The Book And The Brotherhood

Tamar saw, as before, his stout bulk, his flushed plump wrikled face, but she saw in the same look his big animal head with its flowing mane, his huge nostrils like a horse, his sad melancholy of a beast who has been a prince, and now that he had taken off his heavy glasses the apologetic but intent and humorous gaze of his dark eyes.

She said, 'I do like your strange inky eye, it's beautiful, have in always had it?'

'Yes. The rug looks all right already. But your stockings are all stained with tea.'

Tamar laughed and adjusted her skirt. With the centre light on she could now see the desolation of the room. The pictures had been removed from the walls, the bookcase was empty, the mantelpiece was bare, the armchairs, pushed back against the wall, were covered with newspapers and random clothes. Everything was dusty. Tamar recognised the scenery of unhappiness as it existed too in her own house.

Duncan, seeing her glance around, said, 'You'd better go now, Tamar, this is no place for a white woman.'

'But I want to wash up and clean the kitchen.'

'No. Thank you for coming. Are you coming to Guy Fawkes at Gerard's? Perhaps I'll see you there. Please don't worry about the teapot.'

Once again Tamar cried on the way home, but with different tears.

,'Who was Guy Fawkes anyway?' said Lily Boyne.

It was the evening of the Guy Fawkes day party at Gerard's house, and everyone, with the exception of Gideon, seemed to be feeling nervous or out of temper.

`He tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament,' said Gulliver.

`I know that, silly, but who was he and why did he want to blow up the Houses of Parliament?'

Gulliver, already irritable because he had arrived five minutes ago and had not yet been offered a drink, and now irritated at being asked a tiresome question to which he only vaguely knew the answer, replied, 'He was a Catholic.'

`So, what's wrong with that?'

`There weren't supposed to be any Catholics, at least they had to keep their heads down.'

'Why?'

`Oh Lily – don't you know any history! England wan Protestant since Henry the Eighth. Fawkes and his pals objected. So they tried to blow up James the First when he was opening Parliament.'

`He sounds like a brave man defending his ideals, a sort of freedom fighter.'

`He was some sort of shady thug, he may have been a double agent or an agent provocateur. People think now there never really was a plot, it was all organised by the government to discredit the Catholics.'

`Oh. You mean there was no gunpowder?'

`I don't know! I suppose they had to pretend to discover something! Then they hanged a lot of Catholics, and Guy Fawkes too.'

`I thought they burnt him.'

`We burn him. They hanged him.'

`But why, if it was him who arranged it all for their benefit?'

`I suppose he knew too much. Someone promised to get him off, but then didn't or couldn't.'

`I feel very sorry for him,' said Lily, `he was a protester.'

`He was a terrorist. You can't approve of blowing up parliament.'

`It wasn't democratically elected in those days,' said Lily, `it was just a lot of boss types. I've never understood whether Guy Fawkes day is to hate Guy Fawkes or to love him. He's a sort of folk hero really.'

`I suppose people like explosions.'

`You mean we're all terrorists at heart? I expect this will dawn on someone one day and Guy Fawkes will be banned, he'll have to go underground.'

They had arrived, ived, separately, rather early and were now standing, in the awkward lonely attentive attitudes of too-early guests, beside the open fire in Gerard's drawing room which was lit only by candles. It was the tradition that, except in the kitchen, only candlelight should be allowed on Guy Fawkes night. Gulliver was annoyed, and annoyed with himself for being annoyed, that Lily had been invited. Gulliver had attended now for several consecutive years. Lily had never been _invited before. Last year it had been very select. Gull was now, observing Lily more closely in the candlelight, annoyed by her bizarre appearance. He was troubled b^y the possibility that Gerard had invited Lily because he thought Gulliver liked her. On the other hand, if she had to be there, he wanted her to make a creditable show. Mistaking the tone of the party, and envisaging it as some kind of carnival, Lily had spent some time earlier in the evening painting her face with red and yellow stripes. Just before departure however her courage had failed and she had hastily washed the stripes off, leaving a number of streaks and blotches which were now showing through the powder which she had hastily dabbed on. Gulliver himself, trusting to profit by the candlelight, had ventured to put on some discreet make- up.

Lily was remembering an occasion in her childhood when she had seen a large realistic guy burnt on a bonfire. The children laughed as the guy jumped about in the heat and even raised his stumpy hands up in the air. Lily had felt horror and terror and devastating pity and a kind of rage which, as she could not intelligibly direct it against anyone else, she turned upon herself. She bit her hands and tore her hair. She felt that old emotion for a moment now and raised one hand to her hair, the other to her heart.

Rose came in carrying a tray of glasses and a jug which she put down with a bump and a tinkle on the table. She turned on a lamp. She too was irritated with Gerard for asking Lily. She felt this ridiculous unworthy irritation even though she liked Lily and invited her to her own parties. Rose was feeling tired She had spent a lot of the day making sandwiches and smoked salmon canapes and shopping for cheese and the kind of little cakes which Gerard was partial to. It was not exactly a buffet, more a bunfight as Jenkin once put it. The main thing, Jenkin said, was to get a little drunk. He was the one who bought and organised the fireworks, which Gerard paid for. Jenkin was now in the garden with Gerard and Gideon fixing posts for ili catherine wheels and digging in the bottles to take the sticks of the rockets. Thank heavens it was not raining. Rose was also exasperated with Patricia who had welcomed Gulliver and Lily as if it were her house. Rose, who had left her coat upstairs on Gerard's bed as she usually did, had found it removed by Pat to a downstairs cloakroom where guests were being told to leave their things. Then when Rose carried her carefully packed food into the kitchen she found Patricia in control expressing amazement that Rose had brought all that still when she, Patricia, had already made a terrine, a steak aril kidney pie, a vegetable curry, a ratatouille, various salads, wed a sherry trifle. Rose did not say that surely Patricia knew by now that Gerard, who hated standing about with a plate and a knife and fork, or perching on a chair with a plate on his knee, spared his guests this indignity, and at such a party, only tolerated food which could be held in the hand. She did not even protest when she saw Patricia putting away her sandwiches at the back of the fridge. Perhaps Rose should have consulted Patricia beforehand about the food. But Patricia and Gideon, though always asked to this party, did not often come, and Rose was not yet used to the idea that they now lived in Gerard's house and were all ready to be the life and soul of the evening. Violet was always invited too, and sometimes actually came, this was another hazard. Rose was also in a state of anxiety about whether Duncan would turn up and whether if he did he would get impossibly drunk. The general view was that Duncan would not come. Rose identified very much with Duncan's suffering and probably understood it even better than Gerard did. She also grieved and worried about Jean and very much wanted to write to her, but felt she could not do so without telling Gerard beforehand, which she was not prepared to do. Gerard had told Rose portentously that Tamar had seen both Jean and Duncan and had reported back to him, though he did not say what she had said. Rose did not share Gerard's view of Tamar as all-wise and all-holy, and she thought poorly of his idea not least because Tamar might get seriously hurt or upset. If Tamar had been upset she certainly would not tell Gerard. Rose resolved to talk to her herself later on.

Rose was wearing a markedly simple dress, a sort of oatmeal mhift with a brown leather belt, suited, she felt, to this occasion at which, she now also realised, she and Jean had often been the only women. Patricia had put on a swishy black evening skirt with a striped blouse. Lily was clad in a bulky voluminous much pleated robe of light blue crepe, hitched up in Grecian fashion over a low invisible girdle, revealing dark red suede boots. Rose, now noticing the curiously mottled, indeed marbled, appearance of Lily's face, turned off the lamp which she had turned on. She