The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch

Author:Iris Murdoch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Harvey’s taxi had disappeared into the darkness of the ill-lit street. Harvey was standing outside Tessa’s front door. It was the dark damp foggy evening of the day of Emil’s phone call and his mother’s tears: also the day (though unknown to Harvey) of the Clifton necklaces and Clement’s confession to Bellamy. Now a sudden unbearable anguish had driven Harvey to see Tessa.

Harvey’s answer to Aleph’s question concerning what Harvey and Tessa had talked about at the birthday party had not been entirely truthful. Tessa had in fact not agreed with Harvey’s conjectures about Lucas’s sex life. When Harvey had stated, what seemed to him obvious, that Lucas had no sex life, Tessa with (as Harvey now recalled it) a mysterious knowing look had said, ‘Really? You had better ask your mother!’ When Harvey had asked why, Tessa had hurriedly (as of one desiring to cover a slip, as Harvey saw it now) said, oh she meant simply that Joan was a better judge of character and likely to make a better guess. Harvey, preoccupied with his hatred of the party and his desire to leave it with dignity, had not at the time reflected upon this little exchange: now however a sinister conjecture was growing in his soul. When his mother had ‘run away to Paris’ Harvey had not thought about her possible ‘love affairs’. Shy of the whole matter in any case, he felt no impulse to wonder, even less to inquire, about aventures whether in Paris or London. Now he had suddenly found himself rehearsing their recent conversation, for instance her (surely slightly accented) reference to ‘old friends’. Was this in some way significant, concealing Lucas’s name in the list of innocuous others? And how did she know that Lucas disliked Harvey – they must have been discussing him. She certainly didn’t want Harvey to visit Lucas. All this suggested concealment. It was Tessa who had unsettled everything, with her imprudent remark and her significant look: Tessa with whom (he could scarcely now believe it) he had lately been in bed! The memory of this dismal episode remained very painful to Harvey, though in a sense it also ‘hung in the air’ as something unconnected, scarcely real, a non-event. After all, ‘nothing had happened’. Harvey did not regard Tessa as being quite, or really, a woman. Perhaps just this had made the experiment possible.

He had put on his soft walking-shoes and was holding his new stick. His crutches were still with him and when he was in the flat he still used them to give his lame foot a rest. For public scenes however he had used the clinical stick which his second physiotherapist had given him. Now he had impulsively bought an expensive-looking, and indeed expensive, stick of some blond glowing wood (walnut?) with an ivory handle representing the head of a long-beaked bird. This was less useful than the clinical one, but gave him confidence. After all, some men still carried sticks just for style, and not because they were lame.

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