Radcliffe

by David Storey

  The men laughed with a certain relief, staring at this absurd intruder with increasing shyness.

  ‘I mean, to look at me you’d think I was perfectly normal. Yet when I was born my father took one look at me and said.… Ah! What? I’ve heard that one before? Shall I tell you a little secret? You’ve heard everything before. Perhaps because you think I look like this I don’t know. That I haven’t any problems. You ought to see my girl friend. If you think I’m not very attractive, you should see her. Last week she frightened a pig into giving birth to three mutton chops. No, though, it’s not everybody who’s as lucky as me. I mean, don’t you think really that I look just a bit fine? That it’s not quite as bad as it seems? If I thought that, then I might even want to go on living. Do you know? Do you think … if you think it’s just a bit better, just a teeny weeny fraction better than it seems, just the smallest fraction of the smallest part, do you think you could call out, “Yes!”?’

  He waited a moment. ‘Come on. Please, ladies and gentlemen. If you just think it’s not quite as bad as it all seems, could you call out, “Yes!” Please!’ He waited again, the mask turning for the first time, giving its features a simulated look of anxiety.

  Then several people called out, ‘No!’

  There was a burst of laughter, then a louder and more confident shout. ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, dear. What shall I do? How could you be so cruel? How could you be so wanting in the finer human sentiments?… How would you like to wake up next to this on a morning love? Just your cup of tea? She thinks it’s real, you know. Poor old soul. She’s right. It’s all solid bone under here. Good thick stuff all the way through.’

  A slight tone of derision had hardened into a more petulant sarcasm, the mask turning from side to side as the head beneath it grew more animated. ‘I’m not looking my best today. I think that’s the trouble. I had one of my teeth out yesterday, you see. My first milk one. This here at the back.’

  A white hand with no apparent attachment to the figure emerged from the darkness and held back the rubber lip to reveal several large and eroded stumps.

  ‘I’ve suffered. You don’t know how much I’ve suffered with it. You don’t realise. There’ve been times when, literally, I’ve just not known what to do with myself. You don’t understand what it’s like to be like this. But even then, if you think that I don’t look too good you should be up here where I’m standing. You might laugh at me, but my God, was there ever a more pitiable and snotty herd of …’

  A table had fallen over, scraping, then crashing with the multiple percussion of breaking glass; like a giant insect, its legs protruded in the air, rocking slightly from some object pinned underneath.

  Leonard, turning from a sudden and hysterical recognition of Tolson, had bent forward to retch over the white underside of the plastic table, one hand clinging to an upturned, metal leg, the other still clutching his raincoat. For a moment he seemed completely helpless, swaying with the table, then he swung round almost in a complete circle. He seemed to see and to move towards the door in the same instant, a simultaneous impulse which gave those watching the impression that he was being ejected from the room by some invisible force. And as he hurried towards the end of the hall a larger figure detached itself violently from the surrounding crowd and followed him out.

  The men stood in darkness. The light on the stage had dimmed, and for a moment there was no illumination at all. Then simultaneously several lights sprang on, and in such profusion that the men shielded their eyes, calling out, blinded.

  It was some time before the correct combination reduced the brilliance, and it was only then that Alex, standing quite close to the upturned table, was actually aware for the first time of Leonard’s absence. Tolson was also nowhere to be seen. As Alex hurriedly peered round the room he had a distinct impression of his brother, Austen, standing to one side of the door; then the confusion and the crowd masked everything. All around him men were looking at one another with an unaccustomed dumbness as though waiting for an event to begin.

  28

  The mist, swirling in thin clouds, was illuminated by still blue arcs of light. Leonard felt a new alertness, a breathlessness, his mouth open to a quick harsh breathing. His raincoat trailed beneath his arm. It swung loosely with the heavy weight of the hammer, its hem dragging along the pavement.

  The street was now only marked by the diminishing blue intensities in the mist. Tolson held him by the shoulder, half-supporting him.

  ‘What’s the matter, then?’

  ‘I don’t want to see you.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I don’t want to see you.’

  Yet he walked in rhythm to Tolson’s own pace, his body sunk within Tolson’s arm.

  ‘I don’t want to see you.’

  Tolson loosened his grip, his head moving towards Leonard’s with a careful, perceptive affection. ‘What do you mean?’ he said. His voice, though gentle, was heavy with threat.

  Leonard shook his head. He was drenched in mist, his face glistening with a fine mesh of drops, beaded on the narrow fringe of his hair and across his sharp brows. He seemed dazed.

  ‘Here.’

  He pulled Leonard to a halt. He folded him in his arms and, his head bowed like a man consulting a watch in the dark, he kissed Leonard’s mouth.

  ‘Why don’t we go somewhere?’ he said after a while. He was rather breathless, looking up at the mist as he might have glanced at an opening door. Suddenly he released Leonard.

  But only a large dog passed them, soundless on the wet pavement. The next moment he wrenched Leonard’s shoulders more fiercely. ‘Look, I’m not running after you all the time! What’re you trying to prove? What the hell is it?’

  For a moment Leonard didn’t answer. Then he looked up at Tolson directly for the first time. He still seemed shocked and distracted.

  ‘Perhaps, then, I ought to make a time to see you,’ he said after a while. ‘If I make a definite time then I’ll have to keep it.’ He stood thinking about this proposal, staring up into Tolson’s face and drawing his raincoat more firmly over his arm.

  ‘If you’re worried about us being seen together,’ Tolson said, ‘we could go off somewhere on the bike.’

  ‘No. No. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. If I see you, it has to be somewhere I know.’

  ‘But what’s all the bloody mystery about? I’m warning you. Don’t start playing these games with me, you shit.’ He glanced wildly about him for a second. ‘Can’t we go somewhere now? You bugger, I want you.’ He was nodding his head at Leonard in a violent kind of agitation.

  Leonard had backed away slightly. ‘Doesn’t Audrey go out on Wednesday nights?’ he said hurriedly. ‘To her mother’s, somewhere.’

  ‘Yes. She goes out Wednesdays.’

  ‘Oh, God. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.’ He ran his hand across his face. The next moment he drew it away and stared at the beads of moisture that lay in his palm. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and looked again at the drops of liquid collected there. ‘I’m terrible at arranging anything,’ he said, still gazing at his palm, and even holding it towards the vaporous glow of the nearest lamp. ‘I can never plan things and see all the unexpected contingencies that might arise as you’re supposed to. And the worst thing – I suddenly lose all idea of what things mean.’ He dropped his hand and stared down at the pavement as though moodily deliberating with himself. ‘I don’t know.…’

  ‘Look, there’s something I want to tell you. About Elizabeth.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But I want to tell you.’

  ‘I already know. She’s told me. It doesn’t matter. Now will you leave me alone!’

  ‘She’s told you? Has she told you?’

  ‘It’s all right. She’s told no one else.’

  ‘But I wanted you to know. It wasn’t all one-sided.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’

  ‘I want you to know.�
��

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’

  ‘I want you to know. I was wrong!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter! Leave me alone.’

  Tolson had begun to follow Leonard down the street, one hand stretched out to his shoulder as if uncertainly trying to waylay him.

  ‘I’m telling you. It was wrong. I’m telling you now.’ He caught hold of Leonard more firmly, preventing him from walking any further. ‘Now don’t go cutting up like a tart! It wasn’t one-sided. I’ve said I was wrong. I’m telling you.’ Tolson was desperate.

  A familiar grimace of pain had reappeared on Leonard’s face, yet he seemed completely preoccupied with searching for something in the folds of his coat. Only when he had apparently found it was he still, and he began to stare intently, not at Tolson’s eyes, but at some point at the top of his forehead.

  ‘Don’t go acting like a prick! I’ve told you! Don’t act! Don’t act with me! I’ve told you!’

  Leonard made no reply. He scarcely showed that he’d even heard Tolson. He stood perfectly still, his right hand pressed awkwardly across his body and buried in the folds of his raincoat, his eyes turned up to the dark knots of Tolson’s hair. He looked very much like a man about to take possession of something which for a long time he had known to be his.

  ‘Ah, fuck you!’ Tolson said, flinging Leonard from him, yet almost in tears. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ He buried his head in his hands. ‘You never let up. You never let up. You shit!’ He wiped his wrist across his eyes and suddenly glanced round at the mist as though for the first time recognising its confining obscurity. His eyes glistened. He looked massive, penned-in.

  Still Leonard watched him, almost remotely.

  ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’ Tolson screamed. He kicked out against a lamp-post. The metal structure shivered, rasping, and something dropped into the road. ‘You stinking, shitting runt. You runt. You runt!’

  Tolson seemed to reach up as though, suspended above him, were some means of hoisting himself from the ground.

  Then suddenly, he dropped his face into his hands. ‘Len. Len. Give us a chance, love.’

  Leonard had begun to walk away, his feet echoing, a tiny, hollow sound flung out between the houses and buildings. An extraordinary silence had descended in the mist. The next moment they were consumed in a yellow ball of fluorescence as a vehicle swept by on the road.

  Leonard walked stiffly, with a strange angular movement, listening to Tolson’s feet as he began to follow him.

  ‘What do you want? What do you want?’

  They walked like this for some distance, separated by three or four yards. Then Tolson suddenly began to laugh. For a while he appeared to be talking to himself, his eyes screwed up in a half-smile, his lips moving rapidly and soundlessly. Then suddenly he increased his pace and was soon walking alongside Leonard, stooping slightly towards him as though to look closely at his right cheek.

  They walked along like this until they reached the turning which led from the main road up onto the estate, Tolson laughing to himself very quietly, his eyes never leaving Leonard’s face for a moment.

  Then, as they reached the sideroad, Tolson stepped into Leonard’s path.

  ‘Well, you said Wednesday, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Between eight and nine.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tolson was still laughing, yet watching Leonard intently. A moment later he slowly bent back his arm and, with a half-cry, smashed him across the face. The sound itself had seemed almost one of warning.

  Leonard stumbled, then he regained his balance, his arms flung out as though invisibly supported.

  Tolson didn’t move. He still watched him intensely. ‘Wednesday, then. You’ll be there?’

  Leonard made no response.

  ‘If you’re not, I’ll come and find you. Wherever you are. I’ll find you.’ He waited. ‘Is that all right, then?’

  Leonard nodded. Tears had sprung to his eyes.

  Tolson stared at him a moment. Then he swung round and broke into a run. Leonard, standing still, listened to his feet. They seemed to move at an unbelievable pace so that, rather than a fleeing man, they suggested far more the rapid and metallic chatter of a machine.

  29

  On the Wednesday afternoon John had several visitors, and as soon as they had gone he immediately set out to search the Place for Leonard. After a while he found him standing at a single unshuttered window of the York Room.

  Leonard didn’t turn from the window.

  ‘You knew they were here?’

  ‘I saw them come up the drive. And I saw them go down it.’

  ‘They gave two unusual accounts of your behaviour, at Isabel’s, and at a workman’s club.’

  ‘Yes.’ Leonard was extremely pale and lifeless. He moved suddenly away from his father and walked across the room, glancing about him as though casually searching for something. ‘Well, is that all they said?’

  ‘No.’ John paused indecisively by the window. ‘All three now have the idea of disposing of the Place.’

  For a while Leonard didn’t answer. He stood by the fireplace gazing up at the relief. Eventually he said, ‘Are they in a position to do that?’

  ‘Providing they can get the majority of the family to agree with them. And that the trustees raise no objections. I don’t think they’ll have any real trouble.’ After a while he added. ‘It will probably mean the conversion of the Place … or even its demolition.’

  ‘Its demolition?’ Leonard turned and gazed across the width of the room at him. Then suddenly he stared upwards. ‘How did that get in here?’ he said.

  John looked up, and saw nothing but the cellular relief of the ceiling itself. He glanced at Leonard, uncertain whether to treat this as some further eccentricity of his son, one no less peculiar than the scenes which had been described to him by Isabel and Alex a short while before. Yet as he started to speak he saw, hovering in the shadows above their heads, the shape of a large moth. Leonard continued to watch it, his head flung back with a peculiar, static violence. His eyes had rolled back in the shell of his skull with such contortion that it seemed at any moment a cry of pain would escape from his gaping mouth. To John he looked quite insane.

  The moth was like a nervous element of the air itself, barely substantial, its flight created from innumerable shattered movements and flecked convulsions. For several seconds it was lost to sight, then a tiny agitation in the corner of the room brought it back once more into focus. Leonard watched it with a kind of snarled intentness, his hands and arms swinging restlessly by his side, as though he scarcely suppressed a desire to leap at the insect and snatch it from its hopeless meanderings through the room.

  ‘Why, are you hoping to catch it, Leonard?’ John said, as though in some way to divert his attention.

  Leonard murmured in his throat and slowly lowered his head. His eyes, from their straining after the elusive shape, were wide as he stared at his father with a lunatic look of abstraction.

  ‘Whatever was that scene you created at Isabel’s on Sunday?’ his father went on. And as Leonard’s features relaxed to something more recognisable and normal, he added, ‘They apparently included some sacrilegious statements about Christ intended to provoke and upset the Provost, not to mention the other people present.’

  ‘Was Isabel upset?’

  ‘Not at your arguments so much, it seems, as at your behaviour.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just slightly the arguments? After all, people like their arguments clean and white, and with no blood on.’ Yet even as he said this he waved his hand at his father in a gesture of frustration. ‘But what’s it matter? No doubt she’s right to turn her concern at my ideas into her concern for me. It’s what they’re always doing, isn’t it, father? They’re crying out for a touchstone but the moment it’s there.… Oh, God!’ He clasped his hands to his head with the same impulsiveness with which he might have snatched at the moth. ‘Why do I go on talking like this? Al
l this nonsense. All these stupid aphorisms. Worse. Far worse than Austen. And it all means absolutely nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. It’s just nerves. I’m terribly nervous today.’ He smiled with a sudden and insidious slyness at his father. ‘Have you got the time? Do you know what time it is?’

  John watched him a moment, suspecting some sort of ridicule. Then he shook his head. ‘Are you no longer concerned whether we stay here or not?’

  Leonard had begun to smile. ‘What is it? Are you beginning to suspect that I don’t understand you?’

  ‘I don’t know about understand. You don’t even seem to be interested.’

  ‘But I am interested. After all, I’m part of the thing, aren’t I? All your life you’ve hidden here. Waiting for some sign, some revelation. Yet when it comes, are you sure you’ll be able to recognise it? I mean, what really exhilarated you about the death of the old man was that you thought it was a sign. The moment you throw open the Place, the moment you endow it with all those shady powers of determinism you affect to despise, something terrible occurs, a sign, a message. The old man was simply putting God’s mark on the event: “This is wrong!” It was something sufficient to incur a warning. Isn’t that how you see it?’

  Leonard had begun to pace up and down the room as if he had suddenly remembered he had somewhere to go. Only once did he glance up at his father, and then with a look of extreme distaste. The next moment, however, he added, ‘It’s too late for you to give up the Place now. You’ve been offered one sign here, and now you can wait more confidently for the next. And if you’ve hidden yourself away here all your life, until your muscles are too stiff and your bones too corroded to move, why, there’s always your son to rise up in your stead! What has your isolation meant if it can’t be measured in him!’

  ‘Don’t fight me with this,’ his father said. ‘Don’t force things onto me.’ He looked distractedly about the room, then at the window through which the light was now beginning rapidly to diminish. The shadows of the trees crept into the room, deepening the dusty crevices.

  ‘No, it’s too late,’ Leonard said. ‘When I told Isabel, she didn’t understand. There’s no choice now, either for you or for me. You’ve made sure of that. That’s one thing you’ve made absolutely sure of.’ Yet as he turned violently towards the door his mother appeared in the opening. Behind her, in the passage outside, was the vague shape of another woman.