by David Storey
He gazed vacantly at Leonard, then suddenly, almost impetuously, crossed the gravel towards him. Yet the sound, muffled by the mist, seemed cautious. Peering into Leonard’s face, he said, ‘Do you have any respect for me?’ and as if such a question itself set off some fresh agitation in his mind, he limped heavily around him and went to stand a few feet away.
‘Why do you ask me?’
‘Tell me. Did you see me from one of the windows and come down on purpose? I mean, you came down here to see me? You didn’t think it was anyone else, did you? You see, I’m not too well. The fact is, I suffer a lot from depression.’
He had stated this almost in one breath, so that when he paused tiny clouds of vapour rose from his mouth. As yet he had not moved any nearer and the intimacy of what he said contrasted strangely with the distance that separated them.
‘Certainly I get very pessimistic moods,’ he added as though Leonard had made some reply to this, and a moment later he began to laugh slightly, a helpless yet antagonistic sound. ‘I can’t very well describe it without making it sound, well, mercenary. That’s the root of it. Because you can’t communicate it, because everything in the end is so cut off, I get these feelings. You see yourself surrounded by people, yet you know that you’re as far away from them as if you were on an island.’
Leonard looked about him disconcertedly, at the trees, at the shrouded pinnacles of the building. He was about to ask some question that might distract Blakeley when the older man added suddenly, ‘Someone died here yesterday, didn’t they? An old man wasn’t it? Who came to your famous party.’ But before Leonard could answer he went on, ‘You see, I’ve asked you, do you have any respect for me, but I know really that you haven’t. That in fact I wouldn’t have to ask the question if you had. Respect is a thing that shows as plainly as a man’s face.’
‘And is that what you came up here for?’ Leonard was standing now with his arms clasped to his shoulders.
Blakeley looked away. ‘No.’
The cigarette which had been in his hand was now distributed in fragments around his feet, and he began to take out another, allowing his fingers nervously to play with it before putting it into his mouth. Almost immediately he snatched it out.
‘Why did you come out to see me?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to see if it was a person. That I hadn’t imagined it, I mean.’
Blakeley laughed, and began rubbing his face. ‘Well, so you think I’m a ghost now.’ His head turned slowly and he stared round at the trees as though counting their trunks, acknowledging their presence by slight, compulsive nods of his head. Leonard continued to watch him, though still standing several feet away, and beginning to rub his arms urgently through the thinness of his shirt.
‘You see,’ Blakeley said in such a different pitch of voice that it seemed as though a third person he’d been expecting had now arrived, ‘I’ve reached the point where I’ve got to decide … to decide whether it’s all right to go on as I am, or to step back and make a criticism of it. That is, do something that there’ll be no going back from, something that nobody will be able to deny. If a man wants to count at all in his life, he’s got to come to that sort of decision, hasn’t he?’ He looked at Leonard darkly, nodding his head with a kind of minute vexation. ‘That’s what your father did. I know.’
Leonard had suddenly moved closer and for the first time appeared to recognise the expression on Blakeley’s face. His eyes were discarded-looking, and swollen like bruises. He looked so sickened and ill at that moment that Leonard almost raised his arm towards him. But whether to protect himself or in a gesture of consolation he couldn’t determine.
‘I suppose my behaviour the other day put you off,’ Blakeley went on, but now in a plainly sarcastic tone. ‘I mean, what my daughter was saying, the night I took you home. About being Spanish.’ He smiled heavily at Leonard, leaning forward slightly to gaze into his face. ‘You mustn’t be misled by what I said. I don’t know what it is. But I get carried away when I’m with Tolson. I tell you, I don’t know why. But there’s nothing I regret more. Yet I can’t help it. It’s a terrible thing. And I drive myself mad afterwards with the thought of it.’ He coughed, and lurched vaguely to one side, but continued to look at Leonard with the same tormented expression. ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, Leonard. Being like this, I mean. It’s just that I’ve had something of an argument with Kathleen. But that … that doesn’t matter any more now. What I wanted to say is … it’s what I said in the church … that the same place that catered for the need of one family in the past is now sufficient to cater for the similar needs of twenty thousand.… What I really meant was, what are you going to do about it?’
For a moment Leonard didn’t answer. Then he said, ‘But is that my responsibility? Am I responsible for that?’ Yet without any surprise or incredulity, as if having accepted Blakeley’s manner and appearance, this absurdity conflicted with neither.
‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? At one time you were responsible, but now no one demands it of you, no one bothers you with it, torments you with it. It isn’t that God’s no longer relevant, no longer real, it’s simply that God’s no longer interesting.’
As though the increasing violence of his words had spread to his body, he burst into another and severer fit of coughing. ‘And the result is what?’ he went on, his eyes streaming with tears and his face screwed into an apoplectic expression. ‘Nothing! Nothing but this soot and rock and smoke, and the scuffling of workmen. And nothing, not one drop of these acres of blood can be shown to mean one mortal thing. That’s what I’m asking. I’ve had enough of the working man, the ordinary man and his shit-stained mind. I want a king, I want dignity, and authority … and certainty. Because without it it’s the death of all extremes, and it’s only at the extremes that man is finest and noblest of all.’
Leonard had moved closer. Some instinct to rest his hands round the man’s throat made him touch Blakeley, laying his fingers for a second on the damp lapels of his coat. So gently, however, that Blakeley interpreted it as a sign of commiseration and immediately burst into tears. It was the same soundless crying that was an indulgence of the man. That it came out of some real yet completely incoherent distress, Leonard had no doubt at all: but he only gazed at Blakeley with a profound and exhausted look and let his arms drop to his sides.
‘It’s not wrong,’ Blakeley said. ‘It’s not wrong to think like this. But no one cares. The agony of it all is that no one cares, no one gives a damn. I might feel like this but it’s no longer even a part of life.’ The thick band of mist drifted between the two figures. It consumed Blakeley so that Leonard, who had stepped back a pace as if to answer him, stared at the moving strand of air as though his subject had suddenly been wafted away. ‘All that people do nowadays,’ Blakeley added out of this anonymity, ‘is see to what extent they can entertain each other’s sense of despair.’
He suddenly moved forward, nearer to Leonard, the mist draining from his face as though he were moving at speed. ‘I’m a Catholic. And I go into all these different churches. They should be unified. They should all become the one thing. But what does it matter? Can you tell me? What does any of it matter? The fact is, we’re of no more importance than if we’d never existed.’
Leonard, however, had begun to look away towards the far end of the terrace. Very faintly came the sounds of someone moving cautiously up the drive.
‘Do you know, when I first came to live round here,’ Blakeley said as though oblivious of where he was and to whom he was talking, ‘I was still working down the pit. Kathleen had just been born, and only half of the estate had been built. The house here was still standing in a sort of park. It was winter. I used to come up here and look round the rooms. There was an old man with a dog who was supposed to look after the place. But he was as deaf as a post. Either that or he didn’t mind who came in. It’d started snowing, and the builders had knocked off until it cleared. I went up in that window one
morning. Everything was covered in snow. All the roads and the foundations and the causeways they’d just laid out. Curving this way and that. Just little ridges of snow. But the whole of it, the whole side of the hill, was like a giant skeleton. A giant. Just casually laid out there waiting.’
Leonard was staring anxiously through the mist at the huge shapes of the trees at the head of the drive. The crunching of feet on the gravel was much louder and seemed to be coming purposefully in their direction.
‘I know lots of facts about the Place,’ Blakeley added, speaking now quite calmly, with an almost insane composure, for his body was still shaken by minute sobs and intermittently his face would be screwed up as though he were frantically resisting the need to cry. ‘Did you know that the first Radcliffe recorded in the family was a tutor to Richard, Duke of York and later a master of ordnance under Henry V and a Governor of France? I know all these things. And that the Radcliffes got the land around here from that forfeited by the Lancastrians. And that part of the family was Catholic and were even leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace, while another part, those that lived here, were Protestant and joined the Parliamentarians in the Civil War. There’s lots I know. The first Wesleyan chapel in town was built with Radcliffe money. The first Member of Parliament for the town in 1832 was William Radcliffe.…’
Blakeley had now come so close that it seemed to Leonard that those bruised eyes were touching his face. He seemed completely unaware that someone was approaching them through the mist.
‘They even financed two privateers during the eighteenth century to prey on Spanish shipping from Liverpool and Cork. The “Duty” and the “Avenger”. And with the money they built the first school for underprivileged children.… The fact is, I met Tolson last night, Vic, and he told me an extraordinary thing. He said that he’d been with your sister, Elizabeth.’
Blakeley had now grasped Leonard’s arm, and so violently that Leonard had called out. The next moment, however, he had started forward in order to anticipate the arrival of the intruder. Blakeley had at last turned round, still holding Leonard, and was staring in the same direction.
At the end of the terrace, where it abutted onto the drive, a figure had appeared. It came towards them a moment, blindly, then turned towards the path at the side of the Place. Only then did some movement on Blakeley’s part cause it to look up. And with something of a shock, for it stopped abruptly and even moved forward slightly as though to confirm an unpleasant impression. Then, without any further sign, it walked on, holding up a stick against the wet foliage, and disappearing round the side of the building.
‘Austen. Your Uncle Austen,’ Blakeley said.
‘You know him?’
‘Oh … I used to know him. Did you hear what I said? Your sister …’
‘But how do you know him?’ Leonard asked, more disconcerted by this than by anything Blakeley had yet told him.
‘Can’t you hear what I said!’ Blakeley cried out. ‘I met Tolson last night. And he told me.’
Leonard had swung away, but the movement was just as impetuously arrested by the weight of Blakeley clutching his arm. He tried to prise up the fingers, half-dragging the older man with him towards the spot where Austen had disappeared.
‘Don’t you care about your sister!’ Blakeley demanded.
‘Why should you be concerned? What does it matter to you?’ Leonard suddenly cried, yet scarcely coherently. He seemed to be in a state of complete dejection, hopelessly confused, and unable to follow two consecutive words of what Blakeley, with increasing agitation, was saying.
‘But your sister’s the one person I admire and respect above all others. She’s the one innocent party in all this. And Tolson … if Tolson has carried out that sort of assault … I’m speaking delicately, of course … if he’s done that, then he ought to be destroyed like … although I’ve only met her briefly. It seems you’re quite right. There’s no remorse in Tolson at all.’
Leonard, who had been rubbing his arms with an increasing rapidity, now held one hand to his forehead. He seemed completely distraught and vulnerable, almost insensible. Having reached the corner of the Place, he was suddenly uncertain in which direction he should go. He glanced about him at the misty foliage as though it were somewhere he had never seen before.
‘All day … ever since I last saw Tolson I’ve been trying to think of an image that would really express what I meant,’ Blakeley said, standing now decisively in the path that Leonard would have to take in order to escape. ‘And it was only as I came up here that I thought of it. I was walking up through the estate, and hardly able to find my way, when I heard a sound coming from somewhere. For ages I couldn’t decide what it was. Then I suddenly realised it was an aeroplane. Flying, God knows where, at God knows what speed. But don’t you see? Just think of all that energy, all the years of work, the planning it. By thousands of people and at enormous cost.…’
Leonard appeared not to hear. His face seemed melted by the mist, his eyes glazed. Blakeley caught hold of him more firmly, with both hands, and swung him round to speak frantically into his face.
‘Just think of all that energy put into something which in five, in ten years at the most, will be redundant and broken up, destroyed. But think if it had been put into something that would outlast the lives of the men who made it. Don’t you see? It’s that that’s at stake.’
‘Was it … would it be about two years ago that you knew my uncle? That you knew Austen?’ Leonard said slowly, and with great difficulty. It seemed that a muscular inertia restricted his speech, his mouth scarcely opening, his lips thin and stiffened.
‘Austen? Yes. Perhaps two years. Why? Do you think it gave him a shock? Him recognising me? Maybe I ought to have acknowledged him. It’s been such a long time. He might not have wanted me to.’ He pulled heavily at Leonard’s arm. ‘What I was saying. Isn’t it true? Isn’t it? Haven’t we had enough of the working man? Of his smallness, his fawning ways, his cheapness. Above all his cheapness. The way he reduces everything to his narrow-minded size. These shitty little pygmies, under a compassion for whom they now hide all the old ambitions for power. Compassion! Was ever any emotion more cynically deployed!’
These phrases, said despite their apparent violence in an astonishingly controlled voice, seemed to strike some note of familiarity in Leonard. He looked at Blakeley in astonishment. It was, even to the intonation of the voice, an uncannily perfected imitation of his uncle. But not the uncle he knew, but rather that of a man speaking to himself in the privacy of his room. Blakeley, however, seemed completely unaware of any duplicity. If anything the sentiment, or the attempt at its portrayal, had left him exhausted and dazed, and he almost whispered the last remark. ‘If anyone not only knew but understood the working class their immediate and only reaction would be to vomit.’
His words, however, were interrupted by a remarkable occurrence; one so unusual that it had the effect of distracting both men from everything that had been said.
The mist, which until now had enclosed them within an area only a few yards in diameter, concealing all but the silhouette of the nearer trees and the closest flank of the Place suddenly lifted at one side like a curtain. Immediately visible through a gap in the trees was a distant yet minutely defined view of the valley. The sun illuminated the opposite flank, and individual buildings and even vehicles, the light glinting from their windows, could be seen with an astonishing clarity. This brilliant conjugation of buildings and rock was revealed so suddenly that both men seemed bewildered by its appearance. And yet scarcely several seconds elapsed before the mist descended and enclosed them once again. For some time they continued to stare in that direction as if the momentary impression could only have been an hallucination. Yet on Leonard’s face there gradually appeared an expression of intense and private rapture. His eyes had glazed and his lips parted in a half-smile.
Blakeley seemed drained of all feeling and strength, though he still clung to Leonard’s arm determinedly. ‘No,
don’t go,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ask you … if you’ll come and see me … tonight.’
From the back of the Place came the murmur of voices, then the shutting of a door. Feet crunched on the gravel, then thudded more heavily on the earth path. Blakeley looked up in alarm.
‘It’s terribly important,’ he said, releasing Leonard’s arm and preparing to back into the bushes close by. He was already ducking his head as if to conceal himself.
Leonard was beginning to move off. He seemed now completely abstracted, his mouth still parted as though pressed back in a smile.
‘I mustn’t see your uncle. Not yet,’ Blakeley said as Leonard left him.
‘I don’t want to see you again,’ Leonard told him, wrenching his body as if it were still restrained by Blakeley’s grip.
‘Wait. Just a few seconds. It’s very important.’
But Leonard had already disappeared. He could hear Blakeley’s voice calling after him, then the next moment he passed the doctor, who looked up almost in terror at his sudden and silent appearance. Before he could speak Leonard had plunged on, beginning now to run as if pursued.
When he entered the kitchen, however, Austen scarcely looked round. He was sitting with his back to the door and appeared to be in the middle of some discussion with his father.
‘How is Elizabeth?’ Leonard asked formally. Yet he was so flushed and excited, he began to walk restlessly about the room.
‘Your mother’s with her now,’ his father said. ‘It seems it’s nothing serious. Some sort of delayed hysteria. It’s passed now and there’s no need to worry.’ He gazed at Leonard with a strangely resigned expression.
Then Austen said quite suddenly, ‘Who was the man out there?’
Leonard stared at his uncle with a fixed and bitter intensity. He now moved rather slowly about the room, touching each piece of furniture with the tips of his fingers. ‘His name’s Blakeley.’