Fielding Gray

by Simon Raven

  'So you think,' said my mother the next morning, 'that you're going to walk out of here just like that?'

  'I don't want to part with bad feelings, mother. You've got one idea for my future and I've got another. You can hardly blame me for preferring mine.'

  'A mother knows what's best for her son. Don't you see,' said mama, with something of her old whine, 'that I'm doing all this for your sake? The Army will make a man of you, and in India you'll have a job for which any boy should be grateful.'

  'The Army will have its chance in any case,' I said. 'But not yet. You know what I want to do, mother - what I've always wanted to do. Let's not have any more argument.'

  'I'm your mother.' Self-righteous now. 'It's for me to give you money and help you with your future. Not for some interfering master at that damned school.'

  'Then give me money and help me. Stop listening to the Tucks all day long and help me do what I want.'

  'I bore you. I brought you up, protected you. fought for you—'

  '—Yes, yes, and I'm grateful. But now—'

  '—And in return I've a right to have my wishes respected.'

  'It's no good, mother. There's a taxi coming for me in ten minutes. Just as soon as you change your mind and try to see things sensibly, I'll be glad to come back to you. Until then ... well, for heaven's sake let's be nice to each other.'

  'Nice to each other. As if you'd ever been nice to me in your whole life. As if you'd ever thought of me at all, except as someone to get money for you out of your father. Well, you're going to think of me now for once. Oh yes. You're going to think of me now, Fielding Gray, because you're going to have to do what I tell you. You're not going back to that school, money or no money, because I'm going to show them this.' She fumbled in her bag.

  'This' She waved a photograph in front of her. Christopher in cricket kit. "To Fielding with all my dearest love from Christopher",' she read from the back in an obscene, mimicking voice. ' "Please come soon, or I—" '

  '—Stop it, mother.'

  '—“Or I shan't be able to bear it." That ought to be quite enough, after what's happened. That wretched boy dead, after offering himself to soldiers like a common whore in the street—'

  '—STOP IT—'

  '—Yes, this ought to be quite enough. I think. Mind you, we knew already what you'd been up to, Angela and I. She's kept in touch with your friend who came here, Somerset Lloyd-Thing—'

  '—Lloyd-James—'

  '—and he told her all about Christopher. It's a funny thing, but he seems to want to stop you going back too. Nice friends you have. So when he heard that Angela and I had a plan for you, he wrote back helpfully to tell her about this Christopher

  ... only there was no real proof yet, he said. Until I found this. While you were slopping around in Lympne yesterday, not doing what you were told.'

  'So you were snooping, prying? '

  'Not at all. Simply doing my duty as your mother and going over your clothes. This was at the bottom of your shirt drawer. Rather careless, rather forgetful for someone so very clever.'

  'Mother,' I said. 'Christopher's dead and the whole dismal Story's finished. All we want to do, all of us, is to forget it.'

  'Oh? I wonder whether Somerset Lloyd-Thing wants to forget it. Anyway, you won't be able to forget it now, because I've got proof and I won't let you. I'm going to tell your headmaster what I know; and if he lets you back into his school after that, then I'll start writing round to the parents and telling them that their esteemed Headmaster is condoning sodomy. Sodomy,' she hissed, like a dry tap.

  I lurched forward.

  'You mean, spiteful bitch,' I shouted. I thrust my hand out to seize the photograph, but she drew away from me and brandished it above her head.

  'Oh no, my lad,' she said. 'Anyhow Angela's seen it. Even if you tear it up, we can make such a scandal between us that that Headmaster of yours will never want to hear your name again.' ,

  'Bitch.' I screamed, 'Bitch, bitch, BITCH.'

  I lowered the hand which was reaching for the photograph and hit her with a back swing of my knuckles across her cheek. Her lips parted and the blood welled up through her teeth.

  'Mama. I'm sorry, so sorry. Please, mama. I didn't mean—'

  '—Nasty little pansy,' she lisped through the streaming blood; 'nasty, vicious little pig.'

  The door bell rang. I offered my handkerchief.

  'Don't you come near me,' she said. The blood poured over her chin and dripped down on to her dress. 'You get into your taxi and run away back to school. And when they turn you out, you can just come back here. You'll have to grovel, Christ, how you'll have to grovel, but you're under twenty-one, so 1'll let you come back here.'

  Be reasonable, I told myself. It was her fault. She provoked me beyond bearing, and so I struck her. She threatened the vilest kind of blackmail to get her way, and so I struck her. One minute there had been relief, the generous promise of freedom in the Senior Usher's letter, the next there had been frustration and despair, jealousy masquerading as mother love, the hideous desire to control and possess: she was destroying everything, and so I struck her. But reason could not encompass the enormity, could not blot out the picture of the bright blood pouring from my mother's mouth.

  The train slunk through the debris into London. I was following my original plan and heading, as invited, for the Senior Usher's Lodging, because I had nowhere else to go; here, if anywhere, lay help and refuge. But not for long now. One or two days at most, as long as it took my mother to convince the Headmaster of what she knew. I looked down at the jagged, carious rubble. Beaten. I told myself, beaten. How were intelligence or reason to help me now?

  'When a position becomes untenable,' said the Senior Usher, spreading his buttocks before an ample and illicit fire. It is necessary to retreat with good grace to a tenable one. You realize that you can't stay here?'

  'I suppose not.'

  'You see, as long as your misdeeds were extra-mural, so to speak, I could help you. This business of your troll in Piccadilly - easily seen to. But now that you're known to have sinned within these very portals ... it's too near. Fielding, and it can't be disregarded. You remember what I said last quarter? We don't expect you to believe in the Christian ethic - or at least I don't - but we have to insist that on our own ground you observe it.'

  'A condition of belonging, you said.'

  'Exactly. We can, of course, exercise some discretion. We can even ignore what we might have suspected - so long as it's safely dead and buried. But your mother has exhumed this unhappy affair, and she has made of this wretched boy Roland a kind of accusing Lazarus. You see, it's the fact of his suicide that finally settles the question. There'd be those who'd say that you were the cause of it. So you must see that we simply can't keep you.'

  'I know that. I know I must leave here before the quarter starts. But what am I to do? '

  'As I say. dear boy. Retreat to a tenable position. Now then. No last year here, no further award at Lancaster. But you still have a minor scholarship to the college and a place awaiting you. It's more than most people have; so settle for it.'

  'But will they still accept me? If they hear about all this?'

  'Of course. They are civilized and easy-going men, who do not concern themselves with the peccadilloes of adolescence. In any case, you're now too late to propose yourself for this October, so you'll have to do your military service first; and by the time that's done, the whole thing will have been forgotten.'

  'The Tutor ... Robert Constable ... he didn't strike me as easy-going. Neither forgiving, I'd have said, nor forgetting.'

  'You misunderstand him. He is a bore and a prig, but also a conscientious and progressive left-winger. Vintage 'thirties.' Which means that he stands not only for social reform but also for intellectual and sexual freedom. It is, to him, a duty to tolerate your kind of behaviour. Though of course, said the Senior Usher wryly, 'the more complicated and unhappy you can be about it, the better he'll be plea
sed. Never let on that you were amply enjoying yourself.'

  'And money?'

  'I'll stand by what I promised. If you don't qualify for some sort of ex-service grant. I'll see to it you're all right.'

  'And meanwhile? Now, I mean? These days one can't just take the King's shilling overnight.'

  The Senior Usher scratched his rump.

  'If you ask me,' he said slowly, 'As things stand you'd be wise to go home and make your peace with your mother. She is, it seems, a dangerous woman. Tell her you're sorry you were rude and you'll do what she asks. Keep her quiet, dear boy, till it's too late for her to do any more damage.'

  'What more can she do?'

  'On the face of it, none. As I say, Lancaster is run very differently from this place, and nobody there will give a second thought to her story. They keep their chapel going as a decorative museum piece, and that's about as far as the Christian ethic gets with them.'

  'Well then?'

  'One never knows. I still think you'd be wise to calm your mother down and keep her calm till time's done its work.'

  'I don't at all want to go back.'

  'A little more gratitude would become you, and a little more co-operation. You can't have everything your own way.'

  'I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to be difficult and I am grateful.'

  'It'll be unpleasant, I know,' said the old man, relenting. 'But when a woman has a mind to do damage she can be damned ingenious. As you've already seen. So you go off home tomorrow, soothe her down, and get yourself into khaki as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I'll brief Robert Constable and get him to set your mind at rest about your place at Lancaster. And now,' he said, 'I've ordered a nice little dinner in your honour and we will talk, if you please, of something - of anything - else.'

  'Good-bye, sir,' I said to the Headmaster.

  On the boundary of the cricket ground the damp leaves, whirled and fell still.

  'Good-bye, Fielding.' said the Headmaster. 'I 'm sorry it's turned out like this. You're not to blame your mother.'

  'There's no point in blaming anyone. Would you do something for me, sir?'

  'What?'

  'When the boys get back and you see Somerset Lloyd-James. tell him I'm sorry not to have seen him to say goodbye.'

  'I'll tell him. certainly. I expect he'll be sorry too.'

  'No, he won't. You'll see that from his face. Look into his face, Headmaster; look into his eyes. You're unlikely to see anything at all in them, and if you do it won't be tears.'

  When I arrived home again, my mother did not, as she had threatened, make me grovel. She was distant in her greeting and received my apologies for having struck her with an ugly shrug of the shoulders; but as soon as I had made it plain (following the Senior Usher's instructions) that I had come home to toe the line, I was treated with consideration and even with affection. Since I was prepared to yield over the big issues, it seemed that I was to be humoured in the lesser ones. Once I had been to Lympne Ducis, accompanied this time by mama, and had signified to the authorities that I wish to be called up as soon as possible, my comfort and preferences were constantly consulted. On the day that I gave Mr. Tuck a formal assurance that I would join the company in India as soon as I was free from the Army, my mother handed me a cheque for £15, made out to Peter Morrison, and another, worth twice as much, for myself, and suggested that I might indulge any reasonable fancy during the few weeks before I was posted. (Even a trip to London was sanctioned, and I was able to visit the Senior Usher's doctor friend, who tested and approved my blood.) Life at Broughton Staithe, then, was easy and tranquil that autumn; and not only on the surface: for early in October I received assurance from Robert Constable that my place at Lancaster was indeed still open, so that in the very act of complying with my mother's demands I could reflect, with deep and secret satisfaction, that the last word would be mine.

  'Dear Gray [Constable had written in his own hand],

  'I have now learned, both from the Headmaster and the Senior Usher, about the circumstances of your leaving school. They give few details, but I gather there has been some sexual indiscretion. Officially, however, you have merely been withdrawn by your mother, albeit at unexpectedly short notice. This can make no difference to your prospects here; and as Tutor of the College I am pleased to notify you that you may take up your place and your Minor Scholarship as soon as you have concluded your military service.

  Yours sincerely,

  Robert Constable.

  So that was finally settled. When I left the Army I would go to Lancaster, and there was nothing my mother or anyone else could do to stop me. Full of glee at my victory and longing to tell someone of it. I wrote off to Peter to give him a detailed account of my afflictions and of my cleverness in achieving so happy an issue.

  'Well,' said Tuck the night before I left for the Army, 'here's wishing you all the best.'

  Mama was giving a little dinner party in honour of my departure.

  'I expect,' said Angela, 'that you'll look very different when you come home on leave.'

  'Fitter,' said Tuck.

  'Tougher,' said Angela.

  'More grown up,' said mama.

  'Where exactly are you going?' said Tuck.

  '99 Primary Training Centre, At a place called Ranby.'

  'His friend Peter Morrison is there,' mama said, 'who comes from Whereham. Isn't that lucky for Fielding? Such a nice, kind, helpful boy.'

  'I don't suppose he'll be there for much longer,' I said. 'Primary Training only lasts for eight weeks, they tell me. After that we go to training units belonging to our own regiments.'

  'Which regiment are you going to?' asked Tuck.

  The 49th Light Dragoons. Earl Hamilton's Regiment of Horse.'

  'Rather grand?'

  'I don't know ... My school has quite a pull with them.'

  'Hmm,' muttered Tuck suspiciously. 'You'll need a bit of extra money if they give you a commission in that lot.'

  'Fielding will have an allowance,' mama said. 'And it will be nice for him to be in a regiment with people from his old school.' Now that she had won her way, my mother apparently expected no trouble from old associations. A naively snobbish woman, she had even encouraged me to make use of school connections in order to enter a smart regiment. As for the money which would be needed, she had already shown herself generous and was prepared to continue so. Truth to tell, mama was not really an unamiable woman; and had she, earlier in her life, received love, she would not now have needed to exercise power.

  'An allowance,' Angela said, as though such a thing were beyond the dreams of avarice; 'how very kind of you.'

  'So long as Fielding is sensible,' my mother said, 'I shall help him in every way I can.'

  'You've got a brick of a mother,' said Tuck when the two ladies had left us.

  'You might call her that.'

  'I jolly well do. It took her to make you see sense about the plantation. Not many people would have had the patience.'

  'She has certainly been very persistent,' I said.

  'A pretty cool way of putting it.'

  'We're a pretty cool family.'

  'Not your mother. She's warm, generous..

  'Tell me, if it's not a rude question. How much is she investing in the plantation?'

  'Ten thousand. More later, I think. Now the factory at Torbeach has been sold, she reckons she can afford it.'

  'I don't wonder you find her generous.'

  'It's all for you,' Tuck said.

  'Precisely. My father, if you remember, wanted something for himself.'

  'Don't play games with me, boy.'

  'Never again' I said: 'I promise you that.'

  And so I left for Ranby Camp and the last part of this story. I expected anything up to three years of discomfort and boredom, but if Peter could face it, I told myself, so could I. It had to be gone through sometime; and always there was Lancaster College waiting for me at the end of it. Whatever had been lost, that - and it way much - was still pr
omised.

  And now, too, I should be seeing Peter again. He would not be at Ranby much longer, but there he would be. I could seek him out, discuss what had happened, receive his sympathy and applause; then talk with him of friends and enemies in common, of days past and to come. It would be good to see Peter; as the train rumbled over the dreary flats. I cheered myself by thinking of the round face that would be waiting for me and the slow, soothing voice ...

  Today, as for weeks past, the wind has thrust at the island without ceasing. The clouds are coming across so low that the little village on the hill above me has been hidden for hours. Beneath the cloud a swirling drizzle reduces everything to two dimensions and one colour, a drab yellow. But now, just as ten years ago in that train across the Lincolnshire flats, I cheer myself with thinking of Peter, who will be here, in three days' time, with his delegation of M.Ps.

  Although the spell still works, it is weaker now than it was then. Then the thought of Peter's calm eyes and kind, clumsy, hands was enough to quicken the dull fens to enchantment, to make the blue war-time bulbs, which darkened rather than lit the carriage, shine out for durbar. But now, glad as I am that he is coming here, I know that such reunions do not, as a general rule, come up to expectation.

  At Ranby Camp they squadded me and kitted me, took away my civilian clothes and sent them home for me, and issued me with a card which entitled me to forty cigarettes a week at special rates. There, reluctantly and spasmodically, they began to train me. A Jolly red-nosed sergeant lectured me on procedure for seeking redress of grievance or applying for leave if my wife were to prove unfaithful; an officer in furlined suede boots assured me, in a fluting voice, that the Army's skills would stand me well when I returned to my civilian trade; and a neurotic corporal, who had been broken from sergeant-major for striking a Eurasian pimp in a dance hall in Deolali, opined that a properly cleaned rifle was a better friend to me than my mother.