The Game

by A. S. Byatt

  ‘Has he appeal?’ said Cassandra.

  ‘Oh, enormous. He’s a sort of popular symbol of what’s got crowded out of our urban lives. In certain circles. A nature image in their very own drawing-rooms. He doesn’t go in much for fertility, unfortunately. He’s got a vogue. Women think he wants cuddling and domesticating.…’

  ‘My undergraduates like him.’

  ‘Simon,’ said Julia, and laughed.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That means – there is someone out there – to whom he talks.… Someone whose idea all this is, perhaps. What does he do when the camera’s off him?’

  ‘Charm snakes,’ said Cassandra. ‘We shan’t ever know.’

  Simon said, ‘Here is a magnification of the things in the kind of water I just bottled. The kind of activity outside our normal consciousness. Outside our sense of proportion. Like the speed of grass growing. Or the spread of cancer. Things we have to make an effort to be aware of.’

  He peered at them for a moment almost crossly, as though troubled by his own natural inadequacy. A shot of the normal cloudiness of the glass beaker of water was followed by a microscopic expansion of it, a bursting open of vague specks into things alive, transparent, reticulated, shapeless, with waving tentacles and gaping mouths, which jumped and squirmed and floated and writhed across the scene. Something like a parasol, ribbed and frilled, ballooned gently down from the top right-hand corner to the opposite lower corner. Somewhere else a strange string of long beads broke apart and reformed. A flabby blob of jelly made itself a long mouth, ingested a black speck and closed over it, swelling slightly, whilst the scar of the mouth opening slowly disappeared. For a moment Simon lectured them on the alien movements of this unfamiliar life; what was known about the pattern of it, what was not. He told them some names, and pointed out with elation nameless scraps of life. ‘No wonder we lose our sense of our own place,’ he said, reappearing, and fading. ‘We shall never know very much about all this: this is what draws us. As it should.’

  A large white bird strode through the water, peering elegantly this way and that, leaving behind it a trail of wavering liquid arrows, that lost their directness in the weeds at the water’s edge. Cassandra could almost feel the packed, silky texture of the feathers.

  Julia said, ‘Shall I turn it off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t bear the clergymen. Sorry, Cass – but I just can’t.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘No. It’s been a – a funny day. Do you think it was a good thing for us – playing – and so on?’

  ‘We do the best we can,’ said Cassandra, dubiously.

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Apparently. I don’t know what else we could have done.’

  ‘I’m glad we —’ Julia had been going to say ‘talked’ but they hadn’t really. ‘I enjoyed the Game. I hope.… We can have a long talk tomorrow?’

  ‘If you like. He must be waiting. Go to bed, Julia. I’ll lock up.’

  Julia thought of putting out her hand to Cassandra, but they had never touched each other. She said, ‘Sleep well, Cass,’ with warmth, and ran up the stairs. When she had gone, Cassandra rolled up the oilskin and packed away the pieces; when she had done this, she walked round the house, putting out lights, closing doors. In each dark corridor or room she listened for sounds, doing what she had to do with clumsy fingers. When finally she closed her own door, latch and bolt, she undressed without washing, slid into bed like a scared child, and held herself in a rigid ball, bony knees to chin, fists clenched. She was pleased with the effort she had made to walk about so calmly in the dark, but now she was paying. It was a long time before she went to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  ELIZABETH CORBETT would have chosen cremation, but this was out of the question since the snow was still deepening and the roads to the towns were blocked. Burial was delayed for some days by the hardness of the ground in the little orchard behind the Meeting-house, but Thor organized, shovelled, went down to the village, and finally something was done with a road-drill and picks. The post was erratic; distant members of the family could not gather; but in the end they found themselves following the coffin through elbow-high tunnels of scooped-out snow. No one particularly wore black. Cassandra was naturally sombre. Julia wore her scarlet and white, and looked, she thought, incongruously like Father Christmas where the snow had brushed against her. Mrs Corbett’s square body was bundled into her usual square grey tweed coat. She was pinched round the mouth and had aged perceptibly, but seemed, like the rest of them, numbed, responding only to the cold. Deborah screwed graceless knuckles into red eyes. Thor said a few words, in a clear, hard voice about the continuation of consciousness. ‘He will live on, not only in the awareness of all of us – and countless others – which has been profoundly altered by our love for him, but in that larger consciousness which contains and transcends our individual love and knowledge. What was separate is restored to what is eternal, what was finite to what is infinite.…’ Julia thought, that has no meaning for me. But these generalities mean something to Thor; he experiences them, he finds his way round them. I only notice at times like this – death, meeting for worship – where his mind is.

  She remembered her wedding in this Meeting-house; she and her father had stopped, on their way in, in the spring sun, under a cherry tree. She was twenty, and had wanted to be married in a long, white, sophisticated dress with yards of floating veil and an armful of flowers. Her mother had overruled her. ‘I know these things are done, dear, but I always feel they are a little out of place in the simplicity of a Meetinghouse, doesn’t thou agree?’ She had worn short white muslin, with a sash, a round collar and a row of pearl buttons, a white hat like a Quaker bonnet and a posy of rosebuds and forget-me-nots. She looked more like a first communicant than a bride, which irked her, for she had meant Cassandra, a reluctant bridesmaid stumping along behind in grey poplin and a kind of glorified boater to see that she had achieved womanhood first. Her father had said, ‘He has a special love for thee, Julia. And we love him. Thou has known him only two months, and thou art very young. But he is a good man.’ ‘Yes,’ she had said, ‘I know. There are some things, if you don’t find out in two months, you never find out. If you’re willing to find them out.’ Well, it had been something to say. He had kissed her, and reiterated his assurance that Thor loved her, and they had gone in.

  Now, here was Thor, speaking at his funeral. His love for Thor had been deliberately given but at least he had never been given occasion to decide not to retract it. Thor had been all that a son should be. He had been moved by the spirit to claim his wife abruptly and dramatically. ‘In the fear of the Lord and in the presence of this assembly, I take this my friend, Julia Corbett, to be my wife.…’ He had startled her; she had thrust her flowers at Cassandra, who had fumbled with them. She had caught Cassandra’s hard grey eye. And thought, because she was willing herself not to, of Simon, sitting on the edge of his bed in that bare boy’s bedroom he had with a crucifix over the bed, a marble madonna smirking on the mantelpiece, the occasional dry slither and rustle of a snake in a cardboard box under the bed.

  We ought to do things properly. She wished Deborah would stop sniffing. It was too cold to cry. It was too cold to feel; she was glad when they all trooped home again, together with one or two worthy Friends who had struggled through the snow to be present. They ate tomato soup, roast lamb with mint sauce, apple pie. Elsie had been moved to prepare Jonathan Corbett’s favourite meal; this, at last, Julia found concrete and distressing.

  The next day the letters came through. There was a large sheaf of condolences from friends and relations for Mrs Corbett, two or three for Julia, one for Cassandra, and several businesslike long envelopes for Thor. Julia had one from Ivan; the cramped, square handwriting stirred her to sudden excitement.

  ‘Darling Julia, yours was a lovely letter, if a bit gloomy, tho’ of course that’s understandable. I’m sorry about your Dad, love; he was an admir
able man, from all I’ve heard.

  ‘As for the rest of your letter, you do let things get you down, don’t you? And make an awful fuss about personal relations and such like which it’s much better to take with a bit of gay abandon as they come. All this about this sister you never see, and all these ominous murmurings about guilt. As anyone can see from your lovely books, my dearest girl, you’re a brooder, but you will positively wear yourself out if you take everything with this personal intensity, really. Try a bit of deliberate and conscious selfishness for a change. You’re an artist of sorts after all and artists have got to be detached and ruthless. And better if they admit it sincerely? When I get you on The Programme you are going to be splendidly sincere with your disturbing, diffident, bloody-minded straight-look-in-the-eye about just what ruthlessness is required to turn your life into a commodity so saleable and comforting. So be warned. And don’t try to be a sensitive plant. You’ve got a tough hide, sweetie, cultivate it, it’s an asset and there’s nothing wrong with it.

  ‘I don’t understand your obscure references to Simon Moffitt. Apparently teenage girls keep sending him understanding letters. I’ve not met him, but he seems a bit broody too, and not madly your sort of thing, love? though there’s no accounting for tastes. A bit obvious, S. Moffitt. But then, so are you, and it has its attractions.

  ‘You had better come home as soon as maybe and enjoy yourself a bit. Take care of yourself. I’ve got lots to tell you, as you may imagine.…’

  Cassandra’s letter was from Gerald Rowell.

  ‘My dear Cassandra, I was very touched that you should write to me so unexpectedly, and I was naturally distressed to hear of the death of your father. His work will be always remembered, and he himself will be remembered as a truly good man, and, in the deepest sense, a true Christian. I cannot believe that he did not die in peace, and better prepared to meet his Maker than most of us.

  ‘I am distressed that you should reproach yourself for your feelings. As I have had occasion to suggest to you before, you are too scrupulous and expect too much of yourself. You loved your father, and you love him now. A momentary revulsion is of little account beside a lifetime of love. A horror of dissolution, please believe me, is more commonplace than you suppose, and not usually of long endurance. You must offer your weakness to God, who is Infinite Charity, and rest in Him. You have also a duty to your mother, who will be in need of your comfort and support. As I have also said before, you must make your peace with yourself. I am sure you will find your way to it.

  ‘You are missed here; many of the ladies have asked me to convey their sympathy; also the Dean. I have prayed for you and for your family. Yours ever, Gerald Rowell.’

  Julia thought: I asked for sympathy and what I get is flirtatious malice. But she smiled to herself, and felt lightened at the thought of being back with people like Ivan, who took life with a bit of irony, liked people vulgar, self-centred and malicious, didn’t expect, or want, anyone to be perfect. Unlike the Quakers and Cassandra. The Quakers, if not Cassandra, would have denied indignantly that they expected people to be perfect. But they simply tolerated things that Ivan positively admired. Whereas Cassandra tolerated nothing and admired very little. Ivan had not understood her claustrophobia; she would have to explain it again. She was amused but worried by his description of her probable TV personality; she was uncomfortably sure that she could achieve what he wanted. She began to read the letter again.

  Cassandra regarded her letter with slight distaste. It was a distaste already familiar, from moments of communication with Edwin Merton or with Simon himself. It seemed to her that she was capable of only two kinds of approach to men: a constrained dignity, and an overwrought and vague appeal for help of some kind. And her undignified outbursts produced, invariably, from those to whom she exposed herself, a defensive professional reaction. I am not a woman, she thought sharply, her intelligence restored by a renewed sense of her own isolation, to be comforted in that tone of voice. But I am afraid I may write letters that ask for replies in that tone of voice. I certainly did to Simon.

  She did not like Gerald Rowell’s facile assumptions that she ‘loved’ her father and was in a position to ‘comfort and support’ her mother. She had embarrassed him, of course, and he had retreated into the conventions. However silly her letter, she was right to feel disappointed. He could, and should have written more warmly. He should have preserved her from the consequences of her own unbalance. When Cassandra was troubled she retreated into a series of remote judgements as though she herself was completely uninvolved. Father Rowell had been a hope; he had proved to be of no significance. It was safer that way, she thought grimly.

  Thor said, ‘They write to ask me to go to the Congo, to run a relief centre near Elizabethville.’

  Cassandra folded her letter back into its envelope and observed him with an abstract interest. He looked alert; his voice was carefully casual. He waited. Cassandra looked at Julia, who looked at her plate.

  ‘When?’ said Deborah. Cassandra, observing her in her turn, remarked a certain eagerness.

  ‘What do they want with thee, dear?’ said Elizabeth Corbett, stirring from the ruined silence in which she was now usually sunk.

  ‘They want the impossible, of course.’ He was smiling slightly. ‘Management of funds. Administration. Transport, food, drugs. Liaison work. Keeping the peace between charitable bodies. Everything.’

  ‘When?’ said Deborah again. She, and Cassandra, looked at Julia, who said, with apparent reluctance. ‘How long do they want you for?’

  ‘Indefinitely. As far as these things are certain, indefinitely. It has to be long-term, they need continuity. It means living there.’

  ‘We could all go,’ said Deborah. Julia said hastily, ‘Don’t be silly, Deb, it’s out of the question. What about your education? Or mother, now?’

  ‘Thou need not bother about me, dear. I don’t mean to be idle.’

  Cassandra thought Julia could well have done without this unconsidered piece of support. It was clear what Julia felt; what he, Thor, felt was less certain. There was a silence. Deborah spoke.

  ‘It wouldn’t be that bad for my education. It’d be a new experience. A different kind of life.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand. You don’t know what’s going on out there. Rape and murder and all sorts of violence. They’ve been evacuating women and children. I can’t see what Friends are thinking of to offer a thing like that to a man with Thor’s responsibilities. It’s absurd. They can’t have spent any time …’

  ‘They spent some,’ said Thor. He folded and unfolded his letter, with an expression Cassandra recognized as one familiar in her own research students, when presented with a piece of evidence that seriously damaged an argument they were nevertheless not prepared to abandon.

  Deborah said, ‘Some people go, all the same. Some missionaries, that sort of person. Somebody’s got to. It’d be good for you, Julia, you could write completely different books.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Nobody wants any more unsubtle books about race-relations. Or spiritual allegories about jungle warfare. Golding and Bellow worked those out. And anyway I couldn’t do them. I’ve got to have civilisation and social nuances. It’d be the death of me.’

  Like most serious statements disguised as flippancy this simply produced tension. Deborah shrugged her shoulders. She knows when to stop, Cassandra thought, herself an expert at provoking Julia. Although perhaps Deborah, like herself, always lost in the end; Julia was easily embarrassed but very determined. Cassandra looked severely at her niece, who disconcertingly winked.

  ‘Thor,’ Julia cried, ‘it is silly of them, isn’t it, just to spring this on a man in your position? I mean, they could have discussed it with you, at least. They could have —’

  ‘They did discuss it with me,’ he said, slowly. ‘There is real need. Real need. Someone must go. Something must be done. And there are things that can be done —’

/>   ‘But not by you. Not by a man in your position. They can’t expect it.’

  He stood up. ‘Apparently not.’ He repeated coldly. ‘Not by a man in my position, clearly.’

  ‘Thor – if you really want.… If you’ve really told Friends …’

  ‘There is no point in discussing it,’ he said, and walked out. Julia looked from one to the other of the three women. She was the only one wearing make-up; her face seemed too bright, exaggerated, against Cassandra’s pale skull-face with its dry lips, her mother’s grey, slightly puffy skin, and Deborah’s chalk and freckles. She was grieved and belligerent.

  ‘All the same, I’m right,’ she said. ‘I can’t see why everyone has to get at me just because I say something’s impossible that clearly isn’t anything but impossible. Well, is it? None of you ever face facts.’

  Nobody answered.

  ‘I suppose you all think I ought just to pack up and follow him to the Congo?”

  ‘Well, dear …’ her mother began.

  ‘You think I ought to let him do what he wants? Well, if everyone would leave me alone, and he was sure what he did want, I’d be happy too.’

  ‘As long as he wanted the right thing,’ said Deborah.

  ‘Shut up, you,’ Julia cried. ‘You’re just meddling. Oh, what’s the use, what’s the use? You all just side against me. You think my work’s completely worthless.’ She glared at Cassandra. ‘All your feelings are so refined.’

  ‘He feels guilty, Julia,’ her mother offered. ‘He wants to be able to help.’

  ‘And what do you think he makes me feel? He won’t let me help with anything. It’s not so easy, living with someone perfect.’

  ‘Well, he won’t go, because you don’t want him to, and you know that,’ said Deborah, ‘so let’s stop this discussion.’

  Julia burst into tears and ran out of the room.