‘Keep your paws off those books!’ called Demoyte. ‘Come and drink your coffee, or Handy will remove it. You know she only allows seven minutes for coffee.’
Miss Handforth appeared. She was wearing a rather grubby apron and was clearly in the middle of washing up.
‘Can I take it now,’ she said, ‘or have I spoken out of turn?’ She sneezed. Nan ostentatiously averted her head while Handy busied herself pulling the curtains. Mor gulped his coffee down and the tray was removed.
Mor joined the conversation. He could see Nan looking restless and knew that she was now calculating how soon she could decently rise to go. He could almost hear her counting.
‘I think we ought to be starting for home,’ said Nan, after some little time. She looked at Mor.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Mor. He did not want to go yet.
Nan rose with determination. Demoyte did not try to detain her. The company began to drift in a polite group towards the door.
‘I asked Handy to cut you some roses,’ said Demoyte, ‘but I have an uneasy feeling she’s forgotten. Handy!’ He shouted over the bannisters, ‘Roses for Mrs Mor!’
Mor was touched. He knew that the roses were really for him, in response to his having, a few days ago, expressed admiration for the rose garden.
Miss Handforth appeared from the kitchen with a loud clack of the green baise door. ‘I didn’t get down the garden today,’ she announced.
‘Well, get down now,’ said Demoyte in an irritated tone. He was tired of the evening.
‘You know I can’t see in the dark,’ said Miss Handforth, well aware that Demoyte was not serious. ‘Besides, the dew is down.’
Nan said simultaneously, ‘Don’t bother, please. They would have been lovely, but now don’t bother.’ Mor knew that she was not interested in the roses. Nan thought on the whole that flowers were rather messy and insanitary things. But she was quite pleased all the same to be able to underline that Handy was in the wrong.
‘Let me go!’ said Miss Carter suddenly. ‘I can see in the dark. I know where the roses are. Let me cut some for Mrs Mor.’ She ran ahead of them down the wide staircase.
‘Capital!’ said Demoyte. ‘Handy, give her the big scissors from the hall drawer. You go with her, Mor, and see she really knows the way. I’ll entertain your lady. But for Christ’s sake don’t be long.
Miss Carter took the scissors and vanished through the front door. Mor ran after her, and closed the door behind him. The night was cool and very dark. He could not see, but knew the way without sight to the wooden door in the wall that led into the main garden. He heard the door clap before him, and in a moment he felt its surface under his hand, cool and yielding. He emerged on to the quiet dewy lawn. He heard the distant traffic and saw the interrupted flashes from the headlights, but all about him was dark and still. He blinked, and saw ahead of him the small figure hurrying away across the lawn.
‘Miss Carter!’ said Mor in a low voice, ‘wait for me, I’m coming too.’ After the brilliance of the house the garden was strange, pregnant with trees and bushes, open to the dew and the stars. He felt almost alarmed.
Miss Carter had stopped and was waiting for him. She seemed less tiny now that there were no objects with which to compare her. He saw her eyes glint in the darkness. ‘This way, she said.
Mor blundered after her. ‘Yes, you can see in the dark,’ he said. ‘I wish I could.’ They went through the yew hedge under the archway into the second garden.
They walked quietly across the lawn. Mor felt strangely breathless. Miss Carter was laying her feet very softly to the earth and made no sound at all as she walked. Mor tried to step softly too, but he could feel and hear under his feet the moisture in the close-cropped grass. An intense perfume of damp earth and darkened flowers surrounded them and quenched the noises of the world outside. Mor could see very little, but he continued to follow the dark moving shape of the girl ahead. He was still dazed by the swiftness of the transition.
They reached the steps which led up into the third garden. Miss Carter went up the steps like a bird and for a moment he saw the pallor of her bare arm exposed against the black holly bush as she turned to wait for him. Mor plunged forward, his foot seeking the lowest step. He stumbled and almost fell.
‘Here, come this way,’ she said from above him, ‘this way.’ She kept her voice soft, compelled to by the garden. Then she came back down the steps and he realized that she was reaching out her hand. Mor took her hand in his and let her guide him up the steps. Her grip was firm. They passed between the black holly bushes, and released each other. Mor felt a strong shock within him, as if very distantly something had subsided or given way. He had a confused feeling of surprise. The moon came out of the clouds for a moment and suddenly the sky was seen in motion.
The rose garden was about them now, narrowing towards the place where Demoyte’s estate ended in the avenue of mulberry trees. Mor had never seen it by night. It looked different now, as if the avenue were immensely long, and Mor had a strange momentary illusion that it was in that direction that the house lay, far off at the end of the avenue: Demoyte’s house, or else its double, where everything happened with a difference.
‘Quelle merveille!’ said Miss Carter in a low voice. She took a few quick steps across the grass, and then stopped, lifting her face to the moonlight. A moment later she began to run and threw her arms about the trunk of the first mulberry tree of the avenue. The branches above her were murmuring like a river.
Mor coughed. He was slightly embarrassed by these transports. ‘You know, we mustn’t be too long,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Miss Carter, detaching herself from the tree, ‘we shall pick them very quickly now. She began to run between the beds, picking out the buds which were just partly open. The scissors snicked and the long-stemmed roses were cast on to the grass. The moon whitened the paler ones and made the dark ones more dark, like blood. Mor tried to pick a rose, but as he had nothing with which to cut it he only pricked himself and mangled the rose.
‘Leave all to me,’ said Miss Carter, coming to snip off the dangling blossom. ‘There, that should be enough.’
Mor was anxious to get back now. He had a vision of Nan and Demoyte waiting impatiently in the hall. Also, there was something which he wanted to think over. He hastened ahead down the stone steps, his eyes now accustomed to the dark, and ran noisily across the lawn to the yew hedge. Here he waited, and held the iron gate open for Miss Carter. It clinked to behind them, and now they could see the lighted windows of the house where already Miss Handforth had drawn back the curtains in preparation for the night. They passed the wooden gate, and in a moment they were blinking and rubbing their eyes in the bright light of the hall. Miss Carter clutched the great armful of roses to her breast.
‘What an age you were,’ said Nan. ‘Did you get lost?’
‘No,’ said Mor, ‘it was just very dark.’
‘Here are the roses,’ said Miss Carter, trying to detach them from where they had pinned themselves to her cotton blouse. ‘What about some paper to put them in?’
‘Here, have the Evening News,’ said Demoyte, taking it from the table. ‘I haven’t read it, but to the devil with it, now the day is over.’
Nan spread out the paper on the table and Miss Carter laid the roses upon it, trying to order them as she did so. ‘How beautiful!’ said Nan. ‘Miss Carter must have one, don’t you think?’ She selected a deep red rose and held it out graciously to Miss Carter, who took it and fumbled awkwardly to fix it at her bosom. She failed, and held it in her hand, against her skirt.
‘Now take your flowers and be off with you,’ said Demoyte, who was yawning and clearly wanted to be in bed. ‘Good night!’
‘Good night, sir,’ said Mor, ‘and thank you. Good night, Miss Carter.’
‘Good night,’ said Nan. ‘Thank you for the roses.’
‘Good night,’ said Miss Carter.
Nan and Mor were out on the gravel outsi
de the front door. The house glowed at them for a moment from within, and they saw the figures of Demoyte and Miss Carter waving them off. Then the door shut and the light above it went out. Demoyte did not believe in seeing his guests off the premises. Nan waited while in darkness Mor found his bicycle. They started down the drive, Mor pushing the machine. Nan took hold of his arm.
‘Thank heavens that’s over!’ she said, ‘it was rather grizzly, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Mor.
‘What did you make of Miss Carter?’ said Nan.
‘Not much,’ said Mor. ‘I found her a bit intimidating. Rather solemn.’
‘She takes herself seriously,’ said Nan. ‘But she’s really a little clown. She obviously gets on swimmingly with Demoyte when no one else is there.’
‘Maybe,’ said Mor, who hadn’t thought of that.
‘You were ages in the garden,’ said Nan. ‘Whatever happened?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mor, ‘absolutely nothing.’
They walked on in silence and turned on to the main road. Mor was reviving in his mind the curious feeling of shock which he had experienced at the top of the stone steps. He found it hard to interpret.
Chapter Three
‘RIGDEN,’ said Mor.
A long silence followed. Mor was taking the Fifth Form Latin class, a chore which sometimes came his way during the absence on sick leave of Mr Baseford, the classics master. The day was the day after Mr Demoyte’s dinner party. It was a hot afternoon, the first period after lunch, a time which Mor hated. A fly buzzed on the window. Twenty boys sat with the Elegies of Propertius open before them. Rigden clearly could make nothing of the line in question.
‘Come on, Rigden,’ said Mor rather wearily, ‘have a bash. You can translate the first word anyway.’
‘You,’ said Rigden. He was a slight crazy-looking boy with a small head. He idolized Mor. His inability to please him was one of the tragedies of his school days. He leaned intently over his book.
‘That’s right,’ said Mor, ‘and the second word.’
A yell of uncontrolled laughter went up in the next room. That was Mr Prewett’s mathematics class. Prewett was unhappily quite unable to keep order. Mor knew that keeping order was a gift of nature, but he could not but despise Prewett a little all the same. Mor himself had but to look at the boys and they fell silent.
‘Only,’ said Rigden.
‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘now go on.’
Rigden stared wretchedly at the page. ‘While it is permitted,’ he said.
‘Lucet, you juggins,’ said Mor, ‘not licet. Carde?’
Jimmy Carde was one of Mor’s enemies. He was also the bosom friend of Mor’s son Donald. Mor never felt at ease with Carde.
‘While there is light,’ said Carde. He spoke in a casual and superior way, scarcely opening his mouth, as if it were a concession on his part to support these absurd proceedings at all.
‘That’s right,’ said Mor. ‘Now, Rigden, you go on.’
Rigden was beginning to look desperate. He gazed into the book, biting his lip.
‘Get a move on,’ said Mor, ‘we haven’t got all day.’ He sighed, hearing the traffic which murmured away sleepily in the distance. There came back into his consciousness the thought, which had not been far absent from it throughout the lesson, that at a quarter past three he was to meet the portrait painter, Miss Carter, and show her round the school. A note from Mr Everard, waiting in his pigeon-hole that morning, had conveyed the request; and since its arrival Mor had had little time for reflection. He had felt only, for some reason that was obscure to him, a slight feeling of disappointment and irritation that his next meeting with Miss Carter was not to be at Mr Everard’s lunch party, which he had fixed in his mind as the next occasion when he would see her.
‘Lives do not desert the fruit,’ said Rigden in desperation, throwing caution to the winds.
‘No,’ said Mor. ‘Did you prepare this, Rigden?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Rigden, not raising his eyes, and trying to invest his voice with a tone of injured innocence.
‘Well, you’d better stay behind afterwards and talk to me about it,’ said Mor. ‘Our time’s nearly up. Could somebody finish translating? Carde, what about you, could you do the last six lines for us?’
Carde sat quietly looking at the poem. He was a good performer, and he was in no hurry. Carde was efficient, and Mor respected efficiency. In the moment of renewed silence he looked again at the poem. He had chosen it for them that morning as a piece of prepared translation. Perhaps after all it was too hard. Perhaps also not quite suitable. His eye passed over the lines.
Tu modo, dum lucet, fructum ne desere vitae.
Omnia si dederis oscula, pauca dabis.
Ac veluti folia arentes liquere corollas,
Quae passim calathis strata natare vides,
Sic nobis, qui nunc magnum speramus amantes
Forsitan includet aastina fata dies.
Carde cleared his throat.
‘Yes?’ said Mor. He looked at his watch. He saw that the period was nearly ended, and a slight feeling of uneasiness came over him.
‘While the light remains,’ said Carde, speaking slowly in his high deliberate voice, ‘only do not forsake the joy of life. If you shall have given all your kisses, you will give too few. And as leaves fall from withered wreaths which you may see spread upon the cups and floating there, so for us, who now as lovers hope for so much, perhaps tomorrow’s day will close the doom.’
‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘yes. Very nice, Carde. Thank you. Now you can all go. Rigden, wait a moment, would you?’
An immediate clatter broke out, and amid a banging of books and desk tops there was a rush for the door. Carde was first out. Mr Prewett’s class was evidently up at the same moment, and there was a confluence of din outside. The admonishing of Rigden took but little time, and Mor strode into the musty corridor to disperse the riot. A moment later he emerged from the centre door of what was gracelessly called Main School into the sunshine and looked about him.
The chief buildings of St Bride’s were grouped unevenly around a large square of asphalt which was called the playground, although the one thing that was strictly forbidden therein was playing. The buildings consisted of four tall red-brick blocks: Main School, which contained the hall, and most of the senior classrooms, and which was surmounted by the neo-Gothic tower; Library, which contained the library and more classrooms, and which was built close against Main School, jutting at right angles from it; School House, opposite to Library, where the scholars ate and slept; and ‘Phys and Gym’ opposite to Main School, which contained the gymnasium, some laboratories, the administrative offices, and two flats for resident masters. The St Bride’s estate was extensive, but lay along the slope of a hill, which created notorious problems upon the playing fields which lay behind Main School, stretching away towards the fringes of the housing estate and the maze of suburban roads in the midst of which Mor’s house lay. The playground was connected with the main road by a gravel drive which ran through a shrubbery, past the masters’ garden; but the largest section of the grounds lay farther down the hill, below the Library building. Here there was a thick wood of oak and birch, dense with fern and undergrowth, and cut by many winding paths, deep and soft with old leaves, the paradise of the younger boys. On the fringe of this wood, within sight of the Library, stood the Chapel, a stumpy oblong building of lighter brick and more recent date, looking not unlike a water works. Beyond this, hidden among the trees, were the three houses to which the boys other than the scholars belonged, where they lived and took their meals and, if they were senior boys, had their studies. These were Mor’s house, Prewett’s house, and the third was under the aegis of Mr Baseford, then on sick leave. The houses dully bore the names of their housemasters, and a keen rivalry between them was continually fostered by the teaching staff. Beyond the wood, alongside the arterial road, which skirted the school grounds on that side, lay the squash courts and the sw
imming pool - and upon the other side, upon the edge of the housing estate, were the music rooms and the studio. At the bottom of the hill was a ragged lawn, a half-hearted attempt at a flower garden, and beyond these a white stucco Victorian house inhabited de officio by Mr Everard. This ended the domain.
Mr Everard’s note to Mor had said that Miss Carter would be waiting in the playground at the end of the first afternoon period. Mor looked quickly about, but could not see her. The strong sun was slanting in between the Library and the Phys and Gym, gilding the dark nobbly surface of the asphalt. Warmth arose from it, and the air quivered slightly. What Mor did see, at the corner of the playground near the far end of the Library, was his son Donald. Towards Donald, across the sunny asphalt, Jimmy Carde was making his way by a series of spectacular skips and jumps. He reached Donald and made violent impact with him like a bouncing ball. They spun round gripping each other’s shoulders. From a distance Mor saw this encounter without pleasure.