Henry and Cato (23 page)

Stephanie's ‘picnic' was simple but extensive: ham, salami, a meat pie, olives, tomatoes, a potato salad, a green salad, sliced cucumber in yoghurt, cheese, celery, an apple tart. Also a chilled bottle of rather good white wine. Sandy had evidently taught her something.

Henry, usually a hungry man, found that he could eat nothing. It was simply impossible. He pretended to fiddle with ham and cucumber. He noticed that Stephanie too was only pretending to eat. Some more tears came, she tried to conceal them. He drank some wine and felt immediately drunk.

‘Are your parents alive?'

‘No.'

‘Brothers, sisters?'

‘No, no one.'

‘And you ran away from home?'

‘Yes, when I was fourteen.'

‘What did your father do?'

‘He was a labourer. I never got on with him. He beat my mother. Please let's not talk about it.'

‘I'm very sorry. I do understand.'

‘I wish you'd tell me—Sandy never told me anything—I don't even know—'

‘About me, us? My father died a long time ago when I was a small boy. My mother's still very much alive down at the Hall. There was only Sandy and me of course.'

‘Your mother must be so sad. Sandy did mention her sometimes. How much I should like to meet her—but of course that's impossible—'

‘It's not impossible,' said Henry. He put his fork down. ‘There's no earthly reason why you should not meet my mother.' He looked into the round moist dark blue eyes. Feeling slightly giddy he looked away again.

‘Oh no—'

‘Look, Stephanie,' said Henry. ‘By the way, I want to hear you call me “Henry”.'

‘I feel I—all right—Henry—'

‘Good. Now look. What's past is past. I mean, I don't regard you as—I'm not trying to step into Sandy's shoes—'

‘Of course not—' The tears overbrimmed again and she began to mop her face with a paper napkin, smudging the lipstick about.

‘I mean—I want us to be friends, I want to know you as you, for real, I—I won't ever abandon you, Stephanie—oh my dear, please don't cry—' Henry got up and came round the table. Stephanie rose and the next moment, with all the naturalness in the world, he had taken her in his arms. Her hands gripped his sleeve. Her hot wet smudgy face was buried against his jacket, and he felt her wild captive heart pounding against his own.

Very gently he led her to the bedroom.

‘I heard from Gerald Dealman,' said Brendan.

‘Where is he now?'

‘He's running an encounter group in Glasgow.'

‘I wonder how long that will last. Any news of Reggie?'

‘He says he's become a Buddhist, but we assume that's a joke.'

‘I hear Father Milsom is still ill.'

‘Yes, poor old man.'

‘Do you remember Sandy Marshalson? I brought him in to dinner once.'

‘That tall red-headed drunk who smashed himself up in his Ferrari, not on that night, thank heavens?'

‘Yes. We were all rather sozzled that night.'

‘I wonder if he was drunk when he killed himself. He seemed to me a man filled with desperation.'

‘Poor Sandy. Well, his brother's back, I think you never met him, Henry Marshalson, he was in America.'

‘I remember you mentioned him. Your childhood friend. I suppose he's inherited that big place.'

‘Yes, but he's going to sell it and give the money away.'

‘Good for him. Who to?'

‘He wants to give it to us.'

‘Us? Oh
us.
Grab it quick before he changes his mind.'

‘His mother won't like it.'

‘It'll make a change for the good old lady.'

Cato was irritated because he felt that Brendan, having virtually summoned him in order to have a ‘serious talk', ought not to be carrying on the trivial gossip which had now lasted all through supper. Cato, continuing the gossip and bored by it, was determined not to be the first to speak seriously. Of course Brendan, who had been teaching all day, was tired. Or perhaps he thought that Cato was tired and would want to go to bed and not to have to talk late upon grave subjects. But Cato did not want to go to bed, he wanted to talk properly to Brendan, only Brendan would go on and on being flippant.

Cato had had his lunch at a pub and had arrived at Brendan's flat in the afternoon, letting himself in with the key which was always left under the mat. Alone in the flat he had given himself the luxury of a hot bath, and had then lain down in the little slit of a room which was Brendan's spare bedroom. He had at once gone to sleep and had been awakened by Brendan's arrival home. They had drunk some wine and eaten some of an excellent stew which Brendan, who was quite a good cook, had made on the previous day and heated up. Cato, now drinking whisky, was walking restlessly about the room, stopping to examine Brendan's books, then pacing again. Brendan, not drinking, had taken his shoes off and was lying flat on the sofa with his feet up on one of the arms. Sometimes his eyes closed. Hang it, thought Cato, I suppose he wants to go to bed.

Brendan lived in a small flat in Bloomsbury, circled about ceaselessly by traffic whose noise the double-glazed windows muted to a steady murmur which soon ceased to hold the attention. There was, especially now with the lamps on and the thick curtains pulled, an atmosphere of secluded quietness. Brendan came of an old Catholic family, the sort of ‘public school Catholics' whom Cato's father regarded with such suspicion. He had come straight from Downside to train for the priesthood and had studied at Oxford when already a priest. He lived simply, but his narrow room somehow reflected confidence and ease. The silk-fringed lamps cast a subdued golden light and the long central rug, which lay upon other rugs, was a sort of embroidery of brown and golden roses which one hesitated to step upon. An ivory Spanish crucifix, the Christ figure only, very pale and blood bespattered, hung against a black velvet curtain.

‘What's Henry Marshalson doing besides selling his patrimony?'

‘He's writing a book on a painter called Max Beckmann.'

‘Oh yes. A rather frenetic German symbolist.'

‘I'd never even heard of him.'

Cato looked down on his reposing friend, was he really falling asleep or was he watching Cato through those rather long eyelashes? Brendan was good-looking and foppish, wearing a well-cut black suit with his dog collar, a black velvet jacket in the evening. He was tall, with glossy straight black hair and brilliant blue eyes. Cato had disapproved of him at first, taking him to be merely a charmer. As often happens it was Brendan's cleverness which taught Cato to see his virtue.

Cato thought, if he goes on chatting until I've finished my whisky I shall go to bed. It had also occurred to him, as if he had been somehow informed by Brendan's books, by the golden lamps, by the crucifix, that Brendan, whether in a sense he liked it or not, now represented authority. Cato was sure Brendan had not told anyone else in the order about Cato's doubts. But Brendan would have to decide after talking to Cato whether to tell or not, and would then do what he thought right and not what Cato wanted. Perhaps it might be better after all to wait until tomorrow.

‘So you're thinking of leaving us,' said Brendan, his eyes still apparently closed.

Cato felt relief. There was a change of atmosphere, a change of tempo.

‘Can I have some more whisky?'

‘Help yourself.'

‘You?'

‘No thanks.'

Cato paced a bit in silence. There was no urgency now.

‘I don't know—'

‘Not thinking of leaving us?'

‘I feel as if—I may have to—'

‘Why?'

‘I don't believe any more. It's pretty crucial. Of course I don't want to go. But I just don't believe.'

‘What don't you believe?'

‘I don't believe in God the Father or God the Son.'

‘What about the other fellow?'

‘Without them he's either non-existent or non-Christian.'

Brendan laughed. His eyes were open now, but he continued in his relaxed position, his hands behind his head. ‘Well, let's stick to them. What's the absolutely radical central thing which you once believed and now think you don't? What's gone?'

Cato reflected. What had gone? ‘The person. The person has gone. There's no one there.'

‘Christ?'

‘A holy man. A marvellous religious symbol. But not God. Not the Redeemer. Not the kingpin of history. There is no kingpin, there is no redemption.'

‘It isn't just the odiousness of Mother Church?'

‘No.'

‘When did you last say Mass?'

‘I
can't.
'

‘Well, let's leave that for the moment. I wonder how you know what you believe and what you don't believe. You were bound to have a crisis in your faith.'

‘I know. You saw it coming!'

‘I saw it coming. We all did.'

‘Bloody convert.'

‘Bloody convert. This sort of infantile disorder—'

‘Of course you think my faith was born in a drama and never recovered!'

‘How well you put it. Yes, it is something to be got over. You've been living on that drama. Now it's simply exhausted. You were in love, you know.'

‘In love?'

‘With Him.'

‘Oh—Him—yes, I suppose I was. He invaded my life. Everything dissolved everything fell. Oh God, Brendan, I'm so bloody unhappy.' Cato had not intended to say this. The sudden turn of the conversation confused him. He saw the face of Christ as he was accustomed to picture it. Then the face of Beautiful Joe.

‘What about that boy?' said Brendan.

‘You're telepathic.'

‘I'm just trying to see the context.'

‘There isn't a context.'

‘There must be a context. Your doubts and your speculations live in time. They're not metaphysical entities hanging in the void.'

‘You're not suggesting it's all caused by—'

‘I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just fishing around.'

‘If you think my motives—'

‘Oh, hang your motives—any theory you have about your motives is likely to be humbug anyway.'

‘I thought you weren't interested in the boy.'

‘I was, I am.'

‘Well what can I tell you. I love this child, I'm mad about him, I can't think about anything else.'

‘Does he know?'

‘I'm not sure,' said Cato. ‘No, I don't think so. Did he know?'

‘You haven't, then, grabbed him or anything?'

‘Grabbed him? No, of course not!'

‘I was just asking. But you have high-minded emotional conversations about his future and so on?'

‘Well—yes—'

‘Constructive?'

‘Not very. But I just can't stop seeing him. It's as if . . . there isn't any love … anywhere else …'

‘I understand that.'

‘But, Brendan, don't get this wrong. My doubts, the way it's all—gone blank and gone dead—that was happening before. It's nothing to do with Joe.'

‘O.K. Let's leave the boy. You say you feel now there's no one there. Is this a sense of dereliction or an intellectual conclusion or—'

‘There is an intellectual conclusion. There must be.'

‘Why must there be?'

‘Because I'm an intellectual being. And because it's a matter of truth. If Christ be not risen then is our faith vain. I mean, it's either A or not-A.'

‘Of course you are an Aristotelian. Aristotle was the beginning of the end. We've had to spend all the time until now undoing the damage.'

‘I'm not a philosopher,' said Cato impatiently. ‘And I'm not a Buddhist either, like Reggie Poole! I accept that Christ is the stumbling block and I stumble.'

‘We all stumble.'

‘And please, Brendan, don't do that old thing of trying to persuade me that faith is doubt and doubt is faith and where faith ends faith begins and so on! I know all that.'

‘Don't be so peevish, my dear. I'm simply trying to see where you are. The priesthood is a long job. It's a marriage. One doesn't rush out instantly when things are dull and the rewards fail.'

‘I'm not doing that! It's a matter of truth, I tell you!'

‘Truth is very complex here,' said Brendan. He swung his legs off the sofa and sat up, looking at Cato with his blue eyes which showed their colour even in the dim room.

‘When people start saying truth is complex they are usually starting to tell lies. The dogma—'

‘There are worlds and worlds beyond the dogma.'

‘How far can Christianity go beyond the dogma and still remain a religion?'

‘As far as the human soul extends.'

‘That's no answer. Anyway, for you there's no problem. You swim inside the dogma like a fish in water and have done ever since you could talk!'

‘Wait a moment, and don't get cross with me. You say that Christ invaded your life.'

‘Yes.'

‘Something happened.'

‘Yes. Now you will say it was all emotion—'

‘It seems to me that's what you're saying. Something happened. All right. But shouldn't you let it go on happening? Christ isn't a sort of once-and-for-all pill that you take. He's a principle of change in human life. And a human life takes a good deal of changing. “Not I but Christ!” Your complaints seem to be all I and no Christ.'

‘I'm not complaining.'

‘You said you were unhappy.'

‘We're not meeting. You're saying let Christ work and I'm saying there is no Christ.'

‘I think you should wait. Inhibit this state of certainty. And pray.'

‘I can't pray. I try to, but it's a lie, a level of myself that's a lie.'

‘Pray all the same. Damn it, you're a priest not a schoolgirl.'

‘You speak of efficacy. I speak of truth. No meeting.'