20

‘I didn’t want to go.’

‘Why did you?’

Tolson, with the weight of his body, had almost carried Leonard into the pew. He sat beside him, his tall figure scarcely revealed above the high back of the seat which concealed Leonard completely.

Beyond them, where the choir raised itself by a flight of steps above the narrow nave, the darkness was relieved by several white figures, recumbent beneath the smooth, blackened arches and the dull, ochre-eroded walls. The columns of the arches shone, as if stroked to their luminous blackness by hands, a greasy affection; the weight of the stone was lightened and the shadow of the roof suspended over rather than upheld by the stone girths. The light flowed in through five stained-glass windows on either side of the nave, the beams almost meeting in two dull waves, yet separated by a narrow band of shadow that drew a common ground round the feet of the central pillars, and around the figures of Leonard and Tolson themselves.

For a while they sat in silence, Leonard gazing fixedly into the darkness by his feet; Tolson peering, not into his face, but at a point just beyond the profile of Leonard’s head. Here a blackened wooden figure struggled from the structure at the end of the pew. Its tiny face was wrenched upwards, its eyes bulbous with some inarticulate labour, its teeth crumbled, half-formed pegs set round a tongue like rope. Tolson’s figure, as he gazed at it, seemed to grow out of the pew.

Leonard flinched. Tolson had stood up. Limping towards them was Blakeley. He too started with surprise as the head and then the massive shoulders rose like an uncanny edifice from the terrace of the pew.

‘Oh!’ Blakeley said. Then recovering, he looked round the dark interior. ‘It’s like a museum, wouldn’t you say?’ he suddenly stated. He took out a cigarette which, plainly, he had lighted just outside the door. He plucked it from his mouth, glancing quickly at Tolson, then more certainly at the several effigies and carvings that characterised this section of the church. His raincoat hung loosely, like a second, redundant skin from his bony shoulders. ‘Quite a collection. All yours, I presume?’ he said to Leonard who, however, scarcely raised his head. Blakeley laughed, a high, shrill sound.

Tolson had begun to pace up and down the aisle, his hands thrust into his pockets, staring at the ground, his figure passing and re-passing the columns of light that slanted down from the narrow windows. Blakeley continued to glance at him, but with an increasingly nervous expression. Nevertheless, he went on speaking in a relatively calm and reflective voice. ‘Do you realise the unusual thing about the altar ornaments? I mean the silver ware, of course. It’s Spanish of the seventeenth century yet made of beaten metal, and not castings. It’s extremely rare. The candelabra, though, are made of brass. William Howard of Exeter. A craftsman and nothing more. The Last Judgement there, Italian, early sixteenth century, as are the carved reliefs. They’re German.’

Tolson had suddenly stopped his pacing. He was staring at Blakeley with a ferocious intensity.

‘It’s a strange museum,’ Blakeley went on, ‘idolatrous for such a puritan family. That is, for people of such inward and not outward graces. Look. “Orate pro anima Thome Radcliffe militis qui hanc capellam fieri anno Domini 1477”.’ He gestured at the vast white effigy of a knight which, hands poised in prayer above its slenderly featured face, lay like a metal pod between adjacent columns of the central row of arches. Blakeley’s Latin was fluent. ‘Have you attended a service here recently?’ He glanced at Leonard’s bowed head. However, he gave no response. ‘There were seven of us. Five women, a child and me. Oh, I’m not complaining. But imagine. This church was built to serve the spiritual needs of one family, and now it’s sufficient to serve the similar needs of twenty thousand.’

He laughed again. Then coughed. He dropped his cigarette and stood on it. For a moment he seemed to rise in the air as his toe swivelled on the ground. Then he glanced up once more, desperately, at Tolson.

His eyes dropped. He looked at Leonard, licked his lips, and began to limp away. He reached the yellow cone of light that filtered through the open door and, without turning again, disappeared outside.

Tolson’s head had slowly reared itself towards the vault of the ceiling. He gazed up, his mouth peculiarly open. Then he screamed: ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ The sound was strangely dull, as though buried in wood.

Leonard stood up. He attempted to follow Blakeley to the door. Tolson quickly stepped into his way.

‘You know the thing about Blakeley?’ he said, staring at Leonard’s eyes. ‘Do you know? Do you realise? He wants to get rid of you, yet he wants you to save him as well. You. He wants you to save him! He’s mad.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t you think so?’ His amused eyes continued to stare into Leonard’s for some time. ‘Do you know that he came and told me about you seeing Kathleen this afternoon? He told me even before he’d written the letter inviting you there. He wrote it knowing I’d be there! He wanted to get rid of you, yet he can’t bear to lose Kathleen. And he hasn’t any real hatred or badness inside him so he does both things. And bang! They cancel each other out. Can you believe it? He’s mad!’ He watched Leonard a moment longer. ‘Has he ever told you about this peculiar relationship he has with Kathleen?’ Leonard didn’t answer. ‘Do you know, he even told me to go and look in the window.’

Tolson laughed more heavily now, yet scarcely taking his eyes from Leonard.

Suddenly Leonard said quietly, ‘We mustn’t fight. We mustn’t.’

‘Fight? How do you mean? I’m not fighting.’

‘Why must you always live through your gestures. Why can’t you live through what you are?’

‘What I am?’

‘Why are you afraid of your feelings? They’re not wrong. They’re not wrong. They’re not things to abuse, or to despise. They’re you. Why must you always destroy them? Why are you always trying to destroy me?’

‘I don’t want to destroy you.…’

‘You make these situations. It’s as if you’re afraid of loving. Of loving. Of any feeling at all.’

Tolson had begun to smile again.

Leonard stared at him intensely a moment. Then he half-sprang at him. He clutched Tolson to him and kissed his open mouth.

Tolson yielded. Then he flung Leonard back. ‘What!…’ He stared incoherently at him.

Leonard turned and walked slowly up the aisle. Occasionally he paused, glancing at the carvings on either side until, as he reached the choir, he looked back. Tolson hadn’t moved. His huge figure stood solidly amongst the shadows of the nave.

Leonard moved on until, finally confronted by the altar, he turned round.

Tolson had mounted between the choir stalls and was gazing at him with the same fixed, uncomprehending look. His features, in the faint light, seemed rammed apart: absurd protuberances bolted disjointedly to his face.

Yet, when he reached Leonard, he stood massively over him as if completely unable to express any of his feelings. His shoulders mounted, his fists were slowly clenched, and he stood over Leonard in a shaking, helpless agitation.

‘You! You understand nothing of me!’

‘You’re afraid.’ Leonard’s eyes seemed driven back into his skull.

‘Afraid!’

‘You’re afraid of any absolute thing. You’re afraid of anything that’s complete. That’s whole. Anything that takes the whole of you!’

Tolson suddenly leaned his head back. He seemed stunned. Then, with a prodigious lunge of his arm, he swept the metal ornaments across the surface of the altar beyond Leonard’s head. They crashed against the wall and the floor, spattering and splaying out like shrapnel. ‘You know nothing!’

Suddenly he grasped Leonard’s wrist and, as Leonard cried out, covered his mouth with his own. The whole of Tolson’s body seemed centred on the wrist, bowed, stooping towards it as his fingers forced open the skin. For a moment he withdrew, listening to Leonard’s cry. Then, curving his body more leniently, he enclosed Leonard fully, pulling him between his thighs and locking him securely. Together, with Leonard’s smothered cries, they swayed hip to hip, swung to and fro like a huge and single pendulum, their mouths pressed against each other’s. Their shadow fled across the empty surface beyond their heads.

Tolson paused. He tightened his grip. Between his lips came a fresh suffusion of cries. He gazed into Leonard’s face: mouth, eyes, nose, head were flung back in a shriek of pain and, driving home his thumb and finger against the pierced wrist, he tenderly covered with kisses the screaming face.

When he released him the full weight of Leonard’s body fell into his arms. He held him there, gazing now almost abstractedly, half-dazed, into Leonard’s face: it was screwed in an intent frown, the eyes closed, almost sleeping. He kissed the swollen lids. Small vibrations drew the broken body up. He released him, watching morosely, jealous it seemed of such private pain and such private consolation, as Leonard stooped over his wounded wrist, crying now, with a whimpered breath.

Then, as Leonard turned, he turned too, and together, they moved down to the aisle. Neither spoke until they had almost reached the door. Then Tolson said, ‘If you’re frightened of me now, what will you be like in three or even two weeks’ time?’ Yet Leonard only gave him a sunken look, torn, and half-appealing, and without another word Tolson hurried to the door.

Standing there, in the now diminishing shaft of light, was a figure whom clearly Tolson couldn’t recognise. He paused, glancing round quickly at Leonard as though in some way betrayed. Then he approached the door very slowly, nodding his head in some uncertain gesture of introduction.

Leonard, with a similar shock, had identified the intruder, and for a while he stopped and gazed about him as though deliberately to postpone the inevitable encounter. Occasionally he glanced over to where the intruder’s head moved slowly above the high backs of the pews. It possessed, isolated like this, a strange though remote sense of threat. It was his sister, Elizabeth.

After a hesitant introduction, she now stood talking to Tolson, looking round at the interior, her arm raised to indicate something of interest. She was laughing at some allusion of Tolson’s. For a moment the sounds of his voice and hers were joined. It was only as they turned towards the door that they appeared to remember Leonard and, glancing round, Elizabeth called his name.

When he emerged from the church the brightness burned his eyes. A shower of torn paper fluttered round his head as he heard Blakeley’s laughing voice, ‘Oh, isn’t he lovely! Isn’t he lovely!’ Then he felt someone take him roughly by the shoulder, and a voice hissed in his ear, ‘There! I hope you’ll live a long and happy life, and may all your troubles be little ones!’ He recognised Blakeley’s laughter again, beside him, and, further away, Elizabeth’s and Tolson’s.

He looked blindly in the direction of the row of houses which separated the church from the Place. Gradually he was able to make out various figures.

Standing by the low stone wall close to the porch was a single figure, and beyond, by the wooden gate that opened onto the estate road itself, he recognised Tolson and Elizabeth. They were still talking and, apparently, completely absorbed in one another. In the roadway several women had stopped to watch as though an event had taken place.

As Leonard stepped from the porch Blakeley moved in front of him and began to walk towards the gate. At a point roughly halfway between Leonard and Tolson he stopped and turned round.

‘Have you ever actually witnessed a miracle?’ he said to Leonard, who still appeared dazed by the light. ‘Have you?’ He waited for a reply.

Blinking his eyes as though awakening from a dream, Leonard gestured at him as if both to apologise for his inattention and to discourage any interest in his condition.

Blakeley glanced up at the church, now fiercely illuminated in the late afternoon sun and, without changing his expression, added, ‘You remember that slight physical impediment I had?’ He had begun to walk round Leonard without limping. ‘Well, it’s suddenly been cured! Don’t you think it’s incredible!’ Yet, despite his anxiety to attract Leonard’s attention, he was watching Tolson who stood disregardingly several yards away. ‘No! I mustn’t go giving you illusions,’ Blakeley suddenly laughed, catching Leonard’s arm. ‘I only limp as an affectation. An important and very necessary affectation, albeit, but nevertheless, an affectation. I’m sorry, by the way, about Kathleen. I’m very bad at these sort of things.’ He added the last sentence without any change of inflexion in his voice, and without even any change of expression, and went on in a slightly more cheerful tone, ‘Perhaps I ought to have told you. I get moods. Moods when I have to do it. I have to! Can you understand that? The limping, I mean. It makes me look slightly pitiable, don’t you think? Nothing much. Just the right touch.’ He suddenly leaned forward and patted Leonard’s cheek. ‘Oh, what a blushing bride! How I wish I was young all over again. I’d show you!’ He burst into laughter and, moving backwards, led Leonard towards the gate.

Elizabeth was evidently saying good-bye to Tolson, who now began to move off down the road at a brisk pace, calling cheerfully to Leonard and giving a loud, ‘Come on, slowcoach,’ to Blakeley, who immediately hurried after him.

For a moment it looked as though Leonard would follow too. He called out wildly, ‘Vic!… Vic!’ but Tolson only spun round, waved, and increased his pace down the estate.

After a moment’s reflection Leonard turned up the rise towards the Place. Elizabeth walked beside him. She was still excited from her recent encounter.

‘What made you go inside the church? How did you know I was there?’ Leonard asked as they neared the Place.

‘That man. He stopped me. What’s his name? He said you and Vic were in there. The funny thing was, he told me a wedding was taking place!’ She laughed. ‘It was that that made me go in.’ Her laughter seemed to be flung out at the hedges, the road, the houses as some sort of challenge. ‘And there you were. The two of you!’

After a while Leonard said, ‘What do you think to Tolson?’

‘He’s very charming.’ She glanced at Leonard’s sultry face. ‘He’s a kind of heavy-handed knight. It makes a change.’

‘Yes!’ he said, surprised, as though suddenly he had realised she was waiting for some sort of response.

‘He seems to respect and admire you.’

‘Yes.’

She continued to smile at his moody expression.

‘You’ll keep away from him, won’t you?’ he added.

‘Away? And why?’

But Leonard didn’t answer. His face burned, his eyes frowning as though resisting the temptation to cry.

Elizabeth laughed at his bewildered looks. Then she glanced round, slightly flushed. But Tolson was out of sight. The other man, however, who had followed him, was limping heavily round the furthest corner.

‘But he’s married, isn’t he?’ she said uncertainly. ‘What’s his wife like?’

Yet when she turned to repeat the question, she saw that Leonard had already disappeared into the grounds of the Place.