Lord Dismiss Us (10 page)

Your mother in Bryanston Square told me you were in the Reading Room, and I couldn’t do much about
that
! After further pressing phone-calls, and hearing no word from the Master, she tells me suddenly you are in
Italy
, for Chrissake. I thought we’d finished with all that. Charming no doubt your Father Mancini may be, but I distrust his intentions. But I seem to have said that before. As you will have known, I’m having trouble in speaking of the hardest thing. Your mother told me of this too, and I’m terribly sorry – they don’t know the best man when they see him. But whatever was going on in the Reading Room, certain that it will more than make up for temporary setback. Great faith in gifted author. Certain future. Don’t care to think of you at all in that ghastly place. But that won’t last – will it?

We suppose . . . uh . . . that our presence in the vicinity is not strictly to be considered? We find, once there, it has some mysterious hold, but could an exception not be made some London Sunday lunchtime? Someone feels awful and needs to make amends.

love,

Joan.

p.s. I’m a dab hand at roast beef though I say it myself.

Ashley read it – and re-read it – lying on the divan-bed in his room; which was bright and sunny because it was another beautiful day. The room was on the upper floor in the New Buildings, above a classroom. When he had swept out of the Sixth Form on the first day, he had merely needed to go upstairs and along a corridor. But Carleton’s startling remark had sent him off absent-mindedly into the outdoors. The room looked out not on to the herbaceous borders, but on to the other, northern side: a grass bank and lawns, and the wood, with a glimpse of the gorse-covered hills. On the lawn was a tall sycamore tree from whose branches he had occasionally taught the Sixth Form on fine spring days. (He was considering it today). The other Forms were impossible out-of-doors. The open sky for some reason made them uncontrollable.

The room was agreeable enough, with a desk by the window. On it was a photograph of his mother in a play by Terence Rattigan that had run for four years. There were books round the walls: much poetry, religion, philosophy; historical novels by his father, and a few others, mostly French.

It was the morning Break, and the Matron and her admirers were dealing with a queue of invalids in the dispensary next-door. It was true that there
was
a door – as well as the one on to the corridor. He had himself hung a striped rug over it, when first coming here, to give more cheer to a room with a northern outlook. The thing had then vanished from sight and mind.

Was it solely because it came from the other world – the world below – that he found himself viewing this letter with such severe detachment?

She was an intelligent and generous and vital person, and though he had rarely proposed these long sessions of far from sweet or silent thought, once persuaded into them he had played the game with a will. My God, the talk! The revelations of self! The way she kept the gin and tonic moving!

And all after Cambridge too. No excuse of Youth. He had been scarcely involved with the opposite sex at Cambridge: only Mary, who wanted to be a soul-mate, and Ruth, who wanted more and had sent him that bloody little book.

What
did
this one want? How much was it the gin?

Erring ‘friend’.

Suddenly barring the door and throwing back the bedclothes right in the middle of his recent thoughts on the Surface being all-important; and then a struggle – actual physical combat for a moment – and shouts, and the most amazing imprecations coming after him down the stairs.

As far as he was concerned, there was an impediment to the marriage of true minds: it did not admit to sexual intercourse.

Yes, his mother had told him that this ‘sweet girl’ had called. Some drink had been taken. She was ‘rather intense, dear, but really very sweet. That sort of intelligence and honesty frightens men away, you know – that’s why she’s young for her age, like you. My God, she disagreed with
me
about two plays that I’ve
adored
! (We didn’t talk about you
all
the time, you see). She disagreed very sweetly. She blushed. The child blushed. But she was definite. Few men will stand for that, you know. One can see she finds you different. She’s very fond of you, Eric.’

‘Sparring partner.’

‘No, no. On the contrary.’

‘Oh nonsense.’

‘How blind you men are . . . !’

‘Mother, kindly . . .’

‘Mind my own business. But if I can open your eyes. What was all that you told me about E. M. Forster and English people with undeveloped hearts? Now you wouldn’t want to be found guilty yourself, would you? The “denial of love”, wasn’t it?’

‘It’s my concern.’

‘This girl is full of heart . . . and body too, I wouldn’t be surprised, she’s most attractive in her own way, though it’s not mine. All that intensity and intelligence didn’t fool me. It genuinely fools her, though, that’s what’s so sweet. Still like a college girl – what is she, twenty-six? She genuinely believes herself impassioned about your career and your prose style.’

‘She works in a publishing house.’

‘Ha, ha!’

‘How affectionately you women murder each other. You can’t conceive of another member of your sex who isn’t playing in a drawing-room romance.’

‘I don’t know where one plays it nowadays, dear, but it
is
in our nature, you know. Don’t you think you should come to terms with that fairly soon?’

‘I detest you sometimes.’

‘I don’t believe you. I can’t bear to think of having another confirmed bachelor in this house. One was enough. My dear, you’re turning into your father thirty years before your time. I’ve felt for a long while now that I’m really living in an annex of the British Museum.’

‘Of Shaftesbury Avenue, more like it. The place seethes with your out-of-work contemporaries. How could he possibly have written or read History in this theatrical doss-house? My room is perpetually invaded by the Stars of yesteryear.’

‘That’s because I gave you all my best furniture. We seem to have got off the point.’

‘We always do, thank God.’

What had Joan thought? A well-preserved enchantress. Full of heart. The dominant mother. Yes, classic situation. Dear God.

He had gone to Assisi; and the refreshment of Paolo’s humour and immodest humility had worked a cure. They had laughed a good deal, savagely analysing each other. It was Cambridge again. But if the Father had ever had any ‘intentions’ – (Which was enigmatic – he jested about Conversion) – he had them no longer. He had sensed that Mystery, Ceremony, Romance, Comfort, whatever it was that had attracted Ashley, did so no more.

Ashley had himself only come to a complete realization of this when he found that he was actually encouraging the Sixth Form to mockery.

An essay which he had lately published on the Forsterian knowledge of good-and-evil, and on the panic and emptiness of the Marabar Cave – an experience he had lately tasted himself on several occasions, as in the Weatherhill Quad – had led him to a study of Eastern religions. Good-and-evil in an emptiness without panic was, crudely, the starting-point.

That was what he had been doing in the Reading Room.

How disturbingly she touched on everything. The ‘mysterious hold’. Was that possible?

A ‘ghastly place’. Yes, women were surely bound to find it so. But there was a necessary lack of understanding.

In any case, his upbringing had equipped him for no other financial occupation.

No, there was no hold.

When he first came, he had feared there might just be.

But it was gone.

Carleton knocked and came in.

Immaculate, Ashley lay on the divan with his arm behind his head. One knee was up, and the other leg was crossed over it, so that Carleton had to look around the sole of Ashley’s shoe in order to see him. Above his head, there was a primitive crucifix; which Carleton found embarrassing.

‘Ah, dear boy. What can I do for you? Take my humble chair. What’s this you bring? Further news from Caesar?’

‘No, it’s um . . .’

‘Sit down. Sit down. This will evidently take a while.’

Carleton sat at the desk.

‘It’s a story. I wrote it.’

‘Oh God.’

Ashley always disappointed on his own, Carleton thought. In Class he could be crazy, funny, or sometimes exhilarating about a book which one would study later, trying in vain to recapture that same excitement. Alone, he was difficult.

‘It’s a long journey to that railway-station in the snow,’ said Ashley. ‘Ought you not to reconsider while there is yet time?’

‘I wasn’t trying to be Tolstoy.’

‘In that case you may as well tear it up.’

‘Tchekov said the little dogs must bark as well.’

Ashley almost smiled – and ran his fingers through his hair.

‘Where did you discover that, you wretched wench?’

‘I think it was in a letter.’

‘Do you feel that there is an insufficiency of stories, in God’s name?’

‘No. And that’s got nothing to do with it. Anyhow it doesn’t matter. . . .’

‘Sit down! Why bring it here?’

‘I wondered if you’d correct it . . . I mean, look at it . . . for me, and tell me what you think.’

‘You assume that such a production cannot be “corrected”.’

‘Well, hardly.’

‘Pourquoi pas?’

‘Well, it’s not an Exercise or anything. I made it up.’

‘I see.’

Ashley uncoiled, and stretched out, gazing on the ceiling.

Carleton wondered what he had said wrong.

‘Freedom,’ Ashley murmured. ‘Sounds as if you were preparing for the rude world. You’re leaving us, are you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sans bagages. You seem to have slipped through here very neatly. I admire your agility. Perhaps you
are
a writer.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s a substitute. Or a natural defence, if you wish. Can be very valuable when in need. But
I
’
m
no artist, my dear fellow, so I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong shop.’

‘That’s silly . . .’

‘How dare you, Sir!’

‘I mean, everyone knows you’re a writer. . . .’

‘Not creative, Sir. A mere parasite, I regret. I regret it more than I can ever tell
you
, my boy.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I read that article on Yeats. . . .’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘I didn’t understand it, to be honest.’

‘Ah. Let’s hope I’m more fortunate, if I surrender. Why not show
it to your mother?’

‘Are you crazy?’

Ashley had rolled up the letter he was holding, and placed it to his right eye, and was scrutinising the ceiling.

‘You fear it might come short of perfection?’

Carleton considered this surprising idea, and was shocked to think it was probably true.

‘We don’t see her,’ Ashley remarked.

‘No.’

‘Fortunately mine has no desire to visit. She considers my occupation beneath contempt. Ou-boom. Tell me, have you ever suffered from solitude?’

‘No. . . . No, I quite like it.’

‘Really! Tchekov again? But perhaps you make friends. That Johns fellow.’

‘No. No, he’s not.’

‘Dear me. Perhaps you’re immune because untouched.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘That’s the luxury of being young. One should treasure it. But
one can’t, of course. We’re determined to follow. We start to under
stand each other – and that’s that!’

Carleton was anxious to leave. He disliked being called ‘young’; disliked gloomy thoughts he could not understand; and had another commission to execute in Break. Why did Ashley want to talk to him?

‘I had two friends at Cambridge. I believe that’s what they were. They found me entertaining, heaven help me. We used to laugh.’

‘You sound as if you were a hundred years old or something.’

‘I am now. We didn’t understand each other at all. That was the good thing. That was our Youth.’

Ashley was silent.

‘Well, will I . . . ?’

‘Do you follow our incredible Chaplain?’

‘No.’

‘Nor do I. Is it conceivable he moves through depths we know not of?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Nor do I, thank God.’

‘I have to see Matron about something.’

‘Oh? Are you among the stricken?’

‘No! I’m not.’

‘It’s a little unchivalrous to be so definite about it.’

‘Well, I mean . . . Jimmy Rich is her age.
I
’
m
not!’

‘Ah. That’s better.’

Carleton was irritated by being repeatedly caught out.

‘Why do you have to make fun of everyone?’

Irritatingly personal, Ashley thought. He should have cut this conversation short at the beginning. The children were far more entertaining in the classroom. It was the surface, or the particular, in people that was precious. These children had developed none. But at least in Class they had some outward forms – whether inherited or copied. In private, their lack of persona was painful. He himself had developed an outward form for Class, to augment the pleasure there – or to make it bearable. How much it expressed his true self was now beyond discovery, as it was also beyond control.

‘Go on. Leave your masterpiece there. I’ll look at it when the mood strikes.’

Carleton stood up.

‘Will that be long?’