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By Root 14144 0

or other my friend is not content with the normal slipshod method of recording medical anomalies by photographs. He is pursuing some private theory which makes him attach im-portance to the pigmentation of the skin in certain stages of his pet diseases. The ravages of syphilis, for example, in every degree of anomaly, Clea has recorded for him in large coloured drawings of terrifying lucidity and tenderness. In a sense these are truly works of art; the purely utilitarian object has freed the painter from any compulsion towards self-expression; she has set herself to record; and these tortured and benighted human members which Balthazar picks out daily from the long sad queue in the out-patients’ ward (like a man picking rotten apples from a barrel) have all the values of depicted human faces — abdomens blown like fuses, skin surfaces shrunken and peeling like plaster, car-cinomata bursting through the rubber membranes which retain them…. I remember the first time I saw her at work; I had called on Balthazar at the clinic to collect a certificate for some routine matter in connection with the school at which I worked. Through the glass doors of the surgery I caught a glimpse of Clea, whom I did not then know, sitting under the withered pear-tree

in the shabby garden. She was dressed in a white medical smock, and her colours were laid out methodically beside her on a slab of fallen marble. Before her, seated half-crouching upon a wicker chair, was a big-breasted sphinx-faced fellah girl, with her skirt drawn up above her waist to expose some choice object of my friend’s study. It was a brilliant spring day, and in the distance one could hear the scampering of the sea. Clea’s capable and innocent fingers moved back and forth upon the white surface of the paper, surely, deftly, with wise premeditation. Her face showed the rapt and concentrated pleasure of a specialist touching in the colours of some rare tulip.

When Melissa was dying it was for Clea that she asked; and it was Clea who spent whole nights at her bedside telling her stor ies and tending her. As for Scobie — I do not dare to say that their inversion constituted a hidden bond — sunk like a submarine cable linking two continents — for that might do an injustice to both. Certainly the old man is unaware of any such matter; and she for her part is restrained by her perfect tact from showing him how hollow are his boasts of love-making. They are perfectly matched, and perfectly happy in their relationship, like a father and daughter. On the only occasion when I heard him rally her upon not being married Clea’s lovely face became round and smooth as that of a schoolgirl, and from the depths of an assumed seriousness which completely disguised the twinkle of the imp in her grey eyes, she replied that she was waiting for the right man to come along: at which Scobie nodded profoundly, and agreed that this was the right line of conduct.

It was from a litter of dusty canvases in one corner of her studio that I unearthed a head of Justine one day — a half profile, touched in impressionistically and obviously not finished. Clea caught her breath and gazed at it with all the compassion a mother might show for a child which she recognized as ugly, but which was none the less beautiful for her. ‘It is ages old’ she said; and after much reflection gave it to me for my birthday. It stands now on the old arched mantelshelf to remind me of the breathless, incisive beauty of that dark and beloved head. She has just taken a cigarette from between her lips, and she is about to say something which her mind has already formulated but which has so far only reached the eyes. The lips are parted, ready to utter it in words.

* * * * *

A mania for self-justification is common both to those whose consciences are uneasy and to those who seek a philosophic ration-ale for their actions: but in either case it leads to strange forms of think ing. The idea is not spontaneous, but voulue. In the case of Justine this mania led to a perpetual flow of ideas, speculations on past and present