by David Miller
The first part of his plan involved getting some money. A small girl was thumping out scales in the front room, and he saw his mother’s handbag on a table in the narrow hallway. Almost without touching it, he fished out a ten shilling note. It was the first time he had ever done this, and he found that the action disturbed him a good deal. Probably his mother would have given him extra pocket money if he had asked for it: he stole from her because he wanted to be able not to love her.
He spent the ten shilling note on wire traces and triangle hooks at the village tobacconist’s shop. In the afternoon he went to collect the bicycle from the cottage near Braxby Park and later he fished for gudgeon in the stream near the village. He caught eight of them. Two were stiff and white next morning but the rest, for live bait, were now in a paint tin at the bottom of the boat.
They shipped the oars. There was no anchor but the boat stayed, held in the water lilies by the open water. It was Jeremy’s fault that they had arrived so late. He had refused to come out until the middle of the morning; he had needed a good deal of persuasion before he would ask the butler for the key to the boathouse. Then he had pretended to be unable to unlock the iron gate at the top of the steps. Now the rods were out and nothing was happening. While they sat looking at the rays of sunlight fanning down into the deep water or watched the wood pigeons rocketing across the sky, Andrew could feel Jeremy getting bored again. It was like a weakening fever, he felt it infecting himself and breaking down his own will.
“Cooee! Cooee!”
This time it was the girl herself, who must have adopted from her nurse this Antipodean call sign. She was standing on the jetty on the other side of the lake, her pale face and blouse shining out against the shadow of the trees. They waved to her, hoping she would go away.
“Give me a ride.”
“No, we can’t. We’re fishing.”
“Come on, do. Please.”
“You’ll scare the fish,” Andrew called.
“You’ll sink the boat,” Jeremy said. “You’re too fat,” he added more quietly.
“What was that?”
They both giggled, and whispered together: “Too fat, too fat.”
“Please take me.”
“No.” Inside himself, Andrew was already twisted with shame and sorrow and ready to surrender. With Jeremy there, however, it was easy to fall back into shared silliness.
“I think you’re both beastly,” Rowena said. Then the tall navy-blue shape of the nurse appeared beside her. Some sort of heated discussion followed, which ended with both of them walking off together under the beech trees.
After the girl had gone, the boys avoided looking at each other for some time. Andrew felt saddened. Everything about her, even the ugly plaits and the fawn stockings which wrinkled over her round knees, struck him with a guilty and pleasurable melancholy, like singing “The Day Thou Gavest” at Sunday evening service.
A little later there was a splash near the boat, and a gingerpop bottle surfaced among the weeds.
“That was a bloody silly thing to do.”
“Wa-wa. Why don’t you cry about it?” Jeremy wriggled around to face him. “Who are you to go about giving the orders, that’s what I’d like to know.”
He picked up one of the oars and slapped it up and down on the surface of the water. The sounds echoed from the rocks and startled a flight of pigeons.
“Why did you do that?”
Jeremy mumbled something under his breath.
“I didn’t hear. Why did you do that?”
“Because you stink, that’s why.”
Andrew began to reel in his line. Jeremy had got into a terrific rage: obviously the girl’s presence and the way they had both reacted to it had made him feel guilty and angry too.
“Why don’t you just admit you stink and be done with it?”
“I don’t.”
“Of course you stink, it’s famous. You fart worse than anyone else in Lower Changing Room. Only last term I heard someone say “I’m not going in there because that oik’s farted.”
“Let’s go back.”
“I’ll say whether we go back or not, you little oik. This boat belongs to my friends, doesn’t it? You haven’t got any friends.”
Andrew began to untwist the ferrules of his rod. His eyes were getting hot and blurred.
“You haven’t got any friends because you are an oik. You live in a house in a row. Your mother’s as common as muck. You remember when she rang us up the other day at home? Well, we all thought it must be one of the servants’ friends.”
By the conventions of Chalgrove Park, Jeremy’s attack had gone through three stages. You could tell people they stank and be easily forgiven: it was a matter of style. Even being an oik could still be considered a temporary matter, arising out of one particular piece of behavior. But to attack somebody’s “people” to his face was to break a tabu. Jeremy did it so that they would never be able to speak to each other again.
A few moments later they realized that this created difficulties. They were in the middle of the lake, aware to their fingertips of the black depth of water underneath them, and the hundred yards which lay between them and the boathouse.
Without speaking they rowed with quick, light strokes, shaking off the lily stems, and glided in under the rock. Together they slid the boat on to dry land. There were five live bait remaining. Andrew sank the tin in shallow water, which could enter the holes pierced in the lid. Jeremy had hurried ahead and did not see him do this. As he had done earlier, Jeremy found the lock too stiff to move; he handed Andrew the key again. Andrew stood in front of the iron gate and turned the key, but made sure that it did not click shut. He jammed a stone under the gate: it would appear to be locked but he could always get in when he wanted.
At the front of the house, Jeremy waited to return the key to the butler.
Andrew lingered for a little, and then called “Good-bye,” when it seemed unlikely that the other could hear him. It was strange to be alone, bicycling home in the empty middle of the afternoon, as though he was entering on a newer harsher period of his life. Next term when he and Jeremy met at Chalgrove Park, they would not speak to each other anymore. This would not cause any problems, because they had always belonged to different gangs; in any case, the unwritten laws compelled a certain shame about knowing each other in the holidays.
Finding the front door of “Braeside” closed on the chain, he pushed it open as far as he could and shouted.
After some minutes, his mother came downstairs in her dressing-gown. “I wondered who on earth it was. I was resting. I thought you said you’d be out all day.”
“It was no good. Too hot.”
She opened the door in silence.
Trying to please her, he said: “I had a row with Jeremy Cathcart.”
She did not respond to this but turned away, pulling the dressing-gown more tightly around her.
“Is there anything to eat?”
“Take some biscuits. You ought to be out in the open air.”
“All right, I’m going. You won’t catch me staying around this dump.”
This remark, too, had no visible effect on her. He took a handful of gingersnaps from the kitchen. Her unusual silence retained him for a moment. Then he shuffled off, kicking a stone along down the path in front of him. But the silence persisted until he heard her close the door again.
He crossed the main road by the Bovril advertisement, and walked uphill until he reached the Recreation Ground. Stuck in the middle of the country, it was an odd, townish place with its park seats, sandpit and swings, and a cricket pavilion of darkgreen corrugated iron. Everything here seemed much-handled and grimy, and Woodbine packets and sweet papers were trodden into the earth.
Some boys were playing cricket in the middle of the field. He sat on a bench and watched them while he ate the gingersnaps. On three sides of the Recreation Ground there were rows of young pine trees. The fourth side overlooked the village and the railway statio
n. Four cars were parked in front of the station, one of them a Sunbeam, the same color as Godfrey Weare’s. But it couldn’t be Godfrey Weare’s; why should he travel anywhere by train? With a telescope, he would be able to focus on the number plate and be sure.
A little later, though, he saw Godfrey Weare coming across the road near the Bovril advertisement, could not mistake the penguin walk, the large behind, and the bouncing cock’s tail of hair. Godfrey Weare got into the Sunbeam. He reversed, went forward to pause by the main road, and then he drove across the level crossing toward London.
VII
The pike was firmly hooked and it fought strongly. He could glimpse it down below, a dull gold bar flashing in the deep water. Then, apparently surrendering, it rose slowly upward, but when its long head broke the surface it shook with new violence, knocking against the side of the boat. The broad tail fin twisted out, thrashing the water with a noise that echoed across the lake.
He dropped the tip of the rod, and the fish lay captive alongside the boat, with the back fin just out of the water. It was not really large, probably about four pounds, and he had already decided to let it go. If you fished alone, you caught more but there was nobody to witness the result. At home his mother seemed too distracted to pretend any interest.
Nevertheless, he watched the fish with triumph and pleasure. He looked at his watch: it was half past eight in the morning. The sun had not yet risen above the trees and the water was black and dead-looking. He willed himself to remember this moment, its surroundings, and what he was feeling. Whatever lay ahead, like school examinations, he hoped such feelings would continue, although, whenever you looked at adults, it seemed unlikely that they should. He leaned over the side of the boat and the pike turned over showing one flat furious eye. He hauled it into the boat and stuck a piece of wood into its mouth. Talking to it, he tried to get the hook free past the rows of tiny teeth. The hook finally yielded and came out dragging a large piece of living gristle. Appalled by what he had done he heaved the fish back into the water. It sank and then surfaced again, lying on its side. It flapped for a time, righted itself and disappeared. At least he had tried to save it; perhaps it would survive after all.
He was covered with fish slime and he longed to pee. He had observed his bearings from the trees on the shore, and so he rowed without looking back until he saw the rock walls on either side of him. The boat gritted on the floor of the cave.
He jumped out and collided with a buttoned, tweed-covered mass, smelling of tobacco, that felt like an old armchair. In the reflected light from the water, he could just make out the face with the startled permanent grin, like a pike’s.
Andrew put down his head and tried to get past to the steps that led to the open air.
Major Peverill put out large wrinkled hands to stop him. “Where are you off to? There’s no hurry.”
“I must go out. I – I want to be excused.”
“What does that mean? Oh, I understand.” The old man laughed. “You can do it here. We are all men here.”
There was a long pause while Andrew faced the wall. Outside the sun had begun to strike the lake water. He wondered what had happened to the pike he had caught, and whether it would die.
“Well, aren’t you going to?”
“I can’t,” he admitted. He buttoned up and turned around again.
“Where’s the other boy?”
“He didn’t – want to come today.”
“So you’re alone?” The old man observed him with a livelier interest. “The brat’s alone. Do you mind me calling you ‘brat’?”
Andrew stood on one leg and then the other. The immediate urgency seemed to have gone, but he was contorted with something which was like shyness but much stronger.
“After all, why shouldn’t I call you ‘brat’? You are a brat, aren’t you? Come here.”
“No, I don’t want to.”
“You don’t know what you want, at your age. You have to be shown. How old are you, brat?”
“Twelve and three quarters.” Andrew went quiet and respectful; Chalgrove Park had trained him to behave like this unthinkingly in front of adults. “Excuse me, I’ll just get my things.”
He took his rod and fishing bag out of the boat. He went in front up the steps, while the old man’s fingers pinched his backside and tried to get up his shorts. When he reached the last step, he ran as hard as he could.
“Come here, damn you. Here.”
Out of breath at the top of the slope, Andrew looked down through a gap in the rhododendrons. He saw Major Peverill standing there, calling for him like a dog. He was so accustomed to obeying schoolmasters that he still felt he was in some way breaking the rules by not going down again. Now, too, he noticed a droop of sadness and frustration about the old man which made him obscurely sorry.
He returned home to hear his mother giving a piano lesson.
She had reached the point in the proceedings when she would firmly displace the pupil from the stool and take over, letting loose a stampede of chords, arpeggios, and glissandi, twisting around, showing her teeth and saying “Lovely thing, isn’t it?” All of this he took for showing-off and it embarrassed him deeply. Even the noise of it made him cringe going past the window. In the kitchen he poured out a big glass of orange Kia-Ora, which he took upstairs to his bedroom, together with one of his mother’s library books, which he had just started to read.
He heard the front door open and close. His mother came upstairs and stood in his bedroom doorway, with an airy and mysterious look about her.
“Isn’t that book too old for you?”
“No, it isn’t. I like it.”
“You’ll tire your eyes.” She turned over his hairbrush and dug his comb deeply into it. “What are you going to do with yourself all afternoon? Godfrey wants me to go out with him.”
“Read. Can I have a bath? I stink of fish.”
His mother affected an expression of amused tolerance. She went back dowstairs, where he heard her singing as she drifted from room to room.
The geyser flared up and subsided to a steady flame. In the bath, hot water pounded on to rusty stains where the taps had been weeping. When he came back from undressing, the bathroom window had steamed up. Wiping a patch clear, he looked out at the bright noon light over the neighboring gardens, yellow and green privet hedge and creosoted sheds. On one of the sheds a wooden airplane was spinning in a light breeze.
He waited till the bath was nearly full, before turning off the taps. While he looked at himself in the mirror his fingers explored the silky hair which had started growing in a line just above his cock. Now, with a pair of nail scissors, he trimmed the hairs off neatly, so that that part was quite bare again, as it had been a few weeks ago.
VIII
For some time he did not visit Braxby Park, except when he dreamed about it at night, and then it appeared as though he hardly ever left it. In dreams there were several ways of arriving there. Once or twice it was through his preparatory school: toward the end of the holidays his dream life usually attempted to make bridges between the opposing worlds, and his school dream was of drifting without will from the bare classrooms and dormitories, along the corridors, through the swing doors into the Headmaster’s part of the house. There, in carpeted rooms lit by roaring log fires, the Headmaster’s wife would discover him and expel him with ignominy. Sometimes now, however, the school corridors led directly into Braxby Park, and he met Rowena, who told him: “We thought you would keep away and not cause trouble. No wonder we are disappointed.”
But on other occasions it was through unvisited rooms upstairs at “Braeside.” Once he had found them (you knew these rooms existed but somehow they escaped your memory) the lake and the jetty were easily visible from the windows. Later, though, he was running down the paths between the rhododendrons and, although Braxby Park was behind him, there was some bias in his footsteps which pulled him back to the front door where Major Peverill was waiting. He awoke full of of apprehen
sion from these encounters, blinking their persistent sad twilight out of his eyes, which seemed unaccustomed to the ordinary light of morning.
On the last evening of the holidays, he was back at the lake with his fishing tackle. As he had expected, the boathouse was securely locked again; he followed the path around until he reached the jetty. Now, in September, the shadows were already long, and some of the trees had golden reflections in the still water.
He took a long time assembling his rods, paying elaborate attention to each knot, in order to avoid tomorrow in his thoughts. His mother had told him that Godfrey Weare had very kindly offered to take him back to Chalgrove Park in the Sunbeam. It would mean leaving him at school a good deal earlier than usual, because Godfrey Weare and his mother would be driving on to Brighton, to dine together and see a show. She couldn’t realize the sharp twinge she caused by announcing jolly plans for the time when he would be out of the way.
In some ways he was surprised to find himself here this evening, nearly a month after his last visit. In the village street he had run into Jeremy, returned from Ireland: with a single instinct they had cut each other dead. Then this morning he had discovered three frogs in some long grass at the end of the garden. He had read Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler and he remembered the instruction for using them as live bait: “Use him as though you love him, that he may live the longer.” A frog would not only live longer but swim out into the clear water. Suddenly his passion was aroused all over again. Nevertheless, he was almost sure that this was the last time he would come here. The future was getting fuller and fuller of other things; part of his childhood was being crowded out, not because he wanted to let it go, but because there was nobody to share it with.
In spite of Izaak Walton, he had found the business of hooking on the frog rather appalling: you needed somebody else at hand to encourage you to do such things. He hoped to catch a small fish for live bait on the lighter of the two rods. By the time everything was ready, moths were starting to flutter clumsily and rooks were going home across the pale sky. His two floats lay far out on the pale water, the smaller one motionless, the larger one trembling, agitated by the desperately swimming frog.