The Book and the Brotherhood (70 page)

‘What sickening rubbish,’ said Violet, ‘and bringing this sentimental parson along is the last straw. You are all violent intruders, you are thieves, assassins, you smash your way into my privacy –’ Violet was controlled, eloquent, only her voice at moments slightly hysterical.

‘There are, as I see it,’ said Gideon, ‘two main points. The first is that Tamar must go back to Oxford. I should be glad if we can regard this as settled.’

‘I shall never allow Tamar to go back to Oxford.’

‘Actually,’ said Tamar, ‘you can’t stop me.’

Tamar was sitting on her divan bed, the others on chairs about the little table upon which now only the plate of sugary cakes remained. Father McAlister, who had wanted to eat a cake but had been prevented when the farce of ‘tea’ was ended by the acrimony of the discussion, wondered if he could take one now, but decided not to.

Tamar, dressed in a black skirt and black stockings and a grey pullover, was conspicuously calm. Gideon had been watching her with amazement. She had hitched up her skirt over her knees and stretched out her long slender legs in a manner which he could not believe was entirely unconscious. She had ruffled her fine silky wood-brown green-brown hair into an untidy mop. She dressed as simply as before, probably in the same clothes, but looked different, cooler, older, and even in this scene more casual, certainly detached. Something has happened to her, thought Gideon, she has
been through
something. She’s strong, she thinks it’s now or never and she doesn’t care whom she kicks in the teeth. She’s quite got over that depression or whatever it was. It can’t be just this simple-minded priest. Perhaps she’s got a really splendid lover at last.

‘I explained to you,’ Violet went on, looking at her daughter venomously, ‘that there is no money. I am still in debt. This flat costs money. Your grant never covered more than half of what kept you in luxury in that place. I need your earnings,
we
need your earnings. If Gideon has said otherwise he is a
wicked liar. You have no sense of reality, you have let these people put fancy ideas in your head –’

‘I am going back to Oxford in the autumn,’ said Tamar, fluffing up her hair and looking at Violet with a calm sad face. ‘I’ve been in touch with the college –’

‘I am certainly not going to pay for you!’

‘Gideon will pay,’ said Tamar, ‘won’t you, Gideon?’

‘I don’t want
charity
–’

‘Certainly I will,’ said Gideon, ‘now, Violet, please don’t shout. In fact Tamar is so economical that the grant will almost cover her needs, I will pay the rest, and I will also pay your debts. I have – wait a moment – another suggestion to make which is that you should sell this flat –’

‘I think this flat is beyond help,’ said Patricia standing in the doorway. ‘It’s only fit to be burnt.’

‘And that you and Tamar should move into our house,’ said Gideon, ‘into the flat we used to occupy –’

‘It’s a lovely flat,’ said Patricia.

‘We want someone there anyway just to keep an eye on the place when we’re away, we wouldn’t charge you anything – wait, wait – this could be, if you like, an interim move while we all see what we want to do next – but while Tamar’s at Oxford –’

‘You come here and suggest burning my flat,’ said Violet, ‘well, you can burn it with me in it. I’d rather live in hell than in your house.’

‘Perhaps you are living in hell now,’ said Father McAlister.

‘If I am it is nothing to do with you, you loathsome hypocrite, I know your type, peering into people’s lives and trying to control them, breaking up families, smashing things you don’t understand! You all want to take my daughter away from me.’

‘No!’ said Gideon.

‘She’s all I’ve got and you want to steal her –’

‘No, no,’ said Father McAlister.

‘Well, you can have her! I
ask
her, I
beg
her, to stay here with me and do as I want – but if she doesn’t she can go and I’ll
never see her again!
I mean it! I hope you are pleased
with your meddling now! Well, Tamar, what is it to be?’

‘Of course I’ve got to go,’ said Tamar in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘but what you say doesn’t follow.’

‘Oh yes it does. Go then,
go
– and pack your things!’

‘They are already packed,’ said Tamar. ‘You will change your mind.’

‘I see, it’s a conspiracy. It was all arranged beforehand. Wanting to help
me
was just a pretence!’

‘No.’

‘I am left to burn, I am left to die – you know that. For God’s sake, Tamar, don’t leave me, stay with me, tell those
wicked wicked
people to go away! What have they to do with us? You’re all I have – I’ve given you my life!’ The hysterical voice hit a ringing quivering piercing note which made everything in the room shudder. Patricia turned away from the door and hid her face.

Tamar did not flinch. She gave her mother a sad gentle look, almost of curiosity, and said in a low resigned tone, ‘Oh – don’t take on so – I’m going to Pat and Gideon – you’ll come later – I’m sorry about this. I’m afraid it’s the only way to do it.’

The original author of this scene, which as Gideon felt afterwards had a curiously brittle theatrical quality, was Father McAlister. Reflecting upon Tamar’s situation and her future he had had the excellent idea of appealing not to Gerard but to Gideon. The priest saw, rightly, in Gideon, the mixture of self-confidence, ruthlessness, stage-sense and shameless money required to carry off what might almost, in the end, amount to an abduction. He had however envisaged the plan as unfolding more slowly and under his own guidance. He had persuaded Tamar, more easily than he had expected, to play her part, emphasising that the great change would actually, also, constitute the rescue, perhaps even the salvation of her mother. Father McAlister’s very brief meetings with Violet had led him to a prognosis which was if anything grimmer than Tamar’s own.

Gideon expected Violet to scream, and for a moment she
seemed likely to as she drew her breath in a savage gasp like a fierce dog. She clenched her fists and actually bared her teeth. She said in a low voice, ‘So you won’t do anything for me, any more?’

‘I am doing something for you,’ said Tamar, ‘as you will see later. But if you mean will I do whatever you want, no. I can’t do that – and at the moment probably I can’t do anything at all for you – I can do – nothing for you.’ Tamar then turned her head away, looking at the window where net curtains, grey with dirt, hung in tatters. Then she looked back, looking at Gideon with an alert prompting expression as if to say, can’t we end this scene now?

Tamar had spoken so coldly, and now looked, as she ignored her mother and turned to Gideon, so ruthless, that a strange idea came into Father McAlister’s head. Supposing it were all somehow false, the emotional drama, the passion play of salvation in which he and Tamar had been taking part? It was not that he thought that Tamar had been lying or play-acting. Her misery had been genuine, her obsession terrible. But in her desperation had she not
used
him as he came to hand, carrying out his instruction, as a savage might those of a medicine man, or as a sick patient obeys a doctor? Or why not simply say it was like an analysis, neurosis, transference, liberation into ordinary life, an
ordinary
life in which the liberated patient could snap his fingers at the therapist, and go his way realising that what he took for moral values or categorical imperatives on even the
devil
and the
eternal fire
were simply quirkish mental ailments such as we all suffer from, a result of a messy childhood, from which one can now turn cheerfully and ruthlessly away. Tamar had faced the devil and the eternal fire, he had seen her face twist with terror, and later, when he had exorcised the spirit of the malignant child, seen it divinely calm and bathed with penitential tears. Now Tamar seemed endowed with an extraordinary authority. Even Gideon, he could see, was startled by it. She was authoritative and detached and able, in this crisis with her mother, to freeze her feelings. It was her freedom she had wanted, perhaps all along, and now she could smell its
proximity she was ready to trample on anyone. In this ritual of dismissal and liberation which he had been there to sanction, it was as if she had cursed her mother. The priest’s ‘bright idea’ had envisaged a row, certainly, but with it an emergence of Tamar’s genuine love for her mother, which he imagined he had discerned deep within her. He had not wanted to release his penitent from one demon to see her seized by another. Tamar’s former obedience, the predominant importance she had given to her mother’s states and her will, had had something bad about it. He kept telling Tamar about a true and free love of her, a love
in Christ
, which could heal Violet as she, Tamar, had been healed. The priest had, in his brief meetings with Violet, made her out as a monster. He could see, he thought, her terrible unhappiness, an unhappiness which made his sympathetic sentimental (she had used that word) soul wince and cringe, a black unhappiness, deeper and darker and
harder
than her daughter’s, and he had seen too how her suffering had made her monstrous. He was not going to let his Tamar be any more this monster’s victim. But must not, and by both of them, the poor monster be helped too? Now, as he looked at Tamar, who was brushing crumbs off her skirt and making the restless unmistakable shrugging movements of someone who is about to rise and depart, he wondered: is this new energy, this detachment, this authority, not perhaps simply a metamorphosis of an old deep hatred, which has been for so many years obediently kept in check? Have I liberated her not into Christ, but into selfish uncaring power? Have I perhaps simply created another monster? (In the very process however of unrolling these awful thoughts Father McAlister, by a gesture familiar to him, handed the whole matter over to his Master, knowing that it would be handed back to him later in a more intelligible state.)

Violet, who had been glaring at Tamar open-mouthed, her eyes suddenly seeming like blazing rectangular holes, rose suddenly to her feet, rocking the table and making Gideon hastily shift his chair. She fumbled for her glasses in the pocket of her skirt. Taken by surprise by the intrusion, she was, Gideon could see now, pathetically untidy, her blouse
crumpled, her cardigan spotted with holes through which the colours of her blouse and skirt showed accusingly. She was wearing down-at-heel slippers one of which had come off. She looked down, stabbing at it angrily with her foot. Gideon moved the table. Violet went forward to the door. As she did so she composed her face. Patricia, who was standing in the hall, stood hastily aside. Violet entered her bedroom, banged the door, and audibly locked it.

As soon as Violet’s departing back was turned to her, Tamar too rose, and saying, ‘Let’s go,’ darted to a cupboard and began pulling out her suitcases.

Gideon said, ‘Oh dear!’ and rose to his feet. Father McAlister automatically picked up one of the sugary cakes, a pink one, and stuffed it whole into his mouth. They moved into the hall.

‘Well,’ said Patricia, ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Come on, let’s get out, get Tamar away before she changes her mind.’

‘She won’t change her mind,’ said Gideon.

‘If only I’d got that sack out into the hall,’ said Patricia, ‘we could have taken it with us. I found such indescribable filth and mess in Violet’s room, awful hairy decaying things under the bed, I couldn’t even make out what they were.’

Patricia was putting her coat on. The priest picked up his. Tamar carried out three large suitcases and dumped them by the door. As she did so she looked at Father McAlister and an extraordinary glance passed between them. The priest thought, she has seen through me. Then: who has betrayed whom?

‘I’m afraid the car’s miles away,’ said Patricia. ‘Shall we all walk or shall I get it? We can carry the cases between us. I want to get out of here.’ She said to the priest, ‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘No, thanks, I’ve got to see someone who lives nearby.’

Gideon said, ‘You and Tamar get the car. There’s no point in carrying the cases. We’ll put them out on the landing. I’ll wait here. Violet might even emerge.’

‘She won’t. OK. Come on, Tamar.’

Gideon and the priest looked at each other. The priest, raising his eyebrows, motioned slightly with his head toward the closed bedroom door. Gideon, expressionless, continued to hold the door open onto the stairs. He said, ‘Thank you very much. We’ll talk again.’

‘Yes.’ Father McAlister sighed, then with a wave of his hand set off down the stairs and into the street.

Gideon waited until he heard the front door close. Then he carefully closed the flat door and went to Violet’s bedroom and knocked.

‘Violet! They’ve gone. Come out now.’

After a short time Violet emerged. She had changed her clothes, combed her hair, powdered her nose, removed her glasses. She had evidently been crying, and elaborate powdering round her eyes had made the wrinkled skin pale, dry and dusty. She peered, frowning, at Gideon and he saw over her shoulder the chaotic room which had defeated Pat. She walked across to Tamar’s tidy room, moved the table a little, then lifted the plate of cakes and offered it to Gideon. He took a cake. They both sat down on the bed. Gideon felt, for the first time for many years, a sudden physical affection for his old friend, a desire, to which he did not yield, to hug her and to
laugh
. He thought, somebody, a real strong person, a lovable, admirable person, has been
lost
here,
ruined
.

Violet’s hair, like her daughter’s, needed cutting but had been neatly combed and patted into shape. It was still brown, its lustre here and there embellished by single hairs of a pale luminous grey. Her nose was slightly red at the nostrils, whether from a cold or recent weeping. Her small mouth, now touched by lipstick, was at its sternest. She stroked down her fringe over her brow, over her indelible frown, moulding it into shape with a familiar gesture. She had, Gideon reflected, her higher civil servant look. She looked in no way like a defeated woman. In taking Father McAlister’s gamble Gideon had feared, perhaps wanted, something rather more weak and pliable. It was a moment for Violet to surrender to fate, but she looked now unlikely to surrender to anything.