‘Almost all the time would be a good rule to go by.’
‘It’s not a big house really and your mother runs it on a shoestring, she was telling me—’
‘You and she got on jolly well!’
‘Aren’t you glad?’
‘Oh yes—yes—’
‘I think she’s a poor unfortunate old woman.’
‘I think that hardly describes my mother.’
‘You run her down, but you want to admire her all the same, I can see it all.’
‘You can’t see it all and you never will. Don’t try and understand, Steph. People who understand get murdered.’
‘Sometimes you frighten me. You were so rude to her, I could hardly believe it, and it’s so awful that you’re selling the house, it’s a nightmare.’
‘Some men like to spend their lives playing with their property. I don’t. I don’t want to waste my time and yours bothering about trees and walls and drainpipes. My mother manages it somehow—’
‘You think I couldn’t?’
‘I don’t see why you should. I want us to be free.’
‘I don’t want to be free. I’d love to spend my time on trees and walls and drainpipes. I’ve never possessed anything in my life.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘You’ve never known—’
‘Ever since the world began, probably since Eden, men have been led by women into having material possessions. That’s women’s thing—having. I don’t say it’s their fault, it’s their nature, women have, men are. Well, thank God you’re not going to involve me—’
‘I wish I’d never seen the place.’
‘I didn’t want you to see it. I wanted you to see my mother. Just once—’
‘Why did you want me to see her at all then?’
‘I wanted my mother to receive you and welcome you and recognize you and be courteous to you. I wanted to show you that it was possible.’
‘You mean because it would help me not to feel—’
‘Yes.’
The yellow Volvo rattled over the cattle grid and turned left towards the village.
‘You decide everything without me,’ said Stephanie. ‘You don’t regard me as an equal.’
‘Very few men regard women as their equals,’ said Henry, ‘and if I do not regard you as mine that has nothing to do with your past. I just love you, and I regard you as my property. Not all those bloody trees.’
Stephanie slid her arm along the seat of the Volvo behind Henry’s back. She was wearing her black dress with the terrier brooch but had unbuttoned it at the neck. Her appearance had changed, so it seemed to Henry, since he had first met her. There was a brooding bafflement in her round eyes, a spirit of secrecy and thought which gave to her face intensity, almost beauty. She pressed her lips together, tasting her lipstick. ‘You’re funny. I wonder if you mean anything you say? I never said good-bye properly to your mother.’
‘She was in a pet. Not about you.’
‘Will you buy me a diamond ring?’
‘Oh, I suppose so.’
‘I’ll believe anything you tell me if you’ll buy me a diamond ring.’
‘You believe in magic. Well, naturally you do.’
‘Henry, please let us live at the Hall. You could sell everything else and keep the Hall. You can’t sell it, you must be mad.’
‘Steph, I’ve got to drop it or it will destroy me. And if I just leave it to my mother it will get me in the end. Christ, is it me or the Hall you want? I hate the place with every atom of my soul. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be going back to London with you.’
‘I’ve been so deprived and miserable, I’ve had nothing—’
‘I’ll work hard for you, Steph. That will make sense. I want to live an ordinary life that makes sense.’
‘It’s all because of Sandy.’
‘It’s not because of Sandy!’
‘It’s because—’
‘You and my mother had a jolly good talk about Sandy, didn’t you?’
‘Are you jealous?’
‘Do you want me to ditch the car?’
Henry abruptly turned the Volvo into a lay-by and switched off the engine. They were almost in the village. Opposite to them was the sunlit wall of the park, the big rectangular golden stones glistening a little as the sun touched here and there the spiral patterns of the shell-fossils.
At that moment Henry saw the tall figure of Colette Forbes striding towards them along the road. He hesitated, reached for the switch, then sat back. She would have received his letter by now. He passionately did not want to talk to her.
Stephanie, turned with her back to the road, said, ‘What’s the matter?’
Henry sat rigid, staring in front of him. The windscreen darkened. Colette walked round the car to Henry’s side and Henry wound down the window. Colette was wearing a belted jerkin of green tweed and matching knee breeches and a white shirt. Her long brown hair was looped up into a complex knotted tail which now hung forward over her shoulder.
‘Hello, Henry.’
‘Hello, Colette. Stephanie, this is Colette Forbes who lives nearby. Colette this is my fiancée, Stephanie Whitehouse.’
‘How do you do?’ said Stephanie.
‘Hello,’ said Colette, then, addressing Henry, ‘I got your letter about her.’
‘Well, there she is,’ said Henry, ‘as large as life. Thanks for your letter, I appreciated it.’
‘You appreciated it? That’s a funny word.’
‘It was a funny letter.’
‘I’m glad it amused you. I think your reply was very stupid and very rude.’
‘Oh dear—’
‘It was offensive and ungenerous and untruthful. You pretended to regard me as a child because you were afraid to face the challenge of a real relationship. You tried to make a joke out of something utterly serious and deep. You deliberately didn’t treat me with respect. You can’t have believed what you said, you were lying.’
‘Really, Colette. I think you are being stupid and rude! I wrote you a perfectly friendly, perfectly clear letter. After all, yours wasn’t all that easy to answer! I hope at least you got the point.’
‘You were unkind and untruthful.’
‘What a cross peevish little girl!’
‘What is this?’ said Stephanie.
‘May I say something to her?’
‘No!’
Colette lowered her head to the window of the car. ‘Miss Whitehouse, I just want to tell you this. I am going to marry Henry Marshalson. I have known him and loved him all my life and he belongs to me. That’s all. I am going to marry Henry. He is mine. Good-bye.’
The tall figure whisked away. Henry caught a quick glimpse of Colette’s long legs, clad in the green knee-breeches, swinging over the stile into the field which bordered the lay-by. He stared after her. Then he began to laugh. He started the engine. He laughed and laughed. The yellow Volvo sped away.
‘How are you, Steph?’ said Henry, after he had stopped laughing. He gave her a quick glance. The Volvo raced up a hill and turned onto the motorway.
Stephanie was shuddering, her plump legs drawn up under her, hunched behind her handkerchief, tears descending.
‘Come, Steph, don’t suffer from shock, I won’t let you. That idiot girl is just good for a laugh. You didn’t take it seriously, did you?’
‘You were engaged to her, you were engaged to her—No wonder your mother was so strange—’
‘I’m not engaged to her! She’s just a naughty fantasy-ridden schoolgirl. I’ve only seen her twice since she was an adult.’
‘She said you lied to her, so you must have promised—’
‘I tell you I’ve scarcely seen her—’
‘Why were you laughing?’
‘Because she always makes me laugh.’
‘But you said you’d only met her twice.’
‘Well, I laughed twice. This is the third time, and the last. If she upsets you she’s not a joke.’
r /> ‘She’s a witch. She wants you and she’ll get you. She said “He’s mine” and it sounded true. She’s put a spell on us, I can feel it.’
‘I’ll give you a diamond ring to protect you.’
‘She’ll draw you to her. You’ll keep going back. You must have been engaged to her or she wouldn’t have said those things.’
‘You don’t know her! Now, Stephanie, stop it. I’ll never see her again.’
‘Really?’
‘Look, I haven’t told you this, but when I’ve sold the house—’
‘I don’t want you to sell the house.’
‘When I’ve sold the house we’re going to America. Back to my job there—’
‘I don’t want to go to America. Doesn’t what I want matter?’
‘It’s so nice there, we’ll feel so free and happy. I’ve got such a lovely little house—’
‘I want to live at the Hall.’
‘If you lived at the Hall you’d be my mother’s slave.’
‘I want to be your mother’s slave.’
‘Oh, stop crying!’
‘That girl will get you, she’s a witch, I can feel it, she sort of attacked me, I feel I’ve been clawed.’
‘Stephanie, must you start this on the motorway?’
‘I’m not strong enough to hold you against her, I know I’m not.’
The yellow Volvo darted for an exit, rolled along the approach road into a suddenly quiet country lane, bumped on a little way and came to a halt in the mud beside a five-barred gate. A lark was singing.
‘Steph—look at me straight—don’t hide behind the hankie—’
Stephanie looked at him, showing him her red swollen face shining with tears, her wet lips and drooping trembling mouth.
‘Stephanie, hello, there isn’t such a thing as a non-smudge lipstick, is there, yours is everywhere, you look a real gink, you look like a funny girl in a picture.’
‘You can’t love me, it’s impossible, you love her—’
‘If I loved her would I laugh?’
‘I don’t know, you’re so peculiar.’
‘You’re my funny girl in my picture. And we’re going to go to America and you’re going to like it. You’ll say I’m a male chauvinist pig, all right, I’m a male chauvinist pig. I’ve got to save myself, otherwise I can’t save you.’
‘You love her, she’s so young, I’m so frightened, she frightened me—’
‘Stop whining, Stephanie, or I’ll hit you. We’ve come together and it’s fate, you were made for my situation and my problem. I asked the world a question and you were the answer. I’ve never been able to make love to a woman like I have to you. And don’t say “then it’s just sex”. What do you mean, “just sex”? Everything is sex, your hankie with the lipstick on is sex, and the Volvo is sex, and that blue road sign and the moss on the gate and the silly old lark singing and the way I want to look after you. I’ve never wanted to look after anybody before, I’ve never had anybody to look after before, I’ve never had anything of my own since my mother took away my teddy bear.’
‘You just pity me.’
‘Of course I pity you. You pity yourself.’
‘You just want to annoy your mother with me.’
‘Damn all these justs. I could do that without marrying you.’
‘You won’t marry me, you haven’t even given me a ring.’
Henry took off one of his driving gloves and hit her across the face. She turned away and leaned her head against the window whimpering and biting her handkerchief.
‘Stephanie, don’t fret us to pieces. Look, do you love me or don’t you? It’s not just because of Sandy, is it?’
‘No—’
‘You don’t feel you have to let me own you because he did? You loved him and I can’t really see why you should love me. You know, you’re not the only one with doubts. He was a tall handsome man and I’m a little skinny dark fellow. You don’t have to have me, you can clear off. But if you do marry me, I’m the boss and we do what I want. O.K.?’
‘O.K.—’
‘Christ, I’ve got my troubles too, I’m lost, I don’t know who I am, you’re not the only one with an identity problem. Now stop crying. At once.’
‘I’m sorry. That girl frightened me so.’
‘Look, now there’s lipstick all over my glove. Let’s get out of the car. The sun’s quite warm. Let’s go into that field. I’ll bring a rug. Come on Stephanie, quick, quick. Quick.’
Later on the lark was still singing, an invisible point in the blue sun-radiant air. Flooding the sky with a song which, with little momentary ecstatic pauses now and then, went on and on and on.
‘You do love me, Steph?’
‘Yes, yes. Only it’s like a dream, it’s too good to be true, as if I daren’t.’
‘It’s the end of a story, Stephanie, and the beginning of another one.’
‘They lived happily ever after?’
‘I don’t know. I doubt it. But they lived together and trusted each other and helped each other and told each other the truth. Eh, Steph?’
‘Yes.’
‘Listen to the lark.’
‘Give him his plate, and you go to bed.’
Cato looked at Colette, so clumsy, so graceful, standing by the stove in her old green overall stained by garden mud, her looped hair tied back by a stringy ribbon, her face glowing and shiny as a boy’s. He looked at his father, who was almost frowning in an effort not to beam, his grubby hands beyond leather-bound cuffs restlessly scratching the ridgy wood of the kitchen table. Cato looked into two pairs of eyes shining with love and welcome. And he thought, how lucky I am to be loved by such splendid people and how little they can do for me now, for all their good will. This is the first day of the new world wherein I must remake myself and as a duty search for happiness. How shrunk I feel, how thin and like a needle with deprivation and defeat and shame and the loss of all that gave me substance. He thought, I have lost my power, I have lost my stature and my dignity, and how unworthy it is to think of it in these terms as if that was what mattered.
‘That’s good. Now stop pawing him. Off you go, Colette.’
‘But, Daddy—Oh, all right. Good night, dear, dear Cato.’
Cato thought, they are sorry for me. Love purifies their pity. Others will pity me less purely and I shall dwindle. I shall get used to being nothing after all except a queer in a cord coat. He began to eat the stew which Colette had warmed up for him. He had arrived home late.
‘So you’ve got a job already? That’s good. And in Leeds, a good place.’
‘It’s only temporary.’
‘You might get into the university there, I know one or two people—’
‘I’ll take a bit of time to get back—as I haven’t been studying lately.’
‘Pity you wasted all that time. At least earlier you were learning things. The last years have been a dead loss.’
‘Yes—’
‘Well, you can settle down and study now. All your books are here. It’ll be like old days, we’ll both be working.’
‘Yes—’
‘I thought you’d come to your senses in the end. It beats me how anybody can believe all that stuff. You must have felt you were in a false position. Aren’t you relieved now it’s all over?’
‘Yes—’
‘It’s amazing how even rational people can deceive themselves. You’re not the only one. God, I hated you in the black robe. Now you look like a man again.’
‘Yes, Dad—’
‘Well, thank heavens you’ve pulled yourself out, and not too late either. We’ll make you a career in the university.’
‘I doubt if—’
‘In this day and age, well, it beats me—I suppose the thing has a sort of aesthetic appeal. Was that it?’
‘Perhaps, partly—’
‘Oh I can understand that. Religion has always been seducing art. And belonging to a big show, like joining the Communist Party, international brotherhood and hi
story on your side and so on. That was the fashion when I was young.’
‘Only you never joined.’
‘Never tempted to. I saw through it straightaway. I was always too much of a craggy individual, never could stand bosses. Some people like them, there’s safety in obedience, there’s even thrills. Not for me. I was far too literal-minded. I always stuck to what I could understand. Truth is a pretty literal matter, it’s a matter of details, what you can explain and get clear. I saw the danger signals. As soon as you start chasing after what’s large and shadowy you get involved in lies, the lies in the soul, the things you can’t quite see and can’t quite work out but which you accept, because you’re in love with the whole. Politically and morally, that’s the road to hell. Any sort of metaphysics is a lie, anything big is a lie, it’s bound to be.’
‘Yes, I think perhaps you’re right,’ said Cato.
‘You said I was a philistine—’
‘Good heavens, did I? I’m sorry—’
‘Well, you said I was a spiritual philistine.’
‘I only meant—’
‘All right, I know what you meant. I don’t believe in all those myths and legends and I think the notion of survival after death is the most morally debilitating idea ever invented, but I believe in the good life and in trying to be a good man and in telling the truth—I think that’s at the centre of it all, telling the truth, always trying to find out the truth, not tolerating any lie or any half-lie—it’s the half-lies that kill the spirit. You know, I’m not such a philistine as you think.’
‘I’m very sorry I—’
‘Your mother was a sort of saint. We were friends when we were children, but religion passed out of our lives quite naturally. They knew a thing or two though, those old Quakers, there was something decent and honest there. The Inner Light, that’s just truth itself. I saw that early on. I made my own sort of sense of it all. Not all that horrible theology, that sickly picturesque paraphernalia which appeals so much to your aesthetic sense, but just the humble business of living a life, earning your bread, helping other people, fighting against liars and tyrants. That’s all there is to it, Cato, and that’s enough.’
‘Yes—’
‘You know, I never really let you have it—I never really told you what I thought and felt about that—’