by Iris Murdoch
Beautiful Joe was now always in Cato’s prayers. The image of the youth caused him exasperation, excitement, pity. Of course he loved Joe, after all nothing less than loving him would help him at all. How terribly he loved Joe only dawned upon him gradually. Visiting Brendan he said, ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with one of those boys, the one you met.’ ‘The angel with the hexagonal glasses? Don’t worry, we all fall for lovely boys.’ Cato could not get Brendan to take his new predicament seriously. Besides, by now there was the other far more awful question: was there a God? On one hideous sleepless night, smoking cigarette after cigarette (he had started smoking again), Cato suddenly began to realize that the two things must be connected, they must be connected. Perhaps Beautiful Joe had been sent especially to tempt him. When had he begun to doubt God? At the time when Beautiful Joe came into his life. Was not the boy playing with him, coolly probing him, reaching into his soul and confusing all his thoughts? That curious amused cynical aloofness: how could a boy of seventeen be so detached and cool?
Of course these thoughts were mad, as he recognized when he next talked to Joe, seeing now no demon, but the confused silly vulnerable boy, the boy who depended on him and needed him, the boy whom only he could reach. ‘I’m off shoplifting.’ ‘Good.’ ‘I’m going to Belfast to kill those Protestant shits.’ ‘No you aren’t.’ ‘Aren’t I, Father?’ ‘I wish I could see into your heart.’ ‘You can.’ But Cato could not. His own heart was swelling and aching. When they looked at each other Cato was the first to look away. Yet Joe was perfectly tactful, perfectly docile, there was no exhibition of emotion, they remained priest and pupil and a weird decorum reigned between them.
About the time when the Mission was officially closing Cato made a discovery in the house. He noticed in one of the bedrooms a cupboard in the wall which had been papered over so as to be almost invisible except when the bright sunlight shone into the room at a certain time. There was no handle on the cupboard door, there was only a tell-tale slit. Probing with his fingers, then with a knife, Cato, in search of some blankets, which might or might not have been stolen, prized open the cupboard door. There were no blankets, but stowed far back on one of the shelves there was a revolver in a leather case. Cato took it out and studied it. The case was clean and the gun had been newly polished. He had little doubt that it belonged to Joe. Joe had the key of the house, which Cato had given him as a gesture of confidence. The cupboard afforded a safe hiding place, safer presumably than wherever it was that Joe lived. Cato could not decide what he should do. He hid the revolver in his bed, and when he next saw Joe he said nothing about it. He wondered if he were wronging the boy after all. Then the presence of the weapon in the house began to upset him intensely. He kept pulling back the blankets and looking at it and touching it. At last he had taken it and dropped it into the Thames from Hungerford Bridge. That was last night.
And now his cigarette was burning his fingers and he was staring at Beautiful Joe, while in his mind a gabble was going on which was like the gabble of an idiot: the automatic machinery of prayer, which fruitlessly continued without his will and without his heart. The beseeching never stopped, the crying out for mercy, the crying out for light, once such a ready source of power, was more like an obscene involuntary symptom of disease. No one receiving, Cato’s mind raced. It occurred to him for a moment, since there is no God why should I not say all these things, all these things to Joe? This idea fled by. He put out the cigarette, thinking clearly for the first time, I cannot help this boy. Our relationship is a dangerous muddle and a nonsense. I must leave him absolutely and for good. I can do nothing for him, nothing. I must say good-bye to him tonight. This is the logical, the easiest, moment to do it. It is, oh God, now. No need to make a drama. I must save myself. I must go away somewhere and think. I must get back to some innocent place where I can see.
‘Where shall I come to you, Father?’ said Beautiful Joe, looking straight at Cato, his eyes, enlarged by his glasses, seeming like the golden staring eyes of a ginger cat.
How thin he is, thought Cato, how frail really, how defenceless. ‘Joe, I wish I could pull you out of that world.’
‘What world?’
‘You know.’
‘Well, then take my hand and pull.’ Joe stretched out his hand.
Cato ignored the outstretched hand. ‘You’ve got wits, you’ve got sense, why don’t you see?’
‘Take me with you.’
‘Where?’
‘Where you’re going.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I’ll make money, then I’ll retire like, I’ll learn things and read books, I’ll read all the classics.’
‘I wish you would!’
‘But I got to make money first and prove myself, prove I can win at my own game. You don’t want me just to join the rat race, do you?’
‘Joe, if you get into that bad way of life you won’t be able to get out again, if you take to violence you’ll be caught by it, you’ll just become the tool of very wicked men.’
‘Who said anything about violence, Father? You shouldn’t take me so serious, the things I say. Anyway, you can’t get away from violence, can you? Pigs use violence, don’t they? The IRA had to use violence, otherwise they wouldn’t get justice, you can’t get justice under capitalism without violence, look at the trade unions. When you get down to the nitty gritty, everything rests on violence in the end.’
‘No, it doesn’t, Joe, listen—’
‘Capitalism’s finished anyway. Why should a few people have everything and everybody else have nothing? Just look at Ladbroke Grove, there’s the capitalist world for you. Fucking millionaires one end and us at the other. No wonder they need the army and the police! This society’s rotten to the core, and you know it as well as I do, that’s why you’ve dropped out of it, that’s why you live here, that’s why you dress like that, I can understand. You know property’s unjust, it’s wicked, that’s why you’ve got nothing. You went to Oxford College but you’re as poor as we are. You had an electric kettle but somebody stole it.’
‘You probably did.’
‘People are just slaves, otherwise they wouldn’t put up with it, they wouldn’t put up with starving misery when there’s millionaires on yachts, why should they? But they’re slaves. Just like the Jews. I was reading a paper about those concentration camps. Why did the Jews go, why were they like bloody sheep, why didn’t they fight? And in the camps, there were lots of them, why did they let themselves be gassed, why didn’t they kill the guards? I’d have made a fight of it if I’d been them.’
‘They weren’t organized,’ said Cato. ‘And they weren’t soldiers. Violence has to be learnt. They were just a lot of ordinary peaceful citizens pulled out of offices and shops. They were a lot of frightened individuals, and each individual wanted to survive and probably thought he would survive if he kept quiet. He didn’t want to be the one to risk being shot or tortured.’
‘Lot of bloody cowards. I’d have hated those Nazi swine so much, I’d have killed them with my hands. All the same, old Hitler knew a thing or two, you can’t help admiring him.’
‘It’s easy afterwards to talk of resisting. But they didn’t know what was happening.’
‘They knew their bit of it. They knew some bugger was pointing a gun at them and taking away their things.’
‘Exactly. People are afraid of guns.’
‘Yes, they are. And a funny thing, do you know, it’s awfully easy to frighten anybody. Not everybody knows how easy it is, but it’s dead easy.’
‘I expect it is. So you see.’
‘Dead easy. Do it even with a knife. I got a knife, a beauty. I scared a girl with it in the road, suddenly whipped it out and pointed it at her tummy, should have heard her screech. Just show them a knife and anybody will do anything, girls take their clothes off, rich shits hand over their wallets, anything—’
‘If you—’
‘I’m going to write a pop song called “Fear is a knife”
.’
‘Joe, if you play that game—’
‘Well, it’s just a game, you know me, scare a few ratbags, does no harm. I don’t want to be a slave though. Just look at the people you see, ordinary people anywhere, they’re done for by thirty, they might as well be dead, got stupid pigs’ faces, can’t think of anything but telly and football, that’s materialism for you. I’m not going to be like that, I’m not a materialist. I know I’m somebody, I want to be different, I want to be big. You got to be an expert. So people get frightened, O.K. And who’s on top? The frighteners. No good just nicking things, that’s protest but it’s kids’ stuff. The top people don’t bother with nicking, they just frighten the little guys. That’s what the Mafia do, they frighten all the other villains, that’s a laugh, that’s what protection rackets are all about. And Hitler and Stalin that’s what they did too, that’s what made them big. I’d like to be big somehow, I’d like to be famous. I don’t want to be a victim of the system like all the rest. If I got a little job like in a garage mending rotten little cars for pennies a week, what’d I be? Nobody and nothing. I know I’ve got something in me. I just got to find myself, I got to find my way, my way. That’s what freedom’s all about. Most people are just scared, they’re scared of freedom, they’re sheep, they want to become morons, watching the telly with their mouths hanging open, I’m not going to be like that.’
‘All right, don’t be, use your mind, you’ve got one! Do you think I want you to be a moron? And I’m not suggesting you should work in a garage. Get some education, that’s the way to freedom, that’s the way out—’
‘I haven’t time, Father. I’m feeling so frustrated. I wish I was a boxer, that’s the way to get great. I want to live my life now, I want real things, money, fun. And I’ll get them, you’ll see, I’ll surprise you—’
‘You’ll surprise yourself. You’ll probably be hung.’
‘Not now I won’t, get ten years, out in six! I’d like to kill a man, I’d like to do one sometime, just to see what it’s like. Don’t worry, Father, I’m only joking! But I won’t be a sheep, I’d rather die.’
‘Joe, I found a revolver, was it yours?’
Beautiful Joe, his dry hair now frizzed out and brushed by his thin hands into a blond mane, became very still, his mouth a hard thin line. After a moment he returned his hands to his knee and crossed them with deliberation.
‘In that cupboard.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you take it?’
‘I threw it into the river last night.’
Joe was silent, breathing hard almost panting. He creaked his chair backwards with a harsh movement. He was suddenly flushed. ‘You shouldn’t. It was mine. It was my thing. Mine.’
‘You have no business with a revolver. That’s one thing I can do for you, take it away.’
‘It’s mine, it’s beautiful—you don’t understand—I cared so much—I’ll never forgive you, never, never never.’
‘Joe, you know perfectly well—’
‘I hate you for this, just for this, and I’ll have to—you don’t understand what that meant to me, my gun—Christ, I was a fool to leave it here—’
‘Oh, don’t be childish!’ said Cato. ‘You look as if you were ten years old.’
Joe closed his eyes, then opened them and picked up his drink which had been standing untouched upon the floor. He smiled, drank, then laughed a little staccato laugh. ‘It wasn’t a real one anyway, it was an imitation.’
‘Don’t lie.’
‘Well, it’s gone. Did you really throw it in the river? I’d like to have seen that. Well, Father, so you’re going. Where do we meet then?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cato, ‘I’m going away, absolutely away, and I can’t—’
‘Oh, yes you can. I must see you, I must talk to you. You’re the only one I can talk to, you don’t know what a star you are in my life, you’re the only thing that’s not bloody rotten and awful around here, you’re the only person I know—’
‘Joe—’
‘If you leave me, I’m really done for, I’ll go berserk—’
‘All right, I’ll—’
‘You saw me, saw something in me, you knew I was worth something—’
‘All right, all right. I’ll see you—next Tuesday—this time—here.’
Henry Marshalson was standing so still in the evening twilight, standing there beside the iron gate of the park, that someone coming along the little road might have mistaken him for a post, or else not seen him at all as his slim figure blended in the dusk with the dark background of the ivy-covered wall.
He had deliberately arrived several days early, not informing his mother of his coming. Leaving his luggage at his London hotel he had just packed a small bag and set off after lunch for the railway station. When he asked for a ticket to Laxlinden Halt he was met with incomprehension. The station had evidently ceased to exist. He took a ticket to the next station down the line and thence proceeded by bus to Laxlinden village. He wore his trilby hat, long preserved for the amusement of Russ and Bella, pulled down over his brow. He saw nobody he knew. He walked the two miles from the village just as it was beginning to get dark.
The hedges had been cut down and the road had been widened. Otherwise everything looked much the same. He could not easily have pictured the road, but at each turn he knew exactly what he would see next: the tithe barn, as bulky as a cathedral, the row of elms on the low green skyline, the glimpse of the canal and a fishing heron, the Horse and Groom set back, with two labourers’ cottages beside it (the cottages had been turned into a smart little house), the ford, no, the ford was gone and a horrible concrete bridge had taken its place, the pretty view of the Forbeses’ house, Pennwood, across the Oak Meadow, the meadow itself, now sown with clover, and the huge oak tree mistily budding, which gave it its name, then at last the ironstone wall of the park with the dark conifers behind it. A host of elder saplings had grown up along the ravaged roadside and beneath them thick clumps of primroses were pallidly in flower. There was also, here and there, the faint purple stain of violets. Henry marched along and as he marched he watched himself. He felt calm, or rather cold, utterly cold. The evening was very still and windless, carrying a damp fragrance. It had rained earlier, and the road surface on which he was walking was wet and a little sticky. A few cars passed him, some with their lights on. The dim road unwound before him as if in a waking dream he were compelling it to do so. He was thinking these dusky yet glowing meadow slopes and these lonely quiet trees.
It was when he actually got to the wall of the park and to the iron gate that the thing which he had been anticipating launched itself upon him. Standing beside the gate he carefully put his suitcase on the ground and stood quite still taking very long breaths. Then suddenly he fell against the gate, clutching at the wet bars with his hands. His hat fell off. He drooped against the gate, hanging there as if he were pinned to it, his legs swaying and giving way, and the metal made cold wet lines upon his pendant body. His eyes were closed. His cheek was crushed against one of the bars, the rain water was upon his lips. He held onto the gate in a fierce spasm of emotion, as if that old gate were the first thing upon that dream journey which had remembered his name and uttered it. After a minute, as he seemed to be slipping to his knees, he steadied himself, opened his eyes, retrieved and donned his hat and brushed down his suit and his unbuttoned macintosh. He picked up his suitcase and pushed the gate. It clanked back a little way, then checked. He looked more closely and saw that it was chained and padlocked. He pulled vainly at the padlock, then stepped back.
He could see now that the drive beyond the gate was slightly overgrown with weeds, and a line of young nettles and docks were growing just beyond the bars. They must have changed the entrance. Now they probably used the short drive from the other road, not troubling to keep up the long drive, letting it fall into disuse. Henry hesitated, began to walk off, then came back. This was his way. Like a ghost, he felt he must walk his own pa
th. He swung his light suitcase and sent it flying over the top to land among the nettles. He debated whether it would be easier to climb the gate or the wall and decided on the gate. The first bit was easy, just a matter of hauling himself up onto the transverse bar which ran across level with his chest. The next bit seemed impossible until he found some crumbling footholds in the wall at the side, and, holding onto some ivy, managed to swing one leg over the spikes at the top, then lower his dabbing foot gingerly until he could reach the bar. His hat had fallen off again, fortunately inside onto the drive. His body recorded for him that he was no longer twenty.
Henry resumed his damp and slightly muddy hat, picked up his suitcase and began to walk as quietly as he could along the drive, his trouser legs gently swished by the weeds which were growing in the gravel. The motionless evening air was softly exuding a faint almost tangible darkness which seemed to reveal, to body forth, rather than to conceal the masses of shrubs and trees on either side. The grass had been roughly mown, not shorn, and gleamed wet and faintly grey. Some distance away a blackbird was singing a long complicated passionate song. There was a very quiet persuasive sound of dripping. Henry breathed in the cool rainy earthy smell. He had not smelt this particular smell for nine years. It was the smell of England. He had forgotten it all. He had forgotten the unnerving uncanny atmosphere of the English spring. How it smelt, how it dripped. The drive curved and the trees receded. A blackness upon the left, like a huge wall, was a yew hedge where there had once been statues, only they seemed to have gone. A patch of radiant sky opened ahead, dark through a saturation of powdery blueness as if the night were suspended, not yet precipitated, in tiny invisible particles. One large light yellow star was blazing, and round about it, as Henry looked, searching, were other stars, tiny pinpoints hardly able to pierce through the radiance of the twilight blue. Blinking, he looked away across the widening expanse of grass. There were scattered patches of glowing paleness here and there at which he looked for a moment puzzled, then knew of course the daffodils, all of them white, since his father would only tolerate white daffodils. The blackbird had fallen silent. The stars were brighter. The drive curved again and he was within sight of the house. Henry stopped.
