Read Online Havisham: A Novel by Ronald Frame - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ronald Frame
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again, but over her shoulder at the window, out into the yard. My captive.
T EN
The Cam River had frozen over.
The life beneath was trapped under frosted glass: a wintry half-life. Slow-motion fish and the solidified tendrils of riverweed. A pike, caught by its iced tail, fitfully thrashing; other pike gnawing at it.
A punt was boxed in beside a wall. The funnel of a green bottle stood upright, in magical suspension.
* * *
We sat on by the fire. The men talked. Or rather, they debated , symposium fashion.
On one side, by the fire-irons, W’m was arguing for rational, scientific thought: pure reason, the Greeks’ crystalline dianoia . Everything in the universe could be explained.
‘Except people’s behaviour,’ another student said.
‘That too. Cause and effect.’
Moses, perched on the fender, was warming to the subject. He took the opposite tack, claiming that the world was quite unreasonable. Think of what lies beyond where the stars end; do they end? (I felt light-headed suddenly, just trying to imagine.) Life is an enigma. We have to approach it not scientifically but poetically.
‘Piffle!’ W’m said.
‘Why have we been given souls? To elevate us above substance.’
I sat between the two of them. I inclined first one way and then the other, and back again. To and fro.
Outside, dusk drew on. A red blush rose in the sky, outlining towers and spires and cupolas. A red glow fell on to one wall of the room, and we all seemed to turn instinctively towards it.
‘There’s a perfectly cogent explanation’, W’m said, ‘for what we see.’
‘We’re not looking to understand why ,’ Moses responded. ‘We’re thinking of God. Or of a memory of some other time, a place. Or it’s like life before we were born; swimming in the womb.’
W’m shook his head.
‘Light and how it falls is a sequence of connected circumstances. Nothing more.’
‘There’s always something behind what we see,’ retorted Moses. ‘An image. A renaissance, or an ideal. Reality has a fourth dimension.’
W’m tapped his head. Sheba, who had said little, gave vent to some good-humoured laughter. Mouse sighed at the conundrum.
And for myself, I jumped when a coal in the hearth split, and sparks went whistling up the chimney into the dark.
* * *
Wine, heated and honeyed, was served to us from a silver chafing-dish embossed with the college’s coat of arms.
Sitting there I had a sense of completeness, even though the argument hadn’t been won by either party. There was a fitness, an appropriateness, about everything: whether conspiring to this end, or accidentally achieved. I felt I belonged here, in this set of rooms at the top of a flight of old worn wooden stairs, with these people, on this particular evening with the redness in the sky flaring to indigo and the sweet marsala wine in my old fluted glass sparkling against the firelight.
* * *
A door was unlocked, a bolt drawn back, and then we were admitted to a long colonnaded gallery furnished with stone heads, torsos, dislodged limbs. There were several dozen fragments of Greek and Roman statues, each of them many times larger than life. Our footsteps echoed in the skylit gloom – as did our exclamations of astonishment.
Muscular shoulders. The spine’s runnel on a goddess’s back. Smooth buttocks, inviting a hand’s touch. Assorted parties intimes , with or without sculpted vegetation for cover.
I didn’t want to catch anyone’s eye, so I stood behind the others to glean their reactions. Mouse contriving to be studious; Sheba, slowing by the goddesses and naiads to take note of the classical dimensions of beauty; W’m, with a reminiscent air, fascinated by first a hand and then a foot; and Moses, poor Moses, so horribly embarrassed, and making one believe – because he looked the opposite way – that the intimate parts on display were far below his high-minded regard.
It was Moses who later rounded up the other
T EN
The Cam River had frozen over.
The life beneath was trapped under frosted glass: a wintry half-life. Slow-motion fish and the solidified tendrils of riverweed. A pike, caught by its iced tail, fitfully thrashing; other pike gnawing at it.
A punt was boxed in beside a wall. The funnel of a green bottle stood upright, in magical suspension.
* * *
We sat on by the fire. The men talked. Or rather, they debated , symposium fashion.
On one side, by the fire-irons, W’m was arguing for rational, scientific thought: pure reason, the Greeks’ crystalline dianoia . Everything in the universe could be explained.
‘Except people’s behaviour,’ another student said.
‘That too. Cause and effect.’
Moses, perched on the fender, was warming to the subject. He took the opposite tack, claiming that the world was quite unreasonable. Think of what lies beyond where the stars end; do they end? (I felt light-headed suddenly, just trying to imagine.) Life is an enigma. We have to approach it not scientifically but poetically.
‘Piffle!’ W’m said.
‘Why have we been given souls? To elevate us above substance.’
I sat between the two of them. I inclined first one way and then the other, and back again. To and fro.
Outside, dusk drew on. A red blush rose in the sky, outlining towers and spires and cupolas. A red glow fell on to one wall of the room, and we all seemed to turn instinctively towards it.
‘There’s a perfectly cogent explanation’, W’m said, ‘for what we see.’
‘We’re not looking to understand why ,’ Moses responded. ‘We’re thinking of God. Or of a memory of some other time, a place. Or it’s like life before we were born; swimming in the womb.’
W’m shook his head.
‘Light and how it falls is a sequence of connected circumstances. Nothing more.’
‘There’s always something behind what we see,’ retorted Moses. ‘An image. A renaissance, or an ideal. Reality has a fourth dimension.’
W’m tapped his head. Sheba, who had said little, gave vent to some good-humoured laughter. Mouse sighed at the conundrum.
And for myself, I jumped when a coal in the hearth split, and sparks went whistling up the chimney into the dark.
* * *
Wine, heated and honeyed, was served to us from a silver chafing-dish embossed with the college’s coat of arms.
Sitting there I had a sense of completeness, even though the argument hadn’t been won by either party. There was a fitness, an appropriateness, about everything: whether conspiring to this end, or accidentally achieved. I felt I belonged here, in this set of rooms at the top of a flight of old worn wooden stairs, with these people, on this particular evening with the redness in the sky flaring to indigo and the sweet marsala wine in my old fluted glass sparkling against the firelight.
* * *
A door was unlocked, a bolt drawn back, and then we were admitted to a long colonnaded gallery furnished with stone heads, torsos, dislodged limbs. There were several dozen fragments of Greek and Roman statues, each of them many times larger than life. Our footsteps echoed in the skylit gloom – as did our exclamations of astonishment.
Muscular shoulders. The spine’s runnel on a goddess’s back. Smooth buttocks, inviting a hand’s touch. Assorted parties intimes , with or without sculpted vegetation for cover.
I didn’t want to catch anyone’s eye, so I stood behind the others to glean their reactions. Mouse contriving to be studious; Sheba, slowing by the goddesses and naiads to take note of the classical dimensions of beauty; W’m, with a reminiscent air, fascinated by first a hand and then a foot; and Moses, poor Moses, so horribly embarrassed, and making one believe – because he looked the opposite way – that the intimate parts on display were far below his high-minded regard.
It was Moses who later rounded up the other
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