The Book and the Brotherhood (52 page)

When he got back to his house the telephone was ringing. It was Rose. He told her about his visit to Violet. Rose was interested in this, but had rung up for another purpose. She just wanted to hear his voice, and to hear him say, as he duly said, ‘Good night, darling, sleep well.’

Gerard, in pyjamas and dressing gown, sat on his bed, upright as when he had seen and not seen the children feeding the ducks. Long after Rose was in bed and asleep he sat there motionless reviewing the events of the evening. He waited, allowing the stormy waves of his disturbed feelings to calm down. He breathed. He wished very much that he had been able to accept Jenkin’s invitation to stay and sit quietly and
have another drink and listen to the rain. And they could have looked at each other and, without speech, composed a new understanding. Well, there would be other times; and perhaps Tamar’s coming, though it made impossible that quiet different continuation of their talk, had been a sort of sign. They had been thinking about themselves and each other, when suddenly the urgent needs of someone, whom they were both concerned to cherish, had intruded upon them. This also was a bond, and would enable a natural and immediate continuation of their business together. With this thought, Gerard could even enjoy, transforming it into a wry humility, his annoyance that Tamar had preferred Jenkin to himself as the one to run to!

Gerard thought, gentling himself into calmness, at least I made my little speech, it did express exactly what I meant, it said enough and said it simply – and whatever happens, and I must be prepared for nothing to happen, I shall be glad I told him what I felt. Surely after
this
he won’t go away – he won’t want to, and he’ll see he can’t.

But later on, after Gerard had lain himself down to sleep and had slept and wakened in the dark, he felt such a strangeness because he had, for the first time ever, been with Jenkin and been the weaker man. He had come to him as a beggar, standing before him without authority. He had exchanged his power for an infinite vulnerability, and
forced
Jenkin to be his executioner. And as he now thought of Jenkin and of the necessity of Jenkin all sorts of hitherto unimaginable pictures rose up in his mind, and he thought, I must not begin to want what I cannot have. Why did I see it before as something simple? I was so set on saying my little piece, as if that in itself could secure some morsel of my heart’s desire, so that something at least would be safe. I thought I might make a fool of myself – but now, what have I done to his imagination and to mine? I never dreamed that things could go badly wrong and that between his good will and mine we might be put in hell. Perhaps I have brought about something terrible, for him, and for me.

‘Let me see you turn the headlights up,’ said Crimond.

Jean turned them up.

‘Now dip them and turn them full up again several times.’

She did so. She was sitting in her car with the door open, Crimond was standing beside her in the dark. His car, with its lights on, was just in front of hers. It was three o’clock in the morning and they were on the Roman Road.

The rain had gone away, the colder stiller weather had returned, the moon had risen, the stars were visible. Jean was trembling violently.

‘You
can
drive?’ said Crimond.

‘Yes, of course.’

They were on the crest of a hill from which a long view of the road, undulating straight onward, was visible by daylight. There was, from the point at which they had stopped, a dip, then a rise, then a mild descent followed by a steady gentle rise to another crest nearly two miles ahead.

‘When I get there I’ll signal by putting my headlights up slowly three times, and you reply in the same way. If there’s any snag, I can’t think what snag there could be, we haven’t seen another car since we left the main road, but if there is anything I’ll flick the lights quickly a number of times to mean wait. And of course you do the same. Then after the first signals, meaning that I’m there and you’ve seen me, a pause, then the same thing again, both of us together, slowly headlights up three times. You remember all this, we’ve repeated it over and over.

‘Of course I remember.’

‘After the second lot of slow threes, set off at once. Drive with dipped headlights of course, we don’t want to dazzle each other. All you have to do is keep on the left, the road isn’t very broad so I don’t think anything can go wrong. Leave the rest to me. Don’t forget to fasten your seat belt, freakish things can happen, you must be
in
the car. Don’t muff it, well you won’t,
we don’t want to end up in a couple of wheelchairs, there mustn’t be any accidents here. Remember we’ll lose sight of each other when you’re in the dip, after you come over the hump it’s just a little down, then the long rise. If I’d thought, we might have done it the other way round, but it doesn’t matter now, and your car is more powerful than mine – it’ll be simple, it’ll be easy, only for heaven’s sake put your foot down, we want to be doing at least eighty when we meet. You won’t lose control of the car?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Don’t risk that – but you won’t, you’re a perfect driver – get up a great pace, you needn’t look at the speedometer, you can entrust the velocity to me, just get up a pace and keep going and
stay on the left.
That’s all I think. Now, I’ll get in my car. We agreed we’d said our goodbyes – only they’re not goodbyes, we’ll be together now, always.’

As he turned quickly to go Jean got out of the car and followed him a step or two, putting her hand on his shoulder. She felt him shudder and start away and as he stepped back their hands touched. She stood still, watched him get into his car and close the door, heard him start the engine, then watched the rear lights of the car and the flying headlights rush down into the dip, surmount the rise, become invisible for a moment, then appear again on the long rise toward the distant crest. She got back into the car and closed the door and fastened her seat belt.

Jean’s car was a Rover, the more powerful of the two, Crimond’s was a Fiat. Jean found herself thinking about the cars. She liked her car, and now she was going to crash it, to smash it to pieces. She thought of Duncan for a moment, as if she were asking herself whether he would mind about the car. Then she thought, leaning back in her seat and feeling almost sleepy, am I dreaming? Is this a dream? It must be. I’ve
thought
about this all the time since Crimond started talking about it, now I’m dreaming it. Her head jerked and it was like waking up. It was not a dream, she had come to the place they had talked of, at the time they had talked of, the time had come and
Crimond was gone.
The sense of her solitude struck her first.
Then she thought about what was going to happen and she felt cold and black with terror. She began to tremble again and her jaw was shaking. She felt very sick, ready to vomit but unable to do so. Automatically she started the engine. As she did so she thought, there’s time yet. I could run into the wood and be sick, I could go mad and wander away among the trees and sit down somewhere. Why need this concern me any more? Did we not do it just by talking about it? Why do I have to
do
anything more, is it not
already over
? She had not noticed the cold air. Now she wound up the window and thought, it’s warmer in the car. She was wearing a short coat. Her handbag lay on the seat beside her. Why had she brought that with her? The intense sick feeling appeared as a sense of time. The condensed mass of all her recent thoughts and feelings was exploding inside her head. She was beyond logic and contradictory things could be true.

She had tried, over the last days, to fathom her lover, to try, as she always tried, to
find out what he wanted
and to be
as he wanted.
She had believed, for some of the time, indeed, and perhaps now, that it was a test of courage. It was the sort of thing Crimond did, it was Russian roulette again, the gun which he pretended was loaded when it was not. He had, he said, wanted to
see
her courage. She said, to see my love? Yes, your love, it’s the same. This was it again now, he needed like a drug the regular
evidence
, to
see
she was his; and she
was
his, she had come to the Roman Road, to this horrible charade, this scene of
torture
, because she could not gainsay him, she had to obey. She had
not to fail
– either then – or now. If she failed he would leave her. But – if she passed she would die? She thought, he’ll save us at the last moment, that will be like him. I’ll stay on the left and he will simply pass me by, or he’ll come at me and then swerve away. He said,
leave the rest to me.
Well, that is all I can do, that is all of my life now. We’ll meet again after and embrace and shed tears and dance. That is how it will be; and then our love will be reinforced, increased a thousand fold, deified. This is the experience of death after which one becomes immortal. But, she thought, supposing it is death, supposing it is really death he wants, and that we
shall mingle with each other in death and become a legend? Well, if he chooses that, as the final consummation of our love, that too is what I will; she gave a little cry like a bird and a kind of ecstasy of fear so possessed her body that it was as if it were emitting light. I have surrendered my life to him and if he takes it, well, and if he spares it, well. This is the climax that my life was for, the time which is worth all the rest, which redeems the rest of time. I can no other, and in that I must be at peace. Yet still she thought, it is
impossible
that we shall not meet again, it is
impossible
that we shall not be together again and talk of this. If the gods are to reward us we must be there to be rewarded – unless this is now our reward to live the last moments of our lives in this way.

She was trembling with excitement and terror. Her head felt huge and full of points of electricity, little shocks of intense pain. And all the time she was sitting perfectly still with the engine running, watching the road ahead which seemed to be shuddering and heaving and boiling up in atoms of dark. She was aware of the moon, even of the stars, of the frosty moonlit tarmac just in front of hers, and of the lights of Crimond’s car, the pale glow of headlights, the rear lights, briefly lost to view, now well up upon the further slope, slowly climbing up on the waves of the dark. She saw the lights diminish, seem to vanish, the red lights disappearing, there seemed to be an interval, a gulf into which she could fall; then the headlights came slowly out of the dark, first dim then rising to a full flash, three times repeated. Her mouth open now, gasping, finding her hand ready on the switch, she flashed her own lights in reply. The distant signal was repeated, and almost simultaneously she repeated her answer. The far off lights were dipped and she dipped her own. She put the car into gear and released the clutch. The car began to move down the hill and in a few moments the headlights upon the opposite hill disappeared from view. As she began to accelerate Jean felt a sudden surge of energy, something very intense, perhaps fear, perhaps joy, perhaps, in the depths of her body, a prolonged sexual thrill. She pressed her foot down. Faster, faster. At the same time she found herself thinking, after this we’ll drive across France. I’ll
do the driving, he doesn’t really like driving. She had so often imagined that going away with Crimond, which would come after the book was finished. When the book was finished they would drive about, as they had done in Ireland, and be perfectly happy. But the book was finished, and were they not already perfectly happy, was not this, what she was doing now as an instrument of Crimond’s will, perfect happiness?

When she reached the crest of the dip she saw the headlights of Crimond’s car again, much nearer. The road descended a little, then began the long very gradual ascent. Jean kept her gaze fixed upon the pale glowing eyes ahead of her, the eyes which seemed so quickly to be becoming larger and brighter. The Rover sped on beautifully, effortlessly, bird-like. Jean flickered her glance to look at the speedometer, but for some reason could not see it. The pale increasing eyes seemed to have blinded her to all other things in the world. In the world. Will it be quick? she thought. The faster the quicker. Oddly enough, in all the long terrifying, thrilling and somehow unreal discussions which they had had about the Roman Road, Jean had never tried to imagine any of the detail. There had been so much metaphor, so much myth, so much sheer sexual excitement, like a prolonged orgasm, in that extraordinary period, so brief, so crammed and crowded with their united being, after she had realised that Crimond really meant it, that they would actually come to it. That time now seemed in memory like a sunlit battlefield, a joust, with pennants flying and naked deadly lances, not yet stained with blood. From that engagement Jean had been able to escape into endless oscillating speculation about what Crimond really intended. Her imagination had rested intermittently upon perfunctory pictures: the two cars would become one car, there would be nothing on the road except a compact box of metal. But inside the box? She would be there, with Crimond, inside the box, joined together in an eternal blackness. There would be blood, a mingling of blood, a mingling of flesh, but
they
would have vanished, united forever in a clap of thunder. She began to gasp and moan, not yet to scream, though she could already hear the scream she was about to utter.

Is he on the left side of the road or the right side, she wondered. It was still hard to tell. He had told her to stay on the left and leave the rest to him. In your will is my tranquillity. Only now she was alone. But she must not think that. Faster, faster, nearer, nearer. Jean’s eyes flickered again, this time toward the near side of the road. There was a long low stone wall, a dry stone wall the pattern of whose golden-yellow stones was hypnotically, very swiftly, unravelling in the headlights of the Rover. A wall. The other side of the road seemed to be invisible, as if covered by a black patch. Then there were those wheelchairs. Crimond had only just mentioned the wheelchairs, but Jean’s mind had already set up a picture, as if she had been brooding upon it for years, of herself and Crimond slowly moving about in a large room, passing each other like mindless insects as they laboriously propelled their chairs by turning the wheels with their hands. Old age, was it an image of old age? We don’t want to grow old, we don’t want to be cripples either, I mustn’t muff it. Crimond’s car, now perhaps a mile away, or less, was certainly upon the right side of the road, his right, her left, they were joined by a straight line, it would be nose to nose. Her foot was pressing the accelerator into the floor of the car, there was a roaring in her ears, the sound of the engine of which she had been unaware, the wheel seemed fixed in her hands, locked into position. She had never driven so fast in her life, yet she felt in perfect control of the car. If I were to cross his path at the last moment, she thought, he would hit the side of the car, there would be an
accident.
The stone wall was still with her. The pale brilliant eyes ahead which had for a time seemed to grow larger without moving, were now perceptibly coming nearer, rushing nearer, nearer, fast, very fast. Jean began to pray, Crimond, oh Crimond, Crimond. How could she kill her lover? If she could only die and he became a god. He had said, keep on the left and leave the rest to me. The bright eyes were near, hypnotic, glaring dazzling, filling her vision, directly ahead of her, rushing, charging towards her. She thought, he’s not going to swerve, it isn’t a test, it’s the real thing, it’s the end. Jean began to scream, she screamed into the roaring of the engine. She
could see now, not just the eyes, but the car, illumined now by her own headlights, a black car, with a figure in it, coming, coming.
The box, the box, the box.
Oh my love.