The Once and Future King (41 page)

Guenever was doing some petit point in the gloomy room, which she hated doing. It was for a shield—cover for Arthur, and had the dragon rampant gules. Elaine was only eighteen, and it is fairly easy to explain the feelings of a child – but Guenever was twenty—two. She had grown to have some of the nature of an individual, stamped on the simple feelings of the child—queen who had once received her present of captives.

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle—aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. You can’t teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically – she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. In some way like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have knowledge of the world. She has to be left to the experience of the years. And then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living – not by principle, not by deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar and shifting sense of balance which defies each of these things often. She no longer hopes to live by seeking the truth – if women ever do hope this – but continues henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense. Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one – knowledge of the world.

The slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy – this discovery is not a matter for triumph. The baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: I have balance! But the seventh sense is recognized without a cry. We only carry on with our famous
knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves in a habitual, petrifying way, because we have reached a stage of deadlock in which we can think of nothing else to do.

And at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we lacked the seventh sense. We begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with the impetus of life. It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds.

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not. Obviously the existence or otherwise of a future life must be of the very first importance to somebody who is going to live her present one, because her manner of living it must hinge on the problem. There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads.

Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.

All these problems and feelings fade away when we get the seventh sense. Middle—aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments, without difficulty. The seventh sense, indeed, slowly kills all the other ones, so that at last there is no trouble about the commandments. We cannot see any more, or feel, or hear about them. The bodies which we loved, the truths which we sought, the Gods whom we questioned: we are deaf and blind to them now, safely and automatically balancing along toward the inevitable grave, under the protection of our last sense. ‘Thank God for the aged,’ sings the poet:

Thank God for the aged

And for age itself, and illness and the grave.

When we are old and ill, and particularly in the coffin,

It is no trouble to behave.

Guenever was twenty—two as she sat at her petit point and thought of Lancelot. She was not half—way to her coffin, not ill even, and she only had six senses. It is difficult to imagine her.

A chaos of the mind and body – a time for weeping at sunsets and at the glamour of moonlight – a confusion and profusion of beliefs and hopes, in God, in Truth, in Love, and in Eternity – an ability to be transported by the beauty of physical objects – a heart to ache or swell – a joy so joyful and a sorrow so sorrowful that oceans could lie between them: then, as a counterpoise to these attractive features, outcrops of selfishness indecently exposed – restlessness or inability to settle down and stop bothering the middle—aged – pert argument on abstract subjects like Beauty, as if they were of any interest to the middle—aged – lack of experience as to when truth should be suppressed in deference to the middle—aged – general effervescence and nuisance and unfittingness to the set patterns of the seventh sense – these must have been some of Guenever’s characteristics at twenty—two, because they are everybody’s. But on top of them there were the broad and yet uncertain lines of her personal character – lines which made her different from the innocent Elaine, lines of less pathos perhaps but more reality, lines of power which made her into the individual Jenny that Lancelot loved.

‘Oh, Lancelot,’ she sang as she stitched at the shield—crown. ‘Oh, Lance, come back soon. Come back with your crooked smile, or with your own way of walking which shows whether you are angry or puzzled – come back to tell me that it does not matter whether love is a sin or not. Come back to say that it is enough that I should be Jenny and you should be Lance, whatever may happen to anybody.’

The startling thing was that he came. Straight from Elaine, straight from her robbery, Lancelot came like an arrow to the heart of love. He had slept with Guenever already in deceit,
already had been cheated of his tenfold might. He was a lie now, in God’s eyes as he saw them, so he felt that he might as well be a lie in earnest. No more to be the best knight in the world, no more to work miracles against magic, no more to have compensation for ugliness and emptiness in his soul, the young man sped to his sweetheart for consolation. There was the clatter of his iron—shod horse on the cobbles, which made the Queen drop her needlework to see whether it was Arthur back from his hunting – the ring of his chain—mail feet upon the stairs, going chink—chink like spurs against the stone – and then, before she was quite certain of what had happened, Guenever was laughing or weeping, unfaithful to her husband, as she had always known she would be.

Arthur said: ‘Here is a letter from your father, Lance. He says he is being attacked by King Claudas. I promised to help him against Claudas, if it was necessary, in exchange for his help at Bedegraine. I shall have to go.’

‘I see.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘How do you mean, what do I want to do?’

‘Well, do you want to come with me or to stay here?’

Lancelot cleared his throat and said: ‘I want to do whatever you think best.’

‘It will be difficult for you,’ said Arthur. ‘I hate to ask you. But would you mind if I asked you to stay?’

Lancelot could not think of the safe words, so the King mistook his silence for disappointment.

‘Of course, you have a right to see your father and mother,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to stay, if it hurts you too much. Probably we can manage it another way.’

‘Why did you want to leave me in England?’

‘There ought to be somebody here to look after the factions.
I should feel safer in France if I knew there was a strong man left behind. There is going to be trouble in Cornwall soon, between Tristram and Mark, and there is the Orkney feud. You know the difficulties. And it would be nice to think there was somebody looking after Gwen.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Lancelot, choosing the words with pain, ‘it would be better to trust somebody else.’

‘Don’t be absurd. How could I trust anybody more? You would only have to show that mug of yours outside the dog kennel and all the thieves would run away at once.’

‘It is not a very handsome one.’

‘Cut—throat!’ exclaimed the King affectionately, and he thumped his friend on the back. He went off to arrange about the expedition.

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin—clear water. For twenty—four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only one which seemed like happiness. Looking back on it, when they were old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or frozen. The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Lancelot, ‘why you should love me. Are you sure you do? Is there some mistake about it?’

‘My Lance.’

‘But my face,’ he said. ‘I am so horrible. Now I can believe that God might love the world, whatever it was like, because of himself.’

At other times, they were in a terror which came from him. Guenever did not feel remorse on her own account, but she caught it from her lover.

‘I dare not think. Don’t think. Kiss me, Jenny.’

‘Why think?’

‘I can’t help thinking.’

‘Dear Lance!’

Then there were different times when they quarrelled about nothing – but even the quarrels were those of lovers, which seemed sweet when they remembered them afterwards.

‘Your toes are like the little pigs which went to market.’

‘I wish you would not say things like that. It is not respectful.’

‘Respectful!’

‘Yes, respectful. Why shouldn’t you be respectful? I am the Queen, after all.’

‘Do you seriously mean to tell me that I am supposed to treat you with respect? I suppose I am to kneel on one knee all the time and kiss your hand?’

‘Why not?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t be so selfish. If there is one thing I can’t stand, it is being treated like a possession.’

‘Selfish, indeed!’

And the Queen would stamp her foot, or perhaps sulk for a day. But she forgave him when he had made a proper act of contrition.

One day, when they were at the stage of telling each other their private feelings, with a sort of innocent amazement when they corresponded, Lancelot gave the Queen his secret.

‘Jenny, when I was little I hated myself. I don’t know why. I was ashamed. I was a very holy little boy.’

‘You are not very holy now,’ she said, laughing. She did not understand what she was being told.

‘One day my brother asked me to lend him an arrow. I had two or three specially straight ones, which I was very careful of, and his were a bit warped. I pretended that I had lost my straight arrows, and said I couldn’t lend them to him.’

‘Little liar!’

‘I know I was. Afterwards I had the most dreadful remorse for having told him the lie, and I thought I had been untrue to God. So I went out to a bed of stinging nettles that was on the moat, and put my arrow arm into them, as a punishment. I rolled up my sleeve and put it right in.’

‘Poor Lance! What an innocent you must have been.’

‘But, Jenny, they didn’t sting me! I am sure I am right in remembering that they didn’t sting me.’

‘Do you mean there was a miracle?’

‘I don’t know. It is difficult to be sure. I was such a dreamy
boy, always living in a make—up world where I was Arthur’s greatest knight. I may have made it up about the nettles. But I think I can remember the shock when they didn’t sting.’

‘I am sure it was a miracle,’ said the Queen decidedly.

‘Jenny, all my life I have wanted to do miracles. I have wanted to be holy. I suppose it was ambition or pride or some other unworthy thing. It was not enough for me to conquer the world – I wanted to conquer heaven too. I was so grasping that it was not enough to be the strongest knight – I had to be the best as well. That is the worst of making day—dreams. It is why I tried to keep away from you. I knew that if I was not pure, I could never do miracles. And I did do a miracle, too: a splendid one. I got a girl out of some boiling water, who was enchanted into it. She was called Elaine. Then I lost my power. Now that we are together, I shall never be able to do my miracles any more.’

He did not like to tell her the full truth about Elaine, for he thought that it would hurt her feelings to know that he had come to her as the second.

‘Why not?’

‘Because we are wicked.’

‘Personally I have never done a miracle,’ said the Queen, rather coldly. ‘So I have less to regret.’

‘But, Jenny, I am not regretting anything. You are my miracle, and I would throw them overboard all over again for the sake of you. I was only trying to tell you about the things I felt when I was small.’

‘Well, I can’t say I understand.’

‘Can’t you understand wanting to be good at things? No, I can see that you would not have to. It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for. But I have always been making up. I feel dreadful sometimes, even now, with you, when I know that I can’t be the best knight any longer.’

‘Then we had better stop, and you can make a good confession, and do some more miracles.’

‘You know we can’t stop.’

‘The whole thing seems fanciful to me,’ said the Queen. ‘I don’t understand it. It seems unpractical and selfish.’

‘I know I am selfish. I can’t help it. I try not to be. But how can I help being what I was made? Oh, can’t you understand what I am telling you? I was lonely when I was small, and I worked hard at my exercises. I used to tell myself that I would be a great explorer, and cross the Chorasmian Waste: or I would be a great king, like Alexander or St Louis: or a great healer: I would find out a balsam which cured wounds and give it away free: perhaps I would be a saint, and salve wounds just by touching them, or I would find something important – a relic of the True Cross, or the Holy Grail, or something like that. These were my dreams, Jenny. I am only telling you what I used to day—dream about. They are what I mean by my miracles, which are lost now. I have given you my hopes, Jenny, as a present from my love.’