Boys and Girls Come Out to Play

by Nigel Dennis

  I shall never forget one single thing that I see this morning, Morgan thought. It is all marvellous, beautiful, and a thousand times more wonderful than my dreams ever dared to make it.

  Suddenly the town came to an end; the street’s last cottage presented a bare wall to the open country. On the other side of the town lay fields of Willi Morgenstern’s potatoes and the lake of thick black water where tourists took the cure; but the landscape on this side was the scrubby land of gold-country—brown rocks blown over with dust, and ugly as sin. Half a mile away loomed a purplish mass which turned out to be a grove of firs; when Morgan reached it his shoes were thick with dust. A low stone wall surrounded the grove, which lay away from the dusty road like a green island. It looked so clean and fresh that Morgan vaulted the wall, and for half an hour he followed a winding path, feeling the moss under his feet and moving hypnotically in and out of the broken patches of light formed where the sun struck through the leaves. He walked in a daze of shock and joy, thoughtless, drained of every desire to fight or think. The sharp, spontaneous jumpings of his nerves and will, the beady eye with which he examined his mother and summed up prospective enemies, the instinct to leap into any gap that promised a better foothold, the wild determination to reject opposition, the painful grinding of the entrails as he screwed up his courage, the shattering trembling that possessed him from head to toe in moments of defiance, the contemptible struggle between cowardice and audacity, the enthusiasm for a love and beauty in which the absence of struggle and the prevalence of serenity so disarmed him as to make him weak with joy—all these emotions, that usually kept him keyed to a pitch of incessant, vigorous excitement until he collapsed into lethargy, were now so smoothed away that he felt need for neither triumph nor submission and was conscious only of a limitless, patient capacity.

  But he had barely subsided into this floating cradle of serenity when a cloud seemed to descend and settle over his brain, as though weights had suddenly been attached to the corners of his mind. It was a most familiar cloud: it arose out of his little bottle of white pills. His calming drug was doing its work as usual—but where, before, he had hated its intrusion, now he thought: Now that I am free, I can and shall deal with this.

  He sat down under a tree, and began to think about his life as though it were all finished and done with, and himself quite another person.

  He went back six years, to the moment when a kindly specialist, writing a prescription for him, had said: “Now, my boy, we are going to get you well saturated with some stuff.” He had not understood the phrase, but it had had a comforting, relaxing sound. In the following weeks he had been slowly absorbed into the new, saturated world.

  It was a swimming world in which everything was dim, mis-shaped with blur, and distant: a paradise for lethargic fishes. He was a boy in a huge diving-suit with lead-weighted feet, parting his way with superlative waste of effort through heavy water, peering ahead to pick out obstacles (such as people), and to make discoveries (such as his own feet), hearing faint calls and warnings from the normally-dressed, moving with the concentrated watchfulness that seems to the diver himself the utmost in catlike delicacy, and to the onlooker, in the boat on the surface, the perversion of a man into the world’s clumsiest pickled freak.

  But the diver was on land, in the grounds around the house which framed his torpid routine. He groped in the park, which was often hung over with mist, the lawns sodden with rain-water, the tree-tops out of sight, the gravelled paths crunching under foot with the soggy dullness of damp grit. On the days when the sun shone, the trees admitted it in glaring patches that hurt his eyes; the humidity of yesterday’s evaporating, warm rain-water, the sound of bees, and the pressure of thick scent from the flowers kept him in a prolonged apathy that was almost more numbing than the intervals of mist and rain. Now, resting in the grove, thousands of miles away, it seemed to Morgan that he had only slept or dreamwalked for six years; there had been times when he had scarcely been able to tell which he was doing. From time to time, spoons and forks entered his mouth and information had been pressed to his ears. But much of the time, whether sleeping or walking, he had dreamed of the day when he would tug the rope and be raised out of his humid underworld into paradise.

  From where he sat now, he could see paradise close enough to touch. It was the opposite of most paradises, in that it was as bare and fruitless as a desert. The air was so fine that it sang. His home was St. Jerome’s cell, with nothing to stumble over, since it contained only a table, a chair, a bed, and a lion manicured into perfect smoothness. Through the window he could see one thousand miles across ground as flat as a table-top to a horizon that was marked by one sharp, clean pencil-line. There was one tree—a deliberate joke, to emphasize the fact that there were no others—no bushes, nothing that was heavy or bulging or flabby or woolly. In paradise, unconsciousness of any kind was utterly forbidden; slowness of mind and stupidity were obscenities punishable by death. Except when it slept (like a diamond resting in a black box) the mind worked with a swiftness and clarity that suggested electrified geometry. The stark-naked body contradicted all laws of gravity and was as buoyant as a balloon. He would dance where others merely walked; his gestures would be so free that he would appear mad; when he shook hands, he would crack the other man’s bones. When an idea struck him, it would raise him into the blue sky: the quantities of fresh air he would engorge would give him an energy that was frightening to predict: he might at moments become a light-weight engine, of intensely-concentrated power but without a governor, racing at such a flighty speed that his only danger would be of breaking up into thousands of flying bits. With a magic syringe he would clear his mind of all clogging, numbing debris of somnolence and dullness; with a magic sword he would cut away ruthlessly the whole world of cotton puffiness, padding, congestion, and envelopment in eiderdowns.

  He looked at the trees, at the fresh morning sky, at the bright greenness of the moss and grass. He felt strength and confidence pouring into him. I have left it all behind, he told himself in triumph—the crushing, stuffy weight of hot, damp love, watchfulness, obedience, days and nights of torpor, endless sleeps, and responses without sharpness or fire.

  All that is left now is for me to throw away my pills—and my new self and my new life begin.

  He looked at the sky and was filled with joy.

  When he was calmer, he set his jaw and rose to his feet. He walked back by the path he had come, hardly noticing the things he passed, and for once supremely happy at walking in a dream.

  But when he saw the stone wall in front of him again, he jumped at it like a tiger.

  *

  He was still in this divided state of near-tears and laughter, singing to himself, and full of malice on account of his secret plot against his pills (whose bottle now seemed to hold everything in the world that was dangerous to him) when he crossed the square again and went upstairs to see Divver. But as he knocked on his guardian’s door, he composed his face and hid his secrets, so that he entered Divver’s room wearing adolescence’s most commonplace disguise—a gawky body topped by a head that was bent inquisitively and protected by a grin so sheepish as to be almost inane.

  Divver was lying in bed at the other end of the room. His head was propped up on the pillows with his hands behind it, a cigarette with a long ash slanted out of his mouth, scattered ash was spread over his open pyjama top, and his exposed chest, which was full in the sunshine, was covered with grey as well as black hairs. His face looked grey too, in patches of morning stubble. The remains of his breakfast still rested across his legs, ashes and butts mixed with smears of coffee and drying yolk of egg. Morgan was first of all shocked that any human being could coat up such a brilliant morning with so much shabby inertia and decay; then, when it struck him that this shabby creature was Divver, his own guardian, he was shocked again, because it was like meeting a stranger, a man who was hardly related to the Divver who laughed so heartily in Pembroke County and walked the deck on the At
lantic with the immense disdain of a seasoned traveller. And since Morgan too, below his disguise, was changing into another person, they sat opposite each other in a state of peculiar disbalance. They were still upheld for the most part by the pointed vigour that had carried them away from home, but they were already changing into wanderers, men who may depend on nothing but the stability and extent of their self-confidence. In Divver’s case the amount of such confidence seemed small: he looked at Morgan in a tired, heavy way, as though he had reached an old end rather than a new beginning.

  “Well, and where have you been?” he asked, the long ash dropping off the cigarette. His voice was friendly, but he showed no real interest.

  But the question instantly tore away Morgan’s disguise, and his eyes began to shine. “I just don’t know where to begin …” he said, and began to pant, as the story of his miraculous morning flew to his lips in a frantic muddle.

  Looking away, as if he had not heard anything, Divver said (still in the same resigned and empty voice): “It might be as well for you to let me know before you go off anywhere on your own. Just so I’ll know where you are.”

  It was an unexalted, disappointing response, but Morgan replied politely: “Yes, certainly, Max.”

  “After all, though I don’t like to say it …” Divver continued in the same monotone, looking drearily at the bedclothes.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “… I am sort of responsible for you….”

  “Why, of course.”

  “… and just so I can at least feel I’m doing what I promised I’ll do….”

  “I’ll push a note under your door the next time.”

  “Just a few words, nothing complicated. Believe me: I’m no dictator.”

  Divver took the cigarette out of his mouth, drew a heavy breath, and with what seemed to require great resolution from him, sat up and heaved the breakfast tray on to the bedside-table. In doing so he gave Morgan a quick glance, taking in the bright new suit and fresh shirt and tie, after which he slowly laid himself back on the pillows and lit a new cigarette. He appeared to have no more to say.

  After a pause Morgan said rather timidly: “Aren’t you well, Max?”

  Divver again drew a heavy breath, moistened his lips and answered: “Something went wrong. I didn’t get to sleep until 4 o’clock. Then I woke up at seven-thirty. I’d slept well enough on the ship: I don’t know why, suddenly …” All at once he made an effort to be energetic, and said briskly: “Well, let’s hear what you were up to this morning.” Then the dull expression instantly settled over his face again, and Morgan knew that it would be a generous act if he spared Divver the privilege of sharing his enthusiasm. Nonetheless, the words began to bubble out—all except the secret plot against the pills and Morgan’s other reflections in the grove….

  “Well,” Divver said, fifteen minutes later, “I’m glad you got a kick out of your first morning.” He looked at Morgan in a strange way, as though the boy were a creature from another world.

  “I assure you, it was more than just a kick. I had the feeling: I don’t know how to say it: I had …”

  “I guess I’ve arrived on this continent once too often,” Divver said. “The way I feel now I’d just as soon stay right here in bed.”

  “You mean, that’s what you’re going to do?” cried Morgan.

  Divver gave a short, contemptuous laugh. “It so happens it’s not what I’m going to do; but I’d have a perfect right to, if I wanted, wouldn’t I?” He looked full at Morgan, a most obvious sneer over his face.

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “What’s the time?” Divver asked suddenly.

  “It was nearly eleven when I came in.”

  “Is all that banging I’ve been hearing all night that clock you are so excited about?”

  “I guess so,” said Morgan, looking at Divver uneasily. It struck him that in seeing this new Divver he was already losing sight of the impressive figure that had appeared like a redeemer in his mother’s home; he was faintly shocked at the ease and speed of his disenchantment.

  “You’d better write your mother,” said Divver. “Just a card, following last night’s cable, to say you’re up and around.”

  “I guess so,” said Morgan, showing a sudden interest in one shoe and swinging it to and fro.

  “I shall send one to Lily. It’s completely formal. One doesn’t have to say anything; it’s just to reassure the loved ones that manhood’s still in flower.” He gave a quite cynical wink. “What’s it like outside?”

  “A terrific day! The sun’s shining; all the people are out now; they’ve got the tables set up in the square….”

  “O.K., O.K., don’t overwhelm me; I’ll get up.”

  “Are you going to Tutin?”

  “I guess the peace of the world can manage without me for a day or so longer.”

  Divver swung out of bed, and sat on the edge for a moment, his swarthy legs searching for his red Turkish slippers, his eyes dim and tired, the dropped ash tumbling down to his stomach and knees. He passed into the shiny, sunny bathroom like an old tramp-steamer into a tropical anchorage and closed the door.

  Morgan began to pace the floor, back and forth between the window and Divver’s open trunk. The top layer of the trunk had been untidied during the week of travel, but the lower layers still expressed the irreproachable services of a neat wife. Several pairs of shoes in brown-paper scabbards were arranged around two square mounds of books: The Oxford History of Poland, Elements in the Slavic Genius, Europe in Ferment, Death Walks on Stilts, Laugh and Grow Fat: An Anthology of Comedy from Aristophanes to P. G. Wodehouse, etc., etc. Two of Divver’s suits still lay with folded arms under the cleaner’s shroud; fresh shirts bore around their chests the familiar blue stripe of a New York laundry, and the words, “Well, sir! I’m waiting!”

  Fifteen feet from the trunk Divver’s window looked out on to the Hotel Poland’s back-courtyard. Two horse-drawn drays stood by the baggage entrance, unloading a heap of tourists’ trunks and suitcases, mostly slicked up from edge to edge with hotel and steamer stickers. Outside a row of garages, two chauffeurs with rolled sleeves and rubber boots were washing down their limousines. Behind the garages the grounds were split by a high wall; on the left stretched the rows of the hotel vegetable garden; on the right were six tennis courts, with white figurines bobbing over them, and a swimming pool ringed with spots of colour from bathing-suits and umbrellas, and sending up to the window the faint cries and splashes of the bathers. In a dream of contentment Morgan stared at the scene of colour and indolence until he was glutted, and wandered back from the window to stare at his reflection in Divver’s full-length mirror. I am certainly no ordinary person he said to his image, looking it up and down with considerable pride. Someday I shall certainly astonish somebody by doing something. The average Pole, he thought—passing again in front of the mirror at full height and vaguely wondering just what an average Pole might be—would certainly not dismiss me as a nobody. Perhaps, after all, one travels to a foreign country not to see it, but to be seen by it.

  Divver opened the bathroom door: Morgan swiftly turned his back on the mirror and greeted him with a boyish smile. I shall remind myself not to judge him too hastily, he thought. I owe him everything—all this—he went on to think; and the thought seemed more and more incredible, as he watched Divver slowly putting on his clothes, and looking at himself in the mirror as he tied his tie, without the faintest trace of interest.

  “Well,” said Divver, “all dressed for the funeral. The way I feel, Mell isn’t going to bowl me over.”

  “Wait till you see it.”

  Hundreds of tourists might have stayed away from Mell this year through fear, but as many hundreds seemed to have come precisely because they feared that they might never be able to come again. When Divver and Morgan entered the square it was bordered by innumerable little round tables, each painted in the colour of its particular café and forming a distinct bunch of pa
inted circles—yellow began where blue ended, leaving only a few inches of cobblestones between; blue ran into red, red into tricolour stripes, tricolour into the dignified cream of the most expensive restaurant: over the tasselled awnings and the stiff umbrellas flapped the flags and streamers of all the nations. Tourist-girls ambled over the square, looking like sun-drunk, painted Indians seeing the world suddenly through the civilized, half-imbecile stare of sun-glasses. The men were walking cut-outs of the most varied international summer dandyism—in pale grey flannels with dazzling silk handkerchiefs in the cuffs and the breast-pockets; lemon shantungs; white and striped seersuckers; olive gabardines; stiff, yellowish-white cricketing flannels below navy blue jackets and emblazoned blazers; brogues parti-coloured in black, brown and blanco; crêpe-soled yellow doe and buckskins; high ambers and suedes; a sea of light hats bobbing on top. There was a steady rattle of high heels on the cobbles, and more voices and languages crossing in the air than there was room for; the women’s voices ringing out clear and hard over everything—so much so that an old, square-built Anglo-Indian, in pure white from head to foot, wearing a solar topee and carrying a stout stick on one elbow and a thin wife on the other, paused from time to time and made weighty half-turns, like a locomotive on a turntable, bending his head incredulously toward some shrill sound.

  “What the hell do you plan to do with yourself all day?” Divver asked, stopping suddenly in the middle of the square and looking Morgan up and down sharply. “I’ll be in Tutin mostly; you realize that, don’t you?”

  “I just can’t imagine how I’ll have time for all I want to do.”

  “But what? Just wandering around in circles, like these people?”

  “Sure. I could just wander here for ever.”

  “You’d better start making a few friends: take my advice. I’ll look out for some for you, too; then you can fill each day with a proper schedule.”

  Morgan looked away at the other tourists. Deep in his heart, and guiltily, he was astonished to find that he was already beginning to be ashamed of Divver. Divver was clean and respectable, but among the tourists he looked neither. His suit belonged to that hey-day of inverted intellectual pride which bought its clothes at Barney’s. He walked with a deliberate, resentful slouch, studying the crowd as if he were ashamed of it, and more ashamed of being with it. When he bumped into someone he didn’t simply apologize or just walk on; he turned grimly and stared after the person, muttering, as though something extraordinary had happened.