32

A large moon, magnified by a low mist, was rising over the head of the escarpment as Leonard walked hurriedly up through the estate. Apart from a dog crossing one of the avenues in the distance he saw no other sign of life.

When he reached the Place he made his way across the terrace to the porch. He seemed disconcerted to find the doors locked and bolted, and after walking up and down he began to wander round the building, trying windows and becoming increasingly frustrated. Eventually he approached the kitchen and after some hesitation looked in at one of the lighted windows.

His father was sitting with his back to him. Just beyond, and almost directly facing him, was his mother. She was crying. It was a heavy, muscular self-preoccupation, as slow, intermittent shudders of distress were drawn up through her body. She made no attempt to conceal the fact, and his father continued talking as though unaware of it. From behind, the movements of his head and shoulders appeared to be those of a casual affability.

How long Leonard stooped there peering in he had no idea. When suddenly he went to the door, lifted the latch and entered, it seemed that he was in a fever of impatience. His mother and father looked up at him with an unaccustomed alarm.

‘Why, whatever have you done to your face?’ his mother said, making no attempt to conceal her tears.

He glanced round, frowning with the light. Then, staring suspiciously at them both he immediately went to the stairs, bowing slightly towards them in a vague and absurd salute.

‘What did the girl want?’ his mother said.

‘For me to see her father. He’s ill.’

‘And how was he?’

‘He was fine when I left.’ Leonard touched his mouth, tracing his fingers round his lips. ‘You can tell. They seemed quite pleased at me going.’ He glanced once more at his father, then began to climb the stairs.

‘Are you going to bed?’ his mother said.

‘Yes.’

His father hadn’t spoken. He had not, apart from the initial look of alarm, even glanced at Leonard.

When he reached the top of the stairs he paused, listened a moment to the continued murmur of their voices, then immediately crossed the landing to Elizabeth’s room. Pausing and listening again, he very quietly opened the door.

The room was in darkness. Moonlight filtered through the lace curtain identifying Elizabeth’s vague form on the bed. Through the lower half of the window, like the dome of a giant skull, the moon had begun to rise.

Leonard closed the door and, looking hesitantly about him, crossed over to the bed. Elizabeth was breathing very calmly; her features, thrust forward from the pillow, were illuminated by the soft light.

‘Liz.’

She didn’t move. The light waned on her face a moment, drained over the bed, then sprang out with renewed strength. One side of her head was brilliantly lit, a carved relief against the anonymity of the shadow beyond. Leonard took the hammer from the folds of his coat.

‘Liz.’ He waited. ‘Elizabeth.’

The body stirred, then settled back into the momentum of its breathing. Leonard stood quite still, the hammer hanging loosely by his side. From below came the faint murmur of his father’s voice; then, suddenly, the strange sound of his laughter. It was a harsh self-derogatory sound.

Leonard stooped forward, peering intently at Elizabeth’s head. It was a fragile shell in the moonlight, scarcely more substantial than the light itself. He examined the shoots of hair that swept back from the white dome of her forehead. Then, very carefully, he laid his finger on the closed lid of the eye. It trembled. The head, however, scarcely stirred. The nose ran as a slender ridge from the curve of her brows, the nostrils’ slim crevices falling in shadow to the soft protrusion of her mouth. Her lips pouted slightly, drawn out, and between them gleamed the white of her teeth.

Leaning forward, the hammer clenched in his hand, Leonard heard his father’s laugh again. It was a heavy, incomprehensible sound. He stood up, gazing still at the narrow shell on the pillow. And again, a moment later, his father laughed.

It seemed, then, that Leonard was on the point of flinging himself on the bed. But at the same moment he gave an agitated cry and immediately spun round and went to the door. Without glancing back or even closing the door, he hurried out to the landing. A second later Elizabeth rose up from the bed, too terrified, it seemed, to call out.

The front of the Place was bathed in moonlight. As Leonard opened the front doors an animal emerged from the shrubberies and disappeared under the trees. He stood listening, then closed the doors quietly behind him. Heavy shadows slid from the trunks of the trees, running thickly across the terrace to rise up and embrace the structure. Between them the light glinted on shuttered windows.

For a while he paced up and down the shadowed terrace, walking through the alternating bands of light and shade. He seemed like something produced by the light itself. Periodically he would begin to pull on his raincoat, driving one arm down a sleeve only to drag it out a moment later. Eventually, however, as though exhausted by his restless patrol, he suddenly pulled on the coat, bowing slightly as he fastened the buttons, and set off along the drive.

He hurried down through the estate, walking on the grass verges and constantly glancing about him as though pursued. When he reached Tolson’s house, he began to walk more slowly and, once at the gate, stopped altogether, staring round as though uncertain in which direction to move.

A moment later he started off determinedly down the road, walking a distance of some yards, then swung round and, without looking up, entered the gate and hurried down the path at the side of the house. A few seconds later he reappeared, closed the gate very carefully, glanced up and down the street, then turned once more down the path.

He opened the kitchen door with a certain amount of noise, clumsily, and for a while stood listening in the darkness. There were no sounds at all. He began to climb the stairs. A thin beam of light shone across the landing.

It was then that for several seconds he appeared to be seized by a fit of terror. He flung his hands around his body as if something were missing. Only gradually, and with frequent reassuring touches, delicate and oddly poised, did he return to some sort of composure, eventually drawing from the numerous folds and creases of his coat the hammer head. It seemed bound to his pocket. He tugged at it several times, twisting it in various directions, before the handle came free.

He leaned forward slightly, running the cold boss of the hammer head across his face, tracing his forehead, his cheeks, then his mouth, as though cooling his skin. Hearing a sound from the room above he suddenly looked up. For a while he stood perfectly still, the hammer held to his mouth, staring into the darkness at the head of the stairs.

He moved very slowly, almost imperceptibly, so that for a time his feet remained on a stair while his body crept forward, his shoulder holding to the wall. Then, leaning heavily for support, he began his final ascent. It was as if in some peculiar way his feet obstructed his progress, so that when he reached the top of the stairs he stood for several seconds dizzily overcome by the effort.

Opposite him was the door to Tolson’s living-room, slightly ajar and sending out a thin strip of light. It fell like a luminous rope over his shoes.

It was at this strip of light that he was staring when, like some perverse echo of his own agitation, the sudden sound of an alarm bell rang in the air all around him. He was thrust forward by the sound, stepping across the landing as though flung at the door. When he entered the room, Tolson was sitting in an armchair with his eldest son dressed in pyjamas between his knees. They were examining an alarm clock in Tolson’s hand, and even as he paused in the doorway a second ringing echoed through the building. Gradually it died to a slow thudding.

‘You see,’ Tolson said in a peculiarly grieved voice, ‘it’s time to go to sleep.’

As Leonard stepped back, Tolson suddenly glanced up. He recognised him with a look of complete dismay, and started to rise. The boy, half-asleep, his eyes almost closed over a glass of milk between his hands, turned his head briefly at his father’s movement. For a moment Leonard stood gazing emptily at Tolson, then, with his right hand concealed behind his back, he retreated onto the landing.

He stood waiting. A moment later Tolson came out with his arm round the boy and, without looking up, led him into the bedroom at the end of the landing. Leonard could hear him talking to the boy as he tucked him into bed, and when he’d closed the door and returned along the landing Leonard followed him into the room.

‘Why have you come back?’ Tolson said bitterly.

He went straight to the chair he had just vacated and sat down. He seemed overwhelmed, leaning forward, cradling his forehead in his hand. By his feet was the half-emptied glass of milk.

‘The whole thing … I don’t know.’ It sounded as though he were in tears as Leonard strode over to where he was sitting. ‘Why do we go on like this? The whole thing, if we just treated each other gently. I know that’s it.’

He looked up, his expression swiftly changing to astonishment as he saw the raised arm above his head. He bowed forward slightly, his eyes closed, as the hammer descended. Almost, it seemed, as if he were confident that his skull could withstand the blow. His head shuddered as the hammer struck.

He opened his eyes and frowned. He looked round, frowning. Then he tried to get up.

Leonard lifted the hammer again, twisting the handle, and brought the head down with all his strength. The claws on the reverse side bit through Tolson’s hair. He gave a low, private cry, and continued to pull himself to his feet. He rose so slowly that Leonard had time to drag the hammer free and bring it down again on the same spot.

The bone crumbled and a fountain of blood spurted through the dark knots of Tolson’s hair. He stood up with great alacrity, the hammer embedded in his head, and began to fling himself about the room, uprooting the furniture. He turned blindly to Leonard, his arms outstretched, and caught hold of his coat, pulling him towards him. Blood sprang up the hammer shaft as though accelerated by the action itself; it poured down through his hair, seeping more slowly across his nose and his eyes. His head was ribboned with violet streams, his eyes reddened crevices, brimming over. ‘What have you done?… What have you done?’ he called out, half-astonished, clutching Leonard’s arm between his hands so that for a moment Leonard was flung about with Tolson’s own convulsions. ‘What have you done?’

Someone was running up the stairs. Immediately Tolson released him and stumbled, searching for the door. He crashed against the wall, his hands groping wildly across the flower-patterned surface before he found the entrance and dragged himself towards it. The hammer fell from his head, releasing a fuller stream of blood.

‘Audrey!… Audrey! Look what they’ve done to me!’ he shouted. ‘Look what they’ve done!’

Leonard had retrieved the hammer. It seemed that he was about to strike Tolson again, but he stopped, confused, staring at the head of the stairs.

‘Audrey.… Look what they’ve done to me,’ Tolson said. He began to fall to his knees, crying, his hands groping uncertainly to his head. His figure, in the half-darkness, was huge.

It was Blakeley who stepped out of the shadows and stooped over him, and Blakeley who was now crying, ‘Vic … Vic.… Oh, Vic.’

It seemed a decisive moment. Leonard leaned towards Blakeley, peering into his face, then he hastily stepped back. For a second the hammer was half-raised in the air. Then, before Blakeley could move, he brought it down with all his strength on Tolson’s head.

Tolson made a final effort to stand, to see and to clear his eyes. He crouched in the narrow landing murmuring to himself, his figure burdened by his huge ambition to rise. Then he sat down, slowly, leaning on his thigh and his arm as if, negligently, he were resting. Within a few seconds his arm began to bend, folding slightly, and he lay down with a peculiar care on the floor. Thick gouts of blood oozed from the crown of his head with a rhythmical impulse. For a while he lay without moving. Then, with an immense effort, he tried to rise again as a crescendo of hammer blows struck this time on the side of his head.

With a massive muscular contraction he heaved himself to his knees, his face upturned for a moment, speaking, its bloodied features turning like a bizarre flower. Then it seemed to disintegrate as the hammer descended on his forehead. He shuddered, absorbing the sudden force, his shoulders shaking and his arms rising until, under a succession of blows, he pitched forward like someone leaping but whose feet are securely embedded in the ground.

Leonard rushed to the stairs. He glanced back to see Blakeley standing over the low silhouette. Their two figures made a single shape against the lighted room beyond, as if Blakeley were touching the lower mound with his face. Then Leonard dropped down the stairs and hurried out.

It was a misty autumn night and the moon was now massive, orange and complete above the summit of the estate. Immediately above his head was a faint penetration of stars. He was still carrying the hammer quite openly in his hand.

His attention was initially caught by a light burning in the church, which loomed up in the mist beyond its hedged perimeter of grass. A frieze of colours, swirling and convoluting, glowed from the darkness. Contained by the slim tracery of the windows, they whirled beneath the massive spindle of the moon, an oval stain magnified by its proximity to the earth.

Leonard was immediately arrested by this extraordinary juxtaposition of light. At first he seemed about to pass the church. Then as he paused, something emerged from the open porch of the building. It seemed, at first, some secretion of the building itself, a dark and nervous ejaculation. The next moment he recognised it as a large dog.

It stood a short distance away, braced forward on its legs, its head pointed acutely towards him, scenting the fringe of his coat. It was extremely large, its upper lip curled back slightly from its teeth. A low growl periodically escaped from its throat. Only when he turned up towards the Place did he glance back. The dog had disappeared.

Walking hurriedly, he set off up the last slope of the rise. The moon slid behind a thin bank of cloud, giving a sulphurous glow to the Place, drawing it out from its stranglehold of trees. He bolted the main doors behind him, listening, then moved quietly up the stairs to the first floor.

A stream of cool and invigorating air entered the York Room through the still-opened window. When he bent down into the fireplace and looked up, the sky was visible as a comparatively bright illumination at the end of the long, winding funnel. A vague, white movement of cloud animated the aperture. He reached up with his fingers and after a while discovered a suitable crevice. Into it he pushed the hammer.

When he reached his own room he undressed and, very quickly, like someone preparing excitedly for a journey, dropped onto the bed and almost immediately fell asleep.