Henry and Cato (47 page)

‘Not just for revenge. I think your motives are mixed up. I think you are mixed up. I don't like what you are doing or the way you are doing it. But perhaps one day when I am living at Dimmerstone I shall be grateful to you.'

‘Ah—you are—yes—thank you—'

Gerda was very still. Henry was now standing in front of her. He went on after a moment, ‘I don't know you very well. I feel now that I don't know you at all. I'm so grateful that you—talked to me. This is the first real conversation that we've ever had. Yes, you are a cool customer. I wish—oh, I wish—I wish—'

‘Don't wish, Henry. We've both got to accept what you called the way the universe is flowing. Go to bed now, my dear, it's late.'

‘Oh Mother—it's as if—as if—'

‘Good night, Henry.'

Henry stood stiffly, then twisted and took a step away, then came back. Gerda lowered her eyes and slowly put her hand out towards her work basket. The moment passed. Henry turned again and his swift steps echoed in the room, in the hall, upon the stairs. Gerda closed the work basket and fixed its catch. She checked tears and gazed, frowning thoughtfully, into the now pale remains of the fire.

‘Oh stop crying, Colette,' said John Forbes, exasperated. ‘It's just nervous. No one can sincerely go on and on crying.'

‘I can,' said Colette. She had removed the Copenhagen animals and was sitting on the ledge by the window, looking out into the garden.

‘He'll see you there.'

‘He sees nothing.'

Cato was outside in the garden weeding the flowerbeds. It was raining slightly. He was without coat or hat.

‘I've been watching him for an hour,' said Colette.

‘I hope you haven't been crying for an hour, you'll damage your eyes. God, girls are so stupid.'

‘He isn't seeing. I've been watching him. He picks the weeds out all right, but it's as if he was blind. I've never seen anything like it. Just look at him.'

‘I won't look at him,' said John Forbes, and he turned away from the window, clenching his fists. ‘He's getting wet. I'll tell him to come in.'

‘Better not, it'll be like waking someone from a trance, he might die. Anyway it's stopping. Look, there's a rainbow.'

‘I wish he'd do something else.'

‘He can't. Well, he could wash up. I've left him some. He can't go for a walk or read a book or talk to us. He's in hell. I've never seen anyone in hell.'

‘Don't talk nonsense, Colette. You know nothing about hell. He's suffering from shock. I wish he would talk though.'

‘It's impossible. He feels ashamed. And for him it's terrible, terrible, not like it would be for us. Have you ever felt ashamed, Daddy?'

‘Yes, of course.' But John, who was embarrassed by the question, could not recall any very convincing instances.

‘I think he's dying of shame.'

‘Stop crying, Colette.'

‘All right, I've stopped. It's cold in here. Can we have the fire on?'

‘Don't watch him.'

‘All right.'

‘I only hope this ghastly business won't send him running back to the church.'

‘I hope it will. He's got to get help somewhere and we can't give it to him. I wish I could pray for him. I almost feel I could learn to pray, just for this time, as if I could invent God simply to save Cato.'

‘Don't you start! You exaggerate everything so, Colette. You're so absorbed in your own feelings, you make a sort of metaphysical crisis out of every disaster.'

‘He loved the boy. He killed him.'

‘Of course he didn't love him! And he killed a dangerous violent criminal. No one dreamt of blaming him. I know it must be terrible to kill someone. Thank heavens the war spared me that experience. But one must be man enough to deal with it. It's a hard saying, but it's one's duty not to have a breakdown.'

‘He's not having a breakdown. He's in hell. It's different, it's worse. Don't you see how his face has changed?'

‘Yes.' John Forbes had felt terror when he saw that changed face. ‘What I can't understand is why he wrote those awful servile letters, and how it was he didn't make any serious attempt to get out until the very end. We were taught it was an officer's duty to escape.'

‘Cato's not an officer.'

‘What on earth do you mean by that?'

‘I mean it's different. Daddy, you won't ever say that to Cato, will you, about the letters and his not trying?'

‘No. But he ought to be able to stand it if I did. I certainly wish I could understand.'

‘Please don't say it, and please don't think it either, it's somehow disloyal to Cato.'

‘I propose to think what's true, not what's loyal! I'm not hurting him by thinking, am I?'

‘Yes, you are. We can't talk to him now or even touch him. I touched his arm this morning and he shuddered and gave me a terrible look. What we must do is hold him in our thoughts very sort of tenderly and lovingly—'

‘Colette, please don't be sentimental. All this hypersensitive brooding over him won't help. He'll have to be robust and realistic about it in the end. I'll have a talk with him tonight.'

‘Daddy, please don't, please. You'll only drive him away. I feel he's—it's as if he's just being
polite
to us. He's pretending all the time. He'd like to pretend to be calm, only it's absolutely unconvincing, he's screaming inside. Look at him now, look at the way he's bending, he's physically different, he's like a marionette.'

Cato, bending rigidly from the waist, dropped his head and stretched out a poised hand. He plucked a piece of groundsel, then stood up throwing his head back. He tossed the groundsel, without looking, onto a heap, took a step to the right, drew his feet together, then bent again.

‘I can't bear to see him like that,' said John Forbes. ‘If only he hadn't written those letters, that's what I can't understand—'

‘In an officer and a gentleman! You despise him and he feels it, he feels everybody does. He feels ashamed and disgraced. I think at the moment he hates us.'

‘Oh nonsense! I hope he'll stay here till his term starts.'

‘I don't. We can't help him, Daddy. We haven't got the machinery to help him. He'd far better go back to London to Father Craddock. He will go back, I know, as soon as he feels he's been polite enough to us.'

‘Polite! Colette, go and wash your face, you look a sight. Suppose Giles Gosling calls and sees you like this?'

‘I don't care.'

‘You will go to the dance with him, won't you?'

‘I haven't got a dress.'

‘Then you must buy one. Why not go to London tomorrow morning? What does a nice dress cost now, ten pounds?'

‘Daddy, you're living in the past!'

‘Well, twenty pounds, thirty pounds. Colette, do go and buy yourself a dress. I want you to go to that dance with Giles and I want you to be the prettiest girl there. Forty pounds?'

‘Daddy, you're bribing me to be happy!'

‘It's all fixed,' said Henry, just returned from London at tea time. ‘The vans for the stuff for Sotheby's are arriving at eight on Tuesday morning.'

‘The men from the auctioneers were here,' said Gerda. ‘Lucius, don't you want a crumpet?'

‘I shall never eat a crumpet again,' said Lucius.

‘Why not?' said Henry, helping himself to one.

‘I hear Cato Forbes has gone back to London. I'm very sorry you didn't see him, Henry, I'm sure you could have helped him.'

‘Because crumpets belong to happiness.'

‘Oh come,' said Henry, ‘I hear you're going to write your autobiography in rhyming hexameters.'

They were having tea in the dining-room which was still intact, since the big mahogany dining table and set of Victorian chairs were to be sold
in situ.
White numbered labels had already been stuck on. Meals, never elaborate since Rhoda's departure, had now been reduced to a basic simplicity. Scattered crumbs were not always removed. Lucius was wearing his cloak with the collar turned up, although the day was still very warm. He sat sideways to the table, staring at the wall, his legs thrust straight out in front of him. He seemed to be already remote, grey, deep in a dream, no longer seriously attempting to arouse sympathy. Gerda on the other hand was in a nervous bright mood. Henry had attempted in vain to restore the communication between them. She evaded his tacit advances and refused to meet his eyes. She had put on a summer dress and appeared alert and young.

Henry, looking through the window at the sun caressing and celebrating the red brick wall of Queen Anne, covered on this side with budding wistaria, felt as if he were waking from a dream. Or rather as if he had had a nightmare and then found it real. Had he not known, not understood, what he was doing till now when he saw the white labels pasted on the furniture and Lucius too miserable even to pose? Ever since his return home he had been having, for the first time in his life, an orgy of will. He felt as if he had never before really positively done anything, never stretched out a strong imperious hand and altered the world, never until now. Now he had courageously done so, hoping to have life more abundantly. But he felt rather as if he had killed himself. He had destroyed the house of his ancestors, he had exiled his mother and uprooted that silly pretentious harmless old man. Had he done it to prove his pluck or out of a sense of duty or for a revenge? He could not have endured property and riches and to be corrupted by them, and did not all else flow from that? Was not this moral courage and the drawing of consequences?

Lucius had accepted money and his mother would certainly survive. And he would be married and would return to America with the dear helpless woman who was now and for ever to be his task. How was that for will power? And if it all seemed at the moment like a desolation, had he not willed it and was it not his as nothing had ever been before? He had won a kind of liberation, he had won a kind of Stephanie, and out of these he would create the future, his right decision and his wife. Yet he felt an awful remorseful anguish which he connected somehow with that talk with his mother when, for the first time since his childhood, they had really, just for seconds perhaps, communicated with each other. And by that communication some deep rift had been made, some old capacity to love his mother had been touched and wakened. There was a love in him still which did not know of her crimes or could ignore them. Only now there was no time left, and Gerda had closed herself again and armed herself with an awful glossy cheerfulness. Henry stared at her, but she refused to look. He wanted to touch her hand. He stretched out his fingers and moved some crumbs upon the table, wondering if she was aware of his movement and what it simulated.

‘Well, have some bread,' said Gerda to Lucius.

‘I shall go to Audrey's before the auction.'

‘You can't forswear bread for ever! And there isn't much for supper.'

‘I'm to have Toby's bedroom. I know what that means.'

‘What does it mean? More tea?'

‘Where's Stephanie?' said Henry, who had not seen her since his return.

‘Either in bed I imagine or gone out for a walk.'

‘I hope she's gone for a walk,' said Henry, ‘that will do her good.' He hoped so much that she had gone for a walk. Each return to her now compressed his heart with pain, like a return to the cage of a sick animal. He dreaded going up and finding her lying in bed, dropping cigarette ash on the sheets and looking at the room with what seemed to him a simulated hollow stare. Christ, he thought, she's going to marry me and that's what she feels like! And that's a bit what I feel like too. I expect everybody feels rather doomed when they get married. But when we are right away from this mess, when we are in Sperriton, it will be all different. And the prospect of seeing Russ and Bella lit for a moment like a golden spark.

‘Go and see if you can find her anywhere,' said Gerda. ‘Ask her if she'd like some tea.'

Henry got up and went out into the hall. He saw on the hall table a letter from America, in Bella's huge handwriting, and he put it into his pocket and walked out through the front door onto the terrace. The westering sun was striking full onto the façade of Queen Anne and was blotching the green slope to his right with the long rounded shadows of the big trees. The lake vibrated with blue and the warm air was spiced with flower smells and jumbled bird song. Henry looked about anxiously hoping to see Stephanie crossing the bridge or lingering beside the lake, wearing her floppy sun hat and carrying an ancient parasol which Henry had found for her and which had seemed to give her pleasure. Perhaps today she had, like his mother, put on a summer dress. But there was no sign of her. The great expanse of grass was empty, except for a few bounding squirrels. A trio of magpies was flying towards the wood, seeming like an omen. Now he must go and look for Stephanie upstairs. If only he could persuade her to open a window. Was that awful smell just cigarettes? In order to delay a moment longer he pulled Bella's letter out of his pocket and began to read it.

Honey, listen, and don't think we're pigs. A hell of a lot has happened in the last few days. To put it in a nutshell, Russ has got a job at Santa Cruz, and we're going at once. One of the faculty there killed himself accidentally with drugs, bless his heart, and they wanted someone at once and they rang long distance and asked if Russ would come and they more or less promised him tenure if he would and there's even a house (not the deceased's) and we had to decide instantly, and of course we just had to say yes and we sure do hope you'll understand! So we'll be gone when you get back to Sperriton. We've left your keys with Paul and May Horowitz and they'll be sprucing up the house for you and your bride, and we're hopping mad that we won't be there to welcome you and of course we're
dying
with curiosity—but we'll see you before long won't we? You must come to Santa Cruz soon with Mrs. M. and be our guests. Our new home faces the ocean and there's a jungle garden and a Roman emperor-style swimming pool! You got to come, and soon, that's for sure, or we'll suspect you don't forgive us! And of course we'll be beavering away like crazy to find a job there for you. Write us soon, honey, we're thinking of you all the time. You should have told us exactly when the great day is. And, darling, if you're wondering if I'm jealous, of course I am! Write soon, care of the philosophy department, we won't be in the house at once. (It's heavenly Spanish like we always wanted, there's a
fountain.)
And don't forget we love you and you belong to us, married or not. Much love. Bella