“I owe you a quid, don’t I?”
“Yes,” said John wonderingly.
“I’m paying about seven-and-six in the pound at the moment.” He grinned and turned the coins over, selecting two half-crowns, a shilling, a sixpence and six pennies. “Here, will that do to be going on with?”
“Thank you.” John looked at it and made an effort to count it. “Thirteen to come, isn’t that right?”
“Count your blessings,” said Christopher with an enormous yawn, pushing the rest of the money back into his pocket. “Here, jumping Jesus, I’d forgotten. What about that essay? I said I’d go to the flicks tonight.”
“Mine’s on the desk.”
“That’s awfully white of you, old man. Thanks a lot. I’d clean forgotten.”
He sat down at the desk and spread the sheets of paper out, switching on the reading lamp with a careless movement. John was content to be ignored, for he was astonished, both at his lies and at their effect. And they had affected him no less than Christopher: he was excited, filled with tentative little lyrical thoughts, like the mutterings of the orchestra before the overture to an opera. He was not surprised at himself for telling lies, but for telling them so easily: it almost seemed that they had been made up long before it occurred to him to utter them, and the mystery of this kept him silent for a while, wondering that lies could be made up in a dark corner of the mind long before the occasion that called them out arrived. How long had they lain there?
And what were they, that they should have thrown a temporary net around even Christopher? He still trembled from the physical effort of telling them, but so early as this he could touch on the overheard conversation of the afternoon and find that it had in some way grown removed from its first agonizing closeness. Everything indeed seemed altered, as if he had ignorantly twisted his tongue round a magic formula and was watching the world change before his eyes.
Christopher did not get back from the cinema until nearly eleven, but he found John still sitting up when he came in, lying in an armchair without a book. He was ravenously hungry and, taking a half-eaten loaf from the cupboard, hacked a huge slice off and smothered it with marmalade. Munching, he came round and sat on the sofa, beginning to unlace his shoes.
“Watching you do that”, said John amusedly, “reminds me of the holiday I spent with Jill in Wales. Girls are funny, you know. At home, she’s the last person to have anything to do with housework: you can hardly get her to do a hand’s turn. But put her down alone in a cottage and she’ll suddenly change into a perfect housewife. Many a time she made me spread a table-cloth or a newspaper when I wanted to cut some bread. Girls seem to take to that sort of thing by instinct as ducks take to water: as soon as we got there she was scouting round everywhere finding out what we’d got—and what we hadn’t got, too, which was far more important.” He coughed and went on speaking in an authoritative voice. “It was nice down there. Every evening after we’d washed up and lit the lamps (we’d no electricity, of course) we used to sit and read. At first we tried reading Shakespeare aloud, taking the parts, you know, but Jill said it reminded her too much of school, so we dropped that. We used to burn that funny Welsh coal that miners use—it burns without a flame, you know, and lasts all night, just glowing. We’d sit and read till quite late.”
“Oh, yes,” said Christopher uninterestedly. He threw his shoes over to the door and got up: watching the film had made his eyes tired, and the late nights he had been keeping made him disinclined to stay up purposelessly.
John lingered, putting Christopher’s shoes together with his own tidily by the door for the servant to clean in the morning, and hanging up Christopher’s scarf. The rain outside had stopped. Then he went to bed, lying wakeful in the dark and listening resentfully to Christopher’s heaving breathing, that was on the borderline of a snore. It oppressed him to have this other person so close. From next door came the sound of a piano; there was a rich young man there who played at all hours. John listened. He felt himself spun out very fine along the slender line of notes. The music was slow, with a logical sadness.
Jill came into his mind, as now she would (though he did not know this yet) whenever his emotions were stirred gently. He imagined that it was she playing the piano that he could hear and that they both lived in a big house with gardens. He was on the lawn in the evening; the lawn was in shadow and the sun was so low in the sky that it only caught the attic windows. The colours of the flowers and the striped deckchairs that were still left out had grown indistinct. There was a pile of chipped red flower-pots by the greenhouse. The sound of the piano came out of a large downstairs room, where the windows were open, and he walked towards them, feeling the air to be palpable as if walking on the bed of a transparent sea. He could see her sitting at the piano dressed in white. She bent her head slightly to see the music and her shoulders moved as she played. Her fair hair was controlled with a ribbon; her arms, her whole body, were so slender that the bones showed through softly.
For a time he would be content to watch and listen. But after a while she would draw the curtains and he would go into the house.
The first thing John did after breakfast the next morning was to take his sister’s letter out of its envelope and burn it.
He had the idea while lying in bed that morning that if he left a letter from Jill lying about Christopher might surreptititiously read it, and his hold over him (if it really existed) thereby increase. So naturally the letter must be written. He settled himself at the desk: the rain fell outside, splashing the windows and because the sky was so dark and troubled he wrote by lamplight.
It was curious that he felt no hesitancy about what to write. True, he made several drafts, but that was because he found it hard to imitate his sister’s hand from the single addressed envelope. It was cramped, like his own, and might suggest immaturity if subtly coarsened. He worked intently, like an etcher or forger, his feet locked together and his hair shining in the electric light. Christopher was lounging in bed in the other room.
When he had finished he wiped his hands on his trousers and grinned.
Willow Gables School,
Nr. Mallerton,
Derbyshire.
Dear John,
You said you would write to me, but of course you haven’t, you never do. So I am writing to you instead, so mind you answer.
How are you getting on? Tell me everything about your college and the rooms you have; what work you’re doing (remember the bet we made); who your tutor is, do I know him and what’s he like? I long to Know All. Give me plenty of details because Maisie Fenton’s got a brother at Cambridge and is being just insufferable about him. Still, you don’t know Maisie Fenton. (Lucky you!)
I really haven’t any news for you; this place is as usual—need I say more? I came top in English this fortnight (pom-tiddly-om-pom) and intend to do so for the rest of the term for reasons which are Secret.
When do your holidays start? Before ours, I expect—for a change!
Much love,
Jill.
P.S.—We’re going to some incredible concert thing in Manchester, so I shall post this there if poss. I really don’t trust the school box any more after what happened last term.…
P.P.S.—It’s raining. No hockey!
He had just finished copying the last draft when he heard Christopher getting up, so, carelessly stuffing it into the original envelope, he put it on to the mantelpiece and strolled out. As rain was falling he made for the Junior Common Room, where he sat down in a deep leather armchair and pulled out his battered packet of cigarettes. As he smoked he read an article in the newspaper about the promised British aid to Greece. Outside, in the Fellows’ Garden, the trees were heaving in the wind, almost bare of their leaves. Another undergraduate kneeled in the window seat to look out; he had a very finely-made head and black hair. As he stared from the tall windows he slipped a ring off one finger and put it on another. John wondered vaguely who he was: his face was agreeable to look a
t.
John threw the newspaper aside and took up a magazine: the fire warmed his legs and he stretched them out. He was hardly conscious of the contentment he felt. All of a sudden there seemed nothing to do, nothing but the certain fact that this day would open into another equally empty day, only the soft pattering of the rain on ancient stones. The firelight shone on the brass ashtrays and on certain dark panels. He felt he had been very foolish to trouble overmuch about Christopher Warner; he ceased to long that he himself could order servants about confidently, that he was rich, that he had a blue chin, that he sang dirty songs in his bath. These were very fine things, but they were losing their lustre as ideals. He yawned.
He had made tiny pencil marks around the corners of the envelope where it lay on the mantelpiece, and when he returned to the room he found Christopher had gone and the letter was tucked neatly behind the clock. He caught his breath for a moment, then he remembered the servant came into dust the room in the mornings sometimes and certainly Christopher would never have put it away so tidily. He took it down and after a second’s thought laid it diagonally upon the table. It stayed there throughout the day; John shifted its position about tea-time, but Christopher was out all the evening and John went to bed quite early, feeling a drowsiness that was rare with him. Normally at night he was tired, but not pleasantly somnolent.
He did not hear about Christopher and Semple’s cupboard till the next day, when Whitbread asked him up to coffee after lunch with a few other scholars. They were a queer little bunch, but John liked being with them and he felt keenly the prestige of being the man who had to share with Warner. They assembled in Whitbread’s garret-like room, pulling forward the sofa and straight-backed chairs, leaving the armchair, which was nearest to the fire, for Whitbread himself. None of them would ever take the best armchair in the room or help himself to any foodstuffs without asking or accept an invitation he did not intend to return. All their actions were characterized by this scrupulous convention, and there, up in the little dingy room where Whitbread was assembling cups and saucers and milk, they collected like members of some persecuted sect, as if alien to the life around them. There was no luxury or waste or freedom in their company, and yet John was probably more at home with them than with anyone else, though he did not value their friendship. He was very careful not to show this latter, however, as the one thing they all heartily detested was anyone “of their own class” “trying to get above himself”.
“Technically, it’s criminal assault. It is, you know, legally.”
“The Dean should do something.”
“I don’t care who hears me say it,” said Whitbread, putting a plate of buns he had bought for yesterday’s tea on the table.
“It’s just guttersnipe hooliganism, that’s all it is.”
“What is?”
“Why, haven’t you heard? Warner and Semple. D’you mean to say you haven’t heard? I sh’d have thought——”
“I sh’d have thought you’d ’ave been the first to hear,” said Jackson, with a laugh. “I sh’d think Warner’s pretty proud of himself.”
“I’ve hardly seen Chris today,” John explained carelessly. “What’s he done?”
“Why, you know Semple? Fellow who goes round tryin’ to make you join the Oxford Union. Well, he lives next door to Dowling—you know that fellow——”
“Yes, well?”
“Well, last night Warner and Dowling came in a bit tiddly, you know. They’d had one over the eight——”
“More like five or six,” interjected another scholar with a grin.
“—and Semple’s suddenly woken up by a tremendous crash. He gets up and finds Warner and Dowling in his sitting-room, beginning to break it up. All his china smashed and all. And when he asks them what they’re up to, Warner knocks him down. Just that.”
“Haven’t you seen Semple’s eye?” asked Jackson.
“That does sound a bit——”
“A bit! I sh’d like to know what he thinks he’s doing. It’s just rank hooliganism, that’s all. A fellow like that reckons he owns the earth.”
There was an air of hesitant agreement over the company caused by the unadmitted fear that John might report all he heard when he left. But John had no such intention. Studying the tea-leaves at the bottom of his cup (“coffee”, with Whitbread, very often turned into tea by a majority vote), he was thrilling to the anecdote and delighting in the contrast of the two worlds he inhabited. Whatever one might think of Christopher Warner, he could not be neglected; one could not pass over these sporadic flowerings of violence. That night he was privileged to hear Christopher and Patrick (chiefly Christopher) relate the story to Eddy after dinner. Christopher had handed out sherry glasses filled with port and was standing on the hearthrug waving a cigarette.
“Well, it all started with us getting back after we left you, Eddy, and going up to Patrick’s room because Patrick said he’d got some bread. Not that dry bread is a meal for a man who’s had no food since lunch-time—but I was prepared,” Christopher said emphatically, “I was prepared to waive that point provided that the bread was forthcoming, so I sat down, and Pat here dragged out a pretty mouldy-looking hunk and cut it in half. One half he bit, the other half he put on a plate and handed to me. Now, mark you, I was devilish sharp set. I was in no mood to quibble about trifles: I was not, shall we say, in a finical mood. But I was just opening my mouth when I noticed what looked to me like mouse-turd on the bread. ‘I say, Pat,’ I said, d’you keep your bread in a tin?’ ‘No,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘Well, look at that, you rat! Is that fit to offer a guest?’ I was aggrieved. I didn’t take it in good part. I don’t consider myself fussy,” said Christopher, with a grandiloquent air, “but there are certain rules, certain laws of hospitality, you know, which I will stand out for till I perish. And one of these is that no man shall offer his guest bread with mouse-turd on it.”
“My dear Chris, how was I to know——”
“However, we’ll pass over that,” continued Christopher, waving the interruption aside. “I was more than compensated by the sight of Pat spitting out his mouthful into the fire. But the nub of the matter was clear to me at once. I was still hungry. I’d had nothing to eat since lunch-time, and then only a couple of pies in the Bull. And apparently this mouse-turd was the only damned thing available!
“Things were grim. Still, I did not, mark you, lose heart. It takes more than a mouse to get a Warner down. I got up and went out into the corridor, where, I may parenthetically state, I proceeded to micturate. Then I knocked at someone’s door. They said, ‘Come in,’ so I came in. There was some little runt working. ‘Have you’, I said politely, ‘any bread-and-butter, toast or cake?’ He went as red as a turkey and said, ‘No.’ I bowed gracefully and went out. Then I fumbled along to the next door. When I opened this one, the room was in darkness, so I concluded that the man was either in bed or still out, and I put on the light and prepared to investigate his cupboard. Now this is the most curious part of the whole business,” said Christopher impressively. “I went up to that cupboard. I pulled at the door in a sober and sensible way and the whole bloody thing came toppling over forward, very near maiming me for life!”
“Ha, ha, ha!” roared Eddy, slobbering.
“Well, of course, that made a row. I defy anyone to pull over a damn great cupboard without making the devil of a din, and as luck would have it, the man was in bed. At least, he pretty quickly got up and came out into the sitting-room. He was sporting rather an offensive line in blue-and-white pyjamas, I may add, but I decided to let that pass. ‘What the hell are you up to?’ he demanded. Now I admit,” said Christopher, stabbing the air with his cigarette precisely, “I admit that he had, to a certain extent, right on his side. To find one’s cupboard overturned by a perfect stranger in what must have appeared the middle of the night might conceivably be a shade trying, so I overlooked his tone. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, old man, I was wondering if you had any to
ast, bread-and-butter or cake handy—you see I’ve had no dinner——’ And I never got any further. It was incredible. There was something in what I said—or perhaps even in the way I said it, though, mark you, I spoke in as gentlemanly a manner as I could—there was something, anyway, that seemed to infuriate him. Plainly something had got under his skin. He burst out into a positive torrent of insults. ‘Get out!’ he said”—Christopher made a histrionic flourish— “‘Get out! I’m sick of your noisy, boozing gang. How dare you come into my room and start breaking everything you can lay your hands on?’ And so on and so forth, though I must say I offered to pay for any cups that were cracked or broken.
“But after a while—he didn’t slacken, you know: he seemed to warm to his work rather—after a while I began to take offence. He was being just plain bad-mannered, you know: wasn’t swearing, just being plain rude. I didn’t like his tone. I told him so. I said: ‘I don’t like your tone.’ He told me I could do the other thing. Well, I wasn’t going to stand that,” said Christopher, in a reasonable tone of voice. “After all, one will only stand so much, and I thought this had got beyond a joke. So I slapped his face—and as luck would have it, I just caught the edge of his spectacles and they went flying”—Christopher illustrated the arc—“flying right over to the corner of the room. And he came at me like a tiger. Like a bloody tiger. We sparred for an opening”—Christopher made ludicrous sparring movements across the hearthrug—“then I hit him in the eye. And he went down.”
“And stayed down,” finished Patrick.
Christopher drank off his glass of port while Eddy mopped his eyes with a gaily-coloured silk handkerchief. “Oh, lord!” he gurgled. “Damn good, Chris! Damn good!” In fact he liked the story so much that when Semple complained to the Dean and Christopher had to pay three pounds damages, he and some friends of his caught Semple unawares and “crucified” him with croquet hoops over his wrists, ankles and neck on the College lawn. This caused a great stir, as Semple lay wriggling on the lawn all night and caught bronchitis, but both Christopher and Patrick had been provably out of College that night and obviously had nothing to do with it. Semple went home and with proper care presumably recovered health.
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