The Book and the Brotherhood Read Free Page B

it’s just that their lease is up, they’re house-hunting.’
    ‘I hope they are! When is Gideon back from New York?’ Patricia’s husband, Gideon Fairfax, art dealer and financial wizard, now spent much time in that city.
    ‘Next week.’
    ‘You said they were trying to get you out and take over the whole house!’
    ‘Well, Pat keeps saying I don’t need all that space!’
    The existence of the new ‘upstairs flat’ had put ideas into Rose’s head. Why should not she, and
no one else
, occupy that flat? Rose had for years cherished, perhaps in some dusty abandoned but persisting part of her mind still cherished, the hope that ‘in the end’, and ‘after all’, she might marry Gerard. Later this idea became more modestly that of ‘sharing a house’, of being
with him
, in some sense in which, for all their closeness, and their generally acknowledged closeness, she certainly was not now.
    They had moved to the edge of the crowded floor, and Rose knew that in a moment Gerard would suggest that they return to ‘the room’, that is to the quarters of Professor Levquist, Gerard’s old classics tutor, which Levquist had lent to Gerard and his friends to be their base during the dance. (Levquist’s family, originally Baltic Jews called Levin, had adopted the Scandinavian suffix as protective coloration.) Rose said, to delay him, ‘Have you decided anything about the book?’ She was not referring to any book being written by Gerard, there was as yet no such thing, but to another book.
    Gerard frowned at the unwelcome question. ‘No.’
    The waltz music began again. Hearing the fast familiar strain they smiled and moved together. Soon Gerard was whirling Rose round and round, tightening his hold, shifting his grip, moving his left hand up her arm, then embracing herround the waist with both arms and lifting her swift feet from the floor.
    A little later Rose and Gerard made their way to Levquist’s rooms just off the cloisters. Rose felt, but would not of course admit it, a little tired. They found Jenkin Riderhood in possession. Jenkin, who had clearly been drinking for some time, quickly put down the bottle of champagne. Jenkin, a little younger than Gerard, was an old friend, one of the original ‘set’ which included Sinclair, Duncan, Marcus, Robin, who had been close friends as undergraduates at the college. Of the survivors Jenkin was, or perhaps just seemed, the least successful. Duncan Cambus had been having a distinguished career, first as a diplomat, then in the Home Civil Service. Gerard had reached greater heights, tipped for the highest office in his department, when he had suddenly, quite lately, many felt unaccountably, taken an early retirement. Robin, now defected to Canada and rarely heard from, was a well-known geneticist. Sinclair had decided to be a marine biologist, and was about to visit the Scripps Oceanography Institute in California when his glider crashed. Rose had intended to go with him, Gerard was to follow, together they were going to discover America. At Oxford Gerard, Duncan and Jenkin had all done ‘Greats’, Greek and Latin, ancient history and philosophy, and had all got their ‘firsts’. Rose, who came of a Yorkshire family, with Anglo-Irish connections on her mother’s side, had studied English literature and French at Edinburgh. She had done a variety of things, never achieving anything which could be called a career, taught French at a girls’ school, worked for an Animals’ Rights organisation, been a ‘women’s journalist’, tried to write novels, returned to part-time journalism and ecology. She did unpaid social work and occasionally went to (Anglican) church. She had a small annuity from a family trust which she felt she might have been better off without; she might have tried harder. Her friend Jean Kowitz, with whom she had attended a Quaker boarding school, had been atOxford where, through Rose, she got to know Gerard and the others, including Duncan