To the Dark Tower (13 page)

It was only later, driving through the desolate countryside, hungry, haggard, his eyelids dropping incessantly, that he realised that he had paid her nothing: and she, strangely, had made no demands. This omission irritated him. And yet, and yet... Did it not give him an excuse to go back?

Lucy had not died that night. She had survived miraculously, and was to survive for another week. But she seemed to know that he had failed her: for when he went up to her room she said nothing, did nothing, but stared at him fixedly, the tears rolling down her cheeks; and when he took her hand (remembering that other hand on his shoulder) she drew it away with an exclamation of anger or surprise.

Miss Thompson, too, showed her disfavour in numberless ways. When he made the excuse that his car had broken down she shrugged her shoulders and smiled; and even as he spoke to Lucy, she came and elbowed him away with a thermometer in a small glass. He noticed then, for the first time, that her plump hands had dimples in place of knuckles.

He went back to the room near Shepherd’s Market on the night of Lucy’s death.

After it was all over he felt that he must get away from servants who had once hated her and now wept; from Miss Thompson who drew blinds; from the heavy weight of silence and mourning which lay upon the scene. So he took out the car, and drove through the night, and went to the room, and found her there.

"You’ve come back," she said, meeting him as she had done on that other night. "I knew you would." And with a gesture of tenderness she slipped an arm over his shoulder.

Again it was the fire, the untidy room, the removal of the wrap. But something had slipped, had gone astray; so that even as he caressed her, upon the unmade bed, he was suddenly absorbed, abstracted. He suddenly got up and, still without saying anything, began to put on his clothes.

"What is it?" she asked. "Aren’t you well? Aren’t you well, dear? Are you going already?"

He did not answer her. But as he went to the door he took some notes from his wallet. "For you," he said.

She looked at him, her eyes filling with tears, still naked, her shoulders heaved miserably so that the breasts sagged. She shook her head. "No," she said. "That’s too much. I don’t want anything. You took nothing."

"For you," he repeated.

Mutely she put out a hand, crumpled the notes into a ball and tossed them on to the bed.

Then, as though she knew she were seeing him for the last time, she caressed him, momentarily, a brush of the fingers, with great intimacy.

"Good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye."

And she began to hack at the fire with a poker.

These two events, these two visits to a woman whose name he did not know, were decisive. Perhaps not as decisive as they would have been in a novel or film. He did not immediately change, overnight, as they say. She was not the last person that he slept with. But from that time began the asceticism which became his most characteristic trait. His ferocious sexual appetite was curbed; blunted; he lived simply, with the rigour of a monk; he slowly became a misogynist.

Why? Was it a sudden remorse? Or was it the feeling, ‘Never again’, ‘Once bitten ...’? He was not sure himself. Only the cynic or sentimentalist can really be sure. But the change was there.

While Lucy had lived he had taken little notice of the children. They were there, like the dogs, to be petted or taken on walks or told to be quiet. But now they were his responsibility. And he set about the task with great thoroughness.

For the children the change was impossible at first. Life with Lucy had been so different. Not that they had ever really loved her. Coming back that morning from Shepherd’s Market, with Lucy lying dead upstairs, he had found them quarrelling in the hall. "What is the matter?" he asked. At first they would not answer. Then Judith said: "Dennis says he can have Mummy’s walking-stick now. But it’s a lady’s stick. Shouldn’t I have it?"

How easily they had accepted her death—with relief almost! And he could not scold them, could not say: "You are being heartless" for he, too, accepted it in the same mood.

No: the difficulties of the change lay elsewhere—in the need for adaptation. They had got used to one kind of life, and now Father was forcing another on to them. And children are creatures of habit. When so much is unstable within they like stability without.

With Lucy they had been left alone for long periods to do as they liked under the supervision of Miss Kahn, a benevolent German governess. Then suddenly, without warning, there would be a visit to the nursery: Judith’s nails were dirty, Dennis had ink on his collar, she would like a word with Miss Kahn. And afterwards everything went on as it had always done.

Or she would have them up to her sick-room. They hated that. There was always Miss Thompson in one corner saying, "Sh, children! Don’t talk so loud", or, "You’ll have those bottles over"; and there were smells, strange, terrifying; and there was Lucy herself, panting, breathless, one hand pressed to her side, while with the other she forced chocolates or grapes upon them. "Come nearer, my pets," she would say. And an arm, skinny, blue-veined, encircled their waists. It reminded Judith of the witch in
Hansel and Gretel
.

But now it was all different. Miss Kahn left, in tears, with a good testimonial, and Captain Allbright, who was over forty and had lost an arm in the last war, took her place. Not that he was any more formidable. He was short-sighted, and his face twitched nervously when he spoke to them. It was easy to squirt ink behind his back or throw bread-pellets. "Oh, do stop it!" he would say plaintively, still a boy, who became excited over bird-nesting or tree-climbing.

No: he didn’t make much difference. It was Father himself. A few days after Mother died a time-table appeared in the nursery. This was the outward symbol of the change. The old easy-going ways disappeared: the clock became their master, ticking, always ticking, on the nursery wall. Time for work. Time for lunch. Time for games. Time for bed. Time, time, time. They had not been aware of it before. Miss Kahn would say, "Now for some fresh air," and they would troop into the garden. Miss Kahn would say, "You look sleepy, Judith," and they would be hurried up to bed. But now even Captain Allbright watched the clock: he, too, was its slave.

They became typical of all motherless children—Dennis tough, independent, insensitive; Judith old, too old for her years, maternal yet tomboy, a useful fielder when Hugh joined them in cricket. But it was Dennis, rather than Judith, who felt the greatest change. Hugh didn’t care about Judith then: she sniffed, she tended to howl, she wet her knickers, she was a woman. But Dennis, his son ...

So he planned for him. ‘Issues from the hand of God the simple souk...’ Issued from the hand of God the complex soul with all its separate aims and claims; and Hugh set about simplifying it. What was fluid, unstable, uncertain became suddenly petrified. Do this, do that, Hugh said. He was like a dentist freezing a nerve. And the whole essential glory of childhood was sheared off like a crop of hair.

Discipline: he believed in that. Every morning, all the year round, Dennis had a cold bath. No very great hardship there. He did the same thing himself. And the morning-room, what Lucy used to call her ‘Watteau Room’ because the furnishings had faded from bright blue to grey, this was now a gymnasium with boxing-gloves, a punch-ball, parallel-bars.

Round the grounds of the house they made a track for running, ‘The Cresta’ Hugh called it. This was for winter use when the ground was too hard. In a white polo sweater Dennis circled six times, his hands clenched. If only he could do it in under ten minutes! But he never could. And each day there was the shame of saying to Father’s question at lunch: "No, sir. It took eleven minutes." So that in the end, before that winter was over, his eyes used to fill with tears of exasperation even while he ran.

For the great thing was to succeed. And yet ... When Cousin Paul had come to stay with him and Dennis had lost to him at ping-pong, because he looked miserable at his defeat Father had thrashed him for ‘not being a sport’. It seemed as if one should care, but not show it.

Cousin Paul was pink and plump, about Dennis’s age, the son of a stockbroker and Hugh’s sister. Sometimes Dennis envied him. When he was staying at the house Hugh constantly matched the boys against each other—at boxing, tug-o’-war, tennis. But as soon as Paul had had enough he would say, "Oh, Mummy, I
do
feel tired"; and she would answer, "Well, of course, dear. Come and sit down."

Dennis never said things like this. He never dared to. So he went on, doing everything that Father told him to do, though his arms ached and his back ached and his head became dizzy.

But he loved Father. And by suffering in this way he thought he could prove his love. And, of course,
if
Paul beat him at ping-pong, well, didn’t that mean that he had let Father down?

He wanted to be like Father, to have to shave and to smoke a pipe and wear a uniform. He loved Father’s smell, and his strength when they wrestled, and the touch of his hairy forearm.

But, of course, he never said so. That would be unmanly. It was terrible to be unmanly. Father said that Paul was an effeminate prig; and that was because he kissed his mother in public and once said, " Oh, Mummy, you oughtn’t to have worn that hat! The other’s much, much nicer." And Paul called his father ‘Pop’, and said ‘O. K.’, and played an April Fool on him by giving him an inverted egg-shell instead of an egg at breakfast.

But Dennis called his father ‘Sir’, and saluted him when he saw him. And the most Father ever did to show that he was pleased was to flick one of his ears or slap him on the bottom.

But he loved Father, oh yes, he loved him. And in the innocently erotic dreams of childhood he and Father no longer wrestled, but lay silent and motionless together, all conflict gone; and Dennis’s face rested on his chest; and his arms encircled him in a snare of love.

It was inevitable that Hugh’s ambition should consume the boy. He was too frail a vessel for that heady spirit. He was too young. One way or another he would be destroyed. Either he would become an automaton or he would die. These were the only solutions.

This is myself, Hugh thought, as he wrestled with the boy or taught him to dive or hurled a cricket ball at him. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh... And all that he could do this boy would also be taught to do. To be a light unto the Gentiles...

So when, after a day out among the mountains in Wales, with only some raisins to eat, Dennis ran into the dining-room and said, "Gosh, I’m hungry," and began to gnaw at some bread, his father reproved him. One must not be a slave to the body. One must always be master. A lack of self-restraint... But the boy was only seven.

One winter they went to Switzerland to ski. Then Dennis was to be seen every morning on the mountain-side in nothing but a pair of shorts, wiry, dark-skinned, his muscular legs scarred where he had fallen doing impossible things for love of Father.

They had two rooms, one in the hotel itself and the other in the annexe. And these two buildings were separated from each other by a glass conservatory four or five feet in width.

One afternoon Judith and Dennis played dominoes in the bay of the window of their room while Hugh wrote letters on the balcony of his. He had thrashed Dennis a short time before because he had shirked his cold bath by going into the bathroom, letting the water run, and then coming out—dry. This was Deception, and not Playing the Game. So Dennis was beaten, as he had been beaten so often before, and as Hugh imagined he would be beaten so often again. "Take down your trousers..." And Dennis never so much as whimpered.

But now Hugh felt it was time to forgive. So he shouted across: "What are you both up to?"

"Playing dominoes, sir."

"Dominoes!" Hugh put aside the pad on which he had just been writing. "That’s a pretty poor sort of a game, eh?" And Dennis blushed as though at a reproof. "What about another game of chess?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Please, sir. Now, sir?" So he was forgiven. So Father still loved him. So he was not entirely worthless.

"All right. You come across here. Get the board and come across here." Judith had already disappeared, shrugging her shoulders irritably. She was always left out of it. "Hurry, though. Double quick!"

"Yes, sir."

Dennis ran towards the door; but before he could open it Hugh called: "Here! Come here! Come back!"

"Yes, sir?" He stood once more in the embrasure, with closely cropped hair that curled in spite of his efforts to straighten it. A snake-belt encircled his waist. His tie was held neatly with a tie-pin, his shoes gleamed. "Yes, sir?"

"Why don’t you jump?"

"Jump, sir?"

"Yes. Jump, sir," High mimicked back. "Get on to that ledge—and jump. It’s only four or five feet. You’ve jumped that often before."

But it was such a drop. Supposing he fell? Supposing he missed his footing? He stared downwards, white-faced, ashamed, his fingers fiddling with the snake of the belt.

"Well? Come on! Aren’t you going to do it?"

He shook his head, miserably, his eyes filling with tears against his will.

"Funked it, eh? ... Oh, in that case, I’m not sure that I want a game of chess." Hugh took up the pad again. But out of the corner of his eye he was watching Dennis.

Slowly, biting his lip, the boy climbed on to the window-ledge, clutching the frame to steady himself. His hand trembled, the knuckles went white. Far, far away, in a field, he could see the three Dutch children they had played with that morning. They moved in red fur over a white expanse.

"Changed your mind, eh? That’s right. It’s nothing very much. You can do it. You can do it easily."

He tensed the muscles in his legs. "You can do it easily..." And he would be forgiven; and this would be the proof—the proof that he had dreamed of. That’s right ... It’s easy now. You’ve only got to jump. Father’s eyes and father’s voice, and the ache of the muscles in his legs. And the game of chess. And the dream he had had of saving Father from some extraordinary doom—cannibals, was it? It’s nothing very much... Oh, it’s nothing very much. And far away, in one corner of his vision, were the Dutch children rolling in snow. And behind him Judith sang to herself in the dressing-room where she slept. And this was the proof: and afterwards there would be no conflict, but his face on Father’s chest, and his arms holding him, and...