expend all one's spirit, all one',, life- energy, in resentment, remorse, anger and hatred. She could picture (I'or she heard enough about it) her mother's relation with her mother, and felt even as a child, not only the automatic force of her mother's desire to 'get her own back', but also in her own heart a dark atom of that responding bitter anger. She had seen how a life can be ruined and had decided that she would not ruin her own in such a game of repetition. I t might be said that, recognising a choice between becoming a demon and becoming a saint she had chosen the latter. Slic saw that her safety lay, not in calculated hostility or intelligent self-regarding warfare, but in some genuine surrender of sell'. This was her 'angelic' gamble, which so irritated Violet who thought she 'saw through' it, and which led Gerard to regard Tamar as a virgin priestess. A habit of docility and never answering back had not been too hard to acquire. Only now did poor Tamar begin to see how agonisingly painful and (it must be seen) irreparably damaging surrender of self could be.

Violet returned to the kitchen. 'Uncle Matthew has passed away.'-

`Oh – I'm so sorry,' said Tamar, 'Oh dear – I wish I'd gone to see him – I wanted to – only you wouldn't let me -' She began to cry, not the storm of tears which must soon begin, but sad unhappy guilty special tears for Uncle Matthew who had so shyly and so kindly wanted to be her friend, and whom she had so rarely visited because her mother did not want her to be beholden to Ben's family.

`And if you're wondering,' said Violet, 'whether he's left us anything in his will, let me tell you he hasn't.'

Matthew Hernshaw had failed to carry out his intention to `do something' for Violet and Tamar because of an indecision which was characteristic of him. He could not make up his mind how much to leave them, knowing that if he did not leave them enough Gerard would disapprove and if he left them too much Patricia would be annoyed. What he did firmly intend to do was to leave a letter, addressed to both his children, asking them to look after Ben's granddaughter. He several times began to draft his letter but could not decide exactly t he wanted to say. This unformulated request was what attempted unsuccessfully to communicate to Patricia when its dying. Oh if only he had spoken sooner! That was Matthew’s last thought.

Tamar, who had not been wondering about Uncle Matthew’s will replied, 'He'll expect Gerard and Pat to help us.’

Pat will decide,' said Violet. 'She'll send us a cheque for lilt y pounds. We don't want their mean charity! What Gerard might be able to manage is to find you a job- that's it, he'll fix you up, that's the least he can do! So that's settled! It is – settled – isn't it?'

Violet was gazing at Tamar with a tense beseeching stare, ready to dissolve into joy or into anger. Tamar, looking at the inn jars and mustard pots, could picture tier mother's face.' She bowed her head and the storm of tears began. Violet, beginning to cry too, came round the table, moved a chair up beside her child, and hugged tier with gratitude and relief.

At about the time when Violet and Tamar were crying in each other's arms, and Gerard, who had stopped crying, was lying on his bed and thinking about his father and about Grey, and Duncan was lying on his bed and trying to cry and not succeeding, jean Kowitz, faint with an inextricable pain ofjoy and fear, had reached the house south of the river where Crimond lived. His address was in the telephone book.,Jean had not needed to consult this volume however. She had regularly checked his whereabouts, without any intention of going to see him, to know where he was as a place to avoid and perhaps simply to know where he was.

The address materialised as a shabby three-storey. semidetached house with a basement. It was faced with grimy crumbling stucco dotted with holes showing the bricks, also damaged, beneath. The window frames were cracking and almost bare of paint, and an upstairs window appeared to be broken. The house, though dirty and neglected, its scars searched out by the brilliant sunshine, was somehow solid and more imposing than the rat-hole in which Jean had imagined Crimond to be living. It and its neighbours were evidently divided into rooms and flats. Many of the houses had a row of names beside their doors. Crimond's house had only two, his own and above it some sort of Slavonic name.

The big squarish front door, scrawled over with fissures and reached by four steps up, was ajar. jean pushed it a little and peered into a dark hallway containing a bicycle. There was a bell beside the door, but by itself, not related to the names. jean pushed the bell but there was no sound. She stepped into the hall. It was hot and stuffy and the dusty air entered front outside with no hint of refreshment. The uncovered unpainted floorboards creaked and echoed. Some stairs led upward. The door of the front room was wide open and Jean looked in. The first thing