The Centre of the Green

by John Bowen

  By the end of his second week of teaching, Julian had made no personal connection with either staff or pupils at Garrett St. Angus Primary, and when he was approached at the end of the day by one of the older girls, he did not even know her name. It was Shirley, she said.

  “Shirley what?”

  “Paverstock.”

  “You’re all called that.” It was true. The school had seven Paverstocks.

  “She’s Shirley Paverstock. Her dad’s blind. He lives near the crossing.” Already Shirley’s friends had begun to drift into the conversation, and Julian found that he was standing in a ring of seven girls. “Let her answer for herself,” he said.

  “Shirley’s shy.”

  “What does she want then?”

  “She wants to know if you’ve got any books. To read.”

  “I didn’t know you were fond of reading, Shirley.” It seemed unlikely. If Shirley liked reading, why wasn’t she at the Grammar School?

  “It’s not for her. She hates reading. It’s for her dad.”

  “But if he’s blind——”

  “She reads to him.”

  “Oh. But isn’t there a library van or something that comes round every week.”

  Shirley spoke. “He don’t like library books. He likes women’s books.”

  “Women’s books?”

  “Red Star.” “Real-Life Love Stories.” “True Confessions”

  Julian had never heard of these titles, but supposed them to be the names of magazines. “I don’t see why you think I have any of these books,” he said.

  “You’re a teacher. Mrs. Bates gives Shirley all her books after she’s read them.”

  “I see. Well, I’ll ask my mother, and see what we can do.”

  Ridiculous, he thought as he left the village; it’s like A Handful of Dust. The wretched girl didn’t even enjoy reading. Probably because she read so badly—you could see she wasn’t the type for it. And such stuff! Real-Life Love Stories!—he could imagine the sort of thing. He remembered how at Oxford, a member of his own college had gone once a week to read Milton to a blind shoemaker; he’d been a member of the O.I.C.C.U. and had rather an unpleasant, nasal voice. Of course there wouldn’t be any such magazines at the cottage. Perhaps he might find back numbers of Blackwood’s or even Argosy if he scouted around, but he supposed those wouldn’t do. True Confessions—an odd taste for a man, but perhaps his wife had read to him during her lifetime, and he knew no other sort of reading. How old would Shirley be? All these girls were so well-developed that it was difficult to tell. On an impulse, noticing that the village shop in Garrett Under Moor was open, he dismounted from his bicycle and went in. “Have you got anything called Red Star?” he said.

  “No.”

  “True Confessions?”

  “No.”

  “Real-Life Love Stories?”

  “No. I’ve got these.” They were about half a dozen paper-covered novelettes, printed on coarse paper, and bound rather after the manner of the Sexton Blake series which Julian remembered from his boyhood. He picked up the top one. It was called The Inn of Lost Love. “I’ll take this,” he said, and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

  “Mother,” he said at supper that evening, “I’ll be back late on Monday. I’m going to read to a blind man.”

  *

  Charles told himself that he didn’t know why he went to these meetings. He was not really interested in helping any of the group, and did not see how they could help him. Help him to what? Of what was he to be cured? All the others seemed to suffer from conditions. Curly had what he called “this trouble”. Waters had crying fits, and Myra had migraine headaches and a psycho-somatic sinus. Anne was so shy that she trembled all over if anyone asked her to accept a responsibility—even the responsibility of keeping someone’s seat in the cinema—and was liable to be sick. David, a soi-disant actor, sponged on an older man, and punctuated his long spells of unemployment with occasional weeks at north-country reps. Everything got on top of him, he said, and he would have hysterical periods when he was quite out of control; it was his friend who had suggested the Institution. Ethel was compulsively rude to anyone who tried to make a friend of her, and was in consequence friendless. She was like those foster children who wet the bed, tear sheets and scrawl obscenities on the walls of their new homes— so sure they are not wanted that they must give the foster parents an excuse for not loving them.

  But Charles? He had tried to commit suicide—just once and while drunk. It was something in the recent past, a matter of possible concern to the hospital and to the law, but not a condition needing cure; he could hardly be cured of something that had already happened. The group could not help him. There was no point in coming.

  Why did he come, then? To oblige! For something to do! Why not? It was cheaper than going to the pictures. He had made his first coniession, paid his entrance fee, as it were—and was now content to sit back, and take only a surface part. He made the right responses, contributed arguments, suggestions, instances, as he might have done to a discussion group, but the thing was of no real value to him, changing his life no more than a discussion group could change the world. All the time, he was watching them from behind his insulating glass wall, and they, being so preoccupied with themselves, used Charles only for the responses they could get from him. But after a while, they were bound, he supposed, to notice.

  When they did, instead of being grateful that he demanded nothing from them, they attacked him. “You don’t give anything, do you?” Ethel said.

  “He’s always sort of reserved like,” said Curly.

  “What’s the matter, Charley boy,” Bill Waters said. “Don’t you trust us?”

  “Of course I trust you.”

  “Well then?”

  “I—— It’s just that I——” Charles appealed to Peter. “I don’t have to talk about things if I don’t want to, do I? I thought that was one of the conditions.”

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  “It was in a way. I don’t direct what people say, you know. If the members of the group want to ask you questions, they can. If you don’t like it, you can always stay away. But I can’t stop the group from worrying about you while you’re here. Getting worried about each other is one of the things we’re supposed to do.”

  “He’s fair, isn’t he—old Peter?” Curly said admiringly. “You have to give him credit.”

  “Well, what about it, Charley boy?”

  It was very strange, this shrinking into himself, this not wanting to be touched. Charles could see that they were concerned, but he only wanted to be left alone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just resent this ganging-up on me, that’s all. If I had anything I thought was worth contributing, I’d say it.”

  David said, “Resent! Resentment conceals fear. We all know that.”

  Anger. Anger at David, who was always coming out with scraps and tags from the Penguin Psychology Series. But anger, he had noticed with the others, was often a preliminary to talking things out; it was the first unloosing of control. He must guard against anger. So he only said, “Not really”.

  Ethel said, “You won’t be happy until you’ve got it out, you know.”

  Got what out? This wasn’t a baring of souls. There was no absolution from this confession; Peter had made that plain enough long ago. In any case, what was there to confess? Why were they hunting him? He remembered how as a child he had stolen—what was it? something he could have had simply by asking for it, a kitchen ladle for melting lead—and how, when it was missed, he had hidden it, and when they had questioned him, it was just this mingling of irritation and resentment that their questions had aroused in him. Just like a child, trapped by pride into a lie. Just like a child, hiding something which he feared his questioners would take away from him.

  They were all silent, waiting for him to speak, but he would say nothing.

  But what was he hidin
g? What was he afraid to lose? He must not ask himself that question. As long as he himself did not know, they had less chance of discovering. Whatever it was, he needed it, or he would not resent their attempts to get at it.

  Curly said, “There’s always a sort of wall like with Charles. I mean, he’s nice to you and that, but you don’t feel you’re getting through somehow, know what I mean.”

  It was his detachment then, his isolation, that they were after. Ridiculous! This was not something of which he needed to be cured. It was his protection, and they wanted to destroy it. Worried about him!—their only worry was that they had no power over him. “I don’t see that it matters whether you get through or not,” he said.

  “Don’t you?” “You admit it then?” David and Ethel had spoken at once.

  “Admit what?”

  “That you don’t communicate.”

  He wouldn’t come to any more of these meetings; he knew that. For the present, he would ride things out, but he wouldn’t come again. Even as it was, there was nothing to make him answer their questions, except the questions themselves, which, unanswered, hung in the air, heavy with surmise. Besides, he couldn’t very well just sit there, saying nothing like a sulky child. Child again! But it was they who were children. “Maybe you don’t communicate with me,” he said.

  “We try. You won’t let us.”

  “Then maybe——” Charles looked about for help, but there was none, not even from Peter. “Look, it isn’t important,” he said. “I mean, this sort of thing is only subjective really.”

  “Uh?”

  “It’s just a feeling you have. Nothing to do with me.”

  Myra said, “But it’s something we all feel. Independently, I mean. That can’t just be subjective.”

  Peter intervened, and it seemed to Charles like a betrayal. “Myra suggests that a subjective experience shared by the whole group has an objective significance,” he said.

  Anne, who was sitting forward nervously, raised one hand a little way from the arm of the chair, and then lowered it again quickly. Peter said, “Yes, Anne?”

  “Could it be? … If it’s something Charles is hiding from himself, he wouldn’t want us to try—I mean, if it’s something he doesn’t even want to know about himself. I often do that. I won’t admit things to myself at all. Even here … even amongst us, I don’t always like admitting to things, Peter. In fact I never like it.”

  Charles said unpleasantly, “You mean that we’ve all been so kind and nice to you that you feel safe with us?” and Anne flinched, blinking her eyes rapidly, as she always did when one of the group attacked her.

  “Shut up, you beast. You know bloody well she doesn’t mean that at all,” Ethel said. “All this stuff about communicating. If the only way you can communicate is by hurting people, then we’re a bloody sight better off if you don’t do it at all.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Bill Waters said, “We won’t do any good by losing our tempers. If Charles doesn’t want us to help him, then we shouldn’t force it on him. I reckon he isn’t ready for it really. It takes longer with some than with others.”

  “Too right.”

  “No,” said Curly. “But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  *

  “That old hidden pain came suddenly back to life. Rick lived again that afternoon when Sally had said, ‘It’s no good. I can’t go on,’ and had walked out of his life for ever.

  Who was this elfin waif, with the golden hair and eyes like a summer sky? Why had she come here to uncover his hidden memories?

  Once he had hoped that time would heal the wound. He had forced his tall sinewy frame into prodigies of work, day after day, only leaving the fields when the coming of night forced him to retire to his sleepless bed. But he had known it would be no good. He could never forget Sally. She was the greatest mistake of his life, yet she was the only person who could ever make life worthwhile to him.

  Without her, it was bitter and meaningless. Until now.”

  Julian had been reading for half an hour, and had already begun to be bored. As an act of charity, reading aloud took too long, and The Inn of Lost Love was not amusing when one could not make fun of it. The blind man did not even show very much interest in the story, but sat in the gloom by the empty hearth, and, whenever Julian paused, he said, “That’s not the end, is it?”

  Julian himself sat by the window, with his back to it so that the evening sunlight fell upon the page. Shirley sat beside him. She had drawn her chair close to his so as to be able to watch the words while he read. She smelled very slightly of what the advertisements call “B.O.”, but her breath was sweet, and Julian found her concentration a little touching. He had discovered that, if he moved his position only slightly—as he must when his buttocks grew cramped—his knee would touch hers. This had happened twice without any response from her. Strange. She should either have moved a little away, or else returned the pressure. But she seemed not to notice anything at all.

  Perhaps this was because he had himself moved his knee away again. If he were just to leave it resting against hers, she must react in some way. He played with the idea, patting it backwards and forwards like a cat with a paper ball. First he sent it almost out of reach, reminding himself that the girl was only fifteen, and a pupil at the school where he was teaching. Surely he already had enough trouble of that sort, without risking any more. Then he brought it back again. Playing kneeses in the dusk could not lead to much. Then again away—she might talk to her friends.

  “I likes them shorter than this,” the blind man said. “I don’t like those as go on and on. You can’t remember the beginning if they goes on too long. Let them say what they has to say, and get shot of it.”

  “Perhaps you’d rather I stopped?”

  “No. But remember next time. You won’t get this one done by supper. I can tell that now.”

  “He bent over her limp body. Surely that treacherous stair had not claimed a second victim. But no. Slowly she opened her eyes, and smiled at him.

  ‘Rick! Oh, Rick!’”

  When did the blind man have his supper anyway? How long did he expect Julian to go on reading? Perhaps he would be able to stop soon, and Shirley would continue after he had gone. He shifted again in his seat, and again their knees touched. This time he kept his own knee where it was. No response. Extraordinary.

  Giving in even to the smallest temptation usually involves a kind of splitting of the mind. First a moral scruple. It was defeated as soon as stated. But then— more serious—a division between the intelligence and whatever power it is that simply initiates and carries through an action. Julian’s intelligence said, “This is stupid”. It said, “I am not enjoying even the novelty of this”. But his knee stayed where it was.

  It needed so small an effort for him to move his knee away. If he were to make it … now…. If someone were to come in…. If the blind man could only see—just a small miracle to stop Julian before he was caught up in the familiar sequence. There was no miracle. The blind man cleared his throat, and spat into the empty grate, and Julian moved nearer, so that now his leg was pressing against Shirley’s leg from knee to ankle. She could hardly mistake that. Shirley said nothing.

  But already she had enough—too much—to tell her friends in the school playground. Julian blushed. He had a sudden mental picture of himself wheeling his bicycle through the school gate. The covert glances. The giggles. The remark not quite suppressed. He moved his knee away again quickly, and said, “I’m afraid I must be going soon”.

  “You go when you likes. I ain’t keeping you. I didn’t ask you to come.”

  “Aren’t you going to finish it then?” Shirley said.

  “Well, I don’t think I can finish it all tonight. But I’ll go on for a bit longer if you like.”

  “Rick was in torment. He knew that he could not allow himself to love this girl. He had nothing to give her.

  Yet already he knew that she held him in bondage. Looking int
o her eyes, he felt himself drowning.”

  Holding the book in one hand, Julian slid the other down into his lap, then sideways until it was touching Shirley’s knee. Again there was no response. He let his hand lie where it was for a while, then slowly moved it until it lay openly on her thigh, which he pressed. By this time he had reached the end of the page, and needed the hand to turn over. Afterwards he replaced it on her thigh without any further caution, and began to stroke and press her gently.

  The blind man said, “What’s the matter with you, girl? You got assma or something? I can’t hear him read with you breathing like a factory chimney.”

  Somewhere inside Julian’s head, a little piece of despair was squeezed and squeezed until it died. Dying, it became dissipated in numbness and desperation. Julian’s hand moved down Shirley’s leg, squeezing and caressing the calf. It found the hem of her skirt, and passed beneath it to the bare skin, which was very slightly rough to the touch with goose pimples. Then the hand began its journey up the leg again. As it did so, Julian continued to read, and Shirley to watch the words as he read.

  “‘This is madness, Rick,’ she breathed.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ he replied. ‘I only know it’s something that must be done, whatever happens.’”

  Forty-five minutes later, Julian left. He said he would be back on the next evening to finish it off.

  *

  Charles had told himself he would not go to the next meeting, and he did not. Staying away, he found himself restive. There was a gap in the evening. The group had become a habit. All the better to break it, then!

  He went to the cinema instead, but he could not concentrate on the film, which was about a lone outlaw in Arizona who eventually married the daughter of a man he had shot. Afterwards Charles walked home to kill time. He half-hoped that Sybil would come down for a chat, but this was one of her Herbert nights. So he went to bed, and slept badly.