The Green Knight, Page 2

  Earlier that year, now several months ago, Lucas Graffe, Clement’s elder brother, had had a very unpleasant experience. Out walking at night he had resisted an attack by a mugger with such violence that his assailant had died from a blow on the head from Lucas’s umbrella. There was some general indignation (for the incident was briefly in the press) when Lucas was taken to court accused, not actually of manslaughter, but of ‘taking the law into his own hands’ and ‘using excessive violence’. For a few days Lucas was even something of a popular hero. The goodies who wanted to defend the poor mugger were routed when it emerged that he had been carrying an offensive weapon. Lucas, a quiet reclusive academic, a much respected historian, was of course extremely upset by having inadvertently killed a man, even though a bad man.

  ‘He must have been very very distressed,’ said Louise.

  ‘He must have been upset by the publicity.’

  ‘He must have been even more upset by killing a man.’

  ‘Nonsense, Lucas is a hero. If more people hit back there’d be fewer muggers. Lucas deserves a medal. You would side with the rotten thief!’

  ‘To end a man’s life – he may have had a wife and children.’

  ‘I know, we all treasure Lucas, but he is eccentric. It is just like him to startle us by doing something unexpected. He sits in his dark little house writing learned books, then he goes out and kills someone – that’s instinctive courage, and instinctive authority.’

  ‘It was a bit of a freak that the man died – Lucas wasn’t trying to damage him, he was just fending him off.’

  ‘I imagine Lucas was angry. It was hard luck on both of them. And now Lucas disappears for ages – ’

  ‘I can understand that, he wants to get over the shock, and he wants us to get over it too. He won’t want to chat about it.’

  ‘Oh, he won’t discuss it with anybody, we won’t be allowed to mention it, it will be made never to have happened. But where is he?’

  ‘I expect he’s working somewhere, he works all the time, he’s in some university city, in some university library.’

  ‘Yes – in Italy, Germany, America. Is he still teaching?’

  ‘Yes, he’s still teaching, but he’s got some sabbatical leave from his college.’

  ‘He’s certainly not very sociable, he’s led such a sheltered life, he’s a quiet and reticent person, he can’t have enjoyed having his name in the papers. You must all look after him when he returns. You take him too much for granted. He’s lonely.’

  ‘He likes it that way.’

  ‘Clement must be worried stiff about him. You don’t think he’s committed suicide?’

  ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘I don’t mean because of guilt, but because of loss of dignity, loss of face.’

  ‘No! Lucas has plenty of ordinary sense!’

  ‘Has he? Well – and how are the three little girls?’

  Louise’s children at nineteen, eighteen and fifteen, were not now so little.

  ‘Aleph and Sefton have done their exams – now they are anxiously waiting for the results!’

  ‘Surely they needn’t be anxious!’

  Teddy Anderson, having had a classical education, had given his daughters Greek names, Alethea, Sophia and Moira. The girls however, in quiet mutual communion, had decided not to be known by these names. Yet they did not entirely abandon the names either. When the youngest, so much desired by their parents to be a boy, turned out to be another girl, Teddy said ‘It’s fate!’ and christened her Moira, which was easily and promptly shortened to ‘Moy’. The other girls had more trouble finding their true names. Alethea, not tolerating ‘Thea’, decided at first for ‘Alpha’, but as this sounded presumptuous, opted finally for ‘Aleph’, the Hebrew name of the first letter of the alphabet, which retained the connection with the Ancient World, and a mysterious bond with her original name. Sophia, who abominated ‘Sophie’, worked even harder, but came up at last with ‘Sefton’. How she discovered ‘Sefton’ she never explained. Aleph (nineteen) and Sefton (eighteen) were bookish, destined for the university. Moy, who was not academic ‘but clever as a little mouse’ in other ways, was preparing for art school. The girls worked hard, loved their mother, loved one another, were quiet and happy and lived at peace. Sometimes they seemed almost too contented with their lot. To look at, Sefton and Moy were not unattractive. But Aleph was voted to be very beautiful.

  ‘Exams. How time flies! Cambridge, like Dad?’

  ‘They hope for Oxford, but they have other choices.’

  ‘It’ll do them good to get away from home. They are altogether too sedate, there is an atmosphere. And still no television! You deserve to have poltergeists with three demure teenage girls about the place, they’re just the kind to attract them. Those girls are like a drawn bow, they compose a field of force – that’s Clement’s imagery incidentally – it’s time for violence, it’s time for them to fly apart – ’

  ‘Clement said that?’

  ‘Do they still sing, and cry?’

  ‘Yes – ’

  ‘They are perfectly safe and lovingly looked after – now when I was their age – ’

  ‘You said you were having fun.’

  ‘Well, yes and no, strictly speaking I was in hell. Perhaps I have always been there. One can have fun in hell. But why the tears, are they in love? Moy is, isn’t she? She’s in love with Clement, always has been!’

  ‘She’s also in love with the “Polish Rider”.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘A picture by Rembrandt.’

  ‘Oh yes. I always found that picture a bit soppy. Isn’t he supposed to be a woman? And anyway now they say it isn’t by Rembrandt. But seriously, are they in love?’

  ‘No. They’ve always had that gift of tears. They cry over books, not just novels, Sefton cries over history books, Moy cries over things – ’

  ‘I remember, like stones. She thinks things have rights. And she was always rescuing insects.’

  ‘Insects of course, and they all cry over animals. But they laugh a lot too.’

  ‘The all-singing all-laughing all-crying show. You call it a gift. I sometimes wish that I could cry more easily. Men don’t cry. That’s one of the many proofs of their superiority over us. It’s all that caring. I suppose the girls are still vegetarians and saving whales and saving the planet and so on. Moy will die of her own sensibility, she identifies with everything. Save hedgehogs, save the black-footed ferret, abolish plastic bags. Of course Sefton is a swot, a brown-stocking. I see her as a sober bespectacled schoolteacher. Does Moy still eat that orange-flavoured milk chocolate? No wonder she’s such a dear little roly-poly, she’s the plump little woman who makes everything nice. I think she’ll be a cook, or perhaps she’ll live in the country and have a herb garden.’

  Louise did not like these descriptions of her children. ‘Moy draws very well, she will be an artist. Aleph will do English at the university, she wants to be a writer.’

  ‘Oh, Aleph! With her beauty she can have anything, she can marry anybody. When you let her out she’ll be surrounded. But she won’t be in a hurry. That girl has her wits about her. She won’t marry some penniless student. She’ll choose a powerful older man who is rich and loves life, a top scientist, a top industrialist, a tycoon with a yacht and houses everywhere, and they’ll have real fun. I just hope they invite us!’

  Louise laughed. ‘You used to say Aleph would have to pay for her beauty. I hope you’re right about her wits and not being in a hurry.’

  ‘So they still sing all those love songs, those sentimental thirties songs and Elizabethan ditties? Those are worthy of their tears. But I think I know – it’s the calm before the storm – they are crying over the horrors to come, prophetically mourning their lost youth, mourning for their virginity, their goodness in which they heartily believe, their innocence, their purity so soon to be desecrated – and yes, I think they are innocent lambs, not like Harvey who has always had filth in his mind as boys do
.’

  ‘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.