It was a very cold afternoon and a little snow was falling in small frail flakes between Gerard and the parrot. The snow fell slowly like a visible silence as if it were part of the ritual making a private place wherein Gerard and the bird were alone together. Gerard’s reflections and feelings expanded about him into a stilled thought-chamber wherein he ceased to hear the traffic or be aware of the passers-by. He thought of his father lying dead with his waxen alienated face, his high thinned nose and sunken chin, and pathetic open mouth, his poor defeated dead father, whose image was now and forever connected with the ghost of the grey parrot. Perhaps, indeed it was very likely, that Grey was alive while his father was dead. Gerard wanted to tell this, felt he was somehow telling it, to
the parrot in the shop. The cage was hung quite high up, so that the parrot and Gerard were eye to eye. There were no other creatures in the window. The pity and love which Gerard felt for the parrot, the tender sad guilt, were very like the feelings which he had when he thought about his father, about the things which ought to have been said and the affection which ought to have been more openly expressed. Do the dead know how much we loved them,
did
they know, for they know nothing now? As Gerard was thinking these thoughts, he found that he had instinctively moved his hands, beginning to lift them towards the cage. He recognised the movement as the shadow-start of one he had so often performed of opening the door of Grey’s cage and putting in his hand and watching the bird climb onto his fingers, feeling the cool scaly clutch of the feet, then lifting the little oh so light almost weightless living being out of the cage to cradle it against him while he stroked the soft feathers. At this remembrance tears came into Gerard’s eyes.
And it was as if the parrot now before him understood, and felt sympathy and sorrow, while remaining, like a close but calm friend, detached, surveying but not swept into the dark pool of grief. The bird was now moving to and fro, rhythmically from one foot to the other, exactly as Grey used to do; then arresting its dance it spread its wings revealing the sudden ordered fan of grey and scarlet feathers. The movement could not but seem to be a cordial gesture. Then the wings closed and were fussily adjusted and settled. The parrot was staring intently at Gerard with its wise yellow eyes framed in ellipses of white dry skin. It stared at him firmly, purposively, as if to keep his attention and preserve their telepathic communion. Then it bent forward, seizing the bars of the cage in its strong black beak, turned upside down and began a slow clambering circumnavigation of the cage, all the time turning its head so as to continue to gaze at Gerard. This was just what Grey used to do. When he saw the parrot upside down engaged in its laborious climb Gerard, in spite of the memory, smiled, then became grave and sad again.
He entertained, then banished, the awful tempting idea of
going into the shop, buying the parrot, carrying the heavy cage away carefully, returning home in a taxi, putting the cage upon a firm table in the drawing room and opening the cage door, for after all he and the parrot were friends already… It was impossible. It was only later that he remembered that his sister was in the house to which he was bringing back a dream parrot. He put his hand against the glass near to the parrot’s upside-down head and pressed the glass hard to convey, in the form of a frustrated caress, a sort of blessing. Then he looked quickly away and set off down the street where the snow was just beginning to be seen upon the pavements.
Gerard was going to the much-discussed and frequently put off committee meeting of the
Gesellschaft
at which they were to decide ‘what was to be done’ about Crimond and the book. The meeting was to take place, unusually, at Rose’s flat in Kensington. It was normally held at Gerard’s house, but the presence of Patricia and Gideon made this now impossible. Gerard had refused to pursue with his sister the question of her and Gideon joining the group to replace Matthew. He said he would raise the matter at the next meeting. He was reluctant, not perhaps for very clear or good reasons, to let those two join in, though of course their financial contribution would be welcome. Gerard was feeling generally nervous and irritable about the meeting. He had had the awkward task of ringing up Duncan to make sure that he did not want to attend. Duncan certainly did not want to attend, but said that of course he would continue to subscribe. There had been an awkward moment of silence, after which Gerard said he hoped to see Duncan at the Reading Party, and Duncan said ‘maybe’ and rang off, leaving Gerard feeling he had been inadequate and unkind. He often of course invited Duncan to his own house, but Duncan never came, perhaps because of Pat and Gideon, whom he did not like, perhaps because he now found Gerard’s company painful.
The committee diminished by the absence of Duncan and Jean, and (as Gerard now reflected) fundamentally altered by the disappearance of Gerard’s father, would on this occasion consist of Gerard, Jenkin, Rose and Gulliver Ashe. Matthew’s
presence had prevented outbursts of emotion, for instance from Rose and Gulliver, who indulged their indignation more informally elsewhere, and had contributed to the policy of calm indecisive
laisser-faire
favoured by Gerard. Matthew represented tradition, live-and-let-live, altogether a more casual scrutiny of what was supposed to be going on. He refused to see any point in making a fuss or anything much to make it about. Although Gerard was in charge, and he
was
in charge, his father, politely deferred to by all, had largely determined the atmosphere. Now, he thought, it’ll be gloves off. Both Rose and Gull, for different reasons, wanted blood, they wanted a skirmish, a clarification, a show-down. How obsessed they had all become about that book! When it eventually appeared it would probably be a small matter, a damp squib. A possible tactic, and this had occurred to Gerard more than once, would be to send Jenkin as the ambassador. Jenkin, occasionally, actually met Crimond at meetings and discussions. Jenkin always (and as Gerard knew, conscientiously) reported these ‘sightings’ to him, and Gerard, with equal delicacy, did not ask for details. He knew that the connection was slight, though this did not prevent him from being annoyed by it; and he did not want to send Jenkin now, formally, to see Crimond in case such a meeting might make or strengthen a bond between them. He wanted to keep
this
matter in his own hands. Rose would wish this too; yes, Rose positively wanted him to confront Crimond. Was he then to see himself as riding into battle carrying Rose’s favour upon his lance? The image reminded him of Tamar. That at least was something he had done well. Duncan had come to the fireworks party and would, he believed, come to the Reading Party. That was Tamar’s doing, good for Duncan and good for Tamar too. Duncan, who felt too ashamed and defeated to talk frankly to Gerard, might find relief in talking, not necessarily about his ‘problem’ but about anything, to Tamar whom he would not regard as a judge; and Tamar, who was certainly unhappy, would be cheered by a sense of being trusted. The prospect of his own sortie pleased Gerard not at all. What he feared most was a flaming row, after which,
if he had behaved intemperately or irrationally, he would feel ashamed and discredited and
connected
with Crimond by bonds of remorse and indecision and sheer intense annoyance. If there
was
a row Gerard would feel, such was his nature, compelled to attempt to make peace: negotiations which would probably land him in yet messier and more remorseful situations. Gerard hated muddles and any consciousness that he had behaved badly. Also, he did not want to have to think so much about Crimond. He had a quite different problem of his own which he wanted to think quietly about, involving a new course of action upon which he would soon have to decide.
‘I’m sorry to keep repeating myself,’ said Gulliver, ‘but I don’t see why we should keep paying out money every year to support a book that we passionately disagree with, which we aren’t allowed to look at, which he may have abandoned ages ago, which perhaps never existed at all!’
‘Oh come,’ said Jenkin, ‘of course it exists, Crimond isn’t a cheat, Gerard saw some of it once –’
‘A hundred years ago!’ said Rose.
‘The point is,’ said Gerard, ‘that we can’t ditch Crimond. We said we’d support him and there it is, we made a promise.’
‘The point is,’ said Rose, ‘that it’s not the book we said we’d support. I think it never was. Crimond misled us. Crimond is not the man we thought he was. He believes in violence and he believes in lies. He says in one of those pamphlets that truth may have to appear as a lie – and that we are sick with morality, that morality is a disease to be got over!’
‘Rose, he meant bourgeois morality!’ said Gerard.
‘He said morality. And he admires T. E. Lawrence.’
‘So do I,’ said Gerard.
‘He supports terrorists.’
‘It’s hard to define terrorists,’ said Jenkin, ‘we agreed earlier that violence is sometimes justified –’
‘We’ve been into all that!’ said Gulliver.
‘Don’t defend him,’ said Rose, ‘I’m not going to help to
finance a book that excuses terrorism. We’d all be blamed later for that, people would think he represented our views.’
‘I don’t think Crimond meant –’ said Jenkin.
‘How do we know what he meant?’ said Gulliver, ‘he wraps it up so. Rose is right, he can’t distinguish truth and falsehood.’
‘Those are old things,’ said Gerard, pointing to some pamphlets which Gulliver had discovered and brought with him as ‘evidence’.
‘It was a phase he went through –’ said Jenkin.
‘How do we know that?’ said Gulliver to Jenkin. ‘What he thinks now may be even crazier. And why don’t we know what he thinks now? Because he only lets his stuff out to the initiated! You seem to believe he’s some sort of dedicated hermit!
Of course
he belongs to a highly organised underground movement!’
‘It’s true that he writes things which are circulated privately,’ said Jenkin. ‘He doesn’t publish in the ordinary way any more. Someone showed me a recent thing, quite short –’
‘And was it as pernicious as these ones?’ asked Rose.
‘I don’t know whether pernicious is the word, it certainly wasn’t less extreme – but it expressed some deep ideas. Rose, he’s a
thinker
, the activists attack him for not caring about the working class!’
‘All right, it’s his ideas we don’t like!’ said Gulliver. ‘Ideas do things too, as you know perfectly well! Of course he’s not a Stalinist, he belongs to some sort of mad Trotskyist-anarchist group, smash the nearest thing is their creed, any sort of chaos is a form of revolution!’
They had been arguing now for nearly an hour. Everything about the argument upset Gerard. Rose and Gulliver were both surprisingly venomous, they seemed to be consumed by personal hatred for Crimond. Gulliver detested Crimond because (and Gull had told Gerard this) Crimond had once snubbed him savagely at a public meeting. But he also hated what he took to be Crimond’s theories, and was speaking from the heart in defence of ardently held political convictions.
Gulliver, riffling his dark oily hair back with his hand and opening his golden brown eyes defiantly wide and expanding the nostrils of his aquiline nose, looked spirited, distinctly younger and more interesting. At one point Gerard smiled at him and received a signal of gratitude from the brown eyes. Gerard then felt guilty and thought, I must
help
that boy, does he blame me, I hope not. Rose’s emotion (she was quite flushed with indignation) Gerard attributed not only to strong political principles, especially concerning secret societies and terrorism, but also to her belief, of which he had often been made aware but on which he had never commented, that Crimond was Gerard’s enemy and might some day do him harm. Also involved were Rose’s deep feelings about Jean, Rose felt anger with, and fear for, her life-long friend and blamed Crimond for both of these distressing sensations. Gerard had not discussed this matter with her either. Is Crimond my enemy? Gerard wondered. It was an unpleasant idea. Gerard had also been upset, during the argument, by Jenkin’s quiet determination to excuse Crimond. It was some time since Gerard had had a really detailed discussion of politics with Jenkin. He had always assumed that their views on this matter more or less coincided. Supposing he were now to discover, and feel obliged to pursue, some really serious and disturbing difference of opinion? This possibility of a damaging breach was instantly transformed in his mind into the image of Jenkin somehow
defecting
to Crimond. But this was,
must
be, unthinkable. Gerard was more immediately annoyed by the aggressive atmosphere in which he was being driven to go and ‘have it out’ with the rascal.
They were sitting at the round rosewood table in Rose’s flat which overlooked a little square garden enclosed by railings. Between bare branches of trees, before Rose had pulled the curtains, the lighted windows of houses opposite made a pattern of golden rectangles. Snow was still slowly falling. It was now after five o’clock and the lamps were on in Rose’s sitting room. It was warm in the flat and their overcoats and umbrellas, now dry and unfrozen, were piled upon the Jacobean chest in the hall. Rose’s flat was comfortable, a bit
shabby, full of a miscellany of things which had come from her maternal grandfather’s house in Ireland. The ‘fine’ stuff, the Waterford glass, the Georgian silver, the pictures by Lavery and Orpen, Rose had given to her cousins in Yorkshire after Sinclair’s death, at a time when she felt dead herself and wanted to throw away all the things that might have lived in her brother’s house and belonged to his children, to strip herself of all those insidious small reminders, the terrible details, leaving but one great comprehensive pain. That had been before she had found herself, so miraculously, in bed with Gerard. We were suffering from shock, she thought, we were broken and not put together, we were half made of wood like puppets not quite changed into real people. It was something not quite real and for him, she felt, forgettable like a dream.
Did
he remember, she even wondered? If only it,
that
, could have happened earlier – but it couldn’t – or later – but it didn’t. It was several years before Rose really wanted to acquire anything, even clothes, for herself. Her remaining pieces of furniture, mainly from Ireland where she now had no close relations, were handsome enough but un-looked-after, imperfect, damaged, scuffed, stained, even broken. The mahogany sideboard was scratched, the Davenport lacked a foot, the rosewood table had wine-glass, rings, the Jacobean chest in the hall upon which the thawing coats were enjoying the warmth of the central heating had lost a side panel which had been replaced by plywood. Rose had once meant to have the bathroom carpeted and the curtains cleaned. She had meant to have the furniture ‘seen to’, but she kept putting it off because her life always seemed so provisional, a waiting life, not settled like other people’s. Now it was probably too late to bother. Neville and Gillian, the children of her cousins, the heirs, sometimes chided her for not having the table properly French polished and the chest restored. The young people cared about these things. They would be theirs one day.