The Habit of Widowhood Page 11

  “You like it? My little nest, I mean.”

  “Yes, awfully. It’s not like what I’m used to. Even at your sister’s—”

  “My dear, I should think not! Don’t even mention my sister’s in the same breath if you want to stay in favor! Of course, she has the odd good piece—could hardly fail to have in a house as old as that—but everything that she’s bought herself has been the purest Home Counties. Now I rediscovered the thirties ten or fifteen years before anyone else. I bought, bought, bought, quite ridiculously cheaply, dear boy. I wouldn’t like to tell you what some of the things are worth today.”

  As he said it, Crespin noticed on those sturdy country features a registering twitch, a gleam in the eye.

  “This Beaton, for example. Only a photograph, my dear, but in its original frame, and signed to the subject, who was a quite minor poet—well, someone offered me four hundred and fifty only the other day. And I paid two bob for it, back in the days of Harold Macmillan, in a little shop in East Finchley.”

  All the time the boy’s eyes were watching, waiting for him to go on to another item. Crespin, characteristically, decided to play with him. He sat down beside him on the sofa.

  “But don’t let’s talk about my little knickknacks. Let’s talk about you. I don’t even know your name.”

  His name, it turned out, was Stephen Hodge.

  At home, he said, things hadn’t been “all that bad,” but on the other hand he hadn’t got on “all that well” with his parents. His father had been old-fashioned and heavy-handed, and had insisted on his leaving school at sixteen. “Don’t want you loafing around there for the rest of your life, learning things that won’t be no use to you,” he had said. Stephen had wanted to stay on. He was middling at most things, but he had a definite talent in certain directions: “Art and that,” he said. He had wanted to get an education to get away from home, find new horizons, “meet exciting people,” he said. And he added: “Get new experiences.”

  By now they were in the kitchen, and Crespin was preparing one of his risottos.

  “Something light,” he said. “We want to keep our appetites for tomorrow.”

  Over the risotto, Crespin returned to the absorbing topic—absorbing, in fact, to both of them—of his flat, his possessions.

  “When we’ve eaten, dear boy, you shall have a tour of the flat. A personal conducted tour, led by the chatelaine. Then you can feel truly at home here for the festive season. Where are you living, as a rule?”

  “I’ve got this camp bed at a mate’s,” said Stephen, eating hungrily as if he had little desire to save his appetite for the morrow. “He’s away for Christmas.”

  “Then we are saving each other from some perfectly ghastly festive days. I shall conduct you round my nest and my things, so that you will know them as you will know me.” He smiled at the boy, who slowed down the pace of his eating. “I can see that you have an eye for fine things.”

  This last was said with a touch of malice, but it went unperceived. The boy said:

  “I think I do. But I don’t have the training and that. I need someone to show me.”

  After Crespin had found some ice cream in the fridge, which Stephen wolfed up in a way that suggested the schoolboy that showed through some of his clothes, Crespin put on some coffee and they began the conducted tour of the flat. The eye that Crespin had noticed almost from the beginning went everywhere, and the brain stored every item of information. The living room was thirties, but the rest of the flat was pleasantly crowded with more conventional objects of all kinds and dates. Often Crespin noticed that Stephen wanted to ask the value of something, but managed to refrain. Sometimes Crespin would give it to him, sometimes not. He began to drop prices and sale values into his patter, but ambiguously (“Would you believe me if I said fifteen hundred?”). He was already playing with his guest—beginning the games that would be conducted more roughly in the bedroom.

  Soon a refinement of the game suggested itself to him. Instead of being ambiguous, his assertions of value became downright mendacious. His valuable things—oh yes, ducky, he did have valuable things—were commended as amusing trifles, no more. The highest commendation and implied value were lavished on pieces whose worth was at best sentimental.

  If that, said Crespin to himself, as he held—gently, as if it were Ming, and he a museum curator—a piece of nondescript china inherited from his Aunt Molly, which looked as if it had been purchased from Woolworth’s in the twenties.

  “Exquisite,” said Crespin. “And beautifully kept, you notice. Trust my Aunt Molly for that, dragon that she was. I wouldn’t like to tell you what my friend Henry at Chez Moi Antiques round the corner would offer me for that, if I ever told him I’d sell.”

  He saw the boy, in some space behind his eyes, file the information away. For a moment Crespin felt himself washed by a wave of nausea and ennui. So many young men—tough, capable, greedy. So many nights of delicious brutality, followed by less delicious humiliation, depredation, loss. He shrugged the feeling aside, and went on with the tour. Crespin was a magpie. Only a fraction of his things could be shown that evening. There would be plenty left to talk about the next day.

  After coffee, and after all the china and glass had been safely tucked away inside the dishwasher, the games started again, but this time they were more physical, and this time it was Crespin who was the victim. And in these games Stephen understood what was going on. It was amazing how quickly he got the idea. But then, he had been in London some weeks. Crespin had no reason to think he was the first of his kind that the boy had been with. If he frequented The Wagon of Hay, after all . . .

  But it was a pleasure to encounter a lad with that sturdiness of physique, yet with that delicate inventiveness of mind. They started with the schoolboy stuff, with the arm twisted behind the back, but then they proceeded, sometimes Crespin suggesting, sometimes Stephen improvising, to more serious brutalities. Halfway through the games, both of them sweaty, Crespin a little bloody, they stopped for a neat scotch. By this time they had very little in the way of clothes on, and some of Crespin’s, lying on the floor, were torn and dirty. As he drained his glass Crespin plunged his other hand down Stephen’s schoolboyish Y-fronts, and the games began again, until they climaxed, gloriously, on the bed, Stephen’s big hands around Crespin’s throat as he lay on top of him.

  “It’s been one of the most wonderful nights of my life,” Crespin said, after Stephen had roughly taken him for the second time.

  The next morning Crespin was up early, showering away the dried blood, and gazing with satisfaction at the discoloration of his skin as bruises began to show. Before going into the kitchen he went through the lounge and drawing room, looking for something sufficiently masculine to present to Stephen on Our Lord’s birthday. He found nothing that satisfied him, and in the end wrapped up a really beautiful Georgian silver cream jug. In his gifts, at least, he would be generous, he thought. He made tea and toast, set out the tray for two, then put the present on the tray and went into the bedroom. Stephen was awake and sitting up. Crespin thought he had never seen anything more beautiful. He set the tray on the boy’s lap, presented him with the little parcel, then sat himself cross-legged on the end of the bed.

  “It’s beautiful, really beautiful,” Stephen said, gazing at the silver object.

  “Nothing—a mere nothing,” said Crespin, with his characteristic wave of the hand.

  “And I have nothing to give you.”

  “Do you imagine you could give me anything more wonderful than you have given me already?” asked Crespin. Stephen looked pleased, and Crespin added: “Dear boy . . .”

  They had a quiet morning preparing the lunch. The cookery of Mrs. Marks and Mrs. Sparks did not need long in the oven—Crespin was pleased to find that he had two packets of stuffed turkey breast in the deep freeze. He would feed Stephen up. He knew the boy was hungrier than, so far, he had been able to satisfy. He peeled a mountain of potatoes and carrots, set out the cranb
erry sauce on a pretty Meissen dish, opened the tin of National Trust Christmas pudding. Stephen’s eyes sparkled at this: he still had a child’s love of sweet things. While this was going on, Stephen did his bit around the place, clearing up from the night before and setting the table, at which he proved surprisingly adept. In between they watched bits of the Christmas morning service on television.

  “Are you religious?” asked Stephen.

  “I converted to Rome when I was eighteen,” said Crespin, with some signs of pride. “Inevitably, with my name, I suppose. Such a relief after the middle-of-the-road Anglicanism of my childhood—the middle of the road down which my dear sister and her family still happily plod. But somehow the conversion didn’t last. Too much an impulse of emotion, I’m afraid, of theatricality. I regret it. And you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t go to church and that. But sometimes I watch it on television and it seems to . . . have something. But I’m not religious. It doesn’t sort of . . . go, does it?”

  “Go?”

  “With us. With the sort of lives we lead.”

  “No,” agreed Crespin sadly. Soon he went back to the kitchen.

  They ate about two o’clock. The meal was a great success. Stephen ate about two thirds of the turkey, and was clearly pleased with a Christmas dinner that was all breast and no leg or wing. He made significant inroads into the vegetables, and seemed to enjoy Crespin’s cream on the Christmas pudding in place of the custard he always had at home. Before the meal they had a glass of sherry—Reina Victoria. Stephen said it was like no sherry he had ever had before, inspected the bottle and asked how much it cost. As they ate, Crespin gave him a little lecture on Moselles. How often had he given it before, over dinner, to a bored, contemptuous or frankly dimwitted companion? Stephen followed him, asked questions, stored up the answers.

  He will take everything I have to give him, thought Crespin.

  “Do you want to ring your family?” he asked.

  “No,” said Stephen awkwardly. “No. They don’t know where I am, you see.”

  “I’m not pressing you. That’s your business.”

  “Will you be ringing your sister? Don’t say anything if so.”

  “I shan’t ring her. She won’t be expecting it. Nobody will. Outside my job I have nobody.” Crespin paused, then said deliberately: “I could lie here, dead, for days, weeks, and nobody would know. . . .”

  He registered, unmistakably, a tiny glint in the boy’s eye.

  They went back to the living room for coffee, and as he poured it and handed his to Stephen, Crespin said: “This has been a Christmas to remember.”

  “For me too,” said Stephen.

  “Two days, wonderfully marked off from the humdrum round.”

  “Maybe we could do it again.”

  “Dear boy, repetition, even if it were possible, is not advisable. Exquisite pleasure is a once-off thing. With your inventive mind you should understand that.”

  Stephen smiled slowly.

  “You think I have an inventive mind?”

  “I know you have. I’m in a position to pronounce on the subject.”

  Stephen stirred his coffee.

  “I could stay.”

  “Dear boy!” cried Crespin, fluttering his hand. “Do you imagine I could stand excitements like last night’s every day?”

  “We wouldn’t need to go at it like that every day.”

  “If you were here, with me, how could we not? Come, you’ve never seen my study. Let me continue with your aesthetic education.”

  So Crespin resumed yesterday’s game, with renewed zest. He had the boy at an ideal stage: he was quick but ignorant. In a year’s time—if he remained at large—this particular fun would no longer be possible. He would know. Now he was anxious to learn, but did not know. Thus Crespin could wave aside a rare, intimate conversation piece by John Singer Sargent which hung over the mantelpiece as “a mere daub, dear boy. Hardly worth the canvas and oil. Though I keep it for sentimental reasons.”

  He paused, as an idea seemed to strike him. He looked up at the stalwart man, the worried wife and the three girls of the picture.

  “My great-grandfather, the Admiral. And his three jollytar daughters. Imagine—that his blood should have diluted itself into mine. Funnily enough, I remember one of the daughters, in old age, chivvying me into manly sports. The Admiral, I always suspect, would have gone in for more drastic remedies. Probably have had me drowned at birth. He was never one for half measures.”

  Crespin, watched by the boy, tore his eyes from the exquisite “daub” over the fireplace and took, very casually, from the top of a bureau a large, silver-encrusted nineteenth-century firearm.

  “This was his. Isn’t it handsome? And characteristically assertive. Feel the weight of it.”

  The boy took it, and in his surprise nearly dropped it. It was as heavy as Death.

  “It’s not a gun at all, in fact. Really more of a cudgel. He had it made to his own specifications. He always said that if you shot an intruder some damn fool was going to ask questions. With this you could either terrify him or bash the daylights out of him if it didn’t work.” Crespin looked at Stephen, and took the weapon from his hands. “It’s one of the best pieces I own. I always think it might come in useful someday, to somebody.”

  Their glance at each other held a brief flash of understanding. Then they went on to other things. As before, Crespin praised dreary cut-glass vases and commercial prints as if they were priceless objects the Victoria and Albert were itching to get their hands on. The pleasure was redoubled because, in addition to observing that pricing-and-cataloguing routine going on behind the boy’s eyes, he had a sense of something more too: of the boy screwing himself up to something. When he put his hand on his arm, or delicately round his waist, he could feel it as already manifesting itself physically in a bodily tenseness.

  Those brief touches, those affectionate squeezes, inevitably began to lead to something more, but Crespin was not anxious to start on the serious business yet. He wanted a cup of tea. He had always enjoyed tea, and served it in a ceremonious way that reminded him of his mother. He would enjoy one more cup.

  The boy’s tensions had relaxed by the time they both drank tea. For a moment Crespin wondered whether he had changed his mind, but he was reassured to notice a tiny smile of anticipation playing around his lips: he was relaxed because he had decided to do it.

  Conversation between them was strained and spasmodic, as it had never been since Stephen had arrived. Now they had between them an unspoken contract. Any mention of it could only render it ludicrous and void. So they must talk about other things, though other things scarcely came. In the end Crespin put an end to it after one cup. Second cups were always less than perfect. He turned toward the boy beside him on the sofa, and began gently to unbutton his shirt. Stephen, at least, must look kempt when he left the flat.

  His own clothes were another matter. God knew, he had not exactly been cautious in the past. Now there was nothing he wore that could mean anything to him again. But as the game hotted up, no item was given up without a struggle. The shirt went as he was held back forcefully over the sofa, his head being pummeled by one fist as the boy’s other hand tore at the flaunting pink silk. Other items went as they fought across the table, chased each other round the kitchen, sank into violent clinches onto the floor. There were intervals of something like tenderness, almost peace, as their naked bodies came together in something other than struggle. There was a moment, on the rug, in front of the gas fire, when it almost seemed as if the contract between them might be forgotten. It was Crespin who ended it. He slapped Stephen ineffectually across the cheeks.

  “Pig!” he shouted. “Yokel! Rustic yob!”

  Stephen’s fists began brutally hitting him about the head, first left, then right, leaving Crespin breathless. Then Stephen unclenched his hands and felt for the throat. It was a feeling that had always excited Crespin, but he knew that this time he could not give way
to his excitement. That was not the way he had to go. It had to be by the Admiral’s gun. He writhed on the rug, twisted and turned within those strong hands. The bodies came together, then slid off one another, until suddenly Crespin managed to knee the boy in the groin. With a wrench he struggled away as Stephen let go his hands, then he ran for the bedroom.

  “Come for me!” he shouted. “Come for me!”

  He slammed the door, but it swung open again. He stood there in the darkness, panting, aching, watching the light from the living room as it filtered through the opening in the doorway. The boy was not coming. Wait. He heard a floorboard creak. The one just inside the study door. He was going for the weapon. Perhaps he was looking round—at the things he would take, the things he had marked off in his little inventory, the things that would fetch the odd pound merely when he hawked them round the antique shops, as soon as he dared.

  Crespin’s breath was coming more easily now. Let him come! Let him not break the rhythm! He heard the floorboard creak again. He heard soft footsteps across the carpeted floor of the living room. He was coming after all. The game would be played through.

  And as he saw, in the lighted doorway of the bedroom, a large, dark shadow, there flooded over him an overwhelming feeling of excitement and fulfillment. It had been the happiest Christmas of his adult life.

  READER, I STRANGLED HIM

  The restoration of Mr. Rochester’s sight, as I remarked to the rector of Ferndean village, was indeed a blessing. The rector is a man of conventional mind and limited imagination, so I did not add that, like most blessings, it was not unmixed.

  Mr. Rochester’s past life had been narrated to me in all its thrilling, shocking detail by the firelight at Thornfield some years before. I cannot therefore pretend that his nature was a closed book to me. While my husband’s optic orbs were bleared and clouded I was his sight: I led him, I described objects and weathers to him, I expounded from the public prints the thrilling events of the day—Napoleon’s return from Elba, his hundred days of restored power, his defeat by our country’s incomparable hero at Waterloo. By the time the Bourbon monarch was once more uncertainly in the saddle in Paris my husband’s eyes were beginning to discern light, shapes, even colors. When our son began to walk his father could lead him around the garden unaided by me. By the time the Prince Regent became sovereign de jure as well as de facto Edward Fairfax Rochester could read, write, and do everything of importance for himself. My importance in his life was greatly diminished.