The Book And The Brotherhood

Gulliver, fortunately informed beforehand by Gerard that he need not bring evening dress, was wearing his best dark suit, white shirt, and soberly spotted bow tie. He had not been too drunk to comb down his sleek oily dark hair surreptitiously as he came up the stairs. This sleekness gave him a slightly sinister look (which pleased him) but also (he did not realise) made him look older. He looked thin, thin-faced, sallow, hungry and tired, like a minor character playing an unsuccessful lawyer or ill-intentioned priest. Only his pure brown eyes (like a pond of obscure but fragrant water, someone in a gay bar once told him) retained a childish boyish expression of uncertainty and fear. Lily, who had been wearing at dinner a long close-fitting dress covered with green sequins, which everyone politely said made her look like a mermaid, had now changed (not caring that Gull saw her momentarily in her petticoat) into a magnificent dark blue and white dressing gown. Lily looked tired too and a little petulant. A fold of stained lizardish skin descended over one of her pale brown dark-rimmed eyes. She moistened her thin silver lips and fluffed up her scanty pale dry hair. (Gull's hair would have looked better if he had fluffed it up occasionally instead of combing it down.) They returned to their chairs by the fire.

'Do you believe in flying saucers,' said Lily, 'do you think people from other galaxies are coming here to observe us?'

'No.'

'I do. It's immensely probable. There are millions of planets like ours. Of course they don't want us to see them. They're wailing books about us.'

'All right, maybe they're here and we can't see them, maybe they're in this room. The point is they make no difference.'

'How do you know? How do you know how different things would be if they weren't there?'

'They might be better. They couldn't be worse. So they can’t care much. When they've finished their books they'll wipe us out, and a good thing too.'

'Of course the whole universe will end one day. So what's the point, if it's all ending, what's the use of anything? I wonder if this house is haunted, I must ask Rose. It's near to a ley line.'

'What makes you think so?'

'I feel it. Roman roads run along ley lines. What do you think about ley lines?'

'I think they're things that don't make any difference, like saucers.’

' They’re physical, you know, you can find them by dowsing, where two underground streams meet. And they're concentrations of thought-energy too, where human beings have been, all those legions marching along, all those emotions!'

‘If the legions made the energy no wonder the ley line runs along the road.'

‘Oh, but it's cosmic energy too, like in stone circles. A ley line runs through Stonehenge. Are there any Stones above here? They all connect, you see.'

'I believe there's a stone of some sort in the wood.'

'I'll go and look at it, if it's charged with energy I'll know, My grandmother used to say -'

'Lily, this is all nonsense, it's irrational!'

'You're irrational, you won't look at evidence, you just know! I say, do you think I ought to go and see Tamar? She's eating practically nothing and she's as pale as a fish.'

'She's always pale and eats nothing, and she'll be asleep now. Let's have some more whisky.'

'Poor Tamar, oh poor poor little Tamar -'

'Lily -'

'Rose has such a calm smooth face, and she's so much older than me. My face looks bombed. You know, they've got it in for Crimond, they're going to smash him.'

'Who are?'

'They, the little earthly gods, the smarties, the know-alls. I heard them talking after dinner. God, I think I'm drunk, I'm seeing double or perhaps it's Saucer people.'

'Lily, dear, stop raving will you?'

'I'm on Crimond's side, I know you hate him, but I don't -‘

'Lily, just stand up for a moment, please.'

They stood together before the fire and Gulliver put his arms round her waist, drawing her up against him. He felt her thin hard fragile brittle body against his, then suddenly her heartbeat.

'Now let's sit down, over here.'

They moved to the little green sofa and Lily sat on Gulliver's knee and buried,her face in the shoulder of his best suit covering it with make-up.

'You know, I'd better tell you, I'm running out of money, the accountant told me, God knows where it's all gone to, people only care about my money, I'm nothing, I'm just a shell, I'm like a squashed snail -'

'Lily, stop it! Look, can I stay here tonight?'

'You don't know how awful it is to be me -'

'Can I stay -?'

'Oh if you want to, there's plenty of room, I don't care, but it won't be any good.' She started to cry.

Tamar was being closely observed now by Rose who was sitting on her bed. Rose had brought Tamar up a chocolate drink, specially made by Annushka, which Rose knew that Tamar liked, and Tamar had drunk a little of it. Rose had also brought aspirins and sleeping pills which had been refused.Tamar had politely insisted that she was quite well, nothing was the matter, she had eaten quite a lot really, she never had much appetite, she had slept perfectly well last night and would sleep perfectly well tonight. She was enjoying the Tale of Genji, there it was on her bedside table, and she was looking forward to reading a little before she went to sleep. Then she had suddenly started to cry. The tears were brief, like the automatic opening and closing of a sluice gate, large tears, they rolled down copiously for half a minute, then ceased. Rose tried to hold her hand, the hand with which she had been wiping away the tears, but she hid it in the bedclothes. Sitting up in bed in the little round room, with her striped pyjamas and thin tear-stained face, she looked like a small boy. Rose thought, she's ill, she may be in for a depression, I must speak to Violet, but what's the use of speaking to Violet, oh God, if I could only get hold of this child, kidnap her, take her away, and keep her! Perhaps I should have done just that years ago. But Violet is such a savage creature, she has so much will.

'Tamar, you're ill. I want you to see Doctor Tallcott, the doctor here in the village.'

‘Doctor- no!' Tamar looked quite alarmed.

'Your mother needn't know – Well, see your own doctor then. Of course Violet says he's no good -'

‘I'm not ill, I'm perfectly all right, I just want to be left alone, please, Rose dear, don't be cross with me -'

'Darling, I'm not!' Rose knelt down beside Tamar's bed and captured the little thin hand which had strayed out again, and kissed it. 'Will you really sleep now, can I do anything, bring you anything?'

`No, no, I'm all right, I'll sleep now I think, I won't read Genji, I feel you've done me good, don't worry about me, it’s nothing, I promise you, nothing.'

Rose had to be content with that. She left the room and stood for a moment outside. Tamar's light went out.

Rose went downstairs to her own bedroom. This always reminded her of her mother who had been so pretty, so anxious to please everyone, so lost after her son and her husband had both so quickly, so incredibly, so suddenly disappeared; so much under her husband's thumb, under Sinclair's, later under Rose's, even Reeve's. Rose still missed her mother, and looked about for her. She remembered being outraged when someone, a friend of Reeve's, had called her `idle'. Her mother was not idle, she was always busy, though not always with tasks which people would think had much point. The flowers were so beautifully done in her day. Rose and Annushka lacked that talent. The room, not intentionaly altered by Rose, had gradually disintegrated and faded while, remaining generally the same: the old-fashioned dressing table with the glass top, which used to be dusted over with her mother's face powder, the big 'gentlemen's wardrobe', dating from the days when she and Rose's father had occupied the double bed – how far away that seemed now, as if in another century – the shabby armchairs not suitable for guest rooms, the Axminster carpet covered with shadowy flowers, the pink and white striped wallpaper, the pink nearly invisible, the paper peeling, the ghostly rectangles of vanished pictures. The tapestry renderings of Biblical scenes had belonged to her mother's mother, herself an