Henry and Cato (2 page)

It had been extraordinarily painful to leave them, though naturally he was returning very soon. ‘Cheer up, kid, it'll be over by Christmas,' said Russell to leave-taking Henry. ‘By Christmas!' shouted Bella. ‘Why, he'll be back here in a fortnight, he can't live without us!' Henry's chance of sudden English adventures was discussed. ‘If he falls for anybody it'll be some sort of ravaged tart,' said Bella. ‘Like you, honey,' said Henry feebly. It was agreed to be unlikely. Timid Henry shuddered from indiscriminate or hasty sex. One of the things which Bella had done for him was to make him feel that he had somehow been through ‘all that' and come out spotless. What after all did he know about women? What big plump loud-voiced dark-eyed Bella had taught him; he was her pupil, her creation, probably her property.

Henry took off his watch and altered it to London time. Half way there. He felt, as a very vague stirring in his bones, America begin to fall away. Not thinking of England or his mother he poured himself a quick Martini from the hip flask which Bella had thoughtfully provided. Presumably he was a rich man now. Of course he had not been exactly a poor man in the States except in the sense that he had somehow conditioned himself for poverty. His father, a rigid primogeniturist, had left everything to Sandy, the elder son: everything that is except a sum of money, not fabulous though not contemptible, which escaping Henry had left behind him untouched in a bank in London. Occasionally, when economizing with Russ and Bella, he thought of bringing the money over and spending it rapidly on riotous living, only somehow he had never found out how to live riotously. He could not discover in himself any talent for buying anything expensive: girls, fun,
objets d'art.
He did not want them if bought. Even the cornucopia of the American supermarket somehow turned his stomach. He never told the Fischers about the money. Naturally he had told Bella about Sandy at a faculty party the very first time he met her, and she had soon developed her classical theory about his childhood. Only of course it was not like that, it was not like that at all, and the truth was untellable.

Henry's father Burke Marshalson, who died when Henry was a boy, ought to have been Sir Burke Marshalson, or perhaps Lord Marshalson, only unfortunately there were no titles in the family. There had always been a legend based on nothing whatever of ‘grandness', which Henry loathed with every cell of his being. Burke Marshalson spent his life tinkering with the property, which relentless governments were reducing. His wife Gerda, left a young widow, preserved the legend and did her best with the money. In this fictitious importance Sandy, the elder of the two children, had early clothed himself, or been clothed by the attentions of relatives and servants. When still a boy Sandy had inherited Laxlinden Hall, the park and farmlands, and the still substantial fortune needed to ‘keep them up' for transmission in due course to his son. Henry, soon made aware that Sandy owned everything down to the very earth that tolerated Henry stood upon, used to pray daily for his brother's death. Sandy always appeared to be the clever one, though he only studied engineering and even gave that up. He had identity, while all Henry's qualifications failed to endow him with any credible being. Sandy patronized Henry and laughed at him and called him ‘Trundletail', or ‘Trundle' for short. He never even noticed Henry's hatred. To Henry in America he sent Christmas cards, even birthday cards. No one had intended to be unkind to Henry and perhaps nobody had been unkind to him. He had just been born a bit unreal and second rate. ‘The little one is a puny child,' he had heard his mother saying in a context where Sandy was being praised, and quick Henry learnt a new word.

And now handsome six-foot Sandy was dead, and he had never married and never produced the longed-for heir. Inferior Henry was the heir. And now Henry was coming back to it all, back to ancient claustrophobic wicked cluttered Europe and quaint dotty little England and beautiful terrible Laxlinden and the northern light over the meadows. And his mother whom he had not seen since she visited New York five years ago in the company of that sponging creep Lucius Lamb. (Of course tactless Henry had to ask if she had paid his fare.) Hopefully, creep Lamb would have had time to die or get lost in the interim. What would it all be like? Was something going to happen in his life at last? Would he be called upon to make great choices, world-altering decisions? Would he be able to? Free will and causality are entirely compatible, Russell told him once. Henry did not understand. Or would it prove as insubstantial as a dream from which he would soon wake up safe at home in his little white house at Sperriton, with the telephone bell ringing and up-early Bella bright upon the line? Were there
people
waiting for him over there in England? Was there anyone there that he really wanted to see? Well, he would quite like to see Cato Forbes; he wondered over his next martini what had become of him. The plane shuddered on. Emotionally exhausted and now drunk Henry went to sleep again.

At about the hour when Cato Forbes was walking to and fro on Hungerford Bridge and Henry Marshalson was awakening from his first sleep on the jumbo jet high above the Atlantic, Gerda Marshalson and Lucius Lamb were in conference in the library at Laxlinden Hall.

‘He won't change anything,' said Lucius.

‘I don't know,' said Gerda.

She was walking up and down. Lucius was reclining upon the sofa near to the recently installed television set.

The library was a long room with three tall windows, now closely velveted with curtains. One wall was covered with a late seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry, representing Athena seizing Achilles by the hair, the goddess and the hero being decoratively enveloped in green Amazonian vegetation. Agamemnon and his companions were not visible, but nearby Troy was represented, against a mysteriously radiant grey-blue sky, by three creamy pinnacles rising above immense leaves in the top right-hand corner. The other walls were covered by shelves containing ancestral Marshalson books, most of which had been rebound in a uniform tawny-golden leather binding: mainly history and biography and sets of standard literary classics. No book had been touched, except by Rhoda's duster, since Henry went away. The shelves stopped short of the ceiling leaving space for perched busts of Roman emperors. Nobody dusted them, but fortunately they were black in any case.

Two shaded lamps, made out of huge vases, illuminated one end of the room, and beneath the tall chimney piece, carved by a pupil of Grinling Gibbons, a log fire was brightly burning, stirred lately to life by a strong poke from Gerda's small slippered foot. A blue cut-glass bowl beside one of the lamps contained a very large number of white daffodils whose delicate smell blended airily with the warmth of the fire.

Lucius was feeling very tired and wanted to go to bed. His back was hurting and his new false teeth, which he dared not remove in Gerda's presence, were unbearably cluttering up his mouth. A kind of itching ache was crawling about his body, making it impossible for him to find comfort in any position. Pains curled in crannies, merely dozing. How he hated growing old. Even whisky was no good now. He wanted to scratch and yawn but could not do either. He saw Gerda's face hazily. He never wore his glasses in public. She had been talking for hours.

Gerda was wearing one of the long loose robes, too elegant to be called dressing-gowns, which she now often put on in the evenings. Lucius was not sure whether this new style represented a kind of informal intimacy or simply a compromise with comfort. Gerda never spoke about her health and in general preferred her own rigid conception of style to common ease. Tonight's robe was of light wool, checkered blue and green, buttoning high to the neck and sweeping the carpet. Had Gerda, underneath it, undressed? Gerda's straight dark brown hair was looped back from her face and held at the nape of her neck with a large tortoiseshell slide. When loose it just covered her shoulders. Did she dye her hair, Lucius wondered. He lived surrounded by mysteries. Gerda, especially in this light, could still look uncannily young. Of course she was faded and her features were less fine. She had a pale rather wide face and a nose which seemed to have become larger with age, the nostrils more powerfully salient. The eyes were a dark brown and glowed—like Sandy's, like Henry's. She was neither short nor tall, perceptibly plumper. But she still had the authority of a woman who had been a beauty. Watching her stride and turn, tossing her long blue and green skirt, he thought, she's a woman every second, bless her. Her old-fashioned coquetry was so natural it had become a grace.

Lucius was sixty-six years old. It was many years now since he had become the slave of glowing-eyed Gerda. When he first met her she was already married to tall red-headed Burke and carrying a lusty red-headed baby in her arms. Lucius had fallen in love, not intending to make of this his life's work. How had it happened? His fruitless passion had become a family joke. Gerda patronized him. (‘At least English intellectuals are gentlemen', said Gerda.) Nobody feared Lucius. Burke, who felt, for no good reason, that Lucius could perceive, superior to everyone, patted Lucius on the back and told him to make himself at home at Laxlinden Hall. Little did Burke or Lucius dream how thoroughly this would come about.

Lucius had been, making almost a profession of it, a beautiful young man. He had had long flowing light brown hair at a time when this was unusual, a defiant sign of some remarkable oddity. Lucius, very conscious of this, felt that his oddity was simply genius. How he despised Burke, despised even his younger college friend John Forbes through whom he had met Burke. Everybody in London adored Lucius then; it was only at Laxlinden that he was a failure. He belonged to a stylish literary milieu and had published poems before he was twenty. A number of quite well-known men were in love with him. He was the child of elderly parents. They were poor folk, but they had sent him to a good school. They lived to see his book of poems and also the novel which followed it. He had a younger sister but she was uneducated and they had nothing in common. Spurred by an idealism which was one with his self-confident ambition he early joined the Communist party. He soldiered, bravely and decently enough he thought in retrospect, through the years of disillusionment. Perhaps joining the party had been his mistake? He had made some mistake. Perhaps he should simply have sat still and worked it all out
a priori
as other people did. It seemed obvious enough afterwards. What a lot of his young strength he had wasted on fruitless controversies, now rendered dim and tiny by the relentless, and to Lucius always surprising, onward movement of history.

He had lived in this strange way with Gerda for several years now. Of course much longer ago, after Burke died, he had proposed to her. Or had he? He could not now remember the exact form of words. She turned away. He went back to London. He worked as a journalist, then for a publisher, saving up for his freedom. The first novel was a success, the second one was not, he never wrote a third. Instead he wrote literary love letters to Gerda. He gave up poetry and started to write a big book about Marxism. He visited Gerda regularly and told her that she was the only woman he had ever loved, which was not quite true. He talked to her impressively about his book. One day she suggested that he should come and stay at the Hall until he had finished it. It was still unfinished. So Gerda had turned out in this strange way to be his fate after all. Was he glad? Was she glad? He had never been to bed with her. But she seemed to need him, she seemed to expect him to stay on. Perhaps, as the years go by, any woman will value a slavish faithfulness. For a while she expected him to teach her things. They were to have discussions. Once he gave her a book list, and nothing more came of that. Their relations remained intimate yet formal.

And he was really rather beautiful even now, he thought, as he often consoled himself by looking into the mirror. His flowing hair was a greyish white, and with his twinkling eyes and scarcely wrinkled face he looked like a sort of mad sage, and passed for vastly wise as he played the eccentric and made younger people laugh. It was a pity about the false teeth, but if he smiled carefully they were not conspicuous. He had lived on talk and curiosity and drink and the misfortunes of his friends. Only now life was more solitary and he could hardly believe that he had achieved so little and was sixty-six.

‘Will he stay?' said Gerda.

‘I shouldn't think so.'

‘You're not thinking.'

‘How do I know what he'll do?'

‘Will he stay in England, will he stay here?'

‘I shouldn't think he'll stay here, it's so damned dull. I mean—'

‘Will he want to make changes?'

‘No, why should he? He'll find out from Merriman what's in the kitty and skip off back to America.'

‘I wish we hadn't sold the Oak Meadow.'

‘Well, Sandy wanted that boat in a hurry—'

‘Bellamy says John Forbes is going to build on it.'

‘I don't suppose Henry will even remember the Oak Meadow.'

‘Will he live in London?'

‘Darling, he's a stranger to us, we can't know what he'll do, he probably doesn't know himself.'

‘He's not a stranger to me, he's my son.'

Lucius, sucking his teeth, said nothing.

‘Why don't you say something? I wish you wouldn't fidget so.'

‘Yes, of course he's your son. We must be very kind to him.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Oh, I don't know, I mean, coming back here, so long away—'

‘You meant something special by it.'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Are you implying that I've been unkind to him?'

‘No!'

‘Or unjust to him?'

‘No! Gerda, don't always imagine I mean something.'

‘Why not?'

‘I mean you keep thinking he'll arrive with a plan. He won't. We'll have to make the plan. Well, you will. Henry was never able to make a decision in his life. He'll arrive a shy awkward gentle muddle-headed young man as he always was.'