The Book and the Brotherhood (6 page)

‘No, but I met Conrad. He’d lost her and was still looking!’

‘I hope you gave him a wigging.’

‘It wasn’t necessary, he was in a terrible state, poor boy.’

‘We must – what’s the matter, Jenkin?’

‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’

Jenkin took hold of Gerard’s hand and began to pull him along a cross the trampled grass through the scattered strolling of bemused dancers, some still enchanted, some happy beyond their wildest dreams, some concealing grief, some simply drunk, the fading magic of the new light showing their faces more intensely. Near the end of the arcade a youth was being sick, his partner standing guard with her back to him.

Jenkin led Gerard to the ‘sentimental’ tent where he had danced with Rose, and where a wilder strain of music could now be heard. An eightsome reel was in progress; but the floor had emptied, and an audience, standing in a dense ring, was
watching eight evidently expert dancers, the men wearing kilts, who were performing in the centre. One of these was Crimond. It was evident who, in the rotatory movement of the dance, his partner was. Jean Cambus had hitched much of her long red dress up over a belt round her waist, revealing her black-stockinged legs, and her flying skirt came little below her knees. Her narrow hawklike face, usually as pale as ivory, was flushed and dewy with sweat and her dark straight heavy shoulder-length hair, whirling about, had plastered some of its strands across her brow. Her fine Jewish head, usually so stately and so cold, had now, her dark eyes huge and staring, a fierce wild oriental look. She did not, in the weaving of the dance, turn her head, her small feet in low-heeled slippers seemed to dart upon the air, only when her gaze met her partner’s did her glaring eyes flame up, unsmiling. Her lips were parted, indeed her mouth was slightly open, not breathless but as if with a kind of rapacity. Crimond was not sweating. His face was, as usual in repose, pallid, expressionless, even stern, but his slightly freckled skin, which normally looked sallow so that he could have been called pasty-faced, was now gleaming and hard. His hair, narrowly wavy and longish, once a flaming red now a faded orange, adhered closely to his head, no flying locks. His light blue eyes did not follow his partner, nor did they, when he faced her, change their cold even grim expression. His thin lips, drawn inward, made of his mouth a straight hard line. With his conspicuously long thin nose he reminded Gerard, watching, of one of the tall Greek
kouroi
in the Acropolis museum, only without the mysterious smile. Crimond danced well, not with abandonment, but with a magisterial precision, his torso stiff, his shoulders held well back, as taut as a bow and yet as resilient and weightless as a leaping dog. His picturesque garb had also remained orderly, the elaborate white shirt, the close-fitting black velvet jacket with silver buttons, the sporran swinging at the knee, the silver-handled dirk in place in the sock, the neat buckled shoes. His male companions, all excellent dancers, were dandyish too, but only Crimond had not unbuttoned his shirt. The heavy kilts, their closely pleated backs rippling and
swirling, emphasised their owners’ indifference to the force of gravity.

Jenkin watched Gerard for a few moments to see that his friend was suitably affected, then turned to watch himself. He murmured, ‘I’m glad I saw this. He’s like Shiva.’

Gerard said, ‘Don’t –’ The new image, intruding upon his own, was not inappropriate.

The music suddenly ended. The dancers became immobile, hands aloft; then gravely bowed to each other. The audience, released from enchantment, laughed, clapped, stamped their feet. The orchestra immediately began again, with the sugary strain of ‘Always’, and the floor was at once crowded with couples. Crimond and Jean, who had been standing with hanging arms staring at each other, took each a step forward, then glided away together, lost to sight among the dancers.

‘What tartan was that?’ said Jenkin to Gerard as they moved away.

‘Macpherson.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He told me once, it was the one he was entitled to.’

‘I thought it might be any old one.’

‘He’s meticulous. Where’s Duncan?’

‘I don’t know. As soon as I saw
that
I ran to wait for you. I didn’t want you to miss it.’

‘Kind of you to drag yourself away,’ said Gerard with a slight edge.

Jenkin ignored the edge. ‘Shall we separate and look for Duncan? I can’t see him here.’

‘It looks as if –’

‘As if things have gone too far already.’

‘I don’t think Duncan would be pleased to see us.’

‘You don’t think we should sort of shadow him. Keep an eye on him?’

‘No.’

Gulliver was suddenly accosted by a woman.

He had, after eating almost all the cucumber sandwiches,
begun to feel miraculously better, not really drunk at all, and with that came a frenzied desire to dance. He had wandered about, not looking for Tamar (he had forgotten about her) but for some girl whose man had perhaps felicitously passed out and lay somewhere under a bush in drunken slumber. However the girls, though looking themselves rather the worse for wear, or even positively sozzled, seemed still to have their man in tow. It was impossible now to deny that the dawn was breaking, that the light which had never really gone away all night, was declaring itself to be day. Some terrible birds had begun to sing and from the woods beyond the meadows came the intermittent chant of the cuckoo. Hastily seeking some continuation of night time, Gull had been drawn to the pop tent where, in spite of the lightening canvas, darkness still seemed to reign amid the dazzling flashes and the noise. The pop group had gone and their music, continuing, was now machine-made. Here the capering was at its wildest, resembling acrobatics rather than dance, a kind of desperation overcoming the young people as they scented the morning air. The men had abandoned coats, occasionally shirts too, the girls had hitched up dresses and undone fasteners. The effect, after earlier formality, was oddly like fancy dress. Staring at each other, wild-eyed and open-mouthed, the couples leapt, squatted, rotated, grimaced, waved their arms, waved their legs, expressive, thought Gulliver, of a scene out of Dante’s
Inferno
rather than of the vernal joy of careless youth.

‘Hi, Gull, dance with me! I’ve been dancing by myself for at least an hour!’ It was Lily Boyne.

Her frail arms were instantly about him, seizing him at the waist, and they whirled or rather whizzed out into the centre of the deafening maelstrom.

Of course Gulliver knew Lily through ‘the others’ but he had never felt any interest in her, except briefly on one occasion when he heard someone refer to her as a ‘cocotte’. She had seemed to him a pathetic figure whose importunate pretensions were merely embarrassing. Lily now looked like a rather small crazy pirate, perhaps a cabin boy on a pirate ship in a pantomime. Her orange trousers were rolled up revealing
thin bare legs, her white blouse was unbuttoned, sash, silver scarf, golden chains had all vanished, dumped with her evening bag Lily could not remember where. Her face, red with exertion and earlier potation, was covered in a multicoloured grease of smudged cosmetic, making her resemble a melting wax image. Her silver lips were grotesquely enlarged into a clownish mouth. But as they danced, not touching each other, now near, now far, jumping violently about, cannoning into other dancers of whom they were entirely unconscious, grinning, glaring, panting, bound together by their crazed eyes, Gulliver felt that he had discovered a perfect partner. Lily, as she swayed away, pirouetted, leapt, circled him about, waving her arms hieratically like an ecstatic priestess, appeared to be saying something, at least her mouth was opening as if in speech, but he could not, because of the din, hear a word. He nodded his head madly, uttering into the storm of marvellous noise a stream of senseless exclamations inaudible even to himself.

Tamar had not found Conrad but she had found Duncan. Duncan had lost track of Jean earlier on, lingering to drink while she set off into the fray. He was soon informed, by a helpful well-wisher, of Crimond’s presence. Perhaps the same man had already alerted Jean; or perhaps Jean had known all along, he conjectured later? After some searching he witnessed, unseen, the end of the eightsome reel also witnessed by Gerard and Jenkin, and saw Jean and Crimond disappear together before the next dance. After that he took himself off to one of the bars to get as drunk as possible, and to nurse, almost as a consolation, his pain and anger, and his fear that everything would turn out for the very worst. He did not, at this stage, want to find his wife; and when, later still, in the ‘old-fashioned’ tent, he saw Jean come in with Crimond and join the dancers, he sat hunched up in the comparative obscurity at the back, deriving an agonised satisfaction from being invisible while he feasted his eyes.

Tamar, still seeking Conrad, but now very tired and cold,
and additionally miserable because she could not find her cashmere shawl, entered the tent and at once saw Jean dancing with Crimond. Tamar knew that there had been some sort of ‘thing’ about Jean and Crimond a good many years ago, but she had never reflected on it, and regarded it as ancient history. What she saw now made her feel surprise, shock, and then a kind of fear and jealous pain. Jean had long been a very important person in Tamar’s life; she might even have been said to have a ‘crush’ on Jean, to whom she had, in adolescence, brought problems which she could not discuss with her mother, or even with Rose or Pat. She was fond of Duncan too, and was regularly invited to tea, later to drinks. After a moment or two Tamar, glancing round the marquee, saw Duncan sitting with his arm on the chair in front of him, leaning his chin on his arm, and intently watching the dancers. A number of people passed between them, a dance ended and another started, and Tamar, alarmed at what she was seeing, decided to withdraw. Duncan had seen her however and waved to her, beckoning her to join him. Tamar now felt she could not depart and threaded her way past sitting and standing people, overturned chairs, and tables loaded with empty bottles, reached Duncan and sat down beside him. As she sat down, glancing back at the dance floor, she saw Jean and Crimond leaving the tent on the other side.

Duncan was a huge man, said to be ‘bear-like’, or sometimes ‘leonine’, stout and tall with a large head and a mass of very dark thick crisply wavy hair which grew well down onto his neck. His big shoulders, habitually rather hunched, gave a look of retained, sometimes menacing, power. He seemed not only clever but formidable. He had a long wavering expressive mouth, dark eyes, and a strange gaze since one of his eyes was almost entirely black, as if the pupil had flowed out over the iris. He wore dark-rimmed glasses, had an ironical stare and a giggling laugh.

‘Hello, Tamar, having a lovely time?’

‘Yes, thank you. You haven’t seen Conrad have you, you know, Conrad Lomas? Oh – perhaps you haven’t met him.’

‘Yes, I met him at Gerard’s, he’s a friend of Leonard’s, isn’t he? No, I haven’t seen him. Is he your swain? Where’s he got to?’

‘I don’t know. It’s my fault. I left him for a moment.’ Feeling she might be going to cry, she closed her eyes hard against the tears.

‘I’m sorry, little Tamar,’ said Duncan. ‘Look, let’s go and get ourselves a drink, eh? It’ll do us both good.’ However he did not get up yet, just replanted his feet and leaned a little more upon the chair in front of him. He was suddenly not sure that he would be able to rise. He gazed at Tamar, thinking how pathetically thin she was, almost anorexic, and how with her hair done like that, cut in a straight bob and parted at the side, she looked like a girl of fourteen. The white ball dress did nothing for her; it looked like a sloppy petticoat. She looked better in her usual rig, a neat blouse and skirt.

Tamar looked anxiously at Duncan. She had taken in the scene and could now receive some vibrations of his suffering, which made her feel embarrassed rather than sympathetic. Also, it was clear that Duncan was very drunk, he was red-faced and breathing heavily. Tamar was afraid that at any moment he would fall flat on the ground and she would have to do something about it.

At that moment Duncan heaved himself to his feet. He stood for a moment swaying slightly, then put his hand onto Tamar’s thin bare arm to steady himself. ‘Let’s go and find that drink, shall we?’

They began to make their way toward one of the exits, passing as they did so near to the dance floor. The band was playing ‘Night and Day’.

Duncan said, ‘Night and day. Yes. Let’s dance. You’ll dance with me, won’t you?’

He swept her onto the dance floor and, suddenly surrendered to the music, found that his legs had lost their stupidity and like well-trained beasts were able to perform the familiar routine. He danced well. Tamar let herself be led, letting the sulky sad rhythm enter her body, she was dancing, it was her first dance that evening. Some tears did now come
into her eyes and she wiped them away on Duncan’s black coat.

In the jazz tent Rose was dancing with Jenkin. Jenkin had accompanied Gerard back to Levquist’s rooms off the cloister where it occurred to them that Duncan might have taken refuge. ‘He won’t want to see us,’ said Gerard. ‘If he’s there it proves he does,’ said Jenkin. But there was no one in the room. Gerard elected to stay there just in case, while Jenkin, still full of his idea of becoming Duncan’s invisible bodyguard, had set off again. Soon after that he met Rose and felt obliged to ask her to dance. They went to the jazz sound, which was nearest, and Jenkin was dutifully propelling her round the circuit, through the increasingly dense and unbuttoned crowd who, aware of the dawn, had reinvaded the floors. Dancing with Jenkin was a simple and predictable matter since he danced in the same way whatever the music. He had of course told her what he and Gerard had seen. He had even suggested that they should go and have a look in case the performance was being repeated. But Rose had evidently felt this to be bad form, and Jenkin, dashed, had recognised it to be such.

Rose, feeling perhaps that she had expressed too much emotion upon the subject earlier in the evening, was now trying to play it down. ‘I expect Crimond has sheered off and Jean and Duncan have been together for ages. There’s nothing to it. Only you’d better not say you saw her with
him!
’