The Green Knight (45 page)

Lucas paused here. He had been looking as he talked, not quite at Sefton, but beyond her, to the dim far end of the room. He now looked at her for a moment – then stood up, walked round his desk, and sat down in his usual chair. Sefton, at a point about half way through Lucas's speech, had begun to weep. Her tears, which she did not attempt to wipe away, flowed quietly down to her chin and dripped onto her corduroy jacket. She had sat motionless, gazing at Lucas, and as if not breathing. Now she drew a deep breath and moved, bowing her head and closing her eyes.

Lucas shuffled some papers on his desk and said, ‘Please go now.'

Sefton, who had now found a handkerchief, rose and stood facing him. She did not move towards him. Then she stooped to pick up her coat.

Lucas then said, in a soft gentle voice, ‘I shall soon be going away for some time. Goodbye, dear Sefton.'

She could not see his face. She made a gesture, touching her breast with a closed hand, then opening the hand and stretching it towards him. She turned, carrying her coat, and went to the door and out into the hall. As she was opening the door she heard a step behind her.

Lucas, now in a bright humorous tone, said, ‘Wait a minute, could you take this to Harvey? He left it behind.'

He put into her hand Harvey's stick with the ivory bird's head. Sefton took the stick. She was outside the door and the door had closed.

 

Once outside the house Sefton soon ceased her weeping, but not in order to hide her tears. She recalled how, when reduced to tears by Lucas in a tutorial, he had reminded her of how Odysseus in the house of Alcinous had becomingly hidden his tears. Sefton concluded afterwards that the reminder was not really designed to induce her not to cry, or if she must cry to conceal it, but was just a half-jest aimed to restore her to her ordinary cheerful docile state of mind. In fact Lucas had, especially after he had roughly chided her, made many jesting reproaches of this sort, the memory of which she cherished. But now her tears dried because so many terrible emotions and speculations demanded her attention. She gasped, however, tearlessly, and catching her breath sobbed and groaned. (Also like Odysseus on that occasion, she thought as she walked along.) The predominant emotion was fear. She had so many times, when Lucas had disappeared after the court case, listened to the conjecture that he had killed himself. Moreover, and of course, she loved him; but in Sefton's stern code her love had always been chained up, and howled fruitlessly, as indeed it did now. Among her sombre and terrible thoughts a contemptible pang of jealousy kept distracting her. So Harvey had left his stick behind. So Harvey too was admitted to Lucas's counsels, and probably far more intimately. She walked all the way back to Clifton.

As she approached the house she saw a taxi waiting outside. The door of the house opened and Harvey emerged. Sefton hurried forward waving the stick. She came up to him and handed it to him, saying, ‘You left this behind. Lucas told me to give it to you.' Harvey took the stick. He said nothing, but shocked Sefton by a look of extreme distress, almost, she thought afterwards, of hatred. He got into the taxi which drove off. Thinking about it afterwards Sefton reproached herself, remembering what Lucas had said about jealousy. And she thought, I am jealous because Harvey sees Lucas – and Harvey is jealous because I do!

 

 

 

 

‘We are too early, are we not?' said Lucas.

‘Yes. We'd better wait in the car.'

Clement had parked the car down a side road.

‘Yes, indeed. I believe it has stopped raining now. I have brought my umbrella.'

‘Are you all right, I mean how are you?'

‘What a quaint question. I am looking forward intensely to the performance. It is charmingly unpredictable.'

‘You're not intending to – you will keep quiet, won't you – I mean you don't have to do anything.'

‘I have nothing in mind to do. Would you like to search me to find out if I am armed?'

‘No. We want to get this business over quickly.'

‘How long do you think it will take?'

‘I hope about four minutes.'

‘Oh, I hope longer than that. You haven't forgotten the bat?'

‘It's in the inside pocket of my overcoat. But what's it for? Is it for me to defend you with?'

‘You must make it visible. It may jog Dr Mir's memory. After all, the purpose of this gathering is to make him remember something or other. It has no other purpose so far as I know.'

‘I hope it has no other purpose.'

‘You think he may be violent?'

‘I don't know. Do you?'

‘I think there may be some manifestation. I hope there may be one, not too unpleasant of course.'

‘According to Bellamy, Peter thinks of it as a mystery play. I certainly think of it as theatre.'

‘Well, I have all along taken the view that he is mentally disordered, either deranged by the blow I struck him, or else perhaps generally given to epilepsy or to some similar aberration. He is a very excitable man, an oriental type.'

‘Bellamy continues to think that there may be some sort of miracle, a reconciliation scene or an angelic intervention. If he, I mean Mir, wants to play it that way, for heaven's sake will you – '

‘Co-operate? Of course I will. But if he requires me to – '

‘We'd better go now. We are supposed to be there first.'

 

Bellamy was sitting in the front seat of the Rolls. Peter had picked him up as arranged at The Castle, where Bellamy had been lurking outside at the mouth of the cul-de-sac. He had climbed in in silence. The silence continued as the car proceeded slowly through the traffic. Bellamy could hear Peter's irregular breathing, deep sighs and indrawn breaths, almost sobs. He turned his head very slightly, glimpsing in the almost dark of the car his companion's profile, his thick lips parted, his gleaming eye seeming to protrude from its socket. Bellamy thought, my God he looks bullish! Is he going to have a fit or something? I wish he would say something. Oh what a mad business, no good can come of it, only chaos, and not just chaos but evil. How did we gradually get entangled in such a terribly dangerous shambles!

At last, in quite an ordinary tone, Peter said, ‘It has been raining, I'm afraid it will be awfully muddy. I have brought my umbrella. I hope you have brought yours?'

‘Yes,' said Bellamy. He thought, perhaps they will fight with their umbrellas. At that moment he remembered that he had forgotten to bring the torch. ‘Is there a torch in the car?'

‘No.'

Oh God, thought Bellamy, without the torch I can't read the map!

They had arrived. It was soon clear that Peter knew the way. Perhaps, indeed probably, it was not the first time that he had returned to the place. He turned down a side street and they got out. Bellamy saw that they were parked just behind Clement's car, its number plate illumined by the headlights, and was about to remark on this but decided otherwise. If the fates were arranging things, it was better to leave it entirely to them. He got out quickly. Peter got out slowly, leaning against the side of the car. Then he fumbled out his keys and locked the car. He was holding up his green umbrella as if in a ritual. Then Bellamy remembered he had left his own umbrella in the car. That too was fate. Peter took hold of Bellamy's arm, leaning upon it, and leading him purposefully along the road. Bellamy was trying to remember the map, searching for it with his free hand, but it was in his other pocket where his body was pressed firmly against Peter's. He thought, it doesn't matter, he knows the way. They turned into another, ill-lit, street and leaving the pavement and walking on what seemed to be gravel, passed a pile of bricks and what looked like a cement-mixer, and were then walking upon a gravelled path, then in total darkness upon damp grass. Bellamy thought, thank God he knows the way – I hope he
does
know the way. Then a sudden light flashed ahead, for a second illuminating the low sweeping branches and trunk of an immense tree. They moved on, blundering through longer grass, in the direction of the light. A moment later Clement was gripping Bellamy's arm, pulling him onwards through an even darker darkness. The great trees surrounded them, then, apprehensible by a change of air, they were in some sort of small clearing, where Bellamy, looking upward, imagined he could see the sky. He continued to clutch Peter, whose body felt burning hot against his arm. He now saw the other figure, Lucas, standing a few feet away. There was a terrible silence.

Clement had at first been amazed by Lucas's willingness to set up the weird scene which was supposed to achieve something, reconciliation or remembrance. On reflection however he saw that it was ‘just like Lucas' to accept a challenge and join in what might prove a dangerous game. There was also, as he reflected further, so many profound aspects of the relation between these two. Inevitably they were fascinated by each other. And what about him, Clement? It fell to him to
arrange
it all, and this involved, as he had only lately perceived, the return to a place where he himself had very nearly died. It was as if all his inward being, his hopes and fears, his loves and hates, his experience, his
consciousness
, had been so jumbled and shaken up and tossed around that everything had become hopelessly unconnected and out of order. During the time when Lucas was ‘lost' he had worried so intensely about Lucas that he had not meditated at all about what had happened, and what might have happened. And when Lucas returned he had been too busy studying Lucas and exploring and adjusting his own relationship with him. Now, forced to arrange the encounter which had come to seem so inevitable, he had had to return alone, to stand by daylight beneath the great trees, and in a sudden violent vision of the past see, as upon a screen, the slow motion movements of the three actors. The merest flicker of change, amid the unnumbered millions of possible changes, could have prevented that particular conjunction. Clement had felt faint and sat, almost falling, upon the ground. The trees too had seen what had happened. They were old and had seen much. It was after that, when he had returned home and was working out the details, the ‘logistics', of the ‘second event', that he saw clearly the enormity of it all, and that when the time came, on that perilous night,
he himself
must be in charge. They wanted theatre and they would get theatre. It was
his
mystery play and
he
would direct it.

He had prepared his speech. Now, speaking in a soft clear singsong voice, he began. ‘Listen, my friends, we are gathered together in this place where an event of great significance to all of us, I include Bellamy, occurred at about this time on that evening some months ago. What exactly happened on that occasion is a question which has been much disputed, but the purpose of this meeting is not to continue this dispute. The three persons involved in that event, which I call “the first event”, have all suffered very much indeed in the sequel of what then, by the work of chance, occurred. We may in this sense, and from this point of view, count ourselves as companions in a disaster. I believe that no one here wishes to make of this meeting any useless exacerbation of our mutual differences and our common pain. The idea of a re-enactment or “second event” was I believe first suggested by Dr Mir to my friend Bellamy, who then passed it to me and I mentioned it to my brother. The matter then rose again during a discussion involving all four of us, which began with some suggested reconciliation but did not unfortunately end in an agreement. However, I feel sure that we have all reflected upon what was said at that time, and that this reflection has engendered second thoughts, tending towards peace rather than war. We have all been wounded, and reason as well as forbearance urges us to seek recovery. We need and want to return to our ordinary lives. One purpose of this meeting must be to employ the heightened emotion, which we must all be feeling, to carry us, like a wave, over the barriers which divide us toward at least
détente
and appeasement. I think the word “metamorphosis” was used. Let us believe that change is possible. This meeting must, at least at this stage, bear something of the semblance of a confrontation, and Bellamy and I have observed, not simply in jest, that we have been unwittingly cast as supporters or “seconds”, Bellamy to Dr Mir, I to my brother. It is customary on such an occasion for the seconds to suggest to the principals that this is a time to recognise the futility of their ill will and to declare mutually for peace. I now make this suggestion and propose a pause for its consideration. During this pause let us concentrate and consider whether we are not here confronted with a great possibility of choosing good instead of evil.'

Silence followed. Bellamy, hypnotised by Clement's words and his magisterial tone, wondered if he were having a dream. Was Clement reading from a paper? No, after all he was an actor, yet really he must be speaking impromptu and from his heart. How splendidly he has taken charge, yes it is like the theatre, I would not have believed it possible! Listening to Clement, who was standing opposite to him, he had moved a little way from Peter, but could still feel the heat of his adjacent body. Bellamy's eyes were now accustomed to the darkness and he was aware of Lucas, wearing a long black mackintosh, standing beside him. He turned again to Peter, Peter had left his overcoat in the car. How tall and straight he stood, as if at attention, and, as Bellamy could now see, was wearing a black suit, and a black tie. His shoulders were high and square, his head thrown back. Bellamy thought, he looks like a dictator. Bellamy threw his head back too, looking upward to the sky through the opening in the trees. The clouds had parted to reveal a single bright star.