‘Organs?’
‘Lizzie and I are really connected, we’re close, we’re like brother and sister, we’ve stopped wandering, we’re home. Till Lizzie came I was just waiting for the next drink, gin then milk, then gin then milk, you know how it used to go, I thought it would go on till I dropped. Now everything’s different, even the past is different, we’ve talked all our lives over together, every damn thing, we’ve talked it all out, we’ve sort of repossessed the past together and redeemed it-’
‘How perfectly loathsome.’
‘I mean we did it reverently, especially about you-’
‘You discussed
‘Yes, how could we not, Charles, you’re not invisible-oh, please don’t be cross, you know how I’ve always felt about you, you know how we both feel about you-’
‘You want me to join the family.’
‘Exactly! Please don’t be sort of dry and sarcastic and make a joke of it, please try to understand. You see, I believe in miracles, now, dear Charles, miracles of love. Love is a miracle, real love is. It’s far above the sort of boundaries and limits we were always tripping over. Why define, why worry, why not just be simple and free and loving with other people? We aren’t young any more-’
‘Have you given up boys, no more dangerous adventures?’
Gilbert, who had been gazing at the open neck of my shirt all the time he was speaking, raised his eyes to mine. His eyes rolled and swung in an odd characteristic manner, perhaps the effect of drink, and he had a way of wrinkling his nose and pulling down the corners of his mouth which he had copied from Wilfred Dunning. He went through a sort of painful humorous grimace. How selfconscious these old actors’ faces are. ‘Listen, king of shadows, Lizzie has made me happy. I’m new, I’m changed like they say in religion. Of course I’m not a totally reformed character and I wouldn’t mind a drink absolutely now. But listen, Lizzie won’t give me up, you can’t break this bond between us. If you think it’s trivial or funny you haven’t understood. All you can do is make both of us very unhappy by being violent and cruel. Oh yes, we’re frightened of you, yes, like we always were. Or you can make us very happy and make yourself happy just by being gentle and kind and by loving us and letting us love you. Why ever not? And if you make us miserable you’ll feel wretched yourself in the end. Why not opt for happiness all round? Christ, darling, can’t you see, it’s a choice between good and evil!’
Gilbert’s tirade, which was rather longer and more mawkish and repetitive than what I have set down here, was of course absurd. But what really annoyed me was the idea of Gilbert and Lizzie analysing each other and discussing in God knows what beastly detail their relations with me. I should add here that as far as the theatre went, which in his case was most of the way, I had made Gilbert. He owed me everything. And now this puppet was talking back and positively threatening me with moral sanctions! However, I laughed. ‘Gilbert, come back to reality. I am amused by your touching description of your relations with Lizzie, but really it won’t do. You claim to be changed, but you didn’t answer my question about boys. I am totally sceptical about your menage and I don’t see why I should respect it. Why come and bother me with all this drivel about brotherhood and cosmic sex? This matter concerns me and Lizzie. It is nothing to do with you, and I’m shocked that she even told you about it. Even if you are fond of each other, sisters don’t have to get their brothers’ permission for everything. I summoned her, not you. She and I will decide what to do, and you’re not part of it. If you hang around here you’ll simply get burnt.’
As I spoke I was becoming conscious of that old familiar possessive feeling, the desire to grab and hold, which had been somehow blessedly absent from my recent thoughts about Lizzie. Perhaps that was a miracle, or maybe just lack of imagination, the ‘abstract idea’ she had accused me of. This reflection increased my annoyance with Gilbert. He was making me coarsen and define an impulse which had been splendidly generous and vague. This bickering was mean and undignified, but now I could not stop.
‘Charles, can’t we go into your funny house and have a drink?’
‘No.’
‘Well, do you mind if I sit down?’ Gilbert hitched his trousers and sat down carefully on a rock. He laid his hat on the grass and surveyed his well-polished mud-fringed shoes. ‘Charles dear, let’s be calm about this, shall we? Do you remember sometimes when it was all rather fraught and you were furious with us, you used suddenly to stop and say, “All right, this is the English, not the Turkish, court”?’
‘Gilbert, just keep out of my way, will you? If Lizzie wants to come she’ll come, if not not. You don’t understand what this thing is all about, between Lizzie and me, how can you? I don’t want it messed around with your dreams of miracles and perfect love. I don’t believe in your set-up, I strongly suspect you’re deceiving yourself and deceiving Lizzie too. I’m beginning to feel it may even be my duty to bust up your rotten arrangement. So don’t provoke me. And take your bloody hand off my sleeve.’
‘Darling, don’t give way to anger, you frighten me so, you always did-’
‘I don’t think I frighten you enough.’
‘You always had such a bloody bad temper and it didn’t help any of us ever. I know you thought it did, but that was an illusion. There is a worse way and there is a better way here. God, didn’t you read Lizzie’s letter?’
‘Did she show it to you?’
‘No, but I know what she said.’
‘Did she show you my letter?’
‘Er-no-’
‘All this makes me sick!’
‘Charles, you can’t take Lizzie away from me, don’t be so conventional, what does ordinary sex matter here, you’d respect a marriage, well perhaps you wouldn’t, but you must believe Lizzie and at least respect her, it’s a sacred bond and she won’t leave me, she’s said so a thousand times-’
‘A woman can lie a thousand times.’
‘Lizzie’s right, you despise women.’
‘Did she say that?’
‘Yes. And she thinks you’re not serious. You can’t take Lizzie away, but you can spoil things, you can make her mad with misery and regret, you can make her fall in love with you again in a rotten hopeless way, you can make both of us perfectly wretched-’
‘Gilbert, stop. I’m not going to play your game or enter your muddle. You can muddle away and dream away by yourself. Why isn’t Lizzie here to tell me what she thinks and wants? She’s afraid to see me because she loves me.’
‘Charles darling, you know I care for you very much, you could simply murder my peace of mind-’
‘Oh damn your peace of mind-’
At that moment Lizzie appeared. She materialized as a dark blur in the corner of my eye, in the evening sunshine, and I knew it was she before I turned to look at her. And as soon as I saw her that old wicked possessive urge jumped inside me for joy and I knew that the battle was over. But of course I showed no feeling apart from a little air of annoyance.
Gilbert picked up his hat and crushed it onto his face. He said to Lizzie, ‘You said you wouldn’t, you said you didn’t want to, oh why did I let you come-’
I took in Lizzie, but looked beyond her at the sea, which was so calm and blue and quiet after the stupid yapping of my argument with Gilbert. I turned and walked along the road, and then leapt onto the rocks and began to make my way as fast as I could in the direction of the tower. At once I could hear the soft scrabbling pattering sound of Lizzie following me. She did well, considering I knew the rocks and she did not, and reached the grassy patch beside the tower very soon after I did, panting and with the strap of one sandal broken. As I turned round I saw Gilbert beginning to slip and slither on the rocks in his polished London shoes. He disappeared into a crevasse. There was a distant sound of lamenting and cursing.
I went on through the stone doorway into the interior of the tower. Lizzie followed and suddenly we were alone together in that strange greenish light, with the white round eye of the sky up above us, and cool grasses about our ankles. The moist atmosphere inside the tower had produced a quite different vegetation, longer lusher grass and dandelions and some white nettles which were just coming into flower.
Lizzie was wearing a very thin white cotton dress, straight like a shift, and she was holding her handbag close up against her breasts and shuddering a little. She looked slightly slimmer. Her abundant fuzzy cinnamon-brown hair was loose and tangled, and as the breeze blew it I could see the whiteness of her scalp. She was blushing
