Henry and Cato

by Iris Murdoch

  There is no point in going to Leeds tomorrow, thought Cato, I would have so much liked looking for nice digs for Joe, but now, I don’t care where I live. I’ll go up there when term begins and live anywhere. Maybe I’ll stay on here for the present. But not because I think he’ll come back. I’m sure he won’t come back. Maybe after all I’ll go home. I’ll go to Laxlinden, to Pennwood. I have lost Christ and I have lost Joe. And Father Milsom is dead and I didn’t even answer his letter. I have got everything wrong.

  And he thought: I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

  Dear Colette,

  I have got your sweet touching utterly ridiculous and dotty letter. What a load of enchanting nonsense! Of course one is grateful for any signal of approval upon the harsh human scene, but this goes too far! Did you really expect me to take it seriously? Please return yourself to reality forthwith! These are schoolgirl daydreams. And why pick on me for your ‘crush’? I am as old as the hills, embittered by my childhood, talentless, godless, rootless, and by now at least half American. Also shortly to be penniless. You may have heard that I am going to get rid of my patrimony. I gather the rumour is getting round, so if it was the Hall you wanted, forget it. What you need is a nice sensible English boy, young, fresh-faced (not all gnarled like me) with a respectable job (schoolmaster? solicitor? architect?) (what about Giles Gosling?) who will set you up in a safe cosy English home. (I am not being sarcastic.) Anyway you probably want your father to survive for a few years yet and he would certainly die of apoplexy at the prospect of me as a son-in-law. No, no, it won’t do; as far as I’m concerned it’s just good for a laugh, and I expect by now you are laughing yourself.

  There is in fact a further reason why I cannot be yours, which is that I am engaged to be married to a dear girl called Stephanie Whitehouse, who is staying with me at the Hall. We are getting married soon and will then probably buzz off to America. So there! Thanks for your letter though. You must be the only person who ever preferred me to Sandy. Anyway it’s all a girlish dream and will blow away as such. My very best wishes to you.

  Henry

  My dearest Bell,

  I am sorry I haven’t written properly sooner. Everything has been, since I got here, awful and mad. An identity crisis I guess you and Russ would call it! I couldn’t write because I didn’t know who I was. I still don’t. It occurs to me that I didn’t in America either, only there it doesn’t matter because there nobody knows who they are. (And I daresay they are the better for it!) Here I had lots of hats waiting for me to try on. I suppose I am still in process of rejecting them all. (Only the clown’s fits!) You speculated so much about how it would be with my mother and none of the speculations has been quite right. There’s no row, no reconciliation, just a dreadful blank. I didn’t want it, I don’t like it, but I may somehow all the same have brought it about, or else we both did. It’s all abrasive and hurtful and basically cruel, on both sides. It’s odd that I can see this and describe it but I can’t change it. And all the old faithful psychoanalytical machinery which at this very moment you are busy wheeling up won’t do a thing either. All those would-be deep explanations are so abstract and so simple when confronted with the awful complex thereness of a relationship which has gone wrong. You thought she might weep over me, need me, want me to become Sandy. Not a bit of it. Her feelings for him remain totally private. I think I just irritate her, I’m not even a disappointment! I haven’t seen a single tear. My God, she’s tough. I suppose that women (I mean bourgeois English ones, not liberated zanies like you!) learn pretty early on that they’ve got to be alone and bear things alone, even when they’re in the bosom of their family. I daresay my father and Sandy were just the ticket, exactly what she wanted, what she worshipped, but all the same they were bloody ruthless egoists like all men are when they aren’t positively prevented from being so by exceptional women. Hence that toughness, that solitude. I certainly can’t get through to her, and given that she hasn’t shown me the slightest sign of tenderness or affection since I arrived I’m not actually trying very hard! I think she expects to be revered and accepted like a sort of monument, and that’s not my thing. And talking of monuments I have something to tell you. I have decided (and this doesn’t please my mother much either) to sell the Hall and all the land and all the property and all the stocks and shares, the lot, and get rid of all the proceeds, give it away, strew it about, get it absolutely off me, off my hands, off my neck! I hope you’re not shocked, saddened? I know it would be fun to entertain you and Russ here, to get drunk together in the pseudo-Grinling Gibbons library, after which you would want to dance naked in the park or something! It would be nice to épater a bit around the place! But these are childish pleasures. And honest, Bella, I just hate it all, I hate it, I didn’t know how much until I saw it all again and my bloody mother doing the Duchess in the middle of it. Faugh! I thought in my dreams that I might destroy the whole set up, but I didn’t know that I’d be strong enough until I actually saw it and observed myself reacting to it. My mother has taken this final solution fairly calmly. She will be all right, she has a decent annuity and will live in a nice little house nearby. Now I know you’re fishing after motives of which there are hundreds and some of them may be disreputable (as if I cared) but mainly, I don’t think I ought to have much when others have little and: I haven’t the temperament to be an English country gent. I’d hate it and I’d become nasty. (O.K., nastier!) It’s not just a spiritual burden, my dear, it’s a bloody material practical one: walls, roofs, trees, servants, drainage, taxes … God, the blessed simplicity of our life at Sperriton, and Christ how I miss it!

  Well, that’s bombshell number one, if it is one. ( I wonder if you and Russ expected it?) Stand by, honey, for bombshell number two. I am engaged to be married. I am going to marry a sweet humble sexy totally unlettered kittenish beast called Stephanie Whitehouse whom I have inherited from Sandy—she is, you might say, part of the property. She is (literally) an ex-prostitute and was kept by Sandy secretly in London! (There’s glory for you!) She loves me and she is the only woman apart from you that I’ve ever liked being in bed with! She has had a miserable life and I pity her intensely. She is not at all beautiful but very attractive, she warms and excites me and I feel safe with her. She is totally un-Lax-linden Hall, and I can’t wait to get her away from the bloody scene here. Her age is thirty-four, by the way, as you’ll certainly want to know that!

  Bella, darling, don’t be jealous. (All right, you’d clout me for saying that if you were here!) You know as well as I do that love (like other important things) is expansible—perhaps love is infinitely expansible, and the more the more. I can love poor Stephanie without taking any jot or tittle from my love for you. And listen: this has all become clear to me in the last few days. I feel that, in spite of all the horrors, I’ve been thinking like a cool little computer ever since I set foot on English soil, and I’ve only just come up with the answer. I want to come back to my job, I want to come back to you and Russ (you are my family), I want to bring Stephanie to Sperriton. I know we all said I’ll come back but did we all believe it? I’m not sure whether I did. But now: it seems to me that by some sort of deep unconscious ingenuity I’ve found the only woman who could fit the jigsaw puzzle. If I married an intellectual girl or even an ordinary English (or a fortiori American!) girl it wouldn’t work, I couldn’t come back. You understand. But little Stephanie is a waif and utterly not intellectual, she’s gentle and sweet, and you’ll like her and she’ll fit. That at least is how I hope it and see it now. And I know that you will help me, and help her, because you are clever and good. I can’t and won’t lose you and Russ and it’s now beginning to seem that maybe I won’t have to. And quite apart from the jigsaw, I’ve got to come back to Sperriton anyway because I could never get a job over here or sell my enormous talents in England!

  Please, Bella, understand all this
and reassure me as you have always done. Receive poor Stephanie—she’s a simple grateful girl and no sort of trouble-maker. And, you know something—since experiencing once again, from my dear mother, what English coldness can be like I value and yearn for, more than I can express, that American gentleness and freedom into which you and Russ welcomed me and initiated me. Here I can find myself getting colder every day—which is another reason why I must run. I’ve thought about you both so much since I’ve been here, and with such gratitude. I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner, but I’ve been in such a muddle— and I’m glad I’ve written at last because a lot of things have become clear only since I started this letter! Show this to Russ and give him my love. Write to me soon, Bella darling—ever with so much love your (as you once called me) demon son

  ‘Careful,’ said Henry, standing back. ‘I don’t want any strain put on it. You hold that bit up, Mr Bellamy, while Rhoda unhooks those last rings. O.K. Now you can both drop it.’

  The tapestry descended with a loud plop to the floor and a cloud of dust arose. Rhoda and Bellamy climbed down from the tall ladders which they had erected at either end.

  The sun had come out and the rain-pools upon the terrace were little enamelled plates of radiant blue. A pale morning light reflected a subdued clarity in through the library windows. Now revealed upon the bare expanse of wall, an enigmatic vista of the past, was an old forgotten faded wallpaper with a trellis pattern enlaced with trailing roses. At the same time the library suddenly seemed much larger, much colder, as if the future had opened it up with rough chilling force. Henry went across to the tapestry and kicked it, eliciting another cloud of dust.

  ‘Needs cleaning. Now could you fold it up and see if you can get it somehow into the back of the Volvo? No, don’t do it here, take it out into the hall, could you, I’m suffocating.’

  Rhoda and Bellamy rolled the tapestry into a long clumsy sausage and hauled it out through the library door. Henry caught a last glimpse of Athena’s powerful hand plunged into the hero’s hair. He closed the door. Then he sat down at the round table and looked at the great blank expanse of wall, faded and pale and covered with little triangular cobwebs. He breathed deeply.

  Gerda came in, wearing one of her long blue robes, the skirt swinging. Henry rose. She threw some papers down on the table with a gesture of violence. ‘Why did you do this without telling me?’

  ‘I did tell you. I said I was sending it to Sotheby’s.’

  ‘You didn’t say you were going to do it today.’

  ‘Today or another day, what’s the difference? You can’t hang it in your cottage?’

  ‘This is hurtful, and on purpose.’

  ‘Mother, you don’t understand,’ said Henry. ‘It’s not on purpose to hurt, that would be ludicrous and petty. This business is bigger than you and me. It’s a big financial transaction which in the end will benefit a lot of people whom we’ve never heard of and who have never heard of us. Do you imagine I’m enjoying this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong. I love that tapestry. I like it better than anything else in the house, and I like it more than you do because for you it’s just a nice old accustomed wall-covering, while for me it’s a work of art!’

  Bird-headed Rhoda, expressively waving gloved hands, came in and said something.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘She says it won’t go into the Volvo,’ said Gerda, moving away towards the fireplace where a blazing log fire was disputing with the sunny light.

  ‘Oh damn. Well, just leave it folded up in the hall, would you, Rhoda.’

  ‘Then why do you torment yourself,’ said Gerda, when Rhoda had gone. ‘And me. And your fiancée.’

  Henry followed her and stood stroking a garland of burnished chestnut brown acorns in the wood of the chimney piece. ‘Mother, please, what has got to be has got to be. You’ve had your time here and I’m not going to begin. Be fair. Be fair to me.’

  ‘Why are you in such a hurry to sell the tapestry?’

  ‘Because I want to sell something that I value and sell it quick. That will make the rest easier. When you thread a needle the tip of the thread must go through first and the rest follows. This is the tip of the thread. Mother, it’s all going to disappear like Aladdin’s palace. And we must now begin to believe that it will. I don’t think you believe it yet. Perhaps in a way I don’t.’

  ‘If you are so upset about it all,’ said Gerda, not looking at him, ‘and so unsure of what you want, oughtn’t you to wait? And why are you taking your fiancee away now so soon?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep on referring to her as my fiancée. You know her name.’

  ‘Well, she is your fiancée, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but you are being sarcastic.’

  ‘Why are you taking her away so soon?’

  ‘Because you despise her.’

  ‘Henry,’ said Gerda. ‘Be sensible enough to have a little charity. I am trying to get to know her.’

  ‘You are trying to take her over.’

  ‘Oh don’t be ridiculous! You resented our talking about Sandy after breakfast.’

  Henry turned and made for the door.

  ‘Henry, wait, please.’

  Henry paused and faced her. ‘You snubbed me and needled me all through my childhood and you can’t stop doing it now. You don’t want peace, You want war. All right. I know you can’t forgive me for being alive while Sandy is dead.’

  ‘Henry,’ said Gerda. ‘Stop tormenting yourself. You are fighting with yourself not with me. If you only knew how much I pity you.’

  Henry left the room softly closing the door behind him.

  Gerda moved slowly back to the table and sat down. She sat there in a strained position, perfectly still.

  A few minutes later Lucius came in, wearing his cloak, combing his wind-blown hair with his fingers. He said, ‘They’ve gone.’ Then he saw the desolated wall. ‘Oh my God! So that’s what that great pile of stuff is out in the hall.’

  ‘It wouldn’t go in the Volvo,’ said Gerda.

  Lucius then saw the papers lying on the table, upon which Gerda had placed a large flat hand. He raised his eyebrows, then strolled towards the fire, where he stood humming pensively for a while, then turned cautiously to look at Gerda.

  Gerda gave him her attention at last. ‘Lucius, what is all this stuff I found in your room? What is this, for instance? “Dully her feet call up echoes that each time remember less. Clump, clump. The old girl”.’

  ‘Oh—just poetry—’

  ‘And this. “Treading the paths of the house she misses the ways of the heart. Clump, clump. The old girl.” Am I supposed to be the old girl?’

  ‘No, of course not, my dear—’

  ‘And what is this, “Her kitten warmth distracts me with a thousand women.” Who is this kitten?’

  ‘No one my dear, it’s imaginary—it’s art—’ ‘Art! I can’t tell you how impertinent and offensive I find this versifying. There’s pages of it. “Clump, clump” indeed! Here.’ Gerda pushed the pages at him.

  Lucius gathered them, hesitated, stood up. ‘What do you—’ ‘If you were a gentleman you’d burn them.’

  Without any hesitation Lucius went to the fireplace. He threw the poems into the hot inwards of the fire where they flamed up at once. He turned back to Gerda and sat down opposite to her at the table, regarding her with a mild quizzical expression and easing his cloak off onto the chair.

  Gerda looked at him attentively, frowning. ‘So you are going to accept your pension from Henry?’

  ‘Yes, my dear.’

  ‘Have you arranged to live with Audrey?’

  ‘No. Rex won’t let me.’

  ‘Where will you go then?’

  ‘I’ll find a little room.’

  ‘Where?’

  Lucius sat looking at her with his bright mild face. ‘Somewhere near you, dear, if you don’t mind. You’re all that I’ve got left. All these things don’t matter.
I even think Henry may be right, I admire him, I wish I had his courage. We are getting old, my dear, you and I. If we lived in the east, we would be thinking of entering a monastery. Perhaps we ought really to give up the world. In a way, Henry is just making us do what we ought to do. We should live more simply at our age. All this stuff doesn’t matter, this house, this furniture, those lawns and trees, it’s all a kind of illusion, it’s just a tapestry that can be folded up and sold. What matters is you and me, and we can get on better perhaps without them and all the care they represent. So I’d like to live near you, in a little room. I love you, Gerda, and I’ve given my whole life to loving you. I may have made a nonsense of most things, but not of that.’

  ‘All this is rubbish,’ said Gerda. ‘You’ve never “cared” about anything here except strolling in the park and getting your meals served to you. You aren’t fit to give up the world. And as for being old, speak for yourself. You’re a good deal older than I am.’

  ‘I know, my dear, I was only—’

  ‘So you claim to be resigned?’

  ‘Yes. The tapestry’s gone. It will all go. I’ve said good-bye to it already.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t,’ said Gerda. ‘Now go away, please, I want to think.’

  Lucius trotted upstairs to his room and poured himself out a little whisky and put on the second Brandenburg concerto. He began hastily to write out his poems again. He knew them all by heart.

  Gerda sat thinking. She thought, he has made us old. Have I come to the end of being a busy active sensible woman, and am now to become a useless whining spiteful old hag? Then, staring at the wall, she started to remember the endless silly jokes that Sandy used to make about what was happening on the tapestry.

  ‘Don’t go on about it, Steph.’

  ‘And it’s so unkind to your mother.’

  ‘It’s a unique relationship.’

  ‘I wish you’d talk ordinary. You make everything into a theory. I don’t know when you’re serious.’