The Book And The Brotherhood

little house with his little friendly things. It was required of him to be elsewhere, with other people, not friends, there could be no more friends, and no more things either. Of course, going away, going right away, wouldn't mean quarrelling with Gerard, but it would mean abandoning him, being so alp, and far off that Gerard, if he figured at all, would becom, mere tourist in his life. That break, that breaking, was som. how essential; and on quiet evenings when Jenkin was alone ''I his house, listening to the radio and going to bed early, wh he intended could seem to him not only absurd but terrible, kind of death, a pure loss: what Gerard said virtue looked lih, when you saw it from below. Well, it wasn't virtue he wasalici either. His wish was something far more wilful.

When Gerard When Gerard left Jenkin and began to walk from Shepherd's Bush to Notting Hill through the fog, wrapped in the great dark cloak of his thoughts, he found himself remembering a story someone had told him about the method of fishing on some island in the South Seas. What the natives did was this, They let out from the beach an enormous round net stretchinN forward deep into the sea. At the appropriate time – Gerard could not recall how long the process took – the huge net was, with efforts demanding the co-operation of the whole village, winched in toward the shore. As the enormous bundle slowly approached the land and began to be visible above the surface, the net was found to contain a mass of huge fish and what the narrator (who immediately gave up swimming) called 'sea monsters'. The creatures, as they found themselves confined and being removed from their element, began a ferocious and fantastic threshing about, a maelstrom of terror and force, a flailing of great tails, a flashing of great eyes and jaws. They also began to attack each other, making the sea red with their blood. When Gerard told the story later to Jenkin he spontaneously used it as an image of the unconscious mind. Later he wondered why the comparison had seemed apt. Surely his unconscious was full of quiet peaceful fish? Jenkin was more concerned about the poor dying creatures and reiterated his frequent notion, never acted upon, that he ought to become a vegetarian. Gerard was not sure why he remembered this now. Talk with Jenkin always sent waves of force through Gerard's mind, usuall^y beneficent and pleasant ones. Today however the vibrations had made him uneasy as if, though everything seemed as usual, the wavelength had changed. He thought, something's wrong with Jenkin, or perhaps something's wrong with me. He could not make out, reflecting, whether the uneasiness was really about Jenkin or about Crimond. Perhaps the flailing monsters were monsters of jealousy. Gerard was much given to jealousy, a sin with which otruggled and which he meticulously concealed.

The rainy Pleiads wester, Orion plunges prone, the stroke of midnight ceases, and I lie down alone. The rainy Pleiads rter, and seek beyond the sea, the head that I shall dream of, and't will not dream of me.'This poem of A. E. Housman, a rendering of some Greek thing, was often, during these days, repeated to himself by Gulliver Ashe as a kind of liturgy, not octly a prayer. It brought him some comfort. Not that it ad, for him, any precise meaning or application. He was not, at that time, dreaming of any particular head, beyond the sea or not. He was certainly lying down alone, but he had been wing this for some time and was used to it. The little desolation of the poem had for him some larger and more cosmic ring. Gulliver was unemployed. It had taken him some me to realise this as a condition, and one likely to endure.

Gerard, who had got Tamar a job, had also got one for Gulliver, but Gulliver had almost immediately lost it. Gerard had been 'very nice about it', and had twice asked Gulliver to time and see him, but Gull now avoided Gerard. Being, sort of, ashamed was, he was beginning to see, one of the signs of the condition. Gulliver’s job, which lasted four weeks, was with some grand printers and designers who specialised in books, where Gulliver was to be a 'research assistant'. Later he suspected this job had simply been invented to oblige Gerard. Gull was virtually the office boy, then was required to muck in for an absent porter and carry books. The porter did not return, Gulliver, fed up with carrying books, demand some research. Someone was rude to him and he walked out.

Gulliver had 'done' English at a London college and emerged with a good degree and a lot of embryonic talents. He had been a successful student actor and considered a stage career. He also wanted to be a writer, to edit a left-wing periodical, to go into left-wⁱng polⁱtics. He got himself into tut acting school where he decided he would really lⁱke to bc it director or stage designer. He left because someone offered him some book reviewing, and he wanted to start a novel. The book reviews went well, he finished the novel, but could no find a publisher. He applied for and gained a job in the BBC as a trainee producer in radio. He wanted to transfer to television but was not able to. His second novel had also failed to be published. Gulliver attributed its failure to lack of time, and left the BBC to live on his savings and devote himself to writing. He published some short stories, one of which wam made into a television play. He tried to get back into the BBC and failed, but got a job in a theatre workshop. He did a little acting and a little stage managing and even acquired an Equity card, but nothing lasted. He became a drama critic on a literary periodical. In this way years passed and Gulliver was now over thirty. So far he had enjoyed his adventures, sure he could always 'turn his hand to something'. Now things began quietly to get worse. He failed to gain a coveted editorship, the periodical could no longer afford him, the theatre workshop had ceased to exist. There was less money around, there were economics everywhere. He wrote a few more stories but no one published them. He had not the spirit to try another novel. At the time of the midsummer dance he had been unemployed for several months.

Gulliver had been supported through the later years of an unhappy childhood, and through his happy student days and after by an idea of himself as rather beautiful and raffish. As a

student actor and in his earl^y post-graduate years he had been markedly good-looking and attractive to both sexes. He found himself at home with both, but, with high expectations, failed blot the desired wonderful partner. In his raffish persona he at one time frequented various, reportedly louche, gay bars. He wore black leather and studded belts and chains and sinister boots. He could never decide whether this was mere play^,isng or whether it was a brave and ingenious search for reality. There was always a lot of talk about 'identit^y'. But when he went to the gay bars he couldn't tell pretence from real. Later he wondered why he hadn't been murdered. He never told Gerard about that period. Another thing which he never told Gerard was that it was _in a rather special gay bar that he had first heard Gerard's name mentioned. Of course Gerard never came near these places, but people talked about him. He had first got to know Gerard through a rescue operation for a little avant-garde theatre in Fulham; Gerard iii,ide a financial contribution and turned up once or twice. I lie theatre did not survive long however. Gulliver's heart still beat a little fast for Gerard, but he had never expected to be Mal sort of favourite, it being generally known that Gerard did not now have them. Gull was sufficiently flattered to have become friendly with Gerard's friends, and to have been (at a moment when Gerard was feeling guilty about him) co-opted unto to the book committee. In fact, such was Gerard's habitual wocence that the 'encouragement' which he imagined he had given Gulliver existed largely in Gerard's mind, and had jAcarcely appeared perceptibly in the external world.

Gulliver had applied for job after job, gradually reducing his expectations and humbling his pride. He applied to the BBC, the British Council, the Labour Party, the local Town Hall, the University of London. He tried and failed to get a grant to continue his education. Of course he looked for acting jobs but soon realised this was hopeless when good and experienced actors were out of work. He applied wildly for jobs at an increasing variety of institutions and offered himself as numerous kinds of school teacher or social worker. He discovered he had many unsuspected talents and enthusiasms: he was very good with children, with old people, with lunatics, with animals, he was very young, very mature, very experienced, very versatile, very ready to learn. He had no success, aware that every job attracted hundreds of applicants. He had not yet applied to be a porter, waiter, unskilled factory hand, assuming he would be rejected, and regarding this anyway as a desperate perhaps fatal move. He had savings, he kept on hoping; but by now he had clearly envisaged the possibility that, although he was young and talented and had a university degree, he might never be emplowd again.

Gulliver had gone through the routines of pitying the unemployed and blaming the government. Now he was experiencing the thing itself. Often did he think resentfully, it’s not fair, I'm not the kind ofperson who is unemployed! Waking in the morning the misery of his situation quickly blackened his consciousness. He had not realised how solitary he was or had now become. He had been lonely as a child, but when he was a student imagined himself established, received into society, destined to be forever surrounded by friends. Now he was realising that if you are unemployed and have no money, you can cease to be a person. He