Armed With Madness полностью

“Ask Felix,” said Picus. No one knew whether to help him out or not. Carston thought of its boards smouldering on the kitchen fire, making it, as Nanna had pointed out, unfit for proper use.

Scylla said, coolly: “I can’t part with the other half of my wedding-present.”

And this infuriated the old man. It was evident, even to their over-hurried perceptions, that he was more than insulting and exultant, he was in earnest. He began to frighten them. They could not decide whether to economise the truth or not. The old man seemed in need of exorcism. A bib. Altogether too gothic now.

Then Felix cried out: “I burnt the damned thing when Carston told me that you and Picus were playing us up.”

The old man began to laugh. “That’ll do,” he repeated. And quite soon after he was gone, and they dragged out chairs and lay on the lawn at different angles, no one wishing to speak.

Clarence figured it out. Picus had done this to get away from him, falsifying the devotion of years, flaunt a pretty cousin, marry a pretty cousin: because she had some money: because she was a bird and bee woman: because Carston was after her, must be after her, or he would not have come back from Starn. Or why should any man run back after such an exit, to help a woman, a mime, a baggage, a bag of excrement? There is a great difference between a sportsman, a painter, a man that feels the earth, between Ross and Scylla and his terrible green Sdi creature, and Clarence’s feeling for decoration best served by cities, a blasted heath no more than a site for his palace. He was on Carston and Felix’s side, never satisfied with the earth sacrifice the others munched, wanting décor as Carston a stage. Picus was his set-piece, his jewel. His jewel had lied, his palace was unsound, the beautiful basket in which he had put all his eggs was broken. He had no more eggs to lay. A very serious man unable to exercise his sobriety, because he had made fausse route with his friend, because his education was insufficient for his abilities. Not for the first time he did not try to correct himself, thought about his wounds and his wishes until they took phantom shape and he slipped off uneasily with his gun down the wood. Scylla made a face after him. Ross shook his head. Carston had an impulse to follow.

“Gone off to invent excuses for Picus,” said Felix, “for you to listen to— It’s the occupation down here.”

“Come and pose,” said Ross. “I want a model.”

Carston was alone with Scylla. He said:

“I think I’ve an excuse now to say ‘explain a bit’.” It was parching hot, gritty as if a storm of microscopic dust had filled up the holes in the leaves, in the grass-blades, in the skin.

“Reassure me, at least,” he said, “that this would have happened without me.”

“Of course. Much worse if it hadn’t been for you.” They stopped talking.

“I tried to help you,” he said, “it is your turn.” Saw the effort she made, thought how easy these people were to spur.

“Let’s go up and tackle Picus,” she said—“there is one thing about staying in bed, it runs to earth.”

“No,” said Carston, “you must excuse me. I’ve had about enough of that chap.”

“So,” said Scylla, “for the moment, have I.”

“Seems to me he played a mean trick on you all— What I don’t see is why. Or why it should have got you.”

The other side of the house Ross was seeing Felix flung in a chair, hearing the nervous sobbing his own cool voice could not control. Nor could he control in himself his aversion to speak or to help.

“What in hell do we come here for? I told Scylla to sell those shares and we’d have been at Biarritz.”

“It would have been the same at Biarritz.”

“You might be. I should be different there. You’re looking for something. I’m not. And I hope when you get it you’ll like it. Looking for the Sanc-Grail. It’s always the same story. The Golden Fleece or the philosopher’s stone, or perpetual motion, or Atlantis or the lost tribes or God. All ways of walking into the same trap. And Scylla gets into bed with old Tracy’s son.”

“That is not the point. What is it about a trap?”

The boy got up and looked a little madly and very insolently at Ross, the blue eyes cold between lids red with weeping. Ross was surprised to find himself edging away, like a man who is to be shot at.

“We’re through with the baby-brother business.”

Upstairs, Picus had finished shaving, his body worked on as delicately and scrupulously as a cat. Whistling to himself while Felix was sobbing, whistling back his power as their idol, like a god summoning an element or in confidence like prayer. He set his tie for the last time, shook himself, laid himself down on the window seat, and drew a ring with a pearl on to his atrociously powerful hand.