Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  —I just wonder what it’s all for! John resumed when the man had left.

  —Don’t confuse drink with a philosophical turn of mind.

  Jamie said it lightly, but John leaned forward, clutching Jamie’s actual knee:

  —I’m being realistic. Facing things in the face.

  Jamie shaded his eyes against the sun, which was pouring into the carriage. Reunions were strong drink generally, but one couldn’t take them seriously, which John would know if he’d had any practice. As a first outing, had reunion plus funeral been too much? Jamie had probably known it was, but time had been too short to reconsider. Now, before him, the fruits of his carelessness: more than a flap, John had been drinking, who knew how much, but given that he didn’t, enough to unfasten latches.

  —You’re the last person I’d expect to get jaded, Jamie said consolingly.

  But John lurched to his feet and yanked down the sash. A sooty wind pounded the carriage and knocked John’s flowers off the shelf, scratching Jamie in the face.

  —Watch it!

  Newspaper was flapping everywhere. Jamie shut the window. His temple stung.

  —You’ll have someone’s eye out!

  John crushed the wretched flowers into the rack, the smell of lilacs thick about them.

  —You’ve always been at war with the world, Jamie said, exactly like your father.

  He wanted to shut up and stop making things worse.

  —If you can’t stop unclipping grenades, at least don’t lob them at friends, he said.

  John dug at his temples as if pressure were building inside his skull and only knuckles would open a vent, and then, before Jamie could collect himself, John had collapsed across the seat dead asleep, a casualty to Jamie’s rashness.

  * * *

  Box room, cherries, scotch. Heartbeat, heartburn, had it always been so, even in the beginning, watching Jamie climb the tree and leap down into the pond? Or did it happen years later, three weeks before the end, war waiting to strike like a fever you didn’t know you had? Peak of their careers, Merewether said, but was he joking? Did the prince of darkness really wait, looking for his chance when you thought yourself strongest? Or was that a story you told to make things not your fault?

  He was getting all the prizes and winning back the cricket cup. That day he bowled Harrow off the field, took eight of their wickets and sent them home cowed. The XI celebrated all evening in John’s study. But as they broke up for dorm rounds, there was Jamie, who didn’t belong, offering a bag of cherries fresh from home. Somehow, later, they wound up in a box room like juniors, smoking cheap cigarettes. They had the scotch his father had sent, saved for prize day but begun and finished that night. Out the dormer window sky faded to ink. Jamie’s breath, smoky and sweet: Don’t be a Puritan.

  Sixteen days, seventeen nights, better than he’d known anything could be. Glances across the cricket pitch. Fear and thrill. Box-room swelter-welter, mind overthrown, heart held for the first time, hands of a friend yet new; had the treasure been there all along, waiting only to be opened? Eyes flowed, when they’d long forgotten how. No one said good things could hurt so much.

  Was it weakness or joy that gave the prince his chance? His heart, unschooled, never saw it coming. Day seventeen, John bowled the House to victory against their bitter rivals. The House cheered the First XI even as they repaired to the changing room, John carried by the other ten. No one told him he ought to beware. No one told him joy would be so short. The changing room should have been empty, but it wasn’t. There, even there, Jamie with another, all eleven players seeing everything on view, two boys naked to their socks, flaunting every article of their common code. John didn’t even know the other boy’s name.

  Gods of the school convened, and since he was one, he had to sit in judgment of Sebastian and his Ganymede. His heart was punching him everywhere at once, but Jamie’s face lacked disgrace or even fear. Sixth form library, outraged prefects, sentence handed down: a Marlborough flogging of the first degree. Execution fell to Merewether, who dispatched the Ganymede forcibly enough but then called for a pause and drew John into the corridor.

  Sweat down his collar, mind full of lies, John closed the door against the library, but Merewether, it seemed, knew nothing of his guilt or even his shabby delusions. Merewether wanted only the arm of his fastest bowler to deal young Sebastian a lesson exemplary.

  There was no way to refuse, and his arm didn’t want to. There was a hip flask with enough to silence thought. Detached, resolute, but when it came to it, Jamie’s face turned spark to flame—Down with it, down with it, unto the ground—until Merewether grabbed him and made him stop. Cane clattered to floor. Person—thing—dead. Library faces all turned to him in awe and recoil.

  Clock tower. Roof. Down below, the grass. Smooth, far away. Exit quick, over the edge—like his mother when she’d swing him up in her arms, whoosh, and set him down again. More! No one picked him up and no one set him down, but his shoes, when he looked, were new. Not his shoes, but others, other shoes on other feet. New feet, new man. New wine, new skin. New heart.

  * * *

  In London, John was nearly sick in the cab. It seemed to be a case of getting drunker after stopping. At King’s Cross, Jamie paid to get onto the train early so John could collapse in the berth.

  Jamie tried to sleep, too, as they rattled past tenements, fields, and finally dark, but indigestion kept him awake, and then they were hissing into York and John required waking.

  —You look like hell, Jamie said. How much did you drink?

  John seemed to consider the question rhetorical, and once they’d changed trains for the final leg, John closed his eyes again. When the sun broke in at the end of the Burdale tunnel, he howled as if he’d been suffering all along and couldn’t stand it anymore.

  —Dog bit hard?

  —I’m done! John declared. I quit.

  —That’s the spirit.

  —I mean I resign.

  —This again?

  —I’m serious! Put both of us out of our misery. Don’t know how you’ve stood me so long.

  Not pique, but self-pity. John was prone to both. Jamie mentally rehearsed the standard lines, but nothing sounded right.

  —Who else can I trust? he said.

  John tugged at his hair, for all the world like a madman on the heath:

  —Trust? How could you trust me after—

  His voice broke into a sob. Jamie froze.

  —That? Don’t tell me you’re—

  —It’s killing me!

  —It wasn’t—

  —No, John cried, my head! Someone’s drilling like …

  The train slowed, and their platform slid into view. John had begun to sob. In the cab Jamie practiced detachment, and when they pulled up to the gates, Jamie helped John to the Tower, where Kardleigh gave an injection that quieted him.

  —He had a bit to drink, Jamie told Kardleigh, but I haven’t seen him like this since we were boys.

  —Oh?

  —He used to get headaches. They were the only thing that could make him blub.

  —Brought back old times, this funeral of yours?

  —Something like that.

  26

  The Magic Mountain was macabre. Its hero, Hans Castorp as the translator regularly called him (never Hans or Herr Castorp), was a loathsome specimen. Although the author evinced a certain sympathy for him, Gray couldn’t bear the man’s dilettante passivity, his hypochondria, the way he let life blow him about. Gray longed to tell Hans Castorp to pull himself together. If he felt odd and tired upon arrival at the sanatorium, it was likely the altitude, something Uncle Peter had described at length—light-headedness, nausea, breathlessness, from flying in the war. His father, too, once told how he awoke in the night suffocating in the highlands of India. And if Hans Castorp felt heat in his cheeks and chill in his body, it was sunburn, surely, not fever. Yet, Hans Castorp, the ninny, seemed determined to waste his young life (not that his career as engine
er sounded like much) at that mountaintop retreat, courting illness and occupying himself with what was morbid. Gray wasn’t sure what analysis entailed, but he inferred a treatment at once risqué, shameful, and dangerous, likely to drive one mad if mismanaged. Yes, he loathed Hans Castorp, the self-indulgent nothing. The book was as heavy as the mood that overtook him when he thought of it, as if the figures carved in the choir stalls were shaking their heads at him, murmuring beware.

  * * *

  By the time John came through the other side of the headache, Jamie had departed on a fund-raising tour. John felt only relief at his absence, a lungful reprieve. He didn’t trust his memory of their journey; at least he decided that he shouldn’t trust it. If he’d had to face Jamie at breakfast, lunch, and tea, the shame might have been paralyzing; as it was, it only burned like low-grade fever and a comfortable reproach. Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned. He always felt safer in Lent, contained by its disciplines. It wasn’t Lent now, but wasn’t it always the season to turn back? Back to his lessons, to marking done on time. Back to his correspondence. He resumed writing to Meg, determined to overcome her silence. When she began to send replies through her amanuensis, he persisted as charmingly as possible—I fancy you’ll tell me, when you can, what they’re saying there about MacDonald’s cabinet. She could never resist politics, and her daughter hadn’t the first idea of them. He persevered, and by grace she replied:

  We aren’t supposed to take notice of the world, of course, but I’ve cultivated one or two of the servants. The stories they tell would dry out your ears.

  Her hand was weak, but he’d know it anywhere; he knew it in his dreams, where letter upon letter came to him. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited, and redeemed his people. He opened the cupboard and hauled out his manuscript. That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear. It wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined, some passages actually good. Who had written them? He dashed off an update to Nurse Riding, and she returned encouragement.

  It’s always darkest before the dawn, they say (though presumably they speak of a night with no moon). Now, in answer to your question about “Patron’s Day,” I’m afraid I must send regrets.

  He had the impression, from her inverted commas, that she’d never before heard of Patron’s Day, and her curt refusal brought him up short. It was not his place to invite her when her son had plainly neglected the duty. Did the boy not want her, or did he consider the day frivolous? John had a mind to ask him, but before he could work out an angle, the boy waylaid him in the corridor, bearing the book John had loaned him.

  —So soon? John said. Did you finish?

  The boy scowled:

  —I’ve read all I mean to read. Sir.

  John was left feeling he’d trafficked pornography.

  —And what did you think?

  Riding clearly wanted to leave, but John stood his ground. The boy could learn to converse, as a sign of good manners if he couldn’t manage gratitude.

  —I think, sir …

  He looked as in the classroom when put on the spot and resenting it.

  —that sanatoriums are a rum business. Ordinary people go there to get ill, and ill people go there to die. They’re run by charlatans and are full of chocolate soldiers.

  John had never felt so told off in his life. He suppressed the urge to hide the book behind his back.

  —Oh, don’t hold back, Riding. What did you really think?

  Riding recoiled, and a spike went through John’s head.

  —Cut along, he said. And I’d better see proper spelling in that prep of yours. You can jolly well make an effort for once.

  TG, Something terrible has happened. Zoltan Zarday the wunderkind writes that vagovegenative dystonia is what they call a verlegenheitsdiagnose, a polite diagnosis for people who have nothing wrong with them. When I think of the time we’ve wasted Kneipping, and we’re back where we started only Mum is weaker! We must leave Bad Wörishofen, that much is clear, but it might mean taking Murgie into my confidence.

  * * *

  The drops were bitter and Kardleigh wasn’t liberal with them, but the spike eased, the lights stopped flashing, and John’s temper cooled. He was just drifting down the Tower stairs when Jamie burst from the porter’s room.

  —What are you doing here? I thought you were away.

  —Good to see you, too, Jamie said.

  That smile should have stabbed, but the drops had enrobed him in calm.

  —Don’t look like that, Jamie said. I hope you aren’t going to insult me by trying to apologize or some such nonsense.

  —I …

  —Just do me a favor and go easy on the Pims.

  Pims?

  —Need you in good nick Wednesday. That man Arents is coming.

  Was he speaking of Patron’s Day? John was failing to follow.

  —Arents, organ, I told you. No? Got to take his wicket.

  Jamie was rushing off. Was wicket metaphor?

  —Big day! he called. Counting on you!

  John resolved to leave Jamie for the morrow. His study was peaceful, and Mrs. Firth had left him tea. Was that a wire beside—he tore the envelope, fearful, though it didn’t look foreign.

  Corpus Christi Oxford—GRIEVES SAHIB GOT LETTER STOP ARRIVE 24TH 1002 STOP BUNK IN DORM QUERY DEPART 25TH 0718 STOP WILBERFORCE M

  Not blow, but reprieve, one he’d never expected. Morgan Wilberforce after three long years. Not only coming to Patron’s Day, but asking to stay the night. They could sit as they used to, in John’s study after lights out. They could speak of books, boys, everything, and put the world to rights.

  27

  —He’s here!

  The cry rang through the school as Halton strode from the cloisters. He’d convinced himself that the letter hadn’t worked, but then, in an instant, miracle: the Great Wilberforce in their very quad. Surrounded already, Wilberforce shook hands, clapped arms, threw mock punches. He was taller than he’d expected, taller than Crighton or Mr. Grieves, face suntanned, hair cut short, a laugh that made his stomach wave.

  Halton edged around the crowd and dashed up the Tower stairs to complete his errand.

  —Just coming, Kardleigh told him. Have you warmed up?

  Someone was retching in the other room.

  —Note from the Head, sir.

  Kardleigh read it and brightened.

  —Time to sing your socks off, Timothy. Could be an organ in it for us.

  —We’ve got an organ, sir.

  —One that works, cheeky.

  The sound of violent heaving was making him gag.

  —Not you, too, Kardleigh said. Take this.

  He handed him a sheaf of music and his gown.

  —Start the others warming up. I’ll be there directly.

  —Yes, sir.

  Kardleigh turned back to the ward:

  —God’s blood, Riding, what are we going to do with you?

  * * *

  God gave them an English idyll, even better than Jamie could have hoped. Neither too hot nor too cold, the sun reigned from dawn to midsummer dusk. Parents, Old Boys, the full Board, distinguished guests, all crammed into the chapel where the choir sang as angels. Luncheon al fresco, refectory tables lugged out to the quad, shrouded in linen, and laden with the best food of the year. Afterwards, cheered by hock, they repaired to the refectory for a charitable auction to benefit the parish school in Thixendale. (Who will say the great are not also good?) As the crowd drifted outside to find chairs for the cricket, Jamie and Kardleigh showed Arents around the chapel. Stained glass by Whitefriars; icon from Moravia; Conacher organ, once very fine but crippled by a flood in ’13. By the time the innings had begun, Arents had used Jamie’s telephone to arrange a visit to Rushworth and Dreaper, organ builders. It was all bluff, of course, but one never knew when bluff might turn. Jamie saw Arents settled in a lawn chair beside Kardleigh and then began to work the sidelines. On the pitch, the Old Boys,
led by Morgan Wilberforce, batted the First XI into a corner and took their first victory since the war. The day could literally not have gone better.

  By seven o’clock all had departed, leaving the Academy to its annual nature walk, led traditionally by the Headmaster. Jamie escorted wildlife lovers, botany enthusiasts, and anyone else who cared to venture out-of-bounds on a two-hour stroll through the fragrant, hazy wolds. And he could hear, somewhere in his ears, the school’s hymn as it had been sung that morning. Having been released from their mouths in harmonies too beautiful to bear, the sound lingered like a soul unwilling to leave the body. Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be. He had dreamed of the hymn the night he’d first visited the Academy, that Patron’s Day five years before when the Board had courted him and then pressed him into the post. He’d dreamed that night of the Good Friday hymn, of hearing it in the Academy courtyard as he addressed the school, promising to rebuild the chapel.

  The chapel hadn’t needed rebuilding, but the school had, and now here he was, leading them down the leafy lane, back to strawberries and cream, to a place where they could grow and thrive, where music lived and would continue to live, where boys who once wrecked on the rocks became men who turned and returned, giants and heroes.

  Yet, these boys were not his, not in the final sense. Marion had played her part all day, hair blazing fraise-blond in the sun, but what if it was all a beautiful, false feast? St. Stephen’s Day wasn’t until December. Then, the day after Christmas, when no one roamed the Academy but ghosts, it would be a different celebration, martyrdom in the wintry ground. Were they being formed for fruitfulness or for desolation? It was folly, of course, to identify too closely with the institutions one served, though Jamie thought in his case the warning had come too late.

  * * *

  —That choir, Morgan said, has got half-decent.