Radcliffe

by David Storey

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just my nerves. I’m so nervous.’ He shook himself as though to free his body from some invisible restriction. ‘My father shouldn’t have come here. It confuses everything. I mean, has Elizabeth told him something? Did he say anything about her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll have to find out.’ Leonard suddenly peered round the room, looking for a clock. ‘It won’t take long will it? I’ll have to find out if she’s told him. If she hasn’t then it won’t make any difference. What I mean is, I don’t want people to think that I’ve behaved as I have because of her.’

  ‘Oh, but then …’ Tolson said, beginning now to edge slowly towards the door. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I shall have to go and see her. I can’t have it hanging over my head like this.’

  Tolson watched him carefully. ‘But what makes you think I’ll let you out, Len, now I’ve got you here? I can assure you it wasn’t about Elizabeth that your father came down. He knows nothing about it.’

  ‘But you’d better let me out. How can we discuss anything … how can anything happen with this hanging over everything?’

  Leonard seemed completely confused, wandering aimlessly up and down between the furniture, glancing in every direction as though he expected to find an indication of the time everywhere he looked. He clutched his coat to him with a familiar, wounded gesture.

  ‘But I’ll come back,’ he said after a while.

  ‘I’m not bothered whether you will or you won’t. I’m not letting you out. There’s nobody else in the house. Except us. And the kids asleep in the next room. You can see. I’ve organised it, Leonard.’

  ‘I’d like to ask one question about this,’ Leonard said quietly, with a sudden calmness, as though he’d been anticipating such a threat. ‘If I did submit to you, how exactly do you see me doing it? I mean, physically, what do you imagine I’d do the very moment I gave in?’

  Tolson didn’t answer. If anything, he stood more patiently, more firmly, in the doorway.

  ‘Do you see me lying on the floor, or kneeling down praying to you? I suppose in a way you’d like that. Me kneeling to you, even if it’s only to be like Blakeley, committing some absurd action simply because I’d been told to by you.’

  Tolson was moving slowly towards him. Leonard watched him, his right hand buried in the coat which lay neatly over his left arm.

  Tolson looked at the coat, then said, ‘Do you still think you’re going, then?’

  ‘I suppose in your imagination you’ve seen yourself beating me a score of times,’ Leonard went on. ‘Haven’t you gone around the room when you’ve been alone, shadow-boxing? Imagining me as your shadow? Just like Blakeley. Beating me senseless until I realise, I see and I feel who is the stronger. Or am I wrong? Is there some other action I haven’t imagined? Is there an even worse, a grotesquer humiliation that you’ve thought up for me? After all, it isn’t that you want to see me weak within myself, is it? But that you merely want me to acknowledge you. What would be the worst humiliation for me that would acknowledge that?’

  ‘Go on,’ Tolson said.

  ‘But just think, Vic. Think. If you told me what particular action you’d imagined.…’ Leonard’s voice had been gradually mounting in excitement and he now seemed momentarily to lose track of his words. ‘If you imagined what action … I was committing at the very moment I submitted I might even begin to wonder whether I could actually do it.’

  Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his side, so intense that he leaned over it, to his left. At first he thought Tolson had struck him, for it coincided with a sudden movement of Tolson’s arms, and he flinched, turning quickly away. Then, as though imagining it might have been self-induced, he stood upright with a thoughtful expression. As he straightened his body he saw that Tolson had removed his shirt and was facing him, stripped to the waist.

  Only then did he seem to recognise the extreme state of excitement Tolson had been in since he’d come into the room. A wave of horror and surprise swept over his face. He seemed dazed by the sight of Tolson’s body. Tolson was flushed, the redness spreading from his strained face to the thick column of his chest, and he held out his arms as though curving them to contain something he already sensed between them.

  ‘You can’t get out, Len.’

  The coat swung loosely from Leonard’s arm. He rubbed his hand over his face as if agonised at finding his own powerful feelings overhung by an emotion that not only transcended them but which, through his habitual self-absorption, he had completely ignored. It was Tolson now who seemed possessed of every sign of insanity, unfastening the thick belt at his waist and, bowed like some huge segment of bone, tearing off the remainder of his clothes. Leonard gazed at him with a sunken expression of despair.

  Tolson stood firmly against the closed door, breathless as though at the climax of a massive physical event. Yet he went on slowly declaring, in a peculiar frustration of his own, ‘You see. You see. You see …’ calming a moment as if to judge the effect on Leonard, then adding, ‘How are you going to get out now?’

  He seemed half-frightened by his emotion, looking at Leonard for some sort of relief or explanation, or help.

  ‘Tell me … why don’t you start crying?’ he said with strange apprehension. ‘Shall I tell you what I want you to do? What I want you to do the very moment you give in? That question you were so keen to play around with.’

  He was peering at Leonard with a hopeless violence, leaning forward slightly as though at any moment he might fall under the single pressure of his feelings. His voice was choked.

  ‘No,’ Leonard said in a hardly audible voice.

  Tolson’s hand fell to that part of his body which seemed to torment and mesmerise Leonard the most. ‘Well? What theory are you going to make up about that?’

  He had begun to move forward, still remaining, however, in the path of the door.

  ‘Look. Look! Don’t be frightened. If you want to know what famous action you’ll be doing at the very moment you submit … here, this is it. This!’

  Yet despite the threat of his body he looked at Leonard despairingly. It was an anxious, pleading gesture with which he caught hold of him, tearing the raincoat from his arm and pressing him backwards. He pinioned his arms, staring at him with a harrowed fascination.

  ‘Why! Aren’t you going to fight?’ he said with the same frozen look of demand. Suddenly he thrust a leg behind Leonard and forced him over. ‘Do you think if I let you go now you’d keep your promise and come back?’

  Leonard had begun to struggle. The immediate effect was to encourage Tolson into forcing him down on his back. Then he dropped onto Leonard, sitting astride his chest. With his knees he fastened Leonard’s arms to the floor.

  ‘It’d be better if you did fight,’ Tolson said despairingly. ‘Don’t think.… Don’t think I’m playing with you.’

  He fitted a hand round Leonard’s neck, almost carelessly, lifting his head up a moment and peering madly into his face, then suddenly he crashed it down on the floor.

  Leonard turned white as the blood shrank from his face, his head twisting as though trying to escape the smell of Tolson’s body. Tolson had now pulled himself onto his chest, his thighs cushioning Leonard’s chin. He leaned hard down on the body beneath him; then, clasping Leonard’s hair in one hand, he took hold of his nose with the other so that Leonard’s mouth slowly opened for breath. Between his lips he pressed the swollen mound of flesh.

  The muscles round Tolson’s neck and shoulders burst out from their bony supports, his arms curved down to hold the nose and the lever of the lower jaw. He was a contained muscle of maddened energy, almost insensible it seemed, his body raised then pressing forward like some prodigious growth unfolding from the floor of the room. He bowed forward, stooped, in an epileptic gesture of benediction, holding beneath him his frantic sacrifice.

  Suddenly, he flung Leonard’s head from him, banging it back against the floor to hold it lik
e a ball between his thighs. Slowly he drew his body upright, his head upraised and turning slightly to one side, his eyes closed. Then, as though succumbing to some final assault, he drew himself back and slowly, staggering for a moment, pushed himself up to his feet. He leaned heavily against a chair.

  Leonard had turned and was staring up at the red figure, a giant flame in this perspective flung up from the floor. His hands, numbed and indecisive, moved slowly. They rose clumsily, searching his face until they came to rest either side, holding his cheeks. His mouth, still open, glistening, appeared to be soundlessly screaming. Then he rolled on his side, coughed and vomited a small pool onto the carpet.

  Tolson stood watching him with a dazed expression, frowning. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, stooping slightly at the same time as though to examine something caught between his fingers. As Leonard rose to his knees, he watched his laborious struggle to regain his balance.

  ‘What is it?’ Tolson said. ‘What is it?’ Then crying out, ‘What is it!’ He had caught Leonard by his jacket, half-turning him, and gripping his arms.

  Leonard stumbled, falling against the wall. Then he stood upright. His face was distorted, and yet he was peculiarly calm. When eventually he looked at Tolson, seeing him across the room like someone for whom unsuccessfully he had been searching for a long time, it was with a broken smile, shy and vaguely beseeching. He seemed completely helpless.

  Confronted by such a vulnerable expression, Tolson turned abjectly away. As if broken in every limb he began slowly to pull on his clothes. Occasionally he glanced up at Leonard who still watched him with such a simplicity of expression that Tolson turned away with a sound of despair.

  Leonard went over to his coat where Tolson had previously flung it and, stooping to relieve a prolonged bout of coughing, eventually picked it up. He allowed it to sway a moment before slowly arranging it over his arm.

  After a while Tolson said, ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I shall have to go and see. I shall have to see Elizabeth. You don’t understand.’

  He spoke so harshly, with such a grotesque deepening of his voice, that Tolson looked at him in surprise. It seemed like some monstrous imitation of a voice projected from a body substantially larger than Leonard’s. As he saw the alarming intensity of Leonard’s face Tolson blushed and, very slowly, began to smile.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Leonard went on. ‘If my father thought I’d acted out of revenge, something that he’d understand, then I’d never have any peace. The whole thing … there mustn’t be any confusion.’ Yet Leonard had begun to look about him with increasing bewilderment.

  ‘But what are you talking about? What act?’ Tolson said, his looks changing with a kind of ponderous relief. It was as if nothing had occurred.

  ‘I shall have to go,’ Leonard said despairingly.

  The next moment, with a cry of vexation, he swung round and flung himself at the door. He wrenched it open and hurried out, his limbs wildly unco-ordinated, so that he stumbled heavily down the stairs. Several times he glanced back, as though under the impression that he was being followed.

  32

  A large moon, magnified by a low mist, was rising over the head of the escarpment as Leonard walked hurriedly up through the estate. Apart from a dog crossing one of the avenues in the distance he saw no other sign of life.

  When he reached the Place he made his way across the terrace to the porch. He seemed disconcerted to find the doors locked and bolted, and after walking up and down he began to wander round the building, trying windows and becoming increasingly frustrated. Eventually he approached the kitchen and after some hesitation looked in at one of the lighted windows.

  His father was sitting with his back to him. Just beyond, and almost directly facing him, was his mother. She was crying. It was a heavy, muscular self-preoccupation, as slow, intermittent shudders of distress were drawn up through her body. She made no attempt to conceal the fact, and his father continued talking as though unaware of it. From behind, the movements of his head and shoulders appeared to be those of a casual affability.

  How long Leonard stooped there peering in he had no idea. When suddenly he went to the door, lifted the latch and entered, it seemed that he was in a fever of impatience. His mother and father looked up at him with an unaccustomed alarm.

  ‘Why, whatever have you done to your face?’ his mother said, making no attempt to conceal her tears.

  He glanced round, frowning with the light. Then, staring suspiciously at them both he immediately went to the stairs, bowing slightly towards them in a vague and absurd salute.

  ‘What did the girl want?’ his mother said.

  ‘For me to see her father. He’s ill.’

  ‘And how was he?’

  ‘He was fine when I left.’ Leonard touched his mouth, tracing his fingers round his lips. ‘You can tell. They seemed quite pleased at me going.’ He glanced once more at his father, then began to climb the stairs.

  ‘Are you going to bed?’ his mother said.

  ‘Yes.’

  His father hadn’t spoken. He had not, apart from the initial look of alarm, even glanced at Leonard.

  When he reached the top of the stairs he paused, listened a moment to the continued murmur of their voices, then immediately crossed the landing to Elizabeth’s room. Pausing and listening again, he very quietly opened the door.

  The room was in darkness. Moonlight filtered through the lace curtain identifying Elizabeth’s vague form on the bed. Through the lower half of the window, like the dome of a giant skull, the moon had begun to rise.

  Leonard closed the door and, looking hesitantly about him, crossed over to the bed. Elizabeth was breathing very calmly; her features, thrust forward from the pillow, were illuminated by the soft light.

  ‘Liz.’

  She didn’t move. The light waned on her face a moment, drained over the bed, then sprang out with renewed strength. One side of her head was brilliantly lit, a carved relief against the anonymity of the shadow beyond. Leonard took the hammer from the folds of his coat.

  ‘Liz.’ He waited. ‘Elizabeth.’

  The body stirred, then settled back into the momentum of its breathing. Leonard stood quite still, the hammer hanging loosely by his side. From below came the faint murmur of his father’s voice; then, suddenly, the strange sound of his laughter. It was a harsh self-derogatory sound.

  Leonard stooped forward, peering intently at Elizabeth’s head. It was a fragile shell in the moonlight, scarcely more substantial than the light itself. He examined the shoots of hair that swept back from the white dome of her forehead. Then, very carefully, he laid his finger on the closed lid of the eye. It trembled. The head, however, scarcely stirred. The nose ran as a slender ridge from the curve of her brows, the nostrils’ slim crevices falling in shadow to the soft protrusion of her mouth. Her lips pouted slightly, drawn out, and between them gleamed the white of her teeth.

  Leaning forward, the hammer clenched in his hand, Leonard heard his father’s laugh again. It was a heavy, incomprehensible sound. He stood up, gazing still at the narrow shell on the pillow. And again, a moment later, his father laughed.

  It seemed, then, that Leonard was on the point of flinging himself on the bed. But at the same moment he gave an agitated cry and immediately spun round and went to the door. Without glancing back or even closing the door, he hurried out to the landing. A second later Elizabeth rose up from the bed, too terrified, it seemed, to call out.

  The front of the Place was bathed in moonlight. As Leonard opened the front doors an animal emerged from the shrubberies and disappeared under the trees. He stood listening, then closed the doors quietly behind him. Heavy shadows slid from the trunks of the trees, running thickly across the terrace to rise up and embrace the structure. Between them the light glinted on shuttered windows.

  For a while he paced up and down the shadowed terrace, walking through the alternating bands of light and shade. He seemed like something
produced by the light itself. Periodically he would begin to pull on his raincoat, driving one arm down a sleeve only to drag it out a moment later. Eventually, however, as though exhausted by his restless patrol, he suddenly pulled on the coat, bowing slightly as he fastened the buttons, and set off along the drive.

  He hurried down through the estate, walking on the grass verges and constantly glancing about him as though pursued. When he reached Tolson’s house, he began to walk more slowly and, once at the gate, stopped altogether, staring round as though uncertain in which direction to move.

  A moment later he started off determinedly down the road, walking a distance of some yards, then swung round and, without looking up, entered the gate and hurried down the path at the side of the house. A few seconds later he reappeared, closed the gate very carefully, glanced up and down the street, then turned once more down the path.

  He opened the kitchen door with a certain amount of noise, clumsily, and for a while stood listening in the darkness. There were no sounds at all. He began to climb the stairs. A thin beam of light shone across the landing.

  It was then that for several seconds he appeared to be seized by a fit of terror. He flung his hands around his body as if something were missing. Only gradually, and with frequent reassuring touches, delicate and oddly poised, did he return to some sort of composure, eventually drawing from the numerous folds and creases of his coat the hammer head. It seemed bound to his pocket. He tugged at it several times, twisting it in various directions, before the handle came free.

  He leaned forward slightly, running the cold boss of the hammer head across his face, tracing his forehead, his cheeks, then his mouth, as though cooling his skin. Hearing a sound from the room above he suddenly looked up. For a while he stood perfectly still, the hammer held to his mouth, staring into the darkness at the head of the stairs.

  He moved very slowly, almost imperceptibly, so that for a time his feet remained on a stair while his body crept forward, his shoulder holding to the wall. Then, leaning heavily for support, he began his final ascent. It was as if in some peculiar way his feet obstructed his progress, so that when he reached the top of the stairs he stood for several seconds dizzily overcome by the effort.