by David Miller
A wooden jetty projected a few yards out, surrounded by water lily leaves. A moorhen took off suddenly, skittering over the leaves, and settled fretfully among some undergrowth.
Andrew put down his rod and bag and walked out along the jetty. Halfway along some of the boards were missing; he knelt down and could make out some small fish circling slowly in the shafts of light going down into deep water. He went on to the end of the jetty. The lake stretched for about two hundred yards, the surface mostly packed with water lily leaves. On the opposite side birch trees grew on a rocky outcrop; from a cave underneath you could just distinguish the prow of a rowboat sticking out. Nearer, a shoal of small fish flipped through the surface, followed by a broad gulping swirl of water. A pike was feeding, probably a small one. To get out there you would need stronger tackle than any they had with them; live bait and hooks with wire traces; and, most of all perhaps, the boat which lay in the cave across the lake.
A rattling sound distracted him: Jeremy was peeing into some dock leaves beside the path. Andrew went and unbuttoned beside him. He watched his steam rising off the leaves.
Jeremy shuddered and stopped. “We’ll both have to fish off the jetty,” he said.
“It looks jolly good,” Andrew said. Impatience made him button up too quickly, so that the last drops trickled warm and sore on the inside of his thigh.
The gardener’s news of the big pike forced him to keep a check on his eagerness. He would not be allowed to come here without Jeremy, and Jeremy could very easily get bored with him and with fishing in the lake. Later in the holidays, Jeremy would go to relations who lived in Ireland, where there’d be trout and salmon, and perhaps some rough shooting. The number of claims Andrew could make was limited; he was not even Jeremy’s best friend at school.
When the hook was baited with a worm and the float sitting upright beyond the lily leaves, Andrew felt at ease in the continual mild excitement that came from fishing and from being alive. Of course there would always be a gulf of apprehension ahead. If he avoided thinking about what he would do this afternoon, while Jeremy was having tea at the house, then there was next term to think about, when he would sit the entrance scholarship to his Public School. It had been implied that, if he failed, he would be cast into some sort of outer darkness, and his mother would be disappointed and weep. Nobody had ever explained why this had to happen; why it was that Jeremy, for instance, should proceed to Harrow without trouble, having been put down for the school at his birth.
By mid-afternoon, he knew Jeremy was growing restive. They had caught four perch, and had eaten the sandwiches and fruit they had brought with them. The sun was straight ahead of them. A wood pigeon dived and soared in the empty air over the lake.
There was a splash nearby. “That was a pike,” Jeremy said. “A monster pike.”
Andrew opened his eyes and saw the core of Jeremy’s apple floating in circles of water.
He was appalled at this breach of the conventions, but knew better than to protest.
“Let’s explore around the other side,” he suggested.
They fought their way through a thicket of rhododendrons, and emerged on to a path which led down to the boathouse. At the bottom of some steps, slippery with moss, there was an iron gate. The boat, with the oars shipped in it, could be seen just beyond it. The boys shook the gate, but it was locked.
“We need the key.”
“I suppose I could ask them at the house,” Jeremy said.
“Could you? That would be super.”
Jeremy seemed less confident suddenly. “I could try.”
The path went around the lake through two tunnels in the rock and ended up near the jetty. Coming back there was comforting, an arrival at a place already known.
“I must go up to tea,” Jeremy said. “They’ll be waiting for me.”
II
Andrew lurked under some elders near a potting shed, where lawn mowers had been emptied through the years. He was used to lurking: there was a lot of time to waste at school or in the holidays, and there were other times when it was better to keep out of people’s sight. He had a great experience of damp corners by broken sheds, of hollows full of bedsprings and buckets without bottoms, and of streams littered with empty tins. In such places he pondered the possibility of hiding himself completely, of keeping absolutely still, blending with the background, taking on a protective coloration like a bird or an animal. He tried this now for a time, but got bored; the only person to find him would be the friendly gardener who had told them about the big pike.
He picked up a dry elder twig and began digging into the pile of rotten grass cuttings. It was full of worms, the active ones with brown and yellow rings which are best for fishing. However, he had left his bait tin with the bicycles. He was wondering whether to go for it, which would have meant coming into view of the windows of the house, when he received a blow on his left shoulder.
He yelped, and turned around. It was Jeremy Cathcart.
“I’ve been told to fetch you. You’re expected too.”
Andrew wiped his hands on his trousers. “Jesus.”
“Yes, come on.” Jeremy jerked his head and led the way. Andrew followed him at an undignified stumble.
Andrew had never seen anybody quite so old as the small old woman who was sitting in a basket chair in the winter garden. Her white hair was drawn tightly back, and her hands and forehead were deeply spotted like a seagull’s egg. She wore a dark gray dress with a lace front, and a circular cairngorm brooch on a black ribbon around her neck.
“Let me see him,” Mrs. Peverill said. “He’ll have to come closer.”
He was accustomed to soft, smiling old women who doted and said silly things. This one, however, looked at him without apparent friendliness.
“Yer Jeremy’s friend?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What’s yer father do?”
“He’s in the Air Force. In Egypt.”
“That used not to be well thought of, as a career.”
The man standing beside her said: “That would hardly enter into it, Mother.”
The man, who looked very nearly as old as Mrs. Peverill herself, smiled broadly at Andrew, who smiled back with an attempt at confidence.
“They had better sit down,” Mrs. Peverill said. “Get me a cup of tea,” she added to her son.
Major Peverill walked across to the table. He was a tall old man, wearing a gray tweed knickerbocker suit, with ribbed stockings and garter-tabs. The back of his neck was wispy, with a smile of flesh above the collar.
“Tea for them too.”
“What’s happened to Burgess?”
“I told him to go and find Rowena. Nurse Partridge thought she might come down.”
“Is this a – a wise departure?”
“What?”
“Rowena’s descent among us.”
Mrs. Peverill drank some tea and dabbed at her mouth with a handkerchief. “She knows Jeremy. From children’s parties.” She replaced her cup and stared at Andrew.
“The Air Force,” she said with sudden scorn. “Times change, I suppose.”
The cups rattled continuously in the saucers, as Major Peverill handed the boys their tea. Andrew tried hard to return his smile.
“The little wretch keeps grinning at me,” Major Peverill muttered angrily.
Jeremy kicked Andrew under the table. Andrew sat with his eyes lowered. He felt his face heating up and a terrifying desire to giggle. Major Peverill had not been smiling at him at all; he suffered from a tightening of the facial muscles which gave him protruding eyes and this fixed grimace. Viewed from the side, the old man’s head was like a bird’s: an ostrich, an emu, or a cassowary. In a magazine his mother took, Andrew had seen an advertisement with a sketch of a bird’s grinning head, which asked “Can you change my expression?” If you could, using the smallest number of lines, you were offered free tuition by world-famous, but unnamed, artists.
Major Peverill was lik
e this bird; he should have been smiling cheerfully but he looked tense and ruffled with his feathery wisps of hair. Could he, or anyone, change his expression?
Mrs. Peverill spoke to Andrew in a clear voice as though he were deaf. “My granddaughter is staying with us. She has not been well.”
He nodded stupidly. At his age, he felt panicky at the thought of girls not being well.
While she spoke, the girl had come out of the hall into the winter garden. Jeremy jumped to his feet. At school he was well known for good manners and so Andrew copied him.
Mrs. Peverill said: “Rowena, you remember Jeremy.”
Jeremy greeted her with his foppish skill.
“This is one of Jeremy’s school friends.”
The girl looked at Andrew without smiling. She was a large girl with a round face and dark hair plaited into two pigtails. Though she was two or three years older, she did not scare him. There was a sadness in her eyes that reminded you of the oppressed look you saw in boys at Chalgrove Park. Boys at school looked like this after the master in charge of the Navy set had twisted the short hairs in front of their ears. Even if this girl ended up despising him – a condition he was completely accustomed to – Andrew felt himself enlisted on her side.
The girl pulled down her tweed skirt and straightened together large feet in brown regulation school shoes.
“Did they send up Nurse Partridge’s tea?” Mrs. Peverill asked.
“I think so.”
“What does that mean?”
“Yes they did. They did. They did.”
The old lady’s face seemed to slam shut, like a box. A silence, long, resonant, and uncoiling, followed.
“Jeremy has come to fish in our lake,” Major Peverill said.
“I hope they haven’t caught anything,” Rowena said quickly.
Andrew broke out. “Yes, we did. Four perch.”
She gave him an angry intense look, which pleased him more than anything that had happened so far.
“Well, I think you’re jolly cruel. Don’t tell me anything about it.”
Major Peverill put down a rock cake he was munching. “They’re just mud fish. No one minds about mud fish. The gardener’s boy used to catch them.”
“I made the gardener’s boy put them back,” Rowena said. “Please promise you will, too.”
“We usually put most of them back.” He felt he had to be the spokesman for fishing. Jeremy was an uncertain ally: his politeness made him agree with people easily and talk lightly of things that were enormously important. The boys might be argued out of returning to the lake, because of danger or inconvenience, and the holidays would be spoiled, and the big pike would go on swimming there forever.
The girl, however, soon changed the subject. She told him about India, where she had been until two years ago and where her parents still lived. While he talked to her Andrew realized that, for him too, it would be easy to agree with everything she said, in part because he liked her, in part because she seemed hurt and ill at ease. The grandmother was watching them all the time, while eating a rock cake, bits of which fell down from her mouth. Jeremy and Major Peverill were having a conversation about cricket.
In the end the girl leaned over to Andrew and whispered: “Look, I’ve got to go now. Nothing about you. I hope to see you another time.”
She stood up and the grandmother said: “Is anything the matter, Rowena?”
“No, nothing. I’m going, that’s all.” She pushed back her chair and it fell over.
“Try not to be clumsy, Rowena.”
Major Peverill had also got to his feet. “I’ll ring for Nurse Partridge,” he said.
The girl stared at him, and then averted her gaze with contempt. She walked away between the palm trees, and then they could hear her footsteps breaking into a run across the tiled floor of the hall.
There was another ear-splitting silence. In the end, Jeremy stood up.
“I’m afraid we ought to go,” he said. “It takes about three quarters of an hour to get home.”
He went over and kissed the old lady’s withered cheek. Andrew thanked her. She nodded to him but did not say anything.
“Give them one chocolate each,” she said to her son. “Outside. I don’t like the sound of chewing.”
The boys went out into the hall. While they waited for Major Peverill they were watched by dozens of glittering eyes: the walls were lined with cases of stuffed seabirds, hovering on wires or squatting on papier-mâché rocks which the taxidermist had left unwhitened by droppings.
There turned out to be few chocolates remaining in the large ornate box. While Andrew’s fingers searched among the crisp empty frills, the old man said to him: “I hope you were properly grateful to Mrs. Peverill. It’s a great privilege for a boy like you, a great privilege.”
“I did say thank you.”
“You mustn’t expect to come here frequently. There will be no question of that. Jeremy understands. It is different for him.”
Andrew nodded. He was used to the absolute oddity of grown-ups. Major Peverill, however, didn’t seem to be quite the same as a grown-up: he reminded you of an enormous boy from another school.
Major Peverill put his hand down hard on Andrew’s shoulder, kneading it, and said in a scoffing voice: “You’re very lucky to be at Chalgrove Park. It used to be one of the best private schools in the country.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, we had better just say it used to be. People of your parents’ class must find it rather expensive.”
Andrew quoted the words he had often heard spoken hushed and meaningly above his head. “I’m there on special terms.”
The old man cackled mirthlessly. “Good God, he admits it. The little brat admits it.”
When the boys had escaped into the open air, Andrew asked: “What did he mean by that?”
Jeremy kicked a stone across the drive. “Oh, he’s bats. At least, everybody says he’s bats. We’d better eat our chocolates.”
Andrew examined his chocolate, which had a sort of greenish bloom on it. He bit a piece off it, and a taste of sour mold spread through his mouth. He spat it out and started retching. Jeremy was doing the same thing. They glanced at each other and suddenly burst into loud moans, and ended up butting each other, falling about on the grass and whooping with laughter.
When they were tired of doing this, they looked up. Major Peverill was standing behind the plate-glass front of the winter garden, so close to the glass that his nose made a pale circle against it.
“Ought we to go back and apologize?”
“No, let’s go home. He doesn’t matter.”
While they were getting their bicycles, Andrew asked: “Is he Rowena’s uncle?”
“Sort of. Not really. She’s adopted. They were too old to have children when they were married.”
“Who were?”
“Her parents. I mean, they weren’t her parents. Mrs. Peverill’s daughter. You know.”
Andrew was uncertain that he did know, but guessed it was something that older people found embarrassing, like the prolonged absence of his own father and the continual presence at home of his mother’s friend, Group-Captain Weare.
“How do you know about Rowena?”
“The nannies all talked about it at children’s parties.”
They were both embarrassed by this conversation. They found it rather awful to admit they had ever been younger than they now were. At school people blushed and lied when it was discovered that they had younger brothers or, much worse, sisters. No one knew what exacting god laid down such conditions. But his judgment could follow you, Andrew had discovered, even into dreams.
III
He free-wheeled down through the village and over the bridge that crossed the dull little river he had fished in since he was ten. Beyond the railway crossing there was a huge advertisement: BOVRIL – PREVENTS THAT SINKING FEELING.
His home was not far from the railway station, a red-brick villa which had �
�Braeside” painted on the fanlight above the front door. The adjoining houses were called “Ambleside” and “Glen Lomond.” All three of the houses had upright pianos in the front rooms, but his mother was the only qualified pianist there and in the summer when the windows were open he could always recognize her playing as he drew near the three houses. He could also tell what was happening from what was being played: the thumping scales and chords when she was giving a lesson, or the stumbling of one of her pupils through a party piece; her own playing of Chopin or Schumann, and the casades of jazz which meant that Group-Captain Weare had come on one of his visits.
His mother was full of random enthusiasms and intensities, about a new friend or a letter from an old one, or about her new novel from the library, which lay with its suede bookmark on the brass-topped Indian table in the sitting room. To Andrew she was gentle-skinned and warm, and smelt of sweetish cake crumbs. Recently, though, he had begun to practice looking at her as though he had no idea who she was. Then he saw a small plump woman with reddish-blonde hair and a soft complexion, a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, her rings parked on the side of the piano, playing with marked expression, the backs of the small plump hands arched, poised and pouncing at the notes of a piece by her favorite Billy Mayerl, which fell in tinselly cascades, while Godfrey Weare sat on the settee trying to hook a dottle out of his pipe.
When she was playing the piano, she could not hear the ticking sound of the bicycle as he wheeled it along the cinder path to the back of the house. In the shed at the back where he kept his things, there were also two trunks; not the tin ones, which his father had taken to Egypt, but a traveling trunk of his mother’s, and an old round-topped one, which was locked. This contained, among other objects, the sea-fishing tackle they had bought to fish for pollack in Devon about four years ago.