The Green Knight (10 page)

‘Don't be daft.'

‘Are you in love with me?'

‘No.'

‘Are you in love with – ?'

‘Is there any champagne left in that bottle?'

‘Can't you face me without a drink?'

‘No.'

‘Well, there isn't. Unless you'd like to open another bottle. Let's open another bottle.'

‘No, don't bother,
don't bother
!'

‘Actually there's some whisky in that slit there, Harvey's so-called kitchen. Get yourself a glass and put some in mine.'

Clement fetched a glass and the whisky bottle. He poured a little into Joan's glass and into his own.

‘Would you like a towel to dry your hair?'

‘No.'

‘Well, please yourself. Cheers, Harlequin. Why didn't you come sooner?'

‘I've been busy. Have you heard anything about Lucas?'

‘No, I don't know anything about him, why ever should I, why do you ask me?'

‘I just ask everybody.'

‘Harvey was here too, the poor little monster.'

‘Yes, poor fellow.'

‘You mustn't have guilt feelings about him.'

‘I don't.'

‘Well, perhaps you ought to. Never mind. He's smashed himself up accidentally on purpose. Tell me something. So it's still raining. We can agree on that.'

‘I just hope Harvey isn't in for a depression.'

‘If he is, Tessa will cure him.'

‘Have you seen Tessa – yes, of course you just said she'd been here.'

‘You aren't concentrating. Soon you'll be asking me if I've seen Joan lately. Aren't you glad to see me?'

‘Yes. Yes.'

‘Did you know that a man's sexuality ascends into the highest pinnacle of his spirit? That implies, no sexuality, no spirit.'

‘I don't know what it implies or what it means.'

‘Ah sex – a thunderstorm in the tropics when you are instantly soaked to the skin and in the lightning flash just for a second you see everything so bright and clear, including the tiger ready to spring!'

‘Are you still in that flat in the rue Vercingetorix?'

‘Yes, of course, why not?'

‘You said you were going to move.'

‘I can't afford to. All right, I don't want your money.'

‘It's not on offer.'

‘You can be nasty.'

‘No, Joan, sorry, I'm not being nasty, I'm just so tired, and so terribly worried about Lucas.'

‘So everyone tells me. But, damn it, he can look after himself. I know him, I know Lucas, he's a good deal better at self-preservation than
we
are. You make too much of it all. Could you fill up my glass, just
fill
it.'

‘You drink too much. All right, all right.'

‘Ça revient au même de s'enivrer solitairement ou de conduire les peuples.
A great man said that.'

‘Great men can be bloody stupid.'

‘So can little men. So you haven't forgotten our tiny flat?'

‘Not our flat, Joan, your flat.'

‘Well, you know what I mean.'

‘You mean too much. You annoy me.'

‘Oh how young and fresh you look, no wonder you prefer the younger generation! So, Aleph is up for grabs, and Rosemary, and – '

‘Dear Joan, don't talk nonsense,
please
, I just want to be with you in peace.'

‘Peace! When do I ever have peace? My life is scratched to bits.'

‘For God's sake it was one night, and – '

‘So you say. And you'll say we were both drunk.'

‘Yes. It was only one – '

‘How long is one? Sentimentally and in the soul it went on for ages, it still goes on, it goes on and on. I feel your arms around me, your kisses linger yet, You taught me how to love you, now teach me to forget! I'll get the girls to sing that song, and I'll cry, and so will you.'

‘I won't cry.'

‘And I won't forget. You lack loyalty, you lack generosity.'

‘That's a serious charge, old friend.'

‘So I'm old friend now, am I? You remember nothing.'

‘There is virtually nothing to remember.'

‘ “Virtually” can cover a multitude of sins. Don't you remember
“si ça ne vous incommode pas je vais garder mes bas”?
The sexiest thing Sartre ever said. Don't worry, I won't talk. All the same – Vercingetorix. It suits me to have a secret, it gives me power over you.'

 

 

 

Harvey was sitting on Tessa's bed. Tessa was sitting beside him. Their sleeves touched. Harvey had stretched out his stone leg, not to exhibit its decorations, on which Tessa had already commented adversely, but in a vain search for a less painful position. Tessa had stretched out both legs, clad in sturdy shoes and high woollen socks pulled up over her trousers, making them look like knee-breeches. Her rather pale ‘angelic' face, usually alert with attention and authority, often sardonic and amused, could become curiously blank, as if she were absent, her lips parted, her eyelids drooping. No doubt she was tired, resting, switching off her consciousness so as to regather strength. Harvey respected her withdrawal, he was proud that she could be thus withdrawn in his presence.

The rain had stopped. The thin house, in a battered terrace in Kilburn, was, somehow always, rather cold and damp. This was Tessa's house, where she lived and slept and organised her ‘social work'. The hostel for the unhappy women was several streets away. (It was rumoured that Tessa had, elsewhere in London, a luxury flat to which she secretly retired when it was all ‘too much'.) The ground floor, which had been extended into the small untended garden, consisted of the office, a room for typing and interviews, and a very private primitive kitchen. The first floor was Tessa's bedroom and bathroom and a room containing clothes, books, and other items belonging to Tessa, and a few cardboard boxes full of give-away clothing. The top floor, now also colonised by Tessa, had housed a lodger, a Mr Baxter, who had made a tiny contribution toward the rent, but had disappeared suddenly, said to be in prison or perhaps dead. The house was cold, small electric fires, sparingly switched on, being the sole source of heat. Mr Baxter had had an electric fire on a meter, but that had vanished shortly prior to his own disappearance. Tessa had once explained to Harvey that the secret of keeping warm in winter was not to vary the temperature, to let the weather into the house and rely on warm clothing. She should know, having survived a cold winter in the protest camp, living in a makeshift tent which scarcely covered her body, and spending the day searching for firewood. (At least they lit fires there, thought Harvey.) It was like, she said, the rule well known to biologists that the way not to feel hungry was to refrain from eating. A little food brings on an urge for more. People who fast become used to it in a few days. By this method one could at least learn to do without breakfast and lunch. Harvey, who required food as pleasure and had not yet discovered it as a necessity, did not care for these lines of thought.

The doorbell rang downstairs. Tessa locked the door at six and could ruthlessly refuse to answer. She proclaimed that the evening was hers and that she was often out: perhaps, rumour had it, in chic clothes at grand houses. She moved a little away from him and they looked at each other. The bell rang again. Then silence. She murmured, ‘If it was urgent they'd go on ringing. The telephone is switched off too.'

‘It might be a friend.'

‘No. Friends have codes.'

‘Don't tease me. Everything wounds me now except perfect kindness.'

‘I can't provide that at this time of day.'

‘Sorry. I shouldn't have hinted that I wanted to see you. It's very kind of you to – '

‘Yes, yes. Do you want to talk about your mother?'

‘You make people talk about other people.'

‘Only if they want to. What people say about other people says a lot about the people themselves.'

‘I'm afraid she'll take to drugs, she talks about getting “hooked”. She pretends to be desperate and suicidal. Or is it pretence?'

‘Yes, it's pretence. Next question.'

‘Please – '

‘She has tremendous energy and a tremendous will to live. I don't think she is suicidal. Desperation is her mode of willing to live.'

‘Oh well – you visited my grandmother.'

‘Are you jealous?'

‘Yes. That's another wound. Tessa, don't be cold and brisk with me. I don't want to talk about my mother, I want to talk about myself. I feel so depressed. I have to be merry and bright while I just want to cry.'

‘Cry then, cry here, everyone else does.'

‘You must be tired of weeping persons.'

‘Do those girls still cry? You said they cried a lot.'

‘Yes. Don't be nasty about them.'

‘I'm not nasty, I'm just interested. I respect Sefton. But they are all sick with values, crammed with good behaviour. In a way I envy them. Perhaps they'll get away with it. Is the dog still there?'

‘Now you're talking about the dog. Yes.'

‘Bellamy ought not to have given the dog away. A dog is forever. The dog will run off and vanish.
Then
there'll be tears.'

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘Bellamy is totally mistaken about himself. He is a fool.'

‘Perhaps a holy fool.'

‘Ridiculous phrase. Holiness requires intellect. The Jesuits understand that.'

‘Don't be cross with me.'

‘Harvey, I'm not cross. I'm just very tired. I'm sorry I asked you to come, I have nothing for you.'

‘Just being with you helps me, I feel you are in the truth.'

‘Where do you pick up these bizarre phrases?'

‘You regard my mother as a patient, as a case.'

‘You like to see it that way. You want to feel that someone is looking after her. I love her, I calm her, she is so picturesque, she is a witch, a leprechaun, daft as a brush. What a tonic.'

‘I have never understood why a brush is daft.'

‘It is something to do with foxes.'

‘Oh Tessa, I'm so miserable, I feel so unreal, so
sick
, as if my whole inside had been removed, I feel
vacant
, I'm a puppet, I feel I've
died
, I wish you'd take me on as a case.'

‘It wouldn't do, dear child.'

‘Why not? You can't imagine how unhappy I am.'

‘I can. But your kind of unhappiness must cure itself. You have a healing substance in your own body and soul, it is called courage. Your mother has it too. Call upon it, let it flow. Besides you are young and have work and a place in life. Read, study, think.'

‘I can't. I'm an orphan. I realise it for the first time. My mother is just like a child. I can't go near Louise, she's taboo, and anyway she doesn't want me – '

‘Well, please don't elect me to be mother. Harvey, stop. Tell me something. Is there any news of Lucas?'

‘Not that I know of.'

‘You all need him.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘He'll put you in order. He'll make you jump. He is the ringmaster.'

‘I didn't know you liked him.'

‘I don't. But he's really real.'

‘Let's go out and have a drink.'

‘No, I've got to be somewhere else. With a beard St Joseph, without the Virgin Mary, as they say in Spain.'

 

 

 

Harvey had left the ‘refuge' and was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room in Emil's flat. The numerous lamps were softly shaded, the distant traffic hummed in the Brompton Road. Emil collected pictures. He possessed, for instance, a Bonnard and a Vuillard and a Max Ernst and a Caillebotte and a Nolde and a drawing by Picasso and an Otto Dix and some early Hockneys. In honour of such treasures Harvey faithfully remembered to turn the burglar alarm on and off and carry about him a jangling bunch of keys. The peach-pink walls were covered with pictures, not all of which Harvey, though often in the room, had asked Emil to identify. It was
very kind
of Emil to lend him his flat. He could intuit that Clive was less enthusiastic. In the afternoon he had tried to work. As he told everybody, there was plenty of work he could get on with, studying Dante for instance. But his ‘study' seemed to consist of reading some of his favourite passages – and finding that their magic had faded. When he returned from Tessa he fried some eggs in Emil's dream kitchen, clearing up carefully afterwards. Louise had shopped for him, stocking the flat with goodies, but supplies were running out. Soon he would have to shop for himself: a first sign in a gradual process of being
forgotten
. Louise had said vaguely, ‘Come over any time, come to supper'; but, and this was another sign, although he longed to see Louise, and to see Aleph, he increasingly lacked the will to go. He was afraid, he was ashamed, he was a cripple, he was
disabled
. He could not bear their all feeling sorry for him, their sympathy might reduce him to tears. The Harvey who had been once so handsome, so long-legged and athletic,
did not exist any more.
He couldn't even wash properly. He had lost, and lost forever, his youthful pride, his freedom, his nerve. All he could do now was attempt, but surely in vain, to conceal the extent of his loss. He watched television pictures of a war, of a football match, of worthy people in wheel-chairs. He thought about his father and wondered if his father ever thought about him. His leg was hurting alarmingly. They had spoken of taking the cast off again. What would they find underneath? Something decayed and rotting, suitable only for amputation.