The Green Knight (12 page)

As he rose to go and held Louise's hand and gazed at her he felt for a moment his old love for her taking possession of his whole being. They looked at each other. I
feed
upon this looking, thought Clement, but does she? I don't know, and I cannot ask. I am terrified of saying something which would wound our whole precious relationship. We are well as we are. I love her, that's all, that is
my
drama.

As he released her hand and picked up his coat from the bed there was a sudden loud noise from downstairs. Someone was banging upon the front door, hammering it violently with a fist or stick.

‘My God, what is that?'

‘Louise, you stay here, I'll go – '

‘No – '

Clement began to run down the stairs. The noise continued. Doors flew open. Anax was barking in the room above. The light had been switched off on the stairs and Clement nearly fell. He passed Sefton and Aleph who had emerged from the Aviary and moved out onto the landing behind him, looking down into the hall. Someone turned on a light. Clement was conscious of Louise now touching his shoulder. Someone had bolted the door and he struggled with the bolts. Louise was saying, ‘Wait, wait, put the door on the chain!' But Clement had already opened the door wide.

A figure with an umbrella was standing outside. It was Bellamy.

‘You dolt, what do you mean by knocking like that!' He called to the girls above, ‘It's Bellamy.'

‘Sorry, I couldn't find the bell in the dark.'

‘What on earth is the matter?'

‘Lucas is back.'

Clement exclaimed.

Louise said, ‘Oh Bellamy, do come in, come in out of the rain.'

Bellamy said, ‘I can't really, I – ,' but stepped into the hall. Clement closed the door.

Louise said, ‘Is he all right?'

‘Yes, I think so, but – '

‘He didn't tell me,' said Clement.

‘Well, you see I got a letter, someone forwarded it, I just found it now, I've got a taxi, I thought – '

‘Do take your coat off and come upstairs and tell us – '

‘Louise, I can't, the taxi is waiting, I'm going to see him – '

‘Going to see him
?' said Clement.

‘Yes, I was so staggered, I rang him up, I asked him if I could come and see him at once, he didn't seem to fancy it but then he said “All right, come, it may be a good idea.” So I rang Clement's number, then I got the taxi, and then I thought maybe Clement was here, and I wanted to be the first to tell him, and anyway why shouldn't you come with me, Clement – Lucas must have been ringing you to say he's back – why not come along with me now, we'll both go, I feel a bit nervous – '

‘But what did he
say
?' said Louise.

‘Just that he was back, you know how he hates the telephone.'

‘You go with him,' Louise said to Clement.

Clement said, ‘No, he won't talk to two of us.'

Bellamy said, ‘Shall I tell him – ?'

‘Don't say anything, I'll communicate with him tomorrow.' Clement turned away as if to go back up the stairs.

Louise checked him, tugging at his jacket. ‘Clement and I will wait here, you could telephone us when you leave Lucas, let us know how he is and what happened.'

‘I must go home,' said Clement, ‘I'm just going to fetch my coat.'

Bellamy called after him, ‘I'd give you a lift home in my taxi, only I can't keep Lucas waiting – '

When Clement reached the landing Moy, who had darted up the stairs, gave him his coat.

Clement, coming down again, said, ‘Thanks, I've got my car. Off you go.'

A strange terrible wailing sound came from above, a high-pitched howl, then another, then another.

Louise said, ‘Oh heavens, it's Anax, he heard your voice.'

Bellamy disappeared, the taxi door slammed.

Clement occupied the open doorway, the taxi had gone, the howling continued.

‘Clement dear, please stay, I'm so upset – '

‘Sorry, I must go.'

‘It's raining, is your car near?'

The sound above changed into desperate hysterical barking, combined with repeated thuds as the dog hurled himself against the door.

‘Wait, take an umbrella – '

‘No, I'm OK. Goodnight.'

Clement set off walking, then running. Louise watched him from the door until he turned the corner. As she went slowly up the stairs the dreadful noise diminished, then ceased. There was another softer rhythmical keening, the sound of Moy sobbing.

Bellamy's hand had trembled as he paid the taxi driver, a lot of coins had fallen onto the floor of the taxi, others onto the wet pavement. Bellamy hurried to the door. He rang the bell.

Lucas's house in Notting Hill was the house which had belonged to his parents and in which he and Clement had grown up. It was a detached house with an iron railing in front and three steps up to the door. There was a pleasant garden at the back with a cast-iron staircase running up to the first floor and vistas of many trees in other gardens. There was a capacious cellar (where the game of ‘Dogs' had been played) and a large drawing-room with doors opening to the garden.

Lucas opened the door cautiously, a slit only. When he saw Bellamy he opened it a little more and went back through the unlighted corridor to the drawing-room. Bellamy followed, closing the door behind him. The drawing-room was also unlighted. Lucas switched on a green-shaded lamp upon the large desk which stood at the far end of the long room. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn across the glass doors which led to the garden. The room was quiet, all the windows in the house were double-glazed, Lucas hated noise. There was a very faint scarcely audible sound of rain.

Lucas had seated himself on the desk, thrusting aside a pile of books. Bellamy closed the drawing-room door behind him and advanced halfway down the room. They looked at each other.

Once Bellamy was installed in Lucas's presence he felt calm, his heart beat less violently, he was able to feel a simple pleasure and relief at Lucas's return. Bellamy in fact knew Lucas a good deal better than he allowed ‘the others' to realise. This secretiveness was instinctive, perhaps an insurance against the possibility, constantly envisaged, of Lucas suddenly ‘taking against him'. He took off his mackintosh and dropped it with his umbrella behind him on the floor. As Lucas seemed intent on saying nothing he said, ‘Lucas, are you all right?'

‘Yes, of course.'

Lucas was dressed, over shirt and trousers, in a yellow silk dressing-gown. He had very dark narrow eyes, very dark straight hair framing his face, a narrow aquiline nose, a thin red-lipped mouth, and a smooth sallow complexion. He had dark thick eyebrows and long very white teeth. He was not hump-backed but often, because of his stooping attitudes, seemed to be. In fact he had grown slowly as a child and had a habit of crouching. He had small hands and feet. He was said by some to ‘look Chinese'.

He spoke slowly in a precise authoritative voice which, to those unused to it, could sound affected. He wore narrow rimless spectacles for reading.

‘But where have you been all this time?'

‘Why do you ask me in that tone?'

‘I'm sorry – it's just that we've all been so worried – '

‘Why?'

‘Well, in the circumstances, why not – we thought you might – we wondered whether – after all that – '

‘I was in various places, in Italy, in America. I don't usually tell people where I go.'

‘No, of course not. We were silly to worry! And you – now that you're back – well – I suppose it's business as usual!'

Lucas did not reply to this awkward jocularity.

‘Clement has been terribly worried about you. He'll be glad to see you!'

‘I find all this “worrying” rather impertinent.'

‘Well, I'm sorry, we weren't to know. I saw Clement this evening, I mean I went to tell him you were back. I went there in the taxi, I mean to Louise's place, he was there, to tell him.'

‘Oh.'

‘He was very relieved.'

Lucas said nothing so Bellamy went on again. ‘Have you heard about Harvey?'

‘No.'

‘He fell, in Italy, he was walking across a bridge, I mean up on the parapet, and he fell, not over the edge of course, but he jumped down and broke his ankle, so he can't go to Florence, you remember he was going to Florence.'

‘No.'

‘Nothing else has happened really, no births, deaths, or marriages. I told you I was going to retire from the world. That's still on. You remember that.'

‘Do you still see archangels?'

‘No – '

‘Your friend Michael leaning on his sword and watching the damned falling into hell?'

‘Not like that.'

‘And how are the girls?'

‘Delightful, innocent, happy. Well, except that we were worrying – '

‘Apparently you all want to make a drama of my return. There is no drama. You ask if I am all right. I am all right. You can tell that to the others which will remove the necessity of their visiting me.'

‘You wrote to me, but you didn't write to Clement.'

‘That is true. You ask why. You are a harmless chatterbox who will rapidly inform all relevant persons.'

‘Clement will want to visit you, he has been so upset – '

‘Don't tell him to come.'

‘But don't tell him not to come? Were you sitting in the dark?'

‘Yes, I have been scalded and bleached, light hurts my eyes, in the dark they glow. In a century or two this planet will have been destroyed by external cosmic forces or by the senseless activity of the human race. Human life is a freak phenomenon, soon to be blotted out. That is a consoling thought. Meanwhile we are surrounded by strange invisible entities, possibly your angels.'

‘I hope so.'

‘Ah, you think they are good, they
cannot
be good, there is no good, the tendency to evil is overwhelming. One has only to think of the horrors of sex, its violence, its cruelty, its filthy vulgarity, its descent into bestial degradation. You had better go and dream in your monastery.'

‘Would you come and visit me there?'

‘Of course not. I do not visit. Only, unfortunately, am sometimes visited.'

‘You don't want to discuss – you know – what happened? My priest said – '

‘No.'

‘I care about how you are, I love you.'

‘You still fail to realise how this sort of talk sickens me. Now please go. This will do for a welcome home scene. Tell them not to come. I desire to be left alone.'

‘I must tell you this. My priest says that you should feel pity for, you know, that man, and think about giving some help to his innocent wife and family.'

‘All right, I had to say it. I'll tell the others. Goodnight.'

Lucas switched off the light. Bellamy picked up his mackintosh and umbrella and found his way out in the dark.

 

 

 

 

‘It looked terrible when they took the cast off,' said Harvey to Bellamy, ‘it didn't look like human flesh at all, it was all blue and spotty and rotten. I said “It's gangrene,” and they said no, but I thought they didn't like the look of it either. I wanted, I so much wanted, it to be left alone now to breathe the air and the light, you know like a poor plant that has been in the dark. I wanted the sun to warm it, but they tied it up again immediately, not in the cast but these very tight elastic bandages, they're even tighter than the cast.'

It was the following morning. Harvey had arrived unannounced at Bellamy's flatlet, having taken a taxi direct from the hospital. Bellamy was touched and pleased that Harvey had come straight to him. He had already given the boy a suitably censored account of his visit to Lucas.

The rain had stopped, but London had a drenched drowned look, the pavements darkened with water, the gutters full of pools. Even the trees looked soaked and dejected. The low undulating clouds were a blackish grey. An east wind was blowing. Bellamy's one-room flat, now meagrely warmed by the tiny electric fire, was on the ground floor. The window looked out directly onto the street and the noises and presences of passers-by. There was a very small sick garden behind the house, scattered with dandelions which survived without actually growing. Bellamy's room contained a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, a table, a wash-basin and a gas ring. The lavatory was outside on the stairs. In a frenzy of excitement he had given almost everything away. He had enjoyed this stripping with the joy which it is said sailors feel in hurling things into the sea. He congratulated himself on being able to hate his possessions. His flat was sold, his cottage was for sale. He had hoped to make some acquaintance with his new neighbours, first of course the people in the house, and be able to help them in some way. But except for an acquaintance with a shop lady he had had no success, and had not yet ventured to approach the local clergy. The first floor was occupied by a Pakistani family, a tall thin father, a beautiful mother with innumerable saris, and two boys of about six and eight, but except for smiles they were not very communicative. A silent shabby elderly man rarely visible was on the floor above. The third floor was an uninhabitable attic where rain poured in through the roof. Bellamy sometimes wondered, what's the matter with me, what do people take me for, what do I
look like
? Passing boys banged on the window. Harvey had just told him he looked weird. There was no mirror in the room, Bellamy shaved, now less regularly, by instinct. He thought, when I'm
in there
I'll give up shaving altogether and my face will
become invisible
.