The Green Knight (71 page)

Clement mounted the steps. He approached her and picked up her coat. ‘Yes, but I hope it can be rescued. There was talk of pulling it down. It's terrible when a theatre dies.'

‘The boards creak.'

‘Yes, and that will never do! And there's dry rot in the boxes.'

‘Are there boxes? Oh yes, I see them now, they're tiny.'

‘Got to have boxes, it's a matter of prestige! But Louise, why – ?'

‘Where will you get the money from?'

‘We'll stir up the usual sources and mount an appeal – maybe we'll find a millionaire – you see, it's so pretty – '

‘Will it be
your
theatre?'

‘Well, if it survives, sort of, I hope – '

‘Look, do you mind if we go out into the daylight? It's so awfully damp and cold in here.'

‘I'm so sorry, come this way, follow me.' He led her off the stage, not through the auditorium, through various mysterious spaces, collecting his overcoat and turning out lights behind him, down some stairs, and then, suddenly pressing a bar, out by a side exit into the brilliant daylight of a street where there was even a hint of sun. They walked along the side street to the front of the theatre where Clement locked the front doors.

‘Could I have my coat?'

‘Oh, I'm so sorry.'

Louise put her coat on. She said, ‘Well, I must be getting back home. Would that bus take me?'

‘No, it goes to Clapham Junction. Any Aleph news?'

‘No – '

‘I assumed you'd let me know.'

‘Yes.' Louise noticed they were standing beside the railings where the iron spears had been decapitated, and she reached out again and touched the bitterly cold iron. ‘Well, thank you for showing me your theatre. Now I really must go.'

‘Why go, why not stay with me and have lunch? There's a little Italian restaurant which I've discovered, quite close. I'll have to go back to the theatre this afternoon, but – '

‘No, thanks. I'd better get back, I don't eat lunch now anyway, and Moy is holding the fort. I'll just get a taxi – '

‘There aren't any round here.'

‘Well, where's the nearest tube station?'

‘Look here, I'll drive you home, if you don't mind walking to my car?'

‘Oh no, certainly not, I mustn't waste your time, I'm sure you – '

‘Louise, do as I say, it's not far to the car, and I can get you back quite quickly, come on.'

They walked to the car in silence.

‘I wonder when you'll hear from Aleph?'

‘How do I know? I expect a letter soon, telling us about their arrangements, where they'll be. I don't know whether Lucas had any particular university post in mind. Did he tell you?'

‘Tell
me
? No! How's poor Moy?'

‘She's very quiet. I sometimes wonder if she's going mad.'

‘Oh dear.'

They were silent. The car crossed the river and began to run along beside the Thames. Clement suddenly turned to the right, drove a little way, then stopped under huge leafless plane trees in a little square.

‘What is this, where are we?'

‘Where indeed, Louise? I don't know.'

‘Oh – really – !'

‘Please don't.'

‘Don't what?'

‘Be so cold and –
bloody tiresome
.'

‘I'm sorry, but – '

‘Can't we
talk
to each other any more, have we
lost
each other?'

‘I hope we haven't lost each other, Clement.'

‘Such awful things have happened – Lucas and Aleph, and Peter – maybe we have to be in mourning for a while – but – '

‘But?'

‘You came to the theatre.'

‘Yes, perhaps I shouldn't have. It means nothing.'

‘I think it means everything. It means you need me, it means you love me. Isn't that true? All right, cry, do cry – perhaps I shall cry myself – '

 

 

 

 

‘So you've got used to it at last.'

‘What an odd way of putting it.'

‘Well, it is startling, I am startled.'

‘Because it is so sudden.'

‘Because of what it is.'

‘Yes, it is like nothing on earth.'

‘We are like nothing on earth.'

‘We are made divine. Let us be worthy.'

‘We shall be.'

‘To say we are sure may seem rash.'

‘And naive.'

‘But we
are
sure.'

‘We are lucky. You feel it had to be?'

‘Yes.'

‘All those years it was making itself, like a creature in a chrysalis, buried in the moist earth.'

‘Yet there is accident – like you falling on the bridge.'

‘I would have been in Florence now.'

‘The gods tripped you up and you had to be here. But we could not be as we are without that long knowledge of each other, we are not people who have just met.'

‘Yet we are people who have just met.'

‘You were so close to Aleph – so many evenings, we, Louie and Moy and me, heard your soft inaudible conversations and your laughter – '

‘All that was simply a weaving of our impossibility.'

‘You loved each other.'

‘Only in a childish way.'

‘You were ceasing to be children.'

‘Sefton, don't torment me with this. I love you, I love only you, I worship you, I am you. This is the truth and we are in it.'

‘Yes, yes – we must be always in the truth. Oh my angel, I feel transfigured, I feel dazed with light.'

‘Come closer, let me hold you again, your heart against my heart – '

‘Oh my sweet boy – oh my love – '

 

Later, dressed, they sat on Harvey's bed, enlaced, feet and legs tangled, facing each other, hands round each other's necks, like Indian gods, Sefton said.

‘We must tell them soon.'

‘How will they take it? They may not like it!'

‘They will be very surprised and then very pleased. My mother has always loved you, she wanted to keep you with us, she once said to me that she wished you were her son.'

‘I felt she was putting me at a distance.'

‘She was afraid of showing too much affection and seeming to appropriate you. She was sensitive about your mother's rights. And she may have thought too much affection might put you off! She'll be so glad.'

‘I hope so. And Moy?'

‘She'll be delighted too. Of course she's fixated on Clement, but she's always liked you.'

‘If we're going to tell Clement and Louie, we must somehow tell my mother at the same time, she mustn't hear it from them.'

‘I wonder how
she
will take it?'

‘Amazement, horror, relief, delight.'

‘She wants you to marry a rich woman. She also wants you to marry someone she can dominate. I am neither of these. She is still with Cora, isn't she?'

‘Sefton, you must love her, you must, she will long to love you, and she will love you – she has that sort of brittle mask, but it's just acting – she is so gentle and so vulnerable and so kind, and she has had such a rough time, she longs for love, she longs for security – '

‘How can we give her security, we are penniless students?'

‘I mean the security of loving kindness. Sefton, don't be afraid. You have more fears than I have. I fear your fears.'

‘Then I shall send them all away! We have so much love, let it overflow, you are right.'

‘She may even learn to be happy at last.'

‘I hope that we may all make Louie happy too one day. I fear – that word again – that she may mourn for Aleph all her life.'

‘Perhaps Aleph will come back, or – '

‘No, never. And Aleph will never speak to us truthfully again, and we will never speak truthfully to her. Now you stay here please, I shall go home.'

 

Walking back to Clifton in the cold still afternoon among wandering snowflakes, Sefton thought, how was the path so suddenly cleared for us, so that we could speed along it? Did we somehow unconsciously know that Aleph was leaving, did we feel her going, her absence, and how everything would now be different? He has taken me instead of Aleph. Aleph he could not take, something which perhaps I shall never know stood between them and made it impossible. It may be that they had so thoroughly, working it out over the years in those long long conversations, made themselves brother and sister. Perhaps he thought I was Aleph, and for an instant,
that
instant, I was Aleph, the possible Aleph, as if her head and shoulders were laid upon me like one of Moy's masks. I was the Aleph yet not Aleph that could be desired. But my Aleph mask will fade and become transparent and dissolve away. Is this a myth, is it all a myth? It is just a dream of mine, a fear-dream, and that will dissolve and fade away. I am in love, truly in love, and I am happy, blazingly happy, with a happiness I never knew existed, which gives me back the world and all the things in it brilliantly coloured and divinely blessed. ‘Travel light, simplify your life.' I have set aside
his
advice, and
he
has set aside his own advice, and both our lives are to be very different from now on. I am no longer the cat that walks by herself on by her wild lone. Well, I shall simplify my life by love and work and truth. But what has really happened to
them
I shall never know.

‘Well,' said Louise to Clement. They were sitting side by side on the sofa in the Aviary. Clement had just read Aleph's letter, then Louise's reply. It was the day after Louise's adventure in the theatre. They both felt by now that all that had been decided yesterday had been decided long ago, perhaps many years ago.

Clement said, ‘I don't know what to say – '

‘I don't, didn't know what to say – and I don't know what to think either.'

‘One cannot say what one feels.'

‘No. What does one feel?'

‘We have lost them both.'

‘There is a great emptiness. It comes home now doesn't it, I can't quite believe it, I have to go through it every morning when I wake up, remembering it, and then trying to
think
it.'