The Green Knight (2 page)

‘Does it never stop raining in England?'

‘It's not raining now.'

‘Is there
nobody
in town?'

‘Yes, a few millions.'

‘Why do you always say what is obvious?'

‘I say what is true.'

‘Why can't you tell me something funny and stirring, such as whose marriage has broken up, who's in bed with whom, who's bankrupt or disgraced or dead?'

Louise smiled. They were walking over wet grass upon which a pert chill breeze was moving, like hands covering and uncovering in some swift mysterious game, the huge brown leaves of the plane trees heavy with rain. The Serpentine, in fugitive light, was grey and silver through the trees. The pinnacle of the Albert Memorial, which on a sunny day looked like Orvieto Cathedral (or so Joan said once), was streaked and formless like a melting icicle. The sky was black over central London but the rain had ceased for the moment. Joan, who had just put down her big umbrella, was wearing a smart green suit trimmed with narrow bands of grey fur, a black fedora, and high black boots. Louise, who quite liked a little rain on her hair, was wearing a voluminous shapeless black mackintosh with the hood trailing down her back. Her thick brown hair, straight and stiff like horsehair the girls said at school, swept back from her large brow and collected itself in an orderly way upon her neck. Her complexion was pale, freckled in summer, her attentive eyes a mild golden brown, the colour of plane tree leaves in autumn. Her expression was patient, calm, faintly quizzical, benign; someone said, always faintly smiling.

‘Are you all right in Harvey's flat?'

‘No. That folding bed is damp if you fold it up, and if you keep it unfolded all day there's no room to move. It's very uncomfortable anyway, and the place smells. But seriously, who is in town? I must be fed and looked after. We know who isn't in town, Harvey, Bellamy, Clement, Lucas. What about Tessa Millen?'

‘I don't know. I suppose she's here.'

‘Of course that girl is Adolf Hitler in knickers, but I like the type. Why don't you like her? You like almost everybody, why not her?'

Why not indeed? Joan liked Tessa, Louise did not. Sometimes she thought she knew why Joan liked Tessa, and she did not like that either.

‘I'm afraid Connie is out of town too, the whole family is in America, Jeremy has a case there.' Constance Parfitt, later Constance Adwarden, who had also been at the famous high-minded school, had renewed acquaintance with Joan later in France in what they referred to as their ‘unbridled youth'. Jeremy was a lawyer, Connie wrote children's stories.

‘Pity, we need her boys. Don't we need her boys? Will they be back in time for the masked ball? Jeremy was always a bit sweet on you.'

‘No masked ball, only a little party, the children are making masks. You'll stay?'

‘I've no idea. I need to be amused. I suppose Clement and Bellamy will come back when they've deposited Harvey in Florence. Are Clive and Emil still together?'

‘Yes – but they're in Germany at present.'

‘AIDS frightens the young off sex these days, off all sex, such a pity, they don't have fun like I had at their age, they daren't try themselves out, they daren't experiment. We'll have a generation of monastics. That would suit Bellamy I imagine. You know, I think Harvey's still a virgin, I don't think he's had any sex life at all. Has he told you?'

‘He tells me nothing,' said Louise. She was always careful what she said to Joan about Harvey. Louise had known Harvey, as her oldest friend's child, all his life. She had watched over him, she had kept her distance; perhaps she had become, out of loyalty to Joan, too distant. When Harvey's father vanished, Harvey needed a father. At first Teddy was this person. When Teddy died, Bellamy and Lucas and Clement became his fathers. When Joan went to Paris she sold her London flat, bought Harvey his tiny flatlet out of the proceeds, and also set up a bank account into which she paid a small sum, promising more sums, which did occasionally materialise. Lucas and Clement paid for Harvey to attend the austere boarding school which they themselves had attended, and quietly kept him in pocket money and in credit. It was impossible for Louise not, at that time, to make some signal to the boy. Louise, who had three daughters, had wanted a son. She loved Harvey. But she was not his mother. Perhaps she had been too scrupulous, she hoped the boy understood. Louise had often done for him what mothers do, mended his clothes, cooked for him, given him presents, given him advice. He was often in her house, her daughters were like sisters to him. For a time she had shopped for him and cleaned his flat, but silently judged this to be ‘too much'. He could begin to think her intrusive. Of course it was not strictly that Harvey ‘told her nothing'. At one time, just after his mother's departure, he had told her too much, for instance about the terrible unhappiness of his early childhood. Louise had not invited these confidences. Later, older, he said less. Louise did not know anything about Harvey's sex life, he had shown no inclination to tell her, and of course she had not approached the subject; although, more recently, it had been much in her mind.

‘I wonder if he's talked to Harlequin,' said Joan, ‘I must find out. So you don't know when Lucas is coming back?'

‘No. We don't even know where he is.'

‘He must have felt it awfully undignified to be in court, even though he was completely innocent. Did you go to see the show?'

‘Go to the court? Of course not!'

‘I'd have been dying of curiosity, I'd have wanted to know exactly what happened. I wish you'd told me sooner!'

‘We kept well clear. Lucas would have hated us coming to watch like tourists!'

Earlier that year, now several months ago, Lucas Graffe, Clement's elder brother, had had a very unpleasant experience. Out walking at night he had resisted an attack by a mugger with such violence that his assailant had died from a blow on the head from Lucas's umbrella. There was some general indignation (for the incident was briefly in the press) when Lucas was taken to court accused, not actually of manslaughter, but of ‘taking the law into his own hands' and ‘using excessive violence'. For a few days Lucas was even something of a popular hero. The goodies who wanted to defend the poor mugger were routed when it emerged that he had been carrying an offensive weapon. Lucas, a quiet reclusive academic, a much respected historian, was of course extremely upset by having inadvertently killed a man, even though a bad man.

‘He must have been very very distressed,' said Louise.

‘He must have been upset by the publicity.'

‘He must have been even more upset by killing a man.'

‘Nonsense, Lucas is a hero. If more people hit back there'd be fewer muggers. Lucas deserves a medal. You would side with the rotten thief!'

‘To end a man's life – he may have had a wife and children.'

‘I know, we all treasure Lucas, but he
is
eccentric. It is just like him to startle us by doing something unexpected. He sits in his dark little house writing learned books, then he goes out and kills someone – that's instinctive courage, and instinctive authority.'

‘It was a bit of a freak that the man died – Lucas wasn't trying to damage him, he was just fending him off.'

‘I imagine Lucas was angry. It was hard luck on both of them. And now Lucas disappears for ages – '

‘I can understand that, he wants to get over the shock, and he wants us to get over it too. He won't want to chat about it.'

‘Oh, he won't discuss it with anybody, we won't be allowed to mention it, it will be made never to have happened. But where is he?'

‘I expect he's working somewhere, he works all the time, he's in some university city, in some university library.'

‘Yes – in Italy, Germany, America. Is he still teaching?'

‘Yes, he's still teaching, but he's got some sabbatical leave from his college.'

‘He's certainly not very sociable, he's led such a sheltered life, he's a quiet and reticent person, he can't have enjoyed having his name in the papers. You must all look after him when he returns. You take him too much for granted. He's lonely.'

‘He likes it that way.'

‘Clement must be worried stiff about him. You don't think he's committed suicide?'

‘No, of course not!'

‘I don't mean because of guilt, but because of loss of dignity, loss of face.'

‘No! Lucas has plenty of ordinary sense!'

‘Has he? Well – and how are the three little girls?'

Louise's children at nineteen, eighteen and fifteen, were not now so little.

‘Aleph and Sefton have done their exams – now they are anxiously waiting for the results!'

‘Surely
they
needn't be anxious!'

Teddy Anderson, having had a classical education, had given his daughters Greek names, Alethea, Sophia and Moira. The girls however, in quiet mutual communion, had decided not to be known by these names. Yet they did not entirely abandon the names either. When the youngest, so much desired by their parents to be a boy, turned out to be another girl, Teddy said ‘It's fate!' and christened her Moira, which was easily and promptly shortened to ‘Moy'. The other girls had more trouble finding their true names. Alethea, not tolerating ‘Thea', decided at first for ‘Alpha', but as this sounded presumptuous, opted finally for ‘Aleph', the Hebrew name of the first letter of the alphabet, which retained the connection with the Ancient World, and a mysterious bond with her original name. Sophia, who abominated ‘Sophie', worked even harder, but came up at last with ‘Sefton'. How she discovered ‘Sefton' she never explained. Aleph (nineteen) and Sefton (eighteen) were bookish, destined for the university. Moy, who was not academic ‘but clever as a little mouse' in other ways, was preparing for art school. The girls worked hard, loved their mother, loved one another, were quiet and happy and lived at peace. Sometimes they seemed almost too contented with their lot. To look at, Sefton and Moy were not unattractive. But Aleph was voted to be very beautiful.

‘Exams. How time flies! Cambridge, like Dad?'

‘They hope for Oxford, but they have other choices.'

‘It'll do them good to get away from home. They are altogether too sedate, there is an
atmosphere
. And still no television! You deserve to have poltergeists with three demure teenage girls about the place, they're just the kind to attract them. Those girls are like a drawn bow, they compose a field of force – that's Clement's imagery incidentally – it's time for violence, it's time for them to fly apart – '

‘Clement said that?'

‘Do they still sing, and cry?'

‘Yes – '

‘They are perfectly safe and lovingly looked after – now when I was their age – '

‘You said you were having fun.'

‘Well, yes and no, strictly speaking I was in hell. Perhaps I have always been there. One can have fun in hell. But why the tears, are they in love? Moy is, isn't she? She's in love with Clement, always has been!'

‘She's also in love with the “Polish Rider”.'

‘Who's he?'

‘A picture by Rembrandt.'

‘Oh yes. I always found that picture a bit soppy. Isn't he supposed to be a woman? And anyway now they say it isn't by Rembrandt. But seriously, are they in love?'

‘No. They've always had that gift of tears. They cry over books, not just novels, Sefton cries over history books, Moy cries over things – '

‘I remember, like stones. She thinks things have rights. And she was always rescuing insects.'

‘Insects of course, and they all cry over animals. But they laugh a lot too.'

‘The all-singing all-laughing all-crying show. You call it a gift. I sometimes wish that I could cry more easily. Men don't cry. That's one of the many proofs of their superiority over us. It's all that caring. I suppose the girls are still vegetarians and saving whales and saving the planet and so on. Moy will die of her own sensibility, she identifies with everything. Save hedgehogs, save the black-footed ferret, abolish plastic bags. Of course Sefton is a swot, a brown-stocking. I see her as a sober bespectacled schoolteacher. Does Moy still eat that orange-flavoured milk chocolate? No wonder she's such a dear little roly-poly, she's the plump little woman who makes everything nice. I think she'll be a cook, or perhaps she'll live in the country and have a herb garden.'

Louise did not like these descriptions of her children. ‘Moy draws very well, she will be an artist. Aleph will do English at the university, she wants to be a writer.'

‘Oh, Aleph! With her beauty she can have anything, she can marry anybody. When you let her out she'll be
surrounded
. But she won't be in a hurry. That girl has her wits about her. She won't marry some penniless student. She'll choose a powerful older man who is rich and loves life, a top scientist, a top industrialist, a tycoon with a yacht and houses everywhere, and they'll have
real fun
. I just hope they invite us!'

Louise laughed. ‘You used to say Aleph would have to pay for her beauty. I hope you're right about her wits and not being in a hurry.'

‘So they still sing all those love songs, those sentimental thirties songs and Elizabethan ditties? Those are worthy of their tears. But I think I know – it's the calm before the storm – they are crying over the horrors to come, prophetically mourning their lost youth, mourning for their virginity, their goodness in which they heartily believe, their innocence, their purity so soon to be desecrated – and yes, I think they are innocent lambs, not like Harvey who has always had filth in his mind as boys do.'