Free Possession by A.S. Byatt Page B

for her. I asked her how much writing she had lately done, and she laughed, and said she was learning so much, so very much, and when it was all learned she should have new matter to write about and many new things to say. And she kissed me, and called me her dear Blanche, and said I knew she was a good girl, and very strong, and not foolish. I said we were all, all foolish, and in need of divine strength to help us out when we were weak. She said she had never so much felt its presence, its immediacy, as lately. I went up to my bedchamber and prayed, as I have not prayed—from desolation—since I prayed to leave Mrs Teape’s house and thought I should never be answered. The candle flame ran huge shadows like grasping fingers across the ceiling in the draught. I could put some such running, grasping lines of light and shadow around Nimue and Merlin. She came in to me as I knelt there and raised me up, and said we
must never quarrel
and that she would never, ever, give me cause to doubt her, and I must not suppose she could. I am sure she meant whatshe said. She was agitated; there were a few tears. We were quiet together, in our special ways, for a long time.
    Next day:
    The Wolf is Gone from the Door. Dog Tray’s hearth is his own. I have begun on the Lily Maid of Astolat, which suddenly seemed best.
    This writing ended, indeed the book ended, abruptly, not even at the end of the year. Roland wondered if there were other diaries. He put little slips of paper in the entries that made up his fragile narrative or non-narrative. There was no evidence to connect the Prowler with the letter-writer, or the letter-writer with Randolph Henry Ash, and yet he felt a powerful conviction that all three were one and the same. If they were, would not Blanche have said so? He must ask Maud Bailey about the Prowler, yet how could he do so without coming clean in some way—about his own interest in the matter? And exposing himself to that censorious and supercilious gaze?
    Maud Bailey put her head round the door.
    “Library’s closing. Did you find anything?”
    “I think so. It may be all in my own head. There are things I need to ask someone, you. Is it permitted to photocopy the manuscript? I simply haven’t had time to copy out what I’ve found. I—”
    “You seem to have had a profitable afternoon.” Drily. Then, as a concession, “Exciting, even.”
    “I don’t
know
. The whole thing is a wild-goose chase.”
    “If I can help—” said Maud, having packed away Blanche’s pages into their box. “I shall be only too happy. Let’s have coffee. There’s an SCR Coffee place in the Women’s Studies block.”
    “Am I allowed in?”
    “Naturally,” said the frigid voice.

    They sat down at a low table in the corner, under a poster for the Campus Crèche and facing posters for the Pregnancy Advisory Service—“A woman has a right to decide about her own body. We put women first”—and a Feminist Revue: “Come and see the Sorcieres, the Vamps, the daughters of Kali and the Fatae Morganae. We’ll make your blood run cold and make you laugh on the Sinister side of your face at Women’s Wit and Wickedness.” The room was largely uninhabited: a group of women in jeans were laughing in the opposite corner, and two girls were in earnest conversation by the window, pink spiky heads leaning together. Maud Bailey’s excessive elegance was even odder in this context. She was a most untouchable woman. Roland discerned in her a rigorous sense of correctness, or justice, which made her trustworthy, but would likely cause her to disapprove of his own behavior about the letters. Nevertheless, he had decided desperately to gamble on showing her the Xeroxes of the letters because he must know about Christabel LaMotte, and something not himself drove him on. He was forced to lean forward in a kind of pseudo-intimacy and speak low.
    “You know this Prowler Blanche Glover got so worried about? Is anything known about him? The wolf