‘He tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament,’ said Gulliver.
‘I know that, silly, but who was he and why did he want to blow up the Houses of Parliament?’
Gulliver, already irritable because he had arrived five minutes ago and had not yet been offered a drink, and now irritated at being asked a tiresome question to which he only vaguely knew the answer, replied, ‘He was a Catholic.’
‘So, what’s wrong with that?’
‘There weren’t supposed to be any Catholics, at least they had to keep their heads down.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh Lily – don’t you know any history! England was Protestant since Henry the Eighth. Fawkes and his pals objected. So they tried to blow up James the First when he was opening Parliament.’
‘He sounds like a brave man defending his ideals, a sort of freedom fighter.’
‘He was some sort of shady thug, he may have been a double agent or an
agent provocateur.
People think now there never really was a plot, it was all organised by the government to discredit the Catholics.’
‘Oh. You mean there was no gunpowder?’
‘I don’t know! I suppose they had to pretend to discover something! Then they hanged a lot of Catholics, and Guy Fawkes too.’
‘I thought they burnt him.’
‘We burn him. They hanged him.’
‘But why, if it was him who arranged it all for their benefit?’
‘I suppose he knew too much. Someone promised to get him off, but then didn’t or couldn’t.’
‘I feel very sorry for him,’ said Lily, ‘he was a protester.’
‘He was a terrorist. You can’t approve of blowing up parliament.’
‘It wasn’t democratically elected in those days,’ said Lily, ‘it was just a lot of boss types. I’ve never understood whether
Guy Fawkes day is to hate Guy Fawkes or to love him. He’s a sort of folk hero really.’
‘I suppose people like explosions.’
‘You mean we’re all terrorists at heart? I expect this will dawn on someone one day and Guy Fawkes will be banned, he’ll have to go underground.’
They had arrived, separately, rather early and were now standing, in the awkward lonely attentive attitudes of too-early guests, beside the open fire in Gerard’s drawing room which was lit only by candles. It was the tradition that, except in the kitchen, only candlelight should be allowed on Guy Fawkes night. Gulliver was annoyed, and annoyed with himself for being annoyed, that Lily had been invited. Gulliver had attended now for several consecutive years. Lily had never been invited before. Last year it had been very select. Gull was now, observing Lily more closely in the candlelight, annoyed by her bizarre appearance. He was troubled by the possibility that Gerard had invited Lily because he thought Gulliver liked her. On the other hand, if she had to be there, he wanted her to make a creditable show. Mistaking the tone of the party, and envisaging it as some kind of carnival, Lily had spent some time earlier in the evening painting her face with red and yellow stripes. Just before departure however her courage had failed and she had hastily washed the stripes off, leaving a number of streaks and blotches which were now showing through the powder which she had hastily dabbed on. Gulliver himself, trusting to profit by the candlelight, had ventured to put on some discreet make-up.
Lily was remembering an occasion in her childhood when she had seen a large realistic guy burnt on a bonfire. The children laughed as the guy jumped about in the heat and even raised his stumpy hands up in the air. Lily had felt horror and terror and devastating pity and a kind of rage which, as she could not intelligibly direct it against anyone else, she turned upon herself. She bit her hands and tore her hair. She felt that old emotion for a moment now and raised one hand to her hair, the other to her heart.
Rose came in carrying a tray of glasses and a jug which she
put down with a bump and a tinkle on the table. She turned on a lamp. She too was irritated with Gerard for asking Lily. She felt this ridiculous unworthy irritation even though she liked Lily and invited her to her own parties. Rose was feeling tired. She had spent a lot of the day making sandwiches and smoked salmon canapés and shopping for cheese and the kind of little cakes which Gerard was partial to. It was not exactly a buffet, more a bunfight as Jenkin once put it. The main thing, Jenkin said, was to get a little drunk. He was the one who bought and organised the fireworks, which Gerard paid for. Jenkin was now in the garden with Gerard and Gideon fixing posts for the catherine wheels and digging in the bottles to take the sticks of the rockets. Thank heavens it was not raining. Rose was also exasperated with Patricia who had welcomed Gulliver and Lily as if it were her house. Rose, who had left her coat upstairs on Gerard’s bed as she usually did, had found it removed by Pat to a downstairs cloakroom where guests were being told to leave their things. Then when Rose carried her carefully packed food into the kitchen she found Patricia in control expressing amazement that Rose had brought all that stuff when she, Patricia, had already made a terrine, a steak and kidney pie, a vegetable curry, a ratatouille, various salads, and a sherry trifle. Rose did not say that surely Patricia knew by now that Gerard, who hated standing about with a plate and a knife and fork, or perching on a chair with a plate on his knee, spared his guests this indignity, and at such a party, only tolerated food which could be held in the hand. She did not even protest when she saw Patricia putting away her sand-wiches at the back of the fridge. Perhaps Rose should have consulted Patricia beforehand about the food. But Patricia and Gideon, though always asked to this party, did not often come, and Rose was not yet used to the idea that they now lived in Gerard’s house and were all ready to be the life and soul of the evening. Violet was always invited too, and sometimes actually came, this was another hazard. Rose was also in a state of anxiety about whether Duncan would turn up and whether if he did he would get impossibly drunk. The general view was that Duncan would not come. Rose identified very
much with Duncan’s suffering and probably understood it even better than Gerard did. She also grieved and worried about Jean and very much wanted to write to her, but felt she could not do so without telling Gerard beforehand, which she was not prepared to do. Gerard had told Rose portentously that Tamar had seen both Jean and Duncan and had reported back to him, though he did not say what she had said. Rose did not share Gerard’s view of Tamar as all-wise and all-holy, and she thought poorly of his idea not least because Tamar might get seriously hurt or upset. If Tamar had been upset she certainly would not tell Gerard. Rose resolved to talk to her herself later on.
Rose was wearing a markedly simple dress, a sort of oatmeal shift with a brown leather belt, suited, she felt, to this occasion at which, she now also realised, she and Jean had often been the only women. Patricia had put on a swishy black evening skirt with a striped blouse. Lily was clad in a bulky voluminous much pleated robe of light blue crepe, hitched up in Grecian fashion over a low invisible girdle, revealing dark red suede boots. Rose, now noticing the curiously mottled, indeed marbled, appearance of Lily’s face, turned off the lamp which she had turned on. She poured out two glasses of the mixture in the jug. These were gratefully accepted. ‘It’s fruit cup.’
‘Dangerous stuff,’ said Lily, ‘always stronger than you imagine!’
‘People always say that about fruitcup,’ said Rose, then felt she had been rude. She tried to think of something to ameliorate the impression, could not, and felt annoyed with herself and Lily.
The bell rang and Rose could hear Patricia at the door welcoming Tamar. Rose poured herself a glass of the fruit cup, which was indeed stronger than it seemed, and drank it quickly. She was afraid that Gerard would want her to invite Gulliver and Lily to the Boyars reading party and she would have to do so. Gulliver, though invited to Guy Fawkes, had never yet been invited to Boyars.
Lily said thank heavens it was not raining.
Tamar came in. She was not wearing her usual coat and
skirt uniform, and had ventured into a brown woollen dress with an embroidered collar. A near candle revealed her pale transparent milky cheek, flushed a little with the cold, and her cleanly parted silky fair hair, with its evenly cut ends, held in a round slide. Holding Rose’s warm hand in her little cold one for a moment, she kissed Rose. Then after a moment’s hesitation she kissed Lily. Lily liked Tamar but was never sure that Tamar liked her. Tamar smiled at Gulliver, and they made vague gestures. She declined the fruit cup, said she would get herself a soft drink in the kitchen, and went off.
Meanwhile Gerard and Gideon had come in from the garden, leaving Jenkin, the enthusiast, to complete the arrangements, which included the removal of all extraneous obstacles from the lawn. They came in, not by the doors into the drawing room which were still closed and curtained, but by a corridor which passed the kitchen and led to the dining room and hall. In the dining room the long table, which had been pushed back against the wall and covered with a green baize cloth, then by a sturdy white damask cloth, was already occupied by plates, cutlery, wine glasses, open wine bottles, salad bowls, Rose’s smoked salmon canapés which had been allowed out, bread, butter, biscuits, the terrine and the rata-touille, also a display of ham and tongue which Patricia had felt inspired to add at the last moment. The steak and kidney pie, the curry and the potatoes would come in hot. The trifle was still in the fridge. Rose’s sandwiches were not to appear. The fate of the little cakes was still uncertain. Gerard, who had learnt, but too late, of Patricia’s plans, viewed this elaborate spread with dismay. The usual arrangement was that sandwich-style food would be available throughout the evening for people to come and grab informally by hand whenever they felt like it. These pretentious dishes suggested a dinner hour, a queue, guests standing or sitting awkwardly with heaped plates, a scene which he
detested.
Patricia arrived with a bowl of mayonnaise which she had made in the afternoon.
The dining room was rather dark, looking out on the bushy front garden, with its pair of ash trees, and the street. The heavy bottle-green curtains were pulled, the walls, striped
dark brown, and dark ochre, liberally (by Gerard’s standards, for he did not like clutter) covered by nineteenth-century Japanese paintings, shadowy exquisite things with sparse smudgy lines and dashes of colour, representing birds, dogs, insects, trees, frogs, tortoises, monkeys, frail girls, casual men, mountains, rivers, the moon. Gideon respected these, though they were not his cup of tea. He regarded most of Gerard’s mediocre collection with contempt. Looking now at a drawing of a dragonfly on a bulrush he said, ‘Yes, that’s quite cute. But why don’t you try to collect some good pictures? I could advise you.’
‘I don’t want to develop expensive tastes and be like people who can only drink the best wine! I like grand art in galleries. I don’t want it in my house.’
‘I’m not talking about grand art, but you might aim a little higher! I confess I don’t share your passion for English watercolours. Wouldn’t you like a Wilson Steer? You were keen on him once. I could look out for one – of course it wouldn’t be cheap. Or a Vuillard. Vuillard is the chap to buy now, he’s still underpriced.’
‘Far too grand for me.’
‘Chagall, Morisot?’
‘No thanks.’
‘The wallpaper is good. Our Longhis would look nice on it, and the little Watteau.’
‘Look, Gideon,’ said Gerard, ‘this is my house, I don’t want to divide it up. You find a place of your own to live in. You aren’t poverty-stricken. You’ve been here long enough.’
‘Plain speaking. All right, Gerard, we don’t want you to divide the house, we want the house.’
Patricia came in again, carrying a jug of fruit cup, hearing Gideon’s words. ‘Yes, Gerry, you owe it to the family.’
‘I have no family,’ said Gerard.
Patricia ignored this bad joke. ‘Leonard will be married soon, I don’t mean he has anyone in view, but he intends to marry. This house is unique, it’s most unusual in this part of London. We’ve always wanted to live in Notting Hill. It has
this big garden with trees, and there are those good rooms at the top,
and
attics, it’s a family house. Doesn’t it strike you as unjust to occupy all this space?’
‘No.’
‘By the way, Tamar says she doesn’t want Perrier, she wants orange squash, I wonder if there’s any in the sideboard?’
‘I regard you two as my lodgers, except that I pay the bills.’
‘I can give you a cheque, old man.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
Tamar appeared at the door. ‘Look,
please
don’t bother, Perrier is perfectly all right, I don’t want orange squash – Hello Gerard, hello Gideon.’
‘Tamar!’ said Gideon. He went over and kissed her.
Patricia said, ‘He quite fancies her, don’t you, dear?’
Gerard, who did not care for jokes of this kind by married people, concentrated on Tamar. He thought, she is like fresh air, fresh water, good bread. He said nothing but he smiled and she smiled back.
‘Well, here is the orangeade, so you’d better have it,’ said Patricia who had been peering into the sideboard. ‘I suppose Duncan will want to drink whisky all the evening. I’ll leave the whisky and gin out in case anyone wants it, but don’t encourage them.’
Jenkin was taking the opportunity to linger in the garden. The frost was on the grass and he could feel the pleasant crunching of it underfoot. Feeling warm inside his overcoat, woollen cap and gloves, he enjoyed the cold air, nosed it, caressed it with his face. The two heavy cast-iron seats with the swan heads and feet had been moved, with the help of Gerard and Gideon, to the end of the garden beyond the walnut tree, the large flowerpots had been removed from the centre of the terrace, the bottles for the rockets were in place, the posts for the catherine wheels had been hammered in, the fireworks sorted out and set in order in the kitchen corridor, with the sparklers and the electric torches. Jenkin puffed out his steamy breath and watched it in the dim light which came along the side of the house from the street lamps, and also from
Gerard’s bedroom where the light was on and the curtains had not been pulled. Breath, soul, life, our breaths are numbered. He breathed deeply, feeling the cold penetrate down into the warm channels and recesses of his body, and felt that never dimmed and never disappointing satisfaction of, after being with other people, being alone. He lifted his head like an animal who might, upon some empty hillside, let out some lonely inarticulate cry, not a sad cry, though not without a sad tone or echo, but just a deep irrepressible cry of being. So in silence he let out his noiseless bellow to the chill night air and the stars.