Henry and Cato Read Free Page A

years ago in the company of that sponging creep Lucius Lamb. (Of course tactless Henry had to ask if she had paid his fare.) Hopefully, creep Lamb would have had time to die or get lost in the interim. What would it all be like? Was something going to happen in his life at last? Would he be called upon to make great choices, world-altering decisions? Would he be able to? Free will and causality are entirely compatible, Russell told him once. Henry did not understand. Or would it prove as insubstantial as a dream from which he would soon wake up safe at home in his little white house at Sperriton, with the telephone bell ringing and up-early Bella bright upon the line? Were there people waiting for him over there in England? Was there anyone there that he really wanted to see? Well, he would quite like to see Cato Forbes; he wondered over his next martini what had become of him. The plane shuddered on. Emotionally exhausted and now drunk Henry went to sleep again.
    At about the hour when Cato Forbes was walking to and fro on Hungerford Bridge and Henry Marshalson was awakening from his first sleep on the jumbo jet high above the Atlantic, Gerda Marshalson and Lucius Lamb were in conference in the library at Laxlinden Hall.
    â€˜He won’t change anything,’ said Lucius.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Gerda.
    She was walking up and down. Lucius was reclining upon the sofa near to the recently installed television set.
    The library was a long room with three tall windows, now closely velveted with curtains. One wall was covered with a late seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry, representing Athena seizing Achilles by the hair, the goddess and the hero being decoratively enveloped in green Amazonian vegetation. Agamemnon and his companions were not visible, but nearby Troy was represented, against a mysteriously radiant grey-blue sky, by three creamy pinnacles rising above immense leaves in the top right-hand corner. The other walls were covered by shelves containing ancestral Marshalson books, most of which had been rebound in a uniform tawny-golden leather binding: mainly history and biography and sets of standard literary classics. No book had been touched, except by Rhoda’s duster, since Henry went away. The shelves stopped short of the ceiling leaving space for perched busts of Roman emperors. Nobody dusted them, but fortunately they were black in any case.
    Two shaded lamps, made out of huge vases, illuminated one end of the room, and beneath the tall chimney piece, carved by a pupil of Grinling Gibbons, a log fire was brightly burning, stirred lately to life by a strong poke from Gerda’s small slippered foot. A blue cut-glass bowl beside one of the lamps contained a very large number of white daffodils whose delicate smell blended airily with the warmth of the fire.
    Lucius was feeling very tired and wanted to go to bed. His back was hurting and his new false teeth, which he dared not remove in Gerda’s presence, were unbearably cluttering up his mouth. A kind of itching ache was crawling about his body, making it impossible for him to find comfort in any position. Pains curled in crannies, merely dozing. How he hated growing old. Even whisky was no good now. He wanted to scratch and yawn but could not do either. He saw Gerda’s face hazily. He never wore his glasses in public. She had been talking for hours.
    Gerda was wearing one of the long loose robes, too elegant to be called dressing-gowns, which she now often put on in the evenings. Lucius was not sure whether this new style represented a kind of informal intimacy or simply a compromise with comfort. Gerda never spoke about her health and in general preferred her own rigid conception of style to common ease. Tonight’s robe was of light wool, checkered blue and green, buttoning high to the neck and sweeping the carpet. Had Gerda, underneath it, undressed? Gerda’s straight dark brown hair was looped back from her face and held