19

That same morning Leonard had come down rather late to find his mother waiting for him in the kitchen. Looking up from the table where she was working she had smiled at him and handed him a thick blue envelope.

Though unstamped, his name and address had been written across it, the letters large and shaped with unusual care. It was this, he assumed, that had amused his mother, and after examining it a moment, turning it over several times as though uncertain whether to accept it, he had glanced at her severely and taken it with him back to his room.

The letter had been unsigned, and composed in the same laborious handwriting. It alluded in detail to his conversation in the park with Kathleen, even to the encounter with Tolson, yet was written with a rhetorical affectation he associated more with Blakeley than with anything that he knew of his daughter. Its general tone of apology was abruptly terminated by a demand that he should call at the house at a specific time in the afternoon. No mention was made of the coat.

When, some time later, he returned to the kitchen it was to discover Austen already there; and although his mother made no direct reference to ‘the little messenger’, as she’d called the boy who had delivered the letter, it was clear that the subject had been more than thoroughly discussed. It was a relief when Austen had begun to announce his arrangements for the party and it was only after lunch, when he and Austen and his father had gone up to the York Room to assess its possibilities, that he remembered the letter again. Without thinking, he hurried out of the room and was already well on his way to Blakeley’s house before he even realised the circumstances in which he had left his uncle.

He reached the end of the road where Blakeley lived at what he judged to be several minutes before three o’clock, the hour stated in the letter, and taking another turning that led more circuitously to his destination, he walked up and round a crescent and down a second avenue to arrive at the opposite end of the same road. He walked slowly along to the house and arrived there, he surmised, several minutes late.

For a while there was no answer to his knocking. He waited indecisively on the top step, glancing up to reassure himself of the number. The road, in mid-afternoon, was completely silent and deserted. Then from the rear of the house he thought he detected whispered voices and a hurried, hastily-suppressed shuffling of feet. A moment later the door was pulled open and Kathleen stood looking down at him, her face slightly flushed and creased in that now familiar sardonic smile.

‘So you decided to come twenty minutes early,’ she said. ‘And confound us all.’

‘Early?’

‘It’s only twenty minutes to three. But then, perhaps you didn’t read the letter very closely.’

‘I was just guessing the time,’ he said as though he were about to go. ‘I’d no real idea.’

Suddenly she laughed. ‘Come in. Come in. You don’t think I’ll make you walk up and down outside until the proper moment arrives do you?… Come in. There’s no need to look so guilty. I’ve got your coat waiting already.’

She had to take his arm before he actually entered the hallway, and then push him forward slightly in order to close the door. As she did so he had the impression of voices and feet on the path outside hurrying round from the rear of the house.

‘I suppose, really, I’m surprised you have come,’ she said once they were in the living-room and the door finally shut. His coat lay folded neatly over the arm of a chair. He went to stand by it, uncertainly. ‘And now you have come I suppose you’ll take it, say thank you, and leave straight away.’

‘There was no mention of the coat in the letter,’ he said blankly, staring down at it as if so patent a device for their meeting could now only embarrass him.

‘The letter? No.’ She came purposely to stand quite close to him. ‘What did you think to the letter? Didn’t you think it was cleverly composed?’

He suddenly turned away from the coat, and rather confidently went to the wall and began to examine the numerous photographs pinned there. They were all of Blakeley caught in some amusing climax to one of his acts; in each the costume and expression were different. In only one had he been pictured with someone else.

‘Why did you come?’ she added. And when he gave her no answer she hastily went on, ‘I suppose you heard all the discreet sounds of departure when you came in. Enter Radcliffe, the hero of forlorn aspect; exit family of the opposite disposition. I must say you were very clever. You caught us very nicely. Denis mustering them all through the back door with stifled expletives while you stood gazing innocently around on the front step.’

He’d looked up at her. It was the first time he recollected hearing her refer to her father by his first name. The tone of familiarity surprised him.

She glanced away. Then suddenly sat down.

He looked back at the photographs. The central one was of Kathleen and Blakeley, staring solemnly before them. Their hands rested on the shoulders of the three young children. They too shared the same expression of solemnity. The camera, presumably, had been held by Blakeley’s wife.

‘You’re always revealing things,’ he said suddenly. ‘Particularly those things which most people would take every trouble to conceal. In fact, things which your father obviously does go to a great deal of trouble to conceal. And all the time you’re pulling the curtain aside to reveal him in his little act.’ He swung round hastily, and abruptly went to sit in a chair. It was a particularly clumsy action. ‘Yet I feel the whole time that these endless revelations are only to conceal something much huger.’

‘You’re very clever. And what huge thing can it be?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well. You better take your coat, then, I suppose. That’s what you came for, isn’t it?’ When he didn’t answer, but merely looked uncomfortably around him, she began to fumble with her skirt, an absent-minded and vaguely absurd gesture, for she added, ‘What did you think to the letter?’ and before he could answer went on, ‘I suppose you realised by its tone and its quaint omission of a signature that it wasn’t in fact composed by me at all but by my well-intentioned father.’

‘I did think it was.’

‘Oh, you did think it was,’ she said. ‘Then the fact that you have come after all must surely mean something. Well?… Was it to spite Tolson? To show him?’

He looked at her with a blank, undisturbed stare.

They sat in silence for a while.

Then Kathleen added viciously, ‘You’ll laugh at this. No. Perhaps you won’t. Most likely it’ll frighten you. But can’t you guess why he wrote it?’ She stared at him with a triumphant expression, her hands pressed forward on her knees. ‘Why, it’s the traditional tactics of the father in marrying off his daughter. Didn’t you guess? But you must have done, of course. All his furtive attempts to have the house empty when you arrived you must have found particularly encouraging. Why, he’s created what he believes are the “ideal circumstances” for a proposal of marriage! He wants you to marry me!’

If this revelation itself confused him, what was more intimidating was the tone in which it was expressed, one both of despair and outrage. It was as if she taunted him with something of his own pessimism. He stood up and in a very unnatural voice shouted absurdly, ‘What! Are you determined never to be saved!’

‘From what?’ she said, smiling slightly.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.… Your only real contact with people comes from intimidating them.’

‘Does it embarrass you? I mean the real reason for you being asked here. My father’s reason.’

‘I don’t understand you. Not at all.’

‘No. But then I doubt if you understand women at all, do you? Or men, for that matter. Do you honestly see anything of what goes on around you?’ She watched him with the same frozen smile, as though the expression were bitterly imposed on her face.

They were silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘What would you do if I suddenly started showing my legs to you? Or taking off my blouse?’ She watched him acutely, for she was already drawing her skirt over her knees. ‘No, you needn’t be frightened,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to give you a peep show. I’ve no doubt at all what you’d do. Run for the door and I’d never see you again.’

‘Why do you abase yourself in this way?’ he said, rigid in his chair. They were still sitting facing one another, Leonard’s terrified eyes glancing from her to the photographs on the wall. ‘It’s as if you and your father were rotten with the same disease.’

She sat watching him without expression; with a seriousness that for the first time left a peculiar calmness on her face. She slowly pulled her skirt down. Then she began to smile, half-ugly, derisive.

Leonard sat still, his hands clenched over the arms of the chair. The next moment, however, he stood up and with extraordinary slowness, as though his actions imitated those of a much larger man, he crossed the room and bent over her. He stooped down and kissed her lightly on the mouth. He was awkwardly supported by one hand. Her face was quite aged, with numerous small lines springing outwards from the corners of her eyes. He kissed her again. Then he stood up. He was extremely pale, ashen.

‘You better take your raincoat,’ Kathleen said, tonelessly and unmoving. Leonard stood gazing down at her.

‘You accuse me of aloofness,’ he said. ‘But look at this! Look at you now!’ He seemed in absolute despair at her passivity.

‘Now you know why my father thought we’d be suitable for one another. Two equally resistant people. You internally, me … well, something a bit different.’ And when he didn’t answer, but stood there watching her with aimless violence, she added, ‘Doesn’t it offend you? Knowing why you were sent for?’

‘No.’

‘What? Are you so desperate?’ She looked up at him swiftly, but no longer with contempt or amusement. More, it was a look of challenge.

‘If we’ve nothing but deprivation in common, why did you see me? You could have left with the rest of them. In five minutes I’d have gone away. Why are you like this? The whole time. Why have me here if it’s only to take something out of me? You can do that anywhere, anytime. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you.’ He had returned to the same wildness of manner and voice, his hands shaking helplessly at his sides. ‘When I first met you I thought all this was deliberate. That it was a deliberate insult. But now. It just seems pathetic. That’s all it is.’

Kathleen stood up. ‘You better go,’ she said quietly. ‘It was a mistake you coming. I can’t apologise. I know I should. But I can’t. You’ve been taken advantage of, that’s all.’

‘But why did you agree? The letter – it mentioned everything we’d talked about yesterday. You must have told him everything. Why?’

‘Yes. Yes. But then you shouldn’t have tried to spite Tolson. And I shouldn’t have told him. He was just trying to do his best for me. Do you understand?’

Leonard didn’t answer. He gazed at her as though this were yet another attempt to ridicule him.

‘It’s as simple as that. He just happens to think that you’d make me the ideal husband.’ Suddenly she began to laugh, almost the same maundering cry Leonard had witnessed before, an hysterical confusion of relief and distress. ‘That’s how simple, how elemental he is.’

Leonard stared once more at the numerous images of Blakeley on the wall. Then he said despairingly, ‘You might as well have been Tolson for all the mindlessness you have at your disposal.’

‘No. No! It’s not that! Don’t you see? It’s he who is in love with Tolson and wants you out of the way!’

He had begun to move towards the door.

Immediately she stepped forward and put her arms across his shoulders, tentatively at first but as he paused gripping him with a kind of ferocity. It was as if she had physically encountered him in the darkness of a room, unexpected, half-frightened. She buried her face against his with such a wildness that he cried out, more in shock than alarm, for the next moment she wrenched him against her in a sudden gesture of despair.

Her mouth hurried over his face until, with an extension of the same compulsive movement, she pulled down at his shoulders; they subsided first against a chair, then more slowly to the floor. Her hands struggled with his clothes. Then, as her fingers closed over his nakedness, she lay back thrusting her legs apart. It was almost a swimming-like motion of her body as she worked him against her, drawing him down more forcefully, insensibly against her hips. Finally she pulled him in against her with both her hands and very slowly began to arch her back up from the floor.

Looking up through half-blinded eyes, Leonard saw directly above him a window in the centre of which, looking in, was the face of Tolson. It hung there like a painted cloth, an hallucinatory pattern vaguely composed in the features of a grinning man.

Leonard buried his head in the shoulder beneath him, his body curving as though in this act alone he could gain concealment. The movement of his hips became more sporadic, erratic shudders that passed into the tormented figure below.

When she eventually turned her head aside, lying back, Kathleen said, ‘You look lost. Like somebody lost on a journey.’

She was breathless, distraught, her head twisted to one side in some strange detachment. Then suddenly she thrust her hand down between them. ‘Why! Didn’t you feel anything?’ she said. ‘Why. You didn’t do anything!’

‘Tolson. Tolson was here.’ He buried his head again in her shoulder.

‘You didn’t do anything!’

‘Tolson’s here!’

Her hand still feverishly gripped him. She seemed scarcely to hear, was scarcely even concerned.

‘He was there.’

Leonard had begun to draw himself up on his hands, raising himself, but she still gripped him.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘Look. You never did anything!’

He flung himself away, fumbling at his clothes as she released him, and struggled to his feet.

Kathleen still lay on the floor, her head averted as though driven back by force.

‘It was Tolson. He was at the window,’ Leonard said, sobbing.

Kathleen suddenly stood up. She tried to loosen her skirt which was twisted tightly around her waist.

‘Tolson where? You imagined it.’

At that moment Tolson reappeared at the window, smoking and gazing in at them, a thoughtful expression turning to a shy smile. He nodded at them briefly, then glanced down at Kathleen.

For a moment he continued to look at them, slowly removing the cigarette from his lips. Only half-revealed through the window, he appeared like some imaginary embodiment, fixed there. When suddenly he moved away it was without apparent effort, so that he seemed to be propelled by some impersonal force.

Leonard, his shoulders shuddering, had sat down. Intermittently a more violent spasm swept through his body, so that his head was flung from side to side.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kathleen said. ‘What does it matter? He only saw that. Why, it’s an everyday occurrence.’

Her bitterness had returned with greater stridency. She strode over to the window and looked out. ‘It’s just a thing men and women do, unimaginative, tedious. Any fool can do it. Why should it be so important? Now we’re rid of it, what does it matter? What does it matter if he saw? Why, in a minute I expect he’ll be striding in here and waiting for me to flop down again on my back.’ She laughed, looking round at Leonard. ‘And the amusing thing is that I would. I think I would. If he strides in this next minute I’ll entertain you with exactly the same display. Perhaps you’ll be able to pick up a few tips.’

Leonard, his hands clenched between his knees, gazed down at the floor, shivering.

‘Where’s your brave talk of yesterday?’ She went and stood beside him. ‘Didn’t you feel anything?’ she asked quietly. ‘I mean, can’t you do anything in that way?’

‘It was Tolson.’

‘But what does that matter? In any case.… It’s done. I only wanted to show you.’

‘Show me what?’ he said without raising his head.

‘No. No, of course. It was nothing. Perhaps you didn’t realise how crude, how much cruder in fact I am than my father. At least, he and I are matched in that respect.’ She watched him intently, as though for some sign. ‘But that little act we’ve just committed, it was merely to indicate to you how destitute I am. What would you want from me now?’

He didn’t answer. For a moment she stared down at his bowed head with increasing wildness. Then suddenly she knelt down and pressed her face feverishly between his thighs.

Leonard sprang up. He seemed flung apart. He leaned against the wall and fastened his clothes.

Kathleen crouched forward over the chair where Leonard had been sitting and cradled her head in her arms. ‘It’s quite true. My father arranged this meeting with the best intentions. Hoping that it might achieve something. Yet, despite that, he couldn’t help himself telling Tolson. And telling him knowingly. Knowing that he’d come here. Don’t you think that’s very strange? Perhaps he wanted it to be a disaster from the start. He wanted to be rid of you yet couldn’t bear to rid himself of me!’

‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand.’

She raised her head and looked directly at Leonard. ‘Can’t you explain that? Why he should want both things?’ And when he simply shook his head she added, ‘I could tell you, of course. But I shan’t. The only thing is, I’m exactly the same. I would have married you. I would. Yet somehow, I’d have made sure I didn’t. You see, we’re bound together like steel. And not one of us will split. You’ll see. You’ll see. One day you’ll see. And now you must go.’

She stood up and went straight to the door, tugging at her skirt irritatedly as she did so. She hurried out of the room into the kitchen and a moment later reappeared. In her hand was a small knife. She picked up his raincoat, thrust it into his hands and half-led, half-pulled him to the door. In the hallway she stopped and pulled open the front door.

‘You must never see me again. Do you understand?’

When he didn’t reply she caught his arms and shook him. ‘Do you understand! You mustn’t see me again!’

Suddenly she raised her hand, and lifting the knife slit open the ball of her thumb. A stream of blood sprang out. ‘Do you understand! You mustn’t see me again!’

Leonard stood gazing at her without moving. Then, with a stiffened gesture, almost a caricature of obeisance, he leaned forward and kissed the furled ridge of the wound. The hand was lowered beneath the weight of his head. Then it was pressed against his mouth.

They stood, caught in the action, without moving. Then Leonard slowly raised his face. He frowned slightly. Kathleen started laughing.

‘Oh, God. You fool. You poor fool!’ She held her hands to her cheeks as she laughed.

His mouth was enlarged by a crimson stain, clown-like, oddly disjointed. He swung round and stumbled down the steps. When he reached the road he heard the sound of her laughter joined by several others. He saw Tolson, and then Blakeley, standing in the road laughing. Though not, it seemed, so much at him as at some allusion that had passed privately between them. They stood quite close together, looking into each other’s faces.

Yet, as he hurried up the road, they began to follow him. And at such a pace that Tolson, who had easily outstripped the limping Blakeley, soon caught him up. For a while he walked closely behind Leonard, breathing heavily, occasionally half-groaning, half-murmuring or laughing to himself, yet never varying the distance that separated them. Then, as they reached the church immediately below the Place, he grasped Leonard’s arm. He caught him more firmly by the shoulders and, almost lifting him from the ground, spun him round.

‘Well? Are you satisfied?’ he said, staring madly now into Leonard’s face. And then, glancing back and observing Blakeley’s approach, he wrenched Leonard aside. ‘Come on. We’ll go in here,’ he said, ‘away from that limping fool,’ and taking a firmer grip on Leonard’s shoulder, led him into the church.