Adrian Glynde

by Martin Armstrong

  “Ought we then,” said Bob, “to apprentice Adrian to a coal-heaver?”

  “Yes,” said Oliver, “on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and to a poet or a composer on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”

  “My poor Adrian, what a week!” said Clara, glancing compassionately at him across the table. “But on Sundays perhaps you’ll be allowed to pat the Mongrel.”

  On the day following New Year’s Day they left Abbot’s Randale.

  “Good-bye, my spiritual Father,” called Clara from the car to the old man, who stood erect and imposing as a major prophet in the stone niche of the porch.

  “Good-bye, good-bye, my dear animals,” he called back, his grey-blue eyes twinkling. Then, just as Bob was on the point of starting, he hurried forward to the car. “Clara, you haven’t left the Mongrel behind you, I hope?”

  “Oh, dear me, no,” she replied. She tapped her forehead with her forefinger. “I’ve got him safe in here.”

  XIV

  For Adrian the return to Charminster was something like a sea-bathe on a cold, rough day. To fling off the warm clothing of holiday comforts and luxuries and leap suddenly into the bare, turbulent, Spartan welter of school was a drastic change. It was horrible to return to the labour and tedium of school work, to the noise and restlessness of Common-room, to the remorseless lack of leisure, the rush to change for a game directly after lunch without the smallest breathing-space, and to the hostile intrusions of the hated Ellenger. But he had rich compensations. The bodily presence of Ronny Dakyn would be enough to make up for all, and besides Dakyn there was Mr. Heller and music.

  At Waterloo station he began to look out for Dakyn, his eyes anxiously filtering the crowd of boys that moved past the carriage window where he himself had already been lucky enough to secure a seat. He had met Phipps in the station and they had boarded the train together. He had been glad to discover Phipps, not only because he was a special friend of his, but also because by doing so he had ceased to be alone and thus had at once become immune from the anxieties and diffidences to which loneliness exposed him. He felt now that he had an anchorage, that he was a part, and no longer a victim, of this swarming crowd.

  Phipps looked surprisingly a little gentleman, extraordinarily clean and individual, and so did all the other boys. So, though he was not aware of it, did Adrian himself. It would take some days to rub off their holiday cleanness and reduce them all to type again. Some of the boys had their people with them, and Adrian examined them curiously and critically, glad that Uncle Bob and Aunt Clara were not there to be exposed to the multitudinous inspection and so provide an opportunity, he felt, for the infringement of his personal privacy. He spotted members of the school eleven, of his own house eleven, and one or two of the Taylor’s prefects—gorgeous people, self-possessed, and slightly scornful of the crowd through which they moved; but his search for Dakyn was unrewarded.

  The train started, and he took refuge in a book he had borrowed from Yarn, reading it steadily until they had reached their destination. At the station, he, Phipps, and three other boys collared a taxi, and his heart sank as they drove up to the gaunt, ugly block of Taylor’s. But though his heart sank, he felt secure. For he knew the place now, with all its rules and regulations and customs, all the ins and outs and intricacies of its routine and organisation. He was no longer the helpless and bewildered new boy. He became aware, even, of a little thrill of affection for the place.

  They went in and ran upstairs to the dormitory to find their cubicles and deposit their coats and bags. Then all together, as if for protection, they went down to Common-room. How remorselessly clean and bare and hollow the place was. Not a vestige of the comforts of Abbot’s Randale or Yarn which now, in a sudden pang of memory, seemed to him unspeakably precious. But Common-room was at least fairly peaceful at present. No one had yet settled down. Small groups of boys stood about, talking soberly. Adrian spotted friends here and there, and with an inward thrill of fear and hatred one or two of his pet aversions. But he paid little heed to either, for he was in a state of suspense, he was waiting anxiously, impatiently—a prey, under his small, quiet, inscrutable exterior, to desperate hopes and agonised forebodings.

  He and Phipps went providently off to bag pegs for their footer things and pigeon-holes for their boots in boot-room. As they passed the door of Hall, they ran into a large, heavily built shape that was going in. It was Ellenger. He inspected them from under his scowling brows.

  “Hallo, young man!” he said to Adrian in a tone that was rather a threat than a salutation.

  When he was past them, the bumptious Phipps pulled a face at his retreating back. “Surly swine!” he said.

  Adrian said nothing. The sight of Ellenger brought before him in his single person all that he feared and hated at Charminster; but it brought him a gleam of hope too. He knew that Dakyn had been going to stay with Ellenger for the second half of the holidays. If so, then the return of Ellenger must mean the return of Dakyn. On a sudden impulse, knowing that Ellenger was safe in Hall, Adrian ran upstairs and along the passage to the studies. The door of Dakyn’s was ajar and he peeped in. The place was dead. Not a sign of a bag, not so much as a hat; nothing out of place! Obviously Dakyn had not yet been into it. That must mean that he hadn’t yet arrived. His legs weak with anxiety, he went slowly downstairs and rejoined Phipps. At prayers, at least, he would know: his suspense would be at an end. His anxiety was so great that he ate the slices of tinned tongue and wet ham and drank the metallic tea of the invariable first supper of term without even noticing the lamentable change from the good fare of the holidays.

  Supper was cleared, the tablecloths removed, time crept on. At last the boys in Common-room began to line up round the tables. It was five minutes to nine. The door of Hall opened and the boys of the upper school began to stream in and line up. Just before Mr. Wisborough, the prefects would come in. Adrian, who had been late in getting into position, found himself obliged to stand at a point where his back was turned to Hall door and, worse still, where he would not be able to see the prefects where they stood for prayers. It was too late to change his place: there was no room at the other side of his table. “He’s not here! He’s not here!” something kept saying to him. He believed that he could feel, that he knew unmistakably that Ronny was not at the other side of that door. Why wasn’t he there? What had happened?

  Suddenly the door-handle rattled: the door opened. Adrian’s heart beat so fast that it seemed to rise into his throat and stifle him. In defiance of convention, he turned his head and watched. Coulter, the head prefect, came in first. He saw the right shoulder of the next, and of the next; then, higher than the rest, the dark head of Jackman, the fourth. Still Adrian stared. The boy standing next him punched him on the thigh. But Adrian did not turn his head, for behind Jackman’s shoulder he had caught sight of a bright gleam of gold and a neat pink ear. The first glimpse was enough: he was satisfied. But for another second he did not turn away his eyes. With a fluttering heart he stared still. Dakyn, passing him now, saw him and, meeting his gaze, smiled and raised his eyebrows in mock reproof. The footsteps of Mr. Wisborough were audible at the door. Adrian resumed his proper attitude, and as he did so he caught the amused eyes of Phipps, who made a discreet and hardly perceptible face at him.

  Adrian went to bed happy. It did not matter at all that he had hardly seen Ronny and had not spoken a word to him. That brief glimpse of him, that silent, whimsical, wholly unhoped-for salutation, the blessed assurance that he was safely back at Charminster and that his own well-being was thus assured, these things were enough and more than enough for his humble cravings.

  Next day he resumed his job as prefect’s fag. In the morning, after breakfast, Dakyn sent for him, and Adrian found him in the study, busy unpacking a trunk. A wooden box with a padlock lay open beside it, and the door of the cupboard under the bookshelves was open too. Dakyn raised a red face from his labours.

  “Hallo, little man,” he said, “did
you have a decent time?”

  “Very, thank you,” said Adrian. “I hope you had.”

  “Not half bad, thanks,” said Dakyn. “Give me a hand with this unpacking, will you? You’ll find various kinds of foods in the box there. Just take them out and stick them in the cupboard. That small box there is crystallised fruit. That’s for you. First prize for being champion shoe-polisher. You’d better keep it up here, then you won’t have to share it with the crowd in Common-room. You can have one when you happen to be up here. Better try one now.”

  Adrian was overcome with gratitude. He began shyly to undo the wrappings. When he had opened the box and discovered the rows of pink, yellow, and dark green fruits, he held it out timidly to Dakyn.

  “Won’t you have one too?” he said.

  “Shall I?”

  “Yes, do.”

  Dakyn looked at Adrian, then at the fruit. “It’s a terrible job to choose,” he said with a scowl of comic perplexity. Then he chose a green one.

  Some days later Adrian, alone in the study, remembered the preserved fruits and, kneeling down, opened the door of the cupboard and got the box out. He opened it, seriously considered the contents, and had just dislodged a yellow apricot when the door opened and Ellenger appeared. He stood there with his hand on the door-handle and fixed his sombre gaze on the little crouching boy.

  “Hm! Caught you this time,” he said.

  Adrian, with the apricot between finger and thumb, closed the box with his other hand and began to put it away. He was conscious of Ellenger, still motionless, watching him insolently from the door. Dumb rage struggled within him. He was furious that this great swine of a chap should keep butting in and accusing him of all sorts of dirty tricks. He was furious, but he was afraid. Ellenger was so large and aggressive, he himself so small and insignificant. He felt rage spreading like fire over his face, up among the roots of his hair, he felt it flaming round his neck into the very tips of his ears. If he had had the courage and a knife he would gladly have stabbed Ellenger, struck the knife in deep, deep into his broad chest. His hands trembled, and at first he could not fit the box into its place in the small crowded cupboard. Ellenger, watching him from behind, saw the redness flow across his neck and ears and took it for a sign of guilt. He was glad: he felt triumphant and vindictive. But slowly Adrian’s fury got the better of his fear. It struggled with him, oppressing him and urging him to let it out. He turned a flaming face to Ellenger.

  “Do you suppose I pinch Dakyn’s stuff? “he asked, breathless with anger, his nostrils pulsing, the muscles about his temples and jaws twitching.

  “It looks uncommonly like it,” said Ellenger sardonically.

  “That box is mine,” said Adrian. Not for worlds would he have told Ellenger that Dakyn had given it to him: that was no business of Ellenger’s: it was a thing between himself and Dakyn.

  Ellenger smiled contemptuously. “Then why can’t you keep it in your cupboard in Common-room and share it with other chaps, as any decent chap would?”

  Adrian, his bashfulness gone, his eyes bold with anger, shot at Ellenger a look ablaze with the cold fire of hatred. He wasn’t going to tell him, however, that Ronny had said he must keep it there. Not likely. He turned and shut the cupboard door, and at the same moment Ellenger opened the door whose handle he still grasped. Adrian was going, but Ellenger, by holding the door open for him, seized the opportunity to produce the impression that he was turning him out of the study.

  Adrian heard the door shut-to sharply behind him as with racing heart and knees and arms trembling with anger he went down the passage. “Bloody swine!” he murmured to himself. “Bloody swine!” He had never used the word bloody before, and to use it now, to savour the full aggressive possibilities of its sound, brought a marvellous relief to his feelings. It seemed as if the words were actually attacking and injuring Ellenger. Fantastic projects leapt into his mind. He would make a row about it and force Ellenger to apologise. He would tell Dakyn and complain of Ellenger’s low-down accusations. If only he could think of some way of harming Ellenger, of showing him up for the bloody swine he was. At least he would tell all his friends about it and they would agree that he was a bloody swine. That would be a comfort, anyhow, when he told the story and the listener replied: “Oh, well, what can you expect from such a bloody swine!”

  In the afternoon of the day after his return to Charminster Adrian ran down through the copse to Mr. Heller’s house. As he entered the gate and approached the porch a muffled blare of music came from the house, as though the place were a factory pulsing with energy. He opened the front door and let out a louder whirl of sound. He was entangled in music: the whole house was alive with it. Eddies and showers and cataracts of notes swirled, combined, swept apart, and broke across each other’s tracks in a whirlpool of hurrying harmonies which brimmed up into the hollow of the staircase, engulfed the hat-rack with its coats and hats and umbrellas, ebbed and flowed about the kitchen door and down the back passage.

  It had always been understood that Adrian rang no bell and knocked at no door, that he let himself into the house and into the sitting-room, and that if Mr. Heller were playing he sat quietly down at his side, ignored until the piece was finished. He opened the sitting-room door now and let himself into the heart of the factory.

  The heavy, spicy smell of the room, half fragrant, half repellent, attacked his sense with its challenging reminder, bringing back to him in a single impression the essence of all that Old Hell himself, his stumbling speech, his playing and his teaching, all that music itself meant to him. Old Heller’s meagre body was crouched over the keyboard. His busy talons, moving as if in delirium, now clawed, now softly stroked, now grabbed fiercely at the notes, his thin moulting vulture’s head nodded spasmodically. It seemed sometimes as if he were about to peck at a note with his long livid beak. A claw shot forward, made a savage snatch at the music, and in a flash a page was whipped over. Noiselessly Adrian drew up a chair and sat down beside him. He knew at once that it was Bach, and as he sat losing himself in the music it seemed to him that time had swallowed the holidays, closed over them as water closes over a stone, that he had not been away from Charminster for the last five weeks, but that the old routine had flowed on and was still flowing uninterrupted. He watched the old man’s head, noted the direction of his gaze, detected on the page a phrase that had just declared itself in the treble, and, when the moment came, leaned forward as usual and turned over.

  John Donne’s death mask was suddenly turned full upon him, the eyes stared through the thick lenses, the mouth gaped and inarticulate noises came through the noise of the music. “Why, bless … bless … bless me … why …!” Adrian seemed to hear, but the music rolled on uninterrupted, till a pause came at the bottom of the next page, a transition from one part of the piece to another. The new page was headed “Fugue.”

  But Mr. Heller took no notice of Adrian. He held both hands suspended. For a moment the house was full, startlingly, overwhelmingly full of silence. Then the left hand indicated a slow, leisurely rhythm, the right dropped to the keyboard, and the slow simple notes of the fugue were quietly announced. The left hand dropped: another voice joined the first, repeating in rich, tender, more masculine tone what the first had said. Gradually other voices awoke, twining their weft of sound into the growing and thickening texture.

  It seemed to Adrian that he was witnessing a great orderly development, the building in the empty space of the room of a great sound-world. Yet he was not merely witnessing it. Every sense, every sinew and nerve of his body were taking part in it, developing it, or being developed into it, or both simultaneously: a world full and perfect, lacking in nothing that perfection demands, potently and faultlessly called into being by this grotesque, nodding, bony vulture, who himself seemed to lack so much of the perfect man. Adrian, caught into that intenser life, realised powers which were beginning to stir in him. He felt that the mysteries of music were within his grasp, that before long he would be able
to play as Mr. Heller played, and that he would himself write music, not only the small clear tunes he composed now, but a music of tunes woven across tunes in rich and intricate patterns, a richness built up out of simplicity, as his grandfather had said that all good things must be built. The fugue rose to heights and marched by solemn strides irresistibly and inevitably downward, strong as basalt yet flexible as living muscle, rose to higher summits still, to forge downwards still more loudly, still more emphatically to inevitability on ultimate rock bottom.

  When the piece was finished, and when in the long pause that followed they had fallen out of that world created by sound and shattered by final silence, gathered themselves each into his narrow self, into Charminster, into Mr. Heller’s small sitting-room, the old man broke out of his abstraction, turned with his kind smile to Adrian, and the two met for the first time that term.

  “Well … well … er … well, my dear Glynde. I’m … er … I’m … This is … er … really …” With his quiet, distinguished courtesy he held out his long bony hand. “You know,” he went on, making rhythmic indications of words in the air, “I hadn’t … I hadn’t … no, not the slightest … er … You took me … er … completely … by … er, yes, by … er … when you turned over. You had an enjoyable holiday?” he asked with sudden coherence. “Good! Good! I’m very glad. You … er … practised?”

  “Yes, sir. I practised a lot for ten days when I was at my grandfather’s. You see, my aunt has no piano. She and Uncle Bob, my uncle I mean, don’t care about music, but my grandfather is very keen on it.”

  “And what sort of music is he keen on?”

  “Oh, the best sort,” said Adrian. “I told him who your gods were, and he said that you and he belonged to the same religion.”

  The old man held up his large hands in mock horror. “How am I going to teach you music, Glynde, if both he and I are influencing you all the time.” He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I don’t see how the Romantics are going to have a look in,” he said, chuckling to himself. He turned to Adrian again. “Your grandfather isn’t, by any chance, the poet?”