The Green Knight Read Free Page B

She’ll choose a powerful older man who is rich and loves life, a top scientist, a top industrialist, a tycoon with a yacht and houses everywhere, and they’ll have real fun . I just hope they invite us!’
    Louise laughed. ‘You used to say Aleph would have to pay for her beauty. I hope you’re right about her wits and not being in a hurry.’
    â€˜So they still sing all those love songs, those sentimental thirties songs and Elizabethan ditties? Those are worthy of their tears. But I think I know – it’s the calm before the storm – they are crying over the horrors to come, prophetically mourning their lost youth, mourning for their virginity, their goodness in which they heartily believe, their innocence, their purity so soon to be desecrated – and yes, I think they are innocent lambs, not like Harvey who has always had filth in his mind as boys do.’
    â€˜Yes, possibly,’ said Louise vaguely. Joan liked to speculate amusingly about the girls, of whom she was fond, but whom now she hardly ever saw. Louise did not want to talk about such matters. The tears moved and distressed her, such strange tears as for some terrible frightful joy. ‘Bellamy says they are wondering at the existence of the world.’
    â€˜Its misery, its cruelty?’
    â€˜No, just that it exists.’
    â€˜That doesn’t make much sense. They’ve realised their whole lives are at stake. I heard them singing that song about every girl’s a fool and every man’s a liar. Well, perhaps they don’t sing it so often now when they can see it’s not a joke! Well may they weep over the wickedness of the men who will break their hearts! Have they taken to religion? Moy was confirmed, wasn’t she?’
    â€˜She used to go to church sometimes.’
    â€˜She would, she thinks it’s magic, she’s a leprechaun, perhaps she’ll be a witch when she’s grown up and earn a fortune making love-potions.’
    â€˜She is a very remarkable girl,’ said Louise, ‘and she will be a very remarkable woman.’ She was tired of hearing Moy belittled and laughed at.
    â€˜You mean she’s fey, she has an aura, she imagines she communes with the paranormal, but that’s all just a form of female adolescence, she’ll pass through it into ordinariness, no love-potions, no broomsticks, she’ll be arranging the flowers in the local church. I wish I still had some religion, even the beastly old Roman church which my beastly mother hangs onto, while she lives in sin. They say religion is a substitute for sex. You don’t know what it is to want a man, any man. I wish I could discover some respectable male prostitutes, like civil servants or university dons who do it in their spare time for a bit of pocket money, there must be such people. Moy’s still at school, isn’t she? With the other two at home the female vibrations must be overwhelming.’
    â€˜They’re mostly out all the time, they go to libraries, they go to lectures, they went to that cramming establishment.’
    â€˜Lucas used to coach Sefton, didn’t he?’
    â€˜Yes, I think she found him a bit intimidating. But it was very kind of him.’
    â€˜You say he’s kind, you say Bellamy’s generous and you refuse to call him a fool, you think Harvey is a sweet good boy, you think Clement is a parfit gentle knight, you see Aleph as an angel who will never turn into a Valkyrie, I believe you don’t even allow yourself to make moral judgments upon me! You smooth things over and say things you don’t really mean. You inhibit your fears and hates, you are the most inhibited person I know.’
    Louise murmured, ‘Good old inhibitions.’
    â€˜You’ve led an easy life, other people have made the decisions. I have a perpetual frown imprinted on my brow. Your brow is unfurrowed. You have what Napoleon most desired in a woman, repose. My