The Malcontents (20 page)

It was about that time when Mark, bright-faced – the skin beneath his eyes showed none of the fatigue which was now visible in the others’ – proposed that they should go and dance somewhere.

‘Oh yes!’ cried Sylvia.

Tess looked at Stephen, who nodded. He wouldn’t sleep if he went home. Before they left the house, though, he returned deliberately to questions about Neil.

‘I suppose he might have been trying just to put him (Bernard) out. He might have had some idea that, if he doped him, he wouldn’t be able to leak anything more for a good few hours.’

‘There wouldn’t have been much point in that,’ said Sylvia.

‘Enough point for Neil.’ Stephen was arguing like one wanting to believe. ‘It would have given time for the word to go round.’

Glances were meeting his. Even Tess looked unconvinced. He went on arguing: ‘There’s no doubt that he’d identified Bernard. None of you denies that, do you?’

‘I’ve told you what he told me.’ Tess wanted to help Stephen, there was a desire emerging which she could begin to guess: but she was too honest to give way. ‘I can’t swear that he was certain.’

If Stephen’s case were true, they asked him, would Neil have been so ready not to think of suicide? Would he have told them over the telephone that afternoon that he more or less accepted that Lance had nothing to do with it?

‘All that could be a double bluff,’ said Stephen.

He went on: ‘Say that he did it. To keep Bernard quiet. That was criminally irresponsible. Death’s too high a price for anything he did.’

‘That was just a chance,’ Sylvia said, high and clear.

‘Still. If I was absolutely certain about this,’ Stephen was speaking to Sylvia, ‘I should feel inclined to follow your advice.’

By this time, both Tess and Mark had seen that he was hoping to abdicate from responsibility. This was an excuse, more than an excuse, a justification, for leaving Neil to stand alone. Stephen had been invaded by another surge of cowardly relief, of which he was ashamed, and yet to which he could try to reconcile himself.

No one said much more, either at the house, or as they were driving into the town. Stephen and Tess were sitting in the back seat of Mark’s car, and Sylvia, in her own, was following behind. Stephen was in a state when he believed he was forming a decision. Yet underneath his intellect, he had (like Tess, sitting beside him, holding his hand) an honest mind. He wanted to convince himself, and couldn’t yet. He was angry with everyone else’s doubts, most of all hers, jaded and angry about his own. Once or twice in that journey – lighted houses serene and taunting in the streets – he had intervals of beautiful, wish-fulfilling lucidity.

The discotheque in—Street, which they all knew, was dark and noisy and crowded, but they found a table in the corner where, in the blare, they didn’t need to whisper, though they kept their voices low. All round them were bodies, sitting and dancing, multinational, mostly their own age, class and occupation indeterminate; some foreign students, a group of Indians, probably employed in the town, young native businessmen and girls, and a few Caribbeans.

As the four of them pushed towards their table, they met casual smiles, an acceptance of a different kind from that which Mark and Stephen had received from the Anglo-Saxon lorry drivers two nights before. They weren’t looked at as though they belonged to an alien species. It was unexacting: and though in retrospect they found it strange to recall, and stranger that they had agreed to visit that place on that special night, they were at home.

Although in the spattered dark, getting up for their first dance, Tess and Stephen could scarcely see the other two, they took it for granted that they were enjoying it. For Tess and Stephen had seen before this how all Sylvia’s self-consciousness evanesced as soon as she danced: she became as easy as Mark, and was taken over by grace and joy. As for themselves, facing each other, Tess once came near and spoke up to his ear: ‘Don’t decide anything tonight.’

‘I wish I could.’

‘No, don’t decide anything tonight. Promise me.’

For a while he didn’t reply, but she wouldn’t let him stay silent. At last he said: ‘All right. I promise.’

She wasn’t alone in trying to break into Stephen’s mood. Soon after they had returned to their table, Mark leaned across and said: ‘Someone’s got to help Neil out. I mean, in public. Is that right?’

‘I thought so when you (Stephen looked at Sylvia) told us what was happening. But now I don’t know–’ the words dwindled away, he spoke without determination, half angry, half injured because others were not following him.

‘I’ll do it for you,’ said Mark.

‘I feel rather inclined to let you.’

‘I’m more expendable than you are,’ Mark went on. ‘I shan’t involve so many people.’ Then he gave a smile, clear, candid, percipient. ‘Also I shan’t care anything like as much.’

Sylvia, listening with anxiety – caused not so much by danger to Mark as by the precipice-edge feeling she sometimes had when he spoke naturally of himself – thought for long moments that Stephen was going to accept the offer. But, after a pause, in which his expression was sombre, he shook his head. ‘No. If anyone is going to do it, it has to be me.’

Another pause. ‘I confess I don’t see why,’ said Mark, but he didn’t doubt that Stephen meant it.

‘We don’t want to waste effort.’ Almost for the first time that night, Stephen’s tone was businesslike, authoritative. ‘I’m a shade better known. They would probably listen to me more.’

The others had to agree. But Mark said: ‘Is that really why you’ll do it? Is that all?’

‘It’s enough.’

Tess broke out: ‘I want to come in with you.’

‘Of course you do.’ To Sylvia, who had a curiosity about their relation, over-youthful for her age, his smile – since she arrived, he had scarcely smiled at all – came as a surprise. It was sharp with complicity and trust.

‘Of course you do.’ It was the kind of taunt, utterly loyal, that a married couple could have bandied about. ‘I couldn’t let you. It’s unnecessary. It’s romantic. One person can do anything that can be done. Which may be nothing at all. Two persons would add absolutely, not a thing – and increase the liabilities. It would bring in your father, it would be bound to. Quite foolishly. I couldn’t have that.’

As he spoke, his tone had remained businesslike and firm, as they had often heard it. He had used ‘romantic’ as a term of dismissal, and that was in his familiar style (perhaps the scorn a shade overdone because he had to keep down the same extravagance in himself). But, as they danced again, Tess saw his expression revert to what it had been earlier that evening, preoccupied, oddly soft or undefined, like a man procrastinating. She thought she could read all his expressions, but this was rare.

Sitting at their table, all four heads close together, he said: ‘I don’t know.’

They waited.

‘I don’t know how much I have to do.’

He was meaning, and the others understood, how far his obligation went. If Neil had been blameless, if this new suspicion had nothing in it (like others of the past three days), then he had been loyal throughout: if so, there wasn’t any equivocation – or way out. He had to receive support. Yet the suspicion could be true, he might have brought all this upon them: he might have been irresponsible beyond the limits of irresponsibility. Then surely, despite the past, despite the time they had worked together, Stephen was released from obligation: there wasn’t one left to discharge.

In snatches, inconsecutive, words hanging in the air – less articulate than usual, since they were talking of conscience – they showed that they understood. It was after another spell on the floor that Mark suddenly said: ‘You oughtn’t to try to think of everything.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stephen’s reply was guarded.

‘It’s a mistake to try to work out all the combinations. It never helps. Whatever you do, you must do it in your freedom.’

That was a phrase which Sylvia hadn’t heard but which was a reference back to Cambridge arguments. Stephen said: ‘This doesn’t seem much guide.’

‘I’m telling you, it’s simpler than you’re making out. This man is innocent of what they’re nailing him for. He’s gone along with us. Whether that means he has a claim on you – that’s for you to choose. It’s a free choice. You can forget the rest.’

He said it with urgency, though whether he was being unambiguous, whether he was really pointing out the choice, no one could be certain. But Sylvia was quite unambiguous when she danced with Stephen, the only dance they had together that night. He was too self-intent to have perceived that she was in a state of intense excitement: in rapture because she had been so close to Mark, the kind of rapture which – since she was young in matters of love – seemed to her to belong not to the senses but to the soul. As well as rapture, she was showing other signs of excitement, a kind of active protective restlessness, an edge of strain and anxiety. Her lit-up eyes staring at Stephen, she said, as urgently as Mark: ‘For God’s sake get out of this.’

‘I’m not sure that I can.’

‘Of course you can. You’ve done enough.’

‘I’ve done nothing.’

‘You’ve done enough for honour, really you have. Now you’d better save what you can.’

Among the pressures and the contradictions – that is, if Mark had been impelling him to act and Sylvia, believing that, had made the opposite plea – Stephen sat back in their tenebrous corner. At last he said: ‘I think I’d better see the lawyer, Hotchkinson, tomorrow morning.’

He went on, as though talking to himself: ‘I needn’t commit myself, naturally. I needn’t make up my mind. There’s plenty of time to play with, there’s at least twenty-four hours.’ He added: ‘No, there’s no need to settle it yet awhile.’

It seemed to the others, and even more heavily to himself, that he was still procrastinating, snatching at each excuse, and was discontented and guilty as a result. More than at any time since the previous Saturday, he wasn’t at one with himself, he didn’t speak or look as though he were at one. Yet, although he didn’t accept it, the decision was already made: like all decisions, it had been made faster than one likes to believe: like many decisions, it ran counter to much of his nature, and made him unhappy. He had none of the liberation of a decision made. There it was, resolved on but not ending the conflict, leaving him with a sense of emptiness, self-doubt and perhaps self-accusation.

That night Stephen’s sleep was broken. Oblivion, and then full bleak lucid wakefulness. It was dead quiet in the precinct, not even the distant surge of traffic, the only sounds the chime of the clock, and once or twice the windows rattling in a stir of wind.

He lay on his back, staring into the black room. He couldn’t deny his thoughts. He had to let them follow their course, as though he could still delay, as though he were unaware of his resolve, or could renege on one already made. At moments he had waves of relief, the same cowardly relief he had felt in Mark’s drawing-room. He had done nothing yet. Time, a few hours, perhaps a day or two, lay ahead. At moments there still seemed a choice. Hankerings, retreats, pretexts, feelings of free will, lasted long after decisions and alongside them. But he had none of the comforts of confusion. Whatever he did, would be wrong. The consequences were clear and lucid, stamped like lines of figures on the darkness. He went to sleep again, and then woke into the same unrelieved lucidity.

He had wakened for the last time, and was shaving when the telephone rang.

‘It’s me.’ Tess’ voice, quiet, concerned. ‘How are you?’

‘All right.’ That was what they said when they weren’t happy. He wasn’t putting on a front, he was fending her off.

‘Anything I can do?’

‘If there is, I’ll ask you. Of course.’ He didn’t hear, but she did, that his tone was warmer than for days past.

‘What about you?’ ‘I’ll see the lawyer this morning, if I can. I haven’t settled anything.’

‘No. You’ll tell me?’

‘As soon as I’ve made up my mind, I’ll tell you. Of course.’

‘Bless you.’ A pause, then quickly: ‘I know no one’s any good to you just now. But–’

‘That may not be quite true.’

He might not have been aware of it, but he had spoken without cover, and felt easier because of it. Just as he might not have been aware that shortly afterwards he spoke to his father not without cover, but with care and deliberate politeness. With the same politeness he was not avoiding his father that morning, but went down to breakfast at the sacramental time, a quarter to nine. Kidneys and bacon were sizzling on the hot plate. Thomas Freer entered on the stroke, and they said good morning as they helped themselves.

‘I hope you slept well,’ said Thomas Freer, but diffidently.

‘Moderately, thank you,’ said Stephen.

‘Good. Very good,’ said Thomas Freer, with exaggerated enthusiasm.

As they were eating, which concealed an interval of silence, Thomas Freer said: ‘I suppose it’s too early for you to know what you’ll be doing today, isn’t it?’

The question could have been evaded, was so tentative that evasion was provided for. But Stephen answered: ‘As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of calling on Hotchkinson.’

‘That sounds very sensible, I must say.’ A side-glance, up from the breakfast plate. ‘I wonder, have you made an appointment?’

‘No, not yet, I haven’t.’

‘I suppose,’ said Thomas Freer, ‘it wouldn’t be any help if I arranged it for you? It wouldn’t be the slightest trouble, you understand–’

Stephen was on the point of replying that he could do that easily enough for himself. But he realized that his father was pleading to do him a service. In the new control which was composing Stephen that morning, he felt it wrong to say no.

‘That would be very nice of you,’ said Stephen. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘I’ll do it the moment I get to the office. And let you know at once. That shall be done.’ Then, encouraged, Thomas Freer asked, as though vaguely: ‘I take it, though, you haven’t any very precise idea of your present plans? That is, I suppose you’re waiting until you’ve seen Hotchkinson–’