Green, grey and pink movement fills the world of generous floor-to-ceiling window out of which the father looks. From where he sits, on a lounge chair inside the glass—reading a book and occasionally looking up to enjoy the view—the movement is silent but of great depth and rhythm, so powerful that the branches of a large box tree are swaying and so subtle that the occasional flutter of hanging strands of dark green Jasmine, which are closest to the window, are barely noticeable. Those strands lean out of much heavier ropes of entwined runners and fairy light cables where the lights burn like jewels now that evening is about to close in.
The whole arrangement of vines is symmetrical: falling straight, thick and dark on each side of the window and thin and curtained in the middle like the brushed and woven hair of some invisible goddess bride who stares out of her veil at the father while he, not thinking about that yet, simply enjoys the well-formed herringbon-ed ribs of Jasmine leaves and further out through the veil, hot pink roses high up on their thorny stems, looking up at a grey sky.
The shiver and sway makes the father think more deeply about what is happening in his book where a young woman has come back from the world of the dead to seek reconciliation with another young woman. But time is running out. Here in the bedroom of their meeting, the first young woman is about to be subjected to a 'final operation' by her father who is acquiring mastery of the underworld via his black magical experiments.
This other father in his lounge chair is torn between the rich and vibrant scene out there and what is about to happen between the two women in the book. The book wins:
'Betty sat up. Bright in the shadow her eyes opened on Lester, tender and full of laughter. She pushed the bed clothes back, swung out her legs and sat on the side of the bed. She said, 'Hello Lester what are you doing here?' The voice was full of warm welcome; Lester heard it incredulously. Betty went on. 'It's nice to see you anyway. How are you?'
Lester had waited for something but hardly for this. She had not begun to expect it but then she had never seen face to face, this other Betty who had gone almost dancing through the City, nor guessed the pure freshness of joy natural to the City… She knew at once that a greater than she was here; it was no wonder that she had been sent here for help. She looked at the girl sitting on the bed, whose voice was the only sound bar Evelyn's that had pierced her nothing since she had died, and she said, hoping that the other might also perhaps hear, 'Not too frightfully well.'
Betty had risen to her feet as Lester spoke. She looked as if she was about to go to the window but on Lester's words she said, 'What's the matter? Can I do anything?'
Lester looked at her, there was no doubt that this was Betty: light and free, joyous, revitalised, but still Betty. This was no sorrowing impotence of misery, it was an ardor of willingness to help. Yet to ask for help was not easy. The sense of fatal judgement was still present … but to ask that this be set aside, even to plead was not natural to Lester. But her need was too great for her to delay.
She said at once, 'Yes you can.'
Betty smiled and answered, 'That's alright. Tell me about it.'
Lester said rather hopelessly, 'It's those times … at school … and afterwards.'
'Those times at school? But Lester I always liked you at school.'
'Perhaps you did. But you may remember that I didn't behave as if I particularly liked you.'
'Oh didn't you? I know you didn't particularly want me, but why should you?' I was so much younger and … I expect, a nuisance. As far as I can remember you put up with me nobly. … Need we? It's so lovely of you to come and see me now.'
Lester realised that this was going to be worse than she had supposed. She had prepared herself to ask for forgiveness but that it seemed was not enough.
