thoroughly unfortunate and discreditable business which
luckily no one knew about - rather as though I had borrowed
without asking and then broken the pen or squash racquet of
some other boy who had generously promised to say nothing
about it. I knew I should have to give Morton some sort
of answer - one could not reply to a College prefect 'What
damned business is it of yours?' - but I played for time and
said, 'I've no idea, I'm afraid, Morton.'
'Oh, yes, you have,' he persisted. 'Come on, what's it all
about?'
'Well, it's some nonsense of Cook's,' I said, with a flash
of inspiration. 'He finds what he wants to find - that every22
one who's doing these tests is psychic or telepathic, or some
ruddy thing or other. The whole idea's an utter waste of
time.'
'And going to tea with Ma Cook - I suppose that's a waste
of time, too, is it?' asked Morton, leering.
'I don't think that calls for telepathy, really, Morton.'
There was room for only one idea at a time in Morton's
head. The one he had started with had now been replaced by
another - or more probably, Mrs Cook had been the one he
had started with; Sharp was likely to have said more about
her than about me. But as a College prefect Morton could
hardly discuss with a totally undistinguished fifth-former his
fierce affections and thoughts of what Venus did with Mars.
Snorting 'Huh! - one-track mind - like everyone else in "E"
House,' he disappeared into the junior common room. Even
then, this struck me as a classic example of projecting one's
own proclivity on to someone else. Thou rascal beadle, hold
thy bloody hand.
The fact was, as I soon began to realize, that I felt regretful,
and lowered in my self-respect, not only by what I
thought of as my disgracefully uncontrolled and hysterical
outburst in the Cooks' drawing-room, but also by my lewd
reaction to Mrs Cook touching me. If I was fastidious, even
puritanical, in this, there were causes originating well back
in my childhood. For years past there had hovered in my
tracks a kind of ambivalent familiar, at once harsh and
tutelary (or so I personified him to myself in my inward
fancy) - one who would close behind me tread for many
years to come. What he assured me was that I was physically
unattractive - ugly, not to mince words. Such at all events
was my belief, and I felt it endorsed both by the mirror and
by those who had to do with me. 'Such a pity he's not a
prettier little boy!' I had heard an old lady say, from the
other side of the French windows, one hot summer afternoon
when I was six. 'And the mother such a pretty girl, too,' her
companion replied. It may have been a year later, in the
playground, that I hesitantly offered a toffee to the class
beauty, a spoilt, curly-haired chit called Elaine Somers.
23
'Thanks, Pig-face,' she said, off-hand but not unfriendly, as
she pocketed it to eat later. From the way she spoke I knew
that was what they called me. I left her without a word.
Years before I could understand exactly what it implied, I
- a caddis larva crawling on the river-bed - had built firmly
into my stick-and-sand case the notion that as far as I was
concerned, silken dalliance was destined to lie permanently
in the wardrobe. I never kissed or embraced anyone if I could
help it - not even my mother, whom of course I loved dearly
- and if anyone kissed me I froze, letting them perceive that
it gave me no pleasure. There was a kind of bitter pride here,
like that of a lame boy who resents being given a hand.
This was my fate, so I thought. Very well, I would play the
ball as it lay and work out my own style of reciprocity; one
that had no need of touching, either with hands or lips. Long
before the unsought, spontaneous time-bomb of my first
orgasm went off by night in the sleeping dormitory, nolime-tangere
had become an accepted, no-longer-even-conscious
part of myself.
The beautiful, I think, often remain unaware of their
wealth, sweeter than honey in the honeycomb, taking for
granted the smooth lawns, tapestry meadows and shimmering
woods in which they are privileged to wander with their
own kind; idly supposing, when they give it a thought, that
all but the deformed, perhaps, are equally free to roam there
to any extent they please. To be in no least doubt about
one's physical attractiveness - that must be strange - as
strange as being an Esquimau. Yet the Esquimau does not
consider himself strange. 'Twill not be noticed in him there.
There the folk are all as mad as he. At sixteen I had become
adapted to the handicap I believed I carried. It was something
like tone-deafness, or vertigo on heights, and was perfectly
livable-with. One simply avoided music - or heights.
After all, it could have been enuresis, diabetes or epilepsy.
Paradoxically, however, I did briefly enjoy, while still at
Bradfield, what virtually no one else did - a bona fide, happy
and perfectly legitimate relationship with a real, live girl only
a year or two older than I; though there was nothing in the
least physical or in any way incandescent about it and I did
24
not even feel any very deep sorrow when it came to an end
in unhappy circumstances. During my last term - the summer
term of 1958 - having already, the previous February, won
an exhibition in modern languages to Wadham, I had a fairly
free hand; no one minding much, as long as I observed the
decencies, whether I did a great deal of work or not. I was
therefore a natural for co-option into the back-stage team
helping a master called David Raeburn to produce the Greek
play, which that year was the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. In
this capacity I turned my hand to all kinds of things, for I
had come to have a real love for the Greek theatre, that
unique glory and splendour of Bradfield; and although I never
felt any desire to act, was always happy knocking about in it.
I painted flats, repaired and furbished weapons and helmets,
heard people's lines and, if requested, was not even above
clipping the ivy or sweeping the terraces with a besom.
One of the housemasters had a Danish wife, and this lady's
niece, a rather hefty girl of about twenty, was living with
them for a year to improve - or rather, to perfect, for she
was already fluent and idiomatic - her English. She became
known as 'the Danish pastry', for she was not particularly
good-looking - a rare thing for a Dane, as I was later to discover.
If she had been I should not, of course, have had a
look-in, but as things were there was no competition. Kirsten
had also fallen under the spell of the Greek theatre, and
readily signed on for the duration under Raeburn's banner.
She was handy with a Primus and had learned to make good
tea. She also caused amusement by coaching Clytemnestra
and Cassandra, very
competently, in moving and gesturing
like women. As the production developed she became more
and more absorbed in it, learned to read (though not, of
course, to construe) Greek (any more than I could) and at
rehearsals would usually sit high up at the back of the auditorium,
her large bottom uncushioned on the bare stone,
from time to time whispering the lines under her breath as
they were spoken below. I would sit with her, text in hand,
and I can still hear the tense, suppressed excitement and
delight with which she would begin, with the Watchman,
"Qeovs |U,ei> atTtS r�>v8' aTraAAay^v irov
25
She was once more taking the first, joyous step into Aeschylus'
word-perfected, gravely-stylized world. I stepped beside
her: and later, would stroll back with her as far as her
aunt's garden gate. We never touched one another and our
conversation could have been overheard by anyone without
embarrassment to either of us.
I remember how we argued about the character of Clytemnestra
and whether, after her killing of Agamemnon, she
feels either guilt or dread. To Kirsten she was nothing more
than a selfish, insensitive murderess, fully expecting to get
away with her crime and fearing nothing in the security of
her royal power and the protection of her lover Aegisthus. I
was not so sure that this was what Aeschylus had meant, and
to find out more went the length of reading, in translation,
the second play of the trilogy, the Choephoroi (such as it is,
for the surviving text is incomplete). This is the play in which,
some considerable time after the murder, Clytemnestra's son
Orestes, who has fled from Mycenae, returns as a stranger
to revenge his father by killing her. Still mystified, I asked
Raeburn whether or not he thought that Clytemnestra recognizes
Orestes on his return. 'Of course she does,' he
replied. 'She knows him at once. She's been waiting for this
for years.' 'Then why doesn't she say anything?' 'Because she
knows there's nothing to be done but submit to what the
gods have appointed. She can only keep her dignity.' Yet
Kirsten could not accept an interpretation which involved
feeling at least some sympathy for the cruel and bloody Clytemnestra;
and there the enigma remained between us. I
liked her still more for her tenacity.
I see now, of course, that unconsciously I recognized and
respected a fellow-creature - a non-starter in the Aphrodite
stakes. Yet affection and warmth of feeling, though unexpressed,
certainly lay between us, as I discovered one day
to my own surprise. A boy called Hassall, seeing me approaching
Grubs, on the grass outside which he was eating icecream
with some of his cronies, called out, 'Here comes the
pastry-cook!' Thereupon, without hesitation or reflection, I
knocked him clean down Major bank and hurt him quite
badly, after which I simply walked away without a word. For
26
me, this sort of thing was so unusual that it evidently reached
the ears of my housemaster, an experienced, understanding
man with whom I had always got on well; for a day or two
later, meeting me coming through the College gateway, he
remarked, 'Hullo, Desland, off for some more useful work
with your friend in the Greek theatre?' I simply answered,
'Yes, sir.' 'Well, keep your hair on about it,' he said. 'Legpulling
doesn't always call for drastic measures, you know.'
We both smiled, and I replied, 'I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen
again.'
I heard a good deal about Denmark from Kirsten, and
naturally began to feel that I should like to go there and see
for myself some of the places she talked about. One day, as
we were walking through Hillside on our way back from a
Sunday afternoon rehearsal, she suggested rather tentatively
that I might perhaps consider coming over during my first
long vac. the following summer, when she would have returned
home to Arhus.
'The cathedral's well worth seeing, you know,' she said.
'It's the largest church in Denmark. A lot of it's late restoration,
but basically it's thirteenth-century and very beautiful.'
'I'd love to come,' I answered. 'For the matter of that, I
might very well manage a visit before the end of this year either
this September or else a bit before Christmas.'
'Oer, that would be loervely, but of course I shan't be there
then.'
'Won't you, Kirsten? Why, where will you be?'
'I shall be here still, of course. I stay until the end of the
year.'
'But that's not what you told me - when was it? - anyway,
surely not? You're leaving before the end of August.'
'I have not told you that, Alan. What do you mean?'
'Well, I simply mean - well, what I said. I know that, so
you must have told me.'
'Someone else must have told you something wrong. I'm
staying here until the end of this year. That's never been
different, so I couldn't have said it was.'
I was about to argue the matter when I realized how cornpletely
pointless - not to say irritating - it would be to do
27
so. Obviously she knew what her own arrangements were.
But I had been equally sure - certain, in my own mind - that
she was not going to be at Bradfield after August. If she had
not told me, who had? I had hardly ever spoken to her
uncle, the housemaster - our paths did not cross - let alone
his wife. I was reminded of a time a few years before -1 must
have been about eleven - when I had told a certain Mrs Best,
an acquaintance of my mother who had dropped in to tea,
that, being out on my bicycle two evenings before, I had seen
her going into The Swan at Newtown. She had smilingly but
firmly told me I was mistaken - she had not been there.
Knowing very well that I was right, I persisted. My mother
sent me down the garden to get some parsley and on the
way back intercepted me on the verandah. 'Alan, I'm sure
you're right, but for some reason she doesn't want to say
so.' 'But why not, Mummy?' 'I don't know. It's very silly, to
say nothing of being not true, but we'd better leave it at
that.' About six months afterwards Mrs Best was divorced
and she and her lover left the district, but of course it was
not until a good deal later that I put the two things together.
This was different, however. Who could possibly want to
deceive me about Kirsten? What was more, I still had the
odd feeling - as with Mrs Best - that I was right, come hell
or high water. Mrs Best had left her mark, though. I
apologized and said I would plan a visit to Denmark for the
following summer.
But I had another, scarcely-conscious reason for saying no
more. There was something disturbing about the business. I
felt apprehension and a faint, though distinct, nervous
anxiety, rather like that of a small child who has stumbled
on something he does not understand but intuiti
vely feels
to be beyond him, such as his mother's infidelity or some
symptom of illness that she does not want to be disclosed.
And, like a child, I hastened to get out of the way, to forget
what I had inadvertently come upon under a stone.
Once the Agamemnon was over, a good six weeks and more
before the end of term, Kirsten and I naturally saw less of
each other. We didn't arrange to correspond in the holidays
or make any immediate plans to meet again. That, of course,
28
would have been up to me rather than her, and I suppose
it was a case of 'Distress makes the humble heart diffident';
or perhaps the plant, deprived of Agamemnon, had little to
keep it flourishing. In any case, I was due to join my family
in Spain the day after term ended, and what with this and
the exciting prospect of going up to Wadham in October,
Kirsten rather faded out along with Bradfield.
Soon after the beginning of the Michaelmas term at Oxford
my housemaster dropped me a line, hoped all was going
well and said that if I thought it worth my while it would be
nice if I were to come along to the Old Boys' dinner in November.
Since I could conveniently fit this in with an Alec Guinness
production which I particularly wanted to see, I duly
turned up at the Connaught Rooms. As is customary at
these affairs, the current head boy - also a modern linguist
and hence an acquaintance of mine - was among the guests,
and after dinner we fell into conversation.
'What a shame, isn't it, Desland,' he said, 'about that poor
Danish girl? Friend of yours, wasn't she?'
'Kirsten? Why, what's happened?' I asked.
'Good grief! You mean you don't know anything about it?'
'No,' I said, 'I've heard nothing. What on earth are you
talking about?'
'Well, apparently she's got leukaemia and it's very serious.
They sent her home soon after the beginning of last holidays.
Tebbett had me into his study the first evening of term and
asked me to let the house know as quietly as possible. He
seemed awfully cut up about it: so's Ma Tebbett, naturally.'
I never heard what became of her. I don't know now.
There were, of course, no firm grounds at all - nothing
that anyone else would think in the least convincing - for
believing that I had had any kind of foreknowledge. Yet lying
awake that night, recalling this and that about Kirsten - her
quick, absent-minded little 'Tak' when I passed her the turpentine-soaked
rag to clean the paint off her hands, or the
tight, unconscious clutching of her fingers as the third chorus
closed and she waited for Agamemnon's terrible death-cry
from the palace - I came back always to the fact that, although
I had pretended otherwise to her and to myself, I
29
had remained inwardly unconvinced by what she had said
on the Hillside path that Sunday evening. Without recognizing
as much, I had gone on being sure that she would no
longer be at Bradfield in the autumn, and the knowledge
was not due to anything I had been told. I could not help
feeling upset and - well, I suppose, frightened. Was this sort
of thing likely to happen again? For a few days I worried
about it, off and on. Then I did the only thing I could do that
is, what I had done on the Hillside path, and what any
older person whose advice I had asked would certainly have
told me to do - began to think of Kirsten as someone I had
known at one time but would probably never meet again
(when we are young we have little enough pity until trouble
has taught us our own need for it), metaphorically shrugged
my shoulders about my intuition - if that was what it had
been - and turned my attention back to the highly enjoyable
but demanding new life I had begun to lead.
AT Oxford I continued, of course, with French and German
for my degree, but also made time to acquire at least a working
grip of Italian - a rewarding language, to say nothing of
the relative ease of learning it. Also, while still in my freshman
year, I began amusing myself with Danish. I still meant
to visit Denmark at some time or other, but apart from that,
I had been bitten by the bug of tongues and, like an adolescent
girl who has taken to horses, could not, for the time
being, have too much of the pentecostal stables. I joined the
The Girl in a Swing Page 3