by David Storey
‘Yes. He’s just here.’ Elizabeth turned round with something of a dramatic gesture. The hallway, however, was deserted. ‘He was with me. He came down with me,’ she said, and for some reason looked over in the direction where she’d last seen Tolson. He too had disappeared.
The confusion amongst the family, not least Alex’s protest at his nephew’s continued absence, was further accentuated by the photographer who, his face inflamed as though he were directing his anger against John himself, was shouting, ‘Could you come and resolve this matter of precedent, sir? Everyone insists on being closest to the family when the photograph is taken. And God knows, half of them aren’t even distantly related.’
As her father pushed his way among the arguing group, Elizabeth suddenly saw Tolson standing now under the nearest of the trees opposite them and, from his expression, evidently enjoying the situation. His arms folded and his head bent to one side, he seemed to be smiling directly at her. He was obviously on his way home from work. Behind him and to either side the spectators, mainly women and children and a few elderly men, had begun to move forward, apparently encouraged by his confidence.
Leonard had in fact followed Elizabeth to the door only to see, the moment he stepped onto the porch, Tolson facing him under the trees. Everyone else had had their backs to him and the familiarity of that face, distant as it was and shrouded by shadow, had made him recoil as if he had been touched.
Yet it was not so much Tolson’s appearance itself that had made him retreat unobtrusively into the hall, as the rather helpless attitude of his father beyond the silhouette of whose head Tolson was significantly visible. In the noise and confusion his father stood quite still as if drained of all enthusiasm for something which, modestly enough, he had looked forward to with some expectation. As though propelled by the clamour itself Leonard had turned back up the stairs.
As he did so he had had the distinct impression that someone was scrambling hastily up the stairs ahead of him. When he reached the first floor, however, the only people in sight were the caterers. The York Room had now been fully arranged, the tables and chairs set out in a T-shape and laid for the meal. The food itself was in an adjoining room waiting to be served. Two men who hadn’t gone downstairs for the photograph were standing at the far end of the room talking to the waiters and drinking.
One of them said, ‘I didn’t want to distress her, so I just did it as though nothing had happened.’
Leonard climbed to the second floor, then by a narrower staircase to the top. Again he had the impression of someone hurrying ahead of him, and when he reached the final landing he thought he detected voices in one of the rooms that led away to his right. He stood listening for some time. The noise persisted from below, its dissonant effect accompanied by the stifling smell of warm food mingled with the more permanent odour of decay.
He moved down the passage to his right. It led into the older part of the building: a long gallery which flanked the western side and was illuminated along its entire length by mullion windows. As he entered this impressive room he passed a much smaller room to his right which overlooked the rear of the house. Its single window was shuttered but sufficient light penetrated from the rooms opposite to indicate two struggling figures.
As he stepped into the doorway he saw that in fact it was two boys fighting, welded together as if they had been flung at one another by some preternatural force. They rolled together on the floor grunting and snarling and, so far as he knew, unaware that they were observed. He stood there for what seemed a considerable time, yet when he suddenly went into the gallery and looked down at the front of the house he discovered that the group below was more or less in the same confusion as before.
He was just beginning to wonder why he hadn’t interfered in the peculiarly bitter struggle when his father stepped down from the porch and crossed over to the nearest group of spectators. A moment later they began to move away. The photographer had taken one photograph now, perhaps more, for he was standing with another man looking down at the camera suspended over his stomach, making some adjustments to it.
At first the guests watched his father’s effort to dislodge the spectators with some amusement. The majority of them had already disappeared under the trees, but several retreated only a few paces, and one man in particular, dressed in overalls, refused to move at all. For a moment he and his father were engaged in a fierce argument. Then his father suddenly appeared to recognise someone standing close by him under the trees. He paused, hesitated, and without offering another word to the workman turned back to the porch.
Yet as he did so a figure leapt down the steps and, evidently inspired by some insult shouted by the workman, hurried up to him and smashed him violently in the face. It was done so confidently and quickly, and with such power, that the workman fell over on his side. Before he could rise he was grasped by the collar of his overalls, half-dragged to his knees, then flung towards the trees. Leonard now recognised the figure as that of his uncle, Alex.
The guests were silent. Behind him Leonard could hear the fierce sounds of the struggling boys. Below him everyone was watching Alex with fixed attention. Only the photographer had his back to his uncle, and appeared to be staring at the crowd with frustration. Half way across the terrace, and standing quietly resigned was his father. He was staring towards the trees as Alex turned his attention from the workman to argue ferociously with someone who remained hidden under the foliage. From his father’s expression Leonard knew that this could be only one person.
His uncle turned back confidently to the party, and from the activity around the porch it was obvious that this final intruder too had been dealt with effectively. People began to move into the building. Leonard gazed across at the summits of the trees below which he knew Tolson must be making his way back to the road. It was as if he expected those browning canopies to burst into flame. Behind him one of the boys cried out. The sound was followed a moment later by a rapid and bewildering succession of blows. He doubted at first whether the sounds could be those of a fist, but when the cries suddenly increased he turned round.
As he hurried to the door he had the distinct impression that the gallery was lined with paintings. This curious sensation lasted scarcely the seconds it took him to cross to the door, and was merged in what he had just witnessed outside and by the sounds which came from the next room. The next thing, he was standing at the door of the small, dimly-lit room and staring in at its confused interior. The room, however, as he confirmed when he stepped inside, was empty.
Thinking that he might have mistaken the entrance, he hurriedly looked inside the next two rooms in the passage. They too were deserted. No sound at all disturbed the upper floor. When he reached the stairs and looked down he could only hear the preliminary sounds of the party ascending to the York Room. He could distinguish his aunt’s excited voice, then what he imagined to be Alex replying.
For some time he stood peering down the empty staircase until the crash of cutlery and plates, the scraping of chairs and the intrusive murmur of people became so loud that he was compelled to move away down the passage, back towards the gallery. He paced up and down in a state of extreme agitation and indecision. Then, finally, he stopped and swung round and, quite still, began to examine the pale, irregular rectangles of sunlight on the wall.
22
An argument had broken out at the top table, which was formed by the transverse section of the T. John had refused to sit at the very centre, the junction of the two rows of tables, and for a while the chair had remained empty. Then, as the result of popular appeal, it was decided that the old man should sit there.
He had in fact within a very short time of his appearance become a favourite figure, largely because he seemed the only person genuinely oblivious of the increasing abnormality of the proceedings. Something of its incongruous nature had begun to creep in from those who, on the fringes of the party, had been embarrassed by Alex’s display of violence outside. The paradox of
soberly dressed people celebrating in a room which to a stranger’s eyes was a model of decay might at first have been amusing; but now that the occasion had been solemnised, first by Alex’s gesture, then by the Provost’s rueful incantation of grace, a sort of self-consciousness, an uncertain awareness of morbidity and intenseness, had reduced the initial spontaneity to a low and suspicious murmur. The old man, however, was extremely relaxed and indeed seemed almost familiar with the extraordinary environment, even provoking some amusement by his reaction to the deportment of the waiter who served him. It was rumoured that in his early youth he had been a retainer at the Place.
The murmur of conversation had now sunk to a level where it was easily dominated by the sound of cutlery and plates and the quiet orders which sent the waiters moving to and from different parts of the room. John, tense and withdrawn, sat as the focus of this subdued party, occasionally raising his head to smile at Stella or to acknowledge some casual remark from Austen, who seemed unaware of the atmosphere and chatted to those on his right and left as if all were going off as he had intended.
Then, when it seemed that some intrusion by John was inevitable, the doors, which had been closed against the draughts of the building, were pushed open, and Leonard entered.
Conversation, already considerably diminished, stopped abruptly. Those with their backs to the newcomer turned to stare over their shoulders; those facing him peered with a kind of inscrutable curiosity; the waiters stood erect in almost parodied attitudes of respect. Intensely pale, and with a ferocious look in his dark eyes, Leonard entered and walked down the length of the room. Alex, who rose to greet him with extreme and sudden affability, he acknowledged with a slight, awkward bow; once seated, he gazed down at the table with an expression which, to the surprise and the concealed amusement of some, was unmistakably one of acute embarrassment. His face slowly coloured until, raising his head slightly, he glanced up from beneath his dark brows as if to confirm that he was still the centre of attention.
Alex, however, seemed the one to be most surprised by his behaviour. He glanced at Austen as though in some way he had been deceived; then, as if such shyness were itself contagious, he sat looking at his nephew with a faint blush on his own determined features. Only when a waiter approached and asked what Leonard would like did Alex relax with some commentary on the choice of food. He watched his nephew acutely.
Conversation restarted. The red-faced photographer had suddenly reappeared and backed into a corner, peering into the top of his camera. Apparently having taken one photograph very quickly he suddenly turned to the window beside him and, after a lengthy struggle with the catch, opened it and stood breathing deeply. From some distant corner of the Place came the sound of breaking glass, like a stone penetrating a window, but although several heads turned at the noise, in the rising tide of animation that had begun to sweep the room no one gave it any real attention. Suddenly there was a burst of laughter.
As though resenting any detraction of interest from himself, the old man had risen from his place at the centre of the top table and was now making gestures in the direction of the photographer, whom he obviously had some difficulty in seeing. Reassured by sounds of amusement, he began the difficult feat of climbing onto his chair which, despite the discouragement of those on either side, he eventually accomplished. Balanced precariously above the table he now gave his gestures freer reign, increasing them in scale and variation, and bringing from his audience cries of ‘Good old Arthur!… Come on, Arthur!’
Interspersed with demands for the photographer who was now making frantic adjustments to the lenses of his camera, the old man’s gestures gradually matured into those of an unmistakable obscenity, a kind of unwitting insolence that was heightened by suggestive undulations of his emaciated body. As he gyrated precariously on the narrow pivot of his chair his gesticulations attained an almost rhythmical frenzy, until they were abruptly terminated by a loud and unnaturally prolonged emission of wind.
The photographer now found that all eyes and interest had reverted to him. It was as if he had been the real centre of curiosity all along. For a moment he occupied himself with a large attachment protruding from the front of his camera, then began to wander slowly round the tables sighting the instrument at various groups of the party. By this time the old man had returned to his chair and, considerably flushed, was grinning cheerfully at his closest neighbours and nodding his head as if in satisfaction at his recent display. A moment later John rose to his feet, banged the table erratically with his spoon, and announced that Austen would make a preliminary speech on behalf of the hosts.
His brother rose with notes in one hand, his glasses, which he seldom if ever wore in public, in the other, and a certain calm, almost mischievous expression on his face, which he turned first on John, then on his audience at large. He spoke briefly and concisely about the history of the family and the Place, tracing in its struggles the battle between on the one hand its strong puritan and republican character, and on the other certain catholic and royalist sympathies which had never quite abated. He spoke of the Civil War, and its division of the family, as if it were an event that had taken place only in recent years. It was an ambiguity that was never really resolved, so that when he eventually referred to Leonard as ‘that one person whom we must now impress not only with the weight and the significance of his inheritance, but with his obligation to respect and to uphold those traditions which in a decaying world the family has struggled to maintain’, no one was quite sure whether to interpret this as an ironical comment deserving laughter or as a serious if inelegant attempt to retrieve for the party some sort of dignity and purpose. As Leonard began to rise during the hesitant burst of applause which ended Austen’s speech, his father stood very quickly and, raising his hand, began to respond to the toast of the family which Austen had proposed.
John spoke hurriedly, almost incoherently, as though activated by some kind of shock, glancing whenever he paused in Austen’s direction and driven on it seemed by the open curiosity that began to centre on Leonard. Eventually, however, he was distracted by sounds which rose from the old man’s direction: they might have been the mumbling of words or even a more generalised indication of boredom, a noise like a low and persistent groan. The guests refrained from acknowledging it by avoiding the spot with their eyes.
Then a loud and certainly more familiar sound came from the elderly guest. It lasted several seconds, was interrupted, then continued at a slightly higher and more penetrating pitch, wailing off into a distant moan like a faint and derisive echo of itself. Such a versatile demonstration of his powers the old man himself seemed incapable of resisting and, to suppressed murmurs from his audience, he half-rose from his seat.
Whether he was about to speak or not they never discovered, for the next moment the upward motion of his head changed to a slow, parabolic descent, and he crashed forward into a bowl of fruit and cream which lay on the table before him.
The hideous repression of amusement could no longer be restrained, and with guilty looks at their host who, strangely, was holding one hand to his eyes, they burst into loud and uproarious laughter – expressing their concern, however, by standing up and preparing to go to the old man’s help. But what stimulated their laughter, driving it on to fresh peaks of hilarity, was that he persisted in keeping his head immersed. It was only when Alex, sternly immune to the mood of the room, reached across and lifted that ancient skull and peered into its whitened face, that it became apparent that things were not quite what they had seemed. Within a moment, and before the real climax of laughter had passed or the photographer, who had already taken several pictures, had had time to adjust his lenses, Alex announced that the old man was dead.
At the same moment that the murmurous shock swept through the room, Leonard stood up and, as though it had been at the back of his mind the whole time, turned and walked stiffly over to the fireplace where, peculiarly erect, he stood gazing intently at the figure carved in relief. It
seemed a genuine moment of distraction as though noticing the conclusion of the meal, he had excused himself and gone over to investigate something which until now etiquette had prevented him doing. Genuine, that is, but for a certain stiffness, most conspicuous in the erectness of his head and shoulders.
Meanwhile the Provost had taken charge of the body, discouraging Isabel’s more extreme attempts to confirm the absence of life, and calling on the robust photographer to supervise the clearing of the room. Alex had gone to the door, taking Matthew with him, to drive down to the nearest call-box on the estate. John and Stella stood silently to one side as the Provost laid the body on the floor and knelt beside it. They seemed absent-minded, expressionless. Yet a moment later there appeared on John’s face a strange, almost strangled look of elation.
Austen had gone over to Leonard, standing behind him a moment, then suddenly touching his shoulder reflectively. Leonard swayed slightly as the tension immediately left his body in an attitude of physical exhaustion. Only as he went towards the door did he seem to notice the old man and the group collected around him and, pausing a moment as though to reassure himself that they no longer required his assistance, he left the room.
23
‘It’s very difficult to describe,’ John said, ‘but about three days ago I had an extraordinary experience. Well.…’ He paused, waiting.
A reading lamp illuminated Leonard’s head, holding it within its red glow. He lay on his bed gazing up at the ceiling.
For a moment John looked round the room as though to discover some object that might make the incident more accessible to Leonard. Outside it was dusk. A faint murmur came from the yard below where the last group of guests stood talking on the lawn. Further away there was the roar of an engine. Then a car moved off rapidly, down through the estate.