The Book And The Brotherhood

PART ONE

“David Crimond is here in a kilt!`

Good God, is Crimond here? Where is he?'

`Over in that tent or marquee or whatever you call it. He's with Lily Boyne.'

The first speaker was Gulliver Ashe, the second was Conrad Lomas. Gulliver was a versatile, currently unemployed, young Englishman in his early thirties, pointedly vague about his age. Conrad was a more gorgeously young young American student. He was taller than Gulliver who was rated as tall. Gulliver had never hitherto met Conrad, but he had heard of him and had addressed the remark which caused such excitement to, jointly, Conrad and his partner Tamar Hernshaw. The scene was the so-much-looked-forward- to Commem Ball at Oxford, and the time about eleven p.m. It was midsummer and the night was not yet, and was indeed never entirely to be, dark. Above the various lighted marquees, from which various musics streamed, hung a sky of dusky blue already exhibiting a few splintery yellow stars. The moon, huge, crumbly like a cheese, was still low down among trees beyond the local streamlets of the river Cherwell which bounded the more immediate territory of the college. Tamar and Conrad had just arrived, had not yet danced. Gulliver had confidently addressed them since lie knew, though not well, Tamar, and had heard who her escort was to be. The sight of Tamar filled Gulliver, in fact, with irritation, since his partner for the momentous night was to have been (only she had cried off the last moment) Tamar's, mother Violet. Gulliver did not particularly like Violet, but had agreed to be paired with her to oblige Gerard Hernshaw, whom he usually obliged, even obeyed. Gerard was Tamar's uncle, or 'uncle', since he was not Violet's brother but her cousin. Gerard was considerably older than Gulliver. Gerard's sister Patricia, who was to have had Jenkin Riderhood as her partner, had also not turned up, but had (unlike Violet, who seemed to have no reason) a good reason, since Gerard's father, long ill, had suddenly become filler. Gulliver, though of course thrilled to be asked, was irritated by being paired by Gerard with Violet, which seemed to relegate Gulliver to the older generation. Gulliver would not have minded partnering Tamar, though he was not especially 'keen' on her. He found her too shy and stiff, she was pale and thin and rather schoolgirlish, she was wispy and waifish and lacked style, she did her short straight hair in a little-girl way with a side parting. He did not like her virginal white dress. Gull, who was not always sure that he liked girls at all, preferred ones who were bolder and able to take charge of him. In any case there was never any question of Tamar, since she was known to be going to the dance with her new acquaintance, this clever young American, whom she had met through her cousin Leonard Fairfax. Gerard, apologetic about Violet's defection, had said vaguely to Gulliver that he could no doubt 'pick up a girl somehow', but so far this did not seem likely to be possible, all the girls being firmly held onto by their chaps. Later on of course as the chaps got drunk the situation might change. He had wandered about in the warm blue twilight for some time hoping to meet someone he knew, but Tamar's had been the first familiar face, and he felt on seeing her annoyance rather than pleasure. He was also annoyed because he had not, after much consideration, put on his frilly lacy blue evening shirt, such as most of the younger generation were now seen to be dressed in, and was wearing the conventional black and white uniform which he knew that Gerard, Jenkin, and Duncan would have on. Gulliver, who thought himself good-looking, was tall and dark and slim, with straight oily dark hair, and a thin slightly hooked nose which he had come to terms with when someone called it aquiline. His eyes, which he had been told were beautiful, were of a very pure unflecked liquid golden brown. He very much wanted to dance and would have felt thoroughly cross with Gerard for messing things up if it had not been that Gerard had paid for Gulliver's (very expensive) ticket without which he would not be there at all. While these thoughts were mingling and colliding in Gulliver's mind, Conrad Lomas, with a murmured apology to Tamar, had shot offlike an arrow in the direction of the marquee where David Crimond was said to be. He ran upon his unusually long legs across the grass and disappeared, leaving Gulliver and Tamar together. Tamar, surprised by the amazing speed of his departure, had not immediately followed her swain. This should have been Gulliver's opportunity, and he did indeed wonder for a moment whether he should quickly ask Tamar to dance. He hesitated however, knowing that if Tamar refused he would be upset. Nor did he want to find himself, perhaps, later on, 'landed' with her for some long time. He had really, in spite of his cherished grievances, quite enjoyed wandering around by himself and being a voyeur. Moreover, the idea had Just occurred to him of returning to the room where Gerard and the oldies were still drinking champagne, and asking Rose Curtland to dance. Of course Rose 'belonged' to Gerard, but Gerard wouldn't mind, and the notion of putting his arm, where it had never dreamt of being, round Rose Curtland's waist, was certainly an appealing one. His moment for Tamar passed and she began to move away.

Gull said, 'That was Conrad Lomas, wasn't it? Whatever got into him?'

Tamar said, 'He's doing a thesis about something about Marxism in Britain.'

'So he’ll have read all Crimond's stuff.'

'He idolises Crimond,' said Tamar, 'he's read everything he’s written, but never met him. He wanted me to get someone to introduce him but I felt I couldn't. I didn't know he'd be here tonight.’

‘Neither did I,' said Gulliver, and added, 'neither do they.’

Tamar with a vague wave, set off in the direction of the tent into which Conrad had disappeared. Gulliver decided not to go back to the others yet after all. He wanted to wander about a little longer. This was not his college or his university. He had done his degree in London, and although he regarded Oxford and Oxford ways with sardonic detachment he was ready, on this unique evening, to give himself up to the charm of his surroundings, the ancient buildings floodlit, the pale exquisite tower, the intense green of illumined trees, the striped tents as of an exotic army, and the peregrinating crowd of colourful young people of whom, now that he had had a few drinks, he did not after all feel too uncomfortably envious. Perhaps the immediate thing to do was to have some more drink. He made his way toward the cloisters where he could get some whisky. He was tired of Gerard's champagne.

Tamar had not failed to notice Gulliver's indecision about asking her to dance. She would have refused but felt hurt at not being asked. She clutched her embroidered cashmere shawl closely about her, crossing it upon her breast and humping it up high about her neck. The day had been cloudlessly hot, the evening was warm, but there was now a slight breeze and Tamar felt chilly, she tended to feel the cold. Her white evening dress swept the grass upon which she imagined that she could already feel the dew. She reached the marquee where the lights had been turned up, since the pop group were knocking off for refreshments, and the dancers were standing about upon the wooden floor talking. She could not see Conrad anywhere, but soon noticed a closely packed group of young people, like a swarm of bees, in one corner where a high-pitched voice with a slight Scottish accent was holding forth. Tamar did not like Crimond, she was frightened of him, but she had had occasion to meet him very rarely, and, since the row with Gerard and the others, never. It did not occur to her to go over to the group of worshippers and join Conrad. She sat down for a while on one of the seats round the edge of the tent and waited. She noticed Lily Boyne, who, had been reported as being with Crimond, sitting alone on the other side. Lily had taken off one of her sandals and was examining it, now smelling it. Tamar, who did not want to talk to Lily, hoped that Lily would not notice her. Of course she knew Lily Boyne, who was a friend, at any rate a sort of friend, of Rose Curtland and jean Cambus, but Lily made Tamar feel ill at case, slightly made her shudder. I n fact Tamar disapproved of Lily and so preferred not to think about her. When the loud music and the flashing lights started up again Tamar moved out into the dark. The deep vibrating beat of the music upset her, she wanted very much to dance.

Tamar was poised ready to fall in love. It is possible to plan to fall in love. Or perhaps what seems like planning is simply the excited anticipation of the moment, delayed so as to be perfected, of the unmistakable mutual gesture, when eyes meet, hands meet, words fail. It was thus, in these terms, in this expectant state of being, that Tamar had allowed herself to look forward to this evening. She had in fact met Conrad, who had been at Cambridge and was soon returning to America, only a few times, and usually in company. On the last occasion, seeing her home, he had kissed her ardently. Her cousin Leonard Fairfax, who was in America studying art history at Cornell, had introduced them by letter. Tamar had let herself like, then more than like, the tall American boy but had as yet made him no signal. She had dreamt about him. Tamar was twenty, at the end of her second year of studying history at Oxford. She was apparently grown up, but her shyness and her appearance made others, and indeed her Herself, think of her as younger, naive, not quite an adult. She had had two love affairs, the first inspired by anxiety, the second by pity, for which she blamed herself severely. She was a puritanical child, and she had never been in love.

Rose Curtland was dancing with Gerard Hernshaw. They were in the tent where 'sweet' old-fashioned music was being played, waltzes, tangos, and slow foxtrots, interspersed with eightsome reels, Gay Gordons, and ambiguous jigs which could be danced to taste. The sound of the famous pop group was now audible in the distance. In yet another tent there was traditional jazz, in another 'country music'. Rose and Gerard, who were good dancers, could cope with all these, but it was an evening of nostalgia. The college orchestra was playing Strauss. Rose inclined her head gently against Gerard's black-clad shoulder. She was tall but he was taller. They were a good-looking couple. Gerard's face, describable as 'rugged', had been better characterised by his brother-in-law the art dealer as 'cubist'. There were a number of strong dominant surfaces, a commanding bone structure, a square even brow, a nose that appeared to end in a blunt plane rather than a point. But what might have seemed a hard set of mathematical surfaces was animated and harmonised by the energy which blazed through it, rendering it into an ironic: face, whose smile was frequently a mad and zany grin. Gerard's eyes were a metallic blue, his curly hair was brown, now less than it used to be the colour of an undimmed chestnut, but still copious and ungreying although he was now over fifty. Rose's hair was blond and straight, plentiful and rising up sometimes into a fuzz or aureole. Looking lately into her mirror Rose had wondered if all those lively light brown locks were not, all together, changing into a light grey. She had dark blue eyes and a positively pretty slightly retrousse nose. She had kept her figure and was wearing a simple very dark green ball dress. Rose had a conspicuous air of calmness which annoyed some people and comforted others. She often wore a faint smile, and was wearing one now, although her mingled layers of thought were by no means entirely happy. Dancing with Gerard was an icon of happiness. If only she could experience that sense of eternity in the present about which Gerard sometimes talked. She ought to be able to be happy now simply because of Gerard's firm arm round her waist, and the so slight but authoritative movements of his body whereby he led her. She had looked forward to this evening ever since Gerard had announced his plans for his friends. It was he who had arranged the presence of Tamar and Conrad. But now that what she had wanted was here she was allowing herself to be wilfully absent. She smiled a little more, then sighed.

`I know what you're thinking about,' said Gerard.

`Yes.'

`About Sinclair.'

`Yes.'

Rose had not just then been thinking about Sinclair, but the thought of him was so profoundly associated with the thought of Gerard that she felt no qualm in assenting. Sinclair was Rose's brother, 'the golden boy', so long dead. Of course she had thought about him earlier that evening when entering the college, remembering that other far off summer day when she had come visiting her undergraduate brother at the end of his first year, and Sinclair had said to her, 'Look, that tall chap over there, that's Gerard Hernshaw.' Rose, a little younger than Sinclair, had been still at school. Sinclair's recent letters had been full of Gerard, who was two years his senior. Rose inferred from the letters that Sinclair was in love with Gerard. It was only on that day in Oxford that she realised that Gerard was equally in love with Sinclair. That was all right. What was not so all right was that Rose had promptly fallen for Gerard herself, and remained, after all these years, hopelessly, permanently, in love. The extraordinary affair which she had had with Gerard less than two years after Sinclair's early death

was something they never spoke of afterwards, perhaps, such was their curious discipline, never even in their thoughts I urned over, as one turns over memories, reworking, reftir-hishing, exposing to air and change. It lay rather in their past.is a sealed package which they sometimes very gently touched hut never, alone or together, envisaged opening. Rose had had other lovers, but they were brief shadows, she had had proposals of marriage, but they did not interest her. Now, feeling the pressure of Gerard's hand upon hers very slightly increase,

she wondered if he were now thinking of that. She did not look up removing her head from the place where it had momentarily rested against his shoulder. After Sinclair left Oxford he and Gerard had lived together, Gerard working as a journalist, Sinclair continuing his studies in biology and helping Gerard to found a left-wing magazine. After Sinclair's glider crashed into that hillside in Sussex, and after the very brief dream-interlude with Rose, Gerard gave up left-wing activities and went into the Civil Service. He lived at that time with various men, including Oxford friends, Duncan Cambus, who was then in London, and Robin Topglass, the geneticist, son of the birdman. Robin later married a French Canadian girl and went to Canada, Duncan married Rose's schoolfriend Jean Kowitz and went into the diplomatic service. Marcus Field, probably not one of Gerard's lovers, became a Benedictine monk. Gerard had always had plenty of close men friends, such as jenkin Riderhood, with whom he had no sexual relations; and in more recent years seemed to have settled down to living alone. Of course Rose never asked. In fact she had stopped worrying about the men. It was the women she was afraid of.

The waltz had ended and they were standing together in the pleasant relaxed rather limp attitude of people who have suddenly stopped dancing. Rose said, 'I'm so glad Tamar has met such a nice boy at last.'

'I hope she'll grab him and hold on.'

'I can't see her doing anything so vigorous. He'll have to do the grabbing.'

`She's so gentle,' said Gerard, 'so simple in the best sense, so pure in heart. I hope that boy realises what a remarkable child she is.'

`You mean he might find her dull? She's not a bright young thing.'

'Oh, he couldn't find her dull,' said Gerard, almost indignantly. He added, 'Poor girl, always in search of a father.' `You mean she might prefer an older man?'

'I don't mean anything so banal!'

'Of course we're impressed by her,' said Rose, 'because we

know her background. And I mean rightly impressed.'

`Yes. Out of that mess she's come so extraordinarily intact.' `The illegitimate child of an illegitimate child.'

'I hate that terminology.'

'Well, I suppose people still think in these terms.'

Tamar's mother Violet, never married, was the child of Gerard's father's deplorable younger brother Benjamin Hernshaw, also never married, who abandoned Violet's mother. Tamar, who, it was said, only survived because Violet could not afford an abortion, was the result of an affair with a passing Scandinavian which was so brief that Violet, who claimed to have forgotten his name, was never sure whether he was Swedish, Danish or Norwegian. Upon Tamar's waifish charm, her mousy hair and big sad grey eyes, no particular theory could be rested. Violet herself had resolutely taken the name Hernshaw and had passed it on to Tamar. Violet's `messy life', looked so askance at by Patricia, even by Gerard, had continued during Tamar's childhood, but without any comparable accidents.

`Violet was remarkably attractive to men,' said Rose. 'She still is.'

Gerard said nothing to this. He looked at his watch. He was wearing, of' course, the black and white rig deplored by Gulliver Ashe, and which suited him so well.

Rose thought, I'm still jealous of any woman who comes near him, even poor little Tamar whom I'm so fond of! Sometimes she thought, I've wasted my life on this man, I've waited though I've known I'm waiting for nothing, he has accepted so much and given so little in return. Then she would think, how ungrateful I am, he has given me his precious love, I ic loves me and needs me, isn't that enough? Even if he does think of me as a sort of ideal sister. All the same, now he's retired from the Civil Service, he says to write things, he says to start a fresh phase of life, to perfect himself or something, he could suddenly start some mad new thing like loving women -and coming to me for advice! Then she thought, what non-sense! – and after all, haven't I been happy?

‘How's your father?' she asked.

'Not well – but not – actually dying. Of course there's no hope, it's just a matter of how long.'

'I'm very sorry. Patricia didn't think it was a crisis?'

‘No, she's a bit worse, and we couldn't get hold of the nurse. Pat’s very good with him, she's an angel of patience.'

Rose had seen little of Gerard's father in recent years, he had been living in Bristol, in the house in Clifton where Gerard had been born. Only lately, after becoming ill, he had moved to Gerard's house in London. There was a bond between him and Rose which also made them ill at ease together. Gerard's father had so much wanted Gerard to marry Rose. Just as Rose's father had so much wanted Sinclair to marry Jean Kowitz. If Sinclair had survived he would have had the title. As it was it went to the Yorkshire Curtlands (second cousins, the grandfathers had been brothers), who were also to inherit Rose's house when Rose was gone. We are all without issue, thought Rose, all those hopeful family plans frustrated, we shall disappear without trace!

`Surely Patricia and Gideon haven't decided to settle in that upstairs flat you made for your father?'

`No, it's just that their lease is up, they're house-hunting.'

`I hope they are! When is Gideon back from New York?' Patricia's husband, Gideon Fairfax, art dealer and financial wizard, now spent much time in that city.

‘Next week.'

`You said they were trying to get you out and take over the whole house!'

`Well, Pat keeps saying I don't need all that space!'

The existence of the new 'upstairs flat' had put ideas into Rose's head. Why should not she, and no one else, occupy that flat? Rose had for years cherished, perhaps in some dusty abandoned but persisting part of her mind still cherished, the hope that 'in the end', and 'after all', she might marry Gerard. Later this idea became more modestly that of 'sharing a house', of being with him, in some sense in which, for all their closeness, and their generally acknowledged closeness, she certainly was not now.

They had moved to the edge of the crowded floor, and Rose knew that in a moment Gerard would suggest that they return to 'the room', that is to the quarters of Professor Levquist, Gerard's old classics tutor, which Levquist had lent to Gerard and his friends to be their base during the dance. (Levquist's family, originally Baltic Jews called Levin, had adopted the Scandinavian suffix as protective coloration.) Rose said, to delay him, 'Have you decided anything about the book?' She was not referring to any book being written by Gerard, there was as yet no such thing, but to another book.

Gerard frowned at the unwelcome question. 'No.'

The waltz music began again. Hearing the fast familiar strain they smiled and moved together. Soon Gerard was whirling Rose round and round, tightening his hold, shifting his grip, moving his left hand up her arm, then embracing her round the waist with both arms and lifting her swift feet from the floor.

A little later Rose and Gerard made their way to Levquist's rooms just off the cloisters. Rose felt, but would not of course admit it, a little tired. They found Jenkin Riderhood in possession. Jenkin, who had clearly been drinking for some time, quickly put down the bottle of champagne. Jenkin, a little younger than Gerard, was an old friend, one of the original 'set' which included Sinclair, Duncan, Marcus, Robin, who had been close friends as undergraduates at the college. Of the survivors_.jenkin was, or perhaps just seemed, the least successful. Duncan Cambus had been having a distinguished career, first as a diplomat, then in the Home Civil Service. Gerard had reached greater heights, tipped for dic highest office in his department, when he had suddenly, quite lately, many felt unaccountably, taken an early retirement. Robin, now defected to Canada and rarely heard from; was a well-known geneticist. Sinclair had decided to be a marine. biologist, and was about to visit the Scripps Oceanography Institute in California when his glider crashed. Rose had intended to go with him, Gerard was to follow, together they were going to discover America. At Oxford Gerard, Duncan and Jenkin had all done 'Greats', Greek and Latin, ancient history and philosophy, and had all got their ‘firsts’. Rose, who came of a Yorkshire family, with Anglo- Irish connections on her mother's side, had studied English literature and French at Edinburgh. She had done a variety of things, never achieving anything which could be called a carrer, taught French at a girls' school, worked for an ‘Animals’ Rights organisation, been a `women's journalist', tried to write novels, returned to part-time journalism and ecology. She did unpaid social work and occasionally went to (Anglican) church. She had a small annuity from a family trust which she might have been better off without; she might have tried harder. Her friend Jean Kowitz, with whom had attended a Quaker boarding school, had been at Oxford where, through Rose, she got to know Gerard and the others, including Duncan Cambus whom she later married. Jean was a clever academic who should, Rose felt, have 'done something' instead of just being a wife. Jean and Duncan were childless. jenkin Riderhood was, and had always been, a schoolmaster. He was now senior history master in a London school. He had never applied for a headship. He was a diffident solitary man, easily pleased by small treats. He knew a number of languages and liked going on package tours. He was known to have had some romances (that seemed to be the word) with girls at Oxford, but his later sex life seemed to be non-existent, was at any rate invisible.

Jenkin said, `I've just been to look at my old rooms. There was an undergraduate there writing an essay. He called me "sir".'

`I'm glad he had such good manners,' said Rose, 'they don't all.'

`What's it like out there?'

`A forest in Ancient Egypt,' said Gerard. 'I hope the champers is holding out?'

`Bags of it. Piles of sandwiches too.'

Jenkin, who was sweating and flushed with drink, brought forward a plate of cucumber sandwiches and began to mop up with a napkin some of the champagne which was swimming about on the table. He was stout, not tall, and looked fidgety and bulgy in his evening dress which was old and made for a considerably slimmer Jenkin. He had however retained his boyish look and clear soft complexion and could be better described as chubby. His faded strawy blond hair hung down about his head, still concealing a small bald patch. He had streaky blue-grey eyes, a pursed-up thoughtful often-smiling mouth and longish teeth. His face was saved from being cherubic by a rather long substantial nose which gave him an animal look, sometimes touching, sometimes shrewd.

`I'm sorry Pat couldn't come,' said Gerard, pouring some champagne for Rose. Jenkin was to have been, in Gideon's absence, Patricia's partner.

`Oh I'm OK,' said Jenkin, 'loving it. Damn! Sandwiches should bloody stay together.' His cucumber had leapt out onto the floor.

`Did Violet say why she couldn't come?' said Rose.

`No, but one knows why. She doesn't want to see a lot of happy laughing young people. She doesn't want to see a lot of happy laughing us.'

`Who is to blame her?' murmured Jenkin.

`She was probably glad to be asked,' said Rose. 'She may not have wanted to see Tamar being so happy. Parents can love their children and envy them too.' She added, 'We must do something about Violet.' This was often said.

`I didn't spot Tamar and Conrad, did you?' said Gerard. 'I forgot to tell them to come up here for drinks.'

`They won't want to be with us!' said Rose.

`They look so young, the young, don't they,' said Gerard. 'Ali, la jeunesse, la jeunesse! All those clear smooth transparent unspoilt unworked faces!'

`Not like ours,' said jenkin, 'scrawled over with passion and resentment and drink!'

'You two look like children,'said Rose, 'at least Jenkin does. Gerard looks like -' Wanting to avoid some ridiculous comparison she left the sentence unfinished.

'We were children then,' said Gerard.

'You mean we were Marxists,' said Jenkin. 'Or we imagined we were Platonists or something. You still do.'

'We thought that we could live some really civilised alternative society,' said Gerard, 'we had faith, we believed.'

'Jenkin still believes,' said Rose. 'What do you believe in, Jenkin?’

‘The New Theology!' said Jenkin promptly.

'Don’t be silly!' said Rose.

‘Don’t you mean the New Marxism,' said Gerard, 'isn't it much the same thing?'

'Well, if it's new enough-'

‘New enough to be unrecognisable!'

‘I never go to church,' said Jenkin,' 'but I want religion to go on somehow. There's a battle front there, where religion and Marxism touch.’

`Not yours,' said Gerard, 'I mean not your battle. You don't want to fight for Marx! That mix-up is totally incoherent anyway.'

`Well, where is my battle? I'd like to be somewhere out at the edge of things. But where is the edge?'

`You've been saying this sort of thing for years,' said Gerard, 'and here you are still.'

‘Jenkin is a romantic,' said Rose, 'so am I. I'd like to be a priest. Maybe it will be possible in my lifetime.'

`Rose would make a marvellous priest!'

`I'm against it,' said Gerard. 'Don't eat all the sandwiches.' `You agree to being called a sort of Platonist?' said Rose to Gerard.

`Oh yes!'

`That's what you're going to write about, now you've retired?'

`You'll write about Plotinus, like you said?' said Jenkin. `Possibly.' Gerard evidently did not want to talk about this, so the other two dropped the subject.

Rose put down her glass and went to the window. She could see the floodlit tower, the moon risen and now small, a concise circle of'silver, lights in the trees by the river. Her heart heaved within her as if. it were some huge thing which she had swallowed and wished to regurgitate. She suddenly wanted to sob with joy and fear. The slim pinnacled tower, in the fierce light against the dark blue sky, resembled a picture in a Book of Hours. It also reminded Rose of something, some kind of theatre, some time, perhaps many times, when she had seen illumined buildings at night and heard superhuman voices, such as the one which she now instinctively expected to hear, telling her in slow ringing tones some picturesque piece of' history or legend. Son et lumiere in France, England, Italy, Spain. A memory came of something in French, some unplaced piece of poetry, perhaps not even heard correctly. Les esprits aiment la nuit, qua sail plus quunefemme dormer une ame a toutes chows. That can't be right, she thought, what a ridiculous idea anyway. Of course she did, herself, in a way, do just that, endow all sorts of silly senseless things with 'souls', certainly not with any exalted gesture worthy of being announced to the world by a godlike voice beside a magic tower. In her, it was more like superstition, or some sad overflow of wasted love. Breathing deeply she turned round, leaning back against the sill and smiling her faint smile.

The two men looked at her with affection, then at each other. Perhaps Gerard at any rate knew something of what she was feeling, he knew and did not know. Rose understood how little he wanted her, ever, to fail to be her calm self

Jenkin said, 'What about some more champagne? There's a shocking number of bottles stashed away.'

`Where are Jean and Duncan, I thought they might be here,' said Rose, as the champagne cork hit the ceiling.

`They were earlier,' said Jenkin, 'Jean hauled him off, she couldn’t bear not to be dancing.'

‘Jean's such an athlete,' said Rose. 'She can still stand on her head. Do you remember how she stood on her head in a punt one day?'

'Duncan wanted to stay and drink, but Jean wouldn't let him.’

‘Duncan's drinking too much,' said Rose. 'Jean's wearing that red dress with the black lace that I like so. She has her gipsy look.'

'You look stunning, Rose,' said Jenkin.

' I love you in that dress,' said Gerard, 'it's so intensely ,imple. I like that wonderful dark green, like laurel, like myrtle, like ivy.'

Rose thought, it's time for Jenkin to ask me to dance, he doesn’t want to, he doesn't like dancing, but he'll have to. And Gerardwill dance with Jean. Then I shall dance with Duncan.That’s all right. I feel better. Perhaps I'm a little drunk.

‘It’s time I went to see Levquist,' said Gerard. 'Would you like to come, Jenkin?'

‘I’ve already been.'

‘You’ve already been?' Gerard's indignant tone was activated from the remote past.

An old pang of indestructible timeless jealousy seared his heart with the speed of fire. It burned with an old pain. How they had all coveted that man's praise, far away in that short golden piece of the past. They had coveted his praise and his love. Gerard had carried off the famous prize. But what he really wanted was to be praised and loved the most. It was hard to believe now that Jenkin had been his nearest rival.

Jenkin, who knew exactly what Gerard was thinking, began to laugh. He sat down abruptly spilling his drink.

'Did he ask you to translate something?' said Gerard.

'Yes, the brute. He planted me in front of a piece of Thucydides.'

'How did you manage?'

'I said I couldn't make head or tail of it.'

'What did he say?'

'He laughed and patted my arm.'

'He was always soft on you.'

'He always expected more of you.'

Gerard did not dispute this.

'I'm sorry I didn't say I was going to see Levquist,' said Jenkin, serious now, 'so that we could go together. But I knew that he'd play that old trick on me. I don't mind failing, but I'd rather you weren't there.'

Gerard found this explanation entirely satisfactory. 'How you men do live in the past!' said Rose.

'Well, you were remembering Jean just now,' said Jenkin, 'standing on her head in the punt. It was May Morning.'

'Were you there?' said Rose. 'I'd forgotten. Gerard was there, and Duncan – and – and Sinclair.'

The door flew open and Gulliver Ashe blundered in.

Gerard said at once, 'Gull, have you seen Tamar and Conrad? I quite forgot to tell them about coming up here.'

'I saw them,' said Gulliver. He spoke clearly but with the careful solemnity of the drunk man. 'I saw them. And at that very moment Conrad rushed off, leaving her alone.'

'Leaving her alone?' said Rose.

'I conversed with her. Then I too left her. That is all that I can report.'

`You left her?' said Gerard, 'how could you, how perfectly rotten! You left her standing by herself?'

`Her escort not being far off, I presumed,' said Gulliver.

`You'd better go and look for her at once,' said Gerard.

`Give him a drink first,' said Jenkin, hauling himself up from his chair. 'I expect Conrad's turned up again.'

'I'll have a word with him if he hasn't!' said Gerard. 'Fancy leaving her alone even for a moment!'

'I expect it was a call of nature,' said Jenkin, 'he rushed in behind the laurels, the myrtle, the ivy.'

'It was not a call of nature,' said Gulliver. He could see from the behaviour of his audience that they did not yet know his great news. 'Do you know? Well, obviously you don't. Crimond is here.'

'Crimond? Here?'

'Yes. And he's wearing a kilt.'

Gulliver took the glass of champagne offered to him by Jenkin and sat down in the chair Jenkin had vacated.

Their dismay was even greater than Gull had hoped for. I hey stared at each other appalled, with stiffened faces and indrawn lips. Rose, who rarely showed her emotions, had flushed and put a hand to her face. She was the first to speak. ' How dare he come here!'

‘It's his old college too,' said Jenkin.

‘Yes, but he must have known -'

‘That it's our territory?'

‘He must have known we'd all be here,' said Rose, 'he must have come on purpose.'

‘Not necessarily,' said Gerard. 'There's nothing to be alarmed about. But we'd better go and find Duncan and Jean. They may not know -'

‘If they do know they've probably gone home!' said Rose.

‘I bloody hope not,' said Jenkin. 'Why should they? They can justkeep away from him. God!' he added, 'and I was just looking forward to seeing the old colt and getting quietly plastered with you lot!'

‘I'll go and tell them,' said Gulliver. 'I haven't seen them, but I expect I can find them.'

`No,' said Gerard, 'you stay here.'

`Why? Am I under arrest? Aren't I supposed to look for Tamar?'

`Duncan and Jean may come here,' said Rose, 'hadn't someone better be -?'

`Yes, all right, go and look for Tamar,' said Gerard to Gulliver. 'Just see she's OK and if she's alone dance with her. I expect that boy has come back. Why did he rush off?'

`He went to gape at Crimond. I don't see what all the fuss is, about that man. I know you quarrelled with Crimond about the book and all that, and wasn't he keen on jean once? Why are you all so fluffed up?'

`It wasn't quite as simple as that,' said Gerard.

Jenkin said to Rose, 'Are you afraid that Duncan will get drunk and attack him?'

`Duncan is probably drunk already,' said Rose, 'we'd better go and -'

`It's more likely that Crimond will attack Duncan,' said Gerard.

`Oh no!'

`People hate their victims. But of course nothing will happen.'

‘I wonder who he's with?' Rose asked.

`He's with Lily Boyne,' said Gulliver.

`How extraordinary!' said Gerard.

`Typical,'said Rose.

`I'm sure he's here accidentally,' said Jenkin. 'I wonder it' he's got his Red Guards with him?'

Gerard looked at his watch. 'I'm afraid I must go and see Levquist, otherwise he'll have gone to bed. You two go and look for jean and Duncan. I'll watch out for them too on the way across.'

They departed, leaving Gulliver behind. Gull was at a stage of drunkenness at which the body, dismayed, sends out unmistakable appeals for moderation. He felt very slightly sick and very slightly faint. He had noticed the slowness of his speech. He envisaged the possibility of falling over. He could not easily focus his eyes. The room was moving jerkily, and emitting flashes rather like the pop group effect. (The group was the Waterbirds, the college having failed to secure the Treason of the Clerks.) Gulliver, conscious of a desire to dance, was not sure whether his condition favoured it or precluded it. He knew from experience that if he wished to go on enjoying the evening he must have an interval from alcohol, and if possible something to eat. After that he would look for Tamar. He was anxious to please Gerard, or more exactly afraid of the results of not pleasing him. As he had come in to break his news, a queue had already been forming outside the supper tent. Gulliver, who hated this sort of queueing, and who felt that without a partner he might attract suspicion or, worse still, pity, had eaten well in a pub before arriving at the dance; but that now seemed an infinitely long time ago. Moving cautiously about the room he found a bottle of Perrier and another plate of cucumber sandwiches. He could not find a clean glass. He sat down and began to eat the sandwiches and to drink the water which tasted headily of champagne. His ryes kept closing.

The three friends passed out of the cloister and onto the big lawn where the marquees stood. Here they separated, Rose going to the right, Jenkin to the left, and Gerard straight on toward the eighteenth-century building, also floodlit, where Levquist kept his library. Levquist was retired, but continued to live in college where he had a special large room to house his unique collection of books, left of course to the college in his will. He also kept, in his sanctum, a divan bed so that he could on occasion, as tonight, sleep among his books rather than more domestically in his other rooms. His successor in the professorial chair, one of his pupils, continued in an insecure and subservient relation to the old man. Levquist was indeed not easy to approach. This was an awkward fact, given the strong attraction which he exerted upon many of those who had dealings with him.

Gerard looked about him as he went, glancing into the tents and scanning the supper queue, without seeing any sign of Jean or Duncan or Tamar or Conrad or Crimond. The noise of music and voices and laughter made a textured canopy, there was a smell of flowers and earth and water. The lawn, between the supper tent and the marquees, was dotted with shifting groups of young people, and a few embracing couples standing alone kissing. There would be more of these as the night wore on. Gerard set his foot on the familiar stairway and experienced the familiar shock of emotion. He knocked upon the dimly lighted door and heard the harsh sound, scarcely verbal, with which Levquist invited entry. He entered.

The long room, barred with jutting bookshelves, was dark except for a lamp at the far end upon Levquist's huge desk where the old man sat with hunched shoulders, his head turned toward the door. Beside the desk the big window facing onto the deer park was wide open. Gerard advanced along the dark well-worn carpet and said, `Hello, it's me.' With deliberate restraint, he did not now lard all his speeches with the word `sir', nor could he bring himself, though well aware that he could not be by any means Levquist's only 'old pupil' visitor.that evening, to utter his own name.

`Hernshaw,' said Levquist, lowering his cropped grey head and taking off his glasses.

Gerard sat down in the seat opposite to him and stretched out his long legs cautiously under the desk. His heart beat violently. He was still afraid of'Levquist.

Levquist did not smile, neither did Gerard. Levquist fiddled with his nearest books and with an open notebook in which he had been writing. He frowned. He left Gerard to open the conversation. Gerard stared at the large beautiful grotesque Jewish head of the great scholar. 'How's the book getting on, sir?' This was just a standard opening move.

This book was Levquist's interminable book on Sophocles. Levquist did not regard this as a genuine question. He replied, `Slowly.' Then said, 'Are you still in that office?'

`No, I've retired.'

`Rather young to retire, aren't you? Were you at the top?'

`No.’

`Why retire then? You've got the worst of both worlds. Power, isn't that what it was all about? What you wanted was power, wasn't it?'

`Not just power. I like arranging things.'

`Arranging things! You should have arranged your mind, stayed here and done some real thinking.'

This was an old traditional liturgy. Levquist, who scarcely believed that very 'clever people could exercise their minds anywhere else, had wanted Gerard to stay on at Oxford, get into All Souls, become an academic. Gerard had been determined to get away. The political idealism which largely prompted his flight soon lost its simplicity and much of its force; and a humbler perhaps more rational desire to serve society by arranging it a little better, had led him later into the Civil Service. Gerard was, as he was intended to be, hurt by Lequist’s familiar jibe. Sometimes he did wish that he had stayed on, tracing the Platonic streams down the centuries, liccorning a genuinely learned man, a justified ascetic, a scholar. He said mildly, 'I hope to do some thinking now.'

' It's too late. How's your father?'

Levquist always asked after Gerard's father whom he had not metsince Gerard was a student, but whom he remembered with some sort of, not fully intelligible to Gerard, respect and approval. Gerard’s father, a solicitor, had been, for instance,entirely unable upon the first occasion of their meeting, which Gerard recalled with a shudder, to converse

with Levquist about Roman law. Yet this, by contrast, ordinary ignorant man, patently unafraid of his son's formidable teacher, had, perhaps just by this simple directness, made himself memorable. Gerard in fact respected and approved of his father, saw the simplicity and truthfulness of his nature, but was used to finding these qualities invisible to others. His father was not brilliant or erudite or witty or particularly successful, he could seem mediocre and boring, yet Levquist, who despised mediocrity and ruthlessly refused to allow himself to be bored, had at once met Gerard's father upon the ground of the latter’s best qualities. Or perhaps he was just startled to meet some 'ordinary person' who was not, in his presence, a little awed.

`He's very ill,' said Gerard in answer to Levquist's question, `he's -' He suddenly found himself unable to bring out the next word.

`Is he dying?' said Levquist.

`Yes.'

`I'm sorry. Well, it is for all of us a short walk. But one's father – yes -' Levquist's father and his sister had died in a German concentration camp. He looked away for a moment, smoothing over the close-cropped silvery fur which covered the dome of his head.

Gerard, to change the subject, said, 'I hear Jenkin came to see you earlier.'

Levquist chuckled. 'Yes, I saw young Riderhood. He was quite stumped by that piece of Thucydides. A pity -'

`He hasn't got anywhere?'

`A pity he's let his Greek slip so. He knows several modern languages. As for "getting anywhere", ridiculous phrase, he's teaching, isn't he? Riderhood doesn't need to get anywhere, he walks the path, he exists where he is. Whereas you -'

`Whereas I -?'

`You were always dissolving yourself into righteous discontent, thrilled in your bowels by the idea of' some high thing elsewhere. So it has gone on. You see yourself as a lonely climber, of course higher up than the other ones, you think you might leap out of yourself onto the summit, yet you know you can not, and being pleased with yourself both ways you go nowhere. This "thinking" that you are going to do, what will it be? Writing your memoirs?'

`No. I thought I might write something about philosophy.'

`Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating! They fancy their substanceless thought can lead to deep conclusions! Are you so unambitious?' This was an old conflict too. Levquist, teacher of the great classical languages, resented the continual disappearance of his best pupils into the hands of the philosophers.

`It's quite difficult,' said Gerard patiently, 'to write even a short piece of philosophy. And at least it has proved to be rather influential empty thinking! Anyway I shall read -'

`Play around with great books, pull them down to your level and make simplified versions cifyour own?'

`Possibly,' said Gerard, unprovoked. Levquist, used to roughing up his best pupils, always had to get rid of a certain amount of spleen upon them when they reappeared, as if this was necessary before he could speak gently to them, as perhaps he really wished to do, for there was usually some kind thing which he wanted to say and held in reserve.

`Well, well. Now read me something in Greek, that sort of reading you were always good at.'

`What shall I read, sir?'

`Anything you like. Not Sophocles. Perhaps Homer.'

Gerard got up and went to the shelves, knowing where to look, and as he touched the books he felt some fierce and agonising sense of the past. It's gone, he thought, the past, it ^is irrevocable and beyond mending and far away, and yet it is here, blowing at one like a wind, I can feel it, I can smell it, and it's so sad, so purely sad. Through the window open on the pa rk came the distant sound of music, which he had not been aware of since he entered the room, and the wet dark odour of the meadows and the river.

Sitting again at the desk Gerard read aloud from the Iliad, about how the divine horses of Achilles wept when they heard of the death of Patroclus, bowed their heads while hot tears poured from their eyes onto the ground, as they wept with hinging fir their charioteer, and their long beautiful manes were darkened with mud, and as they mourned Zeus looked down on them and pitied them, and spoke thus in his heart. Unhappy beasts, why did I give you, ageless and deathless as you are, as a gift to Lord Peleus, a mortal? Was it so that you too should grieve among unhappy men? Indeed there is nothing that breathes and crawls upon the earth more miserable than man.

As Levquist reached across and took the book from him and they avoided each other's eyes, Gerard was, in the swift zigzag of his thought, thinking of how Achilles, mad with grief, had killed the captive Trojan boys like frightened fawns beside the funeral pyre of his friend, then how Telemachus had hanged the handmaids who had slept with the suitors who were even now dead at the hands of his father, and how, hanging in a row-upon a line, they jumped about in their death agony. Then he thought of how Patroclus had always been kind to the captive women. Then he thought again about the horses shedding burning tears and drooping their beautiful manes in the mud of' the battlefield. All those thoughts occurred in a second, perhaps two seconds. Then he thought of Sinclair Curtland.

Levquist said, for his mind by some other secret thought-way had also reached Sinclair, 'Is the Honourable Rose here?'

`Yes, she came with me.'

`I thought I saw her when I was coming over. How she still resembles that boy.'

`Yes.'

Levquist, who had an amazing memory, reaching back very many years over the generations of his pupils, said, 'I'm glad you've kept your little group together, these friendships formed when you are young men are very precious, you and Riderhood and Topglass and Cambus and Field and – Well, Topglass and Cambus got married, didn't they -' Levquist did not approve of marriage. 'And poor Field is some sort of monk. Friendship, friendship, that's what they don't understand these days, they just don't understand it any more. As for this place – you know we have women now?'

`Yes! But you don't have to teach them!'

`No, I thank God. But it spoils the scene – I cannot tell you how much it mars it all.'

`I can imagine,' said Gerard. He would have felt the same.

`No, the young men don't make friends now. They are superficial. They hunt the girls to take them to bed. In the night when they should be talking and arguing with their friends they are in the bed with the girls. It is – shocking.'

Gerard too conjured up the dreadful scene, the degeneration, the collapse of the old values. He wanted to smile at Levquist's indignation, yet he also shared it.

`What do you make of it all, Hernshaw, our poor planet? Will it survive? I doubt it. What have you become, are you a stoic after all? Nil admirari, yes?'

<sup>`</sup>No,'said Gerard, 'I'm not a stoic. You accused me of being unambitious. I'm too ambitious to be merely stoical.' `You mean morally ambitious?'

`Well – yes.'

`You are rotted by Christianity,' said Levquist. 'What you take for Platonism is the old soft masochistic Christian illusion. Your Plato has been defiled by Saint Augustine. You have no hard core. Riderhood whom you despise -'

`I don't,' said Gerard.

`Riderhood is tougher than you, he's harder. Your "moral ambition" or whatever you call your selfish optimism, is just the old lie of Christian salvation, that you can shed your old self and become good simply by thinking about it-and as you sit and dream this dream you feel that you are changed already and have no more work to do-and so you are happy in your lie.'

Gerard, who had heard this sort of tirade before, thought, I am how exact he is, how acute, he knows I have thought all those things too. He answered flippantly, 'Well, at least I am happy, isn’t that a good thing?'

Levquist stared at him, pouting his thick lips and drawing down the corners, his face become a sneering mask.

Gerard said, 'All right.'

Levquist went on, 'I am close to death. That is no scandal,,,old age is a well-known phenomenon. But now the difference is that everyone is close to death.'

Gerard said, 'Yes.' He thought, it consoles him to think so.

'All thought which is not pessimistic is now false.'

‘But you would say it has always been?'

'Yes. Only now it is forced upon all thinking people, it is the IN possible conception. Courage, endurance, truthfulness, these are the virtues. And to recognise that of all things we are the most miserable that creep between the earth and the sky.’

‘But his cheers you up, sir!' said Gerard.

Levquist smiled. His dark blue-brown eyes gleamed out moistly from between the dry saurian wrinkles and he shook his over-large cropped head and smiled his demon's smile. `You are cheered up_, you were always the optimist, you think always, at the last moment, they will send a trireme.'

Gerard assented. He liked the image.

`But no. Man is ever mortal, he thinks by fit and start, and when he thinks, he fastens his hand upon his heart.' As he spoke Levquist lifted his big wrinkled hand to the upper pocket of his shabby corduroy jacket. Living his life amid the greatest poetry in the world, he retained a touching affection for A. E. Housman. Somebody knocked on the door.

`There is another,' said Levquist. 'You must go. Salute your father from me. And salute the Honourable Rose. This was a short talk, come again, not just on such a day, to see the old man.'

Gerard stood up. He felt, as on other occasions, a strong impulse to move round the desk and seize Levquist's hands, perhaps kiss them, perhaps even kneel down. Would the classical suppliant rite of embracing the knees enable him to carry ofl'such a gesture, make it something formal, not to be rejected as a 'soft' rush of graceless emotion? As on other occasions lie hesitated, then inhibited the impulse. Did Levquist know of his feelings, of their tenderness and strength? He was not sure. He contented himself with a bow.

Levquist growled permission to enter. Then he uttered a name.

Gerard passed a rosy-checked forty-year-old in the door- way. Aching with jealousy, and with remorse at not having managed a more affectionate farewell, he descended the stairs.

Tamar was looking for Conrad, Conrad was looking for Tamar. Rose and Jenkin were looking for Jean and Duncan and Conrad and Tamar. Gull was looking for a girl to dance with.

Tamar had wandered away from the tent, whither Conrad had rushed to see his idol, in a momentary fit of pique which she now bitterly regretted. She had come back almost at once and even approached a group of young worshippers, but could not see Conrad there. Conrad, unable to get near Crimond, had stood a while spellbound on the outside of the circle. Then, realising Tamar had not followed him, he searched the marquee, and, uncertaⁱn of the point at which he had entered, had set off on a circular track about what he thought was the place where they parted company. Tamar had then set off on a straight course toward the next marquee, the waltzing one, toward which they had been making their way when they met Gulliver. She stood for a while here staring about, saw Rose waltzing with Gerard and retired quickly. She was very fond other uncle and of Rose, but shy with them, and anxious now not to be discovered without her partner, whom she blamed herself for having lost. Soon after Tamar had faded back into the darkness Conrad arrived, also saw Rose and Gerard, and with a similar motive made himself. Tamar had meanwhile gone toward the cloisters, where there was a buttery which served sandwiches, and which Conrad had suggested they should locate just before they decided to dance first. Conrad hurried back toward the Waterbirds tent where the famous pop group were rumoured os hi^, about to perform again. Tamar searched through a lot of people who were drinking and laughing beside the buttery and went into the chapel, another point mentioned by Conrad as to be visited later. She passed back through the cloisters and out toward the river just as Conrad entered from the other side.

Time mic passed, supper was over, and the dance had entered a new phase, the big expanse of grass between the glowing stripy hitters was covered with beautiful people, the handsome boys in their frilly shirts, now somewhat undone at the neck, the girls in their shimmering dresses, sleek and flouncy, now considerably less tidy, where here and there an errant shoulder strap, snapped when dancing the Gay Gordons, was being exploited by a laughing partner, and elaborately woven mounds of hair, so carefully constructed hours ago with innumerable pins, had come underdone or been demolished by eager male fingers and streamed down backs and over shoulders. Some couples in darker corners were passionately kissing each other or locked in wordless embraces, the longed-for climax of the longed-for evening. Some dresses carried tell-talc stains of grass. The rival musics continued unabated, the Waterbirds raucously shouting into a maelstrom of flashing lights and electronic din. The dancing in the various tents was slightly less dense but wilder.

Tamar had started to cry, and, attempting to compose herself, had wandered away toward the river and was standing on the bridge. Lights upon the bank strewed the water with streamers or ribbons of brightness which frisked here and there upon the surface before being suddenly darkened and plucked under. As she leaned over she could hear, under the other more distant din, the faint river sound, self-absorbed and permanent. When other people moved onto the bridge she crossed it, but turned back when she saw in the darkness the discreet forms of bowler-hatted security guards, strategically set to keep the envious rabble who had not paid for the expensive rickets from sneaking in to the glittering celebration. She went across the lawn toward the 'New Building'. A little earlier than this Conrad had run into Jenkin. Jenkin, who saw how upset the boy was, did not 'tick him off', but could not conceal his dismay that Conrad had, as he confessed, mislaid Tamar immediately on arrival and before they had even had a dance. After this encounter Conrad was even more upset, realising that his failure (for he entirely blamed himself) would now come to the cars of Gerard, even perhaps of Crimond. Mainly he felt wretched for having so deplorably, perhaps unforgivably, offended Tamar, whom he had so much looked forward to being with, dancing with, kissing, on what was to have been such a wonderful evening to which she too must have looked forward. He had not, like Tamar, framed beforehand the idea of falling in love. But now, running more frantically, randomly, from place to place, senselessly revisiting the same scenes and missing others altogether, charging across the grass and jostling young men with brimmillip, glasses and stepping on girls' dresses, tormented by contintiol hope and continual disappointment, he felt all the anguish of a frustrated lover. A little later he nerved himself to go up to Levquist's rooms where Jerikin told him (information which Gerard had so unfortunately forgotten to impart to Tamar) that there was a 'base', but when he arrived there was no one there. He stood awhile in the empty room which was scattered with bottles and glasses, too unhappy even to give himself a drink, and then, as waiting was even more painful than searching, ran off again. Tamar, exhausted, was sitting in one of the tents, bowing her head to conceal her tears and trying to make up her face. She had put down her cashmere shawl somewhere, she could not recall where, and was feeling cold. Conrad, looking in hastily, failed to see her.

Meanwhile Rose had run into Lily Boyne. Lily and Rose liked each other, but there was caution and incomprehension on both sides. Lily thought that Rose regarded her as rather uneducatedand 'common'. Rose was afraid that Lily thought that Rose regarded her as uneducated (which Rose did think) and 'common' (which Rose did not). In fact Rose did not

ploqmms this concept, but vaguely posited something of the sort. She feared Lily might think she was 'snooty', which Lily did not think. Rose found Lily rather 'bouncy' and could not

always get the 'tone' of her witticisms or answer them spontaneously. But Lily admired Rose for being calm and sensible and kind and nice, which not all of Lily's acquaintances were,

and Rose admired Lily for being tough, and imagined her to be brave and 'worldly' in ways which remained, for Rose, mysterious and obscure. They did not know each other very well. Lily Boyne had come into the ken of Gerard and his friends through Jean Kowitz (Jean Cambus, that is, but her maiden name somehow lingered as some maiden names do), who had met Lily a few years ago in a context of 'women's lib', and come to know her better in a yoga class where they both

frequently stood on their heads. This was before Lily became briefly, famous. Lily had been, as Gulliver once remarked, one of those people who are simply famous for being famous. Lily was now, or rather was credited with being, a rich girl. She had emerged from a poor and chaotic home, started adult life at a polytechnic, played about with pottery and graphic design, imagined herself a painter, then earned her living as a typist. In due course, and in a moment of reckless despair, she married a frail penniless art student called James Farling. How often since had she blessed that pale unhappy boy for having actually persuaded her to marry him! She kept her maiden name of course. Soon after the marriage a series of unforeseen demises in the Farling family brought the family fortune, about which Lily had known nothing, to rest upon James. James was an unworldly boy who cared little for money and had in any case been, before the intervention of the fates, remote from inheritance. Rich, he still cared little, and was only just prevented by Lily, who cared much, from handing it all over to his indignant surviving relations. Then, urged by his wife to spend, he bought a motor bike, riding which, on the day he bought it, he was killed. After that the family fell upon Lily to destroy her. Lily fought back. Her case seemed clear, but clever lawyers had already been at work to find flaws in James's claim. It became a cause celebre. In the end the matter was settled out of court, after Lily had surrendered numerous goodies. Lily did not emerge without discredit since, in her rage, she had told some transparent lies. But she was, for a short time, a popular heroine, the 'poor girl', fighting against the avaricious rich, the lone woman fighting a cohort of men. It was in the latter role that she attracted the ardent attention of Jean Kowitz who was at that time very concerned with various women's liberation causes. It was almost as if Jean had fallen in love with her, so angry and excited did she become on Lily's behalf. Rose too was drawn in and saw quite a lot of Lily, who also, through Jean, became acquainted with Gerard and the rest. When the fighting was over and the publicity died down Jean rather ‘went off’

Lily; she took a high line about Lily’s telling lies. But Rose kept up with her, partly feeling sorry for her. For Lily's wealth brought her little happiness, and was in any case being steadily eroded by a stream of plausible men. She li, acquired expensive tastes and the idea that she deserved fame. She seemed to have few friends and little notion of how to conduct her life.

^`Rose!'screamed Lily, 'what a perfectly scrumptious dress! You always get it right! So simple, so absolutely you!'

They had met near to the Waterbirds marquee and had to raise their voices. The sound of shoes drumming upon the hollow wooden boarding made a continuous ground bass.

`You look lovely,' said Rose, 'rather oriental. I adore those trousers.'

Lily, who was alone, was dressed in baggy orange silk trousers, drawn in at the ankle by spangled bands, and a floppy white silk blouse weighted by gold chains and anchored by a purple sash into which a transparent silvery scarf covering her shoulders was also tucked. This gear had by now begun to come adrift, the trousers escaping from the bands, the blouse from the sash, the silver scarf hanging down behind on one side. Lily was shorter and thinner than Rose, very thin in fact, and had a thin almost gaunt pale face and short dry weightless fair hair and a long neck. It is possible for a girl to have too long a neck, and Lily's could be said to be on the border between the swan-like and the grotesque. She had a way of accentuating it by thrusting her head forward and staring out of her face as through a muslin mask; she experienced this as cat-like, as 'putting on her cat face'. Her lips were exceedingly thin, a continued cause of distress. Her eyes, ‘melted sugar eyes' one of the plausible men called them, were a disconcerting pale brown with a dark rim and blue and brown stripes leading in to the pupil, thus resembling some of sweetmeat. She was wearing a lot of make-up, also in need of attention, and had generously outlined her lips with p-mit. She spoke with a drawling north London voice which had become deracinated and sometimes sounded American.

‘I came with that shit Crimond’, said Lily, 'now he's ditched me, the swine. Have you seen him anywhere?'

‘No,' said Rose. 'I wonder if you've seen Tamar?'

`The little thing, is she here? No, I haven't seen her. Christ, what a din. How are you these days?'

‘Fine -'

`Let's meet -'

`Yes, let's be in touch.'

They parted. Tamar, seeing Rose talking to Lily, retreated toward the archway which led through into the deer park.

As Gerard emerged from Levquist's staircase he found Jenkin Riderhood waiting for him at the bottom.

As he came out he was conscious that the night sky, which had never really darkened, had become very faintly lighter, and this touched him with a sad prophetic emotion. In the intense concentration of his encounter with Levquist Gerard had completely forgotten everything else, where he was, why he was there, even the references to his father, Sinclair, Rose, had appeared as part of Levquist's thought rather than of his own. Now he suddenly remembered the news which Gulliver had brought to them. First of all however he said to Jenkin,

`Have you found Tamar?'

`No, but I met Conrad. He'd lost her and was still looking"

`I hope you gave him a wigging.'

`It wasn't necessary, he was in a terrible state, poor boy.'

`We must – what's the matter, Jenkin?'

`Come with me. I want to show you something.'

Jenkin took hold of Gerard's hand and began to pull him along across the trampled grass through the scattered strolling of bemused dancers, some still enchanted, some happy beyond their wildest dreams, some concealing grief, some simply drunk, the fading magic of the new light showing their faces more intensely. Near the end of the arcade a youth was being sick, his partner standing guard with her back to him.

Jenkin led Gerard to the 'sentimental' tent where he had danced with Rose, and where a wilder strain of music could now be heard. An eightsome reel was in progress; but the floor had emptied, and an audience, standing in a dense ring, was watching eight evidently expert dancers, the men wearing kilts, who were performing in the centre. One of these was Crimond. It was evident who, in the rotatory movement of the dance, his partner was. Jean Cambus had hitched much of her long red dress up over a belt round her waist, revealing her black-stockinged legs, and her flying skirt came little below her knees. Her narrow hawklike face, usually as pale as ivory, was flushed and dewy with sweat and her dark straight heavy shoulder-length hair, whirling about, had plastered some of its strands across her brow. Her fine Jewish head, usually so stately and so cold, had now, her dark eyes huge and staring, a fierce wild oriental look. She did not, in the weaving of the dance, turn her head, her small feet in low-heeled slippers seemed to dart upon the air, only when her gaze met her partner's did her glaring eyes flame up, unsmiling. Her lips wire parted, indeed her mouth was slightly open, not breathless but as if with a kind of rapacity. Crimond was not sweating. His face was, as usual in repose, pallid, expression-less

even stern, but his slightly freckled skin, which normally Imiked sallow so that he could have been called pasty-faced, was now gleaming and hard. His hair, narrowly wavy and longish, once a flaming red now a faded orange, adhered closely to his head, no flying locks. His light blue eyes did not follow his partner, nor did they, when he faced her, change their cold even grim expression. His thin lips, drawn inward, made of his mouth a straight hard line. With his conspicuously long thin nose he reminded Gerard, watching, of one of the tall Greek kouroi in the Acropolis museum, only without the mysterious smile. Crimond danced well, not with abandonment, but with a magisterial precision, his torso stiff, his shoulders held well back, as taut as a bow and yet as resilient and weightless as a leaping dog. His picturesque garb had also

remained orderly, the elaborate white shirt, the close-fitting black velvet jacket with silver buttons, the sporran swinging at the knee, the silver-handled dirk in place in the sock, the neat buckled shoes.His male companions, all excellent dancers, were dandyish too, but only Crimond had not unbuttoned his shirt. The heavy kilts, their closely pleated backs rippling and swirling, emphasised their owners' indifference to the force of gravity.

Jenkin watched Gerard for a few moments to see that his friend was suitably affected, then turned to watch himself. He murmured, 'I'm glad I saw this. He's like Shiva.'

Gerard said, 'Don't -' The new image, intruding upon his own, was not inappropriate.

The music suddenly ended. The dancers became immobile, hands aloft; then gravely bowed to each other. The audience, released from enchantment, laughed, clapped, stamped their feet. The orchestra immediately began again, with the sugary strain of''Always', and the floor was at once crowded with couples. Crimond and Jean, who had been standing with hanging arms staring at each other, took each a step forward, then glided away together, lost to sight among the dancers.

`What tartan was that?' said Jenkin to Gerard as they moved away.

`Macpherson.'

`How do you know?'

`He told me once, it was the one he was entitled to.'

`I thought it might be any old one.'

`He's meticulous. Where's Duncan?'

`I don't know. As soon as I saw that I ran to wait for you. I didn't want you to miss it.'

`Kind of you to drag yourself away,' said Gerard with a slight edge.

Jenkin ignored the edge. 'Shall we separate and look for Duncan? I can't see him here.'

`It looks as if -'

`As if things have gone too far already.'

`I don't think Duncan would be pleased to see us.'

`You don't think we should sort of shadow him. Keep an eye on him?'

`No.’

Gulliver was suddenly accosted by a woman.

He had, after eating almost all the cucumber sandwiches, begun to feel miraculously better, not really drunk at all, and with that came a frenzied desire to dance. He had wandered about, not looking for Tamar (he had forgotten about her) but for some girl whose man had perhaps felicitously passed out and lay somewhere under a bush in drunken slumber. However the girls, though looking themselves rather the worse for wear, or even positively sozzled, seemed still to have their man in tow. It was impossible now to deny that the dawn was breaking, that the light which had never really gone away all night, was declaring itself to be day. Some terrible birds had begun to sing and from the woods beyond the meadows came the intermittent chant of the cuckoo. Hastily seeking some continuation of night time, Gull had been drawn to the pop irni where, in spite of the lightening canvas, darkness still seemed to reign amid the dazzling flashes and the noise. The pop group had gone and their music, continuing, was now machine-made. Here the capering was at its wildest, resembling acrobatics rather than dance, a kind of desperation overcoming the young people as they scented the morning air. The men had abandoned coats, occasionally shirts too^, the girls had hitched up dresses and undone fasteners. The effect, utter earlier formality, was oddly like fancy dress. Staring at each other, wild-eyed and open-mouthed, the couples leapt, squattered, rotated, grimaced, waved their arms, waved their legs, expressive, thought Gulliver, of a scene out of Dante's Inferno rather than of the vernal joy of careless youth.

'Hi, Gull, dance with me! I've been dancing by myself for at least an hour!’ It was Lily Boyne.

Her frail arms were instantly about him, seizing him at the waist, and they whirled or rather whizzed out into the centre of the deafning maelstrom.

Of course Gulliver knew Lily through 'the others' but he had never felt any interest in her, except briefly on one occasion when he heard someone refer to her as a 'cocotte'. She had seemed to him a pathetic figure whose importunate pretensions were merely embarrassing. Lily now looked like a rather small crazy pirate, perhaps a cabin boy on a pirate ship in a pantomime. Her orange trousers were rolled up revealing thin bare legs, her white blouse was unbuttoned, sash, silver scarf, golden chains had all vanished, dumped with her evening bag Lily could not remember where. Her face, red with exertion and earlier potation, was covered in a multicoloured grease of smudged cosmetic, making her resemble a melting wax image. Her silver lips were grotesquely enlarged into a clownish mouth. But as they danced, not touching each other, now near, now far, jumping violently about, cannoning into other dancers of whom they were entirely unconscious, grinning, glaring, panting, bound together by their crazed eyes, Gulliver felt that he had discovered a perfect partner. Lily, as she swayed away, pirouetted, leapt, circled him about, waving her arms hieratically like an ecstatic priestess, appeared to be saying something, at least her mouth was opening as if in speech, but he could not, because of the din, hear a word. He nodded his head madly, uttering into the storm of marvellous noise a stream of senseless exclamations inaudible even _to himself.

Tamar had not found Conrad but she had found Duncan. Duncan had lost track of Jean earlier on, lingering to drink while she set off into the fray. He was soon informed, by a helpful well-wisher, of Crimond's presence. Perhaps the same man had already alerted Jean; or perhaps Jean had known all along, he conjecture^d later? After some searching he witnessed, unseen, the end of the eightsome reel also witnessed by Gerard and Jenkin, and saw Jean and Crimond disappear together before _the next dance. After that he took himself off to one of the bars _to get as drunk as possible, and to nurse, almost as a consolation, his pain and anger, and his fear that everything would turn out for the very worst. He did not, at this stage, want _to find his wife; and when, later still, in the ^,old-fashioned' tent, he saw Jean come in with Crimond and join the dancers, he sat hunched up in the comparative obscurity at the back, deriving an agonised satisfaction from being invisible while he feasted his eyes.

Tamar, still seeking Conrad, but now very tired and cold, and additionally miserable because she could not find her cashmere shawl, entered the tent and at once saw Jean dancing with Crimond. Tamar knew that there had been some sort of 'thing' about jean and Crimond a good many years ago, but she had never reflected on it, and regarded it as ancient history. What she saw now made her feel surprise, shock, and then a kind of fear and jealous pain. Jean had long been a very important person in Tamar's life; she might even have been said to have a 'crush' on_.lean, to whom she had, in adolescence, brought problems which she could not discuss with her mother, or even with Rose or Pat. She was fond of Duncan too, and was regularly invited to tea, later to drinks. After a moment or two Tamar, glancing round the marquee, saw Duncan sitting with his arm on the chair in front of'him, leaning his chin on his arm, and intently watching the dancers. A number of people passed between them, a dance ended and another started, and Tamar, alarmed at what she was seeing, decided to withdraw. Duncan had seen her however and waved to her, beckoning her to join him. Tamar now felt she could not depart and threaded her way past sitting and standing people, overturned chairs, and tables loaded with empty bottles, reached Duncan and sat down beside him. As she sat down, glancing back at the dance floor, she saw jean and Crimond leaving the tent on the other side.

Duncan was a huge man, said to be 'bear-like', or sometimes 'leonine', stout and tall with a large head and a mass of very dark thick crisply wavy hair which grew well down onto his neck. His big shoulders, habitually rather hunched, gave a look of retained, sometimes menacing, power. He seemed not only clever but formidable. He had a long wavering expressive mouth, dark eyes, and a strange gaze since one of his eyes was almost entirely black, as if the pupil had flowed out over the iris. ^He wore dark-rimmed glasses, had ^an ironical stare and a giggling laugh.

`Hello, Tamar, having a lovely time?'

`Yes, thank you. You haven't seen Conrad have you, you know, Conrad Lomas? Oh – perhaps you haven't met him.'

`Yes, I met him at Gerard's, he's a friend of Leonard's, isn't he? No, I haven't seen him. Is he your swain? Where's he got to?'

`I don't know. It's my fault. I left him fora moment.' Feeling she might be going to cry, she closed her eyes hard against the tears.

`I'm sorry, little Tamar,' said Duncan. 'Look, let's go and get ourselves a drink, eh? It'll do us both good.' However he did not get up yet, just replanted his feet and leaned a little more upon the chair in front of him. He was suddenly not sure that he would be able to rise. He gazed at Tamar, thinking how pathetically thin she was, almost anorexic, and how with her hair done like that, cut in a straight bob and parted at the side, she looked like a girl of fourteen. The white ball dress did nothing for her; it looked like a sloppy petticoat. She looked better in her usual rig, a neat blouse and skirt.

Tamar looked anxiously at Duncan. She had taken i_n the scene and could now receive some vibrations of his suffering, which made her feel embarrassed rather than sympathetic. Also, it was clear that Duncan was very drunk, he was red-faced and breathing heavily. Tamar was afraid that at any moment he would fall flat on the ground and she would have to do something about it.

At that moment Duncan heaved himself to his feet. He stood for a moment swaying slightly, then put his hand onto Tamar's thin bare arm to steady himself. 'Let's go and find that drink, shall we?'

They began to make their way toward one of' the exits, passing as they did so near to the dance floor. The band was playing `Night and Day'.

Duncan said, 'Night and day. Yes. Let's dance. You'll dance with me, won't you?'

He swept her onto the dance floor and, suddenly surrendered to the music, found that his legs had lost their stupidity and like well-trained beasts were able to perform the familiar routine. He danced well. Tamar let herself be led, letting the sulky sad rhythm enter her body, she was dancing, it was her first dance that evening. Some tears did now come into her eyes and she wiped them away on Duncan's black coat.

In the jazz tent Rose was dancing with Jenkin. Jenkin had accompanied Gerard back to Levquist's rooms off the cloister where it occurred to them that Duncan might have taken refuge. 'He won't want to see us,' said Gerard. `If he's there it proves he does,' said jenkin. But there was no one in the room. Gerard elected to stay there just in case, while Jenkin, still full of his idea of becoming Duncan's invisible bodyguard, had set offagain. Soon after that he met Rose and felt obliged to ask her to dance. They went to the jazz sound, which was nearest, and Jenkin was dutifully propelling her round the circuit, through the increasingly dense and unbuttoned crowd who, aware of the dawn, had reinvaded the floors. Dancing with Jenkin was a simple and predictable matter since he danced in the same way whatever the music. He had of course told her what he and Gerard had seen. He had even suggested that they should go and have a look in case the performance was being repeated. But Rose had evidently felt this to be bad form, and_.Jenkin, dashed, had recognised it to be such.

Rose, feeling perhaps that she had expressed too much emotion upon the subject earlier in the evening, was now trying to play it down. 'I expect Crimond has sheered off and Jean and Duncan have been together for ages. There's nothing to it. Only you'd better not say you saw her with him!'

`Of course I won't, and of'course you're right. But, my God, what cheek!'

`What are you going to do about the book?' said Rose, changing the subject, as Jenkin stepped on her foot. `We, Rose. You're on the committee too.'

`Yes, but I don't count. You and Gerard must decide.'

`We can't do anything,' said Jenkin. He was worrying about Duncan wandering around like a miserable dangerous bear.

Conrad Lomas appeared from nowhere, making his way across the dance floor, thrusting the insensate couples aside.

`Where's Tamar? Have you seen her?'

`We should be asking you that!' said Rose.

Gerard, alone in Levquist's rooms, where the curtains were still pulled against the light, looked gloomily at the chaotic scene, used glasses and empty bottles perched everywhere, on the mantelpiece, on the chairs, on the tables, on the bookcases, on the floor. How can we have used so many glasses, he thought. Of course one loses one's glass oftener and oftener as the evening goes on! And damn it, there are no sandwiches left, or only one and it hasn't got any cucumber in it. He ate the limp piece of bread, then poured himself' out some champagne. He was tired of the stuff, but there was nothing else to drink. Jenkin had claimed to have hidden a bottle of whisky in Levquist's bedroom 'for later', only Gerard did not feel strong enough to search for it. He fervently hoped that Levquist's scout would be able to clear up the mess before Levquist returned after breakfast. He must remember to tip the man. Then lie recalled with anguish that he had, ⁱⁿ the electric storm of his visit to Levquist, forgotten to thank him for the loan of the room, a notable privilege since other distinguished old pupils were certainly also in the field. He began to plan a gracefully apologetic letter. Levquist would of course have observed the omission and probably derived malicious pleasure from it. ^He then reflected upon the interesting fact that ever since 'that business', now so far in the past, Levquist had never, in meetings with Gerard or Jenkin, mentioned Crimond's name, although he usually referred to the others, and Crimond too had been his pupil and one of the group. Someone must have told him. Gerard then wondered, not for the first time, whether Crimond kept up any sort of friendship with Levquist. Perhaps he had been to see him this very evening! How horrible, how somehow poisonous it was, Crimond being here. Gerard shared Rose's reaction of: how dare he! To which_.jenkin had rationally replied: why not? But dancing wittijean… Gerard had noticed with displeasure how the whole episode, in so far as it could be called that, seemed to have excited Jenkin. Gerard found it shocking, sickening, thoroughly ill-omcned and bad. He wondered if he were drunk, then, how drunk he was. The telephone rang. He lifted the receiver. 'Hello.'

`Could I speak to Mr Hernshaw, if he's there?'

`Pat -'

`Oh Gerard – Gerard – he's gone -'

Gerard reassembled his thoughts. His father was dead.

`Gerard, are you still there?'

`Yes.'

`He's died. We didn't expect it, did we, the doctor didn't say – it just happened – so – suddenly – he – and he was dead -'

`Are you alone?'

`Yes, of course! It's five o'clock in the morning! Who do you think I could get to be with me?'

`When did he die?'

`Oh – an hour ago – I don't know -'

Gerard thought, what was I doing then? 'And were you with him -?'

`Yes! I was asleep with the doors open – about one or so I heard him moaning and I went in and he was sitting up and -and mumbling in a ghastly high voice, and he kept jerking his arms and staring all round the room, and he wouldn't look at me – and he was white, as white as the wall, and his lips were white – and I tried to give him a pill but – I tried to make him lie back, I wanted him to sleep again, I thought if he can only rest, if he can only sleep – and then his breathing – became so awful -'

`Oh God,' said Gerard.

`All right, you don't want to know – I've been trying to get hold of you for ages, ever since, the porter kept telephoning various rooms, I just got a lot of drunks. Are you drunk? You sound as if you are.'

`Possibly.' He thought, of course Levquist has no telephone over there – but that was earlier anyway – what was I doing? Watching Crimond dance? Poor Patricia. He said, 'Bear up, Pat.'

‘You are drunk. Of course I'm bearing up. What else can I do just half mad with grief and misery and shock and I'm all by myself-‘

‘You’d better go to bed.'

‘I can’t. How long will it take you to get here, an hour?'

‘I can do it in an hour,' said Gerard, 'or less, but I can't immediately.'

’Why ever not?’

‘I’ve got a lot of people here, I can't just leave them, I can't go without telling them and God knows where they all are at the moment.’ He thought, I can't go without seeing Duncan. `your father's dead and you want to stay on dancing with ^{your d}runken friends.'

’I’ll _Come soon,' said Gerard, 'I J ust can't come at once, I'm sorry.

Patricia put down the receiver.

Gerard sat with closed eyes in the silence that followed.Then he started saying, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God', and his face in his hands and panted and moaned. Of course _he had known it was coming, he had calmly mentioned it to Levquist, but this was unlike anything which cowardly imagination could have schooled him with beforehand. He had known what he did not will to imagine, the fact, the irrevocable fact. Love, old love, sensⁱbilities and dimensions and powers of love which he had forgotten or never recoggnized_, came speeding in from all the far-spread regions of his being, hotwith Pertin_, crying and wailing with the agony of that

severance_. Never to speak to his father again, to see his smiling welcoming face, to be happy in his happiness, to experience the absolute comfort of his love. He felt remorse, not because he had been a bad son, he had not, but because he was no longer and there was still so much to say. A place wherein he himself was as in no other place had been struck out of the world. Oh my father, oh my father, oh my dear father.

He heard steps upon the stairs and hastily rose to his feet and robed his face although there were no tears on it. He turned, calm gaze to the door. It was Jenkin.

Gerard decided instantly not to tell Jenkin about his father. He would tell him later when they were driving back together to London. He did not want to start to tell and then be interrupted by one of the others. Better to say nothing. Jenkin would understand.

Jenkin, who constantly read Gerard's mind, had been aware that Gerard disapproved of what he might have thought of as Jenkin's excitement, even glee, at the little bit of drama promised by the evening. He also felt that Gerard had thought poorly of Jenkin's appreciation of Crimond's flying kilt. Jenkin was bothered too by his gaucherie with Rose, his inability to dance well, and his abrupt dismissal of her question. He too was not at all sure how drunk he was. When Rose declined the next dance saying she was tired, Jenkinmade a quick circuit looking for Duncan but did not find him. He pursued a white-clad figure who looked like Tamar, but who vanished on his approach. Tamar had by this time finished her dance with Duncan and been sent away by him with a vague, 'Well, off you go, and enjoy yourself.' She did not feel any urge or duty to stay with him, he was clearly very drunk and either did not want her to continue seeing him in this condition or had quite forgotten that she had no partner. She started to walk about aimlessly in conspicuous spaces hoping that someone she knew would see her. About the cashmere shawl, she had given up hope, perhaps someone had stolen it.

Gerard, who constantly read Jenkin's mind, was aware of the little cloud that hung over his friend and hastened to dispel it. 'My dear fellow, do you think you could find the whisky you alleged you hid? I'm fed up with this stuff.'

They went into Levquist's neat student-like bedroom with its narrow iron bedstead and washstand with basin, water jug, and soap dish, and Jenkin began foraging in Levquist's bedclothes. The bottle of whisky was found, and a carafe of water on the bedside table, handy because there was of course no bathroom or running water. Gerard tidied the bed. They took these trophies back into the main room and dosed two champagne glasses with whisky.

`It's day out there, can't we pull the curtains?'

`I suppose it is,' said Gerard, 'how ghastly!' He pulled back the curtains and let in the dreadful cold sunlight.

`I couldn't see Duncan anywhere, but I gather a lot of people are in the deer park.'

`They're not supposed to be.'

`Well, they are.'

Heavy uncertain footsteps were heard on the stairs. 'That must be Duncan,' said Jenkin, and opened the door.

Duncan blundered in and made straight for an armchair and fell into it with a crash. He stared up blankly for a moment. Then passed his hand over his face as Gerard had done earlier, frowned, and gathered himself. With an effort he sat up a little.

`Good heavens, you're soaking wet!' said Jenkin.

It was so. Duncan's trousers and part of'his jacket were drenched with water, muddy too, and muddy water was dripping darkly onto the carpet.

Duncan noticed this and said, 'Christ, what will Levquist say!'

`I'll deal,' said Gerard. He fetched two towels from the bedroom, gave one to Duncan, and with the other began to mop up the pool on the carpet, while Duncan dabbed at his clothes.

`I'm sloshed,' said Duncan. Then he explainedA fell in the river. Crazy!'

`I'm sloshed too,' said Jenkin sympathetically.

`Is that whisky? Can I have some?'

Jenkin poured out a small whisky and filled the glass up with water. Duncan took it with an unsteady hand.

More footsteps were heard on the stairs. It was Rose. She came in and saw Duncan at once. 'Duncan, dear, there you are, I'm so glad!' She could not think what to say to him next, so exclaimed, 'So you're all onto whisky, are you, no I won't have any! What's that mess on the floor?'

There was. Rose, tucking up her green dress, on her knees, began an artfuloperation with little doses of water and careful use of the towel, blending the muddy stain into the fortunately fairly dark and ancient carpet. 'I'm afraid we're messing up Levquist's towels, but the scout will replace them. Don't forget to tip him, Gerard.'

Someone was running up the stairs, stumbling in his haste, and now bursting open the door. It was Gulliver Ashe. Not immediately noticing Duncan he cried out his news. 'There's been such a to-do down there, they say that Crimond has thrown a man into nto the Cherwell!' Then he caught sight of' Duncan and the water scene and put his hand over his mouth.

`Go away, Gull, would you,' said Gerard.

Gull reeled away down the staires.

Gulliver had lost Lily Boyne; he was sorry about this, he had enjoyed dancing with her, yet he was not absolutely sorry since he had come to realise that although he had drunk nothing recently except a glass of champagne which he had discovered on the grass, he was once more feeling very drunk, and a little sick, and also extremely tired. Lily, who had in the course of dancing divested herself of her white blouse, which she had rolled up and thrown away among the dancers (where it was caught and appropriated by a young man) revealing a just decently extensive and lacy petticoat beneath, had also at last declared herself 'flaked' and gone to sit down. Gull had gone out to attend to a natural need and coming back had found her gone. It was after this that he had heard some people talking about Crimond. Expelled from Levquist's rooms he now began to wander, first round the cloister where he managed to acquire, although he didn't really want it, a glass of beer, and then out onto the main lawns between the tents.

It was now full daylight, the terrible inquisitional finalising daylight had come, sending away the enchanted forest and all upturned chairs, errant garments, and every sort of unattractive human debris. Even the tents, in the relentless sunshine, looked dirty and bedraggled. The blackbirds, thrushes, tits, swallows, wrens, robins, starlings and innumerable other birds were singing loudly, the doves were cooing and the rooks were cawing, and, nearer now, in the big trees of ^the deer park, came the hollow repetitive cry of the cuckoo. Dance music continued unabated however, sounding in the more open space of the high cloudless blue sky and surrounded by all that bird song, diminished and unreal. A queue was forming for breakfast, but a considerable number of people seemed unable to stop dancing, possessed by ecstasy or by a frenzied desire to maintain the enchantment, and to postpone the misery to come: remorse, regret, the tarnished hope, the shattered dream, and all the awful troubles of ordinary life. Gull would have liked some breakfast, the idea of bacon and eggs was suddenly extremely attractive, but he did not fancy waiting in the queue by himself, and he felt a more urgent and immediate need to sit down, preferably to lie down. He decided to rest for a short time and to come for the grub later when the crush was less. The desecrated littered grass was also scattered here and there with prostrate human figures, mostly male, some fast asleep. Making his way between these Gulliver even passed, though of course did not recognise, Tamar's cashmere shawl, now a stained screwed-up bundle, which had been used by someone to deal with a disaster to a bottle of red wine. A faint mist was hanging over the Cherwell. He found his way through the archway and out into the deer park. The park had been declared, for ecological and security reasons, out of bounds to the dancers. Now however, presumably since the dance was nearly over, the bowler-hatted guardians had melted away and couples were strolling here and there in the groves of trees… In the distance, in misty green glades, deer wandered and rabbits ran impetuously to and fro. Gulliver staggered on a little way, breathing the delicious fresh rivery early morning air and appreciating the untrodden grass. Then he sat down under a tree and fell asleep.

Tamar had at last found Conrad. For a while she had sat on a chair ⁱⁿ one _of the tents and actually slept for a short time. When she came out the sky was light and the sun had risen. The light was terrible. The skirt of her white dress had become mysteriously covered with grey smudges. She felt terrible, like an ugly ghost. She decided to comb her hair with her little comb, then accidentally dropped the comb and did not turn to pick it up. She walked slowly, for something to do and because she might attract more attention if she stood still. Everything about her looked unreal and appalling, the laughter and the music came to her in gusts like little blows, making her blink And frown. Her head drooped, her mouth drooped. She came io the pop tent where recorded music was still being played, was about to pass it, then looked in. In a second the world changed. There he was, Conrad, her tall fellow, leaping, smiling, twirling round and round by himself. Tamar was about to cry out and rush to him. Then she saw that he was dancing with Lily Boyne.

Tamar turned quickly away, raising her hand to shield her face, and began to run away across the grass. She raced, lifting her skirt, through the cloisters and on to the main gate and out into the High Street. The curving High was empty, beautiful, molemn, in the quiet early sunshine. Tamar made her way, desperately, like a fugitive, hurrying now not running. During leer run the strap of one of her sandals had snapped, and she harried on, skipping a little, limping a little, past the silent magisterial buildings which were glowing in the clear cool sunlight against the radiant blue sky. She felt cold, but the coat which, anticipating this chill daybreak, she had brought with her was locked up in Conrad's car. Fortunately, during i he whole nightmare of the dark hours, although she had lost hei shawl, she had not mislaid her little evening bag, with cosmectics, money, keys, which she had carried unconsciously looped onto her wrist. She rushed along, holding her dirtied skirt high, her dress crumpled, her hair uncombed, her face mipowdered, in the direction of the bus station. The few early passers-by saw her streaming tears and turned to a bus for London all the bells of Oxford were tolling six o'clock.

After Gulliver's departure, the four ⁱⁿ the room did not look at each other. Rose brought the electric fire near to Duncan's soaked trousers, asked if it was too hot, and commented with a laugh at the steam which immediately began to rise. Duncan replied suitably, said really he was almost dry, not to trouble and so on. Jenkin and Duncan went on drinking whisky. It was agreed to be unfortunate that there was now nothing to eat, Gulliver was blamed for having eaten up all the sandwiches.Jenkin wished he had brought some chocolate, said he had intended to. Gerard and_.jenkin discussed whether one of them should sally out to the breakfast scene and bring back Some sausages and bread. They wondered if they could now do this without having to queue. No decision was reached. They were all silently wondering if Jean would turn up and what on earth they were going to do if she did not.

After about half an hour Jean Kowitz-Cambus did appear. She clopped audibly, neatly, up the stairs and entered the room already wearing her coat over the famous red dress with black lace which Rose admired so much. Jean had evidently planned her appearance and her entrance carefully. She was already dressed for a quick departure and had attended to her make-up and arranged her hair. Her very dark hair, sleek and, glowing like the feathers ofan exotic bird, so orderly in its even lines that it might have been enamelled, flowed evenly back from her delicate hawk-face. Her rather stern, though calm, expression relaxed suitably to Rose's greeting.

`Darling Jean, you've come, oh good!'

Rose put her arms round Jean, Jean patted Rose's shoulder and said how lovely it was to hear the birds singing. Gerard and Jenkin stood back. Then Jean approached Duncan who ^remained slumped ⁱⁿ his chair. She said, 'How's the old man? Sozzled as usual? Can someone help him up?’

Duncan stretched out his hands, and Jenkin took one hand and Gerard the other and they hauled him to his feet.

Jean and Duncan then had a conversation. Jean said where was his coat, and he said he thought he had left it in the car, but where was the car? Jean told him where it was, not in the car park, but in a road nearby. They both said it was a good thing it was not in the car park, Jenkin agreed, you could get boxed in, young people were so thoughtless. Rose said lightly that she hoped that Jean was driving, and Jean said she certainly was. Jean kissed Gerard and Jenkin and Rose. Duncan kissed Rose and tried to argue with Gerard about contributing to the tip for the scout. Rose hugged _,Jean and kissed her and stroked her hair. Then she put her arms round Duncan in a special embrace. Jean told Duncan to come along and took his arm. Amid various valedictory remarks and waves of the hand they took their leave. Their footsteps receded down the stairs.

After a suitable interval of silence, Jenkin stifled a little snort of laughter, then went to look out of the window and compose his face. Rose looked at Gerard who frowned slightly and looked away.

Gerard, expected by the other two to make a statement, said, 'Well, I daresay it's all all right, and we won't have to think about it any more, I certainly hope so.'

`You may be able not to think about it,' said Jenkin, returning from the window with a composed face, 'but I doubt if I will.'

`Gerard's good at not thinking about things when he doesn't feel he ought to,' said Rose.

`Or feels he oughtn't to,' said Jenkin.

Gerard said briskly, 'Time to be off. I'll leave an envelope for Levquist's chap.'

Rose wished she was going to drive back to London with Gerard, but she had brought her own car, partly because Gerard had said he was driving Jenkin down, and partly because she wanted to be able to leave earlier than the others if she felt very tired. She fetched her coat which she had left in Levquist's bedroom. They all did a little elementary tidying up, but their heart was not in it. They went down the stairs and through the cloister and faced the warm sunlight and the deafening chorus of birds and the loud cries of the cuckoo.

Gulliver was having a marvellous dream. A beautiful girl with big liquid dark eyes and long thick eyelashes and a moist sensuous mouth was leaning over towards him. He felt her warm sweet breath, her soft lips touched his cheek, and then his mouth. He woke up. A face was close to his, and big dark beautiful eyes were gazing into his eyes. One of the deer, finding this black bundle curled up under a familiar tree, had thrust a dark wet muzzle down towards it. Gulliver jolted up. The deer sprang back, gazed for another moment, then trotted with dignity away. Gulliver wiped his face, wet with the creature's gentle touch. He got to his feet. He felt terrible, he looked terrible. He began to walk back. He felt giddy, bright lights danced around him and little black hieroglyphs kept appearing at the side of his vision.

As he emerged, rubbing his eyes, from the archway of the New Building onto the main lawn, he stopped dead. A dreadful and extraordinary sight which he could not interpret met his gaze. Somewhere, how far away he could not at first estimate, for the phenomenon was so odd, a long line of people, two long lines of people, one above the other, were drawn up directly opposite to him and staring straight at him. He felt helpless panic as at some shattering of a natural law. He rubbed his eyes. They were still there, standing rigidly at attention and looking at him in silence. Then he realised what it was. It was the dance photograph. Nearer, with his back to him, the photographer was marshalling his camera which was mounted on a tripod, looking through it at the posed silent ranks which were looking at him. The dancers were immobile, mostly solemn, many of them looking as terrible as Gull, their clothes disordered, their faces bleary with exhaustion, exposed, graceless and haggard, in the cruel light of day. Under the song of the birds the silence of the music made itself felt. Frowning and focusing his eyes Gulliver scanned the large staring assembly for any familiar faces. He could not see Gerard or Rose or Tamar or Jean or Duncan or Crimond. He spotted Lily however. She was standing beside Conrad Lomas with her arm around his waist. Gulliver began to slink along the front of the building in the direction of the car park. He wondered if his car would be boxed in. It was.

Gerard turned the key in the door and entered the silent house. In the car driving to London he had told_.Jenkin of his father's death. Jenkin had been shocked and distressed, and the spontaneity of his grief for Gerard's father, whom he had known for many years, was touching. But after the first few exclamatory exchanges Jenkin had begun to think, to worry about how much Gerard would suffer, to wonder whether Gerard felt guilty because he had not left the dance at once. Jenkin did not say any of this, but Gerard intuited it behind some clumsy expressions of sympathy and was irritated. He was driving into the sun. He told Jenkin to go to sleep and Jenkin obediently did so, tilting the seat back, settling his head, and going to sleep instantly. The presence of his sleeping friend was soothing, at the moment Jenkin asleep was preferable to Jenkin awake. Coming into London they hit the early rush hour, and as the car crawled slowly past Uxbridge and Ruislip and Acton Jenkin continued to sleep, his hands clasped upon his stomach, his shirt rumpled, his legs stretched out, his trousers undone at the waist, his plump face expressing trustful calm. The sleeping presence, surrendering itself to his protection, calmed Gerard's painful thoughts, held them off a little, catching their sharpness as in a soft bandage. When they reached the little terrace house in Shepherd's Bush where Jenkin lived Gerard woke his friend up, came around and opened the car door and pulled him out, not forgetting the little suitcase into which Jenkin had put, so he said, a woollen cardigan to put on if it was cold, and slippers in case his feet became swollen with dancing. The chocolate had been left behind. Gerard refused the suggestion, less than wholehearted perhaps, that he should come in for a cup of tea. They both felt it was time to part, and the door closed before Gerard had even started the car. He had no doubt that jenkin would go upstairs, undress, put on pyjamas, pull the curtains, get into bed, and fall asleep again at once. Something about the orderliness of' his friend's arrangements irritated Gerard metimes.

Now he was in his own house in Notting Hill, standing in the hall and listening. He did not call out. He hoped Patricia was asleep. The house, a fairly large detached brick-built villa, had belonged to Robin Topglass's father, the bird man, then to Robin. For some time Robin and Gerard had lived in it together. Then when Robin got married and went to Canada tie sold the house to Gerard. He stood in the familiar smell and familiar silence of the house, seeing and feeling the presence of the familiar quiet things, the paintings of birds by John Gould which had belonged to Robin's father, the carved Victorian hallstand which they had bought at an auction, the red and brown Kazakh rug which Gerard had brought from Bristol. The house seemed to be waiting for Gerard, expecting something of him, that he would bring comfort, restore order, take charge. Yet also the house was a spectator, it was not all that involved, it was not a very old house, it was built in i8go, but it had already seen many things. It had seen much, it would see more. Perhaps it was just watching with curiosity to see what Gerard would do. Gerard hung up his coat, which he had brought in from the car, upon the hall stand. He took off his black evening jacket and his black tie. He undid his shirt at the.ck and rolled up his sleeves. His heart, quiet earlier, began to race. He took off his shoes and began, holding them in his hand, to mount the stairs, stepping long-legged over the stair that creaked.

On the landing, he saw that the door of Patricia's bedroom was closed. He did not hesitate but walked on and opened the door of his father's room. The curtains were pulled against the sunshine but there was a bright twilight in the room. The long thin figure on the bed was entirely covered by a sheet. It was somehow startling that the face had- been covered up. The bedclothes had been removed. So had all the paraphernalia of illness, pills, bottles, tumblers, even his father's glasses had gone, even the book he had been reading, Sense and Sensibility. Gerard put down his shoes and crossed the room and pulled the curtains well back. Their movement made a familiar running metallic sound which, in the particular silence of the room, made Gerard shudder, perhaps at some unconscious memory from a time, much earlier, when he had slept in the room himself. He looked out at the harsh sunlight which revealed the back garden surrounded by an old brick wall dark with grime, the damp mossy rockery, the gaudy rose bushes (Robin's choice) in full flower, the walnut tree, the many trees in other gardens. He turned and quickly, gently, not touching what lay beneath, drew back the sheet from his father's face. The eyes were closed. He had wondered about that in the car. He drew a chair up beside the bed and sat down. So lately dead, so only just, but so absolutely, gone. He thought, I shall lie so one day, neatly upon my back with my eyes closed and look just so thin and so long; unless I drown and am never found, or smash to pieces like Sinclair. The face was not exactly calm, but withdrawn, absorbed, expressing perhaps a quiet thoughtful puzzlement, the good kind face, abstracted, already alien, already waxen and very pale above the faint beard, already shrinking, like his father's face yet unlike, like a work of art, as if someone had made quite a good but rather stolid simulacrum. One could see that the soul was gone, no one looked out, the puzzled look was something left behind, like a farewell letter. He lifted the sheet at the side to look at one of the hands, but quickly replaced it. The hand looked uncanny, more alive, its familiar thin spotty claws relaxed. The neck was darker ⁱⁿ colour, sunken, the muscles and tendons prominent, the skin stretched not wrinkled. The wrinkles of the face looked like artificial lines scored in pale thick wax. His father's face, so long youthful, had lately become very wrinkled, the eyes deep in skinny folds, the lower lids curiously fractured in the centre, forming runnels for a perpetual discharge of moisture from the eyes. These were now dry, the face was dry, the hidden eyes were tearless. Death dries the tears of the dead. The dead dry face looked older, the ageing process, after the great change, being gently metamorphosed. Faster it would go on soon, and faster. His father looked gaunt, a gauntness disguised before by the glow illness into a self'-depreciating joke. Without the transparent-rimmed glasses and the false teeth the mask looked ancient now, the nose thinner, the chin sunk, the helpless affronted mouth a little open. So he had eased himself into death as into a garment which now, perfectly, fitted him.

Gerard's imagination engaged with the fact that Patricia had seen him die. Gerard had seen people dead but he had never seen anyone die. He thought, when it comes it is, isn't it, so fast. Well, that must be true by definition, 'fast' doesn't really apply. There just has to be a last moment. What we call a slow death is a slow dying. We may still picture the end as if it were a leap over a stream, but there is no stream and no one to leap._,Just a last moment. Could one know, think 'it will come in this minute'? A condemned criminal could know. At that stage many of us are condemned criminals. It was such a very little time since yesterday when his father had wished him a happy goodbye as he left for the dance. 'Tell me all about it tomorrow.' Gerard had not slept since he had seen his father living. That seemed important too. For Patricia, the sudden going must have been perceptible, one moment the struggle to communicate, to help, the talking, the soothing, the saying, ^,rest, you'll feel better soon', then at some next moment the utter solitude, the job over, nothing to do, alone. Oh God. How is it done, thought Gerard. It can't be difficult, anyone can do it. It could be more like a little movement, a sort of quick turning away. I shall make that movement one day. How shall I know how? When the time comes I shall know, my body will tell me, will teach me, urge me, push me at last over the edge. It is an achievement, or is it like falling asleep which happens but you don't know when? Perhaps at the very last moment it is easy, the point where all deaths are alike. But that must be true by definition too. Here, with a habitual movement, Gerard forbade his thoughts to wonder how long before it happened Sinclair knew that he was to die. That had been too much worked on, once. Thoughts must not go there. He shuddered now looking at the dead flesh, so recently alive, so frightful, so abhorrent to the living. He covered the face and rose and stepped back, trying to see the long still form on which the white sheet made sculptured folds as something general, a sort of monument.

He went to the window and looked at the pale oblong leaves of the walnut tree, tugged at by the breeze, transparent in the sun, looking like messages, a tree of messages, like paper prayers that had been tied to the branches. He felt such a painful aching pity for his father. It seemed absurd to pity someone for being dead, yet so natural too. The helplessness of the dead can seem, at that first realisation, so agonisingly touching, pathetic rather than tragic, the powerlessness, the defencelessness, of those `strengthless heads'. Poor poor dead thing, oh poor thing, oh my poor dear dear dead father. Now love released runs wild when it is too late. I should have seen him more, he thought, oh if only I could see him now, even for a minute and hug him and kiss him and tell him how much I love him. How much I loved him. He pictured his father's face, his loving eyes, as he had seen them yesterday, that sleepless yesterday which had become today. There was so much to say, so much he ought to have said. He ought to have spoken to him about the parrot, only the moment had never seemed to come, so he had put it off, and then towards the end it had seemed too dangerous a matter, too difficult and painful to inflict upon a dying man – yet also perhaps that reference, that speech, was just what the dying man was longing for, was waiting for, but could make no sign. Sometimes when Gerard had felt it 'coming over him' that he should say some good thing about it, he had told himself that it no longer mattered, it had long ago been forgotten. Why drag it up now – better leave it alone, the years had mended it. But more often lie felt sure that the years had not mended it and it was not forgotten. He had not forgotten, how could his father have? The parrot had come into the family when Gerard was eleven and Patricia was thirteen. It had arrived when its owners, clients of Gerard's father, had left England <sup>in</sup> a hurry, leaving behind a confusion in their affairs which Gerard's father was to sort out, and the bird, who was to be found a home or handed over to a pet shop. Gerard loved the bird instantly, passionately. Its sudden presence in the house, its exalted winged bird presence, was a miracle to which he awakened with daily joy. Gerard's passion triumphed, not without some opposition, the bird stayed. It, or rather he, was a male, who had been given by its previous owner a whimsical condescending name which Gerard consigned to oblivion. The bird was a grey parrot and Gerard, divining his true name, called him 'Grey', a gentle simple name, a calm quiet colour, an open lucid sound which its owner was soon able to reproduce. Gerard's mother and his sister usually called the parrot 'Polly', but Grey scorned this and it never became a proper name. Gerard, helped by his father, looked after Grey, who was said to be a young bird. Grey glowed with health and beauty and grace. His clever eyes, surrounded by an ellipse of delicate white skin, were pale yellow, his immaculate feathers of the palest purest grey, and in his tail and wing-tips, the softest most radiant scarlet. About his neck and shoulders he wore, as Gerard saw it like a mobile coat of chain mail, a collar of small closely packed `fishscale' feathers which slithered about upon his athletic frame most expressively according to his moods. The furry leggings above his claws were of almost white down, and under his wings was an intimate softness as of fluffy wool. He could whistle more purely than any flute and dance as he whistled. His musical repertoire when he first arrived included 'Pop Goes the Weasel' and part of the 'Londonderry Air' and jesu joy of Man's Desiring'. Gerard soon taught him ^,Three Blind Mice' and 'Greensleeves'. He could imitate a blackbird and an owl. His human vocabulary had progressed more slowly. He could say 'Hello' and (impatiently) 'Yes, yes', and (excitedly) 'Yippee!' He could also say, often with amusing appropriateness, 'Shut up!' What most touched, and also disturbed Gerard among those utterances from Grey's past was the way he would sometimes say in a tender slightly drawling woman's voice, 'Oh – pretty – one.' Perhaps there had been a woman who loved Grey and missed him; but diat was the past, and Gerard did not often think of it, Grey was his parrot now. Under Gerard's regime, Grey was a wayward learner however. He quickly picked up the sound of Gerard’s mother voice saying in quiet exasperation, ‘Oh dear, oh dear!', but he resisted Gerard's 'pieces of eight', turning his intelligent attentive head firmly away, blinking his eyes as if bored, refusing the nebulously sibilant sounds. He was soon able however not only to say his own name, but to utter something recognisably like the interesting sentence, `Grey is grey.'

Grey was for a time a novelty which sufficiently amused all the family, but later, since Gerard and his father cleaned the cage, fed the bird, examined him for ticks and mites, treated his little ailments, took him to be checked up by the vet, he became more 'their' parrot and of less interest to Patricia and Gerard's mother who soon stopped talking to him and often ignored him. His cage was moved from the drawing room to Gerard's father's study. The intelligence and presence of Grey was for Gerard a continual source of tremblingjoy, a feeling he described to himself as'touchment'. The parrot was a world in which the child was graciously allowed to live, he was a vehicle which connected Gerard with the whole sentient creation, he was an avatar, an incarnation of love. Gerard knew, he could not doubt, that Grey understood how much Gerard loved him, and returned his love. The clever inquisitive white-rimmed yellow eyes expressed, so soon, fearless faith and love. The gentle firm clasp of the small dry claws, the lightness of the entrusted body, the sudden scarlet of the spread tail, expressed love, even the hard dense stuff of the curving black beak seemed mysteriously endowed with tenderness. Of course Grey was soon out of his cage, flying about the room or perched on Gerard's hand or on his shoulder, leaning his soft feathered head caressingly against his cheek, clambering round the back of his neck and peering to look into his face. Eye to eye they often were as Grey, back in the cage to which he returned willingly, swung or jolted and danced to and fro upon his perch, or climbed around the bars, sometimes upside down, pausing to gaze or to listen or to demand attention. The sense of an attentive responding intelligence was indubitable. Grey parrots are not in general very big. Gerard would often take the bird, gently gathering the folded wings, to nestle the small head and light fragile body against his chest, or hold him inside his shirt against his beating heart. He stroked the soft feathers, cradling the frail hollow bones, while the delicate claws grasped his fingers with perfect trust.

The parrot, accepted for a while as Gerard's pet, began later to divide the family. Gerard's mother (her name was Annette) was mildly and reasonably annoyed by bird droppings on the carpet. She and Patricia came to resent the proprietary attitude of Gerard and to a lesser extent his father (whose name wits Matthew) about the bird, and were irritated by Gerard's continual chatter about Grey's exploits. Possibly, he thought later, they were both jealous. They had in any case never spent the time and care necessary to become really friendly with-Grey. In approaching a wild thing it is necessary to move quietly and predictably, to speak gently and softly, adopt regular routines, behave respectfully, be patient, reliable and truthful. All this Gerard knew by instinct. Patricia, perhaps out of jealousy and envy, took to teasing the bird, poking at him jerkily, offering food then whisking it away. Gerard of course was angry. Patricia said she was just playing with Polly, who after all belonged to her too. Gerard explained to his sister, frequently and at length, how to treat the bird with whom they were privileged to live. (He never used the word `pet'.) Patricia continued the persecution in his absence until one day Grey seized hold of an intrusive finger and bit it. There were screams and tears. After that Patricia kept well away from the parrot and the furore died down. The time came for Gerard to go to boarding school. Gerard told Grey not to worry, he would be back before long, he took an emotional farewell pressing his face against the bars as his father was calling him to the car. All his letters babbled of Grey, sending his love. At the longed-for half-term, ferried home in a friend's parent's car, he rushed joyfully into the house and into the study. Grey was not there. He ran to the drawing room, to the kitchen. He screamed.

The explanations followed. No, Polly was not dead, it had not escaped, it had just gone away, it belonged to someone else now. It had gone to the very best pet shop in the city centre, and had been bought by some people, some very nice people the shop man said when he telephoned, no, he didn't know who they were, they were passing through, they had taken Polly away in their car. 'You'll never see it again!' Patricia cried. Gerard's father, averting his face, said nothing. The explanations gabbled on. It was just too difficult to look after it with Gerard away, they could not take the responsibility, it had become wild and vicious, it had tried to bite Annette, they had read in a book, it was kinder to the bird, and so on and so on.

Gerard was hysterical for ten minutes. Then he fell silent. He did not speak to any member of his family for two days. Annette wanted to take him to a psychiatrist. After that, quite suddenly, he resumed polite ordinary apparently cheerful relations with them all. Nothing more was said about the parrot. 'Thank God that's over!' said Annette. Gerard's father knew better. He knew how terribly, how unforgivably, he had failed his son. He had given in, he had allowed the women to bully him, to outwit him, he had, for a quiet life, surrendered to their noisy arguments, to their jealousy and their malice. He had believed their (Gerard had no doubt) lies. He knew it as the years went by, reading that lack of forgiveness sometimes in his son's thoughtful looks, in the very faintly cool quality of' some acts of politeness and consideration. Even undoubted kindness, even love, retained that indelible icy line. They never spoke of the matter again.

Could it be true, thought Gerard, could it actually have any meaning, to say that he had 'never forgiven' his father? About `the women' he minded less. He expected less of them. His love for them, for he did love them, was something less formal, less a question of absolutes, of honour, of responsibility, of truth. He even came later on to see their attitude as not totally unreasonable. His father's failure, his weakness, his duplicity (for it seemed that the infamous crime had been committed soon after Gerard's departure) wounded Gerard deeply. Some perfect thing, some absolute safety, some ground of' being, was, with his belief in his father's perfect goodness, gone out of the world forever. Equally deep, equally enduring was Gerard's mourning for his irreplaceable bird-friend. Through all his childhood, indeed through all his life, he continued to miss Grey. Ideas of searching fbr him, going to the pet shop, asking for clues and so on, had been instantly dismissed as useless, productive only of worse pain. Later when Gerard was an adult he sometimes thought, and it was such a very sad and moving thought, how Grey was probably still alive somewhere. If he passed a pet shop he would occasionally stop and look to see if there were a grey parrot, and if it were Grey. He felt sure that he would recognise Grey, and Grey would recognise him. But he felt frightened too, a reunion might somehow, for some reason, be too awfully distressing. In fact lie was certain that Grey was alive. He never spoke again about the parrot to his parents or his sister, and never mentioned his existence to his later friends; never to Sinclair or to Duncan, to whom he had been so close after Sinclair died, never to Robin or Marcus, or Jenkin or Rose, or to any of'his friends did he breathe a word about him. Only once, in St Mark's Square in Venice, with Duncan long ago, when a pigeon alighted on his hand and he exclaimed with grief, did he come near to telling, and confessed to 'a most unhappy memory'. Oh – pretty – one. In conversation, if parrots were mentioned, he changed the subject; and he never again had any relation with any beast, no cat, no dog, no bird, entered his life. A re-enactment was impossible, and it would have been too painful a reminder. How frail these gentle creatures are who deign to share our lives, how dependent on us, how vulnerable to our ignorance, our neglect, our mistakes, and to the wordless mystery of their own mortal being.

He thought, I ought to have said something-about Grey to my father, brought the subject up somehow. Yet what could I have said, in what form of words and to what good effect? I couldn't just say, 'I forgive you', or `I have long ago forgiven you'. Would that be true anyway, and if a lie would it not be instantly seen as such? In any case this terminology would be too solemn, like an imputation of'guilt. It was not a burden to put upon a dying man, a prolonged discussion would have been unthinkable. Yet, when there was so little time left, was not that exactly the moment to say those things? Or were such ventures only tolerable in a formal context, best left to priests? Perhaps his father had ceased to feel guilty, had long ago dismissed the whole matter. That was unlikely. Gerard had, he thought, or imagined, at many moments through his life, understood the particular look of those gentle penitent eyes. On the other hand, it was also possible that, as he nursed the wound, to himself, to his son, over the years, his father might have felt resentment against Gerard, not only for his withdrawal, but for having somehow occasioned the whole business in the first place by his fanatical attachment to that wretched bird. As for the withdrawal, that must surely have become imperceptible by the time Gerard was at Oxford, the 'iciness' had been internalised. The 'forgiveness' was, had to be, something enacted over a long period, and perhaps had effectively been so enacted, since Gerard's affection for his father had been, and must have been seen to be, so wholehearted, in spite of the secret pain which no longer prompted any accusation. Was the fact that they had never spoken about it, that Gerard had never spoken, since it was for him to make the first move, really so important, so awful? Yes. Yet as the years went by it became harder to raise the subject without some sort of unpredictable shock, without the danger of making matters worse. It could not be casually touched upon or easily woven into ordinary reminiscence. At the end it was too late to make any gesture, as much too late yesterday, he thought, as it is today. And he thought, I'm sure Grey has outlived my father, parrots live longer than we do, he could outlive me too, I hope he will, I hope he is happy. How odd it still is, not knowing where he is, and how odd that when I have forgotten so much I have not forgotten this and can call up the same emotions? And that I feel just this now when my father has died. He stared out of the window at the tree of prayers, frail ephemeral supplications to remote and cruel gods. Turning back towards the long still figure on the bed, he felt tears come to his eyes at last.

Patricia Fairfax opened the door. 'Why are you here?' she asked. Then, seeing the question was ridiculous, said, 'Have you been here long? I was asleep.'

'Not long,' said Gerard, mopping his eyes with the back of his hand.

'Come downstairs. Why have you no shoes on? There are your shoes. Put them on. Have you looked at him?'

^'Yes.'

Patricia stared at the shrouded figure, then turned and hurried down the stairs. Gerard followed, closing the door. 'Would you like some coffee, something to eat?'

'Yes, please.'

'I suppose you've been up all night.'

'Yes.'

They went into the kitchen, Gerard sat at the scrubbed wooden table, Patricia turned on the electric stove. Gerard had felt, he still felt, irritated at the calm way she had taken over his kitchen. He had felt bound to invite Pat and Gideon lbr what was to have been a short interval after the lease of I heir flat was unexpectedly terminated, now they behaved as if they owned the place. He felt extremely tired. 'Pat, dear, don't worry about eggs or anything, just give me some bread.'

'Don't you want toast?'

^,Toast. Yes, no, it doesn't matter. Have you eaten anything?,

'I can't eat.'

Gerard felt ashamed that he could. 'Tell me what happened.'

'He was all right last night.'

'He was all right in the afternoon when I left him, he seemed lictier.'

'I settled him down and went to bed. Then about one 4 o'clock I heard him moaning and moving, making those little iwises, you know, you said like a restless bird – and I got up and went to him and he was awake, but – he wasn't making much sense -'

'Rambling a bit?'

'Yes, that happened before – but really, now – he was different-‘

‘Different – how – do you think he knew?'

'He was – he was – frightened.'

`Oh God -' Oh the pity of it, he thought, how terrible, how I pity him, oh the pity, oh the grief. 'Pat, I'm sorry I wasn't there.'

`You would have been if you hadn't regarded that dance as so absolutely important.'

`Was he in pain?'

`I don't think so. I'd given him the usual stuff. But he had such a – a terrible urgent look in his eyes, and he couldn't keep still, as if all his body were wrong and intolerable.'

`An urgent look. Did he say anything clear?'

^`He said several times, "Help me."'

`Oh - dear – Did he ask for me?'

`No. He talked about Uncle Ben.' Benjamin Hernshaw had been Matthew Hernshaw's 'disreputable' younger brother, Violet's father, Tamar's grandfather.

^`He always loved Ben. Have you telephoned Violet?'

`No, of course not.'

`Why of course?'

`I wasn't going to ring her in the middle of the night, was I? She never liked Dad, she isn't interested, she knows there's nothing for her in the will.'

`How does she know?'

`I told her.'

`Was that necessary?'

`She asked me.'

`We must give her something.'

`Oh for God's sake don't start on that, we've got enough to worry about.'

`Dad didn't mention her because he assumed we'd look after her.'

`Just you try, she'd bite your hand off, she hates everybody!' `She did accept money from Dad, I know – we must tell her he talked about Ben. What did he say about him?'

`I don't know, he was mumbling – remember Ben, or remember Ben's something or other -'

`Well, there you are -'

`Look, Gerry, we must decide -'

`Pat, wait – Did you know he was going to – to die?'

'Only just before the end – then suddenly it was – so clear -.is if he'd explained it -'

`Ali – and you saw him go?'

`Yes. He was lying there and twisting and turning and talking about Ben. Then suddenly he sat up straight and looked at me – with that awful puzzled frightened look – and he looked all about the room – and he said – he said -'

`What?"

`He said slowly, and quite clearly, "I'm – so – sorry." Then he leaned back onto the pillow, not falling, but slowly, a§ if Inc were going to sleep again – he made a little tiny odd sound, like – like a – mew – and I saw it was over.'

Gerard wanted to ask, what did you see, how did you know, he felt, later on I won't be able to, everything must be said now, but he did not ask. He would have time later to think About that dreadful pitiful 'I'm sorry'. He thought, he was looking for me at that moment.

Patricia was dry-eyed and controlled, her emotion evident in her hesitations and in the hard clipped exasperated tone in which she answered Gerard's questions. She now made coffee. She opened a drawer, chose a clean red and green check table cloth and spread it on the table, then set out plate, cup, saucer, knife, spoons, butter, marmalade, sugar, milk in a blue jug, sliced bread aligned in a bowl. She set the coffee pot on a tile.

`Do you want hot milk?'

`No, thanks. Aren't you having cofree?'

'No. '

She gave him a paper napkin. The paper napkins represented her regime, used in preference to Gerard's linen ones. She sat down opposite to him and closed her eyes.

The house felt terrible, disjointed, gutted. Sitting quietly in it at last, Gerard felt his body aching with grief and fear, with grief which was fear, an exhausted denatured sensation, a loss of being. He concentrated on Patricia. It was possible, he knew, to esteem and admire people and enjoy their company Aild dislike them heartily. It was also possible to be irritated, maddened and bored by people whom one loves. He had thus loved his mother and Pat. Through time and custom, simply by enduring, this love had grown stronger. This was no doubt a proof that 'family' meant something to him, or perhaps that he had got used to putting up with them for his father's sake; though for his father's sake too he had resented their separatism, their little league against 'the men', critical, mocking, secretive. He had never liked their laughter, had been enraged as a child by his mother's jesting at his father's expense, had resented his father's humble surrender of his authority and his dignity. Yet they had had a harmonious time on the whole and, apart from that one terrible episode and its reverberations, ^he could not claim an unhappy childhood. His father had been too old for the second war, Gerard too young. He had continued to love them all, and much later to see, with sympathy, his mother and sister as strong frustrated women. Patricia had wilfully thrown away her education and was now irked with excesses of energy for which she could find no use. She was a loving and business-like mother and wife but yearned for some indefinable larger scene, more status, more power. He looked at her now, her face relaxed in tiredness, perhaps in sleep, her lips parted, her mouth, as in a tragic mask, drooping heavily into long harsh lines. She was a striking woman, inheriting her mother's long smooth face, her stern and noble look and perpetual frown, a brave powerful face whose owner would no doubt be a valuable companion on a desert island. The idea of"putting a brave face on it' suited Patricia, she had 'nerve', and had been a tomboyish child. Her shortish fair hair, a little streaked with grey, well cut at intervals, usually tousled, often patted into shape by its owner, looked youthful, was still shaggy and boyish. In recent years she had put on weight. Even now in repose her shoulders were back, her prominent chin well tucked in, her bust set forward under a flowery apron which Gerard was noticing for the first time. It was only lately that Gerard had realised that his sister had begun to envy her younger cousin's trim figure and enduring good looks. Patricia, once handsome, could never have been called beautiful; but Violet Hernshaw's face had that enduring structure which can command esteem at any tge. Of course Pat was established as 'successful', her hus)and wealthy, her son 'brilliant', whereas Violet, as Pat now often sympathetically observed, had made a complete mess of ter life, and her charms had brought her only bad luck. Ben tad abandoned his mistress and his little daughter, he had)een a crazy fellow who took to drugs and died young. Matthew, had tried to 'save' him, had been deeply grieved by his failure; perhaps he felt guilty as well. Matthew had been sober, conscientious, gentle. Now he was gone too. Gerard was mare of laying his head down on the table. He recalled, then saw with the eyes of dream, how his staid father, who rarely louched alcohol, used sometimes to startle them all by singing slightly risque music-hall songs, his grave face transformed by a lunatic _jollity. They found his occasional crazy merriment hildish, touching, and embarrassing.

'You'd better go to bed,' said Pat's voice.

Gerard lifted his head. He had been dreaming about Sinclair and Rose. He had been young in the dream. It took lihn a second or two to remember that he was no longer young mid Sinclair was dead. 'How long have I been asleep?'

'Some time.'

'You go to bed. I'll fix things. We must ring up the undertaker -'

'I've done that,' said Patricia, 'and I've rung the doctor ihout the death certificate.'

'I'll ring Violet.'

'I've done that too. Look, Gerard, we were talking the other I.ty about the house in Bristol, why don't you go and live lure? You said you loved that house. You don't have to live in,ondon now.'

Gerard became wide awake. Typical Pat. 'Don't be silly, why should I live in Bristol, I live here!'

'This house is far too big for you, it doesn't suit you, you're Mly here by accident. I've just been talking to Gideon on the c1cphone. We'll buy it off you. You'll like Bristol, you need a Range:'

^,Oh shut up, Pat,' said Gerard, 'you're crazy. I'm going to bed.’.

`And another thing, now Dad's gone I want to be on that committee.'

`What committee?'

`The book committee. He was on it, to represent the family. Now I should be.'

'It's nothing to do with you,' said Gerard.

`It's our money you're spending.'

'No, it isn't.'

`That's how Dad saw it.'

Gerard went upstairs into his bedroom. The sun was blazing in. He pulled the curtains and dragged the bedclothes aside and began to undress. As he lay down he began to remember the strange events of the night which were now confused, ugly and sinister, with his sister's words into a cloud of fantasy which seemed to be hanging above the heavy weight of that dead body which lay so still and so close, its face blinded. Oh my poor dead father, he thought, and it was as if his father were in terrible pain, the pain of death itself. He _turned on his face and groaned and shed some tears of misery into the pillow.

`Well, what do you propose to do?' said Duncan Cambus.

‘I’m going,' said Jean.

'You're going back to him.'

'Yes. I'm sorry.'

'Did you arrange to meet him?'

'No!’

'So you decided this with him last night?'

'Last night – it is last night, isn't it – or this morning. We it, In't say anything to each other last night. We didn't exchange a single word.' Jean Cambus's eyes widened and glowed as she acid this.

'You think he'll expect you?'

' I don't think anything – I'm going. I've got to. I'm very sorry. Now.'

'I'm going to bed,' said Duncan, 'and I advise you to do the same. I advise you, I ask you, not to go. Stay, wait, please.'

' I must go now,' said Jean, 'I can't wait. To wait would be -impossible – all wrong.'

'An error of taste, a lapse of style?'

These were the first words exchanged by Duncan and his wife since their departure from Levquist's rooms. The walk to the car, the drive to London, during most of which Duncan had slept, had been accomplished in silence. Now they were hoine, back in the sitting room of their flat in Kensington. On arrival there both of them had felt it imperative to step out of their crumpled evening clothes, and had, in different rooms, hastily, as if arming for battle, put on more sober gear. Duncan, seated, had taken off his damp and muddy evening trousers and put on some old corduroys, with a voluminous blue shirt, not buttoned, not tucked in. Jean, standing before him, had covered her black petticoat and black stockings with a yellow and white kimono, pulled in fiercely at the waist. Duncan was no longer flushed with alcohol, but his tired face looled disintegrated, wrecked, a senseless massive face, pale and flabby, covered in soft pencilled-in lines. He sat very still, staring at his wife, leaning forward a little, his big hands pendant from the arms of the chair. He had washed his face and his hands and cleaned his teeth. Jean had washed off her elaborate make-up and brushed her thick dark straight hair, which stayed where it was put, back over the crown of her head. She had been a striking beauty when, in another era, in that now so remote, so dream-like past, she had flirted with Sinclair Curtland. Jean had known Sinclair, through Rose, when they were all children. He and she had been 'close' before Sinclair went up to Oxford, they had somehow, inconclusively, remained so, after, always, in spite of Gerard. Had they ever seriously considered that match which everyone seemed so anxious to bring about? Jean's older face was beautiful too, a little sulkier, still delicately china-pale, wilful and keen, often now recalling that of' her Jewish father, so obsessively devout, so obsessively successful. Her mother, also Jewish, had been a talented pianist. They had observed the festivals. Jean had cared for none of these things, not synagogue or music, or the romance of business in which her father had tried to interest her, his only child. She had been obsessively intellectual. Some wondered why she married Duncan, others why she married at all. Her parents had loved her, though they had wanted a boy. Her mother was dead, her father flourishing in New York. He had dreamed of a Jewish son-in-law, but Sinclair was special.

Duncan rubbed his eyes, he found himself swaying slightly, a desire to sleep could be imperative even now.'When will you come back?' he said. He had taken in the situation, he did not mean tomorrow or next week. He added,'You pulled it off last time, coming back I mean.'

'You wouldn't stand it a second time,' said Jean. 'And yet -who knows what you might stand. I love you, but this is different.'

'Evidently.'

'I love you forever – but this is – Anyway they won't be able to stand it, and that will affect you.'

'Who's "they"?', as if he didn't know. `Gerard, Jenkin, Rose. Married people shouldn't have best friends. Maybe we'd always have been better off if we hadn't always been continually watched, oh how closely they watch. And they'll stick with you, like they did last time. It's you they care about, not me.'

Duncan did not dispute this. 'They're not against you, they won't be, Rose won't be, you have an eternal pact with Rose.'

`You think women too have life-long friendships sealed in blood. It isn't so.' Yet it was true that she had an eternal pact with Rose. 'The two princesses' Sinclair had called them. 'Why the hell did you let Crimond throw you into the Cher, why did you tolerate it!'

'I didn't have much choice.'

`Don't play the fool now!'

`Jean -!’

`All right, all right. What happened?'

'I can't remember very clearly,' said Duncan.'I wasn't after him. I mean I wasn't looking for him. We met suddenly in the dark. I don't think I said anything. I think I hit him, or tried to. We were just beside the water. He pushed me in.'

`God. It was just like – it was just like the other time. Why are, you so weak, why can't you get things right?'

'You mean kill him?' said Duncan.

'It's as if you enjoyed it – of course I know you don't, you Just bungle everything. Did you hit him with your fist or with your open hand?'

'I can't remember,' said Duncan. In fact he could remember very well; and reflected how often, how interminably, he would relive that scene, just as he did the other one, the UrsZene. Retiring to relieve himself, he had come face to face with Crimond in the dark. It only now occurred to him that Crimond must have been watching him, trailing him, and had engineered the sudden meeting. It was the kind of unexpected encounter where one would be shocked into doing something, clasping an extended hand, offering an impromptu kiss or a Blow. Duncan had moved his right hand, deciding, he rememhered, not to close it into a fist. He had intended to slap Crimond on the side of the head, but had again, evidently, decided not to, but had hit him on the shoulder, quite hard it seemed since Crimond had jolted back a pace. Then Crimond had seized him, holding him by his clothes, and swung him round toward the edge of the rⁱver. Duncan lost his balance and fell down the bank. Yes" he remembered it all. He wondered whether, if it had been the other way round and he had pushed Crimond into the Cherwell, Jean would now be leaving.

'So all you can say is that you've got to go?' `You'll be on the telephone to them.' `Don't be contemptible as well as cruel.'

'Of course they are my friends too. I'm gambling the whole issue.'

'I don't like the gambling image either. To imply you just crave excitement does yo_u less than justice. I suggest you get dressed and have some coffee and calm down.'

'I'll take a suitcase,' said Jean, 'and come back for the rest some time when you're at the office. You can go to bed and to sleep, you're reeling with sleep. When you wake up I'll be gone and you can curse me.'

'I shall never curse you_. I just think you're a bloody traitor.' 'I don't know what ^to say. I don't know what the future holds, whether I'll be alive even.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'To go near Crimond i_s to go near death, somehow_. I don't mean anything in particular by that – just, it's danger. He doesn't fear death, he's a Kamikaze type, in a war he'd get a VC'

'He keeps guns and has a very nasty fantasy life, that's all.'

'Well, you used to keep guns when you belonged to that club, you fancied yourself as a marksman. You and Crimond were always messing g with guns at Oxford. No, but if he ever stopped working he might be very desperate.'

'And kill himself or you? You said he once proposed a suicide pact!'

'Not really, he just likes taking risks. He's brave, he doesn't evade things, he ^{tells t}he truth, he's the most truthful person I've ever met.'

'You mean brutal. You can't be truthful without other virtues.'

'He has other virtues! He's dedicated, he's an idealist, he cares about poor people and -'

'Hejust wants to be admired by the young! You know what I think about Crimond's "caring'!’

'He's a strong person. You and I connect through our weaknesses. Crimond and I connect through our strength.'

'I don't think that means anything, it's vulgar rhetoric. Jean, on the day we got married you said, this is for happiness.' 'Happiness. That's one of our weaknesses.'

'You certainly won't find it there. But don't think it will be death or glory this time. You are choosing a dull and dreary servitude with a mean cheap little tyrant.'

'Ali – if I could only tell you how little I value my life -' 'You are telling me, and it doesn't mean anything except that you want to insult our marriage.'

'I don't,' said jean frowning. She was leaning back against the closed door and had kicked off the dusty slippers in which she had danced all night. 'That's not right. You mentioned happiness – I'm just trying to convey to you how little it matters to me -'

Duncan pulled himself up a little in his armchair. He said to himself, I'm trying to make her argue, I'm trying to keep her just a little longer, like asking the executioner for two minutes. He thought, so I have despaired already? Yes. Now it is as if I expected it. But, oh, the happiness, the happiness, which she now sees as nothing. He said, 'Look, this love of yours for Crimond seems to me without substance, almost something stupid, it's not to do with real life at all. You're like two mad people who crave to be together but can't communicate -'

'Mad, yes,' saⁱd Jean, 'but – we communicate.' Her eyes widened again and she sighed hugely, touching her breast and rolling her head.

'My dear – when you chucked it last time it was for good reasons.'

'I can't remember the reasons, except that loving you must have been one, and still loving you – but, well, here we are-“`If only we'd had children, that would have anchored you in reality. I've never managed to make all this real for you. You've been like some kind of visitor.'

`Don't keep saying that about children.'

`I haven't said it for years.'

`All right, we've never played the husband and wife game which you call real. That hasn't stopped us from loving each other absolutely -'

"'Absolutely"?!'

`I'm sorry, everything I say now must seem gross and stupid, it's part of how things have totally changed that I can't speak to you properly. But you understand -'

`You expect me to understand you so perfectly and love you so much that I won't mind your going to another man, and for the second time!'

`I'm sorry, my darling, I'm so so sorry. I know this wound won't heal. But this has to be. And – this doesn't make it any better for you – it isn't, for me, really anything to do with the future – the future doesn't in that sense exist one way or the other.'

`You leave the future to me, now that you've utterly desolated and defiled it. But you will have to live your own foul enslaved future day by day and minute by minute – quite apart from anything else, your stupidity amazes me.' Duncan, with some difficulty, hauled himself up out of his armchair. `Everything about this infatuation, everything that I imagine about you and Crimond being together, fills me with loathing and horror and disgust.'

`I'm sorry. It's terrible. It's carnage, it's the slaughterhouse. I'm sorry.' She opened the door. 'Look – do stop drinking – don't take to drink now, cut it down a bit.'

Duncan said nothing, he moved away towards the window, turning his back on her. jean watched him for a moment, looking at his broad back and hunched shoulders and pendant shirt. Then she left the room and closed the door. She ran to her bedroom and began cramming things into a suitcase in desperate haste. She slipped out of the kimono and stepped into a skirt. She made up her face carefully, simply. Her face with Duncan had been stern and calm, the face of what had to be. Now in the mirror she saw a mad scattered convulsed face.

All the time, as she packed and dressed and dealt with her face, she was shuddering and trembling, her lower jaw moving compulsively, a faint growling in her throat. She put on her

coat, found her handbag, stood still for a moment controlling breath. Then walked out to the front door and out of the flat.

Duncan, who had been looking down through the leafy hoanches of the tall plane trees at the garden in the square, heard the soft click of the closing door and turned round. He oaw on the carpet the dusty discarded slippers and picked them up. He did not want to be moved by them either to anger or to tears, and he dropped them into a waste paper basket will went through into his bedroom. He and Jean occupied separate rooms now. Not that that had any great significance in the huge peculiar apparatus of their marriage, their unity, their love, which had lasted so long and survived so much and was now perhaps finally over. Something cosmic and crucial had occurred, his whole body knew it and he panted for breath. It had happened again, the impossible, the unbelievly had occurred, it had happened again. Why had he not wept, screamed, fallen to his knees, beseeched, raged, seized Iran by the throat? He had coldly despaired. Hope would have been death by torture. He had never for a moment conjectured that Jean might be mistaken, never conceived of paying: 'It's all in your mind, if you turn up he'll be dismayed imd embarrassed.' He entirely believed that in all that long night they had not exchanged a word. That bore the unmistakable mark of Crimond's style. Duncan knew that Crimond now expected her to come with the same certainty that she had in coming.

It was in the despair and the finality that he sought refuge. He could not have endured speculation. The suddenness of the thing made it now seem so like death. Jean's abrupt vanishing, the unspeakable reappearance of Crimond, the dreadful fall into the river. It was all one absolute cosmic universal smash. How wrong Jean had been to imagine that he would now telephone the others. He felt at that moment that in losing her he had forfeited all his relation to the world, and had no desire left for any human contact. He supposed that later he would be discredited in front of his friends, humiliated and disgraced, ashamed of this second defeat, of the fatal ^`bungling' of which his wife had accused him. Now his misery made no account of shame. Of course, he would 'take her back' if she came, but she would not come, would not want to return to what was left of him after this laceration. She would have to assume that he hated her. If Crimond ditched her, whether this happened tomorrow or years from now, she would go right away into an aloneness and a freedom which she had perhaps yearned for during all the time when she had put so much energy into keeping faith with Duncan and with her idea of their mutual love. She would go away and work and think, take counsel with her powerful father in America, discover some world to conquer, go to India or Africa, run some large enterprise, use up elsewhere all that restless clever power which, as his wife, she had wasted on happiness. Yes, they had done it for happiness, and_.jean might be right to see this as weakness.

Of course she had, as Jean Cambus, done all kinds of things, but not the one great thing of which Jean Kowitz had dreamed. She had been a secretary to an M P, edited a magazine, served on numerous committees, written a book on feminism. As a diplomatic wife she had run a house and servants and a whole busy social world which was also a valuable information service. She would have been an excellent diplomat herself, and no doubt imagined how she might, had things been otherwise, have been by now an ambassador, a minister, the editor of The Times. How could she not now, he thought, whatever happened about Crimond, be ready to bolt for freedom? Perhaps Crimond would prove to be a steppingstone? Would it comfort him to think so? He groaned, feeling, smelling, as it came bubbling to the surface, all that old murderous jealousy and hate which had been packed away, a dangerous atomic capsule, submerged for so long in the darkest sea caverns of his mind. It had been easy then, in the harrim, which had now, declared as such, begun already to be part of history, to reflect in a lofty way upon the unworthiness ,of jealousy, its senselessness and lack of'substance. Within the last twelve hours an era had ended and could already be seen, tifirn and complete. Jealousy now was his teacher and in its fight lie saw the truth, that Jean really loved Crimond with an extreme love, a love as absolute as death, and in comparison with which her freedom was as nothing. She would, if he would have her, indeed be Crimond's slave; and in this context, in this picture, she had not exaggerated in speaking of thyapproach to him as something mortally dangerous. What a futile mess it had all been, all the striving of his life, rvcrything he had done and hoped for. Now she was being Mivrn, and by Crimond himself, a second chance. For Duncan did not doubt for a moment that Crimond had come to the dance in order to appropriate her.

It had all started a long time ago. Jean denied (but how could he be sure, how could she be sure?) that she had loved Crimond then, when they were all young together, when Sinclair Curtland had been the one who had taken her to dances, when they had all been so hopeful and so free. Of course Crimond impressed her, he impressed them all, he perhaps even more than Gerard was the one of whom everything was expected. How little they had done, all of them, any of them, compared with the marvels which they had then hoped and intended! Crimond had failed too, at any rate had not yet succeeded. They had, at a certain period, all talked too much about Crimond, partly because he was the only one of their group who retained the extreme left-wing idealism which they had once shared. Something happened to them all when Sinclair was killed. He was the golden boy, the youngest, the pet, the jester, loved by Gerard who was (since Crimond somehow clearly was not) the `leader'; only of course there was no leader since they were all such remarkable individuals and thought so well of themselves! After Sinclair died they seenwil for a while to scatter, their opinions changed, they were busy with new careers, with travel, with searches for partners Duncan and Robin lingered in Oxford for a while, but then came to London, Robin to University College Hospital, Duncan to the Foreign Office. Time passed, and Duncan married Jean and spoke to her of happiness, being so entirely happy himself at possessing this beautiful admired woman whom he had quietly adored during years when she was so much in the company of others. Crimond was becoming a well-known figure in left-wing politics, a respected, or notorious, theorist, a writer of 'controversial' books, a candidate for parliamem. He was, and had since remained, the most famous member of their original set. Crimond came of, and boasted of, modest origins, born in a village in Galloway, son of a postman. He made sure that he was not to be regarded as a pampered cloistered intellectual. Jean, whose opinions were now perceptibly to the left of Duncan's, was for a time a declared supporter of Crimond and even became one of his research assistants. She wrote a pamphlet for him on the position of women in the Trade Unions. When he contested a parliamentary seat (unsuccessfully) she was secretary to his agent. Something must have started then, at that time when Crimond was so important, so well known, a star, the darling of the young. Later on, after the debacle, when she came back, she told Duncan that at that early period she had fought against her feelings, finally ran away from his proximity. She had said (but was this true?) that she was never then his mistress. Again times changed. Duncan had given up the academic world and was now in the diplomatic service, Robin (who later returned to London) was in America at Johns Hopkins University, Gerard was in the Treasury, Marcus Field (after his shocking conversion) was in a seminary, Jenkin was a school teacher in Wales, Rose was ajournalist in York, living with her northern relations. Less was heard of Crimond, he was said to be 'calming down', becoming more reflective and less extreme, even considering an academic post.

Duncan had never entirely liked Crimond in those young days, he thou^ght him conceited, and was irritated by his prestige with the others. He suppresed his dislike because he was a friend of his friends, and because Duncan was, even then, intuitively nervous of him. They were both Scottish, but Duncan's Highland ancestors had long ago taken the road to London. When Jean took to admiring Crimond and even working for him Duncan began to be quietly a little jealous, but without any undue alarm. He was glad when Crimond disappeared from London and was said to be in America, then in Australia. Time passed. Duncan was posted to Madrid, then to Geneva. After this he was sent, on a temporary posting, to Dublin, before proceeding (as ^he was promised) to a coveted and lofty position in eastern Europe. Jean was disappointed at being despatched to Ireland, which she regarded as a backwater, but she soon found Dublin quite amusing enough; in fact both Duncan and Jean rather fell in love with the country, and went as far as to buy a tower in puny Wicklow. Property was still at that time remarkably _Rpensive in Ireland, and the tower (brought to their attention by a writer friend called Dominic Moranty) was an ‘impulse buy' of Jean's who discovered it, loved it, and thought she mi^ght as well buy it as it was so cheap. Duncan chided her, then when he saw what they had acquired, praised her. The tower, described in the prospectus as 'probably very old', made of old stones culled from some ruin or ruins, was, as various architectural features suggested, no doubt set up in the late nineteenth century. It had been at some point, perhaps in its original construction, attached by a rough stone and brick arched passage to a closely adjacent, indefinitely ancient, stone-built cottage or cabin. The wooden floors and cast-iron spiral staircase in the tower were sound, and both buildings had been sufficiently `modernised'. There was no electricity (which delighted Jean), but there was good 'soak-away' sewage with a septic tank. A pump, easily repaired, brought water up from the old well in the cottage. The previous occupant, now deceased, said to have been a 'painter man', had used the tower at intervals until fairly recently and the interior, though primitive and now unfurnished, was in reasonable shape. There were fireplaces, turf for sale at an accessible village, and plenty of wood lying around for free. Jean envisaged a lamp-lit fire-lit life of elegant romantic simplicity, and set about looking for suitably rural Furniture. The tower had a fine view of the two sugarloaf mountains and, from its upper room, the bedroom, a glimpse of the sea. Its living accommodation consisted of only two floors, but above those a round hollow crown rose to a suitably imposing height. Duncan was delighted with the place, and glad too that Jean should have this plaything to distract her attention from a proposed campaign in favour of' contraception and abortion which had seemed likely to conflict with the niceties of their diplomatic position.

It was summertime, a dry warm Irish summer for once, and they took to spending their weekends at the tower, tinkering with its arrangements, sometimes travelling to buy furniture at local auctions. It was a happy time. The tower standing in its own miniature valley, now also their property, was surrounded by sheep-nibbled grass. There was a small stream and a grove of poplar trees, and a scattering of' wild fuchsia and veronica. They had of course already done a good deal of' pleasant rambling round the small beautiful country which they had hardly ever visited before, and Jean had already decided that they must write their own guide book to Ireland, all available guides being declared `hopeless'. They had visited Joyce's tower and Yeats's tower. Now they too had a tower which Jean said should be called Duncan's tower. They were not however destined to enjoy Duncan's tower for long. At a dinner party, Crimond's name was suddenly mentioned. He was jocularly said to be 'coming over to solve the Irish question'. He was going to write some long piece about Ireland and was proposing to take up residence in Dublin for the rest of the summer. Duncan never forgot how, on receiving this news, his wife's face became positively contorted with pleasure.

Duncan was amazed at how miserable he was at once made by the idea of Crimond's presence in Dublin. He felt almost uldishly that all his pleasures had been suddenly stolen and there were no treats any more. When, shortly afterwards, Crimond arrived, and settled himself in a flat in Upper Gardiner Street, Duncan put on a gallant, almost excessive, show of being delighted to see this old college pal. He introduced Crimond to all his favourite Irish people (including Moratity) and saw him warmly welcomed and instantly privileged as the dearest friend of already popular Duncan and jean. Duncan had been finding his diplomatic post a difficult and taxing one. The ambassador was in hospital. ^He was virtually in charge. Relations between Dublin and London, never peaceful, were going through a particularly 'delicate' phase. The two prime ministers, plotting something (or planning an 'Initiative' as these usually futile plots were euphemistically called), were under attack not only by opposition parties but by elements in their own parties. Duncan had to make visits to London. He was extremely busy and ought to have been thinking hard about what he was doing instead of having to think all the time about Crimond. Crimond had meanwhile moved to a flat in Dun Laoghaire, with a view of Dublin Bay, and had given a party to which he invited Jean Mid Duncan, and to which, Duncan being engaged, Jean went alone. He had already become an object of interest and seemed to be getting on very well with the Irish. His political views, in so far as those concerned I rcland, were declared to be 'sound'; and the smallness and gossipy closeness of intellectual Dublin made it impossible for Duncan not to hear his name frequently mentioned.

Duncan, playing his `friendly' part, had of course invited Crimond to a small summer evening gathering at the tower. Crimond was delighted with the place, enthusiastic, full of*a spontaneous boyish pleasure which Duncan could see being appreciated by the other guests. Jean was explaining about the furniture, about altering the kitchen, about planting things, not a'garden'of course, that would be out of place, but a few shrubs perhaps, and laying down a bit of pavement. Crimond was full ofideas. Duncan overheard one of the guests inviting Crimond and Jean to visit a garden centre near his country cottage where you could get old paving stones, and statues – surely they needed statues, a statue anyway, to catch the eye and look mysterious among the poplar trees? Crimond held forth about statues. People became very drunk and laughed a lot. It seemed to Duncan that Crimond, who scarcely drank and was not very convivial by nature, was acting a part. The next day Duncan had to go to London. When he came back Jean told him that she and Crimond had visited the garden centre and ordered some paving-stones and bought some shrub roses and a lawn-mower. After that, during his absences, and sometimes not during his absences, Jean joined Crimond, in Crimond's hired car, for occasional jaunts to famous places. Once they went to Clonmacnoise, which Duncan had not yet seen, and came back rather late. Sometimes other people were (Jean said) with them, sometimes not. Jean and Crimond took over the idea of the guide book to Ireland. During this period Jean was in a state of great excitement and high spirits. Duncan observed her face continually, studying it with an almost morbid intentness, seeing in it the joy brought to her by another man, and also her attempt to conceal this joy.

Of course for the newcomer or tourist, Ireland is simply charming. But it is also an island, divided, angry, full of old demons and old hate. Duncan felt this burden every day in his work and increasingly as his sympathy and his knowledge grew. It soon emerged, and this too upset Duncan who was ready to be maddened by anything which Crimond did or was, that Crimond, although he had hardly ever been to Ireland, knew a great deal more about the island than Duncan did. Anyone who engages deeply with Ireland must engage deeply with its history. Crimond turned out to be crammed full of Irish history. Duncan found himself forced to listen to Crimond airing his views, to a gratified audience, about Parnell, Wolfe Tone, even Cuchulain. Nor did Duncan care to hear Crimond's republican political opinions ever more boldly on display, and his sneers at the British government, uttered in Duncan's company with what seemed a deliberately provocative lack of tact. Duncan declined to be provoked, he watched, he studied his wife's face; and listened quietly to her propounding Crimond's theories about Ireland.

Duncan, crippled by suspicion and hatred, made miserable by fear and by his detestation of his own abject and contemptiblele state of mind, was impelled to action by an accident, the sort of accident which often occurs in such situations. He had of course wondered what else Jean and Crimond did together Resides jaunting around in the car and visiting ruined castles and garden centres. One Sunday morning when Duncan and Iran were spending the weekend at the tower, Jean had gone out early to pursue a plan she had evolved to dam the stream and make a pool or pond. Duncan was to come and help her after the breakfast whⁱch she would soon return to make. The tin was shining. Duncan stood at the window of their bed- nom, the upper room of the tower, and looked out between the silky green flanks of the mountains at the glittering triangle of blue sea. The sky was cloudless, a lark was singing, a -swallow was singing, the stream was murmuring. They still constantly said to each other when they were in bed: listen to the stream. ^He could see his wife below, her trousers rolled up, standing barefoot in the stream, bending down, then straightening up, then waving to him. There was all the paraphernalia of complete happiness, that happiness of which he so well knew himself to be capable: only he was in hell. He waved back. He turned into the room, blinking from the sunshine and the dazzle of the sea, and looked at the disordered bed where They had slept together. They had long ago stopped hoping for it child. They had been to doctors who had offered different useless explanations. Then he saw something at the side of the ctirving room, on the floor, a little thing or shadowy quasiililtig lying there upon the boards against the wall of dark lightly uneven stones. He went over to it and picked it up. It was light and pale and insubstantial. He closed it in his hand mid his heart beat very fast and he sat down heavily on the low divan bed. He could feel the hot blood rush to his face and up to his brow. He opened his hand and held the little thing in his palm and examined it. It was a ball of what might have been dusty fluff, but was, he saw, human hair, reddish hair such as a person, a man, might draw off the teeth ofa comb, after he had combed his hair, and idl^y let fall upon the floor. No one came to the tower to clean or dust or deliver goods or mend, no one had a key to the tower except him and Jean. This was not his or Jean's dark hair which he held in his hand, it was Crimond's red hair.

Jean called from below that breakfast was ready. Duncan put the hair ball into his pocket and went downstairs and listened smilingly to Jean's ideas about her pond. He ate a boiled egg and went out and helped her to move some stones and dig a hole and watched her delight as it filled with water. Later that morning he announced that he had to be in London for two days later that week. When the time came Jean drove him to the airport as usual. When she had left him he bought some sandwiches and hired a car and drove it by a roundabout route toward a place upon a hillside which he had already, studying the landscape, determined upon where there was a thicket of gorse and a fallen tree covered with ivy just upon the crest, and a clear view of the tower in the valley below. He parked the car and climbed the hill to his viewpoint and crept in behind the tree where the tall growth of ivy had woven a screen, and peered through the ivy leaves and through a hazy flowery gorse, shifting about until he could sit, leaning against the tree trunk, and see the tower and the bumpy track which led to it. He took his field glasses from their case and hung them round his neck and waited. He felt a hideous tormenting excitement. Nothing happened, no one came. The ivy was in flower and very many bees were walking and flying over the yellowish flowers with their spotty stamens. The dark powdery smell of the ivy mingled with the coconut smell of the gorse. By now it was afternoon. The sun shone, he took off his jacket, he sweated. His body was heavy and gross, he was short of breath and panting. Soon what he was doing became so loathsome to him that he had to get up and go away.

He drove the hired car south along the coast road as far as Wicklow and booked into a small hotel. The hotel had no bar or restaurant so he went into the pub next door and began drinking whiskey. He found the sandwiches which he had brought so long ago at the airport and ate one and drank some more whiskey. He took Crimond's hair out of his pocket and looked at it. Of course he had thought it possible that someihing serious was going on; vague speculation is life, positive _Hoof is death. Well, he thought, postponing his certainty, I haven't got proof Jean and Crimond could have gone up to thal room just to look at the view of the sea. ButJean had never ^tiald she went to the tower with Crimond. He could not make iip his mind whether or not to repeat his horrible vigil the next day. It might be better to go back to Dublin to their flat in Parnell Square. He did not imagine anything would be happriiing there. If those two were together it would surely be at Ci imond's flat; except that his flat, at the top ofa terrace house gut the sea front, was far too public. No, if it was anywhere it must be at the tower. But why bother, he thought, as the evening grew darker and the bar fuller, why go trying to find trouble? We'll soon be somewhere else, it's just an episode, it happens io everyone. But he felt, I simply want to be sure, if they're doing that I must know – and then I can give up, let it slide, what my eyes. Why should I let those two cripple me with grief? I won't say anything to jean now. I'll just ignore it.

He began to feel self-consciously miserable and ill-used in a way which for a time brought consolation. He saw himself I here, hunched up, a big dark man with a mat of dark crinkly hair and a big red glowering face, getting stupefyingly drunk among a lot of Irishmen (of course there were no women in the bar) who were all getting stupefyingly drunk too. He thought, their wives deceive them, there can be no doubt, and they are deceiving their wives, so what am I moaning about, we are all a lot of vile rotten stinking sinners, black as hell, liars and traitors and probably murderers too, who deserve to be exterminated like rats or burnt alive. And yet here we are, drinking together – what does it all matter – I've never deceived Jean, but haven't I sometimes wanted to? And perhaps now I will too, we'll each go our own way as they say. And as he heard the lilting coaxing Irish voices all round him he felt the soft flowing sounds getting inside his head and he began to think in Irish idioms and talk to himself ⁱⁿ an Irish brogue. So why should I mind now if my darling wife is I bloody whore, why should I worry what that fellow does o, her, or want to kill him for it, sure he's doing what we all (14), vile beasts as we are, isn't it better to be sitting quiet and drinking, and isn't whiskey itself better than God? Men weir sitting near him, beside him, jogging his arm and talking to him, and he talked to them too, and became distant and thoughtful at last and lurched back to the hotel and went it) bed.

The next morning he woke up very early feeling like a sick dying animal. He had a pain in the stomach and a pain in the head and a dry shrivelled mouth and his whole body wits heavy and aching and smelly and fat. Through the flimsy torn curtains cold daylight filled the window. He lay for a whilr almost whimpering with self-pity with his head under the bedclothes. Then he suddenly sat up and stood up, dressed without washing, paid his bill, found his car, and set off back northward. There was a cold white light at the sea horizon pressed down by a low ceiling of thick grey cloud. Curtains of rain could be seen descending ahead, yet from somewhere the sun managed occasionally to shine illuminating the grey wall of cloud and the vivid green hillsides and brightly coloured trees. Upon the farther mountains on his left segments of rainbow came and went. He drove very fast. He had a violent headache and a dark iron pain in his diaphragm, boiling particles and flashing lights skidded above the focus ofhis eyes as he frowned intently upon the flying road. His reflections of last night, his not sure, his why bother, his ignore it, his merciful camaraderie with other sinners, all that was gone. He felt himself, sitting upright in the car and dominating his body's wretchedness, as a black machine of will, a vindictive machine black with misery and rage, powered by one intention, to find and destroy. He no longer entertained any temperate delaying sense of uncertainty, no haze of doubt now gentled his mind. Uncertainty had been a restless torment, but certainty, clarity, was a hell fire from which, in which, one ran screaming. All this he thought and felt as he drove so urgently fast along the wet shining road with the frenzied windscreen wipers hurling aside the now persistent and increasing rain.

When he turned off the main road into the lanes which led toward the tower he began to feel faint and had to stop the car and lean his head upon the wheel. He thought he might be nick. He wondered if he would be able to go on. The rain was lighter now, more like a driving mist, the clouds were higher, dir still invisible sun was making an intense greyish light in which the grass at the little field beside him shone violently green. He got out of the car and stood in the rainy air with his head bowed forward, breathing open-mouthed. He thought, I ism mad, I have become temporarily insane and must someIsow stop myself. He felt as if his hate, without ceasing to be lime, had been changed into pure fear. Too much could li.ippen, terrible things could happen which could change his whole life, he could destroy the world, he had that power now, it) destroy the world. He thought this, knowing that he could tint now check the engine which was driving him on. He stood upright and saw nearby a stone wall, and a horse and a cow looking at him. The rain had stopped. The horse had come over to the wall. He thought he might eat a sandwich, he still had some left, he might go over and stroke the horse, that would be a sensible sort of delay, would it not, to stay quietly l here with the horse and the cow. He got into the car and drove on. He said to himself, there will be no one there and I can drive on into Dublin and go to the flat and rest, and things will be ordinary and I shall be able to think quietly and without the pain. He tried to wonder whether to drive straight to the lower, but found himself driving along the lane which ran I behind his hillcrest viewpoint. He stopped the car and got out and looked at his watch. It was just before nine o'clock. He began, panting and gasping with the effort, to climb up the bleep wet grass slope toward the summit, leaning forward and grasping grass tufts and little bushes to haul himself upward. When he reached the top he did not attempt to hide, but stood i here upright looking down into the valley. Crimond's car was fill the track.

Duncan walked, slowly now and seeming to glide dreamlike over the ground, down the hill toward the tower. It took him about ten minutes to reach it. He heard the birds singing and noticed some very small flowers growing in the grass. Ever^ything was very wet and now shining in the sunlight. At the bottom of the slope some black-faced sheep stared at him with amazement and hurried away. He crossed the stream just above jean's pool. As he moved he had a sudden clear vision or hallucination of Crimond naked, tall, pale, thin as a lance, slim as an Athenian bo^y, long-nosed and brilliant-eyed. The doors of the cottage and the tower were both open. There was no one in the kitchen. Duncan entered the tower and began to climb the spiral staircase. He climbed firmly, not in haste, not trying to mute his steps. The staircase led to a small landing, not directly into the bedroom. Duncan opened the bedroom door.

There was a flurry going on inside. Crimond was standing, not completely naked as Duncan had pictured him, but pulling a shirt over his head. _,Jean was oil the bed, sitting on the far side of it, and had pulled the quilt up round her, looking back over her shoulder towards the door. Duncan remembered later that he had actually reflected for a second or two whether he should now stand and look at them and say something. During that second or two Crimond succeeded in getting his shirt on. The next moment Duncan launched himself forward, attacking like a large wild animal which propels its whole weight onto its victim to crush it. He hit Crimond with his whole body, knocking him backward and seizing him, clasping him in savage bear-like arms, feeling the thin crushable bones inside his clasp, dragging at_. the shirt, feeling the smoothness of Crimond's skin and the terrible warmth of his flesh. As he held on he kicked violently with his booted foot against the slim bare leg. jean screamed. They reeled a moment, then Duncan felt a jabbing pain in his side where Crimond had freed one arm. For a moment he relaxed his grip, received Crimond's knee in his stomach, and staggered back into the open doorway, and they separated. jean screamed again, 'Stop! Stop!' There was a second's interval. Then Duncan, now uttering whimpering cries of rage, Litinched himself again with clawing hands outstretched. 0 iniond stepped to meet him and with a long straight arm _Lunched Duncan as hard as he could between the eyes. Duncan fell back and tumbled all the way down the spiral staircase into the room below.

This was the fight which had such long and dreadful "Pilsequences; and Duncan knew at once that the terrible ihing that was to happen had happened to him. How he managed to fall, to roll his big thick body, all the way down hose iron stairs he could not afterwards imagine. His head, his shoulders, his back, his legs, crashed against the rails, against the hard sharp edges of the treads, he struck the floor hrlow with a violent echoing impact and lay for a moment tninned. But even as he lay there, even it seemed later as he wits falling, he knew that whatever else might have been dimiaged, something frightful had happened to his eyes. The pain was extreme, but worse than the pain was the sense that h-iih were injured, and one of the precious orbs actually crushed. He got up slowly, wondering if he had also broken a lone. The centre of his field of vision seemed to have disappeared and the periphery was full of grey bubbling atoms. He hobbled slowly, carefully, out of the door and across the level grass toward the hillside. He did not pause to wonder why no one followed him down to see if he was badly hurt. Jean told him later that Crimond had to keep her in the room by force. The door had slammed after him, perhaps no one heard lulu fall. Now he was anxious only to get away and reach a hospital as soon as possible. He crossed the stream walking thimigh the water, he crawled up the hill clutching the wet grass. Then with intense concentration he drove himself back to Dublin.

He went first to the Rotunda Hospital, who sent him on to an eye clinic. Once there, and sitting down on a chair, he became for a short period almost completely blind. He was led out by porters, by nurses, answered questions, lay flat while drops were put into the eyes, bright lights shone upon them, a chines lowered over them. He was told that normal vision 'would probably return to one eye, the other would need an operation. Meanwhile, since he was certainly suflering front concussion, he had better go home and rest. Pushed out of the door clutching a card telling him when to return, Duncan found he could see enough to walk back to his flat in Parnell Square. Before he reached it he had come to an important conclusion. Nobody must know what had happened. He had of' course told the doctors simply about a fall. Now it was essential to conceal, if possible, both his mutilated condition, and the shame of his defeat. That meant, and at once, leaving Dublin where everybody found out everything. He passion. ately did not want to see_.jcan and was relieved that there was no sign of her. He was wondering whether he would ever be able to read again, to work again. His world had changed indeed; he had changed it himself, by force. He telephoned the embassy to arrange his absence, he summoned a taxi and went to the airport. He wore dark glasses to conceal his bruises. He remembered that the hired car was still parked in a road near the Rotunda. He posted the keys to his secretary, Miss Paget, asking her to return the car. He caught a plane to London and a taxi to.Moorfields Eye Hospital. It had been a long day.

Their house in London, then in Putney, was let, so Duncan stayed at a hotel. He sent a note toJean simply giving the address of his club. He was busy with his physical condition, attending University College Hospital for head tests. He tried not to think about Jean's reply. An irritating evasive one arrived saying, 'Why have you run away?' A little later, after his second eye operation, she sent another note saying that she was living with Crimond. This news was confirmed by a letter from Dominic Moranty which said it was 'all over Dublin'. Moranty expressed a sympathy which Duncan could have done without, and indignation that 'everyone' was blaming Duncan for having brought it about by his insane jealousy. Duncan was not surprised that gossip sided with the lovers; and was relieved that Moranty's tactless missive omitted the point which would surely have been of the greatest interest if known. A little after this Duncan sent his official letter of' resignation to the Foreign Office. He wrote telling Jean that he had resigned and was staying in London. He added, without complaints or endearments, 'I suggest you return to me.' After a little while Jean wrote that she was sorry he had resigned, that she was stayⁱng in Dublin, and would follow his instructions about the flat, the car and 'the property' (she did not say ‘the tower'). A PS said, I am very sorry. Duncan asked his solicitor to acknowledge the letter.

As Duncan saw it later, he was enabled to go coldly on with this hideous business because he had another engrossing mortal anxiety, another job to do, 'going to work' at

Moorfields. He wondered, later, if he should have screamed, accused and begged, at any rate by letter; he could not, in his present state, have presented himself in person. Later he bitterly regretted not having tried, somehow, intelligently, passionately, to get his wife back. Vindictive hatred of Crimond, Crimond whom he regarded practically as a murderer, had made him icy cold to Jean. Had he been able to think simply, whole-heartedly, about her he could have written tear-stained pages. As it was, ⁱⁿ his imagination and in his dirams, Crimond stood between them, as thin as a lance, as w1las a kouros, pale and glimmering. Meanwhile however his 'work' had been going unexpectedly well, all was by no means lost. His right eye gradually regained normal vision, and his left eye, though oddly 'stained', regained enough sight to help lim colleague. He had worn glasses before, and now with perceptibly thicker lenses was able to envisage, and then,Alain, a return to an ordinary life of walking and reading. The oltiation was even likely to improve further, and he might expect to be able to drive a car again. 'You don't just see with your eyes, you see with your brain,' his cheerful doctor told Mini, 'and it's amazing what ingenious adjustments it can make!' The same doctor assured him that his 'funny eye', certainly noticeable, looked 'fascinating', even 'positively miractive'.

During this ordeal Duncan had become mortally tired. He had enacted being blind, experienced being unable to read. He had felt the cold shadow of death, being determined if he did not regain the power to read, to kill himself. Now as he gradually recovered from one horror ^he was seized by the other. His spirit regained, with its strength, its capacity for a different sufrering. He re-enacted again and again his walk to the tower, the bedroom scene, Crimond with his shirt, Jean looking over her shoulder, the blow, the fall. He dreamt about Crimond. He did not dream about Jean, except perhaps as a black muddy lump or black ball which figured in many dreams. Day and night he desired leer, longed for her presence, fancied her return, reconciliation, happiness. Remorse tor- mented him and he imagined innumerable ways in which it all need not have happened. He ought to have spoken frankly to Jean instead of spying on her, he ought to have admonished her and warned her, he ought to have protected and looked after his wife instead of becoming her enemy. He ought not to have resigned his job, he ought to have stayed in Dublin and faced it all out there, eyes and all. She had accused him of' running away. He had shirked an ordeal which might have won her sympathy, he had too hastily embraced defeat instead of standing out for victory. Now it was too late – or was it? He was paralysed by hatred of Crimond – or was it fear?

Duncan had taken care not to announce his return to any of' his friends. At that time Gerard, Jenkin and Rose were all in London, Gerard in the Civil Service, Jenkin teaching in a polytechnic, Rose working for a magazine. The news of course got round quickly enough that Duncan had resigned from the service, then that his marriage was in trouble, then that the third party was David Crimond. Gerard, the first to hear from a friend in the Foreign Office, rang up Jenkin, then Rose, neither of whom knew anything. Rose said she had thought it odd that she had not had a reply to a letter she had written to Jean, for they kept up a frequent correspondence. Gerard, who kept up more intermittent communication with Duncan, also now noted that he had not heard. Jenkin hardl^y ever wrote to anyone. Gerard took it on himself to check the now more numerous sources of information and concluded that what was rumoured was true. It was obviously not a situation for telephone calls. They were in any case not used to chatting by telephone. Gerard said they must do something, make some gesture. After writing it out carefully in several different drafts he despatched an immensely tactful letter to Duncan in Dublin where he thought (not having imagined so prompt a departure) that his friend still was. Rose wrote a letter, also tactful, but very brief and quite unlike Gerard's to Jean. Both letters 'said nothing', only indicated they had heard something and were feeling upset and sympathetic. Jenkin sent a postcard to Duncan saying: Be well. LoveJenkin. He chose the card with care (it was a peaceful landscape by Samuel Palmer) Alld enclosed it in an envelope. These missives in due course lound their way back to Duncan's London club where he regularly picked up mail, wondering when he would hear again from Jean. Rose, Gerard and Jenkin were meanwhile constantly in touch, and met to discuss the situation at Gerard's house in Notting Hill. (By this period, Robin Top-glass was married and gone to Canada.) They were unanimous in being inclined to blame Crimond. They then started lo compare notes about him, repeating that they must not be iiilluenced by their distaste for his politics. They concluded that his extremist militant socialism must show something about his personality, that he was a 'fey', unpredictable person. They agreed that though they had liked and esteemed him at Oxford, they had never really got to know him. They were genuinely worried about Jean and Duncan, but speculation was inevitably interesting. These conversations (during which they constantly said, 'Of course we don't know the facts!') were inconclusive, but from them dated Rose's positive dislike of Crimond which became important later on. Meanwhile no one seemed to know where Duncan was.

Later, after the welcome verdict from Moorfields, when Duncan, who had heard nothing more from Jean and had not written to her either, was more positively attempting to put his life in order, he found himself bitterly regretting that he was now left without ajob. At this point, not because of this regret but because he felt that the time had come, he at last wrote a note to Gerard, simply giving his address and asking him round fora drink. By now Duncan had given up hotels and had rented a small flat in Chelsea where he had been leading a crazy solitary incognito existence. What passed at this meeting was never later on divulged by either of them. In a way, little passed, but the meeting itself was momentous. Duncan gave Gerard a brief general account of what had happened, omitting the drama at the tower. According to this account, Duncan, having gradually realised that Jean was in love with Crimond and that they were probably lovers, had come into possession of evidence (he did not say what evidence wid Gerard did not ask) that they actually were lovers, and had soon after been told by_,jean that she proposed to leave him, Since then, apart from a letter confirming that she was living with Crimond and had no intention of coming back, he haul heard nothing. Gerard naturally wanted to know a good deal more, but naturally did not press for it. The occasion was also important for Duncan because he was able to 'try out' his damaged eye upon an important witness. In fact Gerard failed to notice the odd eye, and had to have his attention drawn to it by Duncan's reference to 'some eye trouble'. They got a bit drunk together and remembered, though they did not mention, the time when they had been lovers after Sinclair died. Gerard, without audibly bemoaning Duncan's hasty resignation, which he could not see to be necessary, raised the question of ajob. Teaching? No. Politics? Certainly not. Why not the Home Civil Service? Duncan, after indicating that he was 'done for', 'fit for the dole queue' and so on, agreed that this was not a bad idea, transfers from the diplomatic field to Whitehall did occur, and although he had so abruptly 'cut the painter' a sympathetic view might be taken. A short time after this he entered the Civil Service, not in the department which he would have chosen, but in a quite sufficiently promising and interesting post.

The fight in the tower had taken place in June. After Duncan had acquired his new job he had sent a letter to jean saying that he loved her and hoped she would return. This was in August. He received no answer. He was still getting occasional letters from Dominic Moranty confirming that jean and Crimond were together and becoming accepted as an established couple. Duncan now had even more time and energy to be miserable. He was still attending the eye hospital but the original terrible fears for his eyesight were over, and he had also stopped imagining that he was 'done for'. He had dissaded Rose and Gerard from, admittedly vague, plans for hung something about it' (going to Dublin, remonstrating j1h_.1can, denouncing Crimond and so on). He settled down to despair. For the time, friends and acquaintances thronged hood him, a deceived and abandoned man is always popular, satisfying to contemplate. He was grateful to Gerard and Rose Idjenkin, who genuinely cared. But he wanted, so much Orc than the diversions which they invented for him, to sit alone with his own misery, his grief, his loss, even his jealousy, his obsessional images of Crimond, his remorse and regret, his sick yearning for his dear wife. He wanted to make terms with his unhappiness, to go over and over the terrible past, running dirough every `if only…', until he had exhausted all these ihings and been exhausted by them.

Then suddenly, in November, Jean came back. It was a cold evening, a little snow was falling. Duncan was sitting as usual, with a whisky bottle and book, beside the gas fire in his little flat. The bell rang. It was late, he did not expect visitors. He went down some stairs, turned on a light, opened the front door. It was Jean. Duncan turned at once and began to go back up the stairs to the open door of his flat. He could still irmember, later, the feeling of the banisters as he hauled himself up. He had put on weight, he was tired, he was a little drunk. He heard the front door close and jean's steps behind him. She followed him into the flat and into the sitting room closing the doors. She was wearing a black raincoat and dark green mackintosh hat, both lightly spotted with snow. She took off the hat, looked at it, brushed off the snowflakes and dropped it. Then she let the coat slide off backwards onto the floor. She uttered a little whimpering sigh, looked quickly at Duncan, then turned her head sideways and plucked at the neck of her dress. Duncan, who had retreated to the fireside, stood with his hands in his pockets gazing at her with a calm faintly inquisitive look which did not at all express his feelings. He had felt of course, as soon as he saw her, certain that she was really and truly coming back to him. This was no conference once under a flag of truce, it was surrender. A golden light shone before his eyes and an explosive dilation of his hi.is stretched his breast to bursting. He was ready to cry wilt tenderness, to faint with joy; but what steadied him and dictated the charade, upon which he later looked back with satisfaction, was a sense of triumph. It was a delectable miil well-earned reward. He felt too a release of anger as if now lie could shake her, beat her. Just for these sustained seconds she was at his mercy. This was the unworthy thought which made him able to seem so calm and unmoved. Jean too, before his eyes, went through some steadying hardening transition. Perhaps she had hoped for an instant welcome and to allow her tears to flow. There had been some beseeching in her first glance. Now she frowned, smoothed down her hair, turned to him again and said, 'I expect you want me to make a statement.'

Duncan said nothing.

`Well, briefly, I've left Crimond, that's over, and I'd like to come back to you, if you'd like that. If not I'll go away, now, and we can arrange a divorce or anything that suits you.'

Jean's face was still red from the cold and the sudden warmth of the room, and her chin was wet where the snowflakes had got at it under her hat. She looked down at her raincoat on the floor, and evidently realising that it had been a mistake to take it off since she might be leaving directly, picked it up and began putting it on again.

Duncan had by now controlled himself for so long that he found it positively awkward to set about expressing his feelings, and felt silenced by realising that he had a choice of words. Then, watching her, he said spontaneously, 'What are you doing with that coat? Put it down.'

Jean dropped the coat and Duncan stepped forward and took her in his arms.

Thus ended the first episode of Jean and Crimond and thus began the renewed marital happiness of Jean and Duncan which lasted over many years until the occasion of the summer dance which has been described.

The problem about the book was really a quite separate matter which can be more briefly explained. It was separate, and yet it somehow increasingly wove itself into the fates of the friends, ⁱⁿ and out as the years went by, and became, at least emotionally, connected with Crimond's behaviour to Jean and Duncan. It all started long ago, when Sinclair was alive, and it was, as they all later recognised, deepl^y affected by, as it:pr, Sinclair's hand protectively outstretched above the wriltious volume.

When they were all still young, in their twenties, when Gerard and Sinclair were living together and founding and 'thing their short-lived left-wing magazine, they saw a good deal of Crimond. Crimond, not at that time well known, was hushing about in politics and had just been expelled from the Coinmunist Party for left-wing deviation. He was living in Bermondsey in what he called 'a rooming house' and being twispicuously penniless and crammed with revolutionary in Wes. They were all to varying degrees left-wing. Robin was, though not for long, also _in the Communist Party, Sinclair declared himself a Trotskyist, Duncan and Jenkin were radical Labour supporters, Gerard was what Sinclair described As a 'William Morris Merry England Socialist'. Rose (then a pacifist), and Jean, had just left the university. Long exciting itiometimes acrimonious political arguments went on at Crimond's place or at Gerard and Sinclair's flat, or at 'reading parties' at the Curtland parents' house in the country. Sinclair was very fond of Crimond, though not ⁱⁿ any degree or way which could cause Gerard any jealousy. They were all free and generous and unjealous in their affections, in the style approved of by Levquist, and they noticed this too and felt pleased with themselves. They were all fond of Crimond, though he was even then the person least closely involved in the group. They also, and this was important, admired and respected him because he was more politically active, more dedicated, and more ascetic than they were. He was also more politically educated, and apt to assemble his ideas into theories. (He had been a very able philosophy student.) He began to write the pamphlets for which he was later renowned. He lived very frugally upon occasional journalism and savings made from his student grant at Oxford, he had not, and did not seek, a job. He travelled little except for regular visits to Dumfries to see his father. He was known to be good at 'living on nothing', he did not drink, and had worn the same clothes ever since his friends could remember. He liked living with very poor people.

About this time, during the exciting political arguments, Crimond spoke of a long quasi-philosophical book which he intended to write, and whose agenda he sometimes, at their insistence, enlarged upon to Gerard and the company. By now Crimond's savings were beginning to run out and (as he told Gerard when closely questioned) he was proposing to take a part-time job; any job, he said, so long as it was unskilled. Clearly it was no good trying to persuade Crimond to join the establishment' by becoming an academic or an administrator. Gerard had a poorly paid job with the Fabian Society, but Rose and Sinclair had 'money of their own', and jean, whose father was a banker, was rich. Crimond's situation was discussed, and it was deemed a pity that fie should have to spend time on other work when he ought to be thinking and writing. <sup>`</sup>He ought to write that book!' Sinclair said, and added only half in jest, 'I feel it is the book which the age requires!' It was also Sinclair who suggested that they should all join together and contribute on a regular basis to enable Crimond to devote himself to full-time intellectual work. 'After all,' said Sinclair, `writers have often been supported by their friends, what about Rilke living in those castles, and the Musilgeselischafl which supported Musil?' It seemed probable that some such project was then actually communicated to Crimond and contemptuously rejected, at any rate nothing happened. The idea persisted however of what Sinclair referred to as the Crimondgesellschaft, later known among them simply as the Gesellschaft.

Time passed. Sinclair was dead. Crimond had joined the Labour Party. He was becoming a popular figure on the far left, and was respectfully agreed to be an important intellectual. He became a parliamentary candidate. Duncan was in London (after Geneva and before Madrid) and Jean was wiorking (unpaid of course) as Crimond's research assistant. Gerard and Rose had not forgotten Sinclair's imagined Gesellshaft and, as it later appeared, Rose preserved the notion that his enabling of Crimond would constitute a sort of memorial to Sinclair who had so much admired him. The fact that Crimond had remained on the extreme left, while the others now held more moderate opinions, was not of course taken to matter. In a way, as Gerard and Jenkin agreed, they all felt a bit guilty before Crimond, that is before his ascetism and his absolute commitment. After the election (it was a hopeless seat, he did not expect to be elected) Gerard, prompted by Rose, questioned Crimond again about the book which he iwe said he would write. Jean and Duncan were by now in Madrid. Crimond, who had moved into larger no less shabby quarters in Camberwell, said he was about to start writing it. He also mentioned (in answer to questions) that he had taken a part-time job as an assistant in a left-wing bookshop. Gerard consulted the others, Rose, Jenkin, Duncan and Jean. He also consulted his father, and Jean consulted hers. A sort of informal document, not of course a legal instrument, was drawn up describing the proposed Gesellschaft as a group of supporters who would contribute appropriate sums of money annually in order to give Crimond enough free time to write his book. Matthew, Gerard's father, joined in because he had been an ardent socialist when young and felt ashamed of being hored by politics now. Jean's father, Joel Kowitz, who was to make the largest contribution, joined because he adored Jea and did everything that she asked. The next question was, Would Crimond accept the money; there was disagreement, rues bets, about the likelihood of' this. Gerard, in some anxiety, invited Crimond round, explained the plan and presented the document. Crimond immediately said no, then said that he would think about it. More time passed. Finally Crimond, pressed by Gerard and then by Jenkin, agreed.

So the Crimondgesellschaft came into being. Of course no time-limit was mentioned. The committee, consisting of these piembers (only Joel never turned up), was to decide whether adjuscontributions should be increased (in pace with inflation) or ajusted (in relation to contributors circumstances). A kind of silence then ensued. The benefactors did not like to ask questions about the book in case they might seem to be anxious about their investment, and Crimond, after suitable initial gratitude, provided no reports or acknowledgements, In fact, as they ruefully noticed, he promptly and almost completely broke off relations with his 'supporters', and was only by hearsay known to be travelling in America. (`It's only to be expected,' said Jenkin ^understandingly.) There followed in due course, and not very long after, the drama in Ireland and its sequel, which has been recounted, which caused them all, especially Rose, a good deal of distress, and even anger against Crimond. After this, and after Jean's return to Duncan, friendship, even ^communication, with the offender seemed for a time no longer possible, although of course the monies in aid of the book, maintained at a generous level, continued to be paid as promised. Rose uttered feelings which the others hesitated to express in saying that Crimond ought not now to accept their help. But of course, as they all more soberly agreed, it was necessary to separate their ruffled feelings from their promise, and from the particular interest which had prompted it, an interest which referred back to Sinclair's original idea, and even further to Sinclair's affection for Crimond.

Loyalty to Jean and Duncan seemed for some while to preclude any ^communication with Crimond, but as time went on it seemed to Gerard absurd to make such a point of ignoring him. Gerard was incapable (earning' someone he knew, had in this instance known so long; as one grows older the fact of' having known someone 'all one's life' becomes more important. In any case he was _interested in Crimond and reluctant to lose touch with so unusual a man. So it was that Gerard did infrequently see the miscreant, ostensibly to ask about the book, though this subject was rarely raised and never pursued. Jenkin too, said disapprovingly by Rose to be 'soft' in this respect, saw Crimond now and then, coming across him in a more natural and ordinary way in political contexts, Jenkin, unlike Gerard and Duncan, having remained a member of the Labour Party. Crimond was still a member too, though threatened with expulsion and eventually expelled. This second and expulsion, which caused a stir and even a serious row the party, was said to have pleased Crimond very much, even completed some sort of' proof of the soundness of his ideas. He declared, in a speech unintelligible to his young audience who had never read Kipling, that now, like Mowgli, he would 'hunt alone in the forest'. If he expected cries of 'And we will hunt with thee', they did not come; there were however numerous gratifying expressions of sympathy in many qua^y-Iris. Crimond continued to be politically active and audible, Npraking at meetings, writing articles and publishing ad hoc pamphlets. He was increasingly said, however, to have 'missed the bus'. He would never, with his extreme views, get into parliament, he was not regarded as an academic, he had no coherent intellectual position, and was also criticised for lacking any effective day-to-day connection with the praxis of the working-class movement. He had (it was said) no status except as a phenomenon, and his following of disaffected young people was not large enough to be dangerous. He appeared, indeed, as a lonely revolutionary hunter: a view which, on later estimates, did him less than justice.

Years passed during which Crimond continued to receive a salary which set hⁱm free to indulge in political activity which his 'supporters' increasingly disapproved of, and to write, or pretend to write, a book which, if it ever appeared, must exert a dangerous and pernicious influence. It became more difficult to feel that this was simply a matter of keep' ^rig a promise, and began to be thought of as a ridiculous, irrational, intolerable situation about which something must be done. This was the state of indecision which Crimond's second abduction of Jean Cambus seemed likely to bring to a head.

At about the time when Gerard was asleep at the kitchen table at the house in Notting Hill, and Duncan, in Kensington, war dropping Jean's slippers into a wastepaper basket, Tamar Hernshaw in Action, was sitting in a state of appalled misery facing her mother Violet. The flat was small and extremely dirty. Violet's bedroom, where the bed was never made, was full of the plastic bags which she compulsively collected. They were sitting in the kitchen. The floor was littered with newspapers, the table was covered with used plates, milk bottles, sauce bottles, pots of mustard, pots of jam, crusts of bread, bits of old cheese, a squeeze of butter in a greasy paper, a pot of tea, now cold, made for Tamar, who had not touched it. The discussion, which had been going on now for some time, had begun to repeat itself.

'I can't get a job,' said Violet, 'you know I can't get a job!'

'Couldn't you -?'

'Couldn't I what? I can't do anything! Even if I could get a part-time job as a waitress – we need big money, not scraps of what I could earn by killing myself slaving! You keep telling me I'm not young -'

'I don't, I just said -'

'Everything's gone up! You live in a dream world where you don't think about money. All right, it's my fault, I wanted you to have a good education -'

'I know, I know, I'm grateful -'

'Well now's the time to show it. Everything's gone up, rates, taxes, food, clothes, the mortgage – God, the mortgage, you don't even know what that is! We can't afford the telephone, I'm having it disconnected. And feeding you as a vegetarian costs the earth. You drift along as if everything will always be ordered to suityou! But I'm in debt, I'm seriously in debt, if we don't do something drastic we'll lose the flat.'

'I've got a grant,' said Tamar, restraining tears, for she was Inning to see that the situation was hopeless. 'And you know I can live on practically nothing – I don't need any clothes and -‘

‘You'll get anorexia again if you aren't careful, it isn't fair to I can judge what's fair to me!'

'No, you can't. You've had good years at the university enjoying yourself -'

'Can't we borrow from Gerard – or from Pat and Gideon -'

'I'm not going to go crawling to them, and I'll never forgive you if you do! Haven't you any pride, any respect for me? And hat's the use of getting even more into debt?'

'Or I could borrow from Jean -'

'From her? Never! I detest that woman – Oh I know she's your idol, you wish she was your mother!'

'Look,' said Tamar, though she knew this was even more out of the question, 'they're rich, Gideon is anyway, and jean they'd give us the money.'

'Tamar, don't make me sick! You don't imagine I like wiling you all this – I hoped I wouldn't have to. Please try to face reality, and help me to face it!'

'I can't give up Oxford now, I must do my final exams or the whole thing's thrown away – it's now or never -'

'You've got a funny idea of education if all you care about is a bit of paper to say you've passed an exam! You must have learnt something in two years, surely that'll do you, anyway it'll have to!'

'But I want to go on – if I get a first I can get another grant to stay on and do a doctorate – I want to really study, I want to be it scholar, I want to write, I want to teach – I must keep going now – later on is no good.'

'So you want to be Doctor Hernshaw, that's it, is it?'

'I won't cost you anything -'

'You're costing me something all the time by not earning! That money Uncle Matthew gave us has all gone -'

'I thought it was invested.'

'Invested! We can't afford investments! I've had to spend it – to buy your expensive books and that ball dress – and now You've lost your coat and that grand shawl someone gav, you -'

`Gerard gave it to me -'

`And you lost your partner, can't you get anything right? At least now you can sell all those books – Don't look like that, and don't say I'm trying to ruin your life because I ruined my own, I know you're thinking that. I know they've said it to you -'

`No

`Well, they will now.'

`It's only a year to wait, can't we wait? I must do my exams -'

`You can pick it up later, you could go on studying at evening classes, lots ofpeople do that. They say it's better to be a mature student anyway.'

`Oxford doesn't work like that, you can't just drop in and out, you have to keep straight on, it's very difficult to be there at all and the exams are very difficult, you have to keep on studying ever so hard, I can't leave now, it would spoil everything, I'm ready now, I've been working very hard, I'vegot it all in me – my tutor told me -'

`You mean you'll forget all those facts? You can mug them up again. You'll do better after you've been out in the real world, you'll probably see it's a waste of time anyway. You're just infatuated with Oxford, you think it's all so impressive and grand – but what has university education done for that lot, Gerard and his precious friends, except make them into prigs and snobs and cut them off from ordinary life and real people? Don't you realise thatyou are becoming a snob?'

`If I go on and get that degree I'll be able to get a better paid job and earn more money -'

`Tamar, you haven't understood, you haven't been listening. I can't afford to keep you any more. I can't afford to keep anything any more. I owe money, if I don't pay it I'll be in a law court. I can't earn it. You must. It's as simple as that.'

They sat silently looking at each other across the table. Tamar had hastily taken off her ball dress and was now barefoot in a shirt and jeans. The two women, for Tamar though she seemed so childish was indeed a woman, presented it marked contrast. They were so unlike that it might have been imagined that Tamar sprang, like Athena, out of her Imlier's head without female assistance: her vanished unknown father who did not know that she existed, and about whom, especially when she lay awake at night, she so often mid so ardently thought. She was exceedingly thin and had Ptullcred from anorexia nervosa when she was sixteen. The i1iinness of her face enhanced her eyes which were large and mournful and wild like those of a savage child, both fierce and Irightened, and were of the greenish-brownish colour known its hazel. Her thin silky hair which was straight and cut to the earlobe and parted at the side was ofa matching brown colour, not exactly mousy, a sort of dulled yet lively woody brown with intimations of green, the colour of trunks of trees, of ash trees or cherry trees or old birch trees. Her legs were long and diin and being shapely could be called slender. Her neck was thin, her nose was short, her hands and feet were small. Of her youthful breasts, small and exceedingly round, she thought little, though a few discerning persons had thought much. Her complexion was pale and clear, her cheeks flushing faintly, her rye lids delicate as if transparent, as was her neck.

Violet was in more obvious ways handsome and was, as Rose Curtland had remarked, still an attractive woman, which was not very surprising as she was not much over forty. She was taller than her daughter with a fuller finer figure, she wore her chestnut hair (now discreetly tinted) in a fringe, her ryes were markedly blue. She was short-sighted, and when she put on (as rarely as possible) her big round spectacles she could look clever and slightly stern, like a shrewd bossy office woman. Her beautifully shaped mouth, which could also look stern, a stern rose-bud, had lately begun to droop a little. The expression which in Tamar's face was sad, was in her mother's more positively resentful, even bellicose. As they now tensely stared at each other the similarity between them was, in their fierce concentrated expressions which mingled guilt and fear and old familiar misery, at its most evident. Violet had plenty to be bellicose about. She had been dealt a rotten hand by fate, or, to use an even more painful image, had stupidly thrown away such good cards as she had. As an illegitimate child with a feckless drug-addicted rarely visible father, she certainly had a bad start. Her mother had resented her existence. Violet, well aware of the baleful repetition, resented Tamar's existence. An important difference was that whereas Violet and her mother had quarrelled endlessly and bitterly, Tamar and Violet did not quarrel much. This was, Violet knew, no credit to her but was largely because Tamar was, to her mother, it 'bit of an angel'. This angelicness was at times a consolation, but more often a source of guilt which increased Violet's sense of being ill done by.

She had left school at sixteen to get away from her mother. She lost touch with her mother and was pleased to learn later that she was dead. After her father's death his family made serious attempts to help her, but she kept aloof from them. She worked as a maid in a hotel, saved up and did a typing course, worked as a typist. When she was twenty she was beautiful and had various unsatisfactory lovers. At this stage she made some serious mistakes. She rejected someone whom she should have seen as a promising suitor. Perhaps, she thought later, she was simply not in love, and was still too young to realise that a solitary penniless girl cannot afford the luxury of marriage for love. Her most lasting mistake was of course Tamar and the wandering Scand. As Violet had frequently explained to Tamar, she would have been promptly 'got rid of if her mother had had, at the crucial time, enough money to arrange it. This was in the old days when such abortions were illegal, secret and expensive, and there was no respected 'right to choose'. Violet was not able to choose and Tamar was unchosen and often made to feel so. The story ran that Violet, not even willing to think of a name for the unwelcome brat, let her be christened at the registry office by the registrar, a lay preacher who suggested 'Tamar' and his secretary, who offered her own name, 'Marjorie'. Tamar received a decent school education at the expense of the state and proved to be clever and very industrious. Violet was pleased when she went. to Oxford, but was envious, and jealous too when Tamar lirgan to know some men and could be presumed to have lovers. Violet was also able to value her daughter's docility, her desire to please, her quiet acceptance of a very limited way.4 life. Several sums of money had been, secretly, accepted from Uncle Matthew, but money offered by Gerard and Patricia was rejected with scorn. Tamar was allowed to accept Christmas presents however, and the cashmere shawl, from Gerard, was one of these.

'I could get a job in the long vacation,' said Tamar. 'Sorting letters in a post office? No! You must work properly, you must get us out of debt, you must keep us out of debt, you must settle down to being the breadwinner from now on!' 'Can't we just wait -'

'No, we can't! I've done enoughforyou!' said Violet, voicing the thought at which Tamar was arriving. They looked at each,other for a second with faces made similar by misery and anger.

Tamar smoothed her face. She knew it was no use trying to rxplain to her mother the difference between a university education and being a mature student going to evening classes. It was now that the precious gift must be seized. She had already learnt so much, more than she had ever dreamt herself capable of, and that was just the beginning of the metamorphosis which was now to be so brutally cut off. She saw t hat the loss was terrible, no less than the loss of her whole life, file instant substitution of some sort of tenth-rate life for the one to which she had looked forward, to which she felt she had a right. Restraining her tears she tried to take in that there was no alternative to surrender. She knew how little money there was, and she believed what Violet said.

The telephone rang. Violet left the room. From where she %it Tamar began spiritlessly piling the dirty plates together on I lie stained cloth and assembling the jars and pots which never left the awful table into an orderly group. She entertained for a %econd only the traditional thought, which lived between I hem like a folk idea, that her mother had ruined her own life and was intent on ruining her daughter's. Tamar had early understood the huge dark mass of her mother's bitterness, she had seen how it was possible to expend all one's spirit, all one',, life-energy, in resentment, remorse, anger and hatred. She could picture (I'or she heard enough about it) her mother's relation with her mother, and felt even as a child, not only the automatic force of her mother's desire to 'get her own back', but also in her own heart a dark atom of that responding bitter anger. She had seen how a life can be ruined and had decided that she would not ruin her own in such a game of repetition. I t might be said that, recognising a choice between becoming a demon and becoming a saint she had chosen the latter. Slic saw that her safety lay, not in calculated hostility or intelligent self-regarding warfare, but in some genuine surrender of sell'. This was her 'angelic' gamble, which so irritated Violet who thought she 'saw through' it, and which led Gerard to regard Tamar as a virgin priestess. A habit of docility and never answering back had not been too hard to acquire. Only now did poor Tamar begin to see how agonisingly painful and (it must be seen) irreparably damaging surrender of self could be.

Violet returned to the kitchen. 'Uncle Matthew has passed away.'-

`Oh – I'm so sorry,' said Tamar, 'Oh dear – I wish I'd gone to see him – I wanted to – only you wouldn't let me -' She began to cry, not the storm of tears which must soon begin, but sad unhappy guilty special tears for Uncle Matthew who had so shyly and so kindly wanted to be her friend, and whom she had so rarely visited because her mother did not want her to be beholden to Ben's family.

`And if you're wondering,' said Violet, 'whether he's left us anything in his will, let me tell you he hasn't.'

Matthew Hernshaw had failed to carry out his intention to `do something' for Violet and Tamar because of an indecision which was characteristic of him. He could not make up his mind how much to leave them, knowing that if he did not leave them enough Gerard would disapprove and if he left them too much Patricia would be annoyed. What he did firmly intend to do was to leave a letter, addressed to both his children, asking them to look after Ben's granddaughter. He several times began to draft his letter but could not decide exactly t he wanted to say. This unformulated request was what attempted unsuccessfully to communicate to Patricia when its dying. Oh if only he had spoken sooner! That was Matthew’s last thought.

Tamar, who had not been wondering about Uncle Matthew’s will replied, 'He'll expect Gerard and Pat to help us.’

Pat will decide,' said Violet. 'She'll send us a cheque for lilt y pounds. We don't want their mean charity! What Gerard might be able to manage is to find you a job- that's it, he'll fix you up, that's the least he can do! So that's settled! It is – settled – isn't it?'

Violet was gazing at Tamar with a tense beseeching stare, ready to dissolve into joy or into anger. Tamar, looking at the inn jars and mustard pots, could picture tier mother's face.' She bowed her head and the storm of tears began. Violet, beginning to cry too, came round the table, moved a chair up beside her child, and hugged tier with gratitude and relief.

At about the time when Violet and Tamar were crying in each other's arms, and Gerard, who had stopped crying, was lying on his bed and thinking about his father and about Grey, and Duncan was lying on his bed and trying to cry and not succeeding, jean Kowitz, faint with an inextricable pain ofjoy and fear, had reached the house south of the river where Crimond lived. His address was in the telephone book.,Jean had not needed to consult this volume however. She had regularly checked his whereabouts, without any intention of going to see him, to know where he was as a place to avoid and perhaps simply to know where he was.

The address materialised as a shabby three-storey. semidetached house with a basement. It was faced with grimy crumbling stucco dotted with holes showing the bricks, also damaged, beneath. The window frames were cracking and almost bare of paint, and an upstairs window appeared to be broken. The house, though dirty and neglected, its scars searched out by the brilliant sunshine, was somehow solid and more imposing than the rat-hole in which Jean had imagined Crimond to be living. It and its neighbours were evidently divided into rooms and flats. Many of the houses had a row of names beside their doors. Crimond's house had only two, his own and above it some sort of Slavonic name.

The big squarish front door, scrawled over with fissures and reached by four steps up, was ajar. jean pushed it a little and peered into a dark hallway containing a bicycle. There was a bell beside the door, but by itself, not related to the names. jean pushed the bell but there was no sound. She stepped into the hall. It was hot and stuffy and the dusty air entered front outside with no hint of refreshment. The uncovered unpainted floorboards creaked and echoed. Some stairs led upward. The door of the front room was wide open and Jean looked in. The first thing she saw, spread out on a chair, was the kilt which Crimond had been wearing at the dance. The walls were entirely covered with bookshelves. There was a television set. She backed out and investigated the two rooms at the back, one book-filled, with a narrow divan bed and door to the garden, the other a kitchen. The garden was small, tended, Crimond liked plants. jean put both her hands onto the handlebar of the bicycle to stop them from trembling. The metal, greyishly shiny, was cold and sickeningly real. She removed her hands and warmed them against the hideous beating of her heart. She noticed on the floor near the bicycle her suitcase and her handbag which she must have put down when she came in. Suppose Crimond were not there. Suppose he simply told her to go away. Suppose she had entirely misinterpreted the wordless time they had spent dancing together.

She was incapable of calling out. A glass door, locked, closed off the stairs to the first floor. She was trembling and shuddering, her hands compulsively fluttering, her jaw jerking. She saw under the stairs an open door which must lead to Ow basement. She began slowly to descend, her feet cautiously testing the hollow treads. A closed door faced her at the bottom. She touched, but did not knock, then opened it.

The basement room was huge, occupying the whole floor Apace of the house. It was rather dark, with one window _"liening onto the sunless area below the front of the house. The wooden floor was bare except where in a corner a rug lay beside a large square divan bed. The walls were bare except for a target which hung at the far end opposite the window. There was a large cupboard against one wall and beside it two long tables covered with books. Near to the target was a large desk with a lighted lamp upon it where Crimond, wearing his narrow rimless spectacles, was sitting and had been writing. He lifted his head, saw Jean, took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

Jean began to cross the long stretch of the floor towards him. Ahe felt as if she would fall before she reached him. She picked up a chair which was standing nearby and dragged it to the drsk and sat down facing Crimond. Then she uttered a little Im-d-like cry.

'What's the matter?' said Crimond.

Jean did not look at Crimond, was indeed incapable of linking at anything in particular, since the room, the dull pale window, the lamp, the door, the bed with an old wrinkled rug Reside it, the target, the white paper on which Crimond had Keen writing, Crimond's face, Crimond's hand, Crimond's stlasses, a tumbler of water, the kilt which had somehow made its way downstairs, were all composed into a sort of vividly illuminated wheel which was slowly turning in front of her.

Crimond said nothing more, he waited, watching her while dir gasped, shook her head to and fro and opened and closed her eyes.

'What do you mean, "What's the matter"?' said Jean. Then after a few more deep breaths, 'Have you had any sleep?'

'Yes. Have you?'

,No.'

'Then hadn't you better? There's a divan in the back room upstairs. It's not made up, I'm afraid.'

'So you weren't expecting me.'

`Pure carelessness.'

^`Were you expecting me?'

'Of course.'

<sup>`</sup>What would you have done if I hadn't come?' `Nothing.'

There was a pause. Crimond regarded her shrewdly, a little wearily. Jean looked down at Crimond's feet, in brown slippers, under the desk.

'So you possess a kilt.'

'I hired it. One can hire kilts.'

'I see you still have your target.'

^`It's a symbol.'

^‘And the guns. You'll say they are symbols too.'

‘Yes.'

`Did you plan this long before?'

'No.'

`How did you get a ticket for the dance, they were all sold out.'

`I asked Levquist.'

^`Levquist? I thought you quarrelled with him years ago?' 'I wrote and asked him. He sent the ticket by return with sarcastic note in Latin.'

<sup>`</sup>What would you have done if he hadn't sent it? `

‘Nothing.'

`You mean, oh never mind what you mean. How did you know I'd be at the dance?'

`Lily Boyne told me.'

'Did you think that was a message from me?'

‘No.'

`It wasn't.'

`I know that.'

^`What about Lily Boyne?'

^`What about her?'

`You came with her.'

‘It is customary to arrive with a woman.'

`Was it to save face in case I ignored you?'

‘No’

‘You knew I would not ignore you?'

‘Yes’

‘Oh, Crimond, why – why – why now?'

‘Well, it's worked, hasn't it?'

‘But look, about Lily -'

‘Let’s stick to essentials,' said Crimond. 'Lily Boyne is hing, she tried to make my acquaintance and I noticed her because she knew you. I like her.'

‘Why?'

‘Because she is nothing. She values herself at nil.'

'You find her despair amusing?'

‘No'

‘All right, forget her, I see why you used her. What were you writing when I arrived?'

‘ A book I have been working^, on for some time.'

‘You mean the book?'

‘A book, the book if you like.'

‘It is nearly finished?'

'No.'

'What will you do when it is finished?'

'Learn Arabic.'

'Can I help you with the book, do research like I used to?’

‘That stage has passed. Anyway you should do work of your own.’

'So you used to tell me. Are you glad to see me?'

'Yes.'

'Let's stop messing about in this conversation. I've left Duncan. I'm here. I'm yours, I'm yours for good if you want me. After last night I assume you do.'

Crimond looked at her thoughtfully. His thin lips were iliawn into a straight line. His longish very fine pale red hair had been carefully combed. His light eyes which so often gleamed and glittered with thought or sarcasm, were cold and ^pilled, hard as two opaque blue stones. 'You left me.'

'I don't know what happened,' said Jean.

'Neither do I.'

'It shouldn't have happened.'

`But it showed something.'

`That doesn't matter now. It can't matter. If it mattered yoo wouldn't have come to the dance.'

'Oh that. It was on impulse.'

'Oh that! Crimond, understand, I have left a husband whom I esteem and love, and friends who will never forgive me, in order to give myself to you entirely and forever. I hereby give myself. I love you. You are the only being whom I can love absolutely with my complete self, with all my flesh and mind and heart. You are my mate, my perfect partner, and I am yours. You must feel this now, as I do, as we did last night and trembled because we did. It was a marvel that we ever met. It is some kind of divine luck that we are together now. We must never never part again. We are, here, in this, necessary beings, like gods. As we look at each other we verify, we know, the perfection of our love, we recognise each other. Here is my life, here if need be is my death. It's life and death, as if they were to destroy Israel – if I forget thee, O Jerusalem -'

Crimond, who had been frowning during this declaration, said, shifting in his chair and picked up his spectacles, 'I don't care for these Jewish oaths – and we are not gods. We'll just have to see what happens.'

'All right, if it doesn't work we can always kill each other, as you said then! Crimond, you've produced a miracle, we're together – aren't you pleased? Say you love me.'

'I love you, Jean Kowitz. But we must also recall that we have managed without each other for many years – a long time during which neither of us made any signal.'

'Yes. I don't know why that was. Perhaps it was a punishment for our failure to stay together. We had to go through an ordeal, a sort of purgatory, to believe we could deserve each other again. Now the appointed time has come. We are ready. I have left Duncan -'

'Yes, yes – I'm sorry about Duncan. You also mention your friends who will never forgive you, or me.'

'They hate you. They'd like to thrash you. They'd like to humiliate you. They felt like that before – and now… '

‘You sound pleased.'

'It doesn't matter about them, compared with us they don't exist. Can we go and live in France? I'd like that.'

'No. My work is here. If you come to me you must do what I want.’

' I'll always do that,' said Jean. ‘I thought about you every day. If at any time you'd made the least gesture – but I imagined -'

'E_'nough of that. Never mind what you imagined, here you are. Now I must get on with my work. I suggest you go upstairs and lie down. Have you eaten, would you like anything to eat?'

'No. I feel I shall never eat again.'

'I'll fetch you later. Then we can both sleep down here where there's room for two. Then we'll discuss what we'll do.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'How we'll live together. How what must be will be.’

‘ Yes. It must be. All right. I'll go and rest. This is real. Isn't it?

'Yes. Go now.'

'I want you.'

'Go now, my little hawk.'

Jean rose promptly and went upstairs. She thought, we haven't touched each other. That's as it should be. That's his way. We haven't touched each other yet, but all that we are has sprung together into one substance. It's like some great atomic charge, we are each other. Oh thank God. She went into the back room and pulled the curtains and kicked her shoes off then crawled onto the divan drawing the blankets up over her head. In an instant she was asleep, tumbling slowly over and over through a deep darkening air of pure joy.