The Game by A. S. Byatt Read Free Book Online

Simon; that something had prevented Simon from going into the Church. He would have thought it would have been the girl who was suffering from the temporary hysterical religiosity of late adolescence. But Cassandra, in his fifties, was still with him; authoritatively Anglican, dryly knowledgeable, certainly devout, only slightly addicted to cliqueish jokes about vestments or Jesuits. And he, used to women now, enjoyed her company more than he might have imagined possible, and was a little afraid of her. She struck him, now as when she was eighteen, as a spiritual desperado, and one whose capacity for violence was by no means spent. I wonder what she lives
for
, he thought, and said aloud:
    ‘And you, Cassandra, how are your studies progressing?’
    But she was not disposed to talk, had to be asked twice, and then merely said, ‘Very well.’
    By the time they had passed through Alnwick, conversation had fluttered to a stop – only Julia asked spasmodic questions about old acquaintances, brightly. The snow was thickening, and the air in the car, fanned round by the heater, was soporific and heavy. Deborah still held Thor’s hand. Cassandra, turned away to the outside, was aware in spite of herself of the tightness of the grip.
    At last they reached Benstone village. Here, in summer, little gardens of purple and white flowers grew in the road without fences; tough, shrubby flowers, blown by a sea-wind. To the north and east were the long beaches Swinburne had chanted about. The village was built on a steep hill. At the bottom were the church and the vicarage, the village stores and the post office; at the top was the Old House, last in a line of increasingly large grey stone houses fronting the street directly. Here the Corbetts had lived for three generations: they were one of the oldest Quaker families, solid, unpretentious, civilized
bourgeoisie.
    Numbed by the long drive and the car heater they all crowded into the hall – a large, low room with a wood fire burning in a stone fireplace, into which they came straightfrom the street. The roof was beamed, and the floor was bare wood, with various large rugs, comfortable rather than elegant, spread about between leather arm-chairs. The main staircase, uncarpeted and wooden, came straight down into the room from a narrow landing like a kind of minstrel’s gallery. Underneath it, rather dimly lit, was a huge Burne-Jones painting of knights, ladies, hounds and horses plunging through a tangled wood drawn in meticulous detail. It had happened that some of the more worthy of the worthy Friends would complain to the liberal elder Corbetts that the painting represented blood-sports, and was unsuitable; but it had been bought by a Corbett who had been acquainted with Christina Rossetti, and thus had a certain degree of virtue attached to it. Cassandra stared absently at this painting, whilst Julia looked rapidly from object to object – piano, books, terracotta groups they had done themselves, years ago, feeling suddenly the habitual pleasure of coming home.
    It was Thor who crossed to the foot of the staircase to meet Mrs Corbett as she came down, and it was to him she cried, ‘Oh, at last —’ in her booming, committee-woman’s voice. He took her firmly in his long arms, cracking against him the glasses which hung against her bosom.
    ‘How is he?’ said Thor.
    ‘Much the same. I don’t know. He can’t speak.’
    ‘Does he – seem to want to speak?’
    ‘I don’t know. He seems – frightened. That’s what I can’t bear, I can’t do anything to make that better, he just seems frightened.’
    There was, Cassandra thought, a basic absurdity about this fear, spoken in this brisk, summing-up voice.
    ‘It may be your own fright,’ said Thor, directly. ‘You can’t know. Now, sit down. We’re all here; you must rest a little. Keep your strength.’
    He assisted her into a chair: Thor was the only person who unfailingly assisted Elizabeth Corbett. Julia pulled off