The Book and the Brotherhood (22 page)

Gerard had invited Tamar and Violet for a drink assuming that Violet, who was annoyed if not asked, would as usual not come. However both had turned up. Patricia had then dropped in and had, felicitously for Gerard, taken Violet away to show her the new decorations initiated by Gideon in the upstairs flat. Gerard had Tamar briefly to himself.

They were in the drawing room of Gerard’s house in Notting Hill. The room, as someone said, looked like Gerard, sombre and serious, but quietly stylish and smart, in greens and browns and hints of dark blue and wisps of dark red, nothing too much. It was a big room with a door to the garden. The green sofa had blue cushions, the blue easy chairs had green cushions. Upon the dark brown carpet beside the wide fireplace, where a modest fire was burning, was a brown and red geometrical rug. The walls, papered a light speckled brown, bore English watercolours. There were a few tables
with shaded lamps and a few significant things on the mantel-piece. Gerard, who disliked being looked in at by hypothetical entities in the garden, had pulled the dark brown velvet curtains as soon as it was dark.

They stood together by the fire. Tamar, fingering a little sherry, was dressed as usual in her ‘uniform’, a skirt and blouse and jacket. She chose colours which were like her own colouring of tree-trunk brown and green and greenish grey. Her skirt and buttoned shoes were a subdued brown, her stockings were grey, her jacket was dark green, not unlike the colour of Gerard’s jacket. Her blouse was white, worn with a light green scarf. Her mouse-brown tree-brown hair was neatly combed. Her large green-brown eyes looked up with trustful doubt at Gerard. He was not exactly a father-figure. Tamar kept the place of her unknown father piously empty. She often thought of him but never spoke of him. It was odd to think that he did not know she existed. Gerard, not classified as an uncle either, was a long-beloved figure of authority. Because of her mother’s antipathy to ‘them’ (which of course included Pat and Gideon) Tamar had, especially of late, kept the tiniest bit aloof from Gerard. She hoped he understood.

‘You think it would be all right to see her? It wouldn’t look as if I were sort of prying – like a messenger from the enemy –?’

‘No. Look at it naturally. You’ve always been very fond of Jean and she of you, you’ve seen a lot of each other. If you
don’t
go she may feel you condemn her.’

‘I wouldn’t like her to feel that.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But she’ll know I’m seeing Duncan too. I mean, I won’t say so unless she asks, and she won’t ask. She won’t mention Duncan. But she’ll know.’

‘That’s natural too. She won’t expect you to have dropped Duncan! They’ve always been like parents to you.’

‘Don’t say that, I have parents.’

‘Sorry, I know what you mean, I hope you know what I mean. Jean won’t think you come as a spy, and she certainly won’t think that Duncan send you.’

‘But you’re sending me.’

‘Well, in a way – but of course I haven’t discussed this with Duncan. I just want to encourage you to do what I think you want to do only you feel too shy. Tamar, I’m not asking you to do anything at all except
be
with those two occasionally, be with them separately, without any other end in view.’

‘But
you
have an end in view.’

How absolute the child is, thought Gerard. ‘I’m not hiding anything,’ he said. ‘You know I want Jean and Duncan to be together again, we all want that, and the sooner it happens the less damage will have been done. Anything that hastens that process is good.
You
will be good for both of them, in any case.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Tamar, ‘I might just irritate them by being so absolutely out of their mess.’

She’s being too clever about it, thought Gerard. ‘Have you seen Duncan lately?’

‘No. I saw him about a month ago, he asked me to tea, he told me to come again, just to ring up.’

‘But you haven’t been.’

‘I don’t think he meant it. It was just politeness like asking me to tea was. I think I’m not right. I’m a picture he doesn’t want to look at.’

‘He’d feel you were patronising him? The young can patronise their elders!’

‘No, how could he think that! It’s just that if you intrude on someone’s grief, you’re like a spectator, perhaps one has no right.’

‘If we all thought that no one would console anyone. It’s better to err on the other side. We fail much oftener by not trying to help than by rushing in. Of course I’ve said nothing to him –’

‘You’re all good at saying nothing to each other but being understood all the same!’

‘Oh stop fussing, Tamar, just go, see Duncan, just show your face! He can get rid of you if he wants to, he’s known you ever since you were born. Go to both of them.’

‘All right. But –’

‘But what?’

‘I’m afraid of Crimond.’

Gerard thought, we mustn’t get going on that, if we discuss it she’ll work up a phobia. He said, ‘Crimond’s got his head in a cloud of theories, he won’t even notice you. Anyway he’ll be working, you can see Jean alone.’

Tamar smiled faintly and made a little gesture of submission, peculiar to her and which Gerard had observed since her childhood, raising and opening a hand palm upward.

‘Good child,’ he said. ‘Now are you eating enough? You’re awfully thin.’

‘I eat. I’m always thin.’

‘Have you heard anything from Conrad?’

‘No. Not since just after the dance.’ Conrad Lomas had written to her an apologetic letter to say he was just off to the States and would write from there. He said he’d spent the whole evening looking for her (he seemed to blame her really) and that he’d left her coat with the Fairfaxes. She had not heard from him again.

Gerard thought he had better leave the subject of Conrad. ‘How’s the job, are you still enjoying it?’

‘Yes, it’s very interesting, they gave me a manuscript to read.’ Tamar had of course not told Gerard of the screw that had been put upon her to give up Oxford. She vaguely, not explicitly, feigned assent to Violet’s account that she had ‘cleared out’ because ‘fed up’. Wanting to be spared the agony of being questioned, she had quickly made friends with resignation and despair. She did not want to betray her mother to
their
meddling good intentions, and to have
them
fighting uselessly with Violet would merely prolong the pain.

‘It’s a good firm,’ said Gerard, staring at her. He thought, I ought to have asked questions and made a fuss. I’ve been so obsessed with Crimond and that
other business
. I must look after Tamar and not just send her on errands. I keep thinking she’s sixteen. Yet she’s such a strong little person. She’s quite capable of judging me. He dropped his gaze.

Tamar, looking up, keeping her lucid eyes fixed upon Gerard, reached out and grasped the mantelpiece with one hand, her small fingernails aligned beside a black soapstone seal who lived there. Gerard, whose tastes though quiet were
eclectic, had collected a few pieces of Eskimo sculpture. She looked at the seal, which she was fond of, but did not touch it. It was slouched in such an elegant way, its plump shoulder turning, its doggy head raised. So far from judging Gerard, Tamar was feeling pure love for him, the quiet gentle free peaceful flow of communication which may be had with an old wise friend in whom one knows there is no malice, only thoughtful good will, and with whom one may stand in silence.

‘I want to give you something,’ said Gerard, and for an instant he thought of giving her the black Eskimo seal. But he knew he would regret the gift. He liked the seal too much himself.

Tamar, looking happy at last, said, ‘Gerard, look, don’t think I’m dotty – I’d like, I’d
really
like – something to
wear
– something of yours – something old you might be throwing out – a glove or a scarf or – something you’ve worn, you know – like a favour, or –’

‘To carry on your lance?’

‘Yes, yes –’

‘That’s brilliant, I know exactly!’ Gerard went out into the hall and returned at once with his college scarf. ‘Here, my old college scarf – you’ll be wearing my colours!’ He draped the scarf round her neck.

‘Oh – can you spare it?’

‘Of course, I can always get another! You can see how ancient this one is.’

‘Oh, I’m
delighted
– now I won’t be afraid – thank you so much!’

She drew the ends of the scarf down over her breasts to her waist, pulling at them and laughing. Gerard, laughing too, thought how quaint of her to see herself as a young knight going into battle wearing my favour! How touching. She is an odd child.

The door opened and Patricia and Violet came in.

As soon as her mother entered the room Tamar went out, as a light goes out. She was extinguished. The sparkling mischievous look, a rare look for her, vanished in a second, her face closed up, and the quiet free connection with Gerard was
instantly cut off. Tamar now, wearing, Gerard thought, a mask which was so habitual that it could scarcely be so called, looked aloof, composed, withdrawn. Not betraying anxiety, she looked solemnly and attentively at her mother.

The cousins, seen together, had some slight resemblance. Gerard’s father and Gerard’s uncle Ben, especially as they appeared in some old photos which Gerard had discovered in the house in Bristol when he was clearing it out before it was sold, had looked alike when young. Patricia and Violet, it now seemed to him, carried the ghost or aura of this resemblance in a certain intentness of stare, the firm neat assertive mouth and the resolute ‘brave’ look. Only in Gerard’s father and in Ben this alert look had been humorous and ironical, whereas in their offspring it was more opinionated and stern, in Violet’s case aggressive. Pat was taller and stouter, with a plump face and a large chin, Violet altogether leaner and more shapely. Both wore above the nose the vertical lines of a permanent frown. They were now looking accusingly at Gerard and Tamar, whom they suspected of plotting something. Gerard, looking at them, felt his face twitch with pain. Among the old photos he had found some which he had taken of Grey. Of course he had destroyed them at once. Sad that one hastens to destroy, for fear of suffering, the mementoes of love. It had also occurred to Gerard as he looked at the photos of Ben, as a boy, as a youth, that his father had probably felt guilty about his younger brother, about not having tried to rescue him, sought him out and helped him more, about having accepted too easily and too soon the idea of him as a ‘hopeless crazy fellow’ with which Gerard had grown up. Perhaps that too was something which he ought to have talked over with his father. Now however Gerard was thinking about Grey and how he used to spread out one long wing in a kind of salute, flirting his scarlet tail, and gazing so consciously and so solemnly into Gerard’s eyes.

Gerard, sensing Tamar’s slight movement beside him, knew that now she just wanted to get away. She did not like hearing her mother talk to other people, especially not to Pat and Gerard.

Violet, peering myopically under her long fringe and holding her large round blue-rimmed spectacles in her hand, said to Tamar, ‘What’s that old thing you’ve got round your neck, is it a scarf?’

‘Yes, it’s Gerard’s college scarf, he’s just given it to me.’

‘You can’t wear a man’s scarf.’

‘Yes, I can! All college scarves are like this anyway.’

‘But you weren’t at Gerard’s college. It looks as if it needs a good wash.’

Tamar’s face expressed dismay at the idea of this sacrilegious deGeraldisation of her trophy. Gerard thought, God knows what that scarf smells of by now, it’s never been washed in its life!

‘I don’t think college scarves ever get washed,’ said Gerard, ‘it would destroy the patina. I don’t think that scarf would
like
to be washed.’ I sound just like Jenkin, he thought. The image of Jenkin, suddenly superimposed on that of Grey, cheered him up.

‘This college piety makes me shudder,’ said Pat.

‘Did you like the new decorations?’ Gerard asked Violet.

‘Must have cost a packet.’

‘It was Gideon’s idea,’ said Pat. ‘He’s so good with colours. There’s lots of space up there, when we bring in our furniture and some of the Bristol stuff it’ll be quite civilised – and if we reorganise the whole house we can get everything in.’

‘I don’t want everything in,’ said Gerard. ‘And I wish Gideon would leave the rockery alone.’

Tamar was still fidgeting. Patricia and Violet were patting their hair into shape and smoothing down their clothes with identical gestures.

‘Pat says you’re going to move up there and let them have the rest of the house,’ said Violet.

‘That’s news to me!’

‘I think it would be very sensible. This place is far too big for one person. My flat would just about fit into this room. And I think you should sell the Bristol furniture, some of it’s very valuable. Stop looking at your watch, Tamar, it’s rude.’

‘I think we should give some of the Bristol furniture to Violet,’ said Gerard to his sister, after his guests had departed. Violet had refused to let him pay for a taxi.

‘She dropped a hint about that upstairs! There’s no room in her rabbit hutch, she’d spoil those nice things, they’d be covered with old newspapers and teapot rings and plastic bags. We might give her some of the kitchen stuff. But she wouldn’t take it anyway. She just plays the poor relation for all it’s worth. She wants to make us feel guilty.’

‘She succeeds. I wish we could do something for Tamar.’

‘So you keep saying, but it’s no good, Tamar’s got a death wish. She can’t even get around to cleaning the flat! Violet never got over that swinging adolescence, she still dreams she’s twenty and it’s all before her and Tamar never happened. Tamar has never seemed to her entirely real, just a nasty hurtful ghost. She’s made Tamar feel like a ghost. Tamar’s fading away, one day she’ll be as thin as a needle, the next day she’ll be gone.’

‘No –!’

Gideon Fairfax came in, bland, calm, curly-haired, red-lipped, with his clever pretty exquisitely shaven rosy youthful face. His shirt tonight, with his dark suit, was a glowing blueish green. He dyed his shirts himself. Gerard could never make out why his polite pleasant cultivated brother-in-law irritated him so much.