The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch Page B

the first time. My mother is just like a child. I can’t go near Louise, she’s taboo, and anyway she doesn’t want me – ’
    â€˜Well, please don’t elect me to be mother. Harvey, stop. Tell me something. Is there any news of Lucas?’
    â€˜Not that I know of.’
    â€˜You all need him.’
    â€˜Why do you say that?’
    â€˜He’ll put you in order. He’ll make you jump. He is the ringmaster.’
    â€˜I didn’t know you liked him.’
    â€˜I don’t. But he’s really real.’
    â€˜Let’s go out and have a drink.’
    â€˜No, I’ve got to be somewhere else. With a beard St Joseph, without the Virgin Mary, as they say in Spain.’
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    Harvey had left the ‘refuge’ and was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room in Emil’s flat. The numerous lamps were softly shaded, the distant traffic hummed in the Brompton Road. Emil collected pictures. He possessed, for instance, a Bonnard and a Vuillard and a Max Ernst and a Caillebotte and a Nolde and a drawing by Picasso and an Otto Dix and some early Hockneys. In honour of such treasures Harvey faithfully remembered to turn the burglar alarm on and off and carry about him a jangling bunch of keys. The peach-pink walls were covered with pictures, not all of which Harvey, though often in the room, had asked Emil to identify. It was very kind of Emil to lend him his flat. He could intuit that Clive was less enthusiastic. In the afternoon he had tried to work. As he told everybody, there was plenty of work he could get on with, studying Dante for instance. But his ‘study’ seemed to consist of reading some of his favourite passages – and finding that their magic had faded. When he returned from Tessa he fried some eggs in Emil’s dream kitchen, clearing up carefully afterwards. Louise had shopped for him, stocking the flat with goodies, but supplies were running out. Soon he would have to shop for himself: a first sign in a gradual process of being forgotten . Louise had said vaguely, ‘Come over any time, come to supper’; but, and this was another sign, although he longed to see Louise, and to see Aleph, he increasingly lacked the will to go. He was afraid, he was ashamed, he was a cripple, he was disabled . He could not bear their all feeling sorry for him, their sympathy might reduce him to tears. The Harvey who had been once so handsome, so long-legged and athletic, did not exist any more. He couldn’t even wash properly. He had lost, and lost forever, his youthful pride, his freedom, his nerve. All he could do now was attempt, but surely in vain, to conceal the extent of his loss. He watched television pictures of a war, of a football match, of worthy people in wheel-chairs. He thought about his father and wondered if his father ever thought about him. His leg was hurting alarmingly. They had spoken of taking the cast off again. What would they find underneath? Something decayed and rotting, suitable only for amputation.
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    â€œAnd the many many times that I took her in my arms, just to save her from the foggy foggy dew!” ’
    â€˜I like the descant,’ said Clement to Louise. The girls were singing in the Aviary below.
    â€˜That’s Aleph.’
    â€˜With that soprano she should have a singing teacher.’
    â€˜She had a piano teacher at school.’
    Clement was about to protest against the weary irrelevant reply, why had he not, long ago, paid for Aleph’s singing lessons? Everything in his life now seemed to signal: too late. The little flat in Fulham where he had lived for years remained provisional, a pied à terre . Of course he was often away, involved in some play in the provinces or else with theatre people he knew in Paris. He even thought at one time of moving to Paris. He did not exactly dislike his flat, but he lacked faith in it. He did not buy pretty things for it. He