Doting

by Henry Green

  I began by invoking Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, contemporaries whose careers were in every objective sense more successful, and whose books remain far more readable. But are they as rereadable? When I go back to them now they rarely say anything new to me, nothing more than they did at first; I turn their pages with pleasure and yet the pleasure is that of repetition, the resumption of the familiar. The menu never changes. Henry Green seems in contrast always different, and never what he was. The emphasis alters, and some parts of his work remain forever odd, anomalous, and even disturbing. On Doting’s first page he writes that Peter would “several weeks later . . . carry a white goose under one arm, its dead beak almost trailing the platform, to catch the last train back to yet another term.” That goose isn’t mentioned again. I don’t really want to know what the boy plans to do with it, or even how he got it, but I would like to know why Green put it there. I never will, and among the many reasons for reading this difficult genius is the way he keeps his secrets still.

  —MICHAEL GORRA

  DOTING

  “PRETTY squalid play all round, I thought!”

  His son only grunted back at him, face vacant, mouth half open, in London, in 1949.

  Smiling with grace the mother, the spouse, leant across to the fourth of their after-the-theatre party, who was a girl older than this boy, aged almost seventeen, by perhaps two years.

  “But could you conceive of the wife?” Mrs. Middleton cried.

  The girl, the Annabel Paynton, smiled.

  “Oh wasn’t she!” this child agreed who, as a favoured daughter of a now disliked old friend, was invariably asked to make even numbers at what had come to be the immemorial evening out, on the boy’s first night of his holidays.

  So they were three in full evening dress apart from Peter’s tailored pin stripe suit in which, several weeks later, he was to carry a white goose under one arm, its dead beak almost trailing the platform, to catch the last train back to yet another term.

  “Pretty fair rot to my ideas,” Arthur Middleton insisted, “rot” being a word he did not use except in his son’s holidays. But he had no answer save a long roll of drums, because, at this moment, lights throughout the restaurant were dimmed.

  “Not quite ideal for eating,” Diana Middleton complained.

  “Here, I am truly sorry,” the husband apologized, then switched their lamp on to cast violet from the shade upon their table, at which the girl’s sweet features turned to no less than wild mystery in the sort of dark he’d made. Perhaps she was aware of this, for she laughed full at Peter until, at last, the boy squirmed.

  “And have you been here ever before?” she demanded.

  “What, at his age!” Mrs. Middleton cried.

  “Well in that case he’s managed it at last,” the husband commented as he watched Miss Paynton’s face, her eyes. Then, to yet another roll of drums, violet limes were switched on the small stage, a man hurrahed, and Annabel bellied the corsage of her low dress the better to see between elegant shod toes, the party being seated to supper up on a balcony at this night club and hard against wrought iron railings—she did this the better to watch what now emerged, an almost entirely naked woman who walked on to scant applause, and who carried with some awkwardness, within two arms thin like snakes, a simple wicker, purple, washing basket.

  “Well but just look at that,” the father said and turned his gaze back to Miss Paynton, while the son opened his mouth as if he could eat what he now saw.

  “Now, who’s being stuffy dear, please?” Diana asked.

  Peter shushed both as, following the drums, a dirge of indigo music rose then sank, or rose, to a single flute with repeated, but ever changing, runs or trills.

  “Would you call her pretty, Peter?” the mother asked in a bright voice.

  “Fairly awful,” he replied. At which Mrs. Middleton smiled her fondest.

  “All right by me,” his father said to Annabel to be snubbed by yet another “sh’sh” from Peter.

  For the lady had begun to dance.

  All she wore was a blue sequin on the point of each breast and a few more to cover her sex. As she swayed those hips, sequins caught the light to strike off in a blaze of royal blue while the skin stayed moonlit and the palms of her two hands, daubed probably with a darker pigment, made a deeper shadow above raised arms, of a red so harsh it was almost black in that space through which she waved her opened fingers in figure of eights before the cut jet of two staring eyes.

  Mr. Middleton did not seem able to leave Miss Paynton be.

  “How old would you say she was?” he demanded of the girl in what sounded a salacious whisper. “Every bit of sixteen?”

  “Heavens no! Twenty-three at least,” the young lady answered, in a matter of fact voice, as she continued to watch.

  “Come now,” he said, louder, and appeared confident.

  “Any girl with a figure like that could only be a child!”

  “Yes, I suppose,” Miss Paynton seemed to agree, yet obviously doubted, and flicked him a look.

  “Sh . . . Arthur,” his wife implored.

  “Sorry of course,” he answered in a kind of stage whisper upon which, to another, shorter, roll of drums, the spectacle changed, those lights turned to a pink which flushed Annabel’s forehead to rose while the woman below stood still, and seemed to swell as saxophones took over to welcome heads of what, it soon became plain, were mechanically operated snakes thrust forth on springs from the now apricot coloured washing basket, and which did not sway their blunt heads, but kept quite quiet to a sudden return of flutes.

  “Perpetrated a bit of a bloomer, surely, when they turned their lights full on as she staggered in with the old property basket?” Mr. Middleton suggested.

  He had no answer. Now, to a crescendo, in which the whole band joined, the woman began to waggle with extreme violence and the limes went red till she seemed almost about to melt in flames beneath.

  “Oh God when are we to get something to drink?” Peter protested and turned his face away, frowning.

  “I know old chap,” Mr. Middleton agreed.

  “A pint of shandy!” the son wailed.

  “And here’s poor Annabel been without a drop the whole evening,” Diana reminded everyone.

  “All in this place’s own good time,” her husband explained, leaning forward as if he had only now begun to appreciate the good flesh, slopping to music, close below.

  “But really, Arthur,” his wife grumbled.

  “It’s all a part of life,” he said, without looking back. “They’re Sicilians, each one,” he said, eyes fixed. “There not a waiter here will stir before this is over. To them it’s a kind of bonus.”

  “Could I have a cigarette then, d’you think?” the son demanded, almost as a right it seemed, and Diana at once began to rummage in her bag.

  “Steady on,” his father moaned, but no one paid the least attention.

  And Annabel, who had been lending a sort of tolerant amusement to the dance, turned to the boy and said,

  “Then you do already, is that it?”

  Peter did not trouble to reply.

  His father started to watch Annabel again.

  “Strange how much nearer in age you two are, both of you, than to Diana or me,” he said, looking for a moment, as if in self pity, at his wife who chose to ignore this; thence back once more on Annabel, the Paynton, who was growing yet but was full grown already, lush.

  Mrs. Middleton having tossed her son a cigarette, passed him her lighter.

  “Why not smoke occasionally?” Peter asked the girl. “What’s wrong?”

  “Plenty of time yet, thanks.”

  “If you go on saying that, you never will.”

  His father interrupted. “Yes, my dear, have you ever considered,” he said to his wife, “only two years between him and any girl who’s ‘out’?”

  “Of course,” she replied with a fond smile at Peter. Upon which the act beneath they’d ceased to watch, came to a c
lose in thin applause.

  “And then can’t you even drink?” Peter asked the girl.

  “But I don’t want.”

  “I remember when you used.”

  “You’d better not,” she said, and smiled.

  “Now we must and shall get down to serious business,” Mr. Middleton exclaimed, it can only have been to draw attention to himself again. Rising forty-five, on the way to stoutness, he added, “I starve for food after a theatre.”

  His wife put on a loving, superior smile.

  “If you were just not so greedy you wouldn’t gain all this weight,” she said, “all the time.”

  In reply he winked at Annabel, an act which Peter did not miss.

  “I needn’t bother, not at my age,” he boasted.

  “You don’t!” the girl exclaimed.

  “You can say that and mean it?”

  “Now Annabel!” he cried, delightedly laughing. “You shan’t make out I ought to bant. My life’s half over!”

  “Well, I do eat anything and it won’t upset my stomach,” she boasted.

  “Mine’s like an ostrich, too,” he claimed.

  “Poor dear, it’s his liver,” Mrs. Middleton told them.

  “Thanks darling,” her husband said.

  “The doctor keeps on repeating he must slim down for his own sake,” Mrs. Middleton insisted, with a worried frown.

  “Now really, my dear, we needn’t go over all my ailments, not so much in public.”

  “You know what Dr. Adams said, Arthur!”

  “Well, where is our waiter? Anyway, these young people don’t have to consider the size of their meals.”

  “I could eat a whole steak,” Peter announced. “Was that real food they had at the play, d’you suppose?”

  “The whisky’s forever cold tea,” his father told him over a shoulder as he pushed the bell again.

  “No honestly, Arthur,” Mrs. Middleton appealed. “Not whisky, remember! Dr. Adams specially warned us.”

  “Now dear, couldn’t you be making me a trifle ridiculous before the children?”

  “We aren’t children,” his son objected, in a bored voice.

  There was another roll of drums.

  “Why, we’re going to have something else,” Miss Paynton exclaimed, leaning forward again. Once more the elder Middleton looked down her dress, but, this time, his son caught him at it. And Annabel herself glanced sideways up, to pin the older man down. Upon which the father looked guiltily away, lights were dimmed, so he chanced a quick return to the girl’s eyes and, in this half dark, it seemed she steadily regarded him.

  “Hard to see down there from here,” he remarked to Diana, his wife.

  “Is that so?” Annabel sweetly enquired. “Then why don’t you lean under the rail like I’m doing?”

  Mr. Middleton must have blushed, for, in the half light, his face seemed to go black, just as a juggler walked on the small stage.

  The man started with three billiard balls. He flung one up and caught it. He flung it up again then sent a second ball to chase the first. In no time he had three, fountaining from out his hands. And he did not stop at that. He introduced, he insinuated one at a time, one more after another, and threw the exact inches higher each time to give six, seven balls room until, to no applause, he had a dozen chasing themselves up then down into his two lazy-seeming hands, each ball so precisely placed that it could be thought to follow grooves in violet air.

  “Well surely our Sicilians will find nothing to admire in this,” Mr. Middleton said, and pushed the bell once more.

  A waiter, with little English, came at once and when Diana could not read the bill of fare in this dark, her husband had to raise his lighter like a torch, which caused a commotion because the lady was afeared for her great eyelashes. Chattering away, having fun with the Sicilian who, on being asked how their lobster would be cooked, said “in rice very nice, in the shell very well” they altogether ignored, as they decided against this lobster, miracles of skill spun out a few feet beneath—no less than the balancing of a billiard ivory ball on the juggler’s chin, then a pint beer mug on top of that ball at the exact angle needed to cheat gravity, and at last the second ivory sphere which this man placed from a stick, or cue, to top all on the mug’s handle—the ball supporting a pint pot, then the pint pot a second ball until, unnoticed by our party, the man removed his chin and these separate objects fell, balls of ivory each to a hand, and the jug to a toe of his patent leather shoe where he let it hang and shine to a faint look of surprise, the artist.

  But in spite of all this and another roll of drums Miss Paynton insisted on asking Peter.

  “D’you know Terence Shone at your place?”

  “Who?” he said. “No one of that name!”

  “He is there,” Annabel assured the boy.

  “Well yes, there is a Shone,” Peter admitted, “But he’s Captain of Games.”

  “The very one!”

  “Not our Prefect,” the boy muttered, “Why, how on earth?”

  “Oh he’s always asking me down.”

  “What’s he like then, Ann?”

  “All right.”

  When the girl said this Mrs. Middleton allowed her eyes to come, as though casually, to rest on Annabel’s guileless features, where they stayed, with her own great eyelashes batting every now and then like slow, purple butterflies.

  “Oh Terry’s all of a piece, I suppose,” Miss Paynton continued.

  “Gives me tea in that sort of a club they have.”

  “The Prefects’ Lodgings!!” he cried out. “So what’s it like there?”

  “So so,” she assured him.

  “I’ve never seen you about,” he objected.

  “Well then, you can’t have looked while I’ve been having tea, that must be it,” she replied, and sent a short, sweet smile towards his mother.

  “You could introduce them,” Mrs. Middleton suggested.

  “Oh really Mother, would you please mind not being so insane!”

  “I know Peter, I know,” she apologized. “Arthur, were you as difficult at his age?”

  “What’s that?” he asked, “Just for the minute I happened to be thinking of all the papers I’d brought back in my case from the office.”

  “Poor darling,” his wife cooed, in a genuinely soothing voice, while Miss Paynton was continuing to Peter.

  “Terry’s really rather sweet on the whole. He writes.”

  The boy gave a scared, hoarse laugh.

  “Old Shone?” he cried. “Why, he’s only the best half back we’ve had in fifteen years.”

  “But he does write poems all the same. Though I feel Terry rather lately’s taken a wrong turning.”

  “Are you feeling all right?” the younger Middleton protested. “Here, have a glass of water, won’t you? I mean, you must be having me on a bit. Because, since you say you do go down, and I’ve never even seen you, in the street that is, what sort of a meal do they stand people at their Lodgings?”

  “Oh, fried eggs and all the rest.”

  “That’s where the food goes, then!” the boy said, and looked moodily away.

  “Well I call it very decent of you not to say straight out that I’m telling lies. For I do know him, you know, and visit.” She wore a mysterious smile.

  “You were a Prefect when you were at St. Olaf’s, surely Arthur?” Mrs. Middleton interrupted.

  “Of course,” the man replied, and his son squirmed.

  “Then did you have girls down from London in your day?” she enquired.

  “Who else?” the father answered, at his most casual.

  “Bet you couldn’t have,” was all Peter said to this.

  “Don’t contradict so, darling,” Mrs. Middleton protested. “Who ever heard of anyone being a Prefect at seventeen! It’s absurd! And Arthur,” she went on, “poor love,” she comforted. “Are you beginning to remember all that work? Can’t you let it ride, just for this one evening?”

  “My dear,” he r
eplied, “I really do think we ought to eat now, if we’re to get home in anything like reasonable hours.”

  “But we’ve ordered, Arthur! You know what these places are, my darling!”

  “Why do you think I couldn’t be friends with Terence Shone?” the girl pressed the young man again.

  “No reason at all,” he said in sulky tones.

  “Because I am, you understand,” she insisted.

  “Well don’t let him know you meet me, then! That’s all I ask.”

  “We might possibly have other things to discuss,” she assured Peter. “No, you needn’t get worried,” she added with a smile. “Honest, I shan’t tell.”

  “I’m not the worrying sort,” he said.

  Then the parents’ wine was served, Peter drank his shandy in one long soundless gasp and another was ordered, a dance band below struck up, soup was brought, and they began to seem as if they were enjoying themselves a little more.

  “Oh it’s so lovely to have you back,” Diana exclaimed to her son. “Isn’t it, Arthur?”

  “This soup’s marvellous all right,” Peter announced. “Wonderful to be here,” he agreed.

  “Thanks to the soup!” his father laughed.

  Peter laughed back. “If Ann will come down, so we starve . . .”

  “But Peter!” Mrs. Middleton cried out.

  “I’d say they have to be bribed with all our food, the Prefects, or they’d never get anyone to take their job on.”

  “Oh, if you imagine I just go down to gorge,” Miss Paynton laughed, dropped her spoon on the plate, and shoved the dish away.

  “Then they must get all they do, just to spoil,” Peter said, greedily eating.

  “In an agony of despair about their figures?” Mr. Middleton suggested.