That was the situation for him, as he listened, translating, to the story Felix had to tell. Felix said that Ross and he had been to a place called Gault, and he’d sung to it. Presumably a dangerous place. They had then decided to call on distant friends, who might or might not be inhabiting a cottage on a place called Tollerdown. Anyhow, supposing they were not there, a rare species of hawk known as a honey-buzzard might be observed in the vicinity. On arriving they had found their friends (Scylla seemed to be the only woman in the group, a point for reflection) in difficulties owing to their well, shrunk by the drought, yielding nothing but dead hedgehogs. A digression on the use of soda-water to make tea. An excursion down the well to clean out the hedgehogs had led to a discovery. An odd cup of some greenish stone had been found, rather like pea-soup carnelian. The state of the well had necessitated the transfer of Picus and Clarence for an indefinite stay. “You’re done in this country if your well gives out. Wait till ours does.” Carston was not interested. This might interfere with his making love to Scylla, which he had decided was to be his expression of a successful visit. Unless he found out how to use it.
Then Ross produced the cup suddenly, out of his pocket, and handed it round. Carston said:
“That means nothing to me.”
“Been cut by hand,” said Felix. “Is there a kind of opaque flint glass? Keltic twiddles, I think, very worn round the rim.”
A good deal was told Carston, casually, about Kelts and Saxons and Romans and early Christianity; things completely over so far as he knew— Not that they talked about what he hadn’t heard. Only they talked as if there was no time, no progress, no morality. He knew, of course, that there was no progress, and no morality.
Then Ross said, roughly and softly, as though he was loving something:
“The thing was that we fished it out with a spear.”
Scylla said, “Ross, that’s odd.”
Clarence fidgeted attentively. Felix stared, and Carston saw the boy’s tricky brilliant eyes light up. Picus was grave, a man so tall and thin he seemed to go on for ever. Unnaturally supple, he had seen him pick up something behind him as if it had been in front. He tried to think what a spear had to do with it.
Felix said, sharply:
“Good old Freud.”
“Idiot!” said Ross, and turned away furious and contemptuous.
“It seems to me,” said Scylla, “that people had to start some way of thinking of things. What they saw once they’d learned to think might be quite different from the things they’d learned on.”
Then, to Carston, she said that odd things were always happening, and old patterns repeated themselves. That it was sometimes alarming when they did, and Freud very useful in the case of irrational fear. Very true, too, when there had been a row, and no one could feel what was just and what was not. Always look out for the suppressed wish that’s taken a wrong turning. But that what had happened to-day was objective and odd.
Carston said:
“I think I’ll have to ask you to explain a little more than that.”
But Ross had turned round again. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. The insolent insincerity was not meant to be lost on Carston, but it was. “Put it down to the solstice or the heat.”
“Tell us the news,” said Felix. “We couldn’t get back without our tea. Ross believes in perspiration. I don’t.”
Carston had come with elaborations of the best gossip. They listened to him—rather too attentively, he thought. At the same time there was something that spoiled his effects. It was the place, the faintly lit room mixing with the starlight outside. A shallow little green dish was lying among the glasses. Might have been made out of star-material. The woman had called it a diversion, but they weren’t going to let him play. He began suddenly to dislike them, wish to humiliate them. Far too troubled to think how to do it.
Even Ross saw there was something wrong when he left them and went up to bed.
But this Carston had seen. Four ways of saying the woman good-night. Ross nodded to her. Felix embraced her. Clarence kissed her gallantly, with a flourish indicating affectionate indifference to their difference of sex. Picus, busy with a syphon, crooked his fore-finger at her across the room.
The morning restored Carston to kinder thoughts. Last night might have been spent under the sea. If they had drawn him down, it was possible that they had not done it intentionally. His room was comfortable, if mad, full of little bits out of the sea. A ship in a bottle pleased him. On a hook was an old cap with an anchor. A ship was painted inside his morning cup of tea.
