The Book and the Brotherhood (61 page)

This was certainty not a simple matter. It was not, that is, simply to do with hypotheses about Crimond’s appearance on
the doorstep or Jean running back to him. It had more to do with falling down the stairs at the tower, even falling into the river. Yet again, it did not simply represent a desire for revenge. The whole world was out of joint and some radical adjustment was necessary. Rationally, Duncan did not imagine that if he killed Crimond ‘things would be better’. If he actually committed just this murder, or this maiming, he would be in prison, or if he got away with it he would be consumed with guilt and fear. It did not appear to him as something owed to Jean; he was indeed aware that, just for this, Jean might hate him forever, and it was a measure of his obsession that he did not reflect much about this possibility. The requirement presented itself as a very pressing duty or the release of an agonising physical urge: something that
had to be done
about Crimond. When Crimond’s letter came Duncan felt at once the appropriateness of the wording. ‘Unfinished business’ was precisely what there was between them; and
he
felt it too.

So it was that he looked forward to their meeting as to something fated and necessary, without at all seeing what it would be like. The hammer, the knife, were perhaps just blind symbols. He just had to pass the time somehow until Friday came.

On Thursday morning Jean had an unexpected visitor.

Often Jean felt very very tired. Among the things which she had not fully revealed to her husband were the continuing physical effects of the car crash. She had, on return, visited her doctor and the hospital. After all, she was told, you can’t expect to turn your car over and just sprain your ankle! There was a jolt to the spine, a stiffening of the shoulder, nothing too serious, but needing prompt physiotherapy. Was she not in pain? No, mental anguish had for a time taken her out of her
body, to which she now returned. She went to the hospital for heat treatments and to swim, as in a weird dream, in the warm hospital swimming pool. It’s the pool of tears, she said to herself, but not to Duncan. She did exercises. The ankle mended, her shoulder felt better, but now she ached all over and errant pains crept about her body. She was too proud to mention these mundane matters to Duncan, except, for he knew that she went to the hospital, as a sort of joke. They talked laughingly of going to Baden-Baden, even to Karlsbad, when the spring arrived.

Meanwhile, upon that other plane, Jean too was experiencing the mutual incompatibility, yet necessary connection, between analysis and hedonism. She found some relief in both, but neither would relieve her of her deeper, spiritual, sickness, her love for Crimond, from which she had to try, and hope, day by day, hour by hour, to recover. She tried sometimes to remember what it had been like on the previous occasion. Had she really
tried
then – or had she simply kept the thing intact, hidden away like a virus or embryo, preserved alive in some mysterious jar in some secret cupboard? Would it be like this now, or did the thing at last face extinction, must it die, would it die? Like Duncan – for she was like him, had perhaps become like him, her mind like his mind, her talk and mode of argument like his talk and mode of argument – she sometimes wondered if she had misconceived the problem, had obscured its essence by a wrong concept. Why put the question at all? What mattered now was loving Duncan and being happy. In this light the loss of Crimond could seem almost like something mechanical, an inevitable happening, now past, which had not radically altered the flow of her life. In this mood she attached herself for support to certain memories, Crimond’s repeated assertion that their love was ‘impossible’, and, which seemed to her particularly significant, his cry, upon the Roman Road, of ‘take your chance!’ Well, her chance had been his chance too, and she believed what he said. The brutality of his departure must have been intentional, a seal upon their separation. She was helped by her faith in his truthfulness. It was over and had to be over. There could be no
resurrection now. He had needed his freedom and she must learn to need hers. But the illness was heavy and the healing was slow.

Duncan had gone to the office. He had not yet given in his resignation, that would happen soon. This time was an interim, a
breathing
space. Even the flat, which they planned to leave, knew it, although Jean tidied and cleaned it and made it almost as it had been before. There was something provisional about their present mode of life which they acknowledged, convincing each other that a move to somewhere else would rejuvenate them both.

Jean had been reading in a history of Provence about how they had found the skeleton of an elephant, which must have been one of Hannibal’s elephants, when the bell rang at the door of the flat. She went to open the door. The person who stood outside was Tamar.

Jean had not seen, or indeed thought of, Tamar since her return to Duncan, though she remembered now that someone had told her that Tamar had been ill. She was glad to see her.

‘Tamar! Come in, I’m so glad to see you! Are you better? Someone said you were ill. I’m so sorry I haven’t asked you round. Duncan and I have been so busy. Come in, come in, sit down. Is it terribly cold out there? Let me take your coat. Thank heavens the snow has gone away. Would you like some coffee, or a drink? I can give you lunch if you’d like to stay.’

‘No, thanks,’ said Tamar, surrendering her coat. She dropped her handbag on the floor.

Jean saw at once that Tamar was different. She was leaner and looked paler and older, she even seemed taller. Her complexion, usually so delicately transparent, seemed thicker and more dull. Dark rings surrounded her large green-brown eyes. She was wearing her usual coat and skirt and a faded polo-necked jersey round the top of which her untidy hair stringily strayed. She stared about the room in an anxious irritable manner.

‘Where’s Duncan?’

‘He’s at the office,’ said Jean. ‘He’ll be sorry to miss you. You must come again some evening soon when he’s in. Please sit down and tell me how you are.’

Tamar sat down on the sofa near the fire and Jean sat opposite to her, experiencing the relief of one who, suddenly aware of another’s troubles, forgets her own.

‘Is Oxford term over? I’m so sorry, of course you’ve left Oxford. You’ve been ill?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re better now? How is the job going? I believe you’re back at work?’

‘Yes. The job’s all right.’

‘Do let me give you something, coffee, sherry, biscuits?’

‘No, thanks. Did Duncan tell you about me?’

‘About your illness? No. But you’ll tell me.’

‘He didn’t
tell
you?’

‘Well – no – what do you mean?’

‘Then I’d better tell you as he’s bound to later.’

‘Whatever are you talking about?’ said Jean.

‘Duncan and me – we had a love affair.’

‘
What?
’

‘Well, not a love affair, we had one night – not a night, an evening – one evening – and then I got pregnant – well, he doesn’t know that, at least I think he doesn’t unless it’s got round – I didn’t tell anyone of course, but Lily Boyne knows and I expect she’s let it out, she’s the sort of person who would –’ Tamar uttered these words in a sing-song matter-of-fact rather irritated tone, looking here and there in the room as she spoke. At intervals she grimaced quickly and screwed up her eyes as at a spasm of pain.

‘Wait a moment,’ said Jean. Jean had immediately collected herself. She smoothed down her dress and folded her hands. She felt clear-headed and icy cold. ‘Tamar, is this true? You’re not imagining anything? You have been ill, you know.’ Jean did not believe that Tamar was suffering from delusions, she simply wanted to check her and make her speak more plainly.

‘Oh, it’s true,’ said Tamar, still in her nervous and rather
dreamy manner. ‘I wish it wasn’t. Only one night – evening. And I became pregnant. Wasn’t that strange.’

‘But you can’t have done – Duncan can’t –’

‘Oh yes he can, believe me!’ This was uttered in a sudden aggressive, almost raucous voice.

‘You must be mistaken –
are
you pregnant?’

‘No, it’s gone, it’s gone, I had it taken away.’

‘Tamar, my dear, please, I’m not angry with you –’

‘I don’t care if you are,’ said Tamar, ‘I’m far beyond that.’

‘You say you got rid of the child?’

‘I had an abortion – double quick – it’s gone – don’t worry –’

‘Will you please tell me this story right from the beginning? When did it start? You say you had a love affair?’

‘No, I didn’t – well, I said so, but that doesn’t describe it – it all happened in a moment, just on that one occasion – I was trying to help, to
help
– I came to be kind to him – then I felt I loved him – and he was so unhappy he took me to bed – just for a, perhaps, an hour – he regretted it later.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He avoided me, he never spoke to me properly again.’

‘You never told him you were pregnant?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it was
my business
,’ said Tamar savagely.

‘Are you sure the child was his?’

Tamar was silent for a moment, and cast one quick fierce look at Jean, whom she had not looked at since she entered the room. ‘So you think I go to bed with lots of men, that I’m always doing it, perhaps every night?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m very surprised by all this. I’ve got to get it clear.’

‘I’m making it clear. Do you think I’d lie about the most important thing that ever happened to me?
Did
Duncan tell you?’

‘
No.
But, Tamar, the child –’

‘It’s gone, it’s dead.’

‘We would have adopted it.’

Tamar jumped to her feet. She stood for a moment with her
mouth open and her head awkwardly on one side, one shoulder raised. Then she
screamed.
It was a loud deliberate scream, like a call. She picked up her coat and stood holding it. She said in an odd high-pitched voice, ‘How very kind of you. But it was
my
child, mine to kill if I wanted to. I wasn’t going to give it to
you
to love. It might as well have had no father. It was
mine.
I didn’t need
your
permission! Everything was arranged for
you
, so that you and Duncan would be together, that’s what everyone wanted, that’s why they wanted
me
to go and see Duncan, as if I were your servant or your maid or something. I was supposed to
help
, and that was what happened, so I could tell nobody in case it spoilt
your
thing, and now you’re back and I
had
to come and see you because I liked you so much once and I thought you
knew
, and I’ve been in hell –’

‘
Please
,’ said Jean, ‘
please
be calm – sit down –’ Tamar’s hysterical vibrating voice and what she had just said frightened Jean very much. The odd thing, and Jean reflected on this afterwards, was that when Tamar began her revelation Jean had taken the situation in instantly and had felt, in the midst of shock and dismay, a kind of pleasure at the idea that Duncan was to blame for something, that his life was imperfect too, he had deceived her and did not yet know that she knew. The sense of a mortal wound came later, her jealousy, her sense of Tamar’s pain and, worse still, of Tamar’s power to hurt. And then the lost child with its long revenge.

Tears were now streaming down Tamar’s face. She stood holding her coat and her handbag. At one moment she mopped her face with her dangling coat sleeve. She uttered a low moaning sound as she wept.

Jean, near to tears herself, but still relentlessly controlled, said, ‘Listen, Tamar, don’t tell anyone else about this. It’s better to keep quiet. I won’t tell anyone.’ Except Duncan, she thought. Or shall I
not
tell Duncan,
never
tell Duncan?

‘I don’t care who knows now,’ Tamar wailed, ‘I don’t care about anything now. Oh it was so stupid of me to come here, I had to find out whether you knew, and now I’ve told you and you didn’t know –’

‘You did right to tell me.’ Jean did not try to stop Tamar
who was making for the door. ‘My dear – come back again soon – we’ll talk again.’

‘No, we won’t. I hate you. I loved Duncan, I
loved
him – you left him and made him so unhappy – and now all this has happened and I’m ruined, my life is ruined, and I killed my child, and it’s all
your
doing.’

‘Tamar!’

‘I hate you!’

She had opened the door and fled through it, carrying her coat and her bag. The door banged shut in Jean’s face. Jean did not try to follow. She sat down and began to cry over the terrible damage, not yet assessed, which had been done.

It was Friday morning. Tamar was with Jenkin.

Jenkin had been up late on Thursday night. He had rushed round to Marchment’s house in a state of wild excitement because Marchment had said that someone was going to lend him a typescript of part of Crimond’s book. This promised treat did not materialise, but Jenkin then spent half the night arguing with Marchment and his friends. For some time now, ever since what Gerard ruefully called the ‘arraignment’, when Crimond had announced that it was finished, Jenkin’s desire to see the book had been increasing until it was almost as if he were in love with the thing. He had dreams about it. The thought of holding it in his hands made him tremble. He did not dare to ask Crimond for news of it, fearing a rebuff.

Jenkin’s present restlessness had also much to do with what he thought of, with a smile but soberly, as ‘Gerard’s proposal’. He had, since that meeting, been several times alone with Gerard, but neither of them had made any direct allusion to what had then been said. This reticence was, in different ways, characteristic of both. Gerard, too dignified to repeat himself,
was clearly prepared to wait indefinitely for Jenkin’s response or indeed to do without any response except the one he had instantly received. Jenkin, afraid of giving, to someone so meticulous, so demanding of exactitude and truth, the wrong impression, thought it better not to blunder into words until he had something clear to say. But when would that be? Jenkin had been very
impressed
, more so even than he had realised at the time, by Gerard’s statement. Jenkin preferred to think of it as a statement rather than as a suggestion. The statement had in fact already changed the world, and had in some ineffable sense been answered. Their meetings now, with no word uttered on the subject, were different, there was a new gentleness, a douceur, a closeness. They looked with a new calmness into each other’s eyes. These were not ‘meaningful’ or ‘questioning’ looks. They were undemanding gazes which quietly fed their new sense of each other. They also laughed a lot, sometimes perhaps at an intuition of something harmlessly ludicrous in the situation. These communions made Jenkin feel extremely happy. It was like – well, it somehow
was
– being in love, and perhaps just
that
was what had been aimed at and achieved by the statement itself and nothing more had to be done. They had never, it occurred to Jenkin, actually
looked
at each other so much before.