by David Storey
‘What? Why has she come here?’ Leonard said, yet so quietly that they scarcely heard. He had stopped in the centre of the room, staring down and moving restlessly from one foot to the other. Then, as the woman came through the door and his mother attempted some sort of introduction, he asked her directly, in a whining voice, ‘What has she come up here for?’ It was Kathleen.
Bowing her head awkwardly towards him she indicated that she wanted to see him alone. They stood there for a moment in silence.
John had begun to move towards the door. As he did so he was attracted by a movement above Kathleen’s head, and looked up to see the moth fluttering from the ceiling. As he was introduced to the visitor he saw the insect settling down, its slooped expanse of wing suddenly still and seemingly pinioned to the wall immediately above the door. Then, for no apparent reason at all, he turned and looked at Leonard with an outright expression of alarm.
Leonard had flushed, in childish embarrassment, grinning suddenly and grotesquely at his father. Then he looked about him, his eyes averted, as if overcome with shame.
The moment was so inexplicable, the silent interchange between father and son, that Kathleen looked about her in confusion, glancing upwards as though she half-sensed its cause located in some object above her head.
John had reached the door. For a moment he still stared at Leonard in alarm. Then, catching his shoulder against the door itself, he swung round, took Stella by the arm, and left the room. It seemed as though he had been flung through the entrance.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kathleen said. ‘I wouldn’t have come unless it was important.’
Leonard shook his head in a mild bewilderment, looking at the empty doorway. For a moment it appeared that he would rush after his father.
‘My father’s ill,’ Kathleen said. ‘I wondered if you would come and see him?’
‘What? But I can’t! What have you come for?’ He lifted his head, listening. His parents’ voices came from a room close by.
Disturbed by their presence, Kathleen came further into the room. ‘He’s ill. He came home ill last Sunday night, and we can’t do anything with him. He wants to see you for some reason, but we can’t let him out of the house. The fact is,’ she added, coming so close to Leonard that instinctively he began moving away, ‘he tried to attack me last night. That’s really why I’ve come.’
‘What?’ Leonard rubbed his face as though since his father’s look he hadn’t understood or heard anything at all. ‘What? What do you mean?’
‘I shouldn’t tell you about this. Because I know he doesn’t want you to know. But he went away for two years. I mean, in prison. And he’s never really recovered from it. From the experience of it.’
She had come so close to him that she was almost touching him, yet appeared to be completely oblivious of his presence, staring at some point just past his shoulder, and talking as though she were reciting certain ideas to herself. Her voice was toneless, as if what she described was almost irrelevant.
‘He’s been in bed the last few days. And last night I was bending over him, arranging the bed clothes, when he pulled a knife out from under the blankets and stuck it in my back.… Oh, I don’t mean that literally,’ she added as she saw Leonard’s response. ‘I mean, it would have stuck in had it been sharp. As it was, it was completely blunt. It’s just an old knife we keep in a drawer for cleaning shoes. He knew it wouldn’t do anything. In fact he hardly pushed it against me at all. Yet he was so serious about it, watching me like mad to see what I would do. My mother’s frantic. We don’t know what to do. She’s frightened that if she tells the doctor he’ll be put away or something. And that’d kill him. And all the time he’s asking to see you, saying he wants to talk to you. My mother thinks if you’ll just go and talk to him, at least he’ll calm down. You see, it’s not my idea at all. I wouldn’t have come here if she hadn’t got on her knees and implored me. Do you understand?’
Leonard listened without moving, staring fixedly at his feet, his hands thrust stiffly down at his sides, a certain rigidity which suggested that the words called up some sort of determination in him.
‘You see, he’s not a violent man at all,’ Kathleen went on. ‘It’s always been as much as one can do to get him to smack one of the children when they’ve done something wrong. And whenever he has brought himself to do it he’s always sat around for hours afterwards brooding about it. To think of him lying there with that thing hidden under the blankets.… And the strange thing is that once he’d done it he began to hold his own side and groan. Just as if he’d stabbed himself. He made such a din about it that my mother tore the clothes back and looked at his side, certain that he’d stuck it in himself. But there wasn’t a mark. Not a scratch. The big baby. As soon as she had looked he started crying in that stupid way he has … well, not stupid. He can’t help it. But ever since then he’s been asking for you.’ She glanced hurriedly at Leonard for the first time, then added, ‘You know … I suppose you realise he gets these attachments for other men. I mean, that’s what lies right at the root of the trouble. He’s in love with Tolson, insanely in love with him. And he can’t do anything about it. But with you.… You see, he’s so jealous of you that it’s killing him. No, I mean that. Because he can’t do anything about it. That’s why he thought if you became interested in me. But …’ She suddenly burst into laughter, looking into Leonard’s face very closely. ‘You see,’ she said sarcastically, ‘he’s dying of love!’
She had stepped back and taken a cigarette from her coat pocket. Leonard watched her lighting it as though, from within the confusion of events, he was trying to recollect whether he had seen her smoking before. He looked at the cigarette acutely, and most intensely of all at that point where it disappeared between her lips. Occasionally they trembled as though she were still suppressing her laughter.
‘But what can I do?’ Leonard said.
‘And there’s another thing,’ she added. ‘He’s absolutely serious when he talks about himself as an artist. He means it. It’s the only justification he finds for all his troubles and his own hellish nature. You mustn’t disabuse him into thinking he’s not one. All these theories he has about things. You see … you must see that it’s just his pathetic attempt to try and fight off this obsession he has for Tolson. He’s just trying to subdue it, that’s all.’
Leonard had begun to watch her suspiciously. The cigarette, which trembled as she spoke, dissolved in a thin wreath of smoke, filtering upwards and towards one end of the room. He suddenly seemed quite shy. ‘I can’t do anything. There’s nothing I can do,’ he said abjectly.
‘Do you know what he once told me?’ Kathleen went on. ‘He once told me that whenever he’d done something on which he felt he could congratulate himself, something in which he had succeeded, he heard a voice whispering in his ear the whole time, “Not enough, not enough … not enough!” That, well, that’s what he’s hearing now as he lies in bed.’ She plucked the cigarette from her mouth and began to examine it closely. ‘He’s so jealous of you he can’t bear not to be with you, not to share all the feelings you have, everything. It’s a sort of love in reverse, isn’t it?’
Leonard began to look around him as though searching for some object he knew to be concealed in the room. He hurried from wall to wall, his momentum gradually increasing and becoming almost frantic. Then, with a sudden wildness, he said, ‘Have you any idea … I mean, do you know what time it is?’ And before she could answer he had hurried to the window and, reaching up with an excessively awkward movement, had released the catch and pulled down the upper half. Immediately a chill of cold air swept through the room. ‘Don’t you think it’s hot in here?’ he said. ‘Look, you go down and wait for me, will you. Let me see now … I won’t be long. There are one or two things. I’ll have to go to my room and get my coat, for one thing.’ He stood watching her, rubbing his hands together with a peculiar violence. ‘Is that all right, I mean?’
‘You’ll come, then?’
‘I haven’t got long. I’d better warn you. I have to go somewhere else. But I can come for a bit. It’s not quite dark yet is it? I mean, it’s not late.’ He smiled at her, then the next moment appeared to forget her completely, striding out of the room with a sudden and extraordinary energy.
Kathleen stood in the silence for a while looking round at the darkening interior. A single and diminishing beam of light streamed through the window. She slowly crossed to it, and stared out through the double panes that now occupied the lower half of the frame.
The view seemed to intimidate her, for she suddenly stepped back. At the same moment something flew up from between her feet. It sprang to the window and beat dully against the glass like a piece of cloth. At first she scarcely recognised the object, frightened more by the agitation of the air itself, drawing her head back in a strange snarl.
Then the moth sprang upwards and was immediately plucked out through the open window. It was caught by the stream of air that swept round the building and was drawn up over the summits of the darkening trees. Glancing round in alarm, she hurried out.
A short while later, after making a brief excuse to Stella, John too left the Place, hurrying down through the estate as night fell, his coat wrapped tightly around him and his face burning with an unusual agitation.
30
As they approached the house Kathleen suddenly said in a very violent tone, ‘Look. Don’t go and see him!’
‘But why? What is this?’
She came close to him as if, in the darkness, to detect the exact nature of his response.
‘Leave him. Don’t go in. It’ll only be some endless talk of Tolson.’
‘But why did you fetch me then? Why did you ask me?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘But isn’t he ill? I mean, isn’t any of it true, what you’ve told me?’
‘Oh, that’s true,’ she said as though now it was of no importance at all. Leonard seemed completely overwhelmed by the change in her; almost a change of character. He thrust his hand deep into his raincoat pocket and for a moment seemed preoccupied with what he had hidden there.
‘Why don’t we go away?’ she added, staring into his face. ‘Somewhere in the open. We could go to the park. It’d be completely empty now. We could go there. And later we could go away together. Don’t you think so?’ She pulled his arm to rouse his attention. They had now stopped outside the house and Leonard was gazing up at the lighted windows. When it seemed he wouldn’t answer, she suddenly said, ‘I mean, can’t you leave Tolson? To my father.’
Leonard had moved back slightly. He was still staring up at the house. Slowly his head turned towards her. His expression was concealed by the dark.
‘You want to go off with me? Go away with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘And leave … you know, your children and everything?’
‘Yes.’ Yet her voice sounded drained of all enthusiasm, the thing which a moment before had peculiarly enlivened her. ‘Look. I’ve even got the money. There’s no need for me to go back in the house. We can go now.’ She held something out in her hands to which, however, he gave no attention.
‘And what would all this be for? A sacrifice!’ His voice had mounted with tension. He was trembling.
‘No.…’
‘Is that all you’re doing? Buying me off?’
‘No.’
‘Is this what your father asked you to do?’
‘No. It’s not. It’s just something I’ve thought of now. The money was already in my pocket.…’ Suddenly she swung completely round. It was as if she had sensed someone approaching in the dark. But through the pools of lamplight there was no sign of movement.
‘Can’t you see, my father’s obsessed … with you and Tolson. He’d do anything for both of you.’ Yet she had begun to walk towards the house as though there was now no further purpose in their arguing.
Leonard followed her more slowly. She pushed open the gate and walked up the path. Then, when she reached the door, she turned. ‘Remember, then,’ she said, ‘it’s your decision.’
‘But you shouldn’t force these things on me! You know I couldn’t possibly go away with you. The whole thing’s mad and absurd.’
‘Remember, you’ve decided that we’ll both go in,’ she added as if she hadn’t heard his protest.
It seemed then that Leonard was about to turn and go. He was standing on the steps and, in the darkness, he had turned clumsily. At that moment the door was pulled open from the inside and Blakeley stood there.
‘Oh! It is you,’ he said. ‘I thought I heard your voices.’ And before Leonard could move either way he was almost pulled into the house.
Blakeley was dressed in a neat suit. As Leonard stood blinking in the strong light he noticed first the suit, which he had never seen before, then the blankness of the walls of the living-room. All the photographs had been removed with one exception, that of Blakeley and Kathleen together.
‘He got up half an hour ago,’ Blakeley’s wife said. ‘He reckons that he feels better already.’ And although Blakeley was very much alive, shaking Leonard’s hand and leading him by the arm as though to confirm an intimate friendship, his family was completely subdued. Kathleen, still dressed in her unusually long coat, stood sadly watching Leonard.
The three children had obviously been dressed specially for the occasion and stood shyly in the centre of the room as Leonard was brought in. Even his wife had prepared herself in a bright red dress.
‘Well, how are you?’ Blakeley said, leading Leonard to the nearest of the three children. ‘This is young Mark, here.… Say hello, Mark.’
‘Hello,’ the boy said, then blushed as he held out his hand rather stiffly for Leonard to shake. It was such a small hand that, as it lay in his own for a second, Leonard appeared to stare at it in dismay. The next moment Blakeley said, ‘There, you see what little gentlemen they can be when they try. And this is Colin, the youngest imp. Though he has a very beautiful voice. Say how d’you do, Colin.’
‘How d’you do, Mr. Radcliffe,’ the younger boy said, nodding his head as if he were about to bow.
‘You see, I’ve told them all about you while we were waiting. Though of course, I ought to have introduced the little lady first. This is Ruth.’
‘Good night, Mr. Radcliffe,’ the girl said, staring rigidly at the floor, that part of her forehead which was visible a bright crimson.
‘Oh, we’ve all met before,’ Leonard said, acutely embarrassed in his turn.
‘Did you hear that? Good night, and he’s only just come!’ Blakeley was more than pleased with his young performers. ‘Here you are, you little rabbits. What did I say I’d give you all if you behaved like I said?’ He winked heavily, with a certain grotesqueness at Leonard.
None of them answered, however, but began to look at Leonard with a more open curiosity. ‘Well, what do you think, Mr. Radcliffe?’ Blakeley said. ‘Do you think they deserve anything?’
The children’s expressions turned to looks of appeal, though still slightly intimidated by this elaborate ritual.
‘Well? Do they deserve anything?’ Blakeley repeated, staring still at Leonard.
‘Why … yes!’ Leonard half-smiled, looking down.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes!’ Leonard was completely confused.
Blakeley stooped over them, turning his head momentarily to laugh at Leonard, then kissing the faces of the two boys and the girl with some ceremony. When they laughed, he stood watching them with a kind of mock surprise. Then he took several sweets from his pocket which he distributed equally among them. He kissed them all again, laughing, as if both pleased yet saddened by the little game.
Suddenly he broke off and almost with a premeditated gesture came to take hold of Leonard’s coat. ‘You must take your coat off,’ he said. ‘We’ve got this fire laid just for your benefit. She’s been grumbling at the amount of coal I’ve been stuffing on.’
But as Leonard
pulled his raincoat off he twisted awkwardly out of Blakeley’s grasp and, hastily folding the garment, laid it over the arm of the chair where he sat down. After touching the coat a moment he glanced up at Blakeley as though to apologise for his impoliteness.
At first, uncertain how to react, Blakeley stared down rather emptily at his guest, then turned quickly to the children who were beginning to scamper about the room.
‘Now, I’ll have those sweets off you if you’re going to make all that row,’ he said, almost viciously, yet going over to the youngest boy and lifting him down gently from a chair. He smacked him lightly and ruffled his hair, then kissed him on the top of his head. It was done in such a contradictory and vaguely absurd way that Leonard, still watching in some confusion, began to smile. For a brief moment, scarcely a matter of seconds, Blakeley had begun silently to cry, holding the boy’s head gently against his chest.
Then suddenly his wife said, ‘Come on, you lot. Into the scullery if you’re going to play about. We want no noise in here.’ And immediately she began to half-push, half-pull them through the door.
Blakeley watched them go with the same sad reluctance. Then he glanced at the two women.
‘Do you think you could leave us two men alone? I want to talk over a few things with Leonard, and the presence of the opposite sex … well, it makes things a little difficult.’ Despite his calm tone there was an almost hysterical inflexion in his voice, and his wife glanced quickly at Leonard with a mixture of reproach and concern.
‘You mustn’t keep him long,’ she said. ‘Nor get him excited. Whatever he says, he’s just out of bed, and he’s not half as well as he thinks. We’ll be just in the scullery.’
‘Oh, now, get out woman,’ Blakeley said with the same strangled humour. His face was beaded with sweat. ‘Take no notice of them,’ he said to Leonard as they shut the door.