“Our hospitality,” said Felix. Quotation wasted on Picus, caught Carston.
“Yes, a decent vendetta would be better than your poisoned fun.”
“We don’t seem to have cleaned up anything,” said Clarence.
“Cleaned up,” said Picus, chattering at them. “Accusing me. Boring me. Interfering with me.” In this there was something that was not comic, in the dis-ease he imparted.
“An aborted thunderstorm,” said Scylla. “I’m going up to change.”
Five left, hating each other. Then Felix modestly, like the youngest: “I’ll go down the wood, and see about the dinner fish.” Four left. “Work to do,” said Ross. Three left. “Have you a time table?” said Carston. Clarence said: “Hadn’t you better stay till we know the truth?” Carston turned his back on him, and went out neatly through the library door. Two left.
“What is this about you and Scylla?”
“I suppose I am free to sleep with whom I like?”
“Why her?”
“Why not? You don’t want her.”
“God, no. But you might have told me.”
“I thought I heard her tell you.”
“So you and Scylla are one voice then?”
Picus laughed again. “She shouldn’t have told.” Clarence smiled back at him faintly, as if he had to smile under pain, his own, anyone’s. And Picus chattered on, all of him dancing together, subtle, venomous, absurd.
Clarence listened, till the time came when he could listen no longer, and hid his face, the awful pain rising in him, drowning Picus’s presence. And he was thankful for it. Escape into infinite suffering, a deadly grey land, and he was thankful for it. Away from Picus for ever. Not even to meet the true Picus, but to the country where there was no Picus. When that had gone away for ever. That nerve dead. Free among the dead. He raced away on that black heath. Of course, the place where Picus had lost them the day before. But that country had been sapphire and purple, wild with bees. He was out there now in December.
True for trees, but what about the ‘gentle girl and boy’? He had hidden himself a long time in the pain.
When he took his hands away from his face, Picus had gone.
Chapter XIII
Scylla went upstairs, and lying on her bed in her shift felt her elation and clean fatigue replaced by shabby weariness and fear.
Picus had played that trick on Carston. Picus had spoiled her pride in him. Why had he played a spiteful joke? She had not begun to think it possible that he had arranged the story of the cup. Only the trick on Carston was ill-mannered, a little cruel. Also irrelevant. It had made the business seem empty, like the effect got at seances where the interesting, the decisive, the clear is always on the point of arrival, and invariably fades out before the point is reached.
Like the mass of keltic art. Like, now she considered it, the whole Grail story, the saga story par excellence that has never come off, or found its form or its poet. Not like the Golden Fleece or Odysseus at Circe’s house. There was something in their lives spoiled and inconclusive like the Grail story. It would be her turn next for Picus to insult, as he had played a pointless joke on a foreign guest. A number of unpleasant emotions followed that thought, chiefly disturbed sexual vanity which sets the earth by the ears. Life was ice-bright, and disagreeable as flint. It was a maudlin dream. Chance couplings, little minds setting to partners. Victory of ants over the sphinx in flesh: over birds.
She watched the flies flashing across the window, a bee searching a flower head in ajar of mixed wild stalks Felix had put there. Then to detach herself she played an old game, that she was lying out on the wood’s roof: translating the stick and leaf that upheld her into herself: into sea: into sky. Sky back again into wood, flesh and sea.
It did not work, as it was meant to, to deliver her from herself, but it made her see Picus’s proceedings diabolic. Why so? Parody of a mystery. A mystery none of them believed. That reduced it to a bad taste. They did not quite disbelieve. Dangerous fooling then? Parodied also in her bed. Very cruel and so wrong.
But under Gault Cliff there had been no parody. That she had to love Picus by, as much of a creation as any growth in nature. Or ritual, or rite produced by the imagination. As little symbolic as the result of any mystery propitiously performed.
As she attended to what she was thinking, she laughed, her immense vitality racing back. Her entry had made his trick glorious. Dinner would be difficult. What had been wrong with Carston? She would go and talk to him. What about? She would propitiate Felix. How? They will all hate me. Without whom Picus would not have turned creator. Woman’s place indeed. Clarence wanted that job. He did the work, and I wear the crown. Not my fault. Chances of the sacred game.
Swept off into stadium of the game; which is the pleasure in actions for their own sake. Done for the love of playing. Done for the fun of it. Done for no pompous end.
That Felix was just a little nervous about.
Played by Alexander, and young Cleopatra in a bundle at Caesar’s feet.
Played by that demon Picus, when he had whistled up mystery with what was now undoubtedly a Victorian finger-bowl.
Played by Malatesta having Isotta sculpted for the Madonna; and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.
Played by Chaucer who loved everything for what it was. A sword for being a sword, or a horse. And they for what they were, the ‘gentle girls and boys.’
Good thinking, good eating. All things taking care of themselves. Each thing accordynge to its kynde.
Would there be a train for Carston to go away by? Good idea of Picus to say it would be better for him to be slept with than visit that wood.
Was there anything to eat for dinner, anyhow? She jumped up and went out discreetly through the kitchen. In the scullery there was Felix, cleaning a basket of fish. Too much fish. Enough for half to go bad, and the rest infuriate Picus, who would say he had been given it to encourage his brain. Felix said:
“I thought I might as well help. Nanna and Janet are at it all day. Nothing like getting in a stock. Had a good walk with Picus?”
The basket, full offish-shapes, was wet, black-ribboned inside, a shell sticking here and there, a live whelk walking up. Sea-smelling, almost living food, still running with the live sea. She took a knife and a fish, and cut down on the slab of dark blue slate used for cooling butter. Felix had covered it with scales and blood.
“We’ll do it together,” she said.
“You’re not very good at it,” he said.
She hesitated, testing the contact with him.
“We’ll do other things together, then.”
“Don’t we pretty well always?” —His knife scraped down on a bone— “I mean, it’s only half the time I don’t understand.”
She thought: ‘So he went and gutted fish for me.’ She said: “What, my dearest dear, did you understand to-day?” He answered: “When you came in with Picus I saw your beauty. After Carston had been talking, and surprised me, rather. After the things which have happened lately. It was a kind of answer. A sudden opposite to what I was thinking. To what the world is usually, I suppose. You see, I would sooner have you or even Picus in the right. Only, I haven’t faith.”
She thought: ‘Try and have faith. No. Don’t try and have anything. Be with me.’
And in answer, she told him about the wood. The bird, Picus. O lady, be good. Everything. That she could not have told the others. She heard a thought in his head: ‘I shan’t be able to keep this up, but to-day I am my sister’s.’