The Book And The Brotherhood

'Neither do I.'

'It shouldn't have happened.'

`But it showed something.'

`That doesn't matter now. It can't matter. If it mattered yoo wouldn't have come to the dance.'

'Oh that. It was on impulse.'

'Oh that! Crimond, understand, I have left a husband whom I esteem and love, and friends who will never forgive me, in order to give myself to you entirely and forever. I hereby give myself. I love you. You are the only being whom I can love absolutely with my complete self, with all my flesh and mind and heart. You are my mate, my perfect partner, and I am yours. You must feel this now, as I do, as we did last night and trembled because we did. It was a marvel that we ever met. It is some kind of divine luck that we are together now. We must never never part again. We are, here, in this, necessary beings, like gods. As we look at each other we verify, we know, the perfection of our love, we recognise each other. Here is my life, here if need be is my death. It's life and death, as if they were to destroy Israel – if I forget thee, O Jerusalem -'

Crimond, who had been frowning during this declaration, said, shifting in his chair and picked up his spectacles, 'I don't care for these Jewish oaths – and we are not gods. We'll just have to see what happens.'

'All right, if it doesn't work we can always kill each other, as you said then! Crimond, you've produced a miracle, we're together – aren't you pleased? Say you love me.'

'I love you, Jean Kowitz. But we must also recall that we have managed without each other for many years – a long time during which neither of us made any signal.'

'Yes. I don't know why that was. Perhaps it was a punishment for our failure to stay together. We had to go through an ordeal, a sort of purgatory, to believe we could deserve each other again. Now the appointed time has come. We are ready. I have left Duncan -'

'Yes, yes – I'm sorry about Duncan. You also mention your friends who will never forgive you, or me.'

'They hate you. They'd like to thrash you. They'd like to humiliate you. They felt like that before – and now… '

‘You sound pleased.'

'It doesn't matter about them, compared with us they don't exist. Can we go and live in France? I'd like that.'

'No. My work is here. If you come to me you must do what I want.’

' I'll always do that,' said Jean. ‘I thought about you every day. If at any time you'd made the least gesture – but I imagined -'

'E_'nough of that. Never mind what you imagined, here you are. Now I must get on with my work. I suggest you go upstairs and lie down. Have you eaten, would you like anything to eat?'

'No. I feel I shall never eat again.'

'I'll fetch you later. Then we can both sleep down here where there's room for two. Then we'll discuss what we'll do.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'How we'll live together. How what must be will be.’

‘ Yes. It must be. All right. I'll go and rest. This is real. Isn't it?

'Yes. Go now.'

'I want you.'

'Go now, my little hawk.'

Jean rose promptly and went upstairs. She thought, we haven't touched each other. That's as it should be. That's his way. We haven't touched each other yet, but all that we are has sprung together into one substance. It's like some great atomic charge, we are each other. Oh thank God. She went into the back room and pulled the curtains and kicked her shoes off then crawled onto the divan drawing the blankets up over her head. In an instant she was asleep, tumbling slowly over and over through a deep darkening air of pure joy.

PART TWO

MIDWINTER

‘I think there's some beer somewhere,' said Jenkin.

'Don't worry, I've brought some drink,' said Gerard.

'Sorry.'

'This has happened before.'

'I believe so.'

'God, it's cold!'

'I'll turn on the fire.'

Gerard was, after an impromptu telephone call, visiting Jenkin at Jenkin's little terrace house off the Goldhawk Road prar the Arches. Jenkin had lived in this house for many years, purr since the polytechnic days before he returned to school – mastering. Jenkin's road was still very much as it had been full of what Jenkin called 'ordinary blokes'. Neighbouring areas were however becoming 'gentrified', to Jenkin's disgust. Gerard often came to this house. Today he came without warning, not because anything particular was, but because an awful lot of things were, on his mind.

The momentous Commem Ball was now months away in past. It was a foggy evening in late October. Jenkin's house, which had no central heating, was indeed cold, a house which let all weather come inside. Jenkin in fact welcomed the weather at all times of year, the sight of a closed window made him uneasy. Whatever the temperature he slept in an unled bedroom with a breeze blowing. He allowed himself a water bottle in winter however. He hastily now, to please fi lend, closed several windows and turned on the gas fire in little sitting room. Jenkin lived mainly in the kitchen and nut occupy this 'front room' or'parlour', which he kept for C The room was, like everything in Jenkin's house, very I and clean, and rather sparse and bare. It was not without some pretty objects, mostly donated by Gerard, but the spirit of the room resisted these, it failed to merge them into the calm homogeneous harmony which Gerard thought every room should possess, it remained raw and accidental. The faded wallpaper, light green with shadowy reddish flowers, was varied here and there by patches of yellow distempered wall beneath, where Jenkin had carefully removed areas of paper which had become torn. The eflect was not unpleasant. The very clean carpet was faded too, its blue and red flowers merged into a soft brown. The green tiles in front of the fire were shiny from regular washing. The wooden-armed chairs, ranged against the wall until company arrived, had beige folk-weave upholstery. The mantelpiece above the fire was adorned by a row of china cups, some ofthem gifts ot'Gerard's, and a stone, a grey sea pebble with a purple stripe, a present from Rose. To these Jenkin had just added, brought in from the kitchen together with two wine glasses, a green tumblci containing a few red-leaved twigs. The gas fire was purring, The thick dark velveteen curtains were pulled against the foggy dusk. A lamp, a long-ago present from Gerard, was alight in a corner. Gerard rearranged the cups, turned off thr centre light, and handed over the bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau to be opened by his host. Jenkin, when nervous, which he often was, had a habit of making little unconscious sounds. Now as, watched by Gerard, he manipulated the corkscrew, he uttered a series of throaty grunts, then as he poured the wine into the glasses and set the bottle down on the tiles, began to hum.

Jenkin, though so old a friend, remained for Gerard a source of fascinated, sometimes exasperated, puzzlement. Jenkin's house was excessively orderly, minimally and randomly furnished, and often felt to Gerard cheerless and somehow empty. The only real colour and multiplicity in the house was provided by Jenkin's books, which occupied two upstairs rooms, completely covering the walls and most of the floor, Yet Jenkin always knew