They parted. Tamar, seeing Rose talking to Lily, retreated toward the archway which led through into the deer park.
As Gerard emerged from Levquist's staircase he found Jenkin Riderhood waiting for him at the bottom.
As he came out he was conscious that the night sky, which had never really darkened, had become very faintly lighter, and this touched him with a sad prophetic emotion. In the intense concentration of his encounter with Levquist Gerard had completely forgotten everything else, where he was, why he was there, even the references to his father, Sinclair, Rose, had appeared as part of Levquist's thought rather than of his own. Now he suddenly remembered the news which Gulliver had brought to them. First of all however he said to Jenkin,
`Have you found Tamar?'
`No, but I met Conrad. He'd lost her and was still looking"
`I hope you gave him a wigging.'
`It wasn't necessary, he was in a terrible state, poor boy.'
`We must – what's the matter, Jenkin?'
`Come with me. I want to show you something.'
Jenkin took hold of Gerard's hand and began to pull him along across the trampled grass through the scattered strolling of bemused dancers, some still enchanted, some happy beyond their wildest dreams, some concealing grief, some simply drunk, the fading magic of the new light showing their faces more intensely. Near the end of the arcade a youth was being sick, his partner standing guard with her back to him.
Jenkin led Gerard to the 'sentimental' tent where he had danced with Rose, and where a wilder strain of music could now be heard. An eightsome reel was in progress; but the floor had emptied, and an audience, standing in a dense ring, was watching eight evidently expert dancers, the men wearing kilts, who were performing in the centre. One of these was Crimond. It was evident who, in the rotatory movement of the dance, his partner was. Jean Cambus had hitched much of her long red dress up over a belt round her waist, revealing her black-stockinged legs, and her flying skirt came little below her knees. Her narrow hawklike face, usually as pale as ivory, was flushed and dewy with sweat and her dark straight heavy shoulder-length hair, whirling about, had plastered some of its strands across her brow. Her fine Jewish head, usually so stately and so cold, had now, her dark eyes huge and staring, a fierce wild oriental look. She did not, in the weaving of the dance, turn her head, her small feet in low-heeled slippers seemed to dart upon the air, only when her gaze met her partner's did her glaring eyes flame up, unsmiling. Her lips wire parted, indeed her mouth was slightly open, not breathless but as if with a kind of rapacity. Crimond was not sweating. His face was, as usual in repose, pallid, expression-less
even stern, but his slightly freckled skin, which normally Imiked sallow so that he could have been called pasty-faced, was now gleaming and hard. His hair, narrowly wavy and longish, once a flaming red now a faded orange, adhered closely to his head, no flying locks. His light blue eyes did not follow his partner, nor did they, when he faced her, change their cold even grim expression. His thin lips, drawn inward, made of his mouth a straight hard line. With his conspicuously long thin nose he reminded Gerard, watching, of one of the tall Greek kouroi in the Acropolis museum, only without the mysterious smile. Crimond danced well, not with abandonment, but with a magisterial precision, his torso stiff, his shoulders held well back, as taut as a bow and yet as resilient and weightless as a leaping dog. His picturesque garb had also
remained orderly, the elaborate white shirt, the close-fitting black velvet jacket with silver buttons, the sporran swinging at the knee, the silver-handled dirk in place in the sock, the neat buckled shoes.His male companions, all excellent dancers, were dandyish too, but only Crimond had not unbuttoned his shirt. The heavy kilts, their closely pleated backs rippling and swirling, emphasised their owners' indifference to the force of gravity.
Jenkin watched Gerard for a few moments to see that his friend was suitably affected, then turned to watch himself. He murmured, 'I'm glad I saw this. He's like Shiva.'
Gerard said, 'Don't -' The new image, intruding upon his own, was not inappropriate.
The music suddenly ended. The dancers became immobile, hands aloft; then gravely bowed to each other. The audience, released from enchantment, laughed, clapped, stamped their feet. The orchestra immediately began again, with the sugary strain of''Always', and the floor was at once crowded with couples. Crimond and Jean, who had been standing with hanging arms staring at each other, took each a step forward, then glided away together, lost to sight among the dancers.
`What tartan was that?' said Jenkin to Gerard as they moved away.
`Macpherson.'
`How do you know?'
`He told me once, it was the one he was entitled to.'
`I thought it might be any old one.'
`He's meticulous. Where's Duncan?'
`I don't know. As soon as I saw that I ran to wait for you. I didn't want you to miss it.'
`Kind of you to drag yourself away,' said Gerard with a slight edge.
Jenkin ignored the edge. 'Shall we separate and look for Duncan? I can't see him here.'
`It looks as if -'
`As if things have gone too far already.'
`I don't think Duncan would be pleased to see us.'
`You don't think we should sort of shadow him. Keep an eye on him?'
`No.’
Gulliver was suddenly accosted by a woman.
He had, after eating almost all the cucumber sandwiches, begun to feel miraculously better, not really drunk at all, and with that came a frenzied desire to dance. He had wandered about, not looking for Tamar (he had forgotten about her) but for some girl whose man had perhaps felicitously passed out and lay somewhere under a bush in drunken slumber. However the girls, though looking themselves rather the worse for wear, or even positively sozzled, seemed still to have their man in tow. It was impossible now to deny that the dawn was breaking, that the light which had never really gone away all night, was declaring itself to be day. Some terrible birds had begun to sing and from the woods beyond the meadows came the intermittent chant of the cuckoo. Hastily seeking some continuation of night time, Gull had been drawn to the pop irni where, in spite of the lightening canvas, darkness still seemed to reign amid the dazzling flashes and the noise. The pop group had gone and their music, continuing, was now machine-made. Here the capering was at its wildest, resembling acrobatics rather than dance, a kind of desperation overcoming the young people as they scented the morning air. The men had abandoned coats, occasionally shirts too, the girls had hitched up dresses and undone fasteners. The effect, utter earlier formality, was oddly like fancy dress. Staring at each other, wild-eyed and open-mouthed, the couples leapt, squattered, rotated, grimaced, waved their arms, waved their legs, expressive, thought Gulliver, of a scene out of Dante's Inferno rather than of the vernal joy of careless youth.
'Hi, Gull, dance with me! I've been dancing by myself for at least an hour!’ It was Lily Boyne.
Her frail arms were instantly about him, seizing him at the waist, and they whirled or rather whizzed out into the centre of the deafning maelstrom.
Of course Gulliver knew Lily through 'the others' but he had never felt any interest in her, except briefly on one occasion when he heard someone refer to her as a 'cocotte'. She had seemed to him a pathetic figure whose importunate pretensions were merely embarrassing. Lily now looked like a rather small crazy pirate, perhaps a cabin boy on a pirate ship in a pantomime. Her orange trousers were rolled up revealing thin bare legs, her white blouse was unbuttoned, sash, silver scarf, golden chains had all vanished, dumped with her evening bag Lily could not remember where. Her face, red with exertion and earlier potation, was covered in a multicoloured grease of smudged cosmetic, making her resemble a melting wax image. Her silver lips were grotesquely enlarged into a clownish mouth. But as they danced, not touching each other, now near, now far, jumping violently about, cannoning into other dancers of whom they were entirely unconscious, grinning, glaring, panting, bound together by their crazed eyes, Gulliver felt that he had discovered a perfect partner. Lily, as she swayed away, pirouetted, leapt, circled him about, waving her arms hieratically like an ecstatic priestess, appeared to be saying something, at least her mouth was opening as if in speech, but he could not, because of the din, hear a word. He nodded his head madly, uttering into the storm of marvellous noise a stream of senseless exclamations inaudible even to himself.