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By Root 2254 0

if he should, but had never yet met any woman he could—take to in that way. Or if he had, he said, they were already spoken for. He knew there were things he could not discuss with Florence, that she might need to discuss with someone. Olive said she thought he did very well on his own; he was a percipient person. She said Julian was a young man, now, he had almost nothing of the little boy left in him. She did not like, she confessed, the thought of Tom going away to Marlowe. She did not believe Tom was as strong as Julian. “He is ludicrously innocent, I sometimes think,” she said confidingly. “Life will deal him blows. He has run wild, delightfully, but he will find it hard to adjust to discipline.”

So they talked on quietly, sharing things, in a rather pleasant electrical prickle of unactivated sex. It was like dancing. Olive enjoyed it. She had a right, she thought, considering Maid Marian. There needed to be balance, if balance was the word, latitude for latitude, excursion for excursion. Humphry’s vagaries meant she had a right to take pleasure in being admired, looked at, confided in.

Toby loved her too much. He waited, perpetually dumb, he didn’t know for what, and everyone could see it, she thought, and she herself had to be circumspect and watchful, for the truth was, she couldn’t do without Toby, she needed Toby to talk to about fairy mythology, about plots and tales. Every now and then she paid for conversation—she didn’t feel commercial, it was loving, as she loved Toby—with a silent, passionate embrace, mouth to mouth, skin to skin, her laughing face close to his bemused one. He had understood from the beginning that these encounters could only happen if no one spoke, and they were never referred to. He had been awkward at first, blushing, clumsy, but he had grown adept at clutching and letting go, at fierceness followed by lassitude and a kind of consequent indifference. She guided his fingers into hidden places, her body at first immobile and then quivering a little. She did not know what he thought of all this. It didn’t matter, as long as they were not discovered, and he did not become overexcited, indignant, or morose.

Toby had been lecturing in Winchelsea and Lydd, in the winter and spring, speaking about the Saxon fairy-faith, and the Paracelsian elementals. He had become a great friend of Patty Dace, Frank Mallett and Arthur Dobbin. The inner group of the Theosophists had held discussions of Edward Carpenter’s Love’s Coming of Age in Miss Dace’s parlour. This group included Herbert and Phoebe Methley, who were resolutely outspoken about the fact that sex-love and its expression were natural and necessary to both sexes. If Patty or Frank or Dobbin directed a curious look at their bodies as they said these things—and these looks were almost inevitable—they stared back, amiable and unabashed.

Olive wanted to meet Methley, and commanded Toby to bring the Methleys to Sunday lunch in the vicarage. She wanted to meet Methley because, like Frank Mallett, she had been greatly perturbed by one of his stories. He had a book of inconsequential tales of the sighting of fairies, or people of the hills, or the kind folk (who were not kind). These tales were written in a pragmatic first person by a naturalist who saw and observed these creatures as other men observed rare bugs or birds. The introduction to this book pointed out, persuasively enough, that there were indeed more things in heaven and earth than humans could usually apprehend with their limited senses. We cannot see radio, or molecules. We can receive an electrical shock from an apparently inert wire. We see clouds form and unform—where is what made up that bulging grey muscle a minute ago, where now is the grey-blue veil of mist that hung over the marsh poplars? How can it be that our species so steadily and persistently and consistently reported sightings of the fair folk, and occasional dealings with them, if they do not exist? In the beginning of the Bible men talked and walked with God: then with Angels: then with invisible voices. Some humans