Henry and Cato (46 page)

‘Cato—you're suffering from shock.'

‘You came here as a tourist to view the ruins.'

‘I didn't—Please—'

‘Sorry. Sorry. You'd better go. I'll be all right. I don't need a doctor. Please go away. And don't tell them anything at Pennwood. I just hope and pray for you—may you never see what I see now, never know what I know now, never be where I am now!'

‘Cato—'

‘Oh get out, get out, get
out!
'

Henry fled to the door and half fell down the first stairs. The door closed behind him. He paused, and heard again that awful lonely sigh, now prolonged into a kind of quiet moan. He ran down the remaining stairs and out into the street and hailed a taxi. ‘National Gallery.'

Twenty minutes later Henry was sitting in front of Titian's great picture. His violently beating heart was slowly calming a little. He kept his eyes fixed on the picture as in an activity of prayer.

He thought, I can never tell
that
to Colette, or to anyone. I've somehow run myself into hell. There must be many entrances. I won't write to Colette. I'll send her a little air letter saying nothing, from Sperriton. Oh God, he thought, three weeks from now I shall be home in Sperriton and I shall be married and this whole nightmare will be over. I shall be with Russell and Bella—and Stephanie. And my life will be simple and I shall have simple duties: to make Stephanie happy, to live at peace, to teach my pupils, to drink martinis with my friends and tear along the freeway in my automobile. All the violence will be over. I shall be back again with the innocent ones, in the land of innocence, thank God.

He stared at the picture and his heart became quiet. How different it is, violence in art, from the horror of the real thing. The dogs are tearing out Actaeon's entrails while the indifferent goddess passes. Something frightful and beastly and terrible has been turned into one of the most beautiful things in the world. How is this possible? Is it a lie, or what? Did Titian know that really human life was awful, awful, that it was nothing but a slaughterhouse? Did Max know, when he painted witty cleverly composed scenes of torture? Maybe they knew, thought Henry, but I certainly don't and I don't want to. And he thought of Cato now with a horrified pity which was a sort of disgust, and he gazed into the far depths of the great picture and he prayed for himself— May I never see what he sees, never know what he knows, never be where he is, so help me God!

‘I've decided to write my autobiography in the form of an epic poem.'

‘Any furniture you want to keep can go into the barn with my trunks.'

‘Just the table and the chest of drawers.'

‘I'll tell the men.'

‘I can't believe it's all ending.'

‘Look about you, doesn't it look like the end?'

‘Who'll look after me when I'm old?'

‘You are old. We are old.'

‘Audrey I suppose. Except Rex won't let her.'

‘You said you wanted to live in London, you said you felt caged here.'

‘Gerda, don't send me away. You cared about me once.'

‘You loved me once. You wrote poems for me. Now there's nothing left but “Clump, clump, the old girl”.'

‘Can't we start again?'

‘We are starting again.'

‘But together? Can't I live with you at Dimmerstone?'

‘There isn't room.'

‘You're just punishing yourself, you want to pull everything down, you don't want me at Dimmerstone because you don't want me to see you defeated.'

‘I wouldn't mind you as a witness any more than I'd mind Bellamy's dog.'

‘I am your dog. Gerda, don't abandon me, I feel death is near. Let's stay together.'

‘You never helped me, never supported me. Don't start crying now.'

‘I love you, I've always loved you. Gerda, marry me. Let's spend our last days together. It isn't too late, darling, is it? Marry me, Gerda.'

‘If you'd said this long ago it might have meant something, but you didn't. Now you just want a room and a nurse.'

‘But I did say it long ago.'

‘You may have thought it but you didn't say it.'

‘I did—You mean you would have married me?'

‘Oh, I daresay.'

‘Gerda, I shall go mad!'

‘If you had really loved me you would have insisted on marrying me and I would have consented. You just didn't love me enough, Lucius. And nothing is more absolute than that. One gets justice from life really.'

‘You mean you loved me?'

‘As far as I remember.'

‘But Gerda, if you loved me then you can love me now. Forgive me and marry me, you
must.
Let us salvage something, don't let it all be lost. Don't just refuse me now out of pique.'

‘Pique! Oh you are a
fool.
'

‘Gerda, darling, forgive me, marry me, I love you with all my heart, everything there is of me is yours, I've given you my life, it's all yours. You can't be so ungrateful as to reject me now.'

‘You rejected me.'

‘I asked you to marry me, I'm sure I did!'

‘You didn't. Never mind.'

‘Then it must have been because you made it clear you didn't want me.'

‘If you had been more passionate you might have been more successful. You only cared about yourself. Did you want me to run after you and beg you?'

‘So it was just pride then. And it's just pride now.'

‘Oh Lucius—Never mind.'

‘I am a passionate man, I am, I am! I'm not going to leave you, I won't, I won't!'

‘All right, call it pride. I do want to be alone at last and without witnesses. You belong to the past, Lucius, as far as I'm concerned you're a ghost. Oh you are so stupid! You are stupid, so is Henry, so was Sandy, so was Burke. Oh God, why was my lot cast among such stupid stupid men!'

‘Do you mind if I sit with you, Mother?'

‘Of course I don't mind.'

Henry perched himself astride on the club fender. It was late in the evening and the log fire in the library had subsided into a mobile mound of twinkling glowing embers, resembling a hill city at night. The carpet had been removed and some of the furniture, including the round table, had gone to the ballroom on the way to Sotheby's. The room echoed. Gerda, who had pulled an armchair up near to the fire, was sewing a button on to her tweed coat.

‘How quiet it is. Except for the owls.'

‘Yes.'

‘I suppose this is sort of the last sort of moment.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘What was Lucius so bothered about this morning?'

‘He'd just proposed to me,' said Gerda.

‘For the first time?'

‘Yes. He thought he'd proposed before but he hadn't.'

‘A muddled man. Did you ever love him, Mother?'

‘Oh yes, I think so. He was a charming and romantic figure when he was younger.'

‘I remember him. All that wild hair. Did you accept him?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘I'd like to feel you had somebody to look after you.'

‘Lucius needs somebody to look after him.'

‘Well, shouldn't you?'

‘I've been doing so for years. I want a change.'

‘I can imagine that. I've never had anybody to look after.'

‘Did Stephanie get up?'

‘She trailed around in her dressing gown.'

‘She needs fresh air, a brisk walk.'

‘I wish she'd do something, even if it's only reading a novel.'

‘In my opinion—'

‘She'll be perfectly all right once we're in America and out of sight of these faded glories.'

‘I hope you are right.'

‘Mother—'

‘Yes?'

‘I feel I should tell you. Stephanie wasn't ever Sandy's mistress.'

‘I know.'

‘How did you know?'

‘Because of the way she talked about him. It simply sounded false. Then I laid a trap for her.'

‘What sort of a trap?'

‘Well it concerned—a scar—'

‘So you knew. Why didn't you tell me?'

Gerda was silent for a moment. ‘I thought it would make no difference to your plans and I found it all so—'

‘Disgusting?'

‘Upsetting. I preferred not to go into the matter. She told you?'

‘Yes. She never knew Sandy—She was the charwoman.' ‘She is in her way an ingenious little person.' ‘You seem to have been quite ingenious too.' ‘I wonder if you will be happy with her.'

‘When was I ever happy, Mother?'

‘Oh don't be stupid, Henry.'

‘One can't whistle up happiness. It's a gift of nature and I haven't got it.'

‘Why do you want to marry her?'

‘How can one say? It's the way the universe is flowing. I'm not a lucky person who makes radiant decisions which are obviously right. Perhaps it's sheer self-importance that makes me feel so responsible for Stephanie. Of course there was a lot of illusion involved, there probably still is, and of course it was partly because of Sandy. I don't mind her having lied, there was something heroic about that. She's so frail, and yet she fought back against life, against rotten luck. She's got a strange charm, I know you can't see it. Perhaps it's just that she's so awfully touching and I'm sorry for her—and I've
got
her, and this had never happened before. It's the first serious thing that has ever come about in my life and because I'm me I've no idea how it happened or why. I see through the illusions, or some of them, and I love her like God loves her, I guess. Maybe I've been swindled into it, swindled into seeing her as God sees her and loving her as God loves her. Well, of course I don't mean it about God. I just mean I can see what a mess she is but she's mine and I feel fatalistic.'

‘I rather hoped you'd marry Colette,' said Gerda, snapping the thread and sliding the needle carefully back into the pink cushioned lid of her work box.

‘Oh Colette. You know she proposed to me. It must be proposal time.'

‘And you refused her.'

‘Yes. I couldn't—see her—' Henry was intently lifting up some warm ash on his shoe.

‘But you can now?'

‘Oh I don't know. She took it all back later, she isn't in love with me. Anyway she's a kid, a schoolgirl. No, Colette isn't my fate.'

‘Why do you think you haven't got the gift of happiness?' said Gerda, after a moment or two. She was now sitting in repose, her hands folded, watching Henry twisting his leg round one of the bars of the fender.

‘Because you and my father stole it from me when I was an infant.'

‘So you think you had it earlier, in the womb perhaps?'

‘You're smart, Mother. Maybe. But consciousness doomed me. My confidence was broken before I was six. Everybody combined to put me down. Sandy bullied me, my father mocked me and discouraged me and contradicted me. He jeered at me and encouraged you and Sandy to jeer. You could have protected me. All right, you much preferred Sandy, but you could have stopped Father from crushing me. You didn't—you were his ally and his agent. Because we were taught to be so bloody tight-lipped and stoical you probably have no idea how much I suffered as a child, how absolutely my will was broken. Every little project that I ever made for jmyself was somehow destroyed by Father, shown to be petty and laughable and worthless. You both waged war on me. Of course Sandy joined in. I spent my childhood concealing my misery, concealing my tears. No wonder I've never wanted to do any thing since except run and hide.'

‘This is unjust, of course,' said Gerda, sitting very still with folded hands.

‘All right, it's only my impression. But people are responsible for the impression that they make on children.'

‘I think you were often happy.'

‘O.K. Forget it.'

‘Your father was an impatient strong-willed man.'

‘A bully. Yes.'

‘Yes.'

Henry tapped the ash off his toe and looked at his mother.

‘You accuse me of being his ally,' said Gerda. ‘Perhaps I should have fought him, but the cost would have been too great. I had to submit. Of course he absorbed me and dominated me as the years went by. I had to attend to him and not to you. I loved him and I tried to make him happy and be happy myself. It wasn't easy, perhaps it wasn't possible. I kept on sacrificing my will to him, and I kept on thinking that I had come to the end of my will and the end of the sacrifice, but there was always something more than he wanted from me that was hard to give. He loved me and it was one sort of way of having a satisfactory marriage. But I couldn't deal with both you and him. Sandy was all right, I think he sort of understood, and anyway he was independent. I hoped you'd be. You weren't. You were demanding, then you were terribly hostile. A child's hostility can hurt too. I couldn't reach you. I had my own fight, and my own tears. It was partly just a matter of energy. I liked Lucius because he was so absurd and sensitive and gentle. And then when Burke died Lucius was somehow useless, he didn't seem to care enough, at any rate he didn't assert himself enough. Lucius and I mislaid each other because I had lost the will to happiness, I had lost the key. I ought to have taken hold of Lucius then, but my strength was gone and I stood there coldly and waited for him to take hold of me. And now there's nothing left of that either. I let him become a dependent, a figure of fun, a silly idle man. I almost made him inferior because he had failed my hopes. Sandy was the only thing that gave my life any pure sense and any pure joy, but I never talked to Sandy. I never communicated with Sandy. I never told him what I've just told you. I never touched him or kissed him after he was twelve.' Gerda's voice was perfectly steady, only her immobility conveyed emotion.

Henry, who had been holding his breath, gave a little whistling sigh. ‘You're a cool customer, Mother. Maybe we're a bit alike after all. You know—I hope you don't think I'm selling the property just for revenge.'