The Green Knight (59 page)

‘Where's Harvey?'

‘I don't know,' said Sefton, ‘he isn't in here, didn't he stay out in the hall?'

‘But where is he now? He can't have gone home by himself.'

‘Perhaps he's upstairs, he may have gone to lie down.'

‘No, I've looked everywhere, so has Patsie, we can't find him, he must have gone out into the snow!'

‘Keep calm, Louie,' said Sefton, ‘we'll find him!'

They emerged. Moy appeared, now on her way to offer her services in the kitchen. Sefton called, ‘Moy, have you seen Harvey?'

Moy came across to them. ‘Yes, he's asleep, I'll show him to you.'

They followed her down the long hall. The little door of the sedan-chair had been pulled to. Moy gently opened it, revealing Harvey as near to being curled into a ball as it is possible for a human to be. His eyes were closed, he was breathing quietly, his fair glossy curly hair had spread itself out upon the cushions like a halo, one hand, extended towards his chin, held a strand of hair, straightening it out. His face was benign and calm. ‘Well, thank heavens he's all right!' said Louise. ‘We won't wake him just yet. You children must be taken home. I'm going to stay with Mrs Callow, she is very upset and there's still a lot to do.'

In the dimly lit (for Clement had turned out most of the lamps) library, sitting upon the dark red leather sofa, Clement and Bellamy had been having a long serious conversation.

‘Bellamy, you keep calling him an angel and saying he has rescued your life, but you also say you are broken, finished, plunged in eternal darkness and so on – what would he say if he were here, wouldn't he chide you?'

‘But he is not here, and I shall never see him again.'

‘Of course you will, he's in a hospital in London, Jeremy has the address, I'll get it from him! You just seem to have folded up the future.'

‘It is folded up.'

‘Well, he did talk about the heavens being rolled up like a scroll, but that was for the end of the world!'

‘It is the end of the world. My world. I'm sorry to be so stupid and
awful.
You are being very kind to me. Why don't you go away, go back to your flat.'

‘And what will you do, stay here!'

‘No. I can't stay here. I shall never come here again. I just don't want to bother you, I don't want to bother anyone.'

‘My dear, going on like this you will succeed in bothering everyone! Look, come home and stay with me, and don't just stay tonight, stay as long as you like, and – '

‘He is an angel, I saw him on that night, you know, when he was changed – '

‘Yes – '

‘He is an avatar – '

‘Yes, yes – '

‘I wanted him to teach me, to enlighten me, I wanted to be with him forever, for all of my life, and now the powers of darkness have carried him off – '

‘My dear creature, you are
drunk
, that is what you are,
drunk
! Now please let me carry you off!'

‘Dear Clement, you are making jokes and trying to cheer me up. Yes, I am drunk, but I am also perfectly rational. I am in mourning for what I have
lost.
Peter told me this evening that he was going to use his money to set up a great good foundation and he said I was to be his secretary and live with him in this house.'

‘Oh really, did he say that? But in the future, why not? It may be quite soon – '

‘It's not just being his secretary and living here and helping him – I saw a path with a light shining on it, I saw everything I've been
looking for
– wanting to be in that monastery was a false way – then suddenly at last I found
my
way – wanting to have goodness is not enough, it's work, finding the way is part of the work, I felt I had
come home.'

‘Good, then you
are
home! All this despair is just false, it's a show, you refuse to admit you'll see him again and you're banking everything on that, but even if you didn't see him again, wouldn't you still be on the way?'

‘No – it was all too brief, I couldn't sustain it without him. Without him I shall sink back into being the useless whining self-deceiving empty person that I know I really am – all those letters I wrote to that monk, they were all daydreams and romance – '

‘Oh all right, let's try the other tack, there's every possible reason why you will see him again, he's not ill, he's just going to rest, he'll be back here in a few weeks, anyhow he can discharge himself whenever he likes, Jeremy can help him if necessary, he hasn't been abducted!'

‘I had a glimpse, then the door was closed again. Those men will destroy him. I have lost the one I love.'

The door opened and Louise looked in. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Clement, I wonder if you would mind driving the children home? I'm staying here a bit longer to help clear up.'

Clement rose. ‘Yes, of course, I'm just going to take Bellamy home with me, I'll take the children too, there's room for all of us in my car.'

Bellamy got up. ‘I can't stay with you, I must go back to my room, I must be alone there, I shall take a taxi. Where is the telephone?'

‘Oh
all right
, I'll drive you back to that hell-hole.'

They came out into the hall. The inhabitants of the dining-room were emerging too. Moy and Sefton were waking Harvey up. Sefton was shaking him gently, plucking at his shirt, even pulling his hair, while Moy repeated his name at intervals, a little louder each time. Harvey awoke. He showed no surprise but smiled sleepily at the girls. Unfolding himself he said, ‘Oh is it time to go? I've had such a happy dream!' Emil marched over to Bellamy, ‘Come along, Bellamy, you are coming home with me in my car.' Clement said, ‘He insists on going back to his own place and I'm driving him.' Bellamy murmured ‘Sorry,' as Clement, gripping his arm, propelled him along. Louise assembled the children, Cora said she was taking Joan. Jeremy Adwarden, after liberally tipping Mrs Callow and Patsie, collected Connie, who was carrying glasses into the kitchen, and also Kenneth who had no car having arrived by taxi. They all found their coats. Clement opened the front door.

The snow had ceased falling. The light above the door, and the distant street lamps shining through the trees, showed the sparkling cold pathway of the drive where the marks made by the van had already been sifted over, the sugary laden branches of conifers, the windless silence. No one, it now appeared, had been bold enough to park in the drive, which was now being patterned by reverential footprints. Clement left first with Bellamy and the children, then Cora with Joan, then Jeremy with Connie and Kenneth. Louise, who with Patsie was still dealing with the chaos of the dining table, said she would get a taxi home later on. Meanwhile, however, Emil had persuaded Mrs Callow that they should ‘Leave the rest until tomorrow.' Mrs Callow agreed, saying tearfully, ‘Well,
he
won't be there, will he!' No, they didn't want a lift, she had her car in the garage and they would lock up and turn on the burglar alarm. Louise left with Emil, walking in silence over the trampled snow and along the road to Emil's car. When, turning round, they drove past the house, it was already dark.

As the big Mercedes sizzled quietly through the empty well-lighted streets over the frosty snow Louise began to cry again. Emil, glancing at her, said after a while, ‘What is it, my dear? You are so sad about that man?'

‘Yes. It's partly shock. Forgive me.'

‘Oh Louise, Louise – weep on, it is to be envied in you women, I wish I could weep.'

‘Emil, I am so sorry about – '

‘Yes, yes. But now you. Is he then a good man?'

‘Yes, I think so. But it's all so complicated – '

‘And Lucas? Have they met, are they friends? What is it with that? And why did he say to Clement to look after his brother?'

Louise thought, of course Emil
doesn't know
about it. But what is it? Would it soon begin to seem like a dream – it had somehow the qualities of a dream, where incompatible things seem true. She said, ‘Emil, I don't know. You had better ask Bellamy.'

Before they reached Clifton Louise had mopped away her tears. Emil got out and held her arm to walk through the snow to the door. He hugged her and kissed her in silence. She entered the house and Emil's beautiful car hissed away alone. Yes, it was like a dream.

The lights were on, there was no sound in the house. But there was a sound. As she stood on the stairs she could hear the soft voices of Moy and Sefton talking in the Aviary. She thought, how good they are, how innocent they are – and her heart ached with fear for them. She reached her bedroom door, then called ‘Goodnight.' They came to the door of the Aviary and called up to her. She went to bed and to sleep.

Bellamy was standing in a garden upon a smooth grassy lawn. Behind him was a lake. Before him was a path between little box hedges, and beyond the box hedges on either side were big rose bushes covered with flowers. He thought, this is a wild garden, yet this part isn't wild, ‘it is the
rose
garden'. At the end of the path steps led up to a terrace, and at the top of the steps there was a statue. Screwing up his eyes, for there was a lot of light, Bellamy made out that it was a statue of an angel with towering wings. Beyond the steps, across the terrace, was the front door of the house. The door, which was closed, was surrounded by stone carvings. Bellamy thought, I would like to look at those carvings. He thought, it's a big house, very big yet not too big, it is just the right size. The house was long, with a low sloping roof, it was built of stone, the neat rectangular stones being of different sizes and different colours, some pale grey, some light brown, some faintly pink. Bellamy thought, it's like an eighteenth-century house. Then he thought, why do I say it is ‘like an eighteenth-century house' – surely it is an eighteenth-century house. And yet – it isn't. With this he felt a shock in his breast, like a blow, and he thought, how could I
forget
– He suddenly felt fear. Then, as if set in motion by an alien force, he began to walk slowly forward toward the steps. As he came nearer he became aware that what he had taken to be a statue of an angel was a real angel dressed in red and golden silk robes, and now he could even see the long glossy feathers of its wings. As he approached nearer still it moved, gliding off its pedestal onto the smooth paving stones of the terrace, and moving like a domestic bird, not fleeing but simply moving away along the terrace, along the face of the house, away from the door. Bellamy followed, not daring to come too close in case it took flight. When it neared the corner of the house Bellamy called after it, ‘Tell me, is there a God?' It called back at him, turning its head slightly, ‘Yes!', then in a swirl of coloured robes disappeared round the corner of the house. Bellamy followed, now hurrying, but when he turned the corner the angel had vanished. He walked slowly on, walking, he noticed, not upon smooth stone but upon stony gravel scattered with little green leafy plants. Then as he walked he heard a sound, the sound of someone walking behind him upon the gravel of the terrace. At once Bellamy knew who it was who walked behind. He thought –
it is He.
He did not look round. He fell forward upon his face in a dead faint.

Emerging from his dream Bellamy felt breathless, excited. He thought at once, but I didn't go into the house, as I ought to have done. He thought, I'll go another time. Then he thought, but there will never be another time! Then he was aware once more of those footsteps upon the stony gravel behind him, and he allowed himself to be possessed by an ecstasy of prostration. He woke up gasping. Then he remembered. He sat up. Then he sat on the edge of his bed, pressing a hand against his fast-beating heart. He was wearing his vest and pants underneath his pyjamas, as he usually did. He had imagined that he would not sleep, but he had slept. Sorrow can sometimes induce sleep. The room was cold. He turned the light on. He took off his pyjamas. He relieved himself into the wash-basin and dabbed his face with cold water, which was all the taps provided. He put on trousers, a shirt, a jersey, and some slippers over the socks he had worn all night. He thought, this is what every man does, this is how men live, if they are lucky enough. He filled the kettle at the basin, turned on the gas-ring, found the matches, put the kettle on, and put a coin in the meter for the electric fire. He did not want to shave, he had shaved yesterday, now he would never shave again. He could hear above his head the usual racket of the Pakistani family getting up, he could hear the children chattering. He felt a terrible contempt for himself, it came to him like a grey suffocating storm. The kettle boiled. He found a mug and put a tea-bag into it, he held the mug over the basin and poured the boiling water from the kettle into it, scalding one hand as usual. He sat down again on the bed, putting the mug on the floor. He got up and went to the window, pulling back the flimsy cotton curtains and looking through the dirty net ones. It was raining, the snow was gone. He turned out the light, he returned to sit on the bed. If only he could blot out of his mind that golden period of time, an hour perhaps, during which he had pictured himself, and in such
elaborate detail
, Peter's secretary, Peter's friend, helping Peter to build up a great organisation for the relief of human suffering. He had, in that brief time, imagined so much, as if in a cosmic vision of the salvation of the world. Now wiped out. The wiping away of the horizon, the drinking up of the ocean. That was what it was like, what it was
all
like. All the misery surrounding him now at this very moment in these streets, in these rooms. How had he imagined that he had the
energy
required to alleviate one atom of it? Father Damien gone, Peter Mir gone. They had been reality, or rather they had seemed to be his reality. Suppose he were to go along to that clinic, that doctor had left the address with someone. Or had he? Could that place be found, did it exist? Anyway they would not let him in to see Peter – and even if they did,
it would be a different Peter.