Christopher Uptake

by Susan Price

  As soon as I reached my room after reporting, I went to bed, and, in the two days before I started my journey home, I did no more writing, but slept from nine until five, and finally left for Hawksmere feeling more tired than ever.

  I arrived home on the night before the wedding, and found my father in such a state of nerves that it was impossible to talk with him. He didn't seem pleased to see me at all, and so I went to bed, to find that my bed had not been made ready for me, and I had to share my father's. He spent half the night in talking to me about his worries, and the rest of it in punching his pillow, turning over, tugging at the blanket, and talking to himself. At three, he got up again to prepare for the wedding, and I thankfully spread myself out into the space he left, but my young sisters came in then, and wanted to talk to me. So I got up, and was no sooner on my feet and dressed than I was dragged into all the coming and going, and fetching and carrying involved in the wedding arrangements, followed by the full confusion of the service and celebration. The church and house were full of strangers who asked me who I was, and exclaimed and walked away when I told them. The drink was too strong, the food too rich; the noise of laughing, talking, screaming, stamping, smashing, thumping, chewing and singing made my head ache. As the day went on and on into the next morning I passed, between drink and weariness, into a state in which people crossed and recrossed the room in front of me, half-hidden in a thick, candle-lit mist, and I was unable to understand anything that was said. Then it all disappeared, and I was cold, in complete darkness and lying flat on my back. My ears still hummed from the noise of the party, but that humming was all I could hear. For a long time I lay still in fright.

  Only when the lighter shape of a window gradually emerged from the darkness did I realize that I had been put to bed in my room and the party was over. I did not wake properly until the mid-afternoon, by which time it was too late to start the journey back. I spent what was left of the day listening to my elder sister read from my step-mother's Bible. My stepmother could read, it seemed, and had continued my sister's lessons where I had left off and she nodded and smiled as we listened to the story of the serpent tempting Eve, a story that I am always surprised at women tolerating; but I did not have enough spirit left to say so.

  The next day I left Hawksmere for the University, where I arrived a day late and my name was put down on the punishment list for the next Thursday. The day after that the routine began once more: the early rising, the service in the chapel, the reporting to my tutor; a breakfast of boiled beef and porridge, lessons...

  I remembered the months before the wedding, and decided that I could not live like that again, but, since I needed the year that remained, I had to find time to write without annoying the authorities. My absence from chapel, providing I attended once or twice a week, was unlikely to be noticed, nor was my absence from the disputations, and so I stayed away. This new way of ordering my life worked so well that I was very sorry I had not thought of it before. I had plenty of time for writing; I was sure of eating twice a day, and I was able to sleep every night from nine till five. Even the occasions when I attended chapel or a disputation were pleasant; they made a change from the concentration that my writing required. None of my friends approved.

  They all said that I would be in very great trouble when I was found out, but I accepted that and did not worry about it. Besides, I thought that I had at last begun on a play that I could finish.

  I had started it by trying to write about a village like Hawksmere, and then went on to write about a joiner who lived in a village like Hawksmere. I chose to write about joiner because I knew a little about that trade and soon, because I was thinking of my father, the character took on my father's fretful, worrying manner. I gave him a wife, and then I gave the wife a lover; and then the wife and the lover plotted together to kill the joiner.

  At this point things went wrong. In the kind of plays I had always seen at the theatre, the joiner would have been murdered and the lovers would have triumphed for a while, but would then have been discovered and hanged. I found that I could not follow this path in my play because the character of the joiner was so closely entangled, in my mind, with my father, and I couldn't let the evil pair murder my father. So they tried to kill him, but bungled it and failed, and tried again and failed; and the play had turned into a comedy.

  This worried me for a while. I had not yet learned that when characters refuse to follow lines previously worked out for them, it is a sign of success rather than failure. I thought of giving the play up, but I was too interested and, at last, I decided that if it was going to be a comedy, I should try to make it a good one. I began writing again and the play sorted itself out almost as if the characters were thinking for themselves. The joiner learned of the lover's plans from a man whom they had previously employed as an assassin, and he learned that their next plan was to blind him by putting the seeds of darnel grass into his food, and so make him helpless. On returning home, he ate the meal his wife served to him, and pretended to be blinded, and when they attacked him, he killed them both - I naturally provided him with witnesses to the killings being in self-defence. And that was the end. It was the first play I ever finished. I wrote "Finis'' across the bottom of the page, and then sat elaborating the letters into scrolls while I wondered what to do next.

  Obviously, I had to try to sell it, but didn't know how.

  I made up my mind to read it through, to judge how good it was, before planning any further; but when I tried to read it, I was so intensely embarrassed by it that I felt ill.

  The more I read of it - a speech here and a scene there - the greater its faults seemed. The middle section wasn't very good, and it ended weakly. The character of the wife was rather empty, for the simple reason that I knew hardly any women, and none well. Some passages made me shrink and shift in my seat. I would have ripped it up, like all the others I had written, but I could not bring myself to destroy all that work, and the first thing I had ever finished too.

  Besides, it might be good enough to earn me a little money, and that was more important than whether or not it was well written. If I was going to earn my living by writing, then I had to sell my work, not agonize over it - but it was so bad. If I showed it to the actors, who knew about plays, they would laugh at me. Not to my face, but after I had gone, which was worse.

  Still, they might think my play good enough, and buy it, and, in that case, if I didn't even try to sell it, I was throwing away the very opportunity for which I'd been working. I spent hours and hours turning over the pages of my manuscript, in a painful state of indecision, convincing myself that my play was very bad, and then that it was very good; telling myself that I at least had to try to sell it, and then that I would be wasting my time, until I reached a state of mind in which I didn't care what was thought about my play; I would try to sell it in any case.

  I decided to try the next day. I rose with the bell and attended chapel where, while everyone round me asked the Lord for their daily bread, I begged myself not to turn back before I had attempted to make a sale. All day I felt sick and afraid, as if I were in actual danger from something. By the time I started out for the Bear with my manuscript, I felt as if I were suffering from a chill.

  The Bear drew most of its custom from the theatre, and so there weren't many people at the tables and counter inside. I sat down on one of the hard benches in a corner, and occupied myself by riffling through the pages of my manuscript. The other customers peered at me; I pretended that I didn't see them. The landlord called out to ask me if I wanted anything; I said no, thanks, I was fine.

  Someone laughed, but the landlord wasn't amused, and it was very quiet after that. I ripped the corners off my play’s pages for something to do, and, although I had been dreading the arrival of the actors, I was relieved when the crowd came in noisily from the theatre. Soon I saw the actors pushing their way through until, when they sat, they disappeared behind lines of backs and heads. I was going to have to push past al
l those people, and speak up with all of them listening. I stayed in my corner.

  I came out of a daydream, at some time in the middle of the evening, to find that most of the people had left. The manager of the theatre, Dick Hobson, was sitting apart from the other actors, doing the accounts, yawning, and scratching his nose with his thumbnail so that he didn't have to change his grip on his pen. Then he looked up and noticed me. He looked down at his book, then up at me again with an unpleasant expression, as if he knew me well and hated even seeing me, before scratching his nose and going back to the accounts. That look gave me the courage to go over to him. At least he has noticed me, I thought, and won't be too surprised at my speaking to him.

  I shuffled my play together as neatly as I could - I had made it look very tattered by ripping the corners of its pages - and crossed to his table and sat opposite him. He looked up at me once more, and scowled. I began to explain, but found my mouth and throat growing dryer with every word until they ceased to work at all. I managed to say only, "Excuse me, Mr. Hobson, but - ''

  We sat looking at each other in silence for some minutes, and everything about the way he sat, the way he hunched his shoulders and the way he held his pen, told of how much difficulty he was having in keeping his patience. Then he said lightly, to cover what he really felt, "What can I do for you, sir?"

  I was surprised at his politeness, and it gave me the confidence to push my play squarely in front of him. "I've written this - " I said, then swallowed and stared at him hopefully.

  "Have you now?'' Dick said, with the same light tone dancing over the boredom he wished to hide. ''It's a play, I take it, sir, and you want me to have a look at it?" He laid one hand, weighted with weariness, on my play and slowly turned the pages. "You'll understand, sir," he said, "that it's probably no use to me - '' He broke off, read a moment in silence, and said, "Huh! You've to remember that we have to make a profit,'' he added, and looked up at me very suddenly, without raising his head, in a way that made his eyes seem to flash.

  A man sitting beside Dick, very plainly dressed in dark cloth, reached out and pulled my play slightly toward him so that he could read it too. I saw Dick give him a nervous, ill-natured look, and wondered who the man was. Then Dick leaned over the play with him, and they both read for a while. I sat waiting.

  Dick suddenly twitched the play from in front of the other man and said to me, "I hate to disappoint somebody on a quick look like this, but tell you what - I haven't much time, I'm a busy man, but let me have it for a while and I'll read it through and let you know." He waved a hand to tell me to go. "I'll let you know."

  I was rising, and was about to thank him before leaving, when the other man spoke, moving his hand downward to tell me to sit again. ''How is the young man to ensure that you do not steal his plot, and all his best lines, and write them up into a play of your own, Richard?''

  "I'll just read it through," Dick repeated. "He can come and ask for it if he doesn't trust me. I'll give him my honest opinion."

  "I don't want to trouble you, I'm sorry." I said. "I'll go, and not bother you.'' I tried to take the play from his hand, but he wouldn't let go. Then the other man stretched out a hand, took the play from both of us and put it down on the table in front of him.

  "Dick," he said.

  Dick looked bad-temperedly from him to me, then asked me, “Who are you?"

  "Christopher Uptake," I said.

  "Christopher. Right, Christopher, sit down, will you, and listen. This play you've written . . . Mr. Brentwood here, and I, think what we've read very promising - but you don't expect me to buy it, just like that, on the strength of one look through it in a bloody tavern, do you?"

  "No, Mr. Hobson," I said.

  "Well, I'm glad you see that much. So, I'll take it away and read it, and you come back and see me in a day or two." He took up my play again, knocked its pages level on the table, and put it beside him on the bench, out of my sight.

  I glanced from him to the man named Brentwood, who pursed his lips and shook his head slightly. I coughed.

  "How do I know you won't steal it, and never pay me anything for it?" I asked. "You could have it copied out, and then tell me that you don't want it."

  Dick lifted up my play again and slapped it on the table-top, saying, "Oh well - if he doesn't want me to read it . . .''

  I took the play and divided it into two parts. "Read the first half of it," I said, "and I'll come back in two days' time, and if you liked the first half, I'll give you the second half in exchange for it . . . How's that?"

  "Humph. Clever," Dick said unpleasantly, but Brentwood nodded, and asked me if I wanted a drink or something to eat. I thanked him, but refused, and went out into the street. I heard a church clock strike eight, and knew that I would not be able to reach college in time to report to my tutor at nine, and that I had already missed my evening meal. I turned into another tavern and bought the cheapest meal they sold, and then went on to college, dreading the next day. I would certainly be birched for failing to report, but would I be expelled? To be expelled and sent home when I seemed to have a chance of selling a play would ruin everything.

  I reached the college, climbed over the gate, and went to my room, where, as I felt about in the dark, I woke my room-mate. He asked where I had been, and told me that a messenger had come round the rooms asking for me at about six that evening and that, at about eight, the tutor himself had come and knocked on the door to ask where I was.

  "What are you going to tell Old Graceless in the morning, Chris? It will have to be a good tale."

  "I have until six tomorrow morning," I said. "If I can't invent a good tale by then, I deserve to be expelled.'' And then I got into bed and wouldn't talk to him any more.

  I lay awake for a long time, trying to invent a tale that would deceive the tutor, and finally established the bones of one; then I went to sleep and left the rest to inspiration.

  The next morning I decided that I had better attend the chapel and, as I washed and dressed, the rest of my story came to me. As soon as the service ended, I looked about for the tutor. "Mr. Grace, sir?" I said.

  He looked round, saw me, immediately took hold of my arm and, holding it very tightly against him, guided me out of the chapel and into the yard, where he steered me aside from the general stream of people hurrying to the dining-hall. He slowed his walk to a shuffle, held my arm even tighter, and bent his head close to me as if I were his cleverest favourite instead of one of his greatest irritations.

  "I missed you yesterday, Uptake," he said.

  "Yes, sir, you did," I agreed. "I came to apologise for that."

  "I thought that you would have an explanation, Uptake. Let me hear it, do."

  I said, "I didn't report to you after chapel yesterday afternoon because it completely slipped my mind. I'm sorry, sir; it won't happen again, I promise.”

  He said, in his quiet voice, which always had a soft hum behind it, "It is odd, is it not, that when you have spent so many weeks in reporting to me four times each day, you should suddenly forget like this? Where were you when I sent to the dining-hall to ask for you?"

  "I had stepped out for a moment, sir - to, er, answer a call of nature," I said, using the idiom I knew he used himself.

  He began walking again, very slowly. "And can you also explain why you weren't in your room when I came myself to look for you?''

  "Oh I'd gone to look for you, sir; I'd remembered and wanted to apologize."

  "Oh, had you indeed gone to look for me?"

  "Yes, sir; I went up to your room, but you weren't there."

  "No, I wouldn't be, would I?'' he asked gently.

  "Sir, with respect," I said "I am telling you the truth."

  "I am eager to hear," he said "how, having promised yourself never to forget again, you managed to forget that very evening?"

  "You mean at nine o'clock, sir?"

  "That is what I mean." We had reached the door of the dining-hall, and stopped outside it.
<
br />   "I was asleep, sir."

  "You were asleep; I see."

  "Yes, sir. I have been studying rather hard lately, sir - trying to improve my work, as I promised you I would - I was studying at my table and - I'm afraid - I fell asleep over my book."

  "Did your room-mate not inform you that I had been enquiring for you?"

  "Er - no, sir, he did not."

  "Why, how remiss of him."

  "It wasn't his fault, sir - he wasn't in our room when I got back and - I suppose I was asleep when he came back and he didn't want to wake me."

  Mr. Grace pursed up his mouth tightly, clung to my arm and nodded repeatedly at the ground. "Hmm," he said, "so; at four o' clock you forgot our appointment and, despite all your attempts to make good your absence of mind, you couldn't find me. However, you tried not to worry yourself too much, because you remembered that you could always apologize to me in the evening - never thinking that when the time came you would have fallen exhausted across your book. Do I have it correctly?''