The Malcontents (15 page)

‘That’s what’s blown them all wide open.’

Thomas Freer said, shaking his head: ‘I knew the rest. I knew the rest.’

That seemed to give him some obscure consolation. And yet, to Stephen, far less than other darknesses of that night, but still pressing on a nerve, the reversal of roles between his parents was striking inward. From infancy his mother had been immaculate, above the battle. If he had asked himself, he would have expected her in a crisis to be brave. Long since Stephen had accepted that his father slid out of trouble and gave nice reasons for behaving like a coward. But, in the future, Stephen was to think his mother was an accomplice, tacit if you like, in just that cowardice. Maybe that was one of the secrets of this marriage. ‘I can’t bear living in public.’ Maybe, as a courted girl, that was why she had elected for Thomas Freer. It was possible that, with a different wife, he might have relapsed into fewer indulgences, or have been less satisfied with them.

That night he was making an effort – not strong-willed, but with a tinge of conscience or concern – not to add to pain. He wasn’t angry, he was genuinely sad.

He said: ‘This is bad, Steve.’ (It was years since he had called Stephen by that name.) ‘This is very bad.’

‘It couldn’t be much worse.’

Thomas Freer was reflecting.

‘Poor chap,’ he said. ‘Poor chap.’ Then he added, with an air of interested curiosity:
‘Will he be buried according to the Jewish rite, should you say
?’

His wife exclaimed: ‘What in God’s name does that matter?’

Stephen also had been shaken by that bizarre irrelevance. He didn’t perceive – though if she had been calm she might have done, for she had lived with those defences for so long – that this was the device of a timid man, trying to slow himself down, trying to control his nerves.

‘Don’t you realize that this is going to be a public scandal?’ cried Kate Freer, voice unsteady.

‘Yes, I realize that. I realize that.’

‘Do you?’

Once more tenting his fingers he began speaking circuitously to Stephen: ‘I suppose that in circumstances of this kind you have to be prepared for an inquest?’

‘Of course.’

‘I suppose that it mightn’t be a pure formality, don’t you think? There might be certain questions about these police inquiries, isn’t that a possibility?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘I’m inclined to suggest, I don’t know what you think, I’m inclined to suggest that you might consider employing a lawyer, just to watch over your interests, as a precaution, you understand.’

‘That sounds sensible.’ Stephen’s reply was impatient, hard.

‘As a matter of fact, I’d already had a preliminary word with Hotchkinson. Not old Hotchkinson, of course, he’s getting beyond it now, he must be in his eighties, but his son isn’t bad as we provincial solicitors go. Yes, I had a preliminary word with him before this happened, just on the chance that you might be getting into troubled water.’

Again, Thomas Freer, in the midst of his labyrinth (which to himself contained feeling which it concealed from others), derived some consolation from his own foresight.

‘Thank you.’ That was formal manners from Stephen, not more.

‘What’s going to come out of this?’ Kate Freer’s glance moved from one to the other.

‘I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you that.’

‘What’s going to happen?’ This time she was interrogating Stephen direct. He replied without inflection: ‘I hope, nothing too uncomfortable for you.’

He wanted to get away. There was no surcease for him here. Quite politely – strange how politeness survived – he said good night to them both, and went upstairs to his room. It was not eleven o’clock, but he undressed and got into bed although he didn’t expect to sleep. Before he had switched off the light, the telephone rang.

‘Darling. Tess here.’

‘Yes?’

‘This is dreadful for you.’

‘Dreadful for everyone.’

‘Worse for you. I’m thinking of you. I wish I could come to you straight away.’

‘I wish you could.’ (Did he mean that? Did he want her with him, then?)

‘Look, let’s meet tomorrow morning.’

They arranged that she would call for him. Then she said: ‘Darling. There’s something else.’

‘What is it?’

‘Everything’s going to be public property soon, isn’t it?’

‘Nearly everything.’

‘So I think I ought to tell my father. Tonight.’

‘He’ll hear soon enough.’

‘No, I think I ought to tell him myself.’

‘What good will that do?’ She must have heard his tone, more insensitive than she was used to.

‘No, I think I’ve got to. Do I have permission?’

Even now, habits of secrecy endured, were hard to break. It was after a pause that Stephen said: ‘I suppose so. If you must.’

Stephen woke out of a happy dream. He had gone to sleep at once, and it was the middle of the night, no, later, the cathedral clock was chiming, he hadn’t counted, five or six. He had been dreaming of someone, presumably himself, though in his memory, already fading, it didn’t look like himself, sitting by the bank of a stream, fishing (which Stephen had not done since he was a child). The bank of the stream was very close to, or subliminally coincided with, the foyer of a luxurious hotel. Curtained, warm, with, as appeared entirely reasonable, bright lights flashing. Flashing in colour as he remembered it, if one dreamed in colour.

The aura of the dream had been of utter tranquillity and bliss. So, when he was first awake, was its afterglow.

Stephen’s body stiffened, his brow was furrowing, into the sense of loss, the primal deprivation, which comes from moving out of bliss (all beyond one’s will) into misery. The first thought that took charge wasn’t of the danger, though that was just below consciousness: it wasn’t regret or responsibility or a picture of the Kelshall parents the night before: it was the recollection of his own. The drawing-room, what they had said, what he had said, it wasn’t a true memory or a record, more like a momentary film-shot. He felt a stranger. Sharper than that, he was projecting the estrangement on to them, he was feeling angry and quite cold.

Round the edges of the window, the sky was black. He switched on the light and looked at his watch. Ten past six. The morning was a long time off. He tried to sleep again. He couldn’t use the spell which he had used while there was still hope: wishing time to stay still, to linger just as it was, letting him sleep in peace. He would have been ashamed for others to know that he had been wishing that, those past nights: he wasn’t easy-natured enough to guess that other active and strenuous men had often wished the same.

He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t capture the hypnagogic faces that sometimes came before one slept. There was the realization – not like a photograph or film, not like the physical fact – of Bernard’s shattered head. Was that more shaking than the physical fact? The sight of the open window. He had a thought which in confusion hours before he had pushed out of mind: now he didn’t want to admit it, it came back. As with the detective-work of jealousy, it wouldn’t leave him alone. Shut out one answer, convince yourself, another returned.

He switched on the light again. Only ten minutes had passed. Time had expanded. He could get up at 7.15. The housekeeper (she had looked after him since he was a baby: how much did she know now?) would give him breakfast. That way he would miss both his father and mother. He did not choose to see his mother.

Tess would be here. He didn’t want to be alone. It startled him, how much he didn’t want to be alone. He could talk to her about those thoughts. Perhaps to Mark.

At last, at procrastinated last, a single bell began to clang, over in the cathedral tower. Early morning communion. What the Bishop in secret (gossip, quite irrelevant, flooded back to Stephen) would like to have called Mass, but the Provost wouldn’t have it. Just before seven.

Although he had disciplined himself to wait in bed until a quarter past, he was down in the kitchen five minutes before. The housekeeper, wearing an expression worried and kind, gave him scrambled eggs. With the disrespect of the senses, indifferent to anything he felt, they tasted very good.

Back in his room, insulated from the household, he waited, as though waiting were a condition in itself. Tess could not be here for hours: it was not sensible to pretend that he was waiting for a ring from downstairs: yet he was, he was waiting. The cathedral bell again, nearly eight o’clock. Soon afterwards he telephoned Mark, who sounded unconstrained and fresh. They ought to meet today, this afternoon, said Stephen. If you like, Mark agreed. Where?

‘Not here,’ said Stephen. ‘This is out.’

Mark recognized the tone of voice, and didn’t inquire why: though any meeting place was open now, there was no need for security any more. Instead Mark said that Stephen had better come to him; he would drive in and pick him up. There would probably be Tess too, said Stephen. Good, said Mark, as casually hospitable as they had always been among themselves, as though nothing had changed.

Another service, the bell was ringing. Sounds of childhood. He used to hear them on holidays from school, as he went down to breakfast. One grew accustomed to bells, one came to like them, one didn’t fret about what they were ringing for, the noise was jolly and secure.

It was half past nine before the housekeeper spoke from below. Miss Boltwood had come. ‘Tell her I’ll be down,’ said Stephen into the telephone. He was not going to invite her into the house, any more than Mark. He was being more unreasonable than he let himself admit, now that reason wasn’t helping any more. Once he had been proud of the house, with a token sarcasm about the signs of privilege. It wasn’t token sarcasm that shut the house behind him now.

‘How are you?’ asked Tess, as they walked in the lane, in the chilly wind.

‘All right.’

‘Are you really?’ She studied him with a candid, protective gaze.

‘As well as might be expected.’

He said it off-handedly, but it seemed that he was not holding back from her: she gave a smile of relief, and, when they turned towards the market place, let herself slip her arm into his, and felt him press it. But he was paying a price, a matter-of-fact price, for unreason, and so was she. It was bitterly cold in the streets, and they had nowhere to go. He might be a well-to-do young man, but once he felt his home was alien he had no other place to take them. There wasn’t even a café they could go to, at that time in the morning. Tess trudged uncomplainingly at his side.

In the Market Street the shop windows were shining bright. Where could they go? Where could they talk? There was a bookshop not far away, but it was so small, they would be overheard. Tess, who knew how obsessive he could be, began to talk to herself, in the breath-catching wind, outside the taunting windows.

‘Haven’t you heard of people doing weird things, if they’ve been taking LSD?’

Stephen didn’t reply at once.

She said: ‘Could they go out of a window, could that happen? I don’t know, I seem to have an idea–’

She looked up at Stephen. He gave her a recognizing smile.

‘I might have got in first,’ he said. ‘I had exactly the same thought. During the night.’

‘I suppose–’

‘I’ve kept thinking round it. I can’t get anywhere, can you?’

‘The trouble is,’ she said, ‘Bernard would never have taken it. Any more than we would.’

‘Maybe less.’ Actually Stephen, with his share of puritan reserve, had smoked marijuana exactly once in his life, and neither he nor Tess had touched any hard drugs.

‘It wasn’t his thing.’

They walked along, gazed absently into another window.

‘I did just wonder–’ Stephen began.

‘Yes.’

‘Some fool might have thought it was a bright idea to slip him some.’

‘Yes.’

Could it be done without Bernard noticing? The stuff had no taste, Tess believed but wasn’t sure. It didn’t require much, judging by the drops which Stephen had watched Lance add – slowly, hieratically, one, two, three – to Emma’s gin.

‘It might be easy. If someone was giving him (Bernard) another drink.’

‘I didn’t notice anyone doing that,’ said Stephen.

‘You had a fair amount yourself,’ said Tess. She added: ‘I wouldn’t put it past Lance, would you?’

If they ruled out suicide – then what? Was this it? It wasn’t just blind chance. Tess said her father had said something like that, last night.

‘It makes it worse,’ said Stephen.

‘Yes,’ said Tess. ‘It makes it worse.’

With an effort, shaking himself from his thoughts, Stephen asked what else her father had said.

‘He was pretty quiet. For him,’ she said. She went on: ‘He took it very well.’

‘I’m glad.’

She could feel enough, she had already felt, what his own home had been like. She had had a purpose before she met him, stronger since they had been walking.

‘Look here, darling,’ she said, ‘wouldn’t you like to talk to him?’

‘I don’t see the point of that.’

‘Underneath it all, you know, he has a lot of sense.’

‘I’m afraid sense isn’t going to get us very far.’

She said: ‘Listen. You oughtn’t to be quite on your own, now ought you?’

It was a risk. She knew how proud he was and in distress how difficult to reach. But it was a calculated risk, at any rate a calculation of hope. Sometimes he couldn’t be persuaded, certainly not flattered, but curiously (she had found that her will was as strong as his) he could be budged.

After a silence he said: ‘Oh, if you like.’

They retraced the way towards the cathedral, by now repeating their moves on the past (by this time so innocent) Saturday night. She didn’t say anything more, except that her father had volunteered to be ready for them, if they decided to come. As they crossed the cathedral yard, Stephen did not look up towards the windows of his own house. They passed round the church itself towards a small red-brick building, not more than fifty years old. There was nothing grand about the Bishop’s office, any more than there was anything grand about the Bishop himself. In fact, it really was an office, consisting of three rooms, one for the archdeacon, one for the Bishop’s secretary, sharing it with his chaplain, and one for the Bishop himself. For a few minutes, Stephen and Tess had to sit in the secretary’s room, nothing to see except charts pinned up on the green baize notice boards, one picture of Highland cattle. The typewriter tapped. Then a young clergyman emerged from inside, and the Bishop called them in.