Radcliffe

by David Storey

  ‘I was going down the drive towards the gates,’ John suddenly added, ‘when I just happened to look up to the right. To where the wall dips slightly beside the road. There were two people walking towards each other. I couldn’t hear them, because the sound was muffled by the wall, so I don’t know what it was that actually made me look up. And I couldn’t see them either. Except of course for their heads. I just saw the two heads approaching each other along the top of the wall. One was a man, the other a woman. And they were both about fifty, perhaps slightly more. Then, just when it seemed they’d crash into each other, they suddenly paused and, after a moment, kissed each other on the cheek. It was extraordinary. But do you know, for that second I was filled with absolute terror.’

  Leonard scarcely moved. He gave no indication that he had even heard. Then he coughed, and his body appeared for a moment to be flung loosely against the bed.

  ‘It’s odd. I mean, at first I thought it must be something in the two people themselves, or just a bizarre impression created by the obstacle of the wall. But then yesterday I was digging in the grounds for some humus, under the beech trees at the far side, when I moved some leaves aside and uncovered a plant growing there. It was whitish-green, just a thick, bulbous shoot. I was bending over it, looking at it, when I had exactly the same sensation. It seemed ages before I could even straighten my back. I was absolutely terrified. And for no reason at all.’

  He laughed rather helplessly and looked round the room. Then his gaze returned to Leonard as though it were Leonard himself who had been speaking.

  ‘Exactly the same thing occurred this morning. I was going past one of the rooms when I noticed that the floor at the opposite side, just beneath the window, was tilted slightly. That in fact the floor had subsided a fraction. And believe me, it froze me as though I’d seen an apparition. I don’t know how to describe it really. The sensation. It’s as if my skull had been peeled away and my brain exposed to a violent stream of cold air. Like being driven up off the ground, rammed up. And everything: it just seems hopeless, without any definition or purpose. I don’t know, but it’s like glimpsing something which you’ve sensed all along was there and which is only revealed in brief and particular moments.’

  He began to laugh quite freely, rubbing his hands along his thighs and gazing at Leonard, but blindly as if he were some inanimate thing on the bed, or at least something from which certainly he expected no response.

  ‘But of course it’s been a terrible day,’ he went on. ‘And that policeman asking questions as though the old man had been poisoned. I was completely deceived by Austen. You realise that. It’s quite incredible. I’ve even begun to think that the whole thing was a practical joke. Apparently the old man was once employed at the Place, and lived alone in one of those stone cottages at the top end of the estate. Austen, of course, pretends that he knew nothing about it.’

  He stood up suddenly: so quickly that Leonard flinched.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Leonard?’

  Leonard’s voice answered briefly out of the shadow.

  ‘I better go down, then. There are still people I should say good night to.’

  John went to the door. For a moment he waited there, chewing the inside of his cheek and staring down at his feet as though trying to recollect something: but a second later he closed the door and hurried down the landing.

  Yet no sooner had he reached the stairs than he paused again, turned round, and went back to Leonard’s room. He pushed open the door.

  ‘Are you sure? Is there anything you want?’

  Leonard hadn’t moved. The lamp was still alight, though his eyes were now closed. The light glistened round the lids as though only a moment before he had been crying.

  ‘Well, if there is nothing.…’ He waited with his hand on the door, half-leaning into the room. Then, nodding as though Leonard had indeed answered, he closed the door a second time and returned down the landing. He had begun to hum a tune.

  It was dark by the time the last guests left. Clouds flowed quickly across the narrow lip of the moon, roaring across the sky in nervous sheets of vapour, silently convulsed it seemed by some freakish disturbance of the air. As Elizabeth lighted Austen and Alex down the drive with an electric torch, Austen said, ‘I hope you won’t let it affect you so acutely, Elizabeth. I mean, your father seems to have taken it more to heart than anyone else.’

  ‘No.’ She was subdued.

  The three of them stood by the gate, Austen, herself and Alex, their feet contained within the single pool of light.

  ‘I’m afraid your father, although he could never admit it, tends to look on these events as tokens of some sort of deterministic force,’ Austen added. ‘Just as he tends to turn Leonard into some sort of mirror in which he can view his imperfections and disabilities, rather like a miser counting his money and assessing his wealth.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ Elizabeth said, ‘for he’s said much the same sort of thing about you. About the mirror, I mean, and Leonard.’

  ‘Oh has he?’

  But Alex had begun to laugh, and then Austen; they weren’t sure how serious Elizabeth had intended to be.

  ‘Well, remember what I said,’ Austen added. ‘Now off you go. Good night, Elizabeth.’

  She turned up the drive, hearing her uncles’ footsteps echoing amongst the houses. The light from the torch flowed evenly over the stone of the Place and all sounds were muffled. The pale circle assimilated twigs and leaves and stones in its enigmatic course. Yet, when it suddenly illuminated Tolson standing there, his body thrust out from a bush, her cry seemed half-expected.

  As she attempted to move past him he caught hold of her, with a kind of hesitant violence; she cried out and almost fell, her face turned up to his with a look of angered disbelief. The torch dropped and its light fled indecisively amongst the dead leaves. It filtered whitely and loosely over the grass and broken twigs.

  A single, loud stroke of a bell had made Leonard get up and look out of the window. By some mysterious orientation the sun was now shining directly at the northern flank of the Place and therefore straight into his window. It was a white ball of rabid intensity set against a smooth and impenetrably black sky. White drops fell from its phosphorescent interior, draining against the blackness until they touched the earth in luminous explosions.

  The next moment, it seemed, the Place itself spun round, swung ponderously on some central pivot of stone, for immediately below him appeared the valley, deeper now and darker, as though the river bed had been jaggedly gouged and, like a vast, black cell, the inside of the rock exposed. Black pygmies, with frozen limbs and faces, struggled up the heavy sides of this cavernous pit, ejected it seemed by the force of their wooden frenzy, and lit from below by intermittent lights that momentarily glistened on eyes and heads, their ropey tongues and polished hands, so that it was like a huge forest stirring beneath the shuttered face of the land. Yet the only sound, the solitary sound that escaped this pit was a simple, slight, nail-like scratching, an individual finger grazing a piece of wood. So strange and so deliberate that he spun round as though suddenly threatened from behind.

  He woke to find himself in complete darkness. He was turning onto his side as he came to his senses. Gradually the faint night glow of the estate was reflected in his window. He could still hear, however, the peculiar noise.

  Reaching out he switched on the small lamp by his bed. For a while he saw nothing unfamiliar, then his gaze was directed downwards by a slight movement on the floor.

  From a crack between two ill-fitting boards emerged an enormous beetle, so large that at first he thought it must be the gleaming surface of a shoe. Then two tendrils groped forward to hoist from the crevice the remainder of its prodigious body. The sound plainly came from the crackling of its hard shell against the rough edges of the wood.

  It stopped, perfectly still, perhaps distracted by the light. Intermingled with the blackness was a rich crimson sheen. He stared at it in terr
or. It was quite close to the bed.

  He moved slightly. There was no reaction from the insect. He glanced round to see where there might be others. But the floor was bare. He stretched out his arm and from the drawer beside his bed drew out the claw hammer.

  He got out of bed and for a while stood gazing down at the close juxtaposition of the beetle and his bare feet. Now that it was vertically observed, the redness of its dark shell was more apparent.

  He stooped forward and, his eyes closed, crashed the hammer down on the smooth back. He felt its brittle disintegration beneath the steel head.

  When he looked down he saw that in fact the insect had crumbled into dust. It was a dead leaf. From where he was stooping he could see several more blown together beneath his bed. He heard his mother calling to Elizabeth, then her muffled answer from her room. His mother went downstairs. He heard the bolts and the locks slammed on the back door. When he went to the window he saw that above the Place a wind was blowing. The summits of the trees were bowed down against the palely illuminated sky, the clouds flowing past in a single extravagant sheet.

  Below him a figure detached itself from the deep shadow of the outbuildings, then a second, and together they walked across the faint square of the lawn. At the centre, as though to confirm the exact spot where the diagonals crossed, they paused and stood looking up at the Place. Then, as the moon sank into a torn space in the clouds, the two men moved off and disappeared into the darkness beyond the fringe of trees.

  A gust of wind had shuddered the house, like a sea, the spray a flung cloud of dead leaves that spattered against the windows and the roof. Doors were sucked to and fro, and the timbers creaked. He climbed back into bed and laid the hammer beside him. For a while he gazed at its steel boss cradled on the softness of his pillow and at the two claws that swept back from this metal skull like narrow, half-formed horns. Even when the lamp went out it glistened, like a metal figure hurtling through space, yet lying quite still and close to his face.

  24

  The bright red lorry whined up the empty roads of the estate. It had recently been cleaned and it gleamed, curiously silk-like, in the early sun. A few loose timbers and ropes bounced on its lightly springing back.

  After its growling ascent of the final slope it stopped at the gates of the Place, its bonnet almost touching the eroded ironwork, and Ewbank’s black figure climbed awkwardly down from the driving seat. He stood for a while looking at the closeness of the lorry to the gate as if their juxtaposition in some way resolved the dilemma in his own mind. Rooks, which had been disturbed by the intrusion of the vehicle, now returned to the summits of the overhanging trees.

  Suddenly the lorry began to run backwards. There were agitated movements inside the cab, then Ewbank reached up, wrenched open the door and pulled clumsily on the brake. He could scarcely reach the lever, poised forward on the toes of his tiny shoes. The vehicle rocked. It swayed, arrested. Pilkington climbed down from the other side. Then Tolson.

  The contractor immediately stepped onto the footboard, then onto the front mudguard. His arms reached up to the top of the cab from where, after a certain struggle, he flung down two shovels. Dropping to the ground, he gave the two men instructions and watched them push between the embedded gates and begin digging the drive on the other side.

  They shovelled out two symmetrical quadrants in the gravel until they were able to swing back the gates within their circumference. The three of them worked first on the right hand gate, the track of which Pilkington had dug, then on the left, which was Tolson’s.

  The right hand gate was moved with some difficulty, its three hinges so eroded that within the space of a few feet the centre one snapped and the cumbersome structure groaned on the remaining two. The sound of crunching metal accompanied its retreat, Tolson standing at its head and straining to support the weight between his arms. It travelled to within a foot of its full radius and, easing its weight down, Tolson released it cautiously and began to dig out a deeper trough. He discovered a rusted hook secured in the ground and, pressing the gate fully back, set it over the lowest strut. He stood up rubbing his hands and looking at the other two with a slight smile.

  They moved the second gate more confidently, forcing it back through the gouged arc and allowing its weight to smooth out the remaining pebbly obstructions. Then, half way across the quadrant, and with a sudden shower of rust, the upper hinge snapped, then the second, and the gate sprang like a compacted spring from the stone pillar. Ewbank and Pilkington leapt back, and the gate was left leaning across the drive, supported at its foot by the remaining hinge and at its side by Tolson himself. It swayed hugely as he fought with the structure, then it began to fall back against the post. As its head touched the stone the final hinge broke and the gate subsided onto the ground. Lifting it between them, they propped it against the pillar and rested a heavy stone at its foot.

  The shovels were flung back on top of the cab and they climbed inside. Then, with a particularly clumsy application of the clutch and a guttural roar, the vehicle suddenly sprang forward, its tyres groping at the loose gravel, sinking slightly then spinning forward more quickly. The lorry passed between the two leaning flanges of the gates; they rested there like wounded guards as it forced its way beyond them through the low foliage of the drive.

  The sun slid from the banks of vegetation, casting dull waves of shadow and reflecting from the damp leaves and the windows of the Place itself. It was still; the red metal glinted between the green slips of shrubbery and the darker stooped boughs. Across the terrace came the grating percussion of the engine. The light moved on the windscreen like an introspective eye, slow, half-glazed.

  The moment Ewbank dropped onto the terrace the bolts crashed back in the shadow of the porch and the left-hand door was pulled open. John stood in the porch waiting for them to enter, and scarcely seemed to notice when first Pilkington, then Tolson appeared from the other side. He turned and led the way up the stairs.

  The York Room was as the caterers had left it, the chairs indifferently collapsed or thrust to one side and the tables standing at varying angles, two of them kneeling on broken trestles. When Tolson came through the door Ewbank turned quickly to him. ‘We’ll just have them straight out as they are.’ He pushed his foot against the nearest table and, unintentionally, toppled it to the floor.

  John, standing moodily at the far end of the room, glanced round. ‘Do you mind doing it quietly?’ he said. Then he recognised Tolson standing in the doorway.

  Tolson stood gazing in at the barren interior with a kind of stifled curiosity, half-embarrassed. He seemed neither to hear nor to see John who, as though recognising some sort of threat in Tolson’s attitude, had suddenly leaned against the wall in a vague gesture of appeal.

  Pilkington pushed obliviously into the room past Tolson. Picking up the nearest table, they carried it out between them. Ewbank, his eyes concealed beneath the broad brim of his hat, reflectively smoked a cheroot, glancing occasionally at the figure across the room and then, on their reappearance, at the two workmen as they took out a second table. There was, after all, only a few minutes’ work altogether, and he seemed content that they should prolong it by duplicating each other’s efforts. Normally this was a job he would have delegated to a foreman. As the room was gradually emptied he began to walk up and down with increasing ease, puffing out vaster clouds of smoke. Any stranger coming in at this moment would have naturally assumed that Ewbank was the proprietor of the place and John merely another employee.

  He took out his glasses and balanced them briefly on his nose to glance casually at the carved relief dominating the room.

  ‘We were sorry about Leonard leaving, you know, Mr. Radcliffe.’ He swept the glasses from his face to illustrate the sincerity of his observation. ‘He was a good workman. And very reliable. We lost two of them that week. He probably told you.’

  He had begun to look determinedly at John who was still watching him with an absent-minded, half-wakened ex
pression.

  ‘The other one, Shaw, they had to commit, you know. To a mental institution. I think that’s the phrase currently in favour. He had some sort of breakdown.’ He nodded his head in a gesture of self-agreement. ‘Yes.’ Then he looked away.

  Tolson had come back into the room. He threaded his arm through the struts of several chairs and swung them with him through the door.

  ‘And what’s your son doing now, Mr. Radcliffe?’ He pointed at the door where Tolson had just disappeared. ‘I mean, has he taken another job?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see. Well …’ He nodded again and dropped his cheroot on the floor. He trod on it, grinding it out. ‘We had a bit of difficulty with the gates when we came in,’ he said, watching the slow activity of his shoe. ‘I had the men dig them out a bit, but when they swung them back it seems the hinges …’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘This has been a very nice room indeed, has this.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The early light was flung in parallel rays towards that end of the room where John was standing, immediately below the fireplace. Ewbank looked up in some irritation. He saw that John’s gaze was directed to the door. Standing there was Leonard.

  Pilkington came into the room at that moment, pausing as he recognised the figure beside him, then dumbly lifting a table and carrying it out. He nodded slightly as he passed through the door.

  ‘How much longer will you be?’ Leonard said as though, concealed nearby, he had been impatiently watching their progress.

  ‘Well, we’re nearly through.’ Ewbank’s face was still twisted in greeting.

  ‘Hurry them up, then. Get them out of here.’ He was nervously excited, his hands trembling slightly by his sides. His father had moved from the wall and was now standing only a short distance behind Ewbank himself, in the centre of the room. One table, leaning down over a broken trestle, and several overturned chairs were all that remained of the previous day’s celebration.