Radcliffe

by David Storey

  As he entered the York Room at Cubbitt’s side, John saw Austen moving swiftly across the darkened interior to swing back the shutters of the central window. The next moment he stepped back to watch Alex on one side, and Matthew and Thomas on the other, remove the remainder. The room was flooded with light. Having introduced Cubbitt, John stood to one side of the room, gazing round it as though pondering within himself some essential though now unimportant provision for its future.

  The solicitor, a tall, silver-haired man with a flushed, distinguished face, looked round to see where he could place his packed brief-case. After a moment’s hesitation, and saluting Isabel who at that moment entered the room, he walked over to the fireplace and, glancing absent-mindedly at the carved figure above the hearth, he leaned it against the foot of one of the columns. At the same moment Alex crossed over and closed the double doors.

  The family dispersed slowly across the room, each to stand quite alone as though isolation could itself lend force to their projected arguments. Austen, however, remained by the window and, long after the others had retreated, stood with his back to the room watching something that had caught his interest in the grounds below.

  ‘Any decision you may come to,’ Cubbitt said, ‘will naturally have to be confirmed at a subsequent meeting with the trustees. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I state the conditions of trusteeship and our mutual responsibilities, regarding the Place and its annexed properties so that the whole thing doesn’t sound too formidable a mystery?’

  He asked this question of Matthew, the only member of the family with whom he maintained any close acquaintance, and he nodded back in dogmatic agreement.

  Austen still stood by the window, his interest divided between the room itself and something that was apparently taking place outside. Alex and John stood on either side of the closed doors like two ironically contrasted guards.

  ‘The sale of the Place can be effected in two ways,’ Cubbitt went on. ‘Either through a unanimous decision by the family, in which case the trustees, if so inclined, are entitled to withhold their final consent to such a sale or disposal for a period of no more than twelve months; or, if there are two or more who cannot agree with the majority, and providing of course that they themselves are a minority, then the trustees are the sole adjudicators of the decision and can either dispose of or retain the Place according to their discretion.’

  He looked at them in turn and with some care as though he had not only clarified their situation but had also begun to disperse the disturbing atmosphere of the room itself. He had spoken in a low, conversational tone so that gradually they began to move towards him, their convergence curiously absent-minded and instinctive.

  ‘The disposal of a property of this nature is, of course, one of some legal complexity,’ he added. ‘Certain deeds go as far back as the sixteenth century. I think it is fair to say that few of you, apart from Mr. John Radcliffe, have had until now any call to be concerned with the Place, and that in the past, although opportunities have arisen to dispose of the building, the trustees have on each occasion felt it their duty to maintain and preserve the Place as far as was humanly possible. However, you have the power if you so wish to reverse such a decision, and I would ask you, therefore, to use it wisely and only after careful consideration, and to try in your minds to realise what it is you are disposing of.’

  For a while they were silent, startled and perhaps even incensed by his tone of appeal. From outside came the faint voice of a man calling rather excitedly, ‘Peter!… Peter, this way!’ Then a sound like the tyres of a silently running vehicle braking on the gravel of the terrace.

  Cubbitt had suddenly started to sneeze. He gave three violent exclamations, extracting the handkerchief which protruded from his top pocket and concealing his face. At each sneeze his figure was flung forward, bowing in a kind of devastated apology.

  As though to conceal, or perhaps to take advantage of any embarrassment, Alex said, ‘What we are here to do is to decide whether the Place can be put to any use, and if it can’t, then to discuss how we should dispose of it. It’s very simple. Will the benefits we gain from its sale be greater than if we continue to maintain it?’

  ‘There are really two arguments, aren’t there?’ Austen said, moving forward slightly, but determined to keep his observation post by the window. ‘I mean, should we keep the Place on because of certain intrinsic values, historical, aesthetic or otherwise: or should we try and decide whether these are things which have now given way to practical difficulties? For example, should we go on encouraging John to spend his life here …?’

  ‘Are you suggesting, then, that it only requires a different caretaker?’ Matthew said, then turned to John to add, ‘Of course, I use the word in inverted commas.’

  ‘But don’t you think it strange.…’ John began, moving into the room and ignoring this remark, his face pale as he gazed almost frenziedly at Austen. To those watching, however, it seemed that he was speaking to Isabel who stood directly in line with Austen. ‘Don’t you think it strange that a man whose entire life has been concerned with what he lightly calls “certain intrinsic values, historical, aesthetic or otherwise” – isn’t it rather remarkable that when he has to make a choice in a problem like this, he goes against those very things which ostensibly he’s supported so long?’

  ‘I wonder if we could open a window? Get a window open?’ Cubbitt said, beginning to move away from the fireplace. Towards the end of John’s remarks he had begun to sneeze again. ‘I’m afraid this is the tail-end of my hay fever. But I wonder if anyone else notices a pungent sort of smell? Could we get a window open? Rather like something burning, perhaps.’

  Alex had immediately crossed the room and begun to open one of the windows. A moment later Matthew attempted to open another. Cubbitt stood behind them both, alternately watching the efforts of each, his handkerchief held to his nose.

  ‘No, no,’ he continued to John, ‘go on with what you were saying. At least if we can’t clear the air literally we can do so metaphorically.’ This ponderous joke he made quite seriously, turning back just as Matthew breathlessly reached down from his unsuccessful attempt to release the rusty catch.

  John was silent. For a moment longer Austen continued to stare at him, then he slowly turned once more to the window. Both Matthew and Alex had also been attracted by something that was occurring on the terrace below.

  Almost immediately they were distracted by a sound in the room itself, and looked up with expressions of alarm as Thomas, a small raincoated figure, began to speak in an excessively loud and excited voice. ‘Do you realise that every stone of this building bears an individual mark? Do you realise that? A mark put there by the man who carved the stone, several hundred years ago. Every tiny fragment of this building has been created with love and care … and even now … I vote with John. I oppose any disposal of the Place, and the decision will have to go to the trustees, whom God trust.…’

  From outside, amplified now by the open window, came the sounds of several voices and of a vehicle stopping abruptly. The next moment the doors were pushed open and Elizabeth, glancing frantically around the room, called out to her father, ‘Can you come? Can you come?… Something terrible’s happened!’

  One moment John was looking round at the startled faces in the room, the next he was running down the landing towards the inhabited part of the building. As he reached the head of the stairs, a wailing sound rose from the room below. He paused, overcome by some peculiar confusion, and stumbled down the stairs in a slow spinning movement which at one moment brought him facing the point from which he was descending. To those watching above, it seemed deliberate, scarcely the action of someone who had merely lost his balance. When he reached the foot of the stairs he stopped to peer into the kitchen like someone who had inadvertently opened a wrong door.

  The room appeared to be full of people, although in fact there were only six or seven. Leonard lay stiffly in a chair, his head flung back in a c
urious, distorted foreshortening, his mouth held open as though to accommodate some huge and preposterous shape. From it emerged a hoarse and strangulated wail.

  It seemed to John that he was invisibly transported to his son’s side, for immediately he found himself staring down at that racked face and into rigid and unseeing eyes. John could extract nothing from the sounds around him except that single and hideously prolonged wail. He saw his own hand as it gripped Leonard’s arm, then Leonard’s dark suit, then Stella mopping his face with a pinkish cloth. A moment later the body rose under a painful and sustained impulse. It seemed to expand for minutes on end, the air exploding in the throat. It was like a brittle thing about to be broken. Any second John expected it to snap.

  Someone was instructing people to stand aside. A stretcher was lifted in at the doorway. Outside were several people apparently arguing. One man, flushed and carrying a camera, was even shouting. The phrase, ‘A friend of the family’, floated like a repeated commentary through the room.

  Two uniformed attendants bent over Leonard, and John, after trying to maintain his grip on his son’s arm, was suddenly forced back.

  Standing on the table in front of him were seven cups of coffee, steaming, four of them already loaded on a wooden tray as though about to be carried away. Just beyond them was Cubbitt. Again he was sneezing. His face was the deepest crimson, an inflammation of his features exaggerated by the white handkerchief which periodically he held to his streaming eyes.

  ‘Are you the boy’s father?’ a man said to him. But without waiting for an answer he turned away and spoke with someone standing a short distance behind him. Then he said again, ‘Are you the boy’s father, sir?’ He swung round once more and spoke with the person to his rear, then confronted John again, ‘Are you the young man’s father, sir?’

  ‘But what’s happened?’ John said. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘You are the young man’s father, sir? This is your son?’

  ‘Yes.…’

  ‘Mr. Radcliffe?’

  At the same time the man conducted a vituperative discussion with the person behind him. As he turned to face John again there was a blinding flash. The room faded for a moment. John felt himself pushed back, then held in a certain position. There was a second flash as a voice said, ‘Yes, this’s his father.’

  A man’s face emerged from the whiteness. ‘I’m afraid we may be partly to blame for this, Mr. Radcliffe. We never realised the distress it might cause. Everything has been taken care of, of course.’

  ‘But what’s happened?’ John said. The light was now alternating with a consistent and regular pulse. He was staring down at the cups of coffee steaming on the table.

  ‘Yes, he is the father!’

  Several cups had been overturned, and a dark pool lay across the wooden surface.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been a tragic accident, sir. Apparently to someone your son knew quite well. So it seems. That’s what it appears.’

  The man had turned away again. John suddenly recognised the person with whom he had been arguing. It was Thomas. Beyond him in the corner of the room Austen was stooping over Isabel. On the floor, Alex was kneeling and making some adjustment to the stretcher which had obstinately folded at one end. It appeared to John that he had a spanner in his hand. Suspended over it, in the arms of two men, was Leonard. His head was flung back, his body rigid. Stella still wiped his face and neck from which ran two strands of blood. It was only as they laid him on the stretcher that John realised these were in fact the disconnected ends of his tie.

  Elizabeth had reappeared by his side and he said to her distractedly, ‘I’m his father. Shouldn’t I know what’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Blakeley,’ she said with all the signs of impatience. ‘These men came to the door … these newspaper-men came to the door and Leonard answered it. When they told him about Blakeley he fell back in this sort of fit.’

  ‘Would you like to go in the ambulance with your son, Mr. Radcliffe?’

  John saw that Alex was helping to carry the stretcher through the door. Preceding them was Cubbitt; he appeared to spring into the yard only to be halted by another outburst of sneezing. He bowed vigorously towards the stretcher as it emerged. As they crossed the yard towards the path that ran round the side of the Place it was this distraught figure that absorbed all John’s attention.

  They rounded the front of the Place to be confronted by a small crowd which had collected round the rear doors of an ambulance. John noticed that in fact Cubbitt had followed them, and as Leonard was inserted into the vehicle’s white interior he approached John, bowing still with the force of each sneeze, yet making unmistakable if discordant gestures of condolence. His eyes gazed tormentedly from his crimson face.

  The next moment, as John followed Stella and Elizabeth into the ambulance he thought that he glimpsed, standing quite close to the shadowed corner of the Place, as though half-determined not to be observed, the composed figure of Austen. Then the doors of the vehicle were shut and he was staring down at Leonard’s pale face. A red rubber ring protruded from his mouth.

  Shortly after the ambulance’s departure a hideous rumour swept the estate. Started originally several hours previously by a workman who, in the early hours of the morning, had seen a number of stretchers carried out of one of the houses he was passing, it suggested that a well-known club singer only recently released from jail had, in a fit of depression, killed his entire family and finally himself. The tragedy had been discovered by the police themselves who had gone to the house to further their enquiries into the death of Victor Tolson.

  By midday other details had been added to this account, relating it to the event that had occurred that morning at the Place. It was rumoured that Blakeley had written a confession to Tolson’s murder, and it had been with the intention of making an arrest that the police had gone to Blakeley’s house at such an early hour of the morning.

  The public was compelled, however, to wait several days before any of these suppositions could be confirmed, giving ample time for numerous variations to spring up and be discussed. At the inquest, due, it was reported, to the intervention of Cubbitt, Leonard’s name had not been mentioned.

  Blakeley’s confession, extremely long and largely unintelligible, made several points very clearly. One of these was that he had been driven to attack Tolson as a result of that person’s oppressive and destructive personality; and that his family’s misfortunes, his daughter’s as well as his own, had sprung from Tolson’s peculiar mania for domination. Details of the attack on Tolson, descriptions of the room and the landing where the assault had taken place, a statement of the time and the content of the telephone call which had summoned the police, all corresponded to the information already possessed, including Blakeley’s fingerprints which were found everywhere about the room. No reason could be suggested why the confession contained anything other than the truth.

  Blakeley’s motives for killing his family were much more obscure. There was some ambiguity over the parentage of the three children to whom Blakeley had acted as grandparent, and it was finally established beyond doubt that these were his own children conceived by his daughter Kathleen, who had herself never married. This incestuous relationship caused scarcely less of a sensation than the description of the killings for which it provided some sort of motive. It appeared that a knife had been specially sharpened by Blakeley, for a whetstone was discovered in the hearth at his house. The throats of the three children had been cut while they were sleeping, his wife’s while she was rising from the bed; Kathleen herself had apparently been caught as she was about to escape through the front door. Her body was the first to be discovered by the police when they forced an entry. It was covered with such a profusion of knife wounds as to be at first unrecognisable.

  Blakeley himself, it was assumed, had spent some time after this writing his confession, one which was terminated by a simple but extremely articulate appe
al for the strengthening and preservation of the monarchy, and for greater support for the unification of the churches. He had then made several attempts to kill himself with the knife and, having failed, had seemingly walked aimlessly about the house for the rest of the night. Bloodied footmarks led repetitively through every room and up and down the stairs. He had finally succeeded in killing himself, it appeared, as the police knocked on the front door, and had done so by facing a mirror and cutting his throat. The mirror, for some absurd reason, was displayed in court, its surface almost completely concealed beneath a dark tracery of stains.

  35

  It seemed to Leonard that his brain had unfolded. It broke violently apart. He was shocked at first because he could see no cause for it. One moment he was listening to someone speaking at the door and the next he was retreating with awkward, staggering movements of his legs. He couldn’t understand it. Extraordinary pains swept through his body and he was overwhelmed by a deeper sense of shock at his increasingly helpless behaviour. His brain was surrounded by a thicket of flame, separating him from all the things he could now only imagine, his composure, his control, his ease of expression. He saw all that he wanted most to retrieve disappearing beyond that barricade of fire. He was acutely embarrassed, for he was filled at the same time with a great desire to apologise to all those around him: the men who came through the door, his mother, and to Elizabeth making the coffee on the table. He saw this quite clearly, even to the individual and varying expressions of alarm. Several faces seemed to peer down and pursue him into this heatless blaze. He tried to reason and to show his shame. Then with a mixed sensation of relief and alarm, a black film like a helmet was drawn slowly down from the crown of his head, over his eyes, then his nose, and finally over his mouth so that he could no longer see, breathe, nor cry out. It enclosed him in a tightening black shell. A single white circle receded into the distance. Then he woke. He was lying in a bed of stiff sheets and felt sore and utterly tired.