“I wouldn’t count on that, Geraint,” said Arthur. “You must bear your cross. Even if your looks are going, the chemistry is bubbling away as merrily as ever. But we’re wandering from the point. The point is Schnak. What are you going to do about Schnak?”

“Why must I do anything about her? I’m not going to encourage her, if that’s what you have in mind. I can’t abide the shrimp. It isn’t just that she’s ugly to look at. Her voice goes through me like a rusty saw, and her impoverished vocabulary grates on me unbearably. Even if I were willing to forgo beauty, I simply must have the luxury of language. It isn’t just that she looks ugly. She sounds ugly, and I want none of her.”

“You make a terrible fuss about voices, Geraint,” said Maria.

“Because they are terribly important, and usually neglected. Listen to you, Maria; music every time you open your lips. But most women don’t even know that’s possible. It is one of the three great marks of beauty. It totally changes the face. If Medusa speaks like a goddess, you can’t tell her from Minerva.”

“Very Welsh, Geraint,” said Dulcy.

“And none the worse for that, I suppose?” said Geraint.

“There, my dumpling, that’s enough,” said Maria, and putting little David over her shoulder she patted his back gently. The child gave a mighty belch, extraordinary for his age.

“That boy is obviously going to grow up to be a sailor,” said Arthur.

“Or a great lord of finance, like his daddy,” said Maria.

“Will you call Nanny, darling?”

When Nanny came she was not the stout, red-faced figure of stereotype, but a girl in her early twenties, smart in a blue uniform; David was her first charge.

“Come on, my lambie,” she said, in a Scottish voice that made Geraint glance at her approvingly. “Time for bed.”

She took the child over her shoulder, and this time David gave a long, reflective fart. “That’s the boy,” said Nanny.

“David has more sense than the lot of you,” said Geraint. “He has summed up this whole argument in a masterly blast. Let’s hear no more of it.”

“Oh, but we must,” said Maria. “You can’t get out of it. Even if you didn’t encourage Schnak, you must comfort her. The logic is clear, but it would take too long to spell it out.”

“I’ll throw up the show, first,” said Geraint, and, dragging himself from under the heavy cover, he stamped out of the room. He avoided the cliché of slamming the door.

The others chewed over the rights and wrongs of the situation for quite a long time, until Darcourt fell asleep. It was midnight when they went to their own quarters. The big motel was full of people associated with Arthur in one way or another, and Albert Greenlaw insisted on calling it Camelot. Was there a lot of gossip at Camelot about Lancelot and Elaine? Malory doesn’t say.

Geraint was at the hospital the next day, as soon as rules permitted. Schnak was in a room for two, but by good luck the other bed was empty. She sat up in bed, wan and bedraggled, in a hospital gown that had once been blue and was now a poor grey, eating a bowl of orange Jello, washed down with an eggnog.

“You see how it is, old girl,” said Geraint. “Just one of those unlucky things. Neither of us to blame. The working of Fate.”

“I’ve been a selfish shit and embarrassed everybody,” said Schnak. Tears did nothing to improve her looks.

“No, you haven’t and you aren’t. And I wish you’d take a vow to stop saying ‘shit’ all the time; talk shit and your life will be shit.”

“My life is shit. Everything goes contrary with me.”

“Mrs. Gummidge!”

“Who’s Mrs. Gummidge?”

“If you’re a good girl and get well soon I’ll lend you the book.”

“Oh, somebody in a book! All you people like Nilla and the Cornishes and that man Darcourt seem to live out of books. As if everything was in books!”

“Well, Schnak, just about everything is in books. No, that’s wrong. We recognize in books what we’ve met in life. But if you’d read a few books you wouldn’t have to meet everything as if it had never happened before, and take every blow right on the chin. You’d see a few things coming. About love, for instance. You thought you loved me.”

Schnak gave a painful howl.

“All right then, you think you love me now. Come on, Schnak, say it. Say, ‘I love you, Geraint.’ “

Another howl.

“Come on. Out with it! Say it, Schnak.”

“I’d die first.”

“Look, Schnak, that’s what comes of building your vocabulary on words like ‘shit’. Great words choke you. If you can’t say love, you can’t feel love.”

“Yes I can!”

“Then say so!”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“Good. Here’s a basin. I’ll hold your head. Up she comes! Hmm—doesn’t look too bad, for what you’ve been doing to yourself. Almost as good as new. I’ll just put this down the John, then you have a sip of water and we’ll go on.”

“Leave me alone!”

“I will not leave you alone! You’ve got to whoop up more than that eggnog if you’re to be really well. Let me wipe your mouth. Now we’ll try again: say, ‘I love you, Geraint.’ “

The defeated Schnak buried her face in her pillow, but among the sobs she managed to whisper, “I love you.”

“That’s my brave girl! Now look at me, and I’ll sponge your eyes. I’m your friend, you know, but I don’t love you—not the way you think you love me. Oh, my dear old Schnak, don’t think I don’t understand! We’ve all had these awful hopeless passions, and they hurt like hell. But if we were romantic lovers, the kind you’re thinking of, do you suppose I’d hold your head while you puked, and mop your face, and try to make you see reason? The kind of love you’re dreaming about takes place on mossy banks, amid the scent of flowers and the song of birds. Or else in luxurious chambers, where you loll on a chaise longue, and I take off your clothes very slowly until we melt into a union of intolerable sweetness, and not a giggle or a really kind word spoken the whole time. It’s the giggles and the kind words that you need for the long voyage.”

“I feel like a fool!”

“Then you’re quite wrong. You’re not a fool, and only a fool would think you were. You’re an artist, Schnak. Maybe a very good one. Romantic Art—which is what’s kept you busy since last autumn—is feeling, shaped by technique. You’ve got bags of technique. It’s feeling that kills you.”

“If you grew up like I grew up, you’d hate the word feeling.”

“I grew up in a boiling tank of feeling. All tied up, somehow, with religion. When I said I was going to be an actor my parents raved as if they’d seen me in Hell already. But my dad was a fine actor—a pulpit actor. And my mam was Sarah Bernhardt twenty-four hours a day. They poured it all into the chapel, of course. But I wanted a bigger stage than that, because I had an idea of God, you see, and my God showed himself in art. I couldn’t trap God in the chapel. An artist doesn’t want to trap God; he wants to live and breathe God, and damned hard work it is, stumbling and falling.”

“I hate God.”

“Good for you! You don’t say, ‘There is no God,’ like a fool; you say you hate Him. But Schnak—you won’t like this, but you have to know—God doesn’t hate you. He’s made you special. When Nilla is being confidential she hints that you may be really special. So think of it this way: give God His chance. Of course He’ll take it anyway, but its easier for you if you don’t kick and scream.”

“How can anybody live God?”

“By living as well as they can with themselves. It doesn’t always look very well to the bystanders. Truth to yourself, I suppose you’d call it. Following your nose. But don’t expect me to explain. My dad was the explainer. He could go on about living in God’s light till your head swam. Duw, he was a fine preacher! A true God-intoxicated man. But he thought God had one, single, unwinking light for everybody, and that was where he and I fell out.”