She watched the flies flashing across the window, a bee searching a flower head in ajar of mixed wild stalks Felix had put there. Then to detach herself she played an old game, that she was lying out on the wood’s roof: translating the stick and leaf that upheld her into herself: into sea: into sky. Sky back again into wood, flesh and sea.
It did not work, as it was meant to, to deliver her from herself, but it made her see Picus’s proceedings diabolic. Why so? Parody of a mystery. A mystery none of them believed. That reduced it to a bad taste. They did not quite disbelieve. Dangerous fooling then? Parodied also in her bed. Very cruel and so wrong.
But under Gault Cliff there had been no parody. That she had to love Picus by, as much of a creation as any growth in nature. Or ritual, or rite produced by the imagination. As little symbolic as the result of any mystery propitiously performed.
As she attended to what she was thinking, she laughed, her immense vitality racing back. Her entry had made his trick glorious. Dinner would be difficult. What had been wrong with Carston? She would go and talk to him. What about? She would propitiate Felix. How? They will all hate me. Without whom Picus would not have turned creator. Woman’s place indeed. Clarence wanted that job. He did the work, and I wear the crown. Not my fault. Chances of the sacred game.
Swept off into stadium of the game; which is the pleasure in actions for their own sake. Done for the love of playing. Done for the fun of it. Done for no pompous end.
That Felix was just a little nervous about.
Played by Alexander, and young Cleopatra in a bundle at Caesar’s feet.
Played by that demon Picus, when he had whistled up mystery with what was now undoubtedly a Victorian finger-bowl.
Played by Malatesta having Isotta sculpted for the Madonna; and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.
Played by Chaucer who loved everything for what it was. A sword for being a sword, or a horse. And they for what they were, the “gentle girls and boys.”
Good thinking, good eating. All things taking care of themselves. Each thing accordynge to its kynde.
Would there be a train for Carston to go away by? Good idea of Picus to say it would be better for him to be slept with than visit that wood.
Was there anything to eat for dinner, anyhow? She jumped up and went out discreetly through the kitchen. In the scullery there was Felix, cleaning a basket of fish. Too much fish. Enough for half to go bad, and the rest infuriate Picus, who would say he had been given it to encourage his brain. Felix said:
“I thought I might as well help. Nanna and Janet are at it all day. Nothing like getting in a stock. Had a good walk with Picus?”
The basket, full offish-shapes, was wet, black-ribboned inside, a shell sticking here and there, a live whelk walking up. Sea-smelling, almost living food, still running with the live sea. She took a knife and a fish, and cut down on the slab of dark blue slate used for cooling butter. Felix had covered it with scales and blood.
“We’ll do it together,” she said.
“You’re not very good at it,” he said.
She hesitated, testing the contact with him.
“We’ll do other things together, then.”
“Don’t we pretty well always?”—His knife scraped down on a bone—“I mean, it’s only half the time I don’t understand.”
She thought: So he went and gutted fish for me.
She said: “What, my dearest dear, did you understand today?” He answered: “When you came in with Picus I saw your beauty. After Carston had been talking, and surprised me, rather. After the things which have happened lately. It was a kind of answer. A sudden opposite to what I was thinking. To what the world is usually, I suppose. You see, I would sooner have you or even Picus in the right. Only, I haven’t faith.”
She thought: Try and have faith. No. Don’t try and have anything. Be with me.
And in answer, she told him about the wood. The bird, Picus. O lady, be good. Everything. That she could not have told the others. She heard a thought in his head: I shan’t be able to keep this up, but today I am my sister’s.
More love for her now, handed back through Carston’s spite; peace in the scullery with her flesh and blood. Fish blood and flesh on a stone between them. In one day, two kinds of perfect love. Life with Picus. Life with him. (He had understood love for Picus. Picus would not understand love for him.) Life without Picus? Life without him? She remade Antigone’s discovery that you can have more lovers and more children. Not another brother, once your people’s bearing days are gone.
Life with the two gone. Life with Clarence, Carston, Ross? She thought she heard a voice saying: “You will soon be left alone with them. You will be without Felix. Because there is coming to you the opposite of what you’ve had. Must come to you. More than separation; avoidance, treachery. Equal to what you’ve had. At one point, life without them will mean that.”
“Not if I
