The Green Knight (40 page)

He moved back hurriedly, stumbling over the boxes, then returning and peering saw indeed in the dark slit, which now seemed like an upturned coffin, the form of a woman, certainly not Tessa, standing there in hysterics, the voice jerking forth like the regular movement of a machine, the high piercing scream, the desolate agonising wail, the raucous drawing of breath, growling then dying to a moan, then the scream again. Harvey retreated into the kitchen. He felt he was going to be sick. He stood beside the sink shuddering and uttering little moaning cries, mimicking the appalling sound. He wanted to run away, to run out of the house, to escape from the hideous nauseating phenomenon. He trembled, putting his hands to his mouth. Then he returned cautiously. He must make that awful noise
stop
. He stood in the middle of the room and called out, ‘Do please stop!' The scream and the wail continued. He shouted
‘stop it
!
Stop
!' The sound began to diminish, changing its pattern, the dreadful mechanical regularity beginning to break down. Harvey advanced cautiously toward the dark doorway. His eyes were now accustomed to the dim light in the room and he could see into the dark opening. He could see the woman, standing in profile to him, staring at the wall, clasping her hands to her throat. He saw that the little coffin-like slit was a lavatory. He said
‘Please
come out. Come to me.' He spoke now as if speaking to an animal. The woman did not move. Harvey reached in and touched her arm at the elbow, feeling woollen material which he pulled slightly. She began to turn towards him, then almost to fall as if she were going to faint as she took a step into the room. He seized her firmly by the arm, supporting her and making her continue to move. She now, still moaning and sobbing, allowed him to lead her out through the kitchen and on to the office, he guided her to a chair at the table where she sat down covering her face with her hands. He pulled up another chair and sat beside her, stroking her shoulder. He became aware of her sweaty feral smell. The hysterical sound was gone, but she continued to sob, in a rising and falling regular note, almost as if she were singing.

Harvey said, ‘Now, please, do stop, I want to talk to you, tell me what's the matter, let me help you.' As she sometimes moved her hands, dragging at her hair and pulling at her throat, he caught glimpses of her face immensely red and swollen. Her face was so disfigured by weeping that he could not guess her age. She was dressed, poorly it seemed, with a shabby cardigan with a hole in one sleeve. Her hair, dyed blonde with a little grey appearing, was a tangled matted mess which she drew down now and then over her face. Harvey, distraught, repeated, ‘Please stop crying, do let me help, talk to me, perhaps, I could help, oh I am so sorry – ' The woman ignored him as if intent upon her weeping as upon some sort of work or task. Once he tried to take hold of one of her hands but she wrenched it away. After a while he simply sat back and watched her. If only Tessa would come back! He had only just remembered where he was and that Tessa existed. He thought, how can someone go on and on crying like that, how can such crying not kill them or do them permanent damage, why doesn't she become exhausted and faint or go to sleep, how can such grief exist, what can I do, nothing, must I wait with her now, ought I to wait and wait? He felt he ought to wait but suddenly and passionately wanted to get away. He saw on the table a very shabby old handbag which could not possibly be Tessa's, and into it he stuffed a considerable amount of Emil's generous taxi money. After a last plea, ‘Please stop, please talk to me!', he got up and went to the door. He looked back at her still heaving and keening, then moved away, picking up his coat and his stick. He closed the front door quietly as he went out. He felt a traitor and a coward.

Once he was outside however, where it was dark and cold and windy, and the rain was soaking his hair and running down his face, a new will and a new energy seemed suddenly at his disposal. It was as if something had, ever so lightly, touched him. It was so surprising that he paused. Must it not be connected with that awful grief? A mean sense of escape? No, this was something else. Perhaps the weeping woman had been a sort of test or trial run. But had he not failed? What hideous violence or what terrible loss had brought about such grief, which he was now leaving behind? He walked on slowly. He felt that he was being moved on as by a revolving door. Suddenly, in another part of the human scene, of the great chessboard of being, his presence was urgently called upon. Where action had hitherto seemed impossible, he was now empowered to act. The ruthlessness of his departure could seem a source of strength. He had just seen part of a tragedy in which he had no role, now he was being sent out to play a role in his own tragedy. What this role was he did not know. But he felt loosened, as if all his sinews had been unbound, uplifted, inspired to run his own risks. He even noticed that, with his new stick, he was walking fast and without pain. It was nevertheless a long way to the tube station. However, fate, in on this act, was mindful of him and within minutes a taxi appeared. He climbed in and gave the driver Lucas's address in Notting Hill.

He parted from the taxi at the end of the road and began to walk cautiously along under the trees on the side opposite to Lucas's house. Squeezing the water out of his hair, he noticed that the rain had stopped. He had no cap. His head was cold. He had, he now realised,
kept
so long, like a dangerous treasure, his notion of ‘having it out' with Lucas: this was to take the form of some kind of dignified apology, accepted with equal dignity, ushering in an era of some sort of decorous friendliness. Harvey had not dared to write to Lucas, partly for fear of using an inappropriate expression, more because receiving no reply would reduce him to hopeless misery. It had also seemed impossible to arrive unannounced; but given the whole situation, ‘unannounced' now appeared as the only possible way. He had for so long wanted so much to heal that wound, which he had never revealed to anyone, the painful memory of that, after all so childish, and so trivial, episode. Did Lucas eternally hold against him that piece of silly clownish rudeness – or was it possible that he had completely forgotten it and would laugh to hear of Harvey's long anxiety? He did not believe that Lucas had forgotten. Now, in any case, it was the time to find out. He had kept in his heart, pure and undamaged, his gratitude to Lucas for, together with Clement, financing his education. How happy he would be if he could at last with an open heart, lay all these things at Lucas's feet.

There was a light downstairs, perhaps in the hall, Harvey could not clearly remember the interior of the house. He stood opposite to it. Other dark thoughts came to him but he banished them. He concentrated, imagining his entry into the house, his standing in the drawing-room among the books, standing before Lucas who would be sitting at his desk, smiling a mild sardonic smile. Oh let it be, he said to himself, holding his hand to his beating heart. He sighed deeply. Last leaves were falling from the plane trees and one of these, as a signal, lightly touched his cheek. Then, as he moved, his foot leaving the kerb, something happened. A person, a
woman
, had
appeared
in front of Lucas's door, and then instantly
disappeared
. It had taken place so quickly that Harvey could even wonder whether he had actually seen anything. Perhaps another leaf had simply floated past his eyes. The door must have opened and closed in a second, so that she seemed to have dissolved into the door. After a minute or two he crossed the road. He stood outside the house on the pavement trembling, then leaning his brow against the wet cold railings and moving it to and fro. He thought, I mustn't go mad, I must be sure, I must
know. She
cannot be in there, it must be an illusion, why should it be
her
, my mother, when it might be anyone or no one. Oh why have I let those awful thoughts come back, why did I go to Tessa's house and find that miserable woman, it was like a curse – is she still crying there, afraid to go home to some violent cruel man? Now, yes, yes, I must search London, I must find out where she is, she
mustn't
be here, she
must
be somewhere else, I must go everywhere, to Clifton, to Cora, to the flat, oh God if only I could fly like Ariel – oh how glad I shall be when I find her not here, how happy I shall be then! He was holding the railings and trying to shake them, he seemed to be tied to them, his hands glued to them, should he not be racing away? But the door – the door
couldn't
have opened and shut so fast, so it must have been an illusion. Oh let it be an illusion. Then it came to him, of course the woman had not entered by the door, she had passed along the front of the house beneath the front windows and turned at the side to the gate into the garden. Instantly, picking up his stick which had fallen to the ground, he mounted the steps toward the front door, then stepped down into the paved space behind the railings. He paused, putting his hand against the wall of the house, he leaned his shoulder against the wet wall, listening to his rapid breath, and opening his mouth in silent grief – then levering himself away he walked with long strides along the frontage and round the corner toward the gate. He tried the gate, it was open. He passed on and emerged into the garden and came out on the lawn.

He walked backwards a little, looking at the house. He murmured
‘maman'.
If only he could
know.
But what was he doing, standing in this garden, underneath this tree? It was fate indeed, it was all part of the curse, part of his being lame, it was to do with Tessa, he ought not to have gone to Tessa, she had despatched him to hell, through that little door to that doomed woman, and now
here,
to witness this phantom, this
effigy,
of his mother. He felt faint, it was as if a great terror were coming towards him through the darkness. Dropping his stick, he reached out to the trunk of the tree, opening his hand against it, if only he could remember what kind of tree it was. Was it a sycamore? Above him the wind was moving among the branches with a clattering sound. There was something so very odd, so eerie, so awfully
secretive,
about the way that woman, if she existed at all, had vanished. Brushing his wet eyelids with his other hand, he stared at the house. No light, yes, there was a light, curtained, very dim, in an upstairs window, from the room which opened onto the balcony and the steps down to the garden. He walked now, taking long strides over the grass, and gripped the cold wet iron of the staircase. Open-mouthed and panting he hauled himself up, then stood holding his hand over his heart, containing it. A very narrow shaft of light from within, betokening a slit in the curtains, was laid out near to his feet. He moved, thrusting his head forward, trying to thrust his eyes forward. He could see into the room. A chest of drawers, a stretch of bare wall, then a bed. Lucas was sitting on the bed, his head turned sideways. A patch of colour, a piece of material, was draped upon the bed, next to him, touching his knee. It was, it
must
be, part of a woman's skirt. As Harvey leant over a little more, Lucas suddenly turned his head.

Harvey fled, levering himself down the iron stairs in great leaps, then stumbling round the corner of the house. He fumbled with the gate, slithered out along the railings, climbed onto the front door steps, then leapt down them into the street where he continued to
run.
When he had reached the corner of the road he became aware of an acute pain in his foot. He also remembered, as he reached out seeking for it, that he had left his stick behind in Lucas's garden.

 

 

 

 

‘Come,' said Lucas, ‘there are disagreements which divide even the gods.'

‘They are always disagreeing,' said Peter, ‘divine guidance is a matter of compromise. Have we not already come a long way?'

They had indeed, it seemed, come a long way. Bellamy observed the scene, which he had himself in large part engineered, with amazement. They were in Lucas's drawing-room. The room, full of dark shades, the dark Persian carpet, the dark reds and blues of the books from which Lucas always tore the paper covers, the dark brown walls, the big mahogany desk, the leather sofa, was now faintly illumined by the weak morning sunshine, which lighted up the English china dogs, the Italian casket, and the portrait of the Italian grandmother clutching her beads. Lucas was seated at his desk, with Clement sitting a little behind him on one side. Opposite to them sat Peter and Bellamy, Peter on the brown velvet chair with the coat of arms cushion, and Bellamy upon one of the leather-cushioned ladder-backs which he had brought forward from the wall. This set him at a slightly higher level than Peter who was visibly lounging, his long legs stretched out, in the softer chair. Bellamy shifted his own chair a little farther back. He thought, it's like a law court, no, not quite, with Peter sitting like that. Anyway, who could be supposed to be trying whom? It's just what Clement said, it's a
duel
, and, yes, Clement is Lucas's second and I am Peter's second! When Peter and Bellamy had arrived punctually at nine-thirty on the doorstep, Clement had opened the door, turning away at once and going back to sit with Lucas with whom he had no doubt been conferring. Bellamy had hoped to have a word with Clement, at least an exchange of glances, but Clement had quickly, even pointedly, turned his back. Now, sitting behind Lucas like a secretary, his face was cold, and he did not look directly at the visitors.