Radcliffe

by David Storey

  ‘We’ll do our best.’ Ewbank, skilfully humouring this familiar abruptness, walked slowly over to his former employee. ‘Well, young man. How are you keeping, then?’

  ‘I’m fine … I’m fine. Very well,’ Leonard said, not knowing quite what to do in the face of such an oppressive affability. He continually glanced behind him towards the head of the stairs, as though expecting some interruption from that direction.

  ‘You’ll have heard about Shaw, of course,’ Ewbank went on, glancing quickly at Leonard, then up at the ceiling which surged in hopeless frenzy above their heads. ‘It’s an impressive room is this, and no mistake. I was saying to your father just before you came in …’

  ‘Look, can you get out?’ Leonard said as though despite his agitation it were something that could be amicably arranged between them. ‘I don’t want you in here. Do you understand? You could have sent a couple of the men who didn’t know the place.’

  ‘We were wondering, you know, if you’d be coming back to work,’ Ewbank said as though such amicability were the thing he recognised most easily. ‘Now that you’ve recovered from your accident. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, as far as I’m concerned. You know that.’ He glanced behind him at John. ‘Poor Shaw seems to have found everything too much for him all of a sudden. I suppose Tolson’s told you. We’re quite short of men now. What with the season reaching its peak.’ He distributed this information equally between father and son.

  ‘There’s no reason for you to stay here, Leonard,’ his father said. ‘They’ll be finished soon and I’ll see to it that it’s cleared up.’

  ‘But why have they come?’

  ‘It was Austen’s idea.…’

  ‘No. Why have they come?’ He was glancing behind him the whole time, the conversation, his distress even, a formality which he impatiently maintained. It was almost with an expression of relief that he greeted Tolson’s appearance.

  Whether they stood regarding each other as two protagonists or two friends, it was impossible for either of the men watching their encounter to decide. They seemed in fact to peer at one another for such a length of time that Ewbank turned round and walked over to the windows from which he was able to watch Pilkington arranging the load on the back of the lorry. The vehicle now stood fully in the sunlight, a heavy shadow underlining its red sides.

  ‘There’s no reason for you to stay up here, Leonard,’ his father said again.

  ‘Ah, now, Mr. Radcliffe. You can’t go hiding him all the time. He’s got to live like the rest of us.’ Tolson stated this quite genially, yet looking at the older man as though inviting him to reveal the extent of his concern.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ Leonard said. ‘I want to see him. There’s something I want to tell him.’ He even laid a hand on Tolson’s arm as though anxious that he shouldn’t be discouraged by his father and, turning this into a more decisive grip, he began to guide Tolson from the room and along the landing to the stairs.

  As they reached the staircase Pilkington, his head bowed to watch his ascending feet, was coming up from the hall. Leonard immediately turned to the stairs leading to the second floor. Having reached this landing he glanced about him uncertainly, at the passage leading off on either side and at the innumerable entrances to the rooms, then turned once more to the stairs and continued up to the top floor.

  He had to stand and wait here impatiently for Tolson to come up, listening first to his feet then, as he reached the turn of the stairs, watching the tight, curled knots of his hair and, a moment later, his amused, upturned face as he ascended towards him. Leonard paused, glancing in both directions, then led the way down the passage to the right. When he reached the gallery at the far end, however, his indecisiveness momentarily returned and he stood in the centre of the long rectangular room staring at the featureless walls and then at Tolson. He had started trembling, and quite violently. Then suddenly he began to move towards Tolson.

  ‘Oh, Vic.…’

  He put his arms round Tolson with the same delicacy with which a man might have explored an unusually shaped stone. Except that it was with a shuddering curiosity, and that the stone bore its own peculiar life.

  Tolson glanced round the room with a kind of sombre surprise, heavy, purposeful. Like a retreating spider he began to draw Leonard with him towards the door. To one side of the gallery was a darkened room, and it was into this that Tolson finally withdrew with his burden. He laid Leonard down, then knelt beside him and began to loosen his clothes, stooping forward and kissing him gently.

  A short while later Tolson lay back on the dusty floor. They were silent. Then Tolson said, ‘What would you have done if your father had come up? Or better still, Ewbank?’ And when Leonard didn’t answer Tolson rolled onto his side. ‘Why, I think that’s the reason you came up. Isn’t that it? Knowing they were there, waiting.’ He leaned forward and stroked Leonard’s thighs. ‘Why, you’re like a woman. Once you’ve started you’re always wanting it. And showing it, too. You can’t do without it.’

  Leonard moved restlessly against the floor, his head sinking and turning away. ‘You ruin everything. You spoil everything.’

  ‘There’s one thing I’ve always wished,’ Tolson went on quietly. ‘I wish you were built a bit bigger. I wish you were bigger. Then we could box together. God, I’d love to fight you. It makes me bloody ache.’ He moved his body aimlessly against Leonard’s. ‘Why don’t you fight!’ he said wildly. He ran his hands the length of Leonard’s body. ‘I wish you would at times. I wish just once you’d fight.’

  Tolson stood up. He began to fasten his clothes. A moment later he went to the corner of the darkened room. There was the splashing of liquid against the wall and floor. ‘Do you know what Blakeley calls you?’ he said above this sound. ‘The reluctant messiah. I know what he means now.’

  Leonard pushed himself to his knees. He stooped forward, pulling and fastening his clothes. Then he stood up.

  ‘Listen,’ Tolson said. They were silent. From deep down in the house came the crashing of chairs. Then Tolson released a huge clap of wind. He laughed. Leonard went to the door. He stood frowning in the light.

  ‘Why do you act like this,’ Leonard said, holding his hand to his face. ‘Why do you make it like this? You absolute bastard.’ He leaned against the wall.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Tolson said bitterly.

  ‘If you’re ashamed of it. If you feel guilty … why do you keep on? It’s none of those things to me. If my father had come up it just wouldn’t have mattered. I wanted you. I wanted you. And then you become like this.’

  Tolson was silent, standing in the door of the room. He looked about him distractedly. Then he said quickly, ‘Has Elizabeth said anything to you? I mean, today, this morning.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She hasn’t spoken to you or anything?’

  ‘I haven’t even seen her. Why?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter … Len.’ Tolson came to stand by him. He stroked Leonard’s hair a moment. Then he kissed his neck.

  He stood bowed over Leonard, his face pressed against his hair. Then Leonard swung round and folded his arms round Tolson’s neck. He kissed him wildly, pulling Tolson’s face ferociously against his mouth.

  ‘You shouldn’t abuse it. You shouldn’t!’ he said as he withdrew. He rested his head on Tolson’s shoulder, staring down. ‘Don’t you see what it does? It makes me frightened for you. You don’t know what it does to me. I don’t know what it might make me do.’

  He looked up at Tolson’s face. ‘There’s no need to be like this. I’ll never betray you.’

  Tolson didn’t answer. If anything, he seemed confused.

  ‘Why.… Why do you think I came up here with you? Why do you think I brought you here?’ Still Tolson didn’t answer.

  ‘You make these situations, then you drive me into them. There’s no need. There’s no need! We mustn’t fight!’

  ‘You don’t know. You don’t understand,’ Tolson said. He sudd
enly wrenched himself away from Leonard. Yet it was only as if the next moment to take hold of him more fiercely. It was then that he heard Ewbank’s voice calling, ‘Tolson! Tolson!’ He swung round with a half-cry and started down the landing to the stairs.

  Leonard watched him, his face torn with despair. Slowly he began to follow him. ‘There’s no need to feel ashamed. There’s no need to be frightened,’ he said to Tolson’s back. ‘Don’t you understand? I want you. And there’s nothing else. I’ll never betray you. Vic.…’

  ‘Hell!’

  Quite unintentionally – he seemed in fact to be tormentedly and wholly preoccupied with his own thoughts – Tolson had missed his foot on the top step and, his hands clutching out unsuccessfully for the support of the banister, he began to tumble down the stairs. It happened so impulsively that at first it seemed almost a deliberate projection of his heavy body. But the next moment the awkward convolution of those massive limbs, turning slowly and ponderously in that narrow space, had gained such a momentum that by the time Tolson reached the only bend he was unable to prevent himself from being flung round it by his own prodigious weight and sent by a series of incredible leaps and bounds to the landing below.

  Such a helpless display from someone who normally was so portentously co-ordinated seemed to affect Leonard more than anything that had happened that morning. He gazed tormentedly down the empty stairs as though there were still some visual evidence lingering in the dimly-illuminated space, and it was with almost paralysed gestures that he began his own descent. When he reached the landing below, Tolson was standing with his back to the wall opposite the foot of the stairs and looking at him with a sombre and hideous smile which seemed to indicate, if nothing else, a need to express some sort of extreme threat.

  ‘And what do you expect me to be, then? Frightened of you? Giving in to you!’ Tolson cried, referring to their previous conversation, as if by some ludicrous assertion of his personality he could continue as though the accident had never taken place. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say? Expecting me to be frightened! Can’t you see what I am!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Leonard said quietly, watching Tolson as though he had now reached some important decision. He seemed almost in tears.

  In Tolson himself there had appeared a sudden hardness. Almost the need, it seemed, to exact some sort of revenge.

  They gazed at one another in silence for some time, standing so still and intent that John, emerging from the stairs below, did not see them until he almost collided with his son. He looked up at them in terror.

  ‘Leonard!… Vic. Mr. Ewbank’s looking for you.’ They seemed dazed, completely unaware of his presence. ‘Mr. Ewbank’s looking for you.’

  Tolson turned an almost hysterical look of threat on him, then more potently on Leonard. As if re-animated by Tolson’s look, Leonard said incoherently to his father, ‘It’s all right, is it? We’re coming.’

  He immediately turned to the stairs.

  John watched first Leonard then Tolson pass by. He seemed about to speak, his mouth opening, but he watched them in silence as they sank below him.

  When they reached the first floor Ewbank came along the passage from the York Room accompanied by Pilkington.

  ‘Ah, so you’ve found the two miscreants,’ he said, calling to them in an unusually loud voice and expressing with this last word that tone of ridicule upon which were hinged all his remarks and gestures directed at the Radcliffes. ‘I must say, they were forever off on their own when I had them working together, so I’m not so sure exactly what advantage it would be if Leonard did come back.’

  Perhaps intended as a note of badinage, the remark emerged from Ewbank as one of specific condemnation. But even if he were aware of the ambiguity of the words he saw no suspicion of offence in any of the three faces confronting him. If anything, Leonard and Tolson appeared to be suffering from extreme shock, while John seemed lost in a private wilderness of regret and confusion.

  It was only as Tolson reached the broad turn leading down into the hall that he looked back, past Pilkington and Ewbank who were close behind him to where Leonard stood on the landing with his father. ‘I’ll see you again, then?’ he said to Leonard.

  He continued to stare up at the two figures, Ewbank and Pilkington waiting beside him, until Leonard nodded his head.

  ‘All right, then,’ Tolson said.

  He swung round and crashed down the stairs to the door and disappeared.

  Leonard and his father walked back in silence into their inhabited part of the building, leaving open the partition door and going down to the kitchen. As they passed Elizabeth’s room she called Leonard’s name; but it seemed that John himself was too immersed in his thoughts to give her any attention. It was only when he entered the kitchen, and Stella told him that Elizabeth was unwell, that he realised Leonard had not followed him down.

  Having already picked up his coat at Stella’s suggestion that he should call the doctor, he dropped it into a chair and hurried back up the stairs.

  He emerged on the landing just in time to see Leonard coming out of Elizabeth’s room and, apparently excited, hurrying to his own room and closing the door. When he entered Elizabeth’s room, she appeared to be fast asleep. He was unable to wake her. Her face was flushed and her forehead extremely hot. He stroked her cheek a moment, calling her name. Then, a short while later, he hurried out to telephone the doctor.

  Ewbank, lean and almost child-like in his grip of the huge circumference of the steering wheel, watched the Place vibrate in the mirror. The leaves, then the branches, enveloped it until, swinging abruptly round the descending curve of the drive, he was distracted by the sight of one of the metal gates lying across the opening to the road. The heavy vehicle lurched, braking, and almost stopped.

  Then, gradually urged forward by its own weight, the lorry ran onto the metal skeleton. The tyres, scarcely deflected by the gate, rode up over its narrow ribs, the wheels driven up slightly onto their springs, then released suddenly as the eroded metal snapped in several places so that, as the truck turned out into the road, it left in its wake a strung network of debris. Ewbank stopped and got down. After kicking the tyres and glancing beneath the axles of the machine, he walked back to the gate and examined the fragments.

  He called the men from the truck to clear the debris to one side, and, while they worked, strolled back up the drive. When the building came into view he stopped and glanced about him as he might have examined any site which his tents had recently abandoned, and very much as a man might inspect a derelict home for the last trace of things he might wish to take with him. Except that the contractor’s gaze was arrested by the building itself as if that blackened stone tent had somehow escaped dismantling and he was now considering whom to reprimand and whom to send back to load it on his red, titanic lorries. When he turned back down the drive it was in a grave and restless mood.

  The two men had finished clearing the drive. The largest segment of the gate was propped against one of the posts. After examining it, Ewbank instructed them to lift it onto the truck. As they drove off he looked back at the chimneys of the Place diminishing over the roofs of the houses and said, ‘It reminds me of something, does that …’ glancing at the two figures beside him as though having to identify it in so many words would somehow obscure his meaning. Tolson, however, was gazing straight ahead through the windscreen, apparently unhearing; and Pilkington, in the cramped space, was struggling to light a cigarette.

  When they reached the yard Ewbank got down from the large vehicle, lit a cheroot, and stood gazing up at the incredible emptiness of a clear sky. The sunlight fell directly into the yard. There was a light breeze. He set Tolson and several other men onto dragging out the wet tenting that had accumulated in the sheds and – stretching the creased and greying canvas across the paddock. He seemed scarcely satisfied until the alleys between the sheds and the grass beyond were full of the flattened shapes, like sucked bodies, swaying and billowing
with every variation of the breeze.

  25

  There had been a sudden change of temperature and clouds had compressed the hills beyond the city, absorbing their rocky outline so that they appeared the least substantial thing in all that landscape. The jutting crown of the city was lost in the lowering mist, and the Place, poised on the summit of the opposite escarpment, intermittently appeared through the white clouds like a constantly moving thing. It made a slow and indeterminable progress. Leonard, standing at the window of his room, observed a figure cross the lawn below in the same direction and at the same pace as the one that he had witnessed the night before. It cast a similar bleak look at the building before continuing towards the path that circuited the Place.

  He left his room and went down to the front entrance. The doors were still open from Ewbank’s departure and he stood there a while listening. Then he descended to the terrace. No sound came from the heavy shapes of the trees. Stooped down, moist and bulbous, they rested like plants on the bed of a lake. The mist, exhaled by the land, absorbed everything.

  He stood there so silently that a man, coming up the drive and passing within a few yards, disappeared round the side of the building without noticing him. It was the doctor. Leonard heard his feet echoing on the gravel at the back of the Place, then the sound of the closing kitchen door. It was several minutes, in fact, before some instinct made him turn round and stare into the shadows on either side of the porch.

  ‘I was hoping I’d be able to see you, you know, without having to knock or to trouble your family in any way,’ a man’s voice said.

  A moment later Blakeley limped from the shadow to the right of the porch, then stopped as if Leonard’s physical presence were in some way disadvantageous to his real purpose. He coughed and took a cigarette from the pocket of his raincoat. Yet he didn’t light it. It remained as an extremely white object in his hand.

  ‘I was hoping to see you last night,’ he added, coming one step nearer then stopping compulsively again. ‘I didn’t want to knock. And I couldn’t see you about.’