Perfect Freedom (67 page)

He stopped once and stood still in an attitude of intent listening. Somewhere in his mind he heard the ghostly tinkling of the mechanical piano and he lifted his head defiantly. You stars, you worlds, whirling through eons of time into dark infinity, what is the significance of a man? What secrets do you withhold out there in your immensity? Where does the pattern begin and end?

He lowered his head slowly and looked around him. His mind played with memory, retreating back across time, back to the beginning when he had stood here with Helene and said, “And you see, we'll put the house here,” drawing lines in the dust with a stick. He lifted the automatic and looked at it disinterestedly. It glinted sharply in the moonlight. He let his hand drop to his side and looked up at the light. He felt that he was on the verge of a discovery that had been withheld from him all his life, the basis of a greater faith than any he had known. He would know in a moment. He must first commit his act of war.

He started again toward the light. The uncertainty had gone out of his body. His sandals slapped against the steps as he mounted them and he made no effort to silence them. He was prepared for them to come out and greet him. It would be easier if they did. He heard voices and a burst of laughter and he edged his hand back against his leg so that they wouldn't see what he was carrying. He reached the open door and they were before him. Robbie was standing naked in the door of the kitchenette, laughing. Carl was sitting on the edge of the sofa with his trousers unbuttoned as if he were about to take them off. He turned, a smile on his lips, as Stuart appeared in the door.

Looking into his eyes, Stuart calmly lifted the gun and pulled the trigger three times. Carl rose slowly from the sofa but his face was gone and he crashed forward onto the floor, his trousers tangled around his knees. Stuart had the impression that it had all taken place in utter silence. He turned to Robbie. The boy's eyes, wide and staring, were on Carl. He turned and began to vomit onto the floor of the kitchenette. Stuart put the gun into his pocket and leaned against the door, looking into the night.

He had done it. He felt nothing at all, neither remorse, nor the satisfaction of revenge, nor horror. His mind was clear. His head no longer ached. He felt as if he had acquired an extra lucidity. His thoughts turned to his next moves. He intended to spend the night with Boldoni. He would get off first thing in the morning and drive to the Spanish border. Once across it, he would be safe, but whether he should cross it openly or by the underground system he had heard of depended on whether or not his crime would be detected. He had to hide the body. That was going to be unpleasant. Would Robbie report him? Robbie was the unknown element in the situation.

As he thought of the immediate future he realized that for the first time since his legacy had permitted him to give up his job, he was acting under the stress of necessity. The choice was no longer his. At least, not if he wanted to save his own skin. He had recognized that this would be so this afternoon but he hadn't known what it would feel like. It felt fine. He sensed a whole world of comradeship waiting to receive him. He had joined the ranks. He had killed the enemy and earned a place in the mainstream of the common struggle.

Man's desires were too untrustworthy to be dignified by perfect freedom. Individual right? Individual freedom? The emphasis was all wrong. Common rights. Common freedom. Love was the beginning, not the end. Only through order could the true freedom of the spirit be achieved.

He had rejected his uniqueness and gained proportion. He knew now that what mattered was not just himself but himself as part of a human community, and he saw too that it mattered most of all how that community was constituted. The romantic cries, “Love,” and means, “I am all.” True wisdom replies, “I am all and you are all; this is the basic contradiction that must be resolved.”

He was aware of silence. The sound of Robbie's retching had stopped. It was followed presently by another sound, a high, monotonous whimpering. He tore his mind away from his thoughts and he turned. Robbie was still standing in the door of the kitchenette. One hand supported him against its frame. The other was rubbing his head in a circular movement. Around and around it went through his hair. His face was contorted and from his throat emerged the insistent lament. He looked as if he had lost his mind.

Stuart went to a chair and snatched up a pair of trousers. Without allowing himself to look full at the form on the floor, he reached across it and pulled a blanket down over it. Then he took the trousers to Robbie.

“Here, put these on,” he said roughly. He shook the boy by the arm. Robbie recoiled from him but Stuart kept his grip on his arm and half-led, half-dragged him across the room to the door. Around and around Robbie's hand went through his hair and his whimpering rose in intensity.

“For God's sake, pull yourself together,” Stuart ordered him. “And put your pants on.” His words had no effect and he shook the boy more forcefully. “I don't want to hurt you but, by God, I'll give you a beating if you don't stop this.”

“Why don't you shoot me, too?” Robbie screamed.

Stuart released Robbie's arm and lifted his hand to strike the boy, but Robbie flung himself against him and clung to him. He lifted a tear-streaked face. He smelled of vomit. “Why can't you love me?” he pleaded. “I wanted it so much. You never have.”

Stuart fought back the revulsion he felt at the sick smell of him. “You can't imagine how sad it makes me for you to say that. Until two years ago, you were one of the lights of my life. I was so proud of you. I'm still very proud of your work. I hear of you quite often. Robi—isn't that the way you sign yourself—like Toni?—Robi is getting to be quite well known. I'll soon be referred to as Robi's father.” He watched Robbie's face dissolve with grief and a sob broke from him. He buried his face against Stuart's neck and kissed it.

“I wanted so much for you to love me when I needed you,” he cried through his sobs.

Stuart again fought back revulsion, now mingled with disbelief, as he felt Robbie's erection lifting against him. He remembered the time he had seen him playing with himself, thinking that he was going to be quite a man. “For God's sake,” he said in a voice that had become hoarse with distaste. He held the naked boy and soothed him and felt his erection subsiding. He waited until the sobs had become shuddering sighs and then disengaged himself gently from his embrace.

“Put your pants on,” he said. “I want to talk to you.” Robbie did as he was told. Stuart took his arm and supported him out to the path that led down through the terraces. He sat the boy on the retaining wall and seated himself beside him. “I don't know whether we can talk to each other but there are things I have to know,” he said. “Are you going to report me to the police? I can't stop you, of course, but you won't be able to do it until after I'm gone.”

Robbie sat doubled over with his head in his hands. “Why do you say it like that?” he asked in a tearful voice. “Why do you always—everything I've ever felt—you always want to destroy everything.”

“I don't understand you, Robbie. Maybe I never will.” He looked at the boy's bowed head for a moment and then peered into the night. “I don't know whether I can reach you. But think, youngster, think. How can I know what to expect of you? Is anything important to you? Do you have any standards?”

“You've never made me feel that yours could apply to me.” His words were blurred as if his lips were sticking together. He had lost Maurice in the blasts of the gun. Secrecy was no longer possible. He was at his father's mercy again. “You don't approve of anything I think is good.”

“I could try,” Stuart said. “Perhaps I was wrong from the start but you were very young. I thought I could save you from what still seems to me a terrible misfortune. Maybe it was too late. Instead of trying to get you over it, perhaps I should've tried to help you face it and make it part of a decent life. I don't understand it. Maybe it'd help to talk about somebody who wasn't unlike you in some ways, age and background and so forth. Do you know that Edward Cumberleigh is dead?”

Robbie lifted his head. “I heard something. Is it true?”

“Yes, he was killed while he was training for the RAF. I had a chance to talk with Anne about him not long ago. He was apparently very fond of you. In love with you, Anne said. The point is, he didn't believe that his—whatever you want to call it—his special tastes should be made an excuse for shirking his responsibility. He was killed doing his part. I find you engaging in obscene acts with a man I despise, a man—I don't think it's too fanciful to put it like this—a man who killed Edward. Can't you understand why your behavior shocks me?”

He saw the focus of Robbie's eyes shift so that he seemed to be looking through him and beyond him and then he dropped his head again into his hands. Stuart straightened and went on. “Talking to Anne about Edward helped me to understand that whatever you are, you can make something good of it. It will never be easy for you. You can do it only with self-discipline and dedication to principles, to decency, to love. You can't do it by defiling yourself. You must accept the world's standards in all the ways they can be of value to you. I think I would give my life to make you believe this.” He stopped, feeling a great ache in his soul. My son, he thought, and his heart seemed to stop beating as he saw the boy shake his head.

“What can I do?” Robbie whispered. “What can I do?”

Hope started up in Stuart. He leaned forward and put his arm around the boy's bare shoulder. “I've presented you with a big decision. These are times for decisions. Something is being decided in the world. I don't think it will be decided by war but we can all decide for ourselves and we can make our decisions count by everything we do and say. It's not too late for you, Robbie. I'm sure of that. I want you to have a happy life, believe me. I don't know whether you have had up till now.” He gave Robbie a little hug and stood up. “I have a few things to do. I haven't much time. I'll be right back.”

Stuart walked slowly back to the big house. He went into the bedroom and brought his bag out to the terrace and closed the great sliding doors behind him. If Robbie wanted to stay here tonight, he could do so. Agnes would come out tomorrow and put things away and lock up for good.

He paused on the terrace and surveyed once more the meaningless beauty he had made and went on to the car and left his bag in it. He collected some odd lengths of rope from the garage and started back up to Robbie's house.

Hearing his father coming, Robbie straightened and braced himself to face him. Shock had passed. He could think sanely now. He didn't regret Carl's death. It was a deliverance; he was free at last from his romantic and impressionable boyhood. He knew that he was better than his father thought and was embarrassed at showing it for fear that it would lead to more falsity. He wasn't a hero any more than he was a giddy sex-mad faggot. He knew that his father must have felt his brief erection. In the frenzy of the moment he hadn't cared. If understanding were possible between them, it would be easy to explain that feeling his father's protective arms around him had given him for a moment the sense of being held once more by Maurice. He wished he knew how to give him a glimpse of who he really was.

“Feeling better, fellow?” Stuart said quietly, coming close to him and putting his foot on the wall.

Robbie nodded. “I want to warn you,” he said, scarcely daring to speak for fear of losing what this moment could mean to him. “The people we saw today, Carl and I, we're supposed to see again tomorrow. If we don't turn up they'll know something's wrong. They know where Carl has been. You haven't much time.”

Stuart took a deep breath and passed his hand over his eyes. So he had been granted at least this much; his son would not betray him. It was the beginning. It was perhaps everything. “Thank you,” he said. “Are you in any danger?”

“About this? I don't think so. I just came to be with Carl. I have no connection with anything else.”

“I see. Do you have any idea what you're going to do now?”

“You know, about—” Robbie began hesitantly. His heart had started to pound. “Mother has never taken it like you. She knows but I don't think she lets herself imagine exactly what it means, so for her it hasn't been a problem.”

“That's what I've gathered,” Stuart said quietly.

“You see, it's not just something you decide not to do, like smoking or drinking.”

“I understand,” Stuart said. He supposed he couldn't expect him to take a vow of chastity, although others had, or buried it so deeply that it amounted to the same thing.

“I think Maurice is in England. That's where you're going, isn't it?”

“I'm going to try.”

“After tonight I'm not sure I have the right to go to him. I hoped he wouldn't find out about my being here with Carl, but now it can't be a secret. Maybe he'll forgive me. Can you understand that I want to be with a man I love?”

“I understand you very little, Robbie, but I'm deeply moved by the way you say it.”

“Then—then even if I don't find Maurice, I want to go with you.”

The breath caught in Stuart's chest and he almost cried out with it. The earth seemed to reel and he steadied himself against the wall. His throat was tight and he was grateful for the dark that hid his tears. “Good,” he said. “Do you want to see your mother?”

For an instant Robbie was tempted to say no for fear of breaking the fragile bond that had been born between them, but he couldn't lie about something so precious. “Yes, I may not see her again for a long time.”

“Yes,” Stuart said, glad of his answer. “We'll stop by on our way tomorrow. Now I wish you'd go to the house and wait for me. I have one more thing I have to do.”