The Green Knight (7 page)

Louise, watching the spellbound children watching Clement, felt such a strange painful joy, tears came into her eyes.

 

 

A little later, Louise had descended to the kitchen where Sefton had already done the washing up. Moy, with Anax, had taken her beloved Clement up to her attic to show him a picture. Sefton was lying flat on the floor in the Aviary and thinking. Harvey was sitting on Aleph's bed in her bedroom on the floor above. The room was small, accommodating a little desk, a chest of drawers, some shelves for books, a chair and a bed. Aleph's dresses hung with Sefton's in the large cupboard on the floor below. There was just enough space for Harvey's knees not to touch Aleph's as they sat facing each other.

‘Does it hurt?'

‘It itches.'

‘Rosemary's itched too.'

‘When are you going on tour with Rosemary?'

‘November. She used to scratch inside it with a knitting needle.'

‘Can you lend me one?'

‘No one here knits. Perhaps I'll buy you one.'

Harvey had got through the evening creditably. He had eaten and drunk plenty at supper, he had praised the artistic efforts on his cast, he had listened patiently to the account of Rosemary's recovery, he had laughed at everyone's jokes, watched Clement juggling and said ‘aaah!' at the right moment. But his heart was heavy and black and painful within him and he felt humiliated and defeated and miserable and afraid. He hated the hot heavy cast and was appalled when Moy suggested painting on it, he found the idea sickening. The cast he was now wearing was his third, the one put on after the first examination in England having been removed so that the damaged foot and ankle could be viewed by some grander specialist. This specialist had now gone on holiday and Harvey gained the impression that the present cast had been put on hurriedly just to keep his foot ‘in a stable condition' until someone could decide what on earth to do with it. What he deduced from the murmurs and glances of the doctors was that he was ‘an interesting case'. Broken bones were nothing. Trouble with tendons could go on forever. He had, moreover, gained the maddening information that if he had not walked on the damaged foot the situation would have been considerably better. He recalled how, out of sheer vanity and hurt pride, he had insisted on limping, instead of hopping, during the walk back to the car. The cast, even more uncomfortable than its predecessors, pinched his calf, there could be scarcely room for a knitting needle, his whole leg below the knee was burning hot, perhaps he was developing gangrene. His foot was persistently painful, he could not sleep, he felt exhausted and utterly alienated from himself. And all the time he lived with the taunting mirage of what might have happened, what should have happened if only at one little absolutely accidental moment he had not been such a damn fool. A ghostly caravanserai of images accompanied him of the happy free life in Florence which he had so long cherished in his imagination. His first real freedom. And all this bitterness had to be kept absolutely secret and the strain of doing so added to his misery, to have
all that
and to laugh too and pretend that there were things, that there was
anything
, which he could now enjoy! He had to keep up the externals of his well-known merry confident triumphant self while really he was not that self any more, but something tattered. His early realisation that he was seriously damaged had made him decide to
give up
Florence at once and not prolong a hope which repeated disappointments must in the end extinguish. It was this, and not ‘common sense' which had made him assent so surprisingly to the urgings of Clement and Louise, and of his mother who had promptly told him not for heaven's sake to go to Italy and run up endless medical bills when he could get better treatment for nothing in London. His upper lip trembled but there was no shoulder to lean on, no one could really understand how his life had changed and how he grieved over the wreckage of it which was so entirely his own fault. At his age, to be maimed, to be lame, never to play cricket and tennis again, never to dance again, with his perfect health some magical
authority
was gone forever. The two people who, in their imaginings, were nearest to him, Louise and Aleph, collaborated nobly with his miserable pride, stiffening him up, instead of, as he sometimes wished, encouraging him to break down! But of course they
saw
, and he resented this too, and felt ashamed before Aleph, unmanned, undone. Of course there were infinitely worse plights, he had good doctors and good friends, he might even get better, or if not, learn to ‘live with his disability'. But something even more profound appalled him, his terrible devouring self-pity, his
fear
, and that he, Harvey Blacket, so successful, so loved, could have such a fear. No, no one must guess how craven he was, how unprepared to face this first challenge to his adult being. He had often imagined how well he would behave in the army, how brave and unselfish he would be in a shipwreck, how he would endure poverty, deprivation, solitude, without whimpering. It was as if
this
affliction had come at him unfairly, under his guard, unaccompanied by the contextual dignities of the situations in which he had imagined himself so strong. But of course what was so dreadful about this was that he had so wantonly brought it upon himself.

Aleph was sitting opposite to Harvey upon a pale blue upholstered chair with padded arms. Behind her, leaning against her little desk, were his crutches. She was wearing a long dark brown tweed skirt and a close-fitting light brown jersey with little brown beads around its high collar. During the knitting needle conversation she had folded her hands, placing them, nestling within each other, between her breasts in the attitude which so irritated Harvey's mother. She was staring at Harvey, her brow pitted, her dark eyes narrowed, with a look of calculating compassion. There was no doubt that she saw a great deal. But in the cramped vulnerability of the house, always it seemed full of people, there were few opportunities for long intimate conversations; and in any case she was still treating his wounded condition with a respectful caution.

‘How's life at Emil's flat?'

‘Luxe
,
calme et volupté.'

‘You keep warm?'

‘Oh
yes!
And what a kitchen! I think I'll give a party.'

‘Are you all right? I know you're not all right, but are you all right?'

Harvey understood this shorthand. ‘Yes. No, yes.'

‘How's Joan.'

‘Fed up, brimming with energy.'

‘Does she mind staying on in your flat?'

‘No, she loves being inconvenienced and persecuted. I'm going to see her tomorrow. And maybe I'll visit Tessa, see if she's all right.'

An uneasy sensation always prompted Harvey to tell ‘the women' when he went to see Tessa Millen. Not that there was anything ‘between them'. It was just that Louise and Aleph and Moy somehow ‘disapproved' of Tessa. They had never ‘seen the point' of her. Whereas Sefton liked her. Harvey was afraid of being detected making secret visits to Tessa which might be misconstrued. The result was these awkward declarations.

Aleph waved her hand, signifying absolution or perhaps indifference.

‘You look tired, Aleph – are you all right?'

‘Yes, no.'

‘Been writing more poetry?'

‘Nyet'
.

‘I am just waiting. Now you must go.'

Much of their converse lay in such laconic exchanges, signifying perhaps an
impasse
in which, most of the time, they found themselves amazingly comfortable, even the lack of privacy suited them somehow. ‘It's like being always on the stage,' Aleph said once. But moments came when they had trampled the ground too much, nothing fresh was left, and they had to recover. They felt they knew each other too well. But also, and especially lately, they could announce that they had not yet discovered each other at all. ‘Yes, we are players, actors,' Aleph said. Yet too they could agree that there was nothing in the world more natural than their mutual mode of speech. Now, it was as if her lassitude and his craven gloom came together, mingling like two opposing waves. A blue and green silk scarf was trailing over the back of Aleph's chair and touching her shoulder like an honour. She moved, drawing it across her breast. Harvey leaned forward and took her unresisting hand.

Sounds from above suggested that Moy's colloquy with Clement was over and they were now chatting on the landing.

Harvey and Aleph rose. Harvey reached out for his crutches. He said, ‘She loves Clement.'

Aleph opened her bedroom door. ‘Yes, she loves him. You know Moy will grow up to be an extraordinary woman.'

Clement, coming down the stairs to collect Harvey called out, ‘Goodnight, Aleph.'

She called, ‘Goodnight, magician.'

Behind Moy's closed door Anax could be heard barking. Harvey insisted on descending to the front door without help, keeping his wounded foot carefully off the ground.