by Iris Murdoch
He had been asleep and woke. There was a pale faint light all about him, and the walls, scrawled with their patterns of graffiti, were a dark shadowy grey. A candle was burning underneath the table. He sat up, leaning against his pillow.
Beautiful Joe was sitting, as before, upon the table, quite still, staring at Cato. He was wearing jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Cato felt a sick thrill of fear. His body, though scarcely yet his mind, had begun to know that each appearance of Joe brought him nearer to that. Joe looked different. Cato remembered that he must pretend to be drugged. In fact he felt so weak that no pretence was needed. He said, ‘I feel so strange.’ Beautiful Joe continued to stare.
‘Joe, Joe, speak to me—Oh God what a nightmare—’ Joe got off the table and came towards him, blotting out the light, his shadow falling on Cato. Cato cowered back. Joe sat down on the side of the bed. ‘You shouldn’t have taken it.’ ‘Taken what?’
‘The gun. That was stealing. You threw it in the river. That was the start. That was what made me mad. I couldn’t forgive you.’ His voice sounded odd, almost unfamiliar. He took off his glasses and rubbed his cheeks and his eyes looked huge and dark like the eyes of a skull.
‘I did it to help you, to save you.’
‘You shouldn’t have done it, and you shouldn’t have gone on to me about Mr Marshalson. You tried to buy me with his money. It’s all your fault.’
‘Joe, are you all right? You look so strange. They haven’t been doing anything to you?’
‘They? No. They’re not here just now except for the big chap on the door, that dotty negro. He can break a man’s neck just like that, snick.’
‘Have they seen Henry?’
‘I’ve seen Henry. He brought some money. He was so frightened he could hardly stand. I’ll make him go on his knees next time. We’ll get the next lot tomorrow. Look I want to show you this.’ Something appeared in Joe’s hand, flickered in the dim light. A knife. Cato wriggled back. ‘See those stains? That’s Henry’s blood.’ ‘Joe, you haven’t—’
‘Oh, I haven’t hurt him, I just nicked him to let him see I could. And I want you to know that I could too, see? Cato. Isn’t that your name?’ Joe wiped the knife on the sleeve of Cato’s shirt. Then he held the blade lightly, pointing it at Cato’s throat.
‘Joe, put that knife away.’
Joe advanced the blade and Cato felt the light touch of the point on his neck. Then there was a click and the blade vanished. Joe put the knife in his pocket. ‘You wouldn’t believe how cruel these men are, they’re real cruel people. They’re cruel just because they like it. So you better keep quiet, you know. They could just lock you up here and go away. You could scream. No one would find you for years. Christ, that bucket stinks. I wonder if you’ll suffocate?’
‘They’ll hurt you too—’
‘No they won’t. One of the top chaps fancies me. He’s going to take me away with him to—never mind where. He’s going to take me away like you wanted to once. Cato. Such a long time ago. It seems years ago, doesn’t it. Did you really mean it?’
‘Oh God if only you’d come—’
‘And we’d have lived together—up there—’
‘In Leeds.’
‘And you’d have done your teaching stuff and I’d have learnt things like you wanted—read books maybe—I’d like to learn philosophy—’
‘Yes—’
‘I think I’m a bit of an existentialist. Cato.’
Cato thought, he is drugged or drunk. But the idea of escape could not now move him even to twitch a limb. It was hopeless, the knife here, the big crazy negro beyond the door. Cato put a hand to his throat where he could still feel the point of the knife. Only a willed rigidity kept him from trembling.
‘Joe, if we could only get out of here it could all come true even now, like you said. Henry would give us money, we could live in the north, you could do anything you like, study philosophy, why not— Joe, can’t you get us out somehow? You can’t want to stay with these awful people, you can’t—’
‘You better be careful, Cato. That’s not a way to talk. Do you want me to tell on you? They’ll be back soon. They got other things to do. You’re not important. I just got to look after you, that’s my job, you were my idea. Then I’ll be away in the big time, in the big world, out of this shitty little country. So don’t you talk. You lie still, or I’ll break you myself. It’s all your fault, I told you. You shouldn’t have taken that gun.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘You said you loved me—’
‘I did, I do.’
Beautiful Joe was sitting close to him on the bed. Cato could feel the warmth of the boy’s body and now a slight movement brought Joe’s bare arm into contact with his own. Joe’s face, without his glasses, with the huge skull-eyes, looked older, vulnerable, wild, the face of a stranger. His girlish bob of hair was tangled. He looked for a moment like a mad old woman.
Cato, who had been reclining, rigid and cold, now, as he felt the touch of Joe’s arm, scarcely that, the hairs on his arm touching the hairs on Joe’s arm, felt a kind of abstract pang of desire, as if his body was vainly yearning to distract him, or perhaps did not even know of his fate.
Joe, slowly, almost awkwardly, rubbed his arm against Cato’s with a sort of intimate animal gesture, then his hand moved and took hold of Cato’s hand.
‘Joe, darling, get us out of here.’
‘You shouldn’t have done it, Cato. You shouldn’t have chucked the priesthood, that was the end. You deserted me. You gave up trying to save me. No wonder I got desperate. No wonder I felt I was all alone. When you were telling me yourself there wasn’t any God. I’d have gone with you if you’d still been a priest, if you’d ordered me to go, I’d have done anything. You didn’t know your power. You’ve thrown it all away. I loved you, I still do, but it’s no good any more. You’re nothing now. I’m sorry for you. I hate to see you here, I hate to see you shitting with fright.’
‘You brought me here.’
‘It was fate, that’s what. Oh if only you were different, you but different—you’re the only person I’ve ever really—Father, put your arms round me.’
Suddenly the boy was lying beside him full length, burying his head in Cato’s shoulder. Cato moved and took him in his arms. Joe was shuddering, and now he had taken hold of Cato’s shirt in his teeth. Cato could feel the dampness of his lips, perhaps of his tears.
‘Oh my dear—’ said Cato. Distraught with fear tenderness and desire he put his hand into the tangled hair and cradled the head which felt hot and throbbing to the touch.
With a violent movement Joe jerked away. He stood up and tucked his shirt in. He put on his glasses. ‘Don’t maul me. Poor bloody queer, that’s all you are. That’s all your religion ever was. A way of being a queer.’
‘Joe—’
‘I came to tell you something. Cato.’
‘What?’ Cato slowly sat up and put his bare feet to the floor.
‘You got to write another letter.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Don’t be daft. You will. You don’t want to be maimed do you?’
‘I wrote one letter, that’s enough. You can write your own letters now.’
‘You got to write another letter. They want your sister to bring the next lot of money.’
‘My sister? No, no, no—’
‘Your stuck-up sister. The girl you thought was too good for me. She’s got to come. And you got to write and tell her to come. See? Cato.’
‘No,’ said Cato. Rage obstructed his tongue and he could hardly articulate as if his mouth was filled with rages. ‘No. Leave my sister alone, leave my sister alone, leave her alone, leave her out of this—’
‘Too grand for me, your precious bloody sister, eh?’
‘No, no no-oo—’ Cato wailed. Then he cried out again, as he received a violent blow on the side of the head. He fell back on the bed. The light was blotted out.
Dea
r Henry,
They want the rest of the money quick, but don’t come yourself, Colette is to bring it. No one else must know. Tell her to come to the same place. There will be someone there at one o’clock for the next three nights. Keep well away yourself and tell no one else if you want to go on living. Don’t go near the police or it’s the end. Colette must come. Otherwise they’ll start sending pieces of me. Believe this. Cato.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’re dropping cigarette ash on the sheets.’
‘What’s the matter, what’s the letter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re thinking about something.’
‘A man can think.’
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing, nothing, nothing.’
‘I’m so unhappy, nobody tells me anything. You won’t stay with me tonight and I shall have nightmares again.’
‘I can’t here, how can I, everything’s horrible.’
‘It wouldn’t be horrible if we lived here.’
‘Well, we’re not going to live here. We’re probably not capable of living anywhere.’
‘What do you mean? Are you going to leave me? What do you mean?’
‘Of course I’m not going to leave you. But some married people just live in a suitcase all their lives. We’re like that. We’re just suitcase size.’
‘You do love me, don’t you? You will look after me, won’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, but for God’s sake stop whining and moping. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with you.’
‘Well, there is. You don’t know what it’s like when things are terrible in your mind. You don’t understand, your mother doesn’t understand, you’re healthy people. Oh if only we could stay here in this house for ever, I feel safe here, it’s all so big and so real, I don’t want to go back to London, that flat’s like a tomb, I’ll go mad there, oh I so much want to stay here. You don’t know what it’s like to be me, you don’t know what it’s like to be all tattered and destroyed inside—’
‘I wish you’d stop smoking,’ said Henry, ‘this room is like a bloody gas chamber.’
It was after eleven o’clock at night. The letter from Cato had arrived by the late afternoon post. Henry felt as if a bomb had exploded in his mind. He could not act or think. He had been carrying on a mechanical conversation with Stephanie for nearly an hour simply to pass the time.
Stephanie had spent the day in bed. The doctor had visited her and pronounced her fit. He had prescribed some tranquillizers and Gerda had fetched them from the chemist in Laxlinden. Stephanie was lying in the big brass bed in the cherry blossom room, which had remained unchanged since Burke’s father’s day, and which smelt of the past, a mean musty powdery pompous smell which made Henry shudder. Better life in a suitcase. The shutters were closed, pale green and faded between huge looped-up billows of lace curtains. A similar mountain of lace crowned the bed, wound about like a turban, yellowing with dust and age. The cherry blossom wall paper, depicting Japanese scenes, had faded too and retired behind a spotty pale brown haze. Upon a slope of pillows very white by contrast, Stephanie lay with an almost ostentatious awkwardness. She was breathing quickly and her face was flushed. She was wearing a frilly pink nightdress, tight in the bodice and a little too small for her. A frilled shoulder strap cut into the flesh making it bulge on either side. She kept jerking and twitching with nervous irritation, lacking the will to move and make herself comfortable. Henry roved about. His hand, which he had not shown to the doctor, was hurting. He looked down on Stephanie with a mixture of pity and annoyance and possessiveness and sheer blank responsibility which seemed to make up his love for this odd untidy woman. Yes, untidy, physically and spiritually untidy. Her big heavy chin was greasy, her almost round eyes were moist and glowing, hot with some kind of secretive emotion. A subject for Bonnard, Vuillard, better still Degas. A large overflowing ashtray was balanced on her stomach while her hand, holding a lighted cigarette, trailed about like some sort of independent distracted animal. Even in his distress he found her exasperating, attractive. Only the centre of his mind, where it was all blown away, was occupied with Colette.
‘You’re thinking about that girl Colette.’
‘I’m not. Take your sleeping pills.’
‘I wish I had a hundred. I don’t want to go to America. Please, darling, try to understand. I know you’ve got to be you. But I’ve got to be me too.’
‘I daresay that’s a tautology.’
‘And there’s all sorts of things I ought to tell you—’
‘You mean about the past, about Sandy and all that—’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to know. Sandy doesn’t matter. He doesn’t exist any more.’
‘You speak so cruel, it hurts. I know you don’t mean to. You think that I’m just weak like a coward is. But I’m so unhappy in my mind and I can’t do anything to stop it.’
‘Look out, you’re burning a hole in the sheet.’
‘Your mother thinks I’m just a—’
‘Look out—’
‘I don’t care, and you don’t care since you’re giving it all away—’
Stephanie jerked up and strewed the contents of the ashtray together with her glowing cigarette, all over the early nineteenth-century patchwork counterpane.
Henry lifted the ashtray and began to brush the glowing sparks and ash off onto the floor where he trampled them into a grey mess on the Persian carpet. He looked down with exasperation at Stephanie’s hunched shoulder and at a large round dark-rimmed hole in the sheet. Then he reached down and grabbed one of the frilly shoulder straps with both hands and snapped it. Stephanie’s flushed face became suddenly smooth and bland and she relaxed, lying back among the pillows and gazing up at him with her hot eyes.
Henry touched her cheek. Then put the ashtray carefully on the glass top of the dressing table and then left the room closing the door quietly. He went downstairs.
‘What is it?’ said Gerda.
Henry was standing in the doorway of the library. A television programme was on, showing a picture of a hijacked aeroplane standing on the tarmac at an African airport. Gerda, dressed tonight in a dark red robe, was sitting in an armchair. One lamp was on. A last yellow flame flickered in the grate.
Henry said nothing. He turned off the sound of the television, then came forward and sat astride on the club fender, one foot dabbling in the ashes of the log fire, the other rucking up the red and brown Kazak rug. The rug was covered with little burnt patches where hot embers had leapt onto it from the fire.
Gerda stared at her son as he sat there, pale faced, small headed, curly haired, dangling his long legs and poking the ashes intently with his foot. She said, ‘You’ve decided not to sell the house?’
‘No,’ said Henry, kicking up a cloud of ash.
‘How is your hand? I wish you’d let me—’
‘It’s all right.’ He said after a moment, not looking at her, gazing down at his ashy shoe. ‘What did you mean about not living at Dimmerstone? Wouldn’t you like to live at Dimmerstone?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘A man may do what he likes with his own,’ said Gerda, ‘and I cannot complain since I am, as you say, old and have had my time, but I do not want to stay here and see what is done to this place which I love. When the house is sold my life here will be over and finished. I shall leave and not come back.’
‘O.K.,’ said Henry, after a moment. ‘Where will you live then?’
‘In a flat in London.’
‘O.K. They’re jolly expensive now, you know. You’d better have Sandy’s. I don’t want it. There’s a view of Harrods.’
Gerda was silent, staring at him. She was wearing a white flannel nightdress under her red robe, and had pulled the collar of it up around her neck. Her large magisterial face seemed smooth and unwrinkled in the dim light. Her dark hair, a little tossed and unkempt, was piled inside the white collar. She sa
id again, ‘What is it?’
Henry took Cato’s letter out of his pocket. It was a little crumpled and he smoothed it down. He handed it to Gerda.
Gerda read it, frowning. ‘Whatever is this?’
Henry swept his leg over the fender and sat facing her. ‘Well you may ask.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Listen,’ said Henry. ‘Something absolutely awful has happened. I’ve got to share this with somebody, especially now. Cato has been kidnapped by some gangsters. I think it was the idea of a delinquent boy, one of his flock. This boy got wind that I had a lot of money, and now this gang have got Cato and are blackmailing me. I’ve given them twenty thousand and I’m supposed to give them some more. But now this has come. I don’t know what to do. I can’t send Colette to those swine. I daren’t go myself now. I daren’t do nothing in case they start maiming Cato. I don’t know what to do, I think I shall go mad.’
Gerda read the letter through again. ‘You’re sure this is genuine?’
‘Yes. It’s Cato’s writing. And I’ve met the boy. It’s all genuine all right.’
‘What an extraordinary letter to write,’ said Gerda. She returned it to Henry. ‘Who have you told?’
‘Nobody. You.’
‘You haven’t told the police?’
‘No! How can I?’
Gerda reflected. She said, ‘Wait, I’m going to change. I think we should go and see John Forbes.’
Henry was sitting at the big scrubbed kitchen table at Pennwood, his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. He felt a mixture of profound relief and pure terror. Gerda and John Forbes were talking. ‘It’s a matter of eliminating possibilities,’ John was saying.
John Forbes had expressed no surprise when Gerda had telephoned just before midnight to ask if she could come to see him. He had shown only the briefest flicker of emotion at the news that his son was kidnapped and his daughter on demand by gangsters. He had blushed as a man might when he was insulted. They had arrived to find the lights on in the kitchen, the stove radiantly hot with open doors, the room, which Henry had not entered for so many years, tidied for visitors. He read Cato’s letter, and then, while Henry was telling the rest of the story, offered, tea, coffee, beer, whisky. Chocolate biscuits. Gerda refused refreshment. Henry accepted whisky. He thought, I never realized how free I was before this fear came. Even if we get Cato out I’ll be afraid now for the rest of my life. Oh God, why did this have to happen. Stupid bloody Cato, it’s all his fault. He drank some more whisky. He had answered many questions and now left the discussion to the other two.
