‘I do not.’
‘—and who’s to say whether you are or not, it makes no difference what you call it, because you’re caught, and there’s no way out, you’re trapped, wrapped up and ready for destruction, corruption, whatever he wants, but I’m detached, I can see him as he is, and he’s against us, Jane, against everything.’
‘Against what?’
‘Against—against Mendleton, against history, against tradition, against society. Oh, probably he never thinks of it like that, he’s probably not even aware of what he is doing, simply doing it, and if you told him he’d just mock you with his big brown eyes and tilt his nose for an instant in derision to let you know he didn’t care whether you were right or not. Because he doesn’t think like that, you can tell from watching him listen to people talk. He thinks we’re all insane, talking of things that don’t matter, ridiculous things, like love and morality and right. He doesn’t act the way we act, with a sense of principle. He no more thinks like that than an animal. He lives for the precise moment and its possibilities, not planning for things to happen, but causing them by his presence, by his failure to plan and to think like us, putting us at a perpetual disadvantage, so the things he’s caused seem inevitable, uncontrollable. And if you appealed to his better instincts you would appeal to something that’s not there. He has instincts, all right, but they’re neither good nor bad to him, they’re simply instincts and to be obeyed, so you can’t tell the instincts from the man as you can with normal people, where the struggle between instinct and society or morality or training shows on the face, in the eyes, in a gesture checked or a nervous contraction, but for him there is no struggle, no conflict to show in the eyes, no moral world at all, don’t you see, simply the world? It’s as though his moral sense has been amputated, as though he lacked some obvious faculty like sight or hearing, as though somewhere in Borneo or one of those places he was talking about a witch-doctor had operated on him with some voodoo drug and removed it, leaving no scar. But not even that, quite, for after an amputation the patient goes on feeling the lost limb, the man without a leg aches with his missing toes, and the ache is as real as when the toes were there, the senses play tricks, you can never forget you once had a limb where there is now only space or a wooden leg or a metal shoe, and even an appendix whisked out by the best surgeon in London leaves its absence in the tangible reminder of an intimate scar, but with him there is no scar, no continuity of feeling after the amputation, so he must have been born without one, without that sense which distinguishes men from beasts; perhaps he doesn’t even know he’s defective, different, doesn’t realize how much advantage he takes of people.’
‘I simply have no idea of what you’re talking about, Teddy,’ I said. ‘You’ve met him exactly once, and you’ve hardly spoken to him, and then you come out with all this piffle. What suddenly made you know all this nonsense?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Teddy, and he pulled his pyjama jacket tight round his neck and hunched himself up. ‘I don’t understand it myself, I just know what happened to me when I got close, and then I sensed it. I’ve never been so frightened in my life.’
‘Well, that’s rot, utter rot, and I ought to know, I’ve slept with him.’
‘He’d sleep with anyone, anyone.’
‘I dare say he would. But that doesn’t make him all the things you’ve been talking about. Sometimes you make me wonder if you’re all there, Teddy.’
‘I can feel it. I know it.’
Well, a blank wall like that isn’t worth arguing with, and I seriously wondered if Teddy might not be feverish or something, because there was a very odd look in his eyes indeed, and he absolutely refused to tell me when and where he suddenly came to his fantastic conclusion. He just said it was something he had to absorb and understand for himself before he could talk about it, but that he felt he had to tell me David was evil, and I said that was piffle again, and then we kissed good night and he went away, and thank goodness for that, I thought he was going to go on all night, but he gave up suddenly like that as though remembering how frightened he’d been stopped him. And of all the nonsense that was the most ridiculous, because there was nothing frightening about David, though he was rather odd, as I’ve said.
And a few days later he was really very odd indeed, because we’d been playing tennis and had come in and he’d just entered my bedroom and put his hand there when he said something that no one had ever said to me before and certainly I hope they don’t ever again, because it was a very dirty word indeed, and I wasn’t even quite sure what he’d said, though I’d heard right the first time, or exactly what it meant, though it was obviously very dirty, so I said: ‘What did you say?’
And he repeated it, and I asked what it meant, though I was a bit put out that he should say it to me, and then a sort of cold dreamy look came over his face and he explained very slowly and in great detail and I would really have been terribly shocked, only I didn’t have time to be, because he suddenly launched himself on me and by the time we’d finished I was sweating, because it was like nothing that had gone on before. And then he covered himself up as usual, and lay absolutely still, though with a smile on his face and his eyes open, and I couldn’t move at first, I felt terribly lethargic, and that I was going to sink off to sleep, which I’d never done before, I felt exhausted, but at last I forced myself awake, and for no reason I suddenly said: ‘I think I hate you,’ which wasn’t true, really, though when I’d said it I wondered if it might not be. But he didn’t move a muscle, he just lay there looking at me in a sated sort of way, and then he said: ‘It does you credit,’ and turned over on his back and went to sleep. And so I watched him, lethargically, wondering whether I did hate him, and why he’d said that word, and why I’d said I hated him when I didn’t, or did I? And I felt terribly aloof and distant from him, though our sides were touching, and I was very conscious of his skin and bones and tissue, but I still didn’t have any feeling about him very much, and while I was thinking about all this, he woke up and said: ‘You sweated that time,’ and I said: ‘Yes, I did, so what?’, but he didn’t answer, he just sighed in a contented way, so I said: ‘What makes you tick, David?’
‘Tick? Do I tick?’
‘No, no. What do you think about all the time? What do you feel? You never say anything about what you feel.’
‘I feel good,’ he said, but only after a long pause. Then he got up and said: ‘I’d better be getting back. Raymond may want the car,’ and I didn’t want him to go so soon, so I said: ‘Teddy thinks you’re evil,’ but he said: ‘Oh, really?’ and went into Teddy’s room to get dressed, and then he came back and said: ‘How do you like sweating when you make love?’ and I hadn’t thought about it, but I had felt exhausted, so I said: ‘It’s tiring,’ and he said: ‘It’s a pity you want to be an English lady, Jane,’ so I said: ‘What do you mean?’ and he laughed and said: ‘Every English woman thinks sex is a bore till someone shows them, and then they don’t always change their minds. Do you think you’ll change yours, Jane?’
‘But I never thought it was a bore.’
‘Yes, you did, with your Ralph. It’s a means to you, to every woman, first of getting a man, then of getting a child.’
‘I think you’re terribly rude.’
‘I’m not a gentleman,’ he said, and he stood there mocking me with his beautiful deep rich-brown eyes, and then he said: ‘And I’m not even an angry young man. Poor Jane, nowhere to fit me in. I think it’s time you got married, Jane,’ and I wondered if he was proposing to me, and I suppose he saw that, because he said: ‘Not to me,’ very quickly and nastily, and soon after that he went back to Cartersfield and for an hour or two I did hate him, because I hate everyone who says things I don’t understand, except Teddy, but then everything he says is nonsense, and then I decided I didn’t, and next day I phoned and asked if he was coming over that afternoon to play tennis, and he said he was terribly sorry but he’d pulled a muscle that last time and couldn’t pla
y for a week or two, he was sorry, and I could tell from the way he said it that he was lying, and I told him so, but he insisted it was the truth, in a sort of astonished and polite way that was simply maddening.
‘But won’t you come over anyway?’
‘I’m afraid Raymond wants the car.’
And so I knew he wouldn’t come back to do that, and I suppose I knew it the same way Teddy thought he knew David was evil, and for a day or two I wondered if he might not be right, Teddy, I mean, but then evil’s all nonsense, and I’d never liked David very much, and there’s an awful difference between being not very nice and being evil, and anyway I found I couldn’t even hate him properly. He’d never really touched my feelings at all, you see, and though I cried after he’d said that on the phone, I didn’t cry for long, though I thought about him a good deal, but not him so much as his body, and I wished he would come over, because I decided I really didn’t care what he was like, but he was terribly good at making love, and it was nonsense about me not enjoying it and I wanted to prove it to him, and there was only one way of doing that, and then I said that awful word once or twice to myself, but it didn’t have the same power when I said it, it needed a man’s voice, and then I pulled myself together and went and practised my service, only it was rather awful coming back to the house and knowing he wasn’t there to come in and put his hand there like that without a word, because even if he was rather odd he was terribly exciting.
And Mummy asked where he was these days, and Daddy said: ‘Poor Jane, she’s lost her young man,’ till I could have killed him, because he wasn’t my ‘young man’ ever, he was, well, he was David, and very special, and when Daddy said that he sounded so protective and loving, and he obviously didn’t understand at all, I could have killed him, that’s all.
3
IT WAS a heat-wave, said everyone. Every day for a week now the sun had shone bright and hot, as though determined to make up for the dismal spring. Nearly midsummer, the evenings were full of swifts and martins, and the trees were richly green along the roads and lanes round Cartersfield. Mr Thomson at Mendleton and Mr Ponting at Long Acre Farm had safely gathered their first hay, and Mr Henderson smiled without impatience when people stopped him in the street to ask him not to go praying for rain again. The gravel-pits were busy every evening, with the high criesofchildren competing with the twittering of birds across the water, moorhens scuttering for shelter in clumps of reeds, dogs barking furiously at their swimming masters, incensed at the incomprehensible change of element, the moon slowly filling in a sky that dwindled and dwindled but seemed scarcely to fade into night till long after everyone had gone home.
On Saturday there was the usual dance at the Lord George Brunswick Memorial Hall. The doors stood open, since the evening was so warm, and before one could distinguish a tune one heard the steady thump-thump-thumpity-thump-thump of the cymbal and drum from the four-piece band. Nearer one could distinguish occasional gusts of saxophone and a few tinkles from the upright piano used for Thursday choir practice and the Women’s Institute’s opening and closing hymns. The fourth musician played a double-bass that was always inaudible, but the band leader said he kept the whole combo together if you really listened. On the big drum was written CHUCK CARPENTER AND HIS RHYTHM. All the men wore white shirts with claret bow-ties and black trousers, and Chuck himself sported a pale-blue velvet coat. From time to time he sang, his eyes swooning at the sounds of his own voice, and his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down dramatically.
‘It’s high time you and Allen got married,’ said Betty Tarrant to Ruth Stevens. They were standing together with a group of girls near the door.
‘I don’t see why,’ said Ruth. ‘We get on fine the way we are.’
‘How many years have you two been going steady now? It’s a scandal.’
‘Just because we like each other’s no reason for thinking that,’ said Ruth.
‘Don’t you ever want to settle down and have a family? Or are you going to spend your life selling lipsticks at Hudson’s?’
‘I’ll suit myself,’ said Ruth, ‘so you needn’t bother your head about it, thank you very much.’
‘There’s no need to get stuffy,’ said Betty. She did let her engagement ring show for a moment, though, as if to demonstrate the superiority of her position. Ruth sniffed.
‘Oh, look,’ said Betty, nudging her, ‘there’s that nephew of the vicar’s. Quite a smasher, isn’t he?’
‘He’s not bad.’
David joined a group of men of his own age at the other side of the hall, apparently unconscious of the stir his entrance caused. The week’s sun had given him no tan, merely a slight sallowness, as though his face was slightly and evenly dirty. He stooped his head for a moment to light a cigarette, then leaned back against the wall and observed the scene with an indolent smile. Chuck Carpenter began to sing ‘Teen Angel’.
‘There you are,’ said Ruth to Allen Bradshaw, ‘where have you been?’
He wiped his mouth guiltily on his sleeve and said: ‘Just having a wet.’
‘Men,’ said Ruth. ‘All you want to do is drink.’
‘You don’t mind me having a drink, do you?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t leave me alone here, that’s all. Betty’s been on at me about why we aren’t engaged.’
‘Well, that’s none of her business.’
‘It’s mine, though,’ she said. They were dancing now, and she paused as they passed the bandstand in order not to be drowned by the wails of Chuck Carpenter’s saxophone, he having decided that the maximum emotion could be wrung from ‘Teen Angel’ only with the maximum, and amplified, volume of his horn. When they were out of immediate range she said: ‘Why aren’t we, Allen?’
‘Because I haven’t proposed to you, Ruthie, that’s why.’
‘I know that.’
‘Listen, I’m only twenty-one. What do you want me to do, tie myself down?’
‘I’m twenty-one, too.’
‘You didn’t spend two years in the Army. I don’t want to get married yet, Ruth, that’s all. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you or anything. I just don’t want to get married yet.’
‘You could ask me to marry you, all the same.’
‘Not likely. Then everyone’d start pestering about the day. I don’t want to set a day. I’m too young to be married.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ said Ruth.
They danced in silence for a few more moments, then she said: ‘I want to sit down.’
‘O.K.’
They went over to two chairs under a portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh and sat down.
‘Look.’ said Allen, ‘we’ve been through all this before, haven’t we? I’m very fond of you, Ruth, but don’t push me. I’ve only been out of the Army a year. I want to get on a bit before I settle down. I don’t earn enough yet, anyway.’
‘We do together,’ said Ruth, at once. ‘I could stay on at Hudson’s for a bit, till you start getting good money.’
‘No,’ said Allen. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’
Ruth got up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to mind my own business in the ladies’,’ she said, angrily. ‘As though it made any difference to you.’ She crossed the hall and disappeared through a narrow door.
The band played ‘Primrose Lane’. Then Carpenter said seductively into the microphone: ‘Intermission, kids.’ People wandered about, gossiping and occasionally slipping out in pairs. The sweet night air was full of shadowy couples. An occasional squeal could be heard, and once a loud ‘You stop that’. The band came back from the Brunswick Arms and began to play what Carpenter called ‘a medley of number one hits of all time’. Allen waited impatiently for Ruth to reappear.
When she at last came through the door he stood up, ready to greet her, but she was intercepted by the vicar’s nephew who asked her to dance, and she accepted, ignoring Allen’s furious shrug of indifference from across the hall. Allen watched for several min
utes, but when they continued dancing after the end of the first number he went out. There was still half an hour before closing time.
‘What are you doing back here?’ said Dennis Palmer, the landlord’s son. He worked in the bar on busy nights.
‘Women,’ said Allen, ‘they make me sick. Give us a pint, Dennis.’
‘Something up with Ruth?’
‘Oh, she’s always on at me.’ He looked round the narrow bar and said: ‘Anyone for a game of darts?’
In the hall David said to Ruth: ‘Want to step outside for a moment? It’s rather warm in here.’
‘All right.’ Ruth had seen Allen leave, and she was thinking: I’ll show him he’s not the only pebble on the beach.
Betty Tarrant nudged her fiancé, Bill Ponsonby, and they giggled together, as Ruth and David stepped through a knot of people by the door and disappeared.
‘My car’s just up the road,’ said David. ‘Would you like to go for a ride?’
‘All right,’ said Ruth. He can just stew in his own juice, she thought. Expects me never to dance with anyone else, and won’t even say he wants to marry me. Not even when no one else need know about it. Thinks I’m his slave or something.
They walked a hundred yards up the road to where Henderson’s car was parked, an old black Wolseley with a sturdy upright body and a very middle-class respectable air.
‘That’s the vicar’s car,’ said Ruth.
‘That’s right. He lets me have it when I want it.’
They got in, and David said: ‘Where do you want to go, Ruth?’
She didn’t know.
‘I think I know a place,’ he said, starting the engine.
‘All right,’ said Ruth.
*
Raymond Henderson was showing David the church. They had come to the pulpit, an elaborately carved Jacobean piece, with a heavy canopy that looked dangerously liable to fall down on the preacher’s head if he were to become too violently rhetorical. The panels were beginning to come loose with age.
A Disturbing Influence Page 15