Henry and Cato, Page 2

  And now handsome six-foot Sandy was dead, and he had never married and never produced the longed-for heir. Inferior Henry was the heir. And now Henry was coming back to it all, back to ancient claustrophobic wicked cluttered Europe and quaint dotty little England and beautiful terrible Laxlinden and the northern light over the meadows. And his mother whom he had not seen since she visited New York five years ago in the company of that sponging creep Lucius Lamb. (Of course tactless Henry had to ask if she had paid his fare.) Hopefully, creep Lamb would have had time to die or get lost in the interim. What would it all be like? Was something going to happen in his life at last? Would he be called upon to make great choices, world-altering decisions? Would he be able to? Free will and causality are entirely compatible, Russell told him once. Henry did not understand. Or would it prove as insubstantial as a dream from which he would soon wake up safe at home in his little white house at Sperriton, with the telephone bell ringing and up-early Bella bright upon the line? Were there people waiting for him over there in England? Was there anyone there that he really wanted to see? Well, he would quite like to see Cato Forbes; he wondered over his next martini what had become of him. The plane shuddered on. Emotionally exhausted and now drunk Henry went to sleep again.

  At about the hour when Cato Forbes was walking to and fro on Hungerford Bridge and Henry Marshalson was awakening from his first sleep on the jumbo jet high above the Atlantic, Gerda Marshalson and Lucius Lamb were in conference in the library at Laxlinden Hall.

  ‘He won’t change anything,’ said Lucius.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gerda.

  She was walking up and down. Lucius was reclining upon the sofa near to the recently installed television set.

  The library was a long room with three tall windows, now closely velveted with curtains. One wall was covered with a late seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry, representing Athena seizing Achilles by the hair, the goddess and the hero being decoratively enveloped in green Amazonian vegetation. Agamemnon and his companions were not visible, but nearby Troy was represented, against a mysteriously radiant grey-blue sky, by three creamy pinnacles rising above immense leaves in the top right-hand corner. The other walls were covered by shelves containing ancestral Marshalson books, most of which had been rebound in a uniform tawny-golden leather binding: mainly history and biography and sets of standard literary classics. No book had been touched, except by Rhoda’s duster, since Henry went away. The shelves stopped short of the ceiling leaving space for perched busts of Roman emperors. Nobody dusted them, but fortunately they were black in any case.

  Two shaded lamps, made out of huge vases, illuminated one end of the room, and beneath the tall chimney piece, carved by a pupil of Grinling Gibbons, a log fire was brightly burning, stirred lately to life by a strong poke from Gerda’s small slippered foot. A blue cut-glass bowl beside one of the lamps contained a very large number of white daffodils whose delicate smell blended airily with the warmth of the fire.

  Lucius was feeling very tired and wanted to go to bed. His back was hurting and his new false teeth, which he dared not remove in Gerda’s presence, were unbearably cluttering up his mouth. A kind of itching ache was crawling about his body, making it impossible for him to find comfort in any position. Pains curled in crannies, merely dozing. How he hated growing old. Even whisky was no good now. He wanted to scratch and yawn but could not do either. He saw Gerda’s face hazily. He never wore his glasses in public. She had been talking for hours.

  Gerda was wearing one of the long loose robes, too elegant to be called dressing-gowns, which she now often put on in the evenings. Lucius was not sure whether this new style represented a kind of informal intimacy or simply a compromise with comfort. Gerda never spoke about her health and in general preferred her own rigid conception of style to common ease. Tonight’s robe was of light wool, checkered blue and green, buttoning high to the neck and sweeping the carpet. Had Gerda, underneath it, undressed? Gerda’s straight dark brown hair was looped back from her face and held at the nape of her neck with a large tortoiseshell slide. When loose it just covered her shoulders. Did she dye her hair, Lucius wondered. He lived surrounded by mysteries. Gerda, especially in this light, could still look uncannily young. Of course she was faded and her features were less fine. She had a pale rather wide face and a nose which seemed to have become larger with age, the nostrils more powerfully salient. The eyes were a dark brown and glowed—like Sandy’s, like Henry’s. She was neither short nor tall, perceptibly plumper. But she still had the authority of a woman who had been a beauty. Watching her stride and turn, tossing her long blue and green skirt, he thought, she’s a woman every second, bless her. Her old-fashioned coquetry was so natural it had become a grace.

  Lucius was sixty-six years old. It was many years now since he had become the slave of glowing-eyed Gerda. When he first met her she was already married to tall red-headed Burke and carrying a lusty red-headed baby in her arms. Lucius had fallen in love, not intending to make of this his life’s work. How had it happened? His fruitless passion had become a family joke. Gerda patronized him. (‘At least English intellectuals are gentlemen’, said Gerda.) Nobody feared Lucius. Burke, who felt, for no good reason, that Lucius could perceive, superior to everyone, patted Lucius on the back and told him to make himself at home at Laxlinden Hall. Little did Burke or Lucius dream how thoroughly this would come about.

  Lucius had been, making almost a profession of it, a beautiful young man. He had had long flowing light brown hair at a time when this was unusual, a defiant sign of some remarkable oddity. Lucius, very conscious of this, felt that his oddity was simply genius. How he despised Burke, despised even his younger college friend John Forbes through whom he had met Burke. Everybody in London adored Lucius then; it was only at Laxlinden that he was a failure. He belonged to a stylish literary milieu and had published poems before he was twenty. A number of quite well-known men were in love with him. He was the child of elderly parents. They were poor folk, but they had sent him to a good school. They lived to see his book of poems and also the novel which followed it. He had a younger sister but she was uneducated and they had nothing in common. Spurred by an idealism which was one with his self-confident ambition he early joined the Communist party. He soldiered, bravely and decently enough he thought in retrospect, through the years of disillusionment. Perhaps joining the party had been his mistake? He had made some mistake. Perhaps he should simply have sat still and worked it all out a priori as other people did. It seemed obvious enough afterwards. What a lot of his young strength he had wasted on fruitless controversies, now rendered dim and tiny by the relentless, and to Lucius always surprising, onward movement of history.

  He had lived in this strange way with Gerda for several years now. Of course much longer ago, after Burke died, he had proposed to her. Or had he? He could not now remember the exact form of words. She turned away. He went back to London. He worked as a journalist, then for a publisher, saving up for his freedom. The first novel was a success, the second one was not, he never wrote a third. Instead he wrote literary love letters to Gerda. He gave up poetry and started to write a big book about Marxism. He visited Gerda regularly and told her that she was the only woman he had ever loved, which was not quite true. He talked to her impressively about his book. One day she suggested that he should come and stay at the Hall until he had finished it. It was still unfinished. So Gerda had turned out in this strange way to be his fate after all. Was he glad? Was she glad? He had never been to bed with her. But she seemed to need him, she seemed to expect him to stay on. Perhaps, as the years go by, any woman will value a slavish faithfulness. For a while she expected him to teach her things. They were to have discussions. Once he gave her a book list, and nothing more came of that. Their relations remained intimate yet formal.

  And he was really rather beautiful even now, he thought, as he often consoled himself by looking into the mirror. His flowing hair was a greyish white, and with his twinkling eye
s and scarcely wrinkled face he looked like a sort of mad sage, and passed for vastly wise as he played the eccentric and made younger people laugh. It was a pity about the false teeth, but if he smiled carefully they were not conspicuous. He had lived on talk and curiosity and drink and the misfortunes of his friends. Only now life was more solitary and he could hardly believe that he had achieved so little and was sixty-six.

  ‘Will he stay?’ said Gerda.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘You’re not thinking.’

  ‘How do I know what he’ll do?’

  ‘Will he stay in England, will he stay here?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think he’ll stay here, it’s so damned dull. I mean—’

  ‘Will he want to make changes?’

  ‘No, why should he? He’ll find out from Merriman what’s in the kitty and skip off back to America.’

  ‘I wish we hadn’t sold the Oak Meadow.’

  ‘Well, Sandy wanted that boat in a hurry—’

  ‘Bellamy says John Forbes is going to build on it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Henry will even remember the Oak Meadow.’

  ‘Will he live in London?’

  ‘Darling, he’s a stranger to us, we can’t know what he’ll do, he probably doesn’t know himself.’

  ‘He’s not a stranger to me, he’s my son.’

  Lucius, sucking his teeth, said nothing.

  ‘Why don’t you say something? I wish you wouldn’t fidget so.’

  ‘Yes, of course he’s your son. We must be very kind to him.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I mean, coming back here, so long away—’

  ‘You meant something special by it.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Are you implying that I’ve been unkind to him?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Or unjust to him?’

  ‘No! Gerda, don’t always imagine I mean something.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I mean you keep thinking he’ll arrive with a plan. He won’t. We’ll have to make the plan. Well, you will. Henry was never able to make a decision in his life. He’ll arrive a shy awkward gentle muddle-headed young man as he always was.’

  ‘He’s not such a young man. And he wasn’t very gentle to you in New York.’

  ‘He was jealous.’

  ‘Oh don’t talk such rubbish. I should have gone to Sperriton. I see that now. I ought to have seen how he lived.’

  ‘He didn’t want you to.’

  ‘You persuaded me not to go.’

  ‘I didn’t! I never persuaded you of anything!’

  ‘ I wonder if he was living with a woman. Perhaps he’ll announce that he’s married.’

  ‘Perhaps he will.’

  ‘You’re not being very helpful. You’d better go to bed.’

  ‘I am a bit tired.’

  ‘You’re looking cross-eyed. It’s the whisky. Must you have another? You know what it costs now.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to have another.’

  ‘I don’t know how I shall live through this next week till he comes.’

  ‘You’ll live. Only do stop speculating, no wonder I’m crosseyed.’

  ‘Which bedroom should we put him in?’

  ‘His own, of course.’

  ‘It’s so small.’

  ‘If he doesn’t like it he can move. After all he owns the place now!’

  ‘I think I’ll put him in the cherry blossom room. The radiator still works in there. And Queen Anne’s not heated. Oh Rhoda, thank you, dear—’

  Bird-headed Rhoda, the maid, had come in soft-footed and without knocking, as she had used to do when she carried in the oil lamps, in the days before electricity came to the Hall. She moved across the room in her ambiguous uniform and reached high up with her gloved hands to check the windows, her nightly task, to see if they were securely fastened. Company or no company, she came always at the same hour and never knocked.

  ‘Rhoda, I think we’ll put Mr Henry in the cherry blossom room.’

  Rhoda replied.

  ‘He isn’t coming for a week, you know.’

  Rhoda replied.

  ‘Well, make it up in the cherry blossom room, and make sure the radiator’s working. Good night, Rhoda.’

  The door closed.

  ‘What did she say?’ said Lucius.

  Rhoda, who had an impediment in her speech, was comprehensible only to Gerda.

  ‘She says she’s already made up Henry’s bed in his old room.’

  Lucius had taken the opportunity to rise. ‘I think I’ll be off to bed now, darling, I’m flaked.’

  ‘I wonder if I ought to—’

  ‘Oh do stop wondering. It doesn’t matter, the details don’t matter. Henry will only want one thing when he arrives here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your love.’

  There was a silence. Gerda, on Rhoda’s entrance, had stopped pacing and now stood at the chimney piece, one hand touching the warm burnished wood of the superstructure. A sudden flicker revealed her face and Lucius saw tears.

  ‘Oh darling—’

  ‘How can you be so cruel.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Go to bed.’

  ‘Gerda, don’t be angry with me, you know I won’t sleep if you’ve been angry with me. I never sleep if—’

  ‘I’m not angry. Just go away. It’s late.’

  ‘Forgive me, darling Gerda, don’t stay up and—I know what you—do go to bed now, dear—’

  ‘Yes, yes. Good night.’

  ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Lucius went upstairs slowly, as he had used to do holding his candle in the old days, in Burke’s time, when he had been a guest at the Hall. Well, was he not still a guest at the Hall? A little breathless after the climb he went on over creaking boards to his bedroom. This large room, which was also his study, occupied a corner on the second floor, on the drawing-room side of the house, with a view one way towards the lake, and the other towards the grove of beeches which were always called ‘the big trees’. The room was rather bare as Lucius, who had lived in tiny rooms most of his life, liked to emphasize its barn-like size. He liked to feel himself loose, lost somehow in the room, wandering. The cushions on the big divan bed were a recent concession to Gerda’s desire to prettify. Sometimes Rhoda put flowers in the room. Tonight upon the carved oak chest of drawers was a brown jar full of bluebells. The window, which he now closed, had let in the cold earth-smelling April air. The radiator was not working, only with so much else amiss Lucius had not liked to mention it. His bed had been neatly undone and turned down by Rhoda, as it had been every night for years, but there was no hot water bottle. Hot water bottles were not issued after the end of March.

  Lucius sat down on the bed. He would have liked some Bach now, only it was too late. Why had that particular remark made Gerda cry? He would never understand her. His awful mistake, never to have forced her into bed. Did it matter now? He knew that her unspeakable terrible grief at Sandy’s death was still there, hidden from him now as at first it could not be. He had thought at first that she would die of grief, die of shock, die screaming in a frenzy of bereavement such as he had never witnessed or imagined. He shuddered at the memory. But with the fearsome strength that was in her she had collected herself and retired into an almost equally terrible concealment. Avoiding him, she walked the empty rooms of the house every day, he heard her slow rather heavy tread. She sometimes wept, but would dismiss him if she could not control herself at once. She lived in private with her own horror. She was a remarkable woman.

  When he was young, romantic Lucius had thought of himself as a solitary. Real loneliness was different. No, he and Gerda were not a bit like man and wife, he could not partake of her woe and she knew nothing of his soul. Their talk did not contain the affectionate nonsensical rubble which pads out the conversation of true couples. The formality, which had s
eemed at first like a kind of old-fashioned grace, an affectionate respect which she extended, an expression even of the admiration which she had once felt for him, now seemed cold, sometimes almost desperate, a barrier. Yet there they very much were. Of course she needed him, she needed him as an admirer, perhaps the last one, someone who valued her in the old way. She needed him, unless the horror should now place her beyond such needs. He was the prisoner of a woman’s vanity. If it were not for her he might have become a great man.

  Lucius thrust one foot under the bed and winkled out the suitcase which contained the secret whisky bottle to which he occasionally resorted. He filled the glass on the bedside table. It was quite easy to remove the bottles from the cellar only getting rid of them later was something of a problem. Did Odysseus get drunk on Calypso’s island? When would his travels begin again, did he want them to begin, was it not too late for travelling? He took out his teeth and laid them on the table and felt his face subside gratefully into the face of an old man. He drank the whisky. His teeth grinned at him. Could art still console? Mozart had left him long ago but Bach was still around. He only cared for endless music now, formless all form, motionless all motion, innocent of drama and history and romance. Gerda, who hated music, would only allow him to play it very softly. He had stopped writing his book, but he had started writing poetry again. He still wrote newspaper reviews for pocket money, only now editors were less interested. Surely there was still power somewhere, that significant power which he had once felt inside the Communist party. One by one the philosophies had failed him. Is that all? he had felt as he mastered them. He was a creative person, a writer, an artist still, with fewer brain cells but with much more wisdom. Of course he was restless, of course he twitched with frustrated energy. He would become old and wild and lustful, but not yet. Lucius’s back was still hurting and he had a pain in his chest. He finished the whisky and undressed and got into bed and turned out the light. The usual awful melancholy followed. He could hear an owl hooting in the big trees. He wished he was not always young again in his dreams, it made waking up so sad. Henry had been very unkind to him in New York. He had had a way of life with Sandy. Lucius had been grateful for Sandy’s total lack of interest in Lucius’s life, in the justification of Lucius’s life, in the question of why Lucius was there at all. Had this blandness been assumed? Lucius thought not. Big red-haired philistine Sandy simply did not care. Gerda saw Sandy as some sort of hero, but really Sandy was just a big calm relaxed man, unlike dark manic Henry. Lucius had never seen Sandy as either an obstacle or a critic. Semi-educated Sandy only cared, and amateurishly at that, about machines. Gerda ran the Hall, it was her house. Of course Sandy’s death had been a terrible shock, but Lucius did not feel bereaved. He could not think about Sandy now, Sandy was over. He thought about the future and it was a vibrating darkness. He felt fear. He fell asleep and dreamed that he was twenty-five again and everybody loved him.