The Green Knight Read Free

of curiosity, I’d have wanted to know exactly what happened. I wish you’d told me sooner!’
    â€˜We kept well clear. Lucas would have hated us coming to watch like tourists!’
    Earlier that year, now several months ago, Lucas Graffe, Clement’s elder brother, had had a very unpleasant experience. Out walking at night he had resisted an attack by a mugger with such violence that his assailant had died from a blow on the head from Lucas’s umbrella. There was some general indignation (for the incident was briefly in the press) when Lucas was taken to court accused, not actually of manslaughter, but of ‘taking the law into his own hands’ and ‘using excessive violence’. For a few days Lucas was even something of a popular hero. The goodies who wanted to defend the poor mugger were routed when it emerged that he had been carrying an offensive weapon. Lucas, a quiet reclusive academic, a much respected historian, was of course extremely upset by having inadvertently killed a man, even though a bad man.
    â€˜He must have been very very distressed,’ said Louise.
    â€˜He must have been upset by the publicity.’
    â€˜He must have been even more upset by killing a man.’
    â€˜Nonsense, Lucas is a hero. If more people hit back there’d be fewer muggers. Lucas deserves a medal. You would side with the rotten thief!’
    â€˜To end a man’s life – he may have had a wife and children.’
    â€˜I know, we all treasure Lucas, but he is eccentric. It is just like him to startle us by doing something unexpected. He sits in his dark little house writing learned books, then he goes out and kills someone – that’s instinctive courage, and instinctive authority.’
    â€˜It was a bit of a freak that the man died – Lucas wasn’t trying to damage him, he was just fending him off.’
    â€˜I imagine Lucas was angry. It was hard luck on both of them. And now Lucas disappears for ages – ’
    â€˜I can understand that, he wants to get over the shock, and he wants us to get over it too. He won’t want to chat about it.’
    â€˜Oh, he won’t discuss it with anybody, we won’t be allowed to mention it, it will be made never to have happened. But where is he?’
    â€˜I expect he’s working somewhere, he works all the time, he’s in some university city, in some university library.’
    â€˜Yes – in Italy, Germany, America. Is he still teaching?’
    â€˜Yes, he’s still teaching, but he’s got some sabbatical leave from his college.’
    â€˜He’s certainly not very sociable, he’s led such a sheltered life, he’s a quiet and reticent person, he can’t have enjoyed having his name in the papers. You must all look after him when he returns. You take him too much for granted. He’s lonely.’
    â€˜He likes it that way.’
    â€˜Clement must be worried stiff about him. You don’t think he’s committed suicide?’
    â€˜No, of course not!’
    â€˜I don’t mean because of guilt, but because of loss of dignity, loss of face.’
    â€˜No! Lucas has plenty of ordinary sense!’
    â€˜Has he? Well – and how are the three little girls?’
    Louise’s children at nineteen, eighteen and fifteen, were not now so little.
    â€˜Aleph and Sefton have done their exams – now they are anxiously waiting for the results!’
    â€˜Surely they needn’t be anxious!’
    Teddy Anderson, having had a classical education, had given his daughters Greek names, Alethea, Sophia and Moira. The girls however, in quiet mutual communion, had decided not to be known by these names. Yet they did not entirely abandon the names either. When the youngest, so much desired by their parents to be a boy, turned out to be another girl, Teddy said ‘It’s fate!’ and christened her Moira, which was easily and promptly shortened to