“Did you leave your summer clothes at home?”
“No—yes. I expect Mother forgot to put them in,” I blurted out.
The full enormity of this remark then dawned on me; it was at once a lie and a cruel aspersion on my mother, who would certainly have got me some lighter clothes had I not discouraged her. I felt I had lowered her in their regard and burst into tears.
There was a moment’s embarrassed silence; teacups were stirred, then Mrs. Maudsley’s cool-edged voice said:
“Well, won’t you write and ask her to send them?”
For an answer I only gulped, and then Marian, who, I think, had never commented on my heated condition, said:
“Oh, that would take too long, Mama. You know what the posts are. Today is Thursday, he mightn’t get them till well into next week. Let me take him into Norwich tomorrow and get him a new outfit. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said, turning to me.
I mumbled that I should. But among the clouds that were lifted, a new black one appeared.
“I haven’t any money. At least only fifteen shillings and eightpence halfpenny.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Marian said gaily. “We’ve got some.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t take yours,” I protested. “Mother wouldn’t like me to.”
“Don’t forget, Marian, that he has the things at home,” her mother said.
I writhed, but Marian said quickly: “Oh, but we’ll give them to him as a birthday present; she wouldn’t mind that, would she? And then he’ll have two sets. When is your birthday, by the way?” she asked me.
“Well, actually—as a matter of fact—it’s on the 27th.”
“What, of this month?”
Her interest drew me out.
“Yes. You see, I was born under the sign of Leo, though it’s not my real name.”
“What is your real name?”
I saw Marcus looking at me, but I couldn’t refuse to tell her.
“It’s Lionel. But don’t tell anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s rather a fancy name.”
I saw her trying to probe this mystery of the schoolboy mind; by-passing it, she said:
“But how splendid that it’s so soon, your birthday! Now we can all give you something to wear. That’s the nicest kind of present. Shall I give you a mane?”
I thought that very funny, though a trifle silly.
“Or a lion-skin?”
I tried to enter into the joke. “That might be rather hot.”
“It might, indeed.” Suddenly Marian looked bored and almost yawned. “Well, we’ll go tomorrow,” she said.
“Or would you,” said her mother, “rather wait till Monday, when Hugh will be here, and make a party to go to Norwich?”
“Who will be here?” asked Marian.
“Hugh. He comes on Saturday. I thought you knew.”
“Hugh coming?” Mr. Maudsley asked, making one of his rare contributions to a conversation.
“Yes, he’s staying till the end of the month, perhaps longer.”
“Are you sure he is, Mama?” Denys put in. “When I saw him he told me he was going to Goodwood.”
“I had a letter from him yesterday.”
“You know he never misses Goodwood?”
“I think this year he means to.”
“I don’t want to disagree with you, Mama, but I think it most unlikely that Trimingham will miss Goodwood. You see, he—”
“Well, I think you’ll find that he means to give Goodwood up for us.… Marian, are you sure you wouldn’t like to wait till Monday?”
In an agony of impatience I listened for her answer. Who was this Hugh, or Trimingham, who was stealing my thunder? I felt resentful, even jealous of him. With him there, the expedition would be spoiled. And to wait till Monday! Yet Mrs. Maudsley had made her wishes plain, and how dare anyone, even Marian, cross them?
“Wouldn’t you rather wait till Monday?” Mrs. Maudsley repeated.
Marian answered at once, and it was like two steel threads crossing each other.
“Norwich wouldn’t be any treat to Hugh, Mama. He knows it better than we do. He wouldn’t want to go trailing around the shops with Leo and me—and in this heat too.” She looked up mischievously at her mother’s expressionless face. “Besides, by Monday Leo will have melted into butter, and all he’ll need will be a muslin bag! But of course if anyone would like to go with us!”
Her glance strayed from face to face, a challenge, not an invitation, and my eyes followed hers, desperately anxious that there should be no acceptances. And there were not. They all excused themselves. I suppose my jubilation was plain to see.
“Then may we go, Mama?” asked Marian.
“Of course, unless your father wants the horses.”
Mr. Maudsley shook his head.
“But don’t go to Stirling and Porter,” Mrs. Maudsley said, “as you sometimes do. I never like their things.”
“I should go to Challow and Crawshay,” said Denys with sudden energy. “They’re much the best.”
“No, Denys, they’re not,” his mother said.
“I know Trimingham sometimes goes there for his ties,” Denys persisted.
“Will Leo be needing ties?”
“I’ll stand him a tie if you promise to get it at Challow’s.”
I began to feel hot again.
“I tell you what,” said Marian, “let each of the family give him something, and then we can share the blame if they’re not right.”
“Bags I the bags,” said Marcus suddenly.
“Oh, Marcus!”
A chorus of disapproval greeted Marcus’s joke, and he looked quite sheepish until his mother said:
“Well, they can be my present, Marcus dear.”
I was surprised to see the fondness in her face.
Marian said she would find out what I needed. For this she would have to examine my exiguous wardrobe, an inquisition that I dreaded; but when it came, when all soft and flouncy she appeared in our room, heralded by Marcus, what a delight it was!—a transformation scene. She studied each garment almost reverently. “How beautifully they are mended!” she said. “I wish we had someone who could mend like that!” I didn’t tell her that my mother had done it, but perhaps she guessed. She was quick at finding out things. “Those clothes you had at home were a myth, weren’t they?” she said.
“A myth?” I echoed.
“I mean you didn’t really have them?”
I nodded, happy to have been found out, delighting in the shared secret. But how could she have known?
4
THE EXPEDITION to Norwich was a turning-point: it changed everything. Of the expedition itself I remember little except a general sense of well-being which seemed to mount and mount in me, ever seeking higher levels, like wine filling a glass. Ordinarily the process of buying clothes irked me, for I was not vain of my appearance and had no reason to be. I never felt that it had much to do with me until the amusement caused by my looking so hot convinced me that it had. The idea that I was somehow bound up with what I looked like was a revelation to me and at first a very disturbing one. When Marian told me that one thing suited me and another didn’t (she was never for a moment in doubt), when I realized that her main concern was for clothes that would look well rather than wear well, a new feeling was born in me whose sweetness I remember, though it died so quickly. I came back not only feeling it was glorious to be me, intimately satisfying to look like me.
We lunched at the Maid’s Head in Wensum Street, and this was a great occasion for me, for even when my father was alive it was held to be a great extravagance to go to a hotel: if we went out for a meal it was always to a restaurant.
We had started away from Brandham early, and by lunchtime we had nearly finished our shopping. One by one the parcels were put into the carriage until the seat in front of us was covered with them. I could hardly believe that most of them were for me. “Would you like to array
yourself now,” Marian asked me, “or would you rather wait till we get home?” I still remember the indecision that this question brought me; in the end, for the sake of prolonging anticipation, I said that I would wait. Hot as it must have been in Norwich—for the thermometer, when we visited it later in the day, still stood at eighty-three and had been higher—I don’t remember feeling the heat, for all my winter wear.
What did we talk about that has left me with an impression of wings and flashes, as of air displaced by the flight of a bird? Of swooping and soaring, of a faint iridescence subdued to the enfolding brightness of the day?
It all seemed to depend on her presence, yet when after luncheon she dismissed me, asking me to amuse myself for an hour in the Cathedral, my ecstasy continued. No doubt it was partly that I knew that I should soon see her again; but never had I felt in such harmony with my surroundings. It was as though the whole building, striving upwards to its famous vaulted roof, expressed what I was feeling, and later when I left the cool gloom of the interior for the heat and sunshine outside, the domain of Tombland, whose name fascinated me, I kept craning my neck to try to fix the point, the exact point, at which the summit of the spire pierced the sky.
O altitudo! She had asked me to meet her by the statue of Sir Thomas Browne; and in order not to be late I was early; the carriage was there with its two horses, the coachman raised his whip in salute. I hung around the statue, wondering who Sir Thomas Browne was, shy of getting into the carriage and sitting there as if I owned it; and then I caught sight of her on the far side of the square. She seemed to be saying good-bye to someone, at least I had the impression of a raised hat. She came slowly towards me, threading her way through the drowsy traffic, and did not see me till much later. Then she waved her parasol with its frilly, foamy edges and quickened her step.
My spiritual transformation took place in Norwich: it was there that, like an emerging butterfly, I was first conscious of my wings. I had to wait until tea for the public acknowledgment of my apotheosis. My appearance was greeted with cries of acclaim, as if the whole party had been living for this moment. Instead of gas-jets, fountains of water seemed to spring up round me. I was made to stand on a chair and revolve like a planet, while everything of my new outfit that was visible was subjected to admiring or facetious comment. “Did you get the tie from Challow’s?” cried Denys. “I won’t pay for it unless you did!” Marian said yes. Actually, as I discovered afterwards, the tie had another name on it—we had gone to so many shops! “What a cool customer he looks!” said someone, wittily. “Yes,” said another, “just like a cucumber, and the same shade of green!” They discussed what kind of green it was. “Lincoln green!” said another voice. “He might be Robin Hood!” I was delighted by that, and saw myself roaming the greenwood with Maid Marian. “Don’t you feel different?” somebody asked me, almost as indignantly as if I had denied it. “Yes,” I exclaimed, “I feel quite another person!”—which was less than the truth. They all laughed at this. The talk drifted away from me, as it does from children, and I got down awkwardly from my pedestal, realizing that my moment was over; but what a moment it had been!
“Come here, my dear,” said Mrs. Maudsley, “and let me look at you near to.” I went towards her nervously, caught like a moth in the beam from her eye, that black searchlight, whose pressure and intensity never varied. She rubbed the soft, thin material between her fingertips. “These smoked-pearl buttons are nice, I think, don’t you? Yes, I think it does very well, and I hope your mother will think so, too. By the way, Marian,” she added, turning to her daughter as if I and my concerns no longer existed for her, “did you find time for those little commissions I gave you—the things we shall be wanting next week?” “I did, Mama,” said Marian.
“And did you do any shopping for yourself?”
Marian shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh no, Mama; that can wait.”
“You mustn’t wait too long,” said Mrs. Maudsley evenly. “You didn’t see anyone in Norwich, I suppose?”
“Not a cat,” said Marian. “We were hard at it all the time, weren’t we, Leo?”
“Yes, we were,” I answered, so eager to agree with her that I forgot the hour I had spent in the Cathedral.
From being my enemy the summer had become my friend: this was another consequence of our Norwich shopping. I felt I had been given the freedom of the heat, and I roamed about in it as if I was exploring a new element. I liked to watch it rise shimmering from the ground and hang heavy on the tops of the darkening July trees. I liked the sense of suspended movement that it gave or seemed to give, reducing everything in nature to the stillness of contemplation. I liked to touch it with my hand and feel it on my throat and round my knees, which now were bare to its embrace. I yearned to travel far, ever farther into it, and achieve a close approximation with it; for I felt that my experience of it would somehow be cumulative, and that if it would only get hotter and hotter there was a heart of heat I should attain to.
The green suit, with its smoked-pearl buttons and open collar, which sat so lightly on me, the thin underclothes, whose touch caressed me, the stockings, hardly thick enough to protect my legs from scratches, the low shoes, which were my special pride—these, I felt, were only first steps towards my complete, corporeal union with the summer. One by one they would be discarded—in what order I couldn’t decide, though it was a question that exercised me. Which garment would be the last I should retain, before the final release into nakedness? My notions of decency were vague and ill-defined, as were all my ideas relating to sex; yet they were definite enough for me to long for the release of casting them off with my clothes and being like a tree or a flower, with nothing between me and nature.
These yearnings for nudist fulfilment hovered on the confines of my mind; perhaps I never thought them capable of realization. In the meantime my pride in my new rig-out had, at another level of consciousness, altered my outlook on the world, and my relation to it. New clothes are always a tonic, and the circumstances in which I had come by mine made them a super-tonic. I strutted, I preened myself. But I was not incapable of gratitude or awe, and both these feelings had been awakened in me. Gratitude for the gifts—how was it possible that my benefactors did not value me, how was it possible that I should not value them, when such pledges of amity had been bestowed? And awe for the way they had been given: the casual accumulation of colossal bills, mounting from shop to shop, as if money were nothing! The expenditure had been godlike; it belonged to another, ampler phase of being than the one I was accustomed to. My mind could not grasp it, but my imagination could make play with it, for unlike my mind, which could dismiss what it did not understand, my imagination loved to contemplate the incomprehensible and try to express my sense of it by an analogy. And I had one ready-made. From those resplendent beings, golden with sovereigns (and, I suspected, guineas), arriving, staying, leaving, apparently unaffected by any restrictions of work or family ties, citizens of the world who had made the world their playground, who had it in their power (for I did not forget that) to make me miserable with a laugh and happy with a smile—from them it was but a short step to the hardly more august and legendary figures of the zodiac.
One of the items in my trousseau was a bathing-suit, and partly from the promptings of nudism, partly because I fancied the idea of myself in it (the day with Marian had made me conscious of myself in many ways), I badly wanted to put it on. I confessed that I couldn’t swim unless somebody held me, but Marian said she would arrange for that. Here, however, my hostess put her foot down. My mother had written to her that I was delicate and liable to colds; she would not take the responsibility of letting me bathe without first having my mother’s permission. But of course I could watch the others bathe if I liked.
There was a bathing party afoot and I had just time to write the letter and go down and join them. It was Saturday the 14th—meteorologically a disappointing day, for the thermometer (which I now wished to soar to unprecedented heig
hts) had not reached seventy-six. But this was a secret that I shared with Marcus and his father; the others, ignorant of the true state of affairs, complained loudly of the heat. I took my bathing-suit with me, to be in keeping with the spirit of the party. Marcus also had his, for use, though like me he could not swim. Neither of them, I ruefully realized, made many concessions to nakedness: I had tried mine on; it was disappointingly ample, and so was Marcus’s.
I had never been to a grown-up bathing party before. There was nothing surprising in that, for in those days bathing was a pastime of the few, and the word denoted an intenser experience than it does now. I was curious about it and almost frightened—this idea of surrendering oneself to an alien and potentially hostile element. Though my knowledge of it was to be only vicarious, I felt a tingling on my skin and a faint loosening of my bowels.
We trooped down the path, six of us—Marian and Denys, a young man and a young woman whose names are in my diary but whose faces I cannot remember—and Marcus and I bringing up the rear. It was about six o’clock, but the heat still lingered—not burning, but diffused and benign. We went through a wicket gate into a belt of trees. I was often to go that way on hotter days; but never again did I get quite the same impression of cold succeeding heat. The trees were very thick, they wrapped us round; the stillness was infectious, no one spoke. We came to a road between the trees and followed it, and then scrambled down a steep tree-lined bank and over a stile into a meadow. Another stage nearer the experience! Under the renewed assault of the heat we started talking again, and Marcus said: