by David Storey
Kathleen still lay on the floor, her head averted as though driven back by force.
‘It was Tolson. He was at the window,’ Leonard said, sobbing.
Kathleen suddenly stood up. She tried to loosen her skirt which was twisted tightly around her waist.
‘Tolson where? You imagined it.’
At that moment Tolson reappeared at the window, smoking and gazing in at them, a thoughtful expression turning to a shy smile. He nodded at them briefly, then glanced down at Kathleen.
For a moment he continued to look at them, slowly removing the cigarette from his lips. Only half-revealed through the window, he appeared like some imaginary embodiment, fixed there. When suddenly he moved away it was without apparent effort, so that he seemed to be propelled by some impersonal force.
Leonard, his shoulders shuddering, had sat down. Intermittently a more violent spasm swept through his body, so that his head was flung from side to side.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kathleen said. ‘What does it matter? He only saw that. Why, it’s an everyday occurrence.’
Her bitterness had returned with greater stridency. She strode over to the window and looked out. ‘It’s just a thing men and women do, unimaginative, tedious. Any fool can do it. Why should it be so important? Now we’re rid of it, what does it matter? What does it matter if he saw? Why, in a minute I expect he’ll be striding in here and waiting for me to flop down again on my back.’ She laughed, looking round at Leonard. ‘And the amusing thing is that I would. I think I would. If he strides in this next minute I’ll entertain you with exactly the same display. Perhaps you’ll be able to pick up a few tips.’
Leonard, his hands clenched between his knees, gazed down at the floor, shivering.
‘Where’s your brave talk of yesterday?’ She went and stood beside him. ‘Didn’t you feel anything?’ she asked quietly. ‘I mean, can’t you do anything in that way?’
‘It was Tolson.’
‘But what does that matter? In any case.… It’s done. I only wanted to show you.’
‘Show me what?’ he said without raising his head.
‘No. No, of course. It was nothing. Perhaps you didn’t realise how crude, how much cruder in fact I am than my father. At least, he and I are matched in that respect.’ She watched him intently, as though for some sign. ‘But that little act we’ve just committed, it was merely to indicate to you how destitute I am. What would you want from me now?’
He didn’t answer. For a moment she stared down at his bowed head with increasing wildness. Then suddenly she knelt down and pressed her face feverishly between his thighs.
Leonard sprang up. He seemed flung apart. He leaned against the wall and fastened his clothes.
Kathleen crouched forward over the chair where Leonard had been sitting and cradled her head in her arms. ‘It’s quite true. My father arranged this meeting with the best intentions. Hoping that it might achieve something. Yet, despite that, he couldn’t help himself telling Tolson. And telling him knowingly. Knowing that he’d come here. Don’t you think that’s very strange? Perhaps he wanted it to be a disaster from the start. He wanted to be rid of you yet couldn’t bear to rid himself of me!’
‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand.’
She raised her head and looked directly at Leonard. ‘Can’t you explain that? Why he should want both things?’ And when he simply shook his head she added, ‘I could tell you, of course. But I shan’t. The only thing is, I’m exactly the same. I would have married you. I would. Yet somehow, I’d have made sure I didn’t. You see, we’re bound together like steel. And not one of us will split. You’ll see. You’ll see. One day you’ll see. And now you must go.’
She stood up and went straight to the door, tugging at her skirt irritatedly as she did so. She hurried out of the room into the kitchen and a moment later reappeared. In her hand was a small knife. She picked up his raincoat, thrust it into his hands and half-led, half-pulled him to the door. In the hallway she stopped and pulled open the front door.
‘You must never see me again. Do you understand?’
When he didn’t reply she caught his arms and shook him. ‘Do you understand! You mustn’t see me again!’
Suddenly she raised her hand, and lifting the knife slit open the ball of her thumb. A stream of blood sprang out. ‘Do you understand! You mustn’t see me again!’
Leonard stood gazing at her without moving. Then, with a stiffened gesture, almost a caricature of obeisance, he leaned forward and kissed the furled ridge of the wound. The hand was lowered beneath the weight of his head. Then it was pressed against his mouth.
They stood, caught in the action, without moving. Then Leonard slowly raised his face. He frowned slightly. Kathleen started laughing.
‘Oh, God. You fool. You poor fool!’ She held her hands to her cheeks as she laughed.
His mouth was enlarged by a crimson stain, clown-like, oddly disjointed. He swung round and stumbled down the steps. When he reached the road he heard the sound of her laughter joined by several others. He saw Tolson, and then Blakeley, standing in the road laughing. Though not, it seemed, so much at him as at some allusion that had passed privately between them. They stood quite close together, looking into each other’s faces.
Yet, as he hurried up the road, they began to follow him. And at such a pace that Tolson, who had easily outstripped the limping Blakeley, soon caught him up. For a while he walked closely behind Leonard, breathing heavily, occasionally half-groaning, half-murmuring or laughing to himself, yet never varying the distance that separated them. Then, as they reached the church immediately below the Place, he grasped Leonard’s arm. He caught him more firmly by the shoulders and, almost lifting him from the ground, spun him round.
‘Well? Are you satisfied?’ he said, staring madly now into Leonard’s face. And then, glancing back and observing Blakeley’s approach, he wrenched Leonard aside. ‘Come on. We’ll go in here,’ he said, ‘away from that limping fool,’ and taking a firmer grip on Leonard’s shoulder, led him into the church.
20
‘I didn’t want to go.’
‘Why did you?’
Tolson, with the weight of his body, had almost carried Leonard into the pew. He sat beside him, his tall figure scarcely revealed above the high back of the seat which concealed Leonard completely.
Beyond them, where the choir raised itself by a flight of steps above the narrow nave, the darkness was relieved by several white figures, recumbent beneath the smooth, blackened arches and the dull, ochre-eroded walls. The columns of the arches shone, as if stroked to their luminous blackness by hands, a greasy affection; the weight of the stone was lightened and the shadow of the roof suspended over rather than upheld by the stone girths. The light flowed in through five stained-glass windows on either side of the nave, the beams almost meeting in two dull waves, yet separated by a narrow band of shadow that drew a common ground round the feet of the central pillars, and around the figures of Leonard and Tolson themselves.
For a while they sat in silence, Leonard gazing fixedly into the darkness by his feet; Tolson peering, not into his face, but at a point just beyond the profile of Leonard’s head. Here a blackened wooden figure struggled from the structure at the end of the pew. Its tiny face was wrenched upwards, its eyes bulbous with some inarticulate labour, its teeth crumbled, half-formed pegs set round a tongue like rope. Tolson’s figure, as he gazed at it, seemed to grow out of the pew.
Leonard flinched. Tolson had stood up. Limping towards them was Blakeley. He too started with surprise as the head and then the massive shoulders rose like an uncanny edifice from the terrace of the pew.
‘Oh!’ Blakeley said. Then recovering, he looked round the dark interior. ‘It’s like a museum, wouldn’t you say?’ he suddenly stated. He took out a cigarette which, plainly, he had lighted just outside the door. He plucked it from his mouth, glancing quickly at Tolson, then more certainly at the several effigies and carvings that characteri
sed this section of the church. His raincoat hung loosely, like a second, redundant skin from his bony shoulders. ‘Quite a collection. All yours, I presume?’ he said to Leonard who, however, scarcely raised his head. Blakeley laughed, a high, shrill sound.
Tolson had begun to pace up and down the aisle, his hands thrust into his pockets, staring at the ground, his figure passing and re-passing the columns of light that slanted down from the narrow windows. Blakeley continued to glance at him, but with an increasingly nervous expression. Nevertheless, he went on speaking in a relatively calm and reflective voice. ‘Do you realise the unusual thing about the altar ornaments? I mean the silver ware, of course. It’s Spanish of the seventeenth century yet made of beaten metal, and not castings. It’s extremely rare. The candelabra, though, are made of brass. William Howard of Exeter. A craftsman and nothing more. The Last Judgement there, Italian, early sixteenth century, as are the carved reliefs. They’re German.’
Tolson had suddenly stopped his pacing. He was staring at Blakeley with a ferocious intensity.
‘It’s a strange museum,’ Blakeley went on, ‘idolatrous for such a puritan family. That is, for people of such inward and not outward graces. Look. “Orate pro anima Thome Radcliffe militis qui hanc capellam fieri anno Domini 1477”.’ He gestured at the vast white effigy of a knight which, hands poised in prayer above its slenderly featured face, lay like a metal pod between adjacent columns of the central row of arches. Blakeley’s Latin was fluent. ‘Have you attended a service here recently?’ He glanced at Leonard’s bowed head. However, he gave no response. ‘There were seven of us. Five women, a child and me. Oh, I’m not complaining. But imagine. This church was built to serve the spiritual needs of one family, and now it’s sufficient to serve the similar needs of twenty thousand.’
He laughed again. Then coughed. He dropped his cigarette and stood on it. For a moment he seemed to rise in the air as his toe swivelled on the ground. Then he glanced up once more, desperately, at Tolson.
His eyes dropped. He looked at Leonard, licked his lips, and began to limp away. He reached the yellow cone of light that filtered through the open door and, without turning again, disappeared outside.
Tolson’s head had slowly reared itself towards the vault of the ceiling. He gazed up, his mouth peculiarly open. Then he screamed: ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ The sound was strangely dull, as though buried in wood.
Leonard stood up. He attempted to follow Blakeley to the door. Tolson quickly stepped into his way.
‘You know the thing about Blakeley?’ he said, staring at Leonard’s eyes. ‘Do you know? Do you realise? He wants to get rid of you, yet he wants you to save him as well. You. He wants you to save him! He’s mad.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t you think so?’ His amused eyes continued to stare into Leonard’s for some time. ‘Do you know that he came and told me about you seeing Kathleen this afternoon? He told me even before he’d written the letter inviting you there. He wrote it knowing I’d be there! He wanted to get rid of you, yet he can’t bear to lose Kathleen. And he hasn’t any real hatred or badness inside him so he does both things. And bang! They cancel each other out. Can you believe it? He’s mad!’ He watched Leonard a moment longer. ‘Has he ever told you about this peculiar relationship he has with Kathleen?’ Leonard didn’t answer. ‘Do you know, he even told me to go and look in the window.’
Tolson laughed more heavily now, yet scarcely taking his eyes from Leonard.
Suddenly Leonard said quietly, ‘We mustn’t fight. We mustn’t.’
‘Fight? How do you mean? I’m not fighting.’
‘Why must you always live through your gestures. Why can’t you live through what you are?’
‘What I am?’
‘Why are you afraid of your feelings? They’re not wrong. They’re not wrong. They’re not things to abuse, or to despise. They’re you. Why must you always destroy them? Why are you always trying to destroy me?’
‘I don’t want to destroy you.…’
‘You make these situations. It’s as if you’re afraid of loving. Of loving. Of any feeling at all.’
Tolson had begun to smile again.
Leonard stared at him intensely a moment. Then he half-sprang at him. He clutched Tolson to him and kissed his open mouth.
Tolson yielded. Then he flung Leonard back. ‘What!…’ He stared incoherently at him.
Leonard turned and walked slowly up the aisle. Occasionally he paused, glancing at the carvings on either side until, as he reached the choir, he looked back. Tolson hadn’t moved. His huge figure stood solidly amongst the shadows of the nave.
Leonard moved on until, finally confronted by the altar, he turned round.
Tolson had mounted between the choir stalls and was gazing at him with the same fixed, uncomprehending look. His features, in the faint light, seemed rammed apart: absurd protuberances bolted disjointedly to his face.
Yet, when he reached Leonard, he stood massively over him as if completely unable to express any of his feelings. His shoulders mounted, his fists were slowly clenched, and he stood over Leonard in a shaking, helpless agitation.
‘You! You understand nothing of me!’
‘You’re afraid.’ Leonard’s eyes seemed driven back into his skull.
‘Afraid!’
‘You’re afraid of any absolute thing. You’re afraid of anything that’s complete. That’s whole. Anything that takes the whole of you!’
Tolson suddenly leaned his head back. He seemed stunned. Then, with a prodigious lunge of his arm, he swept the metal ornaments across the surface of the altar beyond Leonard’s head. They crashed against the wall and the floor, spattering and splaying out like shrapnel. ‘You know nothing!’
Suddenly he grasped Leonard’s wrist and, as Leonard cried out, covered his mouth with his own. The whole of Tolson’s body seemed centred on the wrist, bowed, stooping towards it as his fingers forced open the skin. For a moment he withdrew, listening to Leonard’s cry. Then, curving his body more leniently, he enclosed Leonard fully, pulling him between his thighs and locking him securely. Together, with Leonard’s smothered cries, they swayed hip to hip, swung to and fro like a huge and single pendulum, their mouths pressed against each other’s. Their shadow fled across the empty surface beyond their heads.
Tolson paused. He tightened his grip. Between his lips came a fresh suffusion of cries. He gazed into Leonard’s face: mouth, eyes, nose, head were flung back in a shriek of pain and, driving home his thumb and finger against the pierced wrist, he tenderly covered with kisses the screaming face.
When he released him the full weight of Leonard’s body fell into his arms. He held him there, gazing now almost abstractedly, half-dazed, into Leonard’s face: it was screwed in an intent frown, the eyes closed, almost sleeping. He kissed the swollen lids. Small vibrations drew the broken body up. He released him, watching morosely, jealous it seemed of such private pain and such private consolation, as Leonard stooped over his wounded wrist, crying now, with a whimpered breath.
Then, as Leonard turned, he turned too, and together, they moved down to the aisle. Neither spoke until they had almost reached the door. Then Tolson said, ‘If you’re frightened of me now, what will you be like in three or even two weeks’ time?’ Yet Leonard only gave him a sunken look, torn, and half-appealing, and without another word Tolson hurried to the door.
Standing there, in the now diminishing shaft of light, was a figure whom clearly Tolson couldn’t recognise. He paused, glancing round quickly at Leonard as though in some way betrayed. Then he approached the door very slowly, nodding his head in some uncertain gesture of introduction.
Leonard, with a similar shock, had identified the intruder, and for a while he stopped and gazed about him as though deliberately to postpone the inevitable encounter. Occasionally he glanced over to where the intruder’s head moved slowly above the high backs of the pews. It possessed, isolated like this, a strange though remote sense of threat. It was his sister, Elizabeth.
Af
ter a hesitant introduction, she now stood talking to Tolson, looking round at the interior, her arm raised to indicate something of interest. She was laughing at some allusion of Tolson’s. For a moment the sounds of his voice and hers were joined. It was only as they turned towards the door that they appeared to remember Leonard and, glancing round, Elizabeth called his name.
When he emerged from the church the brightness burned his eyes. A shower of torn paper fluttered round his head as he heard Blakeley’s laughing voice, ‘Oh, isn’t he lovely! Isn’t he lovely!’ Then he felt someone take him roughly by the shoulder, and a voice hissed in his ear, ‘There! I hope you’ll live a long and happy life, and may all your troubles be little ones!’ He recognised Blakeley’s laughter again, beside him, and, further away, Elizabeth’s and Tolson’s.
He looked blindly in the direction of the row of houses which separated the church from the Place. Gradually he was able to make out various figures.
Standing by the low stone wall close to the porch was a single figure, and beyond, by the wooden gate that opened onto the estate road itself, he recognised Tolson and Elizabeth. They were still talking and, apparently, completely absorbed in one another. In the roadway several women had stopped to watch as though an event had taken place.
As Leonard stepped from the porch Blakeley moved in front of him and began to walk towards the gate. At a point roughly halfway between Leonard and Tolson he stopped and turned round.
‘Have you ever actually witnessed a miracle?’ he said to Leonard, who still appeared dazed by the light. ‘Have you?’ He waited for a reply.
Blinking his eyes as though awakening from a dream, Leonard gestured at him as if both to apologise for his inattention and to discourage any interest in his condition.
Blakeley glanced up at the church, now fiercely illuminated in the late afternoon sun and, without changing his expression, added, ‘You remember that slight physical impediment I had?’ He had begun to walk round Leonard without limping. ‘Well, it’s suddenly been cured! Don’t you think it’s incredible!’ Yet, despite his anxiety to attract Leonard’s attention, he was watching Tolson who stood disregardingly several yards away. ‘No! I mustn’t go giving you illusions,’ Blakeley suddenly laughed, catching Leonard’s arm. ‘I only limp as an affectation. An important and very necessary affectation, albeit, but nevertheless, an affectation. I’m sorry, by the way, about Kathleen. I’m very bad at these sort of things.’ He added the last sentence without any change of inflexion in his voice, and without even any change of expression, and went on in a slightly more cheerful tone, ‘Perhaps I ought to have told you. I get moods. Moods when I have to do it. I have to! Can you understand that? The limping, I mean. It makes me look slightly pitiable, don’t you think? Nothing much. Just the right touch.’ He suddenly leaned forward and patted Leonard’s cheek. ‘Oh, what a blushing bride! How I wish I was young all over again. I’d show you!’ He burst into laughter and, moving backwards, led Leonard towards the gate.