21

In the passage children crashed by and further on a second group ran screaming down the main stairs. Leonard stood at his window, looking down into the yard. Groups of people stood talking in the sunshine, waiters moving aimlessly between them with trays of drinks. The secluded square was resonant with sound and colour, the interlacing of sunlight and shade, although, since it was set against the northern flank of the Place, even in midsummer the building’s shadow never quite left it. In the trees which formed the eastern side of the square, mellowing now prematurely with autumn, two blackbirds were calling in agitation.

Several heads had turned towards the kitchen door. Then, like flowers, more hats and dark crowns of hair slowly rotated in the light. Almost immediately below him Elizabeth had appeared.

Dressed in a dark blue, flared dress, she wore her black hair swept tightly back from the pale shell of her face. She seemed, in this vertical perspective, like some component of the building itself. There was a slight inclination of her head and a faint flushing of the forehead and high cheek-bones, as though she sensed herself the object of the aching curiosity of these people. She moved from group to group, only finally coming to rest in the furthest corner of the yard, by the outbuildings, where her uncles, Isabel and the Provost, a small and extremely ugly man, were talking.

It was towards this spot that his father, by a series of introductions to his guests, was gradually making his way. Having reached the group he shook hands with Thomas, then the Provost, and finally asked some question of Elizabeth. He immediately turned towards the building and, glancing up at the shadowed façade, walked quickly over towards the kitchen door.

Assuming that his father was searching for him, Leonard turned from the window and crossed slowly to his bed. He sat down, moodily waiting. Yet when some time later there was a knock on his door, he looked up in complete dismay. The voice which called out to him was not his father’s but Elizabeth’s.

As he stood up he glanced hastily around the room and, after a certain hesitation, picked up an object which had been lying beside him on the bed. It was Tolson’s hammer. Staring distractedly about him for a moment he suddenly thrust it into the drawer by his bed and, glancing at himself in a mirror, went to the door and drew back the bolt.

Elizabeth gazed in at him with an enquiring expression, as if her sudden appearance were due to some remark about her brother which she had now taken the trouble to confirm. She shook her head meditatively.

‘Well, they’re all waiting for you.’ Then, recognising something of Leonard’s expression she came into the room. ‘Austen’s sent me up to fetch you. He insists that you come down.’ She added something which was drowned by the sound of children running past the room. She closed the door suddenly. ‘Or don’t you intend to make an appearance? Though you must let them see you. You look tremendous.’

Leonard was dressed in a dark suit, almost black, and a white shirt. A slim red tie ran down from his throat. He was extremely pale.

He stood peering at her intently, as though he had in fact asked her a question. When she smiled at him with some curiosity he turned to the window. He glanced back suddenly at the bed, then down at the yard. ‘I feel frightened,’ he said. ‘No, I honestly don’t know why,’ he added, turning round to her as though she had interrupted.

‘But I feel nervous. We all do,’ she said, familiar with and undiscouraged by the suddenly childish tone of his voice. ‘My father especially. There are nearly thirty people here. It’s such a big thing.’

‘Yes.’ His look returned repeatedly to the window. ‘I noticed all your admirers down there.’

‘Are you coming, or do you intend to hide yourself up here?’

There were shouts from downstairs. Several people strolled past the room. As Elizabeth turned to the door Leonard suddenly caught hold of her arm.

‘Liz. Shall I tell you what happened this morning? Just before you got up. The tables and chairs were brought up in a lorry.’ He had begun to smile at her nervously, and to guide her away from the door. ‘Austen had ordered them, of course. I counted them as the men carried them up. Thirty chairs and five trestle tables. And would you believe it? He’d ordered them from Ewbank’s!’

He was now escorting her round the room as though they were casually strolling round a vast arena. ‘Their famous red lorry was parked at the end of the drive. And there they were. Arguing with my father because he refused to let them dig back the drive so that they could open the gates and bring the lorry all the way up.’

He had become quite excited, releasing her arm so that he could move more hurriedly about the room.

‘But there’s no reason to get so worked up about that.’

‘Ah, but you should have seen Tolson. Standing there. Tolson! He’d come with them of course. Quite by chance! Standing there and looking up at the building. It’s amazing. Amazing!’ He laughed suddenly, nodding his head. ‘I’ve seen that look before.’ He glanced wildly at her while still continuing his frantic pacing of the room. ‘You can just imagine how it all seemed. No, of course, I’m forgetting. You won’t see anything suspicious in that. Tolson is simply a benevolent and misunderstood giant.’

He was now hurrying about the room as though searching for something and yet, by numerous smiling expressions and gestures, at the same time attempting to conceal his intentions from his visitor. He seemed to visit the opposite corners of the room alternately, yet although Elizabeth had never witnessed behaviour such as this before she appeared unperturbed, almost amused.

‘You’ve promised, of course, never to see him. God. All these people. They make me nervous.’ He paused to smile at her, and yet perhaps disappointed not to see his eccentricity reflected in surprise on her face. He added hastily, ‘I was watching them all earlier on. From the window, as they came up the drive. Matthew, and that blonde hostess wife. It’s terrible. There he is, all impersonal and dignified. Then his wife appears. Crash! He’s naked. Do you realise why the Provost is so ugly? It’s because, by some unfortunate oversight, his face has been provided with sufficient skin to cover one twice its own area. That’s what gives him that importuning look, like someone struggling ineffectually against the onslaught of their own flesh. And there’s Thomas. All the time like someone planted in the very core of hell and yet trying to assure you by his looks that it’s really quite congenial after all. And Alex …’

‘Alex is a tornado. Are you coming down?’ Elizabeth had turned to the door. ‘He insists you come down and meet him.’

‘But I must tell you the last thing. It’s very remarkable. About Austen.’ Leonard waved his arms as though clearing an imaginary space around him. ‘He was the very first to arrive. He came up the drive like this. Then he paused as he reached the terrace, took off his Homburg, inspected it a moment, then returned it to his head with that little complacent nod, a sweep of his hand which included a casual caress, a brushing of his coat; then, with an expression which suggested indulgence of any sort was somehow displeasing he turned and approached the building, bowed gravely towards it, and using his cane to hold back the branches disappeared round the side.…’

‘But what on earth …’

‘Then as I stepped back from the window I saw an incredible sight. I thought at first it must have been my imagination. About a dozen of the mill and factory chimneys sticking up out of the valley had more or less simultaneously grown huge black bulbs of smoke. They shot up into the sky and almost immediately disappeared.’

‘Oh, Leonard!’ Elizabeth had been about to open the door but a rush of children and people outside made her hesitate, her fingers on the handle. She was laughing.

‘I know, it could have a reasonable explanation.…’

‘Now come on, you must come down.’

Leonard was looking at her with a reconciled, perhaps even a bored expression.

‘Shall I tell you why we get on so well together?’ he said quietly. ‘I mean, why it is that whatever we say and do together it’s of no importance whatsoever?’

‘All right.’

‘It’s because, unlike everybody else – Austen and my father for instance – you treat me openly and sincerely as a fool. As a simpleton. The odd thing is, if I’m treated like that, as an imbecile, I can understand perfectly what’s going on, what everything means, all the nuances and subtleties of a situation, however sophisticated it may be. Don’t you think that that’s a very strange thing?’

‘Perhaps you are a fool, then. A wise fool,’ Elizabeth said, smiling still, yet increasingly impatient.

‘No. The strangest thing of all is that I’m not an imbecile at all. I’m not a simpleton. It’s like some perverse disguise I can’t help taking on. And I mean I can’t help it. The moment somebody starts casually talking to me about ideas and abstractions, or the moment somebody makes a direct physical demand which any normal person would respond to in a minute, I immediately become a simpleton. It’s as though I wished it on myself. For example, the other day in the York Room, Austen … You’re looking incredibly beautiful, Elizabeth!’

This last remark was stated as if it were the only natural conclusion to such a rambling series of thoughts. At the same moment Leonard had started his erratic pacing of the room again, and even began to look up at Elizabeth furtively, as though suddenly suspicious. ‘Tolson, you know, is an absolute monster,’ he said, then a moment later he added in a reluctant voice, ‘There’s a kind of secrecy about me which is completely innocent, a kind of shyness, which nevertheless gives me all the appearances of a cunning and even mischievous man.’

‘My God, but don’t you go on! And don’t you see things in yourself? I can assure you, it’s far more than anybody else ever does.’ His sister regarded him with not a little irritation.

‘I’m so damned nervous, that’s the trouble today.’

‘Nervous. But aren’t we all nervous? After all, this isn’t an everyday occurrence for any of us.’

‘I feel frightened.’

‘Frightened what about?’

‘I feel that Austen and my father expect something from me. But it’s not that I feel frightened for myself. I feel afraid for them.’

‘What is it they see … expect in you?’ Yet Elizabeth’s attention seemed to be on a conversation that was now taking place outside the door.

‘But who on earth is the old man?’ a voice said.

‘But that’s not the most disturbing part,’ Leonard said. ‘The worst thing is that they don’t really understand what it is in me that attracts them.’

Elizabeth was now opening the door, and beginning to smile as if she were being mocked. ‘And what is it?’

‘That they’re all concerned with their own consciences whereas I have no conscience at all. That’s what attracts them so passionately.’

She burst out laughing, opening the door and even turning her head as if to include in her amusement those who were standing there, and who now momentarily stared directly into the room at Leonard, then began to move uneasily away. One of them was the Provost, who glanced quickly away and blushed before moving down the landing.

‘All right, then,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I promise.’

‘Promise what?’

‘I promise. I’ll treat you as a simpleton. Then you won’t feel so uncomfortable down there. Now, are you coming?’

There was a momentary harshness in her voice which in some way coincided with a particularly clumsy movement of Leonard’s as he came out of his room. It was as if he were emerging yet at the same time determined to go back in. Elizabeth, however, closed the door quickly behind him and they went through into the main part of the building.

They joined a general movement of people down the main stairs to the hall where a strong light and the sound of excited voices streamed in from the front entrance.

‘And where does Victor fit into all this?’ she said as though to fulfil her promise; Leonard was lagging behind.

‘It’s very simple. He has a conscience. But all his actions are directed against admitting it. That’s why he can’t forgive me. Why he torments himself. I insist on him having a conscience. The whole time. It’s the one thing that can save him.’

‘You sound like a tyrant,’ Elizabeth said without interest. She had been attracted by the sight that now greeted them through the open front doors of the Place.

A mass of people was assembling in a loose group in front of the portico. A large, red-faced man in a brown check suit, a camera suspended from his neck, was trying to arrange the crowd into two groups on either side of the pillared entrance. Already mounted on the steps between them were the members of the family, including the uncles and the aunts. They were staring suspiciously at the stranger who slowly retreated to the edge of the drive as he peered into the top of the camera. Eventually he hoisted himself onto a block of stone and began to shout at the people at the extreme fringes to move closer in to the steps. There was now a great deal of laughter and shouting, from amongst which Elizabeth’s and Leonard’s names were called several times.

Elizabeth had in fact emerged into the sunshine at the back of her parents’ group just as Isabel succeeded in encouraging the Provost to join her from the anonymity of one of the flanks, when at the same moment a cry went up for another name which at first was not quite discernible. An elderly figure was being helped slowly up the steps to join the family party. An extremely old man, with a mass of white hair that came forward in a limp shield as far as his eyebrows and whose face was remarkably elongated by a pointed white beard, he seemed scarcely aware either of the surroundings or of what was about to take place. For a while he stood facing the wrong way, gazing into the hallway where Leonard was standing motionless in the shadows, before being turned round to the sunlight and the desperate commands of the stranger with the camera. Although no one amongst the family appeared to recognise the old man, they parted in the middle and allowed him to stand to one side of John. Stooped forward and trembling slightly he peered round incomprehensibly at the excited crowd below.

Elizabeth’s appearance had as yet gone unnoticed. She had come to stand several paces to the rear of the old man and was staring out, as though in confirmation of that elderly figure’s gaze, towards the trees that faced this southern façade of the Place. Here, between the gnarled trunks and apparently unnoticed by the crowd, were several people from the estate. Even as Elizabeth watched, more were emerging from the trees to stand silently within the shadows and a moment later to spread out in the space afforded by the drive. Then she recognised Tolson.

At the same moment Austen and Isabel saw her simultaneously.

‘Elizabeth!’

She was eagerly brought forward into the group and given a place to the left of the old man. He was smiling and gazing out at the trees as though he recognized there something with which at last he was familiar.

‘Well, have you brought the hero?’ Alex said, leaning forward from the confusion below. The photographer had come up to the group on their left and was attempting, despite several protests, to push people into place.

‘Yes. He’s just here.’ Elizabeth turned round with something of a dramatic gesture. The hallway, however, was deserted. ‘He was with me. He came down with me,’ she said, and for some reason looked over in the direction where she’d last seen Tolson. He too had disappeared.

The confusion amongst the family, not least Alex’s protest at his nephew’s continued absence, was further accentuated by the photographer who, his face inflamed as though he were directing his anger against John himself, was shouting, ‘Could you come and resolve this matter of precedent, sir? Everyone insists on being closest to the family when the photograph is taken. And God knows, half of them aren’t even distantly related.’

As her father pushed his way among the arguing group, Elizabeth suddenly saw Tolson standing now under the nearest of the trees opposite them and, from his expression, evidently enjoying the situation. His arms folded and his head bent to one side, he seemed to be smiling directly at her. He was obviously on his way home from work. Behind him and to either side the spectators, mainly women and children and a few elderly men, had begun to move forward, apparently encouraged by his confidence.

Leonard had in fact followed Elizabeth to the door only to see, the moment he stepped onto the porch, Tolson facing him under the trees. Everyone else had had their backs to him and the familiarity of that face, distant as it was and shrouded by shadow, had made him recoil as if he had been touched.

Yet it was not so much Tolson’s appearance itself that had made him retreat unobtrusively into the hall, as the rather helpless attitude of his father beyond the silhouette of whose head Tolson was significantly visible. In the noise and confusion his father stood quite still as if drained of all enthusiasm for something which, modestly enough, he had looked forward to with some expectation. As though propelled by the clamour itself Leonard had turned back up the stairs.

As he did so he had had the distinct impression that someone was scrambling hastily up the stairs ahead of him. When he reached the first floor, however, the only people in sight were the caterers. The York Room had now been fully arranged, the tables and chairs set out in a T-shape and laid for the meal. The food itself was in an adjoining room waiting to be served. Two men who hadn’t gone downstairs for the photograph were standing at the far end of the room talking to the waiters and drinking.

One of them said, ‘I didn’t want to distress her, so I just did it as though nothing had happened.’

Leonard climbed to the second floor, then by a narrower staircase to the top. Again he had the impression of someone hurrying ahead of him, and when he reached the final landing he thought he detected voices in one of the rooms that led away to his right. He stood listening for some time. The noise persisted from below, its dissonant effect accompanied by the stifling smell of warm food mingled with the more permanent odour of decay.

He moved down the passage to his right. It led into the older part of the building: a long gallery which flanked the western side and was illuminated along its entire length by mullion windows. As he entered this impressive room he passed a much smaller room to his right which overlooked the rear of the house. Its single window was shuttered but sufficient light penetrated from the rooms opposite to indicate two struggling figures.

As he stepped into the doorway he saw that in fact it was two boys fighting, welded together as if they had been flung at one another by some preternatural force. They rolled together on the floor grunting and snarling and, so far as he knew, unaware that they were observed. He stood there for what seemed a considerable time, yet when he suddenly went into the gallery and looked down at the front of the house he discovered that the group below was more or less in the same confusion as before.

He was just beginning to wonder why he hadn’t interfered in the peculiarly bitter struggle when his father stepped down from the porch and crossed over to the nearest group of spectators. A moment later they began to move away. The photographer had taken one photograph now, perhaps more, for he was standing with another man looking down at the camera suspended over his stomach, making some adjustments to it.

At first the guests watched his father’s effort to dislodge the spectators with some amusement. The majority of them had already disappeared under the trees, but several retreated only a few paces, and one man in particular, dressed in overalls, refused to move at all. For a moment he and his father were engaged in a fierce argument. Then his father suddenly appeared to recognise someone standing close by him under the trees. He paused, hesitated, and without offering another word to the workman turned back to the porch.

Yet as he did so a figure leapt down the steps and, evidently inspired by some insult shouted by the workman, hurried up to him and smashed him violently in the face. It was done so confidently and quickly, and with such power, that the workman fell over on his side. Before he could rise he was grasped by the collar of his overalls, half-dragged to his knees, then flung towards the trees. Leonard now recognised the figure as that of his uncle, Alex.

The guests were silent. Behind him Leonard could hear the fierce sounds of the struggling boys. Below him everyone was watching Alex with fixed attention. Only the photographer had his back to his uncle, and appeared to be staring at the crowd with frustration. Half way across the terrace, and standing quietly resigned was his father. He was staring towards the trees as Alex turned his attention from the workman to argue ferociously with someone who remained hidden under the foliage. From his father’s expression Leonard knew that this could be only one person.

His uncle turned back confidently to the party, and from the activity around the porch it was obvious that this final intruder too had been dealt with effectively. People began to move into the building. Leonard gazed across at the summits of the trees below which he knew Tolson must be making his way back to the road. It was as if he expected those browning canopies to burst into flame. Behind him one of the boys cried out. The sound was followed a moment later by a rapid and bewildering succession of blows. He doubted at first whether the sounds could be those of a fist, but when the cries suddenly increased he turned round.

As he hurried to the door he had the distinct impression that the gallery was lined with paintings. This curious sensation lasted scarcely the seconds it took him to cross to the door, and was merged in what he had just witnessed outside and by the sounds which came from the next room. The next thing, he was standing at the door of the small, dimly-lit room and staring in at its confused interior. The room, however, as he confirmed when he stepped inside, was empty.

Thinking that he might have mistaken the entrance, he hurriedly looked inside the next two rooms in the passage. They too were deserted. No sound at all disturbed the upper floor. When he reached the stairs and looked down he could only hear the preliminary sounds of the party ascending to the York Room. He could distinguish his aunt’s excited voice, then what he imagined to be Alex replying.

For some time he stood peering down the empty staircase until the crash of cutlery and plates, the scraping of chairs and the intrusive murmur of people became so loud that he was compelled to move away down the passage, back towards the gallery. He paced up and down in a state of extreme agitation and indecision. Then, finally, he stopped and swung round and, quite still, began to examine the pale, irregular rectangles of sunlight on the wall.