The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch

generation! So, Aleph is up for grabs, and Rosemary, and – ’
    â€˜Dear Joan, don’t talk nonsense, please , I just want to be with you in peace.’
    â€˜Peace! When do I ever have peace? My life is scratched to bits.’
    â€˜For God’s sake it was one night, and – ’
    â€˜So you say. And you’ll say we were both drunk.’
    â€˜Yes. It was only one – ’
    â€˜How long is one? Sentimentally and in the soul it went on for ages, it still goes on, it goes on and on. I feel your arms around me, your kisses linger yet, You taught me how to love you, now teach me to forget! I’ll get the girls to sing that song, and I’ll cry, and so will you.’
    â€˜I won’t cry.’
    â€˜And I won’t forget. You lack loyalty, you lack generosity.’
    â€˜That’s a serious charge, old friend.’
    â€˜So I’m old friend now, am I? You remember nothing.’
    â€˜There is virtually nothing to remember.’
    â€˜ “Virtually” can cover a multitude of sins. Don’t you remember “si ça ne vous incommode pas je vais garder mes bas”? The sexiest thing Sartre ever said. Don’t worry, I won’t talk. All the same – Vercingetorix. It suits me to have a secret, it gives me power over you.’
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    Harvey was sitting on Tessa’s bed. Tessa was sitting beside him. Their sleeves touched. Harvey had stretched out his stone leg, not to exhibit its decorations, on which Tessa had already commented adversely, but in a vain search for a less painful position. Tessa had stretched out both legs, clad in sturdy shoes and high woollen socks pulled up over her trousers, making them look like knee-breeches. Her rather pale ‘angelic’ face, usually alert with attention and authority, often sardonic and amused, could become curiously blank, as if she were absent, her lips parted, her eyelids drooping. No doubt she was tired, resting, switching off her consciousness so as to regather strength. Harvey respected her withdrawal, he was proud that she could be thus withdrawn in his presence.
    The rain had stopped. The thin house, in a battered terrace in Kilburn, was, somehow always, rather cold and damp. This was Tessa’s house, where she lived and slept and organised her ‘social work’. The hostel for the unhappy women was several streets away. (It was rumoured that Tessa had, elsewhere in London, a luxury flat to which she secretly retired when it was all ‘too much’.) The ground floor, which had been extended into the small untended garden, consisted of the office, a room for typing and interviews, and a very private primitive kitchen. The first floor was Tessa’s bedroom and bathroom and a room containing clothes, books, and other items belonging to Tessa, and a few cardboard boxes full of give-away clothing. The top floor, now also colonised by Tessa, had housed a lodger, a Mr Baxter, who had made a tiny contribution toward the rent, but had disappeared suddenly, said to be in prison or perhaps dead. The house was cold, small electric fires, sparingly switched on, being the sole source of heat. Mr Baxter had had an electric fire on a meter, but that had vanished shortly prior to his own disappearance. Tessa had once explained to Harvey that the secret of keeping warm in winter was not to vary the temperature, to let the weather into the house and rely on warm clothing. She should know, having survived a cold winter in the protest camp, living in a makeshift tent which scarcely covered her body, and spending the day searching for firewood. (At least they lit fires there, thought Harvey.) It was like, she said, the rule well known to biologists that the way not to feel hungry was to refrain from eating. A little food brings on an urge for more. People who fast become used to it in a few days. By this method one could at least learn to do without breakfast and lunch. Harvey, who