Henry and Cato (8 page)

‘It's easy afterwards to talk of resisting. But they didn't know what was happening.'

‘They knew their bit of it. They knew some bugger was pointing a gun at them and taking away their things.'

‘Exactly. People are afraid of guns.'

‘Yes, they are. And a funny thing, do you know, it's awfully easy to frighten anybody. Not everybody knows how easy it is, but it's dead easy.'

‘I expect it is. So you see.'

‘Dead easy. Do it even with a knife. I got a knife, a beauty. I scared a girl with it in the road, suddenly whipped it out and pointed it at her tummy, should have heard her screech. Just show them a knife and anybody will do anything, girls take their clothes off, rich shits hand over their wallets, anything—'

‘If you—'

‘I'm going to write a pop song called “Fear is a knife”.'

‘Joe, if you play that game—'

‘Well, it's just a game, you know me, scare a few ratbags, does no harm. I don't want to be a slave though. Just look at the people you see, ordinary people anywhere, they're done for by thirty, they might as well be dead, got stupid pigs' faces, can't think of anything but telly and football, that's materialism for you. I'm not going to be like that, I'm not a materialist. I know I'm somebody, I want to be different, I want to be big. You got to be an expert. So people get frightened, O.K. And who's on top? The frighteners. No good just nicking things, that's protest but it's kids' stuff. The top people don't bother with nicking, they just frighten the little guys. That's what the Mafia do, they frighten all the other villains, that's a laugh, that's what protection rackets are all about. And Hitler and Stalin that's what they did too, that's what made them big. I'd like to be big somehow, I'd like to be famous. I don't want to be a victim of the system like all the rest. If I got a little job like in a garage mending rotten little cars for pennies a week, what'd I be? Nobody and nothing. I know I've got something in me. I just got to find myself, I got to find my way,
my
way. That's what freedom's all about. Most people are just scared, they're scared of freedom, they're sheep, they
want
to become morons, watching the telly with their mouths hanging open, I'm not going to be like that.'

‘All right, don't be, use your mind, you've got one! Do you think I want you to be a moron? And I'm not suggesting you should work in a garage. Get some education, that's the way to freedom, that's the way out—'

‘I haven't time, Father. I'm feeling so frustrated. I wish I was a boxer, that's the way to get great. I want to live my life now, I want real things, money, fun. And I'll get them, you'll see, I'll surprise you—'

‘You'll surprise yourself. You'll probably be hung.'

‘Not now I won't, get ten years, out in six! I'd like to kill a man, I'd like to do one sometime, just to see what it's like. Don't worry, Father, I'm only joking! But I won't be a sheep, I'd rather die.'

‘Joe, I found a revolver, was it yours?'

Beautiful Joe, his dry hair now frizzed out and brushed by his thin hands into a blond mane, became very still, his mouth a hard thin line. After a moment he returned his hands to his knee and crossed them with deliberation.

‘In that cupboard.'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you take it?'

‘I threw it into the river last night.'

Joe was silent, breathing hard almost panting. He creaked his chair backwards with a harsh movement. He was suddenly flushed. ‘You shouldn't. It was mine. It was my thing.
Mine.
'

‘You have no business with a revolver. That's one thing I can do for you, take it away.'

‘It's mine, it's beautiful—you don't understand—I cared so much—I'll never forgive you, never, never never.'

‘Joe, you know perfectly well—'

‘I hate you for this, just for this, and I'll have to—you don't understand what that meant to me, my gun—Christ, I was a fool to leave it here—'

‘Oh, don't be
childish
!' said Cato. ‘You look as if you were ten years old.'

Joe closed his eyes, then opened them and picked up his drink which had been standing untouched upon the floor. He smiled, drank, then laughed a little staccato laugh. ‘It wasn't a real one anyway, it was an imitation.'

‘Don't lie.'

‘Well, it's gone. Did you really throw it in the river? I'd like to have seen that. Well, Father, so you're going. Where do we meet then?'

‘I don't know,' said Cato, ‘I'm going away, absolutely away, and I can't—'

‘Oh, yes you can. I must see you, I must talk to you. You're the only one I can talk to, you don't know what a star you are in my life, you're the only thing that's not bloody rotten and awful around here, you're the only
person
I know—'

‘Joe—'

‘If you leave me, I'm really done for, I'll go berserk—'

‘All right, I'll—'

‘You saw me, saw something in me, you knew I was worth something—'

‘All right, all right. I'll see you—next Tuesday—this time—here.'

Henry Marshalson was standing so still in the evening twilight, standing there beside the iron gate of the park, that someone coming along the little road might have mistaken him for a post, or else not seen him at all as his slim figure blended in the dusk with the dark background of the ivy-covered wall.

He had deliberately arrived several days early, not informing his mother of his coming. Leaving his luggage at his London hotel he had just packed a small bag and set off after lunch for the railway station. When he asked for a ticket to Laxlinden Halt he was met with incomprehension. The station had evidently ceased to exist. He took a ticket to the next station down the line and thence proceeded by bus to Laxlinden village. He wore his trilby hat, long preserved for the amusement of Russ and Bella, pulled down over his brow. He saw nobody he knew. He walked the two miles from the village just as it was beginning to get dark.

The hedges had been cut down and the road had been widened. Otherwise everything looked much the same. He could not easily have pictured the road, but at each turn he knew exactly what he would see next: the tithe barn, as bulky as a cathedral, the row of elms on the low green skyline, the glimpse of the canal and a fishing heron, the
Horse and Groom
set back, with two labourers' cottages beside it (the cottages had been turned into a smart little house), the ford, no, the ford was gone and a horrible concrete bridge had taken its place, the pretty view of the Forbeses' house, Pennwood, across the Oak Meadow, the meadow itself, now sown with clover, and the huge oak tree mistily budding, which gave it its name, then at last the ironstone wall of the park with the dark conifers behind it. A host of elder saplings had grown up along the ravaged roadside and beneath them thick clumps of primroses were pallidly in flower. There was also, here and there, the faint purple stain of violets. Henry marched along and as he marched he watched himself. He felt calm, or rather cold, utterly cold. The evening was very still and windless, carrying a damp fragrance. It had rained earlier, and the road surface on which he was walking was wet and a little sticky. A few cars passed him, some with their lights on. The dim road unwound before him as if in a waking dream he were compelling it to do so. He was thinking these dusky yet glowing meadow slopes and these lonely quiet trees.

It was when he actually got to the wall of the park and to the iron gate that the thing which he had been anticipating launched itself upon him. Standing beside the gate he carefully put his suitcase on the ground and stood quite still taking very long breaths. Then suddenly he fell against the gate, clutching at the wet bars with his hands. His hat fell off. He drooped against the gate, hanging there as if he were pinned to it, his legs swaying and giving way, and the metal made cold wet lines upon his pendant body. His eyes were closed. His cheek was crushed against one of the bars, the rain water was upon his lips. He held onto the gate in a fierce spasm of emotion, as if that old gate were the first thing upon that dream journey which had remembered his name and uttered it. After a minute, as he seemed to be slipping to his knees, he steadied himself, opened his eyes, retrieved and donned his hat and brushed down his suit and his unbuttoned macintosh. He picked up his suitcase and pushed the gate. It clanked back a little way, then checked. He looked more closely and saw that it was chained and padlocked. He pulled vainly at the padlock, then stepped back.

He could see now that the drive beyond the gate was slightly overgrown with weeds, and a line of young nettles and docks were growing just beyond the bars. They must have changed the entrance. Now they probably used the short drive from the other road, not troubling to keep up the long drive, letting it fall into disuse. Henry hesitated, began to walk off, then came back. This was his way. Like a ghost, he felt he must walk his own path. He swung his light suitcase and sent it flying over the top to land among the nettles. He debated whether it would be easier to climb the gate or the wall and decided on the gate. The first bit was easy, just a matter of hauling himself up onto the transverse bar which ran across level with his chest. The next bit seemed impossible until he found some crumbling footholds in the wall at the side, and, holding onto some ivy, managed to swing one leg over the spikes at the top, then lower his dabbing foot gingerly until he could reach the bar. His hat had fallen off again, fortunately inside onto the drive. His body recorded for him that he was no longer twenty.

Henry resumed his damp and slightly muddy hat, picked up his suitcase and began to walk as quietly as he could along the drive, his trouser legs gently swished by the weeds which were growing in the gravel. The motionless evening air was softly exuding a faint almost tangible darkness which seemed to reveal, to body forth, rather than to conceal the masses of shrubs and trees on either side. The grass had been roughly mown, not shorn, and gleamed wet and faintly grey. Some distance away a blackbird was singing a long complicated passionate song. There was a very quiet persuasive sound of dripping. Henry breathed in the cool rainy earthy smell. He had not smelt this particular smell for nine years. It was the smell of England. He had forgotten it all. He had forgotten the unnerving uncanny atmosphere of the English spring. How it smelt, how it dripped. The drive curved and the trees receded. A blackness upon the left, like a huge wall, was a yew hedge where there had once been statues, only they seemed to have gone. A patch of radiant sky opened ahead, dark through a saturation of powdery blueness as if the night were suspended, not yet precipitated, in tiny invisible particles. One large light yellow star was blazing, and round about it, as Henry looked, searching, were other stars, tiny pinpoints hardly able to pierce through the radiance of the twilight blue. Blinking, he looked away across the widening expanse of grass. There were scattered patches of glowing paleness here and there at which he looked for a moment puzzled, then knew of course the daffodils, all of them white, since his father would only tolerate white daffodils. The blackbird had fallen silent. The stars were brighter. The drive curved again and he was within sight of the house. Henry stopped.

The Hall was L-shaped, the foot of the L being a remnant of a brick-built Queen Anne house onto which about 1740 a longer slightly lower stone house had been added at right angles. This long façade now faced towards Henry, several lighted windows, making pale milky rectangles in its uncertain form. Against the dark blue sky the darker outline of the shallow roof seemed to creep a little. Beyond the house, invisible, the land sloped to the lake. There was more light. A bright half moon was now making its presence felt from behind the grove of conifers, shining over Henry's shoulder, silverpointing the slates and making pendant shadows beneath the far-projecting eves. The mown grass ahead, shaven here to a level carpet, was grey, heavy with moisture.

Something moved, just ahead of him, and Henry's gaze sharpened. A small darkness moved among bushes, detached itself, then began to travel noiselessly across the lawn. It stopped again, and Henry made out the outline of a fox. The darkness which was the fox seemed to be looking at the darkness which was Henry. Then, without haste, it moved away and in a few moments disappeared into the longer grass which fringed the birch woodland beyond. Henry looked back at the house. Then he sat down abruptly on the grass. Some huge violent emotional
thought
had come to him: the thought, he realized, that this was the first time in his life, since his early childhood, that he had ever seen the Hall without apprehending ‘Sandy's'. He could not recall much from the time before his father's death. What he remembered, with his first vivid memories of himself playing upon the terrace, was Sandy saying, ‘This is my house, I could turn you out if I wanted to.' ‘You couldn't.' ‘I could.' ‘
You couldn't!
'

Henry got up after a while, feeling damp. He had somehow or other failed to sit on his raincoat. He vainly tried to brush the wetness off his trousers. Then he picked up his bag and began to walk with careful foxlike silence across the lawn, leaving a wavering track of watery footprints behind him in the moonlight. He had now parted company with the drive which turned away to the left, passing round the house to the front door on the other side, and branching to reach the stable block and join the other driveway to the Dimmerstone road. Henry had intended to arrive unexpectedly, but he had not really intended to arrive at night. Coming like this, he felt himself both menacing and menaced. But most of all now he felt, foxlike Henry, as he approached the house, a piercing tender agonizing emotion which was like a desire to worship, to kneel down and kiss the earth. But what would he have been worshipping? He also, as he set his foot upon the first of the three steps that led up to the nearside of the terrace, felt sick, a positive urge to vomit which he had to pause and quell. The second step was cracked, a corner missing, where a patch of thyme grew. His foot felt the crack and the softness of the thyme. He stopped again on the terrace, summoning up reserves of coldness. He could weep now, but must not. He would be cold, hard, if possible even sardonic, utterly masked. The alternative was a blubbering mess. Henry called up, and felt it come, blessing him from beyond the coldness, sheer old hatred. That was what was needful, that would stiffen him all right, thank God.