The Green Knight (3 page)

‘Yes, possibly,' said Louise vaguely. Joan liked to speculate amusingly about the girls, of whom she was fond, but whom now she hardly ever saw. Louise did not want to talk about such matters. The tears moved and distressed her, such strange tears as for some terrible frightful joy. ‘Bellamy says they are wondering at the existence of the world.'

‘Its misery, its cruelty?'

‘No, just that it exists.'

‘That doesn't make much sense. They've realised their whole lives are at stake. I heard them singing that song about every girl's a fool and every man's a liar. Well, perhaps they don't sing it so often now when they can see it's not a joke! Well may they weep over the wickedness of the men who will break their hearts! Have they taken to religion? Moy was confirmed, wasn't she?'

‘She used to go to church sometimes.'

‘She would, she thinks it's magic, she's a leprechaun, perhaps she'll be a witch when she's grown up and earn a fortune making love-potions.'

‘She is a very remarkable girl,' said Louise, ‘and she will be a very remarkable woman.' She was tired of hearing Moy belittled and laughed at.

‘You mean she's fey, she has an aura, she imagines she communes with the paranormal, but that's all just a form of female adolescence, she'll pass through it into ordinariness, no love-potions, no broomsticks, she'll be arranging the flowers in the local church. I wish I still had some religion, even the beastly old Roman church which my beastly mother hangs onto, while she lives in sin. They say religion is a substitute for sex. You don't know what it is to want a man, any man. I wish I could discover some respectable male prostitutes, like civil servants or university dons who do it in their spare time for a bit of pocket money, there must be such people. Moy's still at school, isn't she? With the other two at home the female vibrations must be overwhelming.'

‘They're mostly out all the time, they go to libraries, they go to lectures, they went to that cramming establishment.'

‘Lucas used to coach Sefton, didn't he?'

‘Yes, I think she found him a bit intimidating. But it was very kind of him.'

‘You say he's kind, you say Bellamy's generous and you refuse to call him a fool, you think Harvey is a sweet good boy, you think Clement is a parfit gentle knight, you see Aleph as an angel who will never turn into a Valkyrie, I believe you don't even allow yourself to make moral judgments upon
me!
You smooth things over and say things you don't really mean. You inhibit your fears and hates, you are the most inhibited person I know.'

Louise murmured, ‘Good old inhibitions.'

‘You've led an easy life, other people have made the decisions. I have a perpetual frown imprinted on my brow. Your brow is unfurrowed. You have what Napoleon most desired in a woman, repose. My God, how much I haven't got it! Damn, it's beginning to rain.'

Joan put up her umbrella, Louise pulled her hood over her head. In an instant the grass became slippery and muddy. The wind blew the rain into their faces as they turned back.

‘I'm so glad Harvey got that bursary thing to go to Florence,' said Louise. ‘He must be so happy.'

‘To get out of London and out of England, yes. But I wish he had a girl friend. Somehow or other it always turns out he's with men. He hangs around with Emil and Clive – what's the use of a pair of dedicated gays – now who's he with? Clement and Bellamy. All right, they're not gay, at least Clement isn't, but they're
men
. Men flirt with him, he's so pretty, they pet him, I've seen them, they pull his hair – remember how they all used to chuck him under the chin, I remember Teddy used to. You know, I think he's been retarded by your girls, they've inoculated him against women, against sex, they've played brother and sisters all their lives, he thinks all females are taboo, they're his sisters! Chastity is a potent magic, it casts a spell. Those girls are paralysed, they've become fairy-tale damsels, grail-bearers, sleeping princesses inside an enchanted castle. Harvey ought to be the prince who hacks his way through the forest, but he can't be, he's
in
the castle!'

‘What nonsense!' murmured Louise under her dripping hood. Anax was pulling her now, she could feel the collar tight against his throat.

‘He's under the spell too. And all the time Eros is fluttering his wings above them all. How I wish he could descend like an eagle upon the whole scene and tear it to pieces! We need someone to come to break the enchantment, someone from
elsewhere
. I warn you, if Harvey turns out to be queer it won't be my fault, it'll be your fault!'

 

 

 

 

‘ “I feel your arms around me, your kisses linger yet, You taught me how to love you, now teach me to forget!” '

The singers were Aleph and Moy, Aleph seated at the piano, Moy standing behind her, leaning against her shoulder. The girls all played the piano, Aleph very well. Sefton, who when reading was deaf to sound, was sitting on the floor at the far end of the room, leaning back against the bookshelves which covered the wall. She read: ‘The Anglo-Danish kingdom was personal to Canute. His sons were not of the calibre to sustain so difficult a structure. Our island, which had led Europe in culture in the eighth century, lost nothing of its native character under the brilliant Dane, reverted soon after his death to its ancient loyalties and recalled the son of Ethelred from his Norman exile.'

Anax was asleep in his basket, his long head concealed beneath his bushy tail. Aleph, the ‘beauty', was pale in complexion, her skin (of course innocent of make-up) faintly glowing, her face from a large brow tapering into an oval form, her eyes, beneath long almost straight dark eyebrows, large and dark brown, thoughtful, expressive of sympathy, also of judgment, her hair, a dark shining chestnut colour, a lively complex of curls which framed her face and cascaded in orderly disorder to her long slim pale neck. Her nose was straight, descending in an almost unwavering line from her brow. Her mouth, with a full lower lip and a classically bowed upper lip, always seeming slightly moist, was sweetly pensive, faintly amused, ‘clever, but loving and forgiving' as Clement once said. (Sefton found a resemblance to a girl in the Acropolis museum.) She was slim and tall, though not too tall, with long elegant legs, she was dignified, in company often withdrawn, seeming proud, as if superior, but among people she knew, lively and witty. She was indeed clever, esteemed by her school and by her more recent mentors. Her university entrance had been delayed by the bout of glandular fever which had penetrated the trio in the previous year. Perhaps being constantly told that she was beautiful had indeed made her a little haughty, or perhaps what was visible and sometimes unnerving was a kind of controlled absolutism, a capacity for passion and exigence which was usually well concealed beneath her gentle silences and sympathetic perceptive gaze.

Sefton was less tall than Aleph and less slim, her eyes were the greenish brown known as hazel, she had golden brown eyebrows and reddish brown straight hair rather jagged (she cut it herself) and square teeth which used to protrude until they were restrained by a golden band only lately discarded. Her complexion was pale, not with the glowing ivory pallor of Aleph's but like her mother's, readily freckled. Her mouth was firm, her lips pressed together, thoughtful, even said to be stern, her expression in repose somewhat austere, she wore glasses for reading and could stand on her head. She was said to be too bookish, obsessed with learning and passing exams, only interested in serious conversation. She had a clear lucid carrying voice and, like her sisters, sang well. She did not care for clothes but wore shabby, often second-hand, corduroy jackets and trousers, and cheap men's shirts. She was reticent, and by her family generally agreed to be the cat that walked by herself by her wild lone. Moy, who took after Teddy Anderson, had blue eyes, and golden hair which she wore in a long thick plait which was held together at the tail by a sturdy elastic band. She was shorter in stature than Sefton and secretly afraid that she had stopped growing. (When did one stop growing? She was afraid to ask.) She was rosy-cheeked and rather plump, not ‘intellectual' like the other two, but ‘awfully talented' in various ‘artistic' ways still to be defined. She made and dyed her own clothes and wore shapeless shifts in various subtle colours, with wide sleeves. She drew well, and painted in the style of her art teacher, Miss Fitzherbert (for she was still at school), and more wildly in various other styles. She also made things, garments, jewellery, hats, masks, ritual objects. She hoped to go to an art school, but feared (again secretly) that she could do many things but not any one thing properly. She could in fact cook well, but did not regard this as important.

The large room on the first floor, once the drawing-room, had become in time the girls' ‘common room'. It was called (having been so named by Moy) ‘The Aviary'. It occupied, together with a small landing and a very large cupboard, the full width of the house, the other rooms being, with the exception of the attic, rather small. The furniture, remnants which had come from the larger house in Hampstead which they had occupied while Teddy was alive, was handsome but had become shabby, as if it ‘knew its place'. Even the piano, a good instrument, had a slightly battered look. It rarely occurred to the girls, or to Louise, to polish anything. There was no television set, the girls disapproved of television. The house was a four-storey terrace house in a modest street in Hammersmith, near Brook Green. A fanlight over the door (already present when Louise had bought the house) said ‘Clifton'. The number in the road was ninety-seven, proclaimed by Moy to be a lucky number. However ‘Clifton', though never used in the postal address (which would have been too pretentious for so unassuming a dwelling), was what the house was called among its friends.

It was evening. They had had supper which took place at eight, and on this occasion had consisted of (provided by Moy) tomato salad with mozzarella cheese and basil, lentil stew with curried cabbage, and apples (not Cox's Orange Pippins, which had not yet appeared in the shops). The family, in a spontaneous movement of spirit (or inspired by Moy, Moy said) had become vegetarians some years ago. The rain, which had started in the afternoon, had continued ever since, making a pleasant soft faintly hissing sound. The curtains were pulled, the gas fire was murmuring. Louise, who now did not enter the Aviary except by invitation, was reading in her small bedroom on the floor above, opposite to the bathroom and Aleph's even smaller bedroom. Louise's bedroom looked out onto the street, Aleph's onto the small garden and the backs of houses in the next street. The book which Louise was reading was
A Glastonbury Romance
. The large attic room on the top floor was occupied by Moy. Sefton had the room on the ground floor opposite the kitchen.

Aleph closed the piano. Sefton was now supine on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, her book open upon her stomach. She often lay thus upon the floor, thinking. Moy had gone to kneel beside Anax. She watched him sleeping for a while, then wakened him.

‘Don't disturb him,' said Aleph, too late.

Anax, removing his long nose from underneath his tail, licked Moy's face. She caressed him, running her finger lightly along the black line of his upper lip, then laid her head down upon his warm flank, gathering her long plait into the basket with him. Louise had of course, as Joan pointed out, been wrong to suggest that Anax had forgotten his master, Bellamy. (Nor did Louise in fact believe this.) However, Moy had certainly, in a short time, established a profound relationship with the dog. The children had been in mourning for their old cat, Tibellina, when Bellamy's surprising move had cut short their discussions about another pet.

Aleph looked down at Moy's long yellow plait lying upon the stiff light-grey fur. Then she went over to Sefton and kicked her gently. Sefton, without otherwise moving, took hold of Aleph's foot and pulled the shoe off. Aleph, relinquishing the shoe, moved to an armchair and sat down, opening Milton's
Poetical Works
. She read:

Sefton, abandoning Fisher's
History of Europe
, was now wondering: what would have happened if Harold had defeated the Normans? Or if Canute had lived longer? England would have become part of a Danish confederacy with its capital in Denmark. Europe would have been unified. Would that have been a good thing or a bad thing?

Louise, who was convinced that the girls never discussed sex, was in fact wrong. They did discuss it, but only in a certain style. Perhaps most of the things they did were in a certain style, tacitly agreed upon, since each cared what the other two thought and a standard had to be maintained. Now some time had passed in silence. They often stayed thus together in the evenings. Sefton was still lying motionless, Aleph was still reading Milton, Moy, the restless one, was sitting beside Anax's basket with her back against the wall, arranging beads upon the carpet to plan a necklace. Her hands smelt of basil. Anax, sitting up, watched her.

Aleph said, ‘Has he been out in the garden?'

Moy, intent, said ‘Yes.' Then she said, ‘Oh how I wish we could get out of London. How I wish we could get to the sea.'

Aleph had put down her book and folded her arms across her breasts. ‘I wish Bellamy wasn't selling his cottage.'

‘Yes. I suppose there's no other way of getting to the sea.'

‘Moy is a girl upon the land, but she is a silky in the sea.'

‘I dreamt about seals the other night, such a strange dream. When are you going touring with Rosemary, not before my birthday?'