Thus confronted with the unspoken question in his mind, Laurie said at once, “Well, nothing specially.”
“Unfair to Spud,” said Ralph, suddenly laughing. “Sorry.” Snapping open his case he said, “Have one of mine,” and lit two. With an obscure pleasure, Laurie perceived that this wasn’t one of the things in which practice had made him perfect. “I never told you how it ended, did I?”
“Well, no one in their right mind would have thought of asking.”
“Why not? Ancient history. Hazell and I fell out on a matter of discipline in the end. By the way, when you said just now that he used to get away with murder, were you in point of fact referring to me?”
“No,” said Laurie, losing his nerve. “Of course not.”
“Well, he was a responsibility in any House, even Jeepers had the wit to see that. I believe he tried to get rid of him several times, but the Head took the view that he was a plow the School had put its hand to. Anyway, there he was, and one had to use a bit of discretion. Then this began, and at first one seemed to be helping him find his feet and really making something of him. I suppose some of that might even have been genuine. Quite soon he began to be tiresome in various ways, trying to take advantage. I remember I had a long talk with him, explaining in words of one syllable why that would be bad for both of us. When that got nowhere, I told him that the next time he came up to me for a beating, that would be what he’d get. He could see I meant it. I was surprised when he turned up a couple of days later. I thought he was calling my bluff. Perhaps that’s what he thought himself. I don’t know. Anyway he’d left me no choice. I hated the whole business, I don’t know when I’ve hated anything more, so I got down to it without wasting time. And afterwards I was just about to say, ‘Well, that’s that, don’t let it happen again and now let’s forget about it.’ And then I realized.”
Laurie waited and then said, “He couldn’t take it, you mean?”
“Well, no. Just the opposite. If you don’t know it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh,” said Laurie. He thought how lightly he would have read all this, stripped of its human reality, in a psychological handbook.
“I think I just stood there and looked at him. Of course one sees if he was like that he couldn’t help himself, poor swine. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d ever expected to find myself mixed up in, that’s all. I’d have liked to see him dead, so long as I hadn’t got to touch him. I suppose he saw it. It may be he went to Jeepers out of revenge, but I don’t think so. I think he was scared, and it made him a bit hysterical. He told it reversing the point of the final episode, if you see what I mean. I didn’t see very much future in arguing about it.”
“God, how little we all knew. How awful for you.”
“For him too,” said Ralph, “I suppose.” For a minute or two he didn’t speak, but tapped with his fingers on the top of the car door, a broken rhythm like Morse. “The thing is, sooner or later one has to think it out, one can’t just leave it there. I realized afterwards, some time afterwards, a perfectly normal person wouldn’t have been so angry. He was sick, after all. But that, really, was it. That was what I had against him. I’d been trying to work up what I was into a kind of religion. I thought I could make out that way. He made me see it as just a part of what he was.” His hand moved absently over the dashboard; suddenly the narrowed pencil of the masked headlamps shone out into the empty air of the valley, tracing paths of pale vapor in which midges danced like sparks. He swore under his breath and switched them off.
“Well, we have to face that sooner or later, of course.” Now that the sudden light had gone it could be felt that the neutrality of twilight was over; it was almost dark. There was a moment of extreme quiet in which the distant shunting of a train, a car on the road behind them, the chirr of a night bird, were like differently colored silences. Ralph said, with a basic simplicity, “You see, Spud, don’t you? That was why.”
“Yes,” said Laurie, “of course I see.” He was too much moved to narrow his thoughts down to any one point of the story. He strained for better, more expressive words, which would not come. It was at this moment that the approaching car turned in and parked beside them. Inside it girls’ voices were already giving provocative twitters of protest; whispers of giggling reproof pointed out that strangers were present. Ralph switched on the engine and, with carefully managed ease, put in the gear.
They drove for some time in silence. Soon they got down into traffic again; and it was then that he became aware of Ralph’s increasing irritability. The small misdoings of other drivers seemed to infuriate him; after keeping up for some miles a profane running commentary, he started to address the offenders direct. Laurie put it down to the gears at first, till it occurred to him that Ralph hadn’t had a drink yet this evening. He sat quiet, to avoid attracting the lightning, till a youth on a bicycle wobbled across in front of the car. Ralph pulled up and stayed to deliver a reprimand. For a moment it was funny to see the youth clinging paralyzed to the hedge like a monkey fascinated by a python; but when it was over he could see that Ralph was depressed and angry with himself, so at the next pub they passed he said, “What about stopping for a quick one?”
“No,” said Ralph shortly. “Won’t be time.” He accelerated. About a quarter of a mile on, he said quite pleasantly, “If we’re too late, everything fit to eat will be off.”
In one of their silent pauses Laurie found himself wishing it were possible, without telling Andrew too much, to get a sensible idea of Ralph into his head. It was the first time he had ever thought of Andrew in terms of criticism, even such gentle criticism as this.
“Usually the food’s a bit less filthy here than anywhere.” The hotel Ralph stopped at was Edwardian, shabby, clean, and restful. To Laurie’s relief, after the third double Ralph made a move to the dining room. By that time he had started to talk again.
“I must say, Spud, you’re remarkably well balanced for the offspring of divorce. Quite often being queer is the least of it.”
“Well, my mother’s pretty well balanced,” Laurie began. Then it all came back to him. Ralph looked at his face and said gently, “Come on, Spud.” With an awkwardness gradually superseded by relief, Laurie brought it out.
Ralph didn’t urge him to see the best in Mr. Straike. He sounded, Ralph said, a bloody-minded old so-and-so. Rather like the first captain he had served under, he added almost as an afterthought. He was an old so-and-so if you like; if he had ever come down off the bridge in a gale someone would undoubtedly have tipped him overboard. But one trip he had taken his old woman along, and she seemed to think he was God’s gift, it oozed out all over her. You couldn’t account for women.
Laurie found this rough comfort, but did his best not to show it. “I expect it’ll work out,” he said.
“Have I been unnecessarily brutal, Spud? I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know. I’m not much of an authority on family relationships. None of my girl friends went in for that sort of thing, either.” He looked at Laurie and laughed. “Come, now, Spuddy, let it go at a raised eyebrow. That stunned expression isn’t very flattering.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, but joking apart, you don’t want to have written off half the human race at your time of life. I don’t mean this unkindly, but perhaps you’re having the navel-cord cut in the nick of time. Look at it that way and don’t be too upset about it.”
There was an odd unexpected relief in this hard handling. “All the same, I doubt if mothers will ever need to lock their daughters up when they see me coming.”
“Oh, perhaps not, I didn’t mean that so much. It’s more an attitude of mind than anything. What I always feel—”
This opened a conversation that went on for most of the meal. Once or twice Ralph would have changed it, but Laurie kept it going, not for the sake of the advice, which he couldn’t feel would ever be important to him, but to make Ralph talk about himself. So it turned out, for after dismissing the soup and remarking that they s
eemed to have used shark’s tripes, he said, “I did two years of women, when I first went to sea.” He said it very much as sailors say they have done two years in tankers, or two years in sail.
“Did you?” said Laurie. “Why?”
“Oh, for almost every reason except the real one. I’d had rather a sickener of the other side. Once people know about you at sea, they want you to be too obliging. It’s not so good in peacetime starting lower deck with the wrong accent and so on. I didn’t want to give them anything on me. Besides, when I found I could if I gave my mind to it, I thought I might become naturalized, so to speak. Some people seem to take an inordinate pride in never having made the attempt, but I don’t see it myself. I decided I’d give it the two years, anyway.”
He broke off to attend to his food. Laurie saw that though he could use the left hand well enough, the padded fingers of the glove were clumsy and got in his way. It was impossible to guess how much he felt all this.
“Did it make any difference?” Laurie asked him.
“Well, yes, it did in a sense, of course. It’s bound to do something for one’s self-confidence, if nothing else. I think one year would have been enough. Funny thing, you know, it didn’t feel at all like going straight. More like trying to cultivate some fashionable vice that never quite becomes a habit. I served out the contract, though. No, let’s be honest, I broke out a week short of the time. I happened to meet someone and I’d have been at sea a week later. All I can remember thinking is ‘Thank the Lord, back to normal at last.’ Well, there it is. Some people make a go of it. I don’t think it was a complete waste of time, though; it stops one getting too parochial. Now and again I’ve even had a woman since; I’ve met one who reminded me of one of the early ones, or something. I don’t know why, really. Vanity very likely. You look thoughtful, Spud. Do I sound very unfeeling?”
“No,” said Laurie. He felt a fool and looked away.
“Well, I only managed to get along with real bitches, and none of them complained. Good women are definitely not my cup of tea.”
This seemed reasonable in the circumstances, and Laurie hardly knew what it was that made him ask why.
“Probably because they’re the cruellest of the carnivora. Give me the bloody Nazis, any day.”
He had used the voice that closes a subject. Laurie, who had never gone in for forcing people’s confidence, thought afterwards that it must have been the gin which had made him behave so uncharacteristically. It did not occur to him that there is a degree of emotional insecurity, in which he had been living for some weeks now, where the need for reassurance can produce almost the same effects as the desire for power. The coffee came and Ralph ordered brandy with it. Laurie led the conversation round in a circle and tried again.
“Well, Spud, you see, I shouldn’t have said what I did just now. Don’t know why I said it. Cheap and nasty, I’ve been seeing too much of the wrong people lately. I can’t very well tell you after that … No, I mean look at it for yourself, once you start passing the buck to the previous generation, where do you step off? I suppose Eve put Cain’s nose out of joint by petting his little brother. You can flannel out of anything.”
“It doesn’t matter. Sometimes it helps to know about other people.”
“Well, Christ, it’s nothing. It happens every day. What do you think it is, the secret of Glamis or what? See, now. My mother was a good woman, only she saw something nasty in the woodshed. She couldn’t help what she felt about it. Her parents were Plymouth Brethren.”
“But what did she see?”
“Well, me of course. Oh, waiter, two more brandies. What a flop this story’s going to be after the build-up you’ve given it. She saw me aged six, and the little girl next door aged seven, rather solemnly discussing anatomy. I imagine the same thing’s going on at this moment in about five million woodsheds from China to Peru. However, it was apparently the filthiest crime that had ever touched my mother’s life. She found it quite hard to talk about, so by the time she’d done, I took away some dim idea that carnal knowledge of women would cause one’s limbs to rot and fall off, like leprosy.” With an unconscious tic which Laurie had noticed in him once or twice before, he touched as if for reassurance his spotless white collar. “She got my father to do the beating; he told me it was about time I went to school to learn a clean life. Rather horrible precocious child I must have been, I suppose. Finish your brandy, Spud, you’re one behind.”
Laurie could see that if he wanted more of the story than this, it would be necessary to ask for it. He finished his brandy. “I see now,” he said, “that last day at school, why it was you said you were going straight to Southampton.”
There was a short pause. Then Ralph said, “Did I? Well, that was what I ought to have done.”
After this, Laurie learned without much surprise, soon after, that Ralph had had nothing to do with women since leaving hospital. He offered no comment on this; but it would fit well with his conception of them, Laurie thought, to expect that they would punish him with his deformity.
Suddenly he seemed to remember the text of his earlier sermon, and laughed. “No, all I mean is, Spud, don’t have a closed mind about it. I can’t remember who those cranks are who say you mustn’t think negatively; but they’ve got something, you know. About the most boring conversation this world affords—and I don’t say this lightly, Spud, I’ve been in ships that took passengers, and sat with them at meals, and still I’ve heard nothing to touch a bunch of queers trying to prove to each other that the grapes are sour.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Well, look at Shakespeare’s girl friend in the Sonnets, who was probably the bitch of all hell, yet she gives the thing what you might call body.”
“Yes, but the thing about Shakespeare is that he was normal plus, not minus.”
“Good Lord. Well, if you’re prepared to admit that without a struggle, I’ve just been wasting your time. Have a cigarette.”
As in this public place they took and lit their own, Laurie found they were exchanging the shadow of a smile, and he couldn’t be sure afterwards which of them had smiled first.
“There’s always this,” Ralph said. “If one hasn’t accepted too many limitations, one can pay one’s final choice the compliment of—”
“Your brandy, sir,” said the waiter.
Shortly after this Ralph looked at his watch and said, “Well, we’ve got an hour or so in hand; let’s go round to my place.”
“Surely there won’t be time?”
“What? Oh, not the Station, I’ve got a room in town. Very utilitarian. There’s a nice old square outside, but you won’t see that for the blackout. Never mind.”
The argument over the bill, about which Ralph was inclined at first to be imperious, ended amicably in a draw. Laurie scarcely noticed that his side of the discussion only made sense if they assumed that they were going to see a good deal more of one another.
The house was later than the one where Alec and Sandy lived; probably mid-Victorian. You couldn’t say of this one that the proportions were good. It still came within the great period of the town’s wealth; Ralph’s torch picked out door-frames and banisters hideously carved, but made of solid teak. The landlady had summarily settled the blackout problem by removing the light bulbs from the hall and staircase. It was a narrow house: as one came in one could almost feel the squeeze of the walls. There were two flights of stairs, but Laurie began the climb without misgiving; Miss Haliburton’s machine was still doing him good. The first landing was quite dark and silent, without even a crack of light under a door.
“Are you all right, Spud?”
“Yes, fine.”
The blackout in the room was still open. Irregular blots of darkness surrounded a tall glimmering rectangle of night sky. From the doorway, Laurie caught an indefinable, strangely familiar and nostalgic smell of shabbiness and simplicity. It was the combination of these two things, so often divorced, that stirred the memory, as much by what
was absent as what was there: a positive kind of cleanness which lacked the institutional sour undertaste, a smell of scrubbed wood and beeswax and books.
Ralph’s shoulder jutted sharply against the window. “Take a look if you like, but you can’t see much.”
Laurie came over, feeling his way along a table. They were on the upper side of the square, which sloped with the slope of the town. Beyond the houses opposite, a gray expanse of distance merged into the sky.
“Where are you, Spud?”
“Here.” He put out his hand and touched the stiff cold braid on Ralph’s moving sleeve.
“You can’t see anything. It must have been pretty, when they had the lights.”
“I expect it’s nice in the daytime.”
Laurie narrowed his eyes at the invisible horizon. A curtain, made of some harsh stuff, brushed his hand. He was scarcely aware of it, or of what he was looking at. In a flash of recognition, he had identified the smell of the room. It was like school: not like the corridors and classrooms, which smelled of gritty boards and pencil shavings and ink and boys, but like the Head Prefect’s study. He might have thought of this sooner, since it had been his own for a year; but just at this moment he didn’t feel it as ever having been his. His perceptions, to everything else so dull, were full of this special feeling of the room, and, growing out of it, an intense awareness of Ralph standing close and silent beside him, not in serge and braid but in gray flannel; it seemed to him that he could even feel the cloth again. It all took him suddenly and with bewildering force; his next immediate reaction was a panic fear of having somehow betrayed himself. He had a dim impression that Ralph had made some movement and that this must mean he had noticed something. With Andrew so much on his mind, Laurie had become unreasoningly nervous; he obeyed a chain of reflexes with scarcely an intelligible thought. He turned quickly from the window, said, “Shout when you’ve done the blackout and I’ll do the light,” and made for the door. Haste made him clumsy; he collided with a chair and struck it hard with his knee, the wrong one.