Lord Dismiss Us (24 page)

It sounded a bit like Rowles, but the context could hardly be less apt; and this made Carleton smile too.

‘Oh, I do love you.’

‘I love you terribly,’ Allen said, and he had gone quickly out of the door and closed it carefully behind him.

He waited a few minutes, and then stepped into the corridor.

The bell had stopped. There was no one to see him. But up in front of the Head’s House he came on Pryde and several other Prefects. They looked morose and angry. They stopped talking and watched him. Pryde said, ‘Where the blazes have
you
been? Roly has searched the School for you.’

‘Where is he?’

‘With the Crab.’

He left them wondering, and went up the steps through the open front door.

Rowles and Ashley were standing in the hall. They appeared to have been having a row. Ashley was scowling. He looked awful.

‘I was told you wanted me, Sir.’

‘Where the devil have you been, Carleton?’

‘Uh . . . how do you mean, Sir?’

‘You’ve been noticeably absent from our latest variety show.’

‘He’s in love,’ Ashley said.

‘I beg your pardon?!’

Ashley was looking at him with the most horrible expression. He wanted to run.

‘You’re going crackers, Ashley. I’ve work to do.’

The Doctor turned and walked away.

‘True, is it not?’ Ashley said.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Carleton murmured.

‘So we haven’t escaped after all. You don’t know what danger you’re in, child.’

‘I’m not a child.’

‘No. No, perhaps not. But that is the danger.’

Suddenly – and luckily – Rowles was back. He said: ‘By the way, Ashley, there’s been a letter lying in the Common Room for you most of the week. If you used it like the rest of us I’m sure your correspondents would be grateful.’

He was gone again.

Carleton escaped out the front door.

The Common Room faced the Study, across the hall. Oblivious of everything, old Mr Wall was asleep in a brown leather armchair. There was one letter on the central table. He recognised the writing with distaste and alarm. He opened it and read –

Dear Eric,

I thought not answering was pretty damn mean. A blast in the teeth would have been preferable.

Your mother says she hasn’t heard from you either. She is not a celebrated actress for nothing, but I still don’t think she’s as worried as I am.

I’m nerving myself on vodka for the next bit. But I’m determined to brave it.

It seems you passed your boyhood years at this same damn place! When she told me I laughed hoarsely. There appears to have been a greenhouse period of vegetation at Cambridge, involving overheated rooms, joss-sticks, sherry, the lot – and two characters called – ye gods – Walter and Clive. She seemed to place particular emphasis on the Clive one, but I may well have reached the state of hearing things. It is not for a mere girl to pass judgement on how the better-heeled males, if that is what they are, choose to educate themselves in this country, but I do feel you should have called a halt. I mean, I believe you may have done something worse than foolish in going back to school.

I would give a great deal to know why the birde flewe.

There is worse. Read on.

I have booked a room in a hotel called the Crown and Anchor in Marston for next Saturday night. I am inviting you to dinner at seven.

And having topped up my glass again and taken a long gulp, I’m telling you that in my opinion – and I believe you know what I mean – if you do not meet me there you will be
lost
.

love,

Joan.

Ashley tried to laugh hoarsely, but failed.

He tore up the letter instead.

Chapter Seventeen

This is going to be something better to do in Rest than reading ‘Talleyrand’, if I can keep to it.

I’m on the blanket and cold pillow, with my knees up and this empty hard-cover exercise-book propped against them. I’m going to write a memory of the most important event in my life. (I have a key to the drawer in the bottom of my wardrobe). McIver has given me a suspicious look and rolled his eyes, but he can’t see from there. I don’t need a photo now. No, that’s not true, I’d like one as well. I’d like to be able to look at him all the time, or any time I wanted. But I’m not going to ask.

I love writing. I don’t suppose that necessarily makes you a writer.

Home was an absolute blank. I wonder did I seem odd. I thought my mother was looking at me. I longed to be back. I could only think of him.

And not really being able to imagine him, see him . . . isn’t that funny? Only someone small, dark, laughing, warm and excitingly,
bewilderingly, mine. Perhaps that’s why I mean I’d like a photo too.

The Crab was surprising really. He was frightening at breakfast, telling us this would be the last exeat unless the culprits owned up. Beware of Rape. (Everything seems to happen in the Dining Hall these days). Three oafs confessed and were given six. Jimmy Rich and Nancy have gone. The Cod is taking games for the rest of this term, and some old crone is coming as Matron.

There was a moon. But no one could see us round the buttress. We stayed until the bell went for A. to go to bed. We could have stayed for ever. Bach was going on inside. The Beatle was playing the Prelude and Fugue in A Minor. It was all just magical and marvellous. I told him he had beautiful ears. It didn’t sound soppy then, but maybe it does a bit now. He says hardly anything. We both stood there for ages without speaking at all. Which is something I could never have imagined. It’s funny – there’s something special about being together in love
out
-
of
-
doors
, particularly at night. Maybe because it’s so real and natural – and Nature is too.

I nearly forgot. I’d taken two cigarettes out of my mother’s packet, when I was home, and we lit up. It sounds silly, but there was something extra special about being a Prefect and smoking with my darling. A kind of trust. It removed the only possible division between us.

After he’d gone I slipped round the Chapel – straight into The Beatle. He didn’t wonder where I’d been. He said he’d decided to resurrect one of his early musicals – ‘Peter Piper’, before my time – for the end of term, and as usual he wanted me for the male lead. I said that was marvellous as it was my last term. I certainly meant it.

He’s amazing. How did he know we’d
have
to write notes? Meeting isn’t so easy, and we couldn’t endure a day without getting at least one. He’s amazing. He runs by, with his friends, and he doesn’t even seem to notice me, but he puts his hand in his coat pocket. It’s tricky, his locker is nowhere near mine. Gower has turned the corner twice, and the second time I think he saw me closing the wrong locker. To be suspected by Gower! Roly never mentions him now. I don’t know what’s happening. Anyhow, his little notes seem alive in my hand. My heart races. ‘Don’t worry, I love you, I love you, I love you. N.A.’ ‘Yes, I’m longing for tomorrow too. Be patient. I’ll be in your arms. N.A.’

Nicholas, his name is. The funny thing is, I can’t say it. He doesn’t call me anything either. We say ‘you’. A couple of times I heard his friends, or whatever they are, say ‘Nicky’. (He’s frightfully popular). I was furiously jealous. I think of him now as Nicky. I long to call him Nicky. But I can’t say it.

It’s somehow crazy to think he’s away down in a corner of this very same room each time I am writing this.

Thank goodness Nicky has a bike! There’s a heat wave going on. It’s glorious. He looks absolutely brown in his white shirt. He’s going to be terrifically handsome when we’re older, which is exciting. Not that I’m going to be able to love him any more than I do now. It was the half-holiday and we met on bikes up near Little Hammerton. It has a funny old pub and I nearly went crazy and suggested we go in. We left and returned separately, of course. It looked odd, so I pedalled like mad. Blast it, but on the way back up the drive I had to pass Roly and The Pedant. I rang my bell. They turned and stared, but I was going like the wind. I have a three-speed gear.

It’s hard to write this, but as I sat looking down at him as he lay on the grass I heard myself say something very strange, without thinking. No, not really – in fact I’d always thought it, and always thought I should say it. I remembered Naylor. But I want to be absolutely honest – I think there was a little bit of a question in it as well.

I said: ‘We must never do anything.’

My goodness, it seemed ages before he answered!

‘It’s up to you,’ he said.

It didn’t seem to be exactly a complete agreement. I couldn’t think what to say.

‘Anyhow,’ he said. ‘I don’t want ever again to have to turn away whenever I see somebody. Never again.’

I nearly collapsed. I didn’t dare question him.

But it did seem this time to mean that he agreed.

I got over it quickly. But for a moment I thought – and it wasn’t the first occasion I’d thought it – and I was furious –

‘What the dickens goes on at Eton?!’

I’ve asked him about Mr Brownlow. He thinks he was horrible. But he
did
sit on his knee.

Ma Crab was on several times about ‘Allen’, and that wretched window, at lunch, even though it’s been put in ages ago. She also remarked – twice – on how I wasn’t eating anything. (I can’t these days, my stomach’s all fluttery, my heart too. I feel kind of nervous all the time.
And
I’m glad). Can she know? How? Lucretia still wanders around, but I thought she’d given it up.

I think there’s no doubt a few others know. I can’t imagine how.

This morning Beauchamp and Sinnott went past, and Beauchamp said: ‘I never thought our Carleton had it in him, did you?’

A nice compliment!

But to be honest I’d be a bit fed up if nobody knew. If only it were possible I’d like every single one of them to know. When you score a hundred they cheer. To have fallen in love seems a far greater achievement. And to have won him – this, surely, Desired of All, as they say – is another.

But wait, it’s more than that. I want my New Self known. I want to re-introduce myself, because now I’m a completely different person. I like them all suddenly. I even like Sinnott. I even like Beauchamp. It’s the way I felt at the match, only more so. I like everyone. I’m not Carleton any more.

As a matter of fact I’ve always hated my own surname. I wonder does anyone else have the same feeling. We’re all stuck with surnames here.

I’m still worried about Eton. We were lying in a place we’ve found behind the San yesterday, and I had put my hand inside his open shirt collar and there were little black hairs running right down his back. I liked them. But he said, bashfully and at once: ‘I’ve horrible hairs going down my back.’

How did he know?

Who told him?

Speaking of the San, Henderson and Finch Minor are both in there, without their bearskin, but with gastric flu. And there’s no one else there! Everyone is talking about it. But the Old Crone is not likely to understand. It’s a bit sad – no one helps her in Dispensary.

Nicky is quite a gossip himself. He can be very funny. He seems to be far more in the thick of things than I am. Perhaps it’s being a Prefect. Perhaps it’s just me. He’s in a much bigger Form, of course. All kinds of things seem to get said and done in the middle part of the School that we’ve lost. All kinds of people seem to confide in him. Too many. It makes me nervous. I’ve no one but him. In the world.

I suppose the best piece of news I’m ever likely to hear in my whole life!

Nicky is coming to Oxford too.

He’s aiming for some kind of grant or other.

This settles everything. I’m going to have the luckiest life anyone ever had.

Chapter Eighteen

Outside the Music Building, a visiting cricket team in red blazers was climbing up into a coach, and preparing to depart. The home side stood about, in blue, vaguely and embarrassedly saying good-bye. The Cod and a visiting Master were doing it with more address, and more talk. Curious that hallos, good-byes, thank-yous and handshakes were ‘adult’. Did the young dislike them for their falsity, or was it that egoism as yet unassailed ruled out such tributes to strangers? Or just shyness? (Always a dull solution).

Carleton, in the blue group, looked over his shoulder, and at once looked away.

Why had he been so cruel?

My God, surely not envy?

No, it was a recognition of folly, and a knowledge that for
Carleton’s sake it should be stopped. Extremely ill-expressed. True. He must try and make amends.

The other creature was there too, fooling about on the outskirts. A dark little self-satisfied piece of apparently angelic no-good. Dangerous.

He was conscious of subjecting the hand-made shoes to the ill-laid concrete, which had ripples in it all the way. It was another perfect, and interminable, summer evening. Still and hazy: the aftermath of heat. His forehead and nose felt sore. The oaks at either side of the drive threw no shadows. It was dry and dusty: the Farmers had dumped hay in the almost brown field for the cattle. A church bell was ringing far away. Soon their own tinnier bell would be ringing for Tea. They would drink it in absurd quantity and gobble mountains of bread in the dark, noisy refuge of the Dining Hall, while outside this long summer ache went on.

I am becoming a self-pitying bore. And why the devil am I walking into this challenge after all? Because at least it is a challenge, and rage and rejection seem tempting negatives as things are now.

‘Taking the air, Sir?’

Old Gregory, in a filthy shirt, was doing something to his three rose bushes in front of the Gate Lodge.

‘Good evening. Yes, indeed.’

A fatuous question. There wasn’t any air.

A black Rover swooshed past . . . (though in fact Ashley didn’t know the makes of cars) . . . bearing homewards a tired, sunburnt family. The road was warm and sticky and the tyres made a peculiar sound.

The monastery infected even him, to the extent that always on stepping forth he felt for a time a deep antipathy to this other existence. Freed from thought. Running on petrol. Nowhere. No more Latin, no more French. . . . The enemy. Escaped. Smug about it. Crass, vulgar and inane.

Especially in Buckinghamshire.

Ashley walked along the very dusty path, detesting Bucks.

A particular hell in summer.

The Thames Valley. The River – polluted by Humanity.

And
they
were set, absurdly, on a hill in the middle of it. In a county of Assistant Film Producers. At Sunday lunchtime in the Crown and Anchor, towards which he was now heading, there was the babel of prosperous cretins, amid horse brasses and mock parchment lamps. And in the Public Bar, building labourers – experts in Mock Tudor – looking by comparison like dockers from Port Said.

While on a hill – down the road – in a stale stench of ink and exercise-books, one stood behind a filthy desk; at the same wage as the clapper-boy in their Studios. And spoke of Racine.

Which was the more real?

It was a short walk and he found he could still plump for Caesar, algebra, and Magna Carta.

Perhaps they did rise, just a little, above the avarice and envy down here; after all.

There was no one in the wide street that was Marston: only the passers-through in cars. Old, redbrick, pretty houses faced each other across this main road. They had not built a bye-pass yet. When they did there would be no sense of loss. The place seemed to have cut itself off already: the houses seemed uninhabited. True, there was a new little shop selling pottery and brassware, but Ashley had never seen anyone in it. Marston was a long way from the river. There was no water to pollute.

But there were large and shiny cars outside the Crown and Anchor, and there were more parked in the lovely old courtyard at the back. It was approached under an archway, which had signs to left and right – Saloon Bar and Public Bar. Ashley went into the Saloon. It was confusingly dark; having mullioned windows on the street, and with walls of almost black panelling. The portentous publican, with the R.A.F. tie, or else his wife, in the black frock and pearls, had found it necessary to switch on the small parchment lamp on the counter. Quite a group of friends, neighbours, fellow customers, or whatever they considered themselves, had assembled. Their talk was loud but not all-absorbing: not one of them, male or female, missed Ashley’s entrance.

She was sitting at a small table in the corner, in a light brown tweed dress; simple and presumably expensive. A glass of campari, like blood, was on the table, and the butts of several tipped cigarettes in an ashtray. His first reaction contradicted all he had formulated on the walk down. Here was company. Here was company at last, after the solitude of the monastery. The prepared hostility had gone. He looked down at her rather as he did at the boys; teasing, with a kind of affection. He understood how much nerve this had taken. He also knew why it was company: every word spoken on the hill had its connotation in respect of School. But their words would be free. The word alone is certain good. (She thought Yeats ‘a phoney’ – and another bad influence). No, on second thoughts it was also company for the reason that they had found they could talk together.

‘You know this is mad. And pointless,’ he said.

‘Well!’ she said, with some humour, and patting her brown hair, which was cut rather short and newly done. ‘Let’s not come to any hasty decisions. What are you drinking? I’m sure you don’t these days, but let’s say it’s Christmas or something.’

That tone won’t serve your cause, he thought. Yet at the same time straight talk had always brought them closest.

‘A gin and tonic,’ he said, to a youth in a dirty white coat. ‘Large.’

She lit a cigarette with a lighter. Her hand was shaking slightly. He wanted to help, a little.

‘What’s all the drama about?’

‘I just thought. . . .’ She was tapping the cigarette on the ashtray. ‘Things should be made a little clearer.’

There is nothing to clear, he thought. How do I say that?

She looks like a young business-woman. She partly is. But mostly it is courage. She can be hurt, but there is a spirit of recovery that says a day later – ‘Christ, that hurt’, and so off to work. She would not be destroyed. But, of course . . . she was here to save him.

He should not have come.

‘Is there anything to clear?’

‘What do
you
say?’

She looked at him directly. She had greenish eyes, rather close together, and a slightly tilted nose. He was antagonised. What did the Bar think of this girl? Pretty? Not exactly. Good figure. Very good legs. Interesting? Yes. Nice to look at, dressed like this. Would they guess she had until recently let go in the latest dances with a boyfriend called John who was now being evaded as a bore? No. The woman-of-the-world exterior was well done; even antagonising.

‘I’ve been clear enough, heaven knows,’ he said.

‘Will you tell me something?’

He was almost afraid. Why? Because they were not of the same world. She was alien, pushing in. For God’s sake, let her go back to John. He had been flattered, yes – for a day or so.

‘Probably not. What is it?’

‘Why have we spent hours together, and I thought we were at one, and I thought you said things to me you’d say to no one else, and I don’t believe I’m a complete bloody fool?’

‘Slightly similar minds, and neuroses, and humour. Both seekers maybe. Also, too much drink.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Oh come on, Joan. It’s not worth being intense. We’re not important. Are we having dinner? What’s it like here?’

‘Ghastly.’

Ashley looked at the half-dozen large men in check coats, at the bar, and their painted ladies on stools. It was the world outside; and yet even they must at one time have been to schools. Life was incredibly long, if one was prepared to pursue it.

‘I think we are
all
important. And I’m afraid I don’t believe you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s possible I’m extremely stupid, and I’m making a mistake which will be with me for ever, but I feel there’s more between us.’

‘If there was I would know.’

He thought this might be the end of the evening, but she said – ‘Not necessarily,’ and ‘I’ll have another of these,’ drinking down the campari.

‘How’s School? You look tired, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘Well, it’s supposed to be ruining me, isn’t it?’

‘I think so.’

Another drink was ordered; and for himself also. He considered it unwise, but he could see no other way of enduring the evening. She lit another cigarette, with a calm hand. He had once smoked a pipe, at Cambridge; but nothing now. It gave him no sense of advantage. It gave her a sophisticated air of meaning business.

Yet she is vulnerable, and she is in a very awkward spot, and she believes me vital to her existence – yes, that has become plain enough – and she doesn’t know that she will survive without a scar. Or rather, with a scar that she treasures.

‘Why don’t you go into publishing?’

He very nearly laughed.

‘You smile?’

‘It was unexpected.’

The drinks seemed astonishingly expensive. But his life was sheltered.

‘Listen,
Eric
.
. . .’

They had always been very bad indeed at christian-names. She could only use his with an emphasis . . . a pleading note, a sentimentality. It was unpleasant.

‘. . . You must get another job.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this will destroy you.’

Across her shoulder a figure had appeared in profile at the end of the bar, wearing a leather-patched coat. Ashley was astounded.  It was Milner. He was talking with the blonde assistant behind the counter.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I don’t really like it here. . . .’

‘Oh for God’s sake who does. . . . Your mother agrees. . . .’

‘Oh no.’

‘Eric, if you don’t listen to people who . . . care, who are you going to . . . ?’

‘I don’t require anyone’s advice.’

She is addicted to mistakes. She is a mistake-maker. There was some undergraduate called Tom who seemed so nice, and turned out a cad and left her with an abortion. It made her no older or wiser. She is twenty-seven and a bit afraid of it and the future; and still an emotional child, an innocent. She waits to be surprised. She refuses to know, or grow, because then there would be no surprise, or mistake, no sudden blow in the face to carry back to the flat and grieve over.

But she thinks she is waiting for me, oh God. And may well spend a life on it.

‘Let’s talk about Spinoza or something,’ she said.

Loss of temper will end this. She knows that. She is now controlling herself, and, except when the shouting starts, she is admirably good at it. The curious part is that she does talk about Spinoza, like a college girl. She was at some strange college where there was a handsome man with silver hair who was a father to her. She uses his christian-name with ease and freedom. She did a thesis on Spinoza. And another one on Eliot.

She also makes fun of herself on both counts – ‘As I remarked about Eliot. . . .’

Intellectually uncertain, she admires and is a little afraid of me. In that sphere.

I am being absolutely detached and therefore a swine. And will always be with this other person. Can she not see that?

‘I’d prefer it,’ he said. ‘I hate . . . pairs of people who talk intensely and desperately in corners of bars.’

Had Milner seen? He was cunning. His hand was now out and the barmaid was telling him his fortune. Well, he too had seen – and it was almost incredible.

‘Come upstairs a minute,’ she said abruptly. ‘I have a letter I want to give you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s all right, it’s all right. I won’t assault you. My God, never again thank you very much! This is important. Then we can have dinner. I share your views on bars.’

‘What is it? What letter?’

‘I’ll show you.’

She stood up and, taking her glass, led the way across the Bar, passing perilously close to Milner. A brute with a gingery moustache scrutinised her – and particularly her legs. Milner did not turn his head, but he must obviously have seen them. She passed through the miniature foyer – a chintz sofa and sporting magazines and a huge fireplace bedecked with horse-brasses – and so up the stairs.

Talking about letters, he was thinking, do you remember that you wrote me this insulting, superficial drivel about joss-sticks? This college girl’s Freud? Am I not being over-kind in pretending that it did not happen?

They went up on a hideous, crimson, floral carpet. There were pink gladioli on the landing in a highly polished brass pot. Nothing seemed real, Ashley thought, including this encounter.

When they were in her room, she closed the door. She also dexterously locked it and kept the key, without him seeing. This move was assisted by a pink dressing-gown hanging on the back of the door; very feminine, very unlike her; or rather, like a part of her that he did not care to know about. A smell of perfume. A pair of stockings hanging on the back of the chair. A woman’s bedroom. It was all rather shocking. There were other feminine adornments on the dressing-table, and a letter which she handed him. It was from her employer, the managing director of a publishing house.

Dear Mr Ashley,

I learn from Miss Taylor that she will be seeing you at the weekend, and also that you are contemplating other employment more suited to your talents. I happen to know about these: not merely your reputation at Cambridge, but also your critical writing in ‘New Arts Review’. It so happens that we are looking out for someone at this moment who would join our editorial side, with the prospect of becoming Editorial Director when the present holder of that position retires; as he shortly intends to do. If you are ever in London, it would be very agreeable to meet you, and talk further about this.