The Book And The Brotherhood

cliches.'

`Don't say such bad untrue things! People's love may not help you, but it's there. You say they can't come near. All right, but I'm here, I'm near, and I love you!'

`Don't, Tamar, please -'

`I love you!' As she said this Tamar turned towards him and stretched out her arms, slipping her hands round Duncan's thick bull neck and thrusting them under the heavy cool mass of his dark hair. Taken by surprise Duncan put his arm round her shoulder, Tamar knelt and drew herself towards him, then twisting, still holding on by her hands now locked under his hair, found herself sitting on his knee. They both gasped. Tamar stayed awkwardly in position, her head against the rough tweed of his jacket collar. Then something in their attitude horrified them both, the sense perhaps, never clarified, of her as a child and him as a father, and she sprang back, propelling herself like a startled animal into the farther corner of' the sofa, where she gazed at Duncan with her cheeks flaming and one hand containing her beating heart.

She said, 'I'm so sorry. I just felt – I do love you, and so do other people, and I wanted to tell you so.'

'Tamar, come back,' said Duncan, 'come here.' He had taken off his glasses.

The note of command was new and Tamar felt its novelty and understood its sense even though it was only later that she inflected upon the seemingly inevitable stages of their movements, plotted as in a strange game. She rose to her knees, then sat again beside him, tucking in her legs as she had before, holding one of her thin ankles in one hand. She turned her head against his nearer shoulder, stretching out one arm along the sofa behind him. He now put both arms around her, gentling her into an easier position, capturing the awkward stretching arm, supporting her as she now was, half kneeling, with her face in his hair and mouth against his hot neck. They stayed thus for a moment with two accelerated hearts beating violently against each other. Then with closed eyes they found rich other's lips and kissed carefully twice. After that Duncan milled her along so that she was leaning against the end of the sofa and drew his legs up so that they, again awkwardly, were half reclining side by side and face to face.

`I love you, Duncan,' said Tamar. 'I love you. I'm sorry. Don't be angry with me.'

`I'm not angry with you, how could I be. Oh Tamar, if you only knew what an absolute hell I'm in.'

`I so much want to help you, but I can't, I know I can't, and I shouldn't have come but I did want to say that I love you. Oh, don't be in hell -'

`Get that woollen thing off, I want to put my arms round you properly.'

Tamar slithered out of her cardigan which fell on the floor and Duncan's arms came round her and the buttons of his jacket pressed into her breasts. A moment later he too had slipped his jacket off and gathered her against his stout chest which was bursting out of his shirt, while one hand undid the buttons on her high-necked blouse. A great heat came out of Duncan's body, so that Tamar, pressed against it, felt almost scorched. Her love and her pity for him merged into a swift dizzy physical joy of self-giving as she felt herself strongly enclosed by his arms, his faintly rough cheek scraping hers and his large hot hand laid upon her throat.

After a few moments of this Duncan sat up, pulling her with him. 'This is absurd, there isn't room for us on this sofa, would you mind if we went and lay on my bed? I just want to hold you and be comforted by you. It's for me to say, don't be angry!'

Tamar's hands were clasped round his neck and she hung from his neck as, not waiting for an answer, he rose, then stooped and lifted her up in his arms. Tamar had never been carried by a man before. He said, 'How light you are, you weigh nothing.' He carried her into the guest room, which Duncan had occupied since Jean left, and laid her down on the bed. He unlaced her shoes and removed them, holding her warm feet for a moment in his hands, then removed his own shoes, and undid the buttons of'his shirt. He lay down beside her, occupying himself with undoing the remaining buttons of her blouse. Tamar lay against her with his big heavy dark head between her breasts. He said, his moist breath muffled against her, ‘Forgive me.’

`I love you,' said Tamar, 'I love you absolutely. I've loved you ever since – ever since teapot -' She was going to say 'ever since the dance', for it came to her that even then she had been ready to give to Duncan all that great store of love which she had put in readiness for someone else. But not wishing to remind him of the dance, she said, 'Ever since forever.'

Duncan, kissing her breasts, murmured with his wet mouth against her smooth skin, 'Good old teapot.' Then ^he said, 'Do you mind if we undress a bit more?' They undressed a bit more, quickly, but not completely, flinging garments away and clinging desperately together, warm flesh seeking warm flesh.

`You're not angry with me? No, I know you're not. You're an angel. You're the only thing in the world that isn't made of evil and darkness and hell. You're saving me, it's a miracle, I couldn't have believed it, you've made me come alive again, I'm back in the world, I can imagine not dying of grief, I can imagine wanting to live. I feel something again, love, gratitude, surprise. Do you understand?'

`Yes, but it's only for a moment,' she said. 'I mean, with us, it's only for a moment. I'm so glad and so grateful – I'd do anything for you, anything, so that you could live and be happy. This moment will pass. But you must go on living and feeling things and knowing that it's not all hell and you won't die of grief.'

Duncan was silent. Then he said, 'I love you, kid, I'm so grateful to you – I didn't expect this -'

`You're grateful and I'm glad, I'm so glad. This will pass. Jean will come back, I know she'll come back. That's what I want for you more than anything, that's why I came, that's what I'm for -'

Duncan's hand that was holding one of hers squeezed it with violent force. Then he took her hand to his face and kissed it and laid it on his cheek. A little later he said, 'Do you mind? Just roll over for a moment, I’m going to pull off the counter-pane and the blankets. I want us to be more completely together. Don’t worry, I can’t make children, I probably can’ t make anything with you, I just want to hold you entirely in my arms. Oh pardon me, Tamar, help me, help me, hells me -'

Gerard had found a parrot. It was in a pet shop ⁱⁿ the Gloucester Road. It was very like Grey, but was certainly not Grey. Gerard, who had been passing, was outside the shop, the parrot was in its cage in the window. They gazed at each other. The parrot was shy, then coy, then grave, very conscions of being closely observed. It stood attentive, head on one side, one foot raised. Gerard did not smile. He looked at the parrot with a tender melancholy stare, a reverent humble stare, as if the parrot were some sort of small god, yet at the same time he wanted to say, 'I'm sorry, oh I'm so sorry,' as if to a pitiable innocent victim. He even murmured half aloud, 'I’m sorry,' meaning, he supposed, that he was sorry that the parrot was a captive, in a cage in London, and not flying about in the tall trees of the rain forests in central Africa where grey parrots come from.

It was a very cold afternoon and a little snow was falling in small frail flakes between Gerard and the parrot. The snow was slowly like a visible silence as if it were part of the ritual making a private place wherein Gerard and the bird were alone together. Gerard's reflections and feelings expanded about him into a stilled thought-chamber wherein he ceased to hear the traffic or be aware of the passers-by. He thought of his father lying dead with his waxen alienated face, his high thinned nose and sunken chin, and pathetic open mouth, his poor defeated dead father, whose image was now and forever connected with the ghost of the grey parrot. Perhaps, indeed it was very likely, that Grey was alive while his father was dead. Gerard wanted to tell this, felt he was somehow telling it, to the parrot in the shop. The cage was hung quite high up, so that the parrot and Gerard were eye to eye. There were no other creatures in the window. The pity and love which Gerard felt for the parrot, the tender sad guilt, were very like the feelings which he had when he thought about his father, about the things which ought to have been said and the affection which ought to have been more openly expressed. Do the dead know how much we loved them, did they know, for they know nothing now? As Gerard was thinking these thoughts, he found that he had instinctively moved his hands, beginning to lift them towards the cage. He recognised the movement as the shadow-start of one he had so often perrmed of opening the door of Grey's cage and putting in his kild and watching the bird climb onto his fingers, feeling the cool scaly clutch of the feet, then lifting the little oh so light almost weightless living being out of the cage to cradle it against him while he stroked the soft feathers. At this remembrance tears came into Gerard's eyes.

And it was as if the parrot now before him understood, and felt sympathy and sorrow, while remaining, like a close but calm friend, detached, surveying but not swept into the dark pool of grief. The bird was now moving to