The Book And The Brotherhood

`I wish I was dead,' said Lily. 'I'm good for nothing. I’m rotten, I'm wicked.'

Gerard, sitting next to her at the table, said, 'Stop it, Lily, I won't have you saying such untrue things in this house!'

`My accountant says my money's running out.'

`I'm sure it isn't, it must be invested.'

`I don't know, I don't know what invested is. Oh I'm so unhappy, and I can't be happy.'

`Of course you can, I know you can. You can help other people.'

`I hate other people, I hate myself, I can't trust anyone, nobody cares about me -'

`Oh stop it! Of course people care, I care for example. ‘

‘If you're worried about your money or anything you can always come to me.'

`Can I?' said Lily in amazement. She dried her tears on the soft billowy sleeve of her dress, the front of which was stained with red wine. She turned to Gerard a drunken ravaged face crazy with relief and said suddenly, 'I've always wanted to look at these pictures, I've never been able to, they look so nice.'

`We can look at them now,' said Gerard. They got up and he lifted a candle. There's a butterfly, there's a snail, there's a beetle flying, there's a frog, the Japanese like frogs, there's a girl washing her hair…'

The noise outside was becoming louder and louder. Gideon was exclaiming with pleasure, Violet's eyes were shining, her mouth was open, Patricia's hands were at her face. Why do they like those awful terrifying sounds, thought Rose. Do I like them? Perhaps I do. Oh where is Gerard? She saw Gulliver turning away and gliding in long strides towards the house. Gulliver opened the dining room door and saw Gerard holding a candle up beside one of the pictures which Lily was lookin^g at. Gulliver felt an uncomfortable pain in his diaphragm. It was a feeling he had not had for some time. He recognised it as jealousy. But why, for whom, of whom, about what? He closed the door again.

A ^great flight of rockets suddenly flew upward. Then from quite nearby came a long series of deafening explosions, much louder than anything which they had heard yet. They covered their ears. Patricia cried out, 'That's not fireworks, it can't be, it must be bombs, it's terrorists!'

`No!' cried Jenkin in ecstasy, 'it's the party at the French Embassy!'

Rose had gone into the house. She went to the dining room and turned the light on.

As the light of the rockets went out and the echo of the explosions ceased, Duncan moved over to where Tamar was standing, and extended his hand quietly sideways towards her, and for a moment her small hand clasped his.

`Jenkin didn't send those flowers,' said Rose, 'I asked him – and I'm sure Duncan didn't.'

`I'm glad Duncan came, that was Tamar's doing. She thought her visit to him wasn't a success, but evidently it was!'

The guests had gone, Patricia and Gideon had retired, Rose and Gerard were sitting in the drawing room beside the glowing remains of the open fire, holding glasses of whisky and soda. The candles, carefully secured in their candlesticks by Rose, had burnt down in an orderly manner and were extinguished. Electric lamps now made the room bright and calm.

`Did you talk to Duncan?' asked Rose.

`Scarcely. He told me one thing. He said Tamar had brok, of a teapot!'

`You mean when she visited him? Hot? Full of tea?'

`I don't think so, it was when she was trying to tidy up his kitchen, she knocked it off a shelf. Duncan didn't seem to mind, he thought it was a joke, he became helpless with laughter when he was telling me!'

`Hysteria, drink. It can't have been a joke for poor Tamar who was trying to help. I can picture Duncan's kitchen, rather like Violet's! I assume he didn't say anything about Jean and Crimond.'

`No. I think he'll talk to me, but not yet.'

`What are we going to do about Crimond, I mean about the book?'

`Oh, I don't know!' said Gerard impatiently. He felt that `the others' were steadily pushing him toward some sort of confrontation with _.Crimond, some sort of showdown. He hated showdowns. On the other hand, he didn't want anyone else messing round with Crimond, if anyone dealt with Crimond it had to be him. But he disliked the prospect extremely.

Rose, reading his mind, said, 'It needn't be a fight! We can reasonably ask for a progress report! All this time he's had our money and not even sent a postcard to say thanks, book getting on! Anyway it's time we called a meeting of the committee.'

`Yes, yes. I'll call it. You know, Gulliver still hasn't found a job.'

`I think Gulliver was wearing make-up.'

`Rose, I'm tired, you're tired. Off you go.'

Rose felt a little drunk and very disinclined to go home. She had frightened herself this evening, had been deeply disturbed by her ridiculous and unworthy feelings of jealousy about Lily and Tamar. Am I to grieve if he even looks at another woman, do I, I, then feel so insecure? Yes. After all these years I am absolutely without defence, I can be broken in an instant. Nothing whatever binds him to the relation that we have now, he is scarcely aware of it as a state of af irs that can change, or indeed as a state of affairs at all! I suppose it's good that he takes me so much for granted, she thought, but just that also means that I have no rights. Rights? So now she was thinking about rights! She could imagine Gerard's reaction to any language of that sort! But I must talk to him, she thought, I must tell him, I must, oh it sounds so weak and spiritless, ask him to reassure me. But how can I put it, and what can he say? I must be open and sincere. But what do I want? What I want now is not to go home but to go to Gerard's bed and lie with him until the world ends. Can I tell him that? Does he know?

`Don't ring for a taxi,' she said, 'I'll get one easily if I just walk to the end of the road. Don't bother to come.'

`Of course I'll come! Where the hell did Pat put my coat?'

Out in the street when the taxi stopped and its door was open, Gerard kissed Rose on the lips as he often did and she put her arms round his neck as she often did.

Tamar left the office early that evening. She had got used to the office, although the head of the firm called her `Totsy', and one of her female colleagues had lectured her on her clothes. The unattached young men liked her and teased her but made no advances. She was going to see Duncan. A note from him had suggested she should come again, and she had rung up and arranged to come.

In the situatⁱon into which Gerard had prompted her to enter, Tamar had felt herself in the role of a slave-girl who, without any special relation with either, was to bring the hero, and the heroine together. She was, in this, to be unnoticed and unrewarded, a mere tool. Looking back later she realised that she had never believed that she could in any way assist that reconciliation, but had simply believed in Gerard's belief and felt pleased (so there was some pleasure in it) to be chosen. Something however had happened now to complicate her task. She was not sure when exactly it had happened: perhaps when Duncan had cried 'Stop!’ and led her by the hand back to the sofa, or just after that when they were sitting on the sofa looking at each other, or possibly later on that night when she was at home in her bedroom thinking about Duncan and his huge head and mane and his gentle quizzical clever look. She certainly could not put it that she had fallen in love with him, that was, because of the difference in their ages and his status in her life, entirely impossible. But her feelings of sympathy, her desire to' help and heal, were intensified, she thought about him more and could recognise stirrings of a sexual nature. Tamar was not dismayed. No one knew of this, mild and harmless after all, condition and no one would ever know. She had had similar vague feelings when she was younger in equally inviable situations, for a master at school, for Leonard Fairfax, for Jean, even for Gerard, and knew that these things were innocent, could be concealed and suppressed, and would pass. She had felt some acute anxiety at the Guy Fawkes party, wondering if he would come, then when