Henry and Cato by Iris Murdoch Page B

‘It’s cold in here. In America we don’t let the weather come inside the house.’
    â€˜How are you feeling?’
    â€˜Terrible.’
    â€˜It’s the flight.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    They looked at each other in silence which although it expressed every awkwardness, almost the total impossibility of communication, was not exactly embarrassing. Gerda saw the dark curly-headed neat-faced youth with the small pretty mouth and round bob of a chin who seemed to her now not to have changed since he was twelve. Even the long dark suspicious glowing sulky eyes were the same, expressing resentment, self-pity. Henry saw his mother, older certainly, fatter, but still handsomely carrying that old air of a beauty’s confidence, her rather large broad pale face seeming without make-up, her large fine brown eyes seeming without concealment. Her dark silky hair was loose today and made her look girlish. She was wearing a smart plain tweed dress with a pink Italian cameo brooch pinned onto the collar.
    Henry felt satisfactorily hard and cold, like an athlete. No danger of blubbering today. ‘How long has Lucius been living here?’ he said, realizing that he was speaking rather sternly and involuntarily frowning.
    â€˜Oh—two or three years—you don’t mind, do you?’
    Henry cleared the frown away with his fingers, and said nothing.
    â€˜You’re not engaged to be married, are you?’ said Gerda.
    â€˜Me, engaged? No, of course not. I’m not married either, if it comes to that.’
    â€˜But you don’t mind about Lucius? He’s a sort of shipwrecked person.’
    â€˜Is he?’ said Henry.
    â€˜One can’t help feeling sorry—’
    â€˜Why should I mind?’
    â€˜Because it’s your house.’
    Henry was silent again, as if pondering this, still giving his mother the unembarrassed slightly dazed stare.
    â€˜You are—going to stay here—aren’t you?’
    â€˜Here? Do you mean here in the house or here in England?’
    â€˜Either. Both.’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Henry. He had noticed behind his mother on a little table a photograph of Sandy. No photograph of himself. Of course she had not had time to put it out yet. He felt a nervous compulsion to say something about Sandy. ‘This must have been rotten for you.’
    â€˜This—?’
    â€˜This—bereavement.’
    Gerda was silent. She pressed her lips together and looked at Henry with a kind of desperate stoical intentness which made her look ugly. She said nothing.
    â€˜I’m sorry about it,’ said Henry insistently, saying what had to be said and willing his mother not to cry.
    They went on staring at each other.
    He got up, intending to go out of the room, but misunderstanding his movement she stretched out her hand. Henry took it briefly and squeezed it, his face wrinkled with annoyance.
    â€˜Mother, I’m going out for a walk.’
    â€˜Yes, that’s right,’ she said in a low tone.
    Henry made almost a dash for the window, fumbled with the catches, pushed up the window, and stepped out onto the terrace.
    A large low chubby dark grey cloud was being carried by the wind away over the house, leaving a bright blue sky behind it. The sun was shining and making the watery earth sparkle in all its recent raindrops. Henry moved along the side of the house away from the front door, trailing his hand along the big squared ironstone blocks of the wall, which were variegated with white curling patterns of crushed fossilized shells. He came to the steps and began to run down them, where the hillside descended in a series of stone terraces, until he reached the mown grass which curved more gently downwards towards the lake. Up the hill to his left were the eighteenth-century stable block and the cast-iron arches and glittering glass of the huge Edwardian greenhouse. Beyond, were the walled garden, the tennis courts,