The Charioteer

by Mary Renault

  “It doesn’t matter in any case. It’s been a lovely party; thank you both for asking me.”

  He started to get up. Alec reached out a surprisingly firm hand and quietly pulled him back.

  “The thing about all that was, Bim had just about got to the end, and Ralph happened to be the only person who could do anything with him.”

  Laurie thought of a good answer to this; but something gave him pause, and he didn’t say it.

  “It’s a shame you couldn’t have met Bim a few months ago; well, even a few weeks. He was light relief, you know. Pure Restoration comedy. I don’t know how long it is since he averaged more than two or three hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, he’s stopped talking about it; they’re not supposed to let on how far under strength they are. As a matter of fact, I think Bim’s one of two or three people who are still alive of the original squadron a few months back. I’ve no idea how long a break they’ve given him now, but I do know it takes a lot of sedative to cancel out a week’s benzedrine, especially if you’ve forgotten how to give it the chance. He can’t go on much longer. It’s too bad you had to meet him just tonight.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken any notice.”

  “Oh, my dear, it was just what he was after. If you hadn’t played I think he’d have collapsed like a house of cards, and I’d have hated that. He’s had a bit of a thing about Ralph for quite a while, but Ralph’s always managed to laugh it off successfully, up till tonight.”

  “Oh,” said Laurie. “I see.”

  “I was sure you would. Just a minute.” He got up and took a plate of sandwiches from Sandy, who looked rather sulky about it. “Do have something to eat; I’m going to. Sandy’ll cope with the rabble. How long have you been discharged from hospital, by the way? There was such a babel going on when Sandy told me.”

  “It’ll be another week or two, I expect.”

  “Oh, God. No wonder Ralph … I thought you were looking tired. What will they do to you when you get back?”

  “Oh, nothing much. First offense. I feel fine. I think, you know, that probably I ought to be going. If you’d just tell Ralph that I’m sorry I couldn’t wait.”

  “If it’s a matter of time, it’ll be quicker to wait for him. He can’t be long.” He bit into a sandwich, opened it to look inside, and stuck it together again. “I wonder what I put in that one, it’s rather good. In case I didn’t make this clear, there isn’t the slightest reason why Ralph should take any responsibility for Bim, except that he’s a person whom responsibility always seems to stick to.”

  “I suppose he always was.”

  “It was rather bad luck, his getting beached. Especially as it was a matter of inches, literally. He lost just half a finger too many. Two and a half instead of two. With two he’d probably have got back on the active list again.” He opened another sandwich. “A good deal seems to have happened to Ralph at Dunkirk, one way and another.”

  Just then Sandy came up and said tartly, “Alec, if you could possibly tear yourself away for a moment, Peter and Theo want to say goodbye.”

  Alec said, with pointed friendliness, “Just a moment, Laurie; I’ll be right back.” He went and saw off the people who were leaving; immediately after, Laurie saw him get Sandy in a corner and give him what looked like a quiet but concentrated dressing-down. When Sandy began to argue, he silenced him with a look and turned away.

  “I’ve brought you a drink,” said Alec, returning. “Don’t take any notice of Sandy; he gets little turns, but they don’t mean a thing.”

  Laurie took the unknown mixture and tasted it. It was smooth on the palate and, he guessed, concealed a ferocious kick; but it made him feel, for the moment, better. Alec said, “It’s what Ralph calls his special.”

  “You were going to tell me something. I can’t remember what it was now. About Ralph at Dunkirk, or something.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, on second thoughts, I can’t remember what it was either.”

  “Just as you like.”

  “Don’t be like that about it. It’s just—oh, well, nothing, except that Ralph’s got a funny idea about me this evening and it seems rather a moment not to add to it. You see, to give you a slightly more intelligible angle on all this, perhaps I ought to explain that Ralph and I at one time saw a good deal more of each other than we do now.”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  Alec looked at him without annoyance and said, “Yes, of course. So you’ll see how it is that I might know one or two things about Ralph which at the time he told them to me might seem in some degree to be my concern, and which afterwards one would regard as, well, privileged.”

  “Yes,” said Laurie hazily. “Yes, quite.” He could feel the potion dissolving his fatigue into a loose-limbed relaxation. He thought that Alec had a pleasant, restful voice.

  “So just now my name’s mud, which isn’t enjoyable, especially as I can do damn-all about it; but I mind more about Ralph, really. Not that I’m anything much now, of course; it’s just that so many of Ralph’s things have gone, if you understand me.”

  “What did you put in this drink?”

  “Oh. Oh, yes, of course. Don’t mind me, just drop off when you feel like it.”

  “No, stay here and talk. I like it. Only Sandy doesn’t like it. You know about that?”

  “Yes, I know about that. It’s not good for him to be let get away with it. He’ll be all right. What makes me cross about people like Ralph is the way everyone uses them. Their life gets like one of those ham spy films where they brief the agent and say, ‘But remember, one slip and you’re on your own.’ Take school. I went to a conventional public school and by firmly eluding all responsibility, I managed to get along nicely. Really, it makes me feel quite indignant when I think what must have been put on Ralph; and then, when the crack-up happened, no one was even sorry for him. Except you, of course.”

  “Sorry for him?” Laurie opened his eyes wide; for a moment he struggled awake; he stared at Alec. “I wasn’t sorry for him.”

  Alec looked at him. “I see,” he said slowly. “Oh, God, yes, now I see everything.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He listened to the drag of his own voice and thought, No doubt about that. Drunk. Stinking.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Alec. “Let it go. No one but a lunatic would shove his oar in here, anyway.”

  “I think we’re both a little bit tight. I am.”

  “Oh, well, then we know where we are, don’t we? In vino veritas: alarmingly true, usually, don’t you find? It’s nice to know you make such a candid and sympathetic drunk; it’s reassuring, as far as it goes. Were you very surprised to find that Ralph remembered you after all?”

  “He’s got a very good memory. Knew everyone’s name, all the little twirps, first day of term, everyone.”

  “Listen, Laurie. Are you listening?”

  “Sorry, Alec. You shouldn’t have put all that in this drink.”

  “Oh, well. Can you see Sandy anywhere about?”

  “No. Not here. Shall we look?”

  “No, he’s just being naughty. We must leave him a bit longer or he’ll get spoilt. Everyone seems quite happy.” The few guests who were left seemed, indeed, to be sufficiently entertaining one another. “Do you think it funny that a person who’s been attracted by Ralph should also be attracted by Sandy? Or do you think I’m just not particular, as they say?”

  “No, I think you’re nice. Funny, but really very nice.”

  “Too kind, as Florence Nightingale said to Edward the Seventh. Much too kind, I’m afraid. T. E. Lawrence has a rather sad passage about ‘complex men who know how sacrifice uplifts the redeemer and casts down the bought.’ He doesn’t use the word ‘complex’ flatteringly, and neither do I. Ralph’s tragedy is that he’s retained through everything a curious innocence about it. I suppose when at last he loses that, the tragedy will be complete.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Oh, hello. I thought you passed out minutes ago. R
alph won’t be long.”

  “Is he all right? You said he’s in a spot. You said then—tell me again. Can I do something? Where is he?”

  “Not now. Take it easy. He’ll be on his way back by this time.”

  “No, tell me, please, if I can do something. I want to know.”

  “Not for the moment. It’s a pity, as things are, he takes such a functional view of his own existence. He isn’t even scrapping himself tragically; just by fits and starts of irritation, like throwing out junk you don’t see a use for. I don’t suppose, really, there was ever a time when I could have done much about it. Complex man with his mean little instinct of self-preservation. He could get plenty of full-time passengers, God knows, but he despises them. No, I see now the only kind of person who’d offer him some hope of happiness would be someone up to his own strength with the continual patience to go on concealing it. Or, of course, the modesty not to know it, which would mean an innocence comparable in its way with his own.”

  Laurie, who disliked to feel himself slipping, had been determined to follow every word of this. He opened his heavy eyes.

  “Like Bunny?” he said.

  “What?”

  “This friend of his. Bunny, isn’t it, he said?”

  “Oh, dear God. Make yourself comfortable, my dear. Lie down properly and put your feet up; that’s the way. I’m not going to bother you any more.”

  “I’m not so sleepy. When Ralph comes back, if he’s in a fix you’ve got to wake me. No good keep talking about he’s in trouble, and not do anything. Ralph was very good to me.”

  “Was he? Laurie. Laurie. Just a minute. It doesn’t matter about the rest if you just listen to this. Do you hear?”

  “Yes?” Laurie half sat up, rubbing an arm smarting from Alec’s wiry strength. “Yes, I can hear. What is it?”

  “Stick around Ralph for a bit. Will you? You, not anyone else. That’s all. Just stick around.”

  “That’s all right. I won’t go away. I’ll wait for him here if it takes all night.”

  Alec looked down at him for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, got up and went over to the group by the fire. Someone said, “Sandy seems to have vanished lately. Is all well?”

  “Oh, yes; he’s making coffee or something, I expect.”

  “Well, you were having a rather cozy get-together.”

  “That? I was just carrying out an experiment in sleep-suggestion. They do it in Brave New World, with tiny little radios under the pillows.”

  “I think I should check your results a good long way from Sandy, if I were you. And just possibly from Ralph Lanyon—or am I letting my imagination run away with me?”

  Laurie opened his eyes, vaguely. By some biochemical trick, now that he was free to sleep he found that he couldn’t. He hung in a suspended half-consciousness. Alec’s cocktail couldn’t be wearing off so soon; he discovered that he hadn’t even finished it. It occurred to him that the drug Ralph had given him, earlier, had been the potent force; that it was passing its peak, and that though he was both torpid and rather drunk, he was neither to the point of incapacity. He would get up as soon as Ralph came back, and give them all a surprise. Ralph would …

  The door opened. Ralph looked in and, ignoring everyone else in the room, said, “Alec. Can you come for a minute?”

  Laurie sat up. He felt dizzy and swayed a little as he got to his feet; but this did not affect at all the strange sharpness which had happened in his mind, like the sudden crystallization of a fluid, as soon as he heard Ralph’s voice. Out of all the known and unknown possibilities, he guessed at once what kind of emergency this was.

  He was still drunk enough to have lost certain social inhibitions. The discreet murmur of the residual guests (by now there were only four), and their careful noninterference, infected him with no hesitation. Implanted in his mind, at some nonrational level, was the idea that Ralph was in a fix and needed him. He followed Alec out to the landing.

  The party had been discreetly lit with a couple of shaded table lamps; by contrast, the naked light from the open door of the bathroom seared the eyes. Ralph ran down the stairs with the brisk neatness of a seaman; Alec holding the banisters swung down in strides and was just behind him. Laurie, arriving last, found them both kneeling over Sandy, who was lying on the bath mat with a dressing-gown thrown over his naked body. He was groaning, and showing the whites of his eyes. Round his left wrist was a tourniquet made of a folded handkerchief, a toothbrush, and a strip torn from a towel. The bath was half full of crimson water.

  Alec said nothing. With a feverish but instinctively exact movement, he took Sandy’s other wrist and felt the pulse.

  Ralph said, “He’s all right. I left the bath so that you could see how much he’s lost. You can tell in water better than I can.”

  Alec looked up. “Not more than two pints at the most, I should think. Pulse about ninety-six. Sandy!”

  Sandy groaned, and turned his face away.

  Speaking across him as though he were an inanimate object Ralph said, “I heard him in here, doing that, as I came upstairs. The door wasn’t locked.”

  Sandy rolled over toward Alec again. “Let me alone,” he said in a dying voice. “I want to finish it. Go away.” Ralph slapped him lightly across the face and said, “Shut up.”

  “Please, Ralph,” said Alec, “not now. He’s feeling ill.”

  “He’s not feeling half as ill as I’d like to make him.”

  “Go away,” said Sandy. “Go away.”

  Laurie felt sorry for Alec but his sympathies were with Ralph. There was no doubt that Sandy looked a disgusting spectacle, with his pale damp face, his head lolling on the bath mat, his watery eyes upturned. He had thrown off the dressing-gown as he moved, and Ralph with a gesture of distaste twitched it back again. The movement caught Laurie’s eye. Suddenly he realized Ralph had taken off his glove; it was the left hand Laurie was looking at.

  He had seen so much in hospital that if it had been displayed to him deliberately, in a moment when he had been thinking about it, he would have felt scarcely a qualm except of sympathy; but now, he felt a catch in his stomach. Not only the two last fingers were missing and half the second, but the outermost bone of the hand had gone too, taking with it the margin of the palm and narrowing it by an inch. The effect was strange and clawlike; at the edge, and at the stumps of the fingers, the recently healed flesh was still red and mauve. Ralph was balanced on his heels, his good hand holding the edge of the bath; and it came back to Laurie that he had had beautiful hands, with which he had never made an affected or exhibiting movement; neither coarse nor overfine, full of intelligence and adaptable strength. The one that was left was still the same.

  Just as if Laurie had spoken aloud, Ralph’s head came up and their eyes met. He said coolly, “Shut the door, Spud.”

  At the sound of Laurie’s name Sandy squirmed around toward Alec, moaning.

  “Alec—don’t bring him here. Oh, how could you? No no, it’s too much.”

  “Shut up,” said Ralph. “I’ll bring the police if you don’t behave.”

  Laurie said, “I’m sorry. I’d better clear out.”

  “Don’t go, Spud,” said Ralph. “I might want you.” He jerked the chain of the bath-plug and the water started to gurgle out. Suddenly he said in an urgent undertone, “Bolt the door. Don’t make a row about it.”

  Laurie slid the bolt home softly. Next moment the handle turned, persistently, but in a refined, rather furtive way. Laurie knew at once that a woman was doing it. It hadn’t struck him before that in an unconverted house the bathroom might be shared. Ralph slammed his right hand flat over Sandy’s mouth, cleared his throat raspingly, and gave a loud, aggressively masculine cough. The door-handle went dead, and a fading creak sounded on the stairs.

  “That would have been pretty,” Ralph said. He removed his hand from Sandy’s face and added, “All right, you can start groaning again now.”

  “We’ll have to get him out of this,” said
Alec.

  “You’ve got something there. Here, you.” He shook Sandy’s shoulder. “Get up, damn you. You’ve got to move.”

  “Don’t, Ralph.” Alec knelt down beside Sandy and put an arm around his shoulders. “Look, old dear, you’ll get pneumonia lying here all wet on the floor. You’ve got to let us get you to bed. Try and sit up, come on.”

  There was certainly a good deal of water about. Laurie noticed for the first time—the darkness of the navy cloth had disguised it—that Ralph’s uniform was soaking wet from shoulder to knee. It couldn’t have been a light job to heave Sandy unaided out of the bath; Laurie was struck forcibly with this while they were trying to persuade the patient onto his feet. Clammy, slippery, and repulsive to the touch, he kept sliding through their hands like a fish and subsiding on the mat again. Laurie saw Ralph open his mouth, shut it after a glance at Alec, and swear to himself soundlessly.

  “Sandy,” said Alec. He was panting with exertion; his face looked white and strained. “Sandy, try. Why can’t you get up? What is it?”

  “I’m going to die,” said Sandy. “Oh, God, I’m going to die.” He rolled over and was violently sick on the bath mat.

  Ralph let go of him and stood up. Sitting back against the edge of the bath, with his hands in his pockets, he stared down at Sandy silently; then he looked at Alec. Laurie, who was well sobered up by now, had a powerful consciousness that he shouldn’t be there, and looked behind the bath for a floorcloth. The smell of steam, blood, vomit, and stale drink was overwhelming.

  The silent conversation behind his back ended, or perhaps was cut off by the sounds Sandy was making. Laurie was in time to see Alec taking his pulse again. His face had a blotchy, blue-and-yellow look. Ralph said, unemotionally, “He can’t possibly have taken anything, as well, I suppose?”

  Alec said, “Sandy, have you? Sandy! Sandy, you must tell us. Sandy—please.”