Henry and Cato (31 page)

‘And I thought you'd still be a priest, and that would make it all right. You've no idea how bloody stupid you look in those clothes. All the—all the sort of—magic's gone— what made me care—Now you're just a queer in a cord coat. You're the sort of person I spit on.'

Cato, in sudden utter panic, reached across the table and seized the boy's hand. ‘Joe, don't say that! It's me. You know me.'

‘I don't. That's the trouble.' Joe drew his hand away, pushing his chair back a little. ‘If we went away together, Father, it would be muck—muck like you don't know about. And I wouldn't care a fuck for it, for anything that you could give me, or anything that you could do for me. There'd be no joy there, Father, only hell, the only point would be money. I cared for you once, Father, but I cared for the other you, the one that wore a robe and had nothing, not even an electric kettle.' ‘I've still got nothing.'

‘You've got a cheque for five hundred pounds from Mr Marshalson.'

‘But I only got it for you, I only did everything for you, I didn't want you to suffer, I didn't want you to be poor!' ‘Well, it's all spoilt now. I'm sorry, I was thick—' ‘As for Mr Marshalson's cheque, that's easily dealt with.' Cato took the cheque and tore it into small pieces.

Joe looked at the fragments, then spread them out a little with his fingers. ‘That's sad. That's really sad.' ‘I can get another one—'

‘I don't care what you do, Father, only you can't do it with me.'

‘But Joe, don't abandon me. I've got nothing now. I've given away everything so as to be with you, and you did say—'

‘I was crazy. It could never have worked, like that anyway. I used to think there were two things in the world, you and somehow what you stood for, and the hell where nothing matters but money. Now I think there's only one thing in the world. The hell where nothing matters but money.'

Cato was silent. He was trying to think. If he could only find the right words, only make the right appeal—In spite of Joe's rejection of him they were close, closer than they had ever been before. He leaned forward and gripped for a moment between his fingers the cold thick sleeve of Joe's black leather coat.

‘Joe, listen, just listen and don't interrupt. I impressed you because I was a priest but a priest is just a symbol. And I can't be that any more. But still it's true that there isn't just hell. There's love and that's real and I do really love you. And there's no need for you to think what does he mean, what is he after? I don't know myself, except that I want to help you. Isn't this something that you shouldn't just throw away? Are you so rich in love that you can refuse this gift? Why not at least try it? Let me be in your life. You know me well enough to know I wouldn't dominate you or interfere. I just want to help and to serve. I suppose that's all there is left of my priesthood. You asked me once if I wanted a love affair, and I said no. Now I say, why not? Of course I want to hold you in my arms, and now that I'm just a queer in a cord coat at least I can tell you the truth! If it happens, good, if it doesn't happen, also good. You know I'll never let my love be a burden to you, I want you to be free, that's what love is all about. Can't you accept it all simply and let me help you to be happy? You talk about living in hell—well, why live in hell? If you go on as you're doing at present, playing at being a petty criminal, you'll end up as a real criminal, and you'll lead a hateful miserable frightened life which you won't be able to escape from. Surely you want to be free and happy? We can live together in Leeds and enjoy life. We won't be short of money. I'll work and you can learn something interesting—'

‘I don't want to learn anything,' said Joe, still looking down at the table, moving his hands a little to make shadows on the wood. ‘You're always on about learning as if people liked learning things. Well, maybe you do but I don't.' ‘You said you might like to be an electrical engineer.' ‘You said I might. I might like to be a pop star. But I'm not going to learn anything. Learning's finished.'

‘All right, we needn't decide at once what you do. The important thing is to get away, to know each other better and find a way to live and to work—' ‘You want to be in bed with me.'

‘That's not important. I want to be with you, to live near you, to see you. We needn't even be in the same house if you don't want.'

‘You said we wouldn't be short of money, but you tore up that cheque.'

‘Look, Joe, I can get another cheque, I can get any money that we need from Mr Marshalson. Anyway I'll have a decent salary and—'

‘I don't want to know about your feelings and who you want to be in bed with, it disgusts me. It's no good, Father, it doesn't add up. I don't like you like this any more, it all makes me feel sick. When I said I'd go with you, I didn't think it would be like this.'

‘But I told you!'

‘Well, I didn't understand then, I didn't think. I couldn't stand it, we'd end up murdering each other like queers do. Anyway, I'm not a queer.'

‘All right, I never said you were—'

‘Yes you did, you implied it, and I resent that. I dig girls, I want to fuck them, even if they're bloody stupid cunts. You're just trying to bribe me and I think it's horrible. I don't want to see you any more ever again.'

‘Joe, dear heart, don't say that!' Cato moved his chair and put a hand onto Joe's shoulder. He tried to draw the boy towards him.

In an instant Joe had leapt up and was at the door. ‘Don't touch me!'

‘I'm sorry—'

‘You go away, go anywhere, just go away. And don't bloody come after me again or I'll smash you. You don't know me, you don't know anything about me, you don't know what it's like to be me, you've never bloody cared to find out, you've just imagined me the way you want me. I've had a lousy life, no one's ever really cared for me, and you don't either. My father hated me and my mother hated me and my brothers hated me and I curse the lot of them and I curse you most of all because you pretended to be different and you're not. You tried to catch me and trap me, but I can see you now and all your nastiness and what you really are, so don't you come near me again or I'll kill you. I'm in with the big boys now, I'm in a gang, I'm working on big things, and I'm nothing to do with you and your rotten lying ideas any more. I'm in with real people and I'm going to make big money. So it's good-bye, Mr bloody Forbes or Cato or whatever you call yourself now. And leave me alone, I mean it. You won't find me anyway, I'm leaving. I'm going to be with
them.
I've found them at last like I said I would. So good-bye and you can make your own hell only I won't be in it.'

Cato leapt up. Beautiful Joe flashed out of the door and banged it shut in Cato's face. The door of the yard banged.

Cato, after opening the kitchen door, closed it again and sat down slowly at the table. He started stroking the wood and making shadows on it with his hands, as Joe had done. He thought, it's perfectly true, I didn't know him. But I did love him. And not just in a selfish way. I loved him as well as I could.

He sat there for a long time, looking at his hands and twitching his shoulders about inside the unfamiliar garments. He felt that he wanted to cry but he could not cry. He felt shock. He thought, I deliberately destroyed my capacity to help him. But what else could I have done? I told the truth. Perhaps I should not have told the truth. And now he has gone to
them.
And perhaps it is my fault. Better that a millstone should be hanged about my neck and I should be drowned in the depths of the sea.

There is no point in going to Leeds tomorrow, thought Cato, I would have so much liked looking for nice digs for Joe, but now, I don't care where I live. I'll go up there when term begins and live anywhere. Maybe I'll stay on here for the present. But not because I think he'll come back. I'm sure he won't come back. Maybe after all I'll go home. I'll go to Laxlinden, to Pennwood. I have lost Christ and I have lost Joe. And Father Milsom is dead and I didn't even answer his letter. I have got everything wrong.

And he thought: I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Dear Colette,

I have got your sweet touching utterly ridiculous and dotty letter. What a load of enchanting nonsense! Of course one is grateful for any signal of approval upon the harsh human scene, but this goes too far! Did you really expect me to take it seriously? Please return yourself to reality forthwith! These are schoolgirl daydreams. And why pick on me for your ‘crush'? I am as old as the hills, embittered by my childhood, talentless, godless, rootless, and by now at least half American. Also shortly to be penniless. You may have heard that I am going to get rid of my patrimony. I gather the rumour is getting round, so if it was the Hall you wanted, forget it. What you need is a nice sensible English boy, young, fresh-faced (not all gnarled like me) with a respectable job (schoolmaster? solicitor? architect?) (what about Giles Gosling?) who will set you up in a safe cosy English
home.
(I am not being sarcastic.) Anyway you probably want your father to survive for a few years yet and he would certainly die of apoplexy at the prospect of me as a son-in-law. No, no, it won't do; as far as I'm concerned it's just good for a laugh, and I expect by now you are laughing yourself.

There is in fact a further reason why I cannot be yours, which is that I am engaged to be married to a dear girl called Stephanie Whitehouse, who is staying with me at the Hall. We are getting married soon and will then probably buzz off to America. So there! Thanks for your letter though. You must be the only person who ever preferred me to Sandy. Anyway it's all a girlish dream and will blow away as such. My very best wishes to you.

Henry

My dearest Bell,

I am sorry I haven't written properly sooner. Everything has been, since I got here, awful and
mad.
An identity crisis I guess you and Russ would call it! I couldn't write because I didn't know who I was. I still don't. It occurs to me that I didn't in America either, only there it doesn't matter because there nobody knows who they are. (And I daresay they are the better for it!) Here I had lots of hats waiting for me to try on. I suppose I am still in process of rejecting them all. (Only the clown's fits!) You speculated so much about how it would be with my mother and none of the speculations has been quite right. There's no row, no reconciliation, just a dreadful blank. I didn't want it, I don't like it, but I may somehow all the same have brought it about, or else we both did. It's all abrasive and hurtful and basically cruel, on both sides. It's odd that I can see this and describe it but I can't change it. And all the old faithful psychoanalytical machinery which at this very moment you are busy wheeling up won't do a thing either. All those would-be deep explanations are so abstract and so simple when confronted with the awful complex thereness of a relationship which has gone wrong. You thought she might weep over me, need me, want me to become Sandy. Not a bit of it. Her feelings for
him
remain totally private. I think I just
irritate
her, I'm not even a disappointment! I haven't seen a single tear. My God, she's tough. I suppose that women (I mean bourgeois English ones, not liberated zanies like you!) learn pretty early on that they've got to be alone and bear things alone, even when they're in the bosom of their family. I daresay my father and Sandy were just the ticket, exactly what she wanted, what she worshipped, but all the same they were bloody ruthless egoists like all men are when they aren't positively
prevented
from being so by exceptional women. Hence that toughness, that solitude. I certainly can't get through to her, and given that she hasn't shown me the slightest sign of tenderness or affection since I arrived I'm not actually trying very hard! I think she expects to be revered and accepted like a sort of monument, and that's not my thing. And talking of monuments I have something to tell you. I have decided (and this doesn't please my mother much either) to sell the Hall and all the land and all the property and all the stocks and shares, the lot, and get rid of all the proceeds, give it away, strew it about, get it absolutely off me, off my hands, off my neck! I hope you're not shocked, saddened? I know it would be fun to entertain you and Russ here, to get drunk together in the pseudo-Grinling Gibbons library, after which you would want to dance naked in the park or something! It would be nice to
épater
a bit around the place! But these are childish pleasures. And honest, Bella, I just
hate
it all, I
hate
it, I didn't know how much until I saw it all again and my bloody mother doing the Duchess in the middle of it. Faugh! I thought in my dreams that I might destroy the whole set up, but I didn't know that I'd be strong enough until I actually saw it and observed myself reacting to it. My mother has taken this final solution fairly calmly. She will be all right, she has a decent annuity and will live in a nice little house nearby. Now I know you're fishing after motives of which there are
hundreds
and some of them may be disreputable (as if I cared) but mainly, I don't think I ought to have much when others have little and: I haven't the temperament to be an English country gent. I'd hate it and I'd become nasty. (O.K., nastier!) It's not just a spiritual burden, my dear, it's a bloody material practical one: walls, roofs, trees, servants, drainage, taxes … God, the blessed simplicity of our life at Sperriton, and Christ how I miss it!

Well, that's bombshell number one, if it is one. ( I wonder if you and Russ expected it?) Stand by, honey, for bombshell number two. I am engaged to be married. I am going to marry a sweet humble sexy totally unlettered kittenish beast called Stephanie Whitehouse whom I have inherited from Sandy—she is, you might say, part of the property. She is (literally) an ex-prostitute and was kept by Sandy secretly in London! (There's glory for you!) She loves me and she is the only woman apart from you that I've ever liked being in bed with! She has had a miserable life and I pity her intensely. She is not at all beautiful but very attractive, she warms and excites me and I feel safe with her. She is totally un-Lax-linden Hall, and I can't wait to get her away from the bloody scene here. Her age is thirty-four, by the way, as you'll certainly want to know that!