The Book and the Brotherhood (45 page)

He immediately said, ‘Oh Tamar, what a bit of luck, here you are! I was just saying to your mother how nice it would be if you were to spend Christmas with us in Italy, we’re renting a house –’

Violet said, ‘What are you doing here at this time, have you got the sack?’

‘I’ve taken the afternoon off,’ said Tamar.

‘Tamar, what about Christmas, Italy?’ cried Gideon, jumping up, as Tamar seemed to be turning to go.

‘No thanks.’ Tamar disappeared, banging the kitchen door behind her.

‘You see?’ said Violet.

As he walked away through the cold dark foggy London morning toward his car Gideon pondered upon the mystery of Violet and Tamar. How could people
not want
to be happy? It was utterly contrary to nature. In Gideon’s view, human beings do, and certainly ought to, reach out instinctively and ingeniously toward the fruit of happiness, seeking through all the branches and shaking the tree if necessary. He pondered, but did not want to ponder too deeply. He would try again of course. He had exaggerated slightly in saying that the Italian idea had been Pat’s too. He had (as Violet had later assumed)
never talked to Pat, or to anyone, about the moment (but had there ever really been such a moment?) when he had found twenty-year-old Violet attractive. He did not want to add anything to that little oddity, but neither did he dismiss it. It did not trouble him, it sometimes amused him. He loved his wife, and had found with her the happy life whose possibility he had intuited when he first met her; those two were closer than many outsiders liked to think. Pat certainly also wanted to help that miserable pair, though her motives were perhaps slightly different from his. About this too he did not ponder for long. Gideon could see Tamar’s image as a perfect angel, certainly as a ‘strong good girl’, and he instinctively understood how this appearance, partly a reality, arose from her determination not to be ruined by her mother. Violet had called her a survivor, a tough little atom. Only as Tamar’s impulse so patently lacked joy Gideon could not really believe in it, he saw her, as Gerard did not, as but too likely to ‘break down’. Perhaps the process was now visibly beginning. He did in fact find her physically attractive, and wanted, but in no sinister or improper manner, to kidnap her and transform her, clothe her, take her to Paris, Rome, Athens, buy her a car and a rich successful handsome virtuous young husband. He also wanted to kidnap Violet and shake her into life, but that was a more complex wish, and probably a fruitless, even imprudent or senseless one. He recalled the days when she was ‘swinger’ and he was (a silly nickname which he refused to remember) without any deep emotion but with a kind of loyalty, he was touched by the memory and by her as a continuing element in his life; and he pitied her, though this was a feeling he did not care for, and continually altered into something else, perhaps into the euphoria and the selfishness and the power of which she accused him. As he walked along he banished the problem, he would have another idea about it later. He thought instead about his father whom he loved but with whom, in some profound way, he had never really
got on
(as he, for instance, got on with Pat). Of course his father was glad that his son was rich, and glad (must be glad) to be now surrounded with what money would buy. But he had wanted his
son and only child to be a doctor and still spoke nostalgically of the old hard days in the New King’s Road. Mutual love (for it was mutual) does not ensure mutual understanding. Thank heavens Leonard got on so well with his grandfather, as he had, as a child, with his grandmother, now long dead. She had been a contrary person too. Of course both of them had had terrible childhoods. Easily releasing his ancestors and their childhoods Gideon began to think about some Beckmann drawings which he thought he could obtain for a reasonable price. Then, as he approached his beautiful car, he thought, far more deeply and vaguely, about himself, and began to smile.

Tamar had taken the half-day off in order to visit Lily Boyne. In her lonely agony, Lily seemed to be the only person who could organise the practical assistance which Tamar now urgently needed at least to consider.

When, after her visit to the chemist’s shop, Tamar, alone in her little bedroom, had established without doubt that she was carrying Duncan’s child, she thought that she would go mad, she thought she would have to kill herself, the idea of doing so was indeed the only barrier against madness. In her few timid
amours
Tamar had always had a dread of pregnancy, this dread had been a chief reason for her avoidance of, almost repugnance for, physical love. She had witnessed the sordid miserable dilemmas of her fellow students; and some instinctive puritanism, a part of her severance from her mother, made her fastidious about anything at all approaching promiscuity, and gave her a deep and not just prudential horror of the idea of children out of wedlock. She had been happier without ‘involvements’, and was sure she had never been really in love. About the occasions when she had been got to bed she felt guilt and remorse. She had not in any way anticipated her sudden intense feelings about Duncan, protected against any such development by the fact that he was so
much older. She was used to him as an elderly friend, an avuncular figure, remoter than Gerard and subsidiary to him. When Tamar found herself beginning to fall in love with Duncan she was surprised, unnerved as by something weird and uncanny, then pleased, even exalted.
It
, or something very like it, had happened at last, but (and was this not, for
her
, the point?) in the most confined and fruitless way. Falling in love: to be so utterly in the
power
of someone else, all one’s freedom, all one’s
reality
, stolen away into another place and controlled by another person. And precisely because it was a totally blocked path (Tamar saw this later) she, immured, enchanted, gave herself up to the new sensation as to a delightful purifying painful fate. This was what she felt, briefly enough, but with a careless intensity, before the love-making. He would, of course,
never know
. She would serve and help him, would somehow (she knew not how, but perhaps this too was fated) reunite him with his wife; then retire with her secret pain which would in time be transformed into a source of untainted pleasure.

After the love-making Tamar’s state of mind, which had been clear and single, even a kind of peace of mind, became a dark battlefield of incompatible emotions. To have actually taken her big animal-beloved into bed, to have hugged him in her arms and consoled him
thus
, could not but produce a mad elation which fed and fed upon an
increase
in her love. But this terrible love was now doomed and wicked. At the same time she found herself trying to continue her dream of somehow ‘making it all good’, for
them
, and for her. Was there not still a way, was there not always a way, to be innocent and unselfish? Apparently not, since by her
wilful
act she had done some irreparable spiritual damage, some huge damage which would have consequences for herself and others. She had lost that original and blameless Duncan whom she had held so tenderly within her reticent and silent power, giving him up forever, in return for the momentary pleasure of telling her love. And yet again, how could she have resisted, how denied him then when he begged her to love him? She would have seemed to him selfish and cowardly and cold, turning her very
love into a lie, he would have felt himself rejected, he would never have forgiven her and she would never have forgiven herself. Sometimes she thought, or was tempted to think, since she regarded the idea as a consolation, that the vast ‘damage’ with its awful consequences was something which applied only to herself, not touching Duncan or Jean at all. Was it not the damage to her self-esteem, was it not the result of
that
, the marring of her role, that so terrified her? Whatever those larger ‘consequences’ might turn out to be, there were immediate baneful and hateful ones which demanded her attention. She would have to imagine Duncan’s feelings and behave accordingly. She guessed that he would now be regretting the episode, would be anxious to ‘cool’ it, to put an end to any absurd ideas which she might harbour about it. After all he had other troubles and could persuade himself not to take her ‘childish’ avowals too seriously. He would rely upon her ‘common sense’. Later on the matter could seem trivial. There would be no portentous sequel, his feelings would remain kindly, even affectionate, even grateful; for the present, he would distance himself. One day, when Jean was home again, he would tell her and they would smile over it. Or would he tell Jean? Tamar
hated
wondering about this, and tried to stop herself from doing so. She fully intended to assist the painful distancing process. So it was after the act, and before the terrible discovery. Tamar had trusted Duncan entirely when he said he could not have children, there had been no question of ‘precautions’. Not believing the evidence of nature, she had given herself a pregnancy test chiefly as an exercise of superstition.

Now the implications of her position unfolded around her. The child was an impossibility, an abhorrence; yet it was a
child
, a real creature with, if it lived, an infinitely extended
future
: Duncan Cambus’s child,
her
child. She had often heard it said that ‘they’ had wanted children. She had also heard it said that Jean would certainly come home. She had seen the death-misery in Duncan’s face. She had imagined his joy when his wife returned. Duncan had wanted a child. Well, now he had a child.

The terrible aliveness of the child absorbed her to a degree which almost swallowed thought, as if the child were already an authoritative presence, a prince (for Tamar felt sure it was male) claiming his territory and asserting his rights. This absorption, this sense of a miraculous other being, such a source of joy to a true mother, was here torture. How could Tamar let it be known that she had Duncan’s child, a revelation which would almost certainly prevent Jean’s return, and would, even if Jean did return, darken that marriage ever after? Yet how could Tamar bring herself to destroy the child, the miracle-child of Duncan Cambus and Tamar Hernshaw,
her
child? Did not the sheer existence of this being make everything else trivial by comparison? Was she doomed to curse her child, to hate it, because of Duncan, because of Jean, because she lacked the special
courage
that her situation demanded? Would it be possible to conceal the child, pretend he was someone else’s, have him adopted? She knew that if he lived she could never bring herself to let him go. If only she could treat it simply as a matter of
Duncan’s
rights, and run to him saying, ‘Here is your son.’ Would he be delighted, appalled? He may once have wanted a child, but not now, and not
this
one. She thought, I’ve done what my mother did,
I’ve ruined my life
, I’ve got me a child by an impossible man. Oh if only I could disappear, taking the child with me, become someone else and never be heard of again! I can’t gamble with the future like that, I can’t
think
about it, I need more
time
, but the clock is ticking.

Would it all have to come out anyway, and if so why not confess it now? She had already told one person, the priest, Father McAlister, who had told her to keep the child and trust in God. Tamar was sure that Father McAlister would not tell anybody. But the fact that she had told him showed that she
could
tell, and might again. Of course she had not told him any details and had, in the essence of the matter, misled him, so that his advice could have little meaning for her. She had said that she did not know what was the
right
thing to do, but had not set out the problem. She had refused to discuss the father, just saying he was a student. The priest had realised, and had
said as much, that she was concealing something essential, but had added that whatever the situation was, his advice was right. He wanted to see her again, and was ready to come to London, but Tamar, in a state of horror of herself, declined and fled. The unburdening did her no good, it was another thing to regret and to fear.

And now she had committed another folly, she had told Lily Boyne. She already regretted this too. She understood why she had done it, she had done it to gain time, or rather to
cheat
time. She had felt that, while she was deciding what to do, she might at least establish the details of some of the possibilities. She wanted to find out where and how one could have an absolutely private abortion and how much it would cost. Of course abortion was legal, she could have one on the Health Service, there were numerous agencies who could advise her, but these open moves would almost certainly lead to discovery. The tale she told to Lily, not without detail, was circumstantially false (she was learning how to lie), about a friend from Oxford who had suddenly turned up for one imprudent night. Tamar was not wrong in assuming that Lily ‘knew all about it’. Lily had had an abortion herself, she told Tamar, and knew how the poor girl felt. She knew just the place, she even offered to pay for it, an offer which Tamar refused. She swore that she would never tell a soul, cross her heart. When Tamar went away, saying that she would think it over, she felt that by talking about abortion with Lily she had in effect made her decision. Was this what she wanted to feel, that the die was already cast? Did she really, after all that she had said to herself,
hate
her child? Today she was going back to talk to Lily again, as if this had become a significant and fruitful way of passing the time.

Lily was reclining on her sofa which she had made up as a ‘day bed’ with a red- and black-striped sheet and matching cushions from Liberty’s. She was wearing a green light-woollen shift-dress over a white silk shirt. She had put some newly advertised oil on her hair, and her face, with little
make-up, was serene. It was very warm in the flat. The curtains were pulled against the fog and all the lamps were on, although it was only three o’clock in the afternoon. Tamar had left her mother’s flat soon after her arrival there, she had only come back to fetch an extra jersey and was anxious not to be detained by Gideon. She spent the interim before the time of her appointment walking round the streets, as her mother rightly guessed she did in the evenings. She ordered a sandwich in a café but was unable to eat it. She and the child walked and walked. She and the child went up in the lift to Lily’s flat.