“Now I’ll just clean the other barrel,” he said, “and then I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”
Should I accept his offer? Tea would be waiting for me at Brandham Hall.… I saw his cricket bat standing in a corner, and to gain time I said:
“You ought to oil your bat, too.”
It was rather pleasant to give instructions after receiving so many.
“Thanks for reminding me. I shall want it again on Saturday.”
“May I oil it for you?” I asked.
“Of course you can. It’s an old one, but it does drive. Yesterday was my top score. I don’t suppose I’ll ever make another fifty.”
“Why not?”
“Not if you’re about.”
I laughed at this. “Lord Trimingham gave me the ball to keep,” I said, wondering if he would turn pale at the name; but he only said:
“I’ll put the kettle on in the scullery. It’s too hot for a fire here. I’ll get the linseed oil.”
I handled the bat as reverently as if it had been the bow of Ulysses, and wondered which of the bruises on its much-scarred surface had been caused by the stroke I caught him off. The oil came in an alien container: “Price’s Cycle Axle Oil” was printed on the tin, and there was a picture of a lady and a gentleman bicycling gaily along a country road, looking at me and at the future with surprised but pleased and confident expressions.
I poured a little oil on the middle of the bat and began to work it in gently with my fingers; the wood seemed to drink it thirstily and gratefully, as if it too was suffering from the drought. The rhythmic rubbing half soothed and half excited me; it seemed to have a ritual significance, as if I was rubbing out my own bruises, as if the new strength I was putting into the bat would pass into its owner. I was thinking more normally now: I belonged to the present, not to a ruined past and a menacing future. Or so I felt.
Suddenly he came in and said: “Have you a letter for me, postman?”
I gave it to him. I had forgotten it.
“It looks as if you had been sleeping on it,” he said, and took it with him into the scullery. He came back with a tablecloth and some tea-things.
“I’m on my own today,” he said, “my daily woman doesn’t come on Sundays.”
“Oh, do you have a woman every day?” I asked politely, though not perhaps without an oblique reference to the many servants at Brandham Hall.
He shot me a quick look and said: “No, I told you she doesn’t come on Sundays, and only in the mornings on Saturdays.”
I don’t know what made me think of Marian, but I did. Suddenly I felt I could not stay to tea. I must get back to face the music, which I now felt more able to do.
“Have you any message for her?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, “but do you want to take it?”
I was totally unprepared for this question and felt the tears coming back.
“Not very much,” I said, “but if I don’t she’ll be so angry.”
It was out. I hadn’t meant to say it, but the surprise of having my wishes consulted weakened me.
“So it was her,” he said, and lit a cigarette, the first I’d ever seen him smoke. I don’t know what he had meant to say, but what he said was: “’Tisn’t fair to ask you to do it for nothing. What can I do to make it worth your while?”
“Nothing,” I ought to have answered, and “Nothing” is what I should have answered half an hour before. But since then many impressions had overlaid my mind, already tired and strained by too much emotion. Ted had once more imposed himself on me with his gun, his cricket bat, his self-sufficiency, his panoply of masculine endowments and accomplishments. The fact that he did not seem to be angry with me gave me nothing to resist. Like many uneducated people he was readier than the educated to talk to a child on equal terms; his age was a physical but not a conversational barrier.
With the wish to please him some of my old relish for my mission returned; the case against it seemed far away and much less cogent. Instead of saying “Nothing” I temporized; I did not reject his bribe as I had Marian’s money. Besides, I remembered something.
“The last time I was here,” I said accusingly, “you said you’d tell me something.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you said you’d tell me all about spooning. That’s partly why I came.” This was not true; I had come because Marian made me; but it served for an argument.
“So I did, so I did,” he said. “I’m just going to get some teacups,” he added, and presently returned with them. I can see the teacups now. They were deep and cream-coloured, with a plain gold line round the outside, and inside at the bottom, worn by much stirring, a gold flower. I thought them rather common-looking.
It was odd to see a man laying the table, though of course the footman did it at the Hall.
Ted cleared his throat and said: “I did enjoy your singing at the concert.”
“I enjoyed yours too,” I said.
“Oh, mine was nothing. I’ve had no lessons, I just open my mouth and out it comes. I made a pretty good fool of myself, really. But you sang just like—well, like a lark.”
“Oh well,” I said lightly, “I practised those songs at school. We’ve quite a good teacher. He’s an L.R.A.M.”
“I never had much schooling,” Ted said, “but when I was a nipper, hardly bigger than you” (his using me as a standard of smallness came as a shock to me), “Mother took me one Christmas to hear the carol-singing in Norwich Cathedral, and there was a lad there with a voice just like yours. I’ve never forgotten it.”
Gratified as I was by the comparison, I sensed that he was putting me off; it was a trick all grown-ups had.
“Thank you very much,” I said, “but you said you were going to tell me about spooning.”
“So I did, so I did,” he repeated, moving the plates about the tablecloth with clumsy fingers. “But now I’m not sure that I shall.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“It might spoil it for you.”
I thought about this and my tired mind suddenly turned angry.
“But you promised!” I exclaimed.
“I know I did,” he said, “but it’s a job for your dad, really. He’s the one to tell you.”
“My father’s dead,” I said, “and”—contempt for the stupid pastime suddenly blazed up in me—“I’m quite sure he never spooned!”
“You wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t,” Ted said grimly. “And I believe that you know more about it than you let on.”
“I don’t, I don’t,” I cried passionately, “and you did promise to tell me.”
He looked down at me irresolutely and said: “Well, it means putting your arm round a girl, and kissing her. That’s what it means.”
“I know that,” I exclaimed, wriggling and throwing my-self about in my chair, outraged by his perfidy. “That’s on all the postcards. But it’s something else too. It makes you feel something.”
“Well,” he said heavily, “it makes you feel on top of the world, if you know what that means.”
I did know: it was what I had felt last night and this morning. But I didn’t think it was the same as the pleasure of spooning and I said so.
“What do you like doing best?” he asked me suddenly.
I had to think: it was a fair question and I was annoyed with myself for not being able to answer it.
“Well, something that happens in dreams, like flying, or floating, or—”
“Or what?” said he.
“Or waking up and knowing that somebody you dreamed had died was really alive.” I had dreamed this several times about my mother.
“I’ve never had that dream,” he said, “but it’ll do, it gives you the idea. Think of it, and add some, and then you’ll know what spooning’s like.”
“But—” I began. But my protest was drowned by a commotion in the scullery: rattling, bubbling, and hissing.
“The kettle’s boiling over,” exclaimed Ted, jumping up. He came back with the tea
pot in one hand and in the other a plum cake on a plate. My mouth watered: I would stay, but only on condition—
“You haven’t really told me,” I said, “what spooning is.”
He carefully put down the teapot and the plate and said patiently: “Yes, I have, it’s like flying, or floating, or waking up and finding someone you thought was dead is really there. It’s what you like doing best, and then some more.”
I was too exasperated to notice how exasperated he was.
“Yes, but what more?” I cried. “I know you know, and I won’t take any more messages for you unless you tell me.”
Some primitive instinct told me that I had him in a corner; it also warned me that I had tried him too far. He towered above me, as hard and straight and dangerous as his gun. I saw the temper leap into his eyes as it had when he caught me sliding down the straw-stack. Armoured by his nakedness, he took a step towards me.
“Clear out of here quick,” he said, “or you’ll be sorry.”
16
BRANDHAM HALL
NEAR NORWICH
NORFOLK
ENGLAND
THE WORLD
THE UNIVERSE
ETC.
DEAR MOTHER [I wrote],
I am sorry to tell you I am not enjoying myself here. When I wrote to you this morning I was enjoying myself, but not now, because of the errands and the messages. They are very kind to me as I wrote to you this morning and I like being here, but please, dear mother, send a telegram to say you want me to come back at once. You could say that you want me to come home for my birthday because you would miss me too much and I would much rather spend it with you. My birthday is on Friday July the 27th so there is still plenty of time. Or if this is too expensive you could say please send Leo back—I will write explaining. I don’t want to stay here any longer than I or you can help. It is not that I am not enjoying myself, but the messages.
Here I paused. I knew I ought to be more explicit about the messages, but how, when my lips were sealed? And did I know myself what they were? I did not, except that they were to arrange meetings between Ted and Marian. I knew that they were very secret and aroused the strongest feelings—feelings which until this afternoon I had not known that grown-up people possessed, feelings that might lead—well, lead to murder. That was only a word to me, but it was a fearsome word, and though I didn’t understand the logic of the emotions, Ted’s violence, and his threats, and his gun, which I had come to think of as a symbol of himself, gave me an inkling of how the thing might happen in real life. And Lord Trimingham would be the victim; I did not doubt that: the fate of the fifth Viscount made it all too plain.
I could not tell my mother any of this, but I could use other arguments, arguments she would appreciate, to make my aversion to the errands sound more plausible.
It is nearly four miles there and back, and I have to cross the river by a narrow Plank and go along a ruff farm road which is very exhausting in the Grate Heat [“in the great heat” was a stock phrase of my mother’s and, as I have said, she dreaded the reality for which it stood], and on both sides there are some wild animals or nearly so which frighten me. This I have to do nearly every day otherwise they would be angry, they depend so much on the messages.
So much for the material and physical objections to the errands. Now I would deal with their moral aspect; this, I felt sure, would influence my mother. She had two phrases, Rather Wrong, and Very Wrong; the former she applied often, the latter sparingly, to any course of action that she didn’t approve of. I did not believe in the idea of wrong myself, but I saw this was the moment to invoke it.
I should not mind this so much [I went on], only I feel that what they are making me do is Rather Wrong and perhaps Very Wrong [I thought I would get them both in] and something you would not like me to do as well. So please send the telegram as soon as you get this letter.
I hope you are quite well, dear Mother, as I am and should be very happy if not for the Errands.
Your loving son
LEO
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
PS. I am looking forward very much to coming home.
PPS. I have unfortunately missed the post today, but if this letter arrives by the first post on Tuesday July 24th, your telegram will arrive here about 11.15 on Tuesday morning and if it arrives by the second post the telegram will arrive by 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday at latest.
PPPS. Perhaps you could send a telegram to Mrs. Maudsley too.
PPPPS. The Heat is Grate and growing Grater.
I was naturally a good speller, and if I hadn’t been tired and excited I shouldn’t have made so many mistakes.
Although I felt much better for writing the letter, the afternoon had put my mental age back and dealt my spirit a shrewd blow or I could not have written it. I do not quite know where the wound went deepest. True, my feelings had been hurt, but they had been hurt twice over and the second blow had in a way deadened the first. Ted’s outburst had almost obliterated Marian’s: it had finished off the demolition of my temporary emotional structure. For the second time that afternoon I had taken to my heels: I had run out of the house as fast as my legs could carry me. Looking back, I saw Ted standing at the farmyard gate, waving to me and shouting; but I thought he was meaning to give chase, and I ran the faster, like a street urchin fleeing from a policeman, nor did I draw breath until my breath gave out. I did not cry, however, because he was a man, and his anger touched a hardier nerve in me than Marian’s had. By the time I reached the sluice, the frontier between his land and ours, my fright had begun to wear off, for I was beyond the reach of his arm, or even of his gun, which I still dreaded.
To bleed from many wounds may be more serious than to bleed from one, but the pain, being less localized, is also easier for the mind to bear.
Perhaps more important to my well-being than my feelings was my amour-propre. This had suffered in various ways, but it had also been bolstered up by Ted’s references to my prowess at cricket and singing, and in a way it dwelt in a part of me which was almost inaccessible to my feelings: I had excelled at cricket, I had excelled at singing; these were as-sets that hard words could not devalue. At the same time it depended to some extent on public recognition, and this is what I foresaw would be lacking when I returned to Brandham Hall.
I had got it into my head (the most unlikely thing that could happen) that Marian would have told everyone what she had told me, that I was a stupid little boy, a swollen-headed brat, and so on, and, worst of all, a Shylock. I imagined that when I entered the drawing-room, rather late for tea, everyone would treat me as an outcast; and this, even after my other experiences, was a prospect that daunted me.
In fact, the opposite happened. I wasn’t even late; I was greeted with acclaim; inquiries, both facetious and solicitous, were made as to how I had spent the afternoon, which I answered as best I could; and I was drawn into the circle in a place of honour near the tea-kettle—the shining silver tea-kettle that had always been my admiration.
Marian was presiding over it. I had never seen her so animated. She did not put the finesse into pouring out the tea that her mother did, asking questions all round the table, making each cup seem like a present, for she seemed to know by instinct, or to remember from other times, just how everybody liked his tea. “Yours is with lemon, isn’t it?” she would say, and so on. We were a full house. Among the week-end guests were some older people, whom I welcomed because they generally had more to say to me than the younger ones. I can’t remember their faces, but I can remember hers, and the challenge in her eye and the lift of raillery in her voice. Her eyes were always fiercer than her mouth; they glinted while it smiled. The guests seemed to enjoy being made fun of, for there was flattery in it too. Lord Trimingham was sitting beside her on a low chair, I could only see his head, and it struck me that this was how they would be when she came to reign at Brandham—she in full view and he half in shadow. There was a sparkle on everything she did. In her mother’s absence she seemed to
be reigning already, there was such decision in her face and in her gestures. I wondered where Mrs. Maudsley was; she had never been away at tea before. This was another mastery than hers, less subtle but more brilliant.
When my turn came, Marian looked into my eyes and said: “Three lumps or four, Leo?” and I said four because small boys are supposed to like a lot of sugar. It raised a laugh, as I had hoped it would.
Tea was made a feature of at Brandham. The cakes and sandwiches and jam we had! Half of it went back into the servants’ hall. If I thought of Ted eating his lonely tea at his kitchen table scored with knife-cuts, it was to wonder how I ever came to be there; it had left a lurid feeling in my mind, as if it had been the cage of a wild animal. The decorous sounds we all made eating and drinking, the light chatter, the unemphatic voices, the small safe sounds of things being moved about and passed from hand to hand, the glitter of the trail of gold—how captivating it all was! And yet I shouldn’t have relished it so much if I hadn’t known the other.
When I took my cup to Marian to be refilled (I claimed this privilege as a guest of older standing), her eyes held a message that I did not miss. “Stay behind,” they said, “or come and see me afterwards.” But in spite of that and in spite of having enjoyed it all so much, I didn’t. I went back to my room and locked the door and wrote the letter.
It seemed to me that if I went away, and only if I went away, the relationship between Ted and Marian would cease. I didn’t ask myself how it had been kept up before I came. I reasoned: “There is no one else to take the notes but me; they have to be taken and brought back on the same day, because only after breakfast does Marian know what her mother’s plans will be; if I’m not there to do it, they can’t meet, and Lord Trimingham will never know that his bride-to-be is too friendly with another man. If I stay, I shall have to do as she tells me: the only thing is to go.” I saw no flaw in the logic of this.
I didn’t ask myself why these missions, which had once been my delight, were now my bugbear. It was I who had changed, not they. For the first time in my life I had a strong sense of obligation in a matter that didn’t really concern me—a sense of ought and ought not. Hitherto my maxim had been to mind my own business, as it was the maxim of most of my schoolfellows. If anyone attacked me, I tried to defend myself. If I had broken a rule, I tried to escape the consequences. Where no rules were, and when I was not being attacked, I had no sense at all of two independent elements, unrelated to my concerns, called right and wrong, to which my actions could be referred for approval or disapproval. But now for some such scruple I felt constrained to take preventive action—and at a sacrifice to myself, for I didn’t want to leave Brandham.