Lord Dismiss Us (46 page)

While they hesitated, she added, ‘And you might ask them to reduce the sound in the hall. Our Chaplain has taken to his bed. He is extremely unwell.’

They moved out, and Johns closed the door, saying: ‘I just can’t believe it, I can’t believe it! How does it feel to be unwholesome?’

‘I don’t know what she’s talking about,’ Carleton said. He was entirely bewildered. He didn’t feel like a Star any more. Had they seen through his performance with Nicky? It was baffling.

‘Less noise there, you people,’ said Steele, who had suffered his final, surprising, loss of esteem as Senior Prefect.

The group wandered away, but Naylor was still there, murmuring, ‘Since he’s apparently safely in bed, why don’t we have a final libation?’

Carleton hesitated. Nicky was still nowhere near the Common Room door. Was he coming behind the Chapel? He must be, he must be. But there was time; and, besides, the wine might help.

‘O.K.’

They went quickly up the stairs, with members of the queue watching inquisitively. The landing light was on. The wooden grapes gleamed on the front of the huge cupboard. Naylor had done everything by himself, after Chapel, as Carleton had to be on stage, and he had kept the key. He lifted out the bottle, which was three-quarters full.

‘After you,’ Carleton said.

They passed it back and forth. It was warm, red, sweet, and delicious.

‘We may as well have the lot,’ said Naylor, tilting the bottle and drinking deep. ‘Never again.’

He looked middle-aged and different. His hair was still powdered.

‘O.K. Steady on.’

‘The poor old sod,’ said Naylor, in a funny voice. ‘Do you think he’s really dying in there?’

Carleton giggled; which was shocking, but he couldn’t help it. This was delightful. His face, which was already slightly pained, felt warm and flushed.

‘So he said.
He
ought to know.’

They both giggled, and Naylor biffed him on the shoulder.

‘Imagine him falling into the Burning Fire,’ said Naylor. ‘I don’t think he meant to at all.’

‘ ’Course not,’ said Carleton. ‘It was super though. His mind must have gone, poor man.’

‘The mind has boggled,’ Naylor said, choking.

‘Ssh. . . . There’s only about two swigs more.’

‘You can finish it. I had some before. . . . Listen, there’s a crowd going up the wood. Pryde and some other sods. We’ve brandy and cigars. Are you coming?’

It wasn’t just his powdered head. Naylor had changed, almost alarmingly. He wasn’t at all the silent fellow who said, ‘tch, tch,’ and nothing much more.

‘I know . . . I can’t.’

The last swig in Carleton’s mouth was most peculiar. Little grains between his teeth.

‘Oh, ho,’ said Naylor, too loudly. ‘A final bid. O.K. But use your head, for God’s sake.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know what was wrong, don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘We both wanted to be boss. No good. You have it made. Christ, I’m tight. It was the brandy. Can you get this damn key in?’

Carleton locked the cupboard. He was taken aback, and thought he should be shocked. But he felt too well. They crept down the stairs, trying not to laugh. The hallway was deserted. They must have stayed above longer than he realised. My goodness, had Nicky already gone to the buttress and found no one there?

They tiptoed down to the back of the hall. The grandfather clock began to strike ten and gave them both a fright. In the Cloisters, Carleton said, ‘You go ahead.’ There were people scampering about in the dark. No one was bothering to play Cloister cricket: it was over; next term was football. ‘All right, all right,’ said Naylor, ‘I’m not nosey. Come and join us if it doesn’t work out. We’ll be up near the pool.’

‘O.K. Thanks.’

Naylor took the stone steps in several bounds, and nearly fell on his face, and then disappeared across the Chapel Square.

Carleton followed. It was very dark: a starless night.

Someone shouted, ‘a burning fah!’ and someone else was whistling the tune of ‘we must be wending now.’ A night of freedom, release. Nothing punishable now. The long grass brushed his trousers. In a faint light through the stained-glass he could just see the dark slope of the buttress. He was intensely excited, and also full of confidence from the wine. Approaching the buttress, he spoke the one word in the world for the first time in his life – ‘Nicky?’

No reply. Well, he hadn’t arrived yet; that was all.

I’ll wait.

Yes.

And when he does arrive I’ll waste no more time. I’ll show him what we’ve been missing. I’ll be what Naylor calls boss. I’ll embrace him up against the buttress. Our mouths kissing. I’ll bend over him. I’ll open his trousers, because when one really loves someone, one must know all of them, and the rest is just agonising and stupid flirtation, and I’m a fool to have let it go on so long, so that it’s darn nearly died on me . . . on the two of us.

Carleton was aching, and warm, and not entirely sober.

Something white in the buttress appeared like an hallucination. But it was real.

It was a note!

He held it up high, so that reddish-purple light fell dimly on it from the window – making it seem evil and hellish – ‘I saw you go up, so don’t think I expected to meet you here. I’m not meeting you in the dark. I’ll give you a few minutes to say good-bye in the morning, though you don’t deserve it. After breakfast, down by the farmyard.’

It was unsigned.

Carleton felt blank and empty for a moment, and then tears rushed out of his eyes. He indulged them. There was something wretchedly sweet about giving way to emotion now, of whatever kind. Until he heard himself sob out loud and was afraid of being discovered. He brushed his face with the back of his hand, controlled himself, and stepped away from the buttress. He didn’t know where to go. He couldn’t face the group up at the pond. The light was still on in the Chapel. It came between the narrow crack in the oaken doors. It had always been peaceful in there. The handle was a round black ring. He gently turned it and opened one of the two doors.

There was, at once, the echoing, unearthly sound of a single voice.

He couldn’t distinguish the words.

Curious, he stepped in, and closed the door behind him, and tiptoed across the ante-chapel to where he could look down the aisle.

Ashley was standing at the lecturn, reading at the top of his voice.

Carleton felt afraid. He didn’t know why. The empty Chapel. The lecturn light just revealing the great strained forehead under unruly blond hair. But most of all the angry, defiant, almost crazy tone of voice . . . and the crazy words. It was Ecclesiastes. He had read it before himself, but never like this.

‘And the grinders cease because they are few,

And those that look out of the windows be darkened,

And the doors shall be shut in the street;’

‘I have deserted him, as Nicky has deserted me. And there’s nothing I can do.’

‘When the sound of the grinding is low,

And one shall rise up at the voice of a bird,

And all the daughters of music shall be brought low;

Yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high,

And
terrors
. . .’

The Chapel reverberated. Ashley had – by chance? – raised his head.

They stared at each other down the length of the Chapel.

Carleton couldn’t speak. The silence went on and on.

‘. . . shall be in the way;

And the almond tree shall blossom,

And the grasshopper shall be a burden,

And desire . . . shall . . .
fail
.’

Ashley raised his head again. He said quietly, but in a horrible tone, ‘Go away. You painted, pampered, jade.’

Carleton hesitated. Ashley stared at him. He didn’t even run his fingers through his hair. He was calm, in a crazy way. He seemed to hate. It was terrible.

‘Leave!’

Carleton tried to murmur ‘sorry’, but couldn’t. He walked to the door.

‘Because man goeth to his long home,

And the mourners go about in the streets.’

He opened the door and went out. The voice seemed to stay with him. He could scarcely see his way across the Chapel Square. There were no lights. What time was it? He went through the Big Schoolroom, stumbling between two rows of chairs, along the corridor and into the washroom, to remove his make-up. Rowles was polishing his shoes. He turned with one foot up on the bench, and roared, ‘Where in tarnation have
you
been, Carleton?’

‘Um . . .’

‘And where are the others? There’s not one living Prefect in the whole House.’

‘I don’t know, Sir. I didn’t know it was so late, Sir.’

‘Late! I’ve had to put out all the blasted lights myself. Take that muck off your face!’

Rowles went on polishing. Carleton washed off the make-up.

‘Just because it’s the last night, you people think you can make merry hell. I may tell you I’ve given six on the arse on the last night before now. And I’ve given it to Prefects too!’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘You even polish your shoes,’ Carleton thought. Rowles hadn’t spoken to him like this for years. It was a sad way to end things, but he couldn’t see any escape. Where was Johns? Surely he hadn’t joined the others. He must be having some private celebration of his prison release.

‘The Head is beside himself. I warned Milner, but it was no use. You certainly overdid it with your inamorata. I’ve never seen such infernal and disgusting cheek!’

‘We were . . . supposed to be acting, Sir.’

‘Acting my arsehole,’ said Rowles, starting on the other foot. ‘And another thing . . . what’s Ashley getting up to? Rich has been
here with that female, pestering me about him.
I
don’t know where
he is.’

‘He’s . . . um . . . reading out loud in the Chapel. Ecclesiastes.’

The Doctor’s mouth dropped open. He hurled his materials into the box.

‘I’d rather work in an asylum,’ he said. ‘Get on up to bed.’

‘Yes, Sir. Good-night, Sir.’

There was no reply. Carleton went up in the dark. He bumped his knee against the end of Gower’s bed, and groped his way towards his own. McIver’s torch was out. His acting must have exhausted him. Nicky was away in a corner. Tomorrow morning – good-bye? A deep silence. They were tired out. They were young, after all. He was the old one.

As he lay there, for the last time in his life, strange recollections of Ashley ran through his head. What did they mean? Art before life. Art is solitude. They way back to isolation. Substitute. . . . Natural defence. . . . Owen with his cars, until life refused to be rejected. . . . Freedom comes when the relationship is ended. If you stop you will turn into me. This is what will happen to
you
. And the almond tree shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall be a burden. And the almond tree shall blossom. . . .

Unexpectedly, and with benefit of Communion wine, he was asleep.

Chapter Thirty-five

Ashley woke in a cold sweat. He had heard no bells, but it must be late: the room was warmed by brilliant sunshine. His hands and feet seemed totally dead, and he tried to move them. A strange tingling, and something swept over him. He managed to raise a hand to his face, and found it as wet as if he had been out in a rainstorm. Then the thought of the coming day produced its customary alarm, but terrifyingly intensified. ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ took hold of his mind and went on repeating itself. He was afraid to look at his watch, to see whether the day was, or was not, truly launched. He pulled the clothes round him: he was shivering in the hot room. He tried to sleep, but unconsciousness would not come; only these passing waves of faintness and fright.

At last he decided to pick up the watch. His fingers were almost uncontrollable. It was twenty past nine. The train left at ten five. There was only just time. He was not going to be left alone in this deathly place. He stood out of bed and was seized with an agonising cramp in his right leg, so that he had to sit down. Then he limped towards the curtains.

Yes, it was a dazzling morning. The sycamore tree . . . the wood beyond . . . it all seemed hostile and desolate. Panic and emptiness. Oo-boum. He wiped his face and chest with a towel, and washed, but decided not to shave, because his hands were fluttering preposterously. He had to use them both, to drink from the tooth-mug and relieve his dead dry mouth. He put the toothbrush and his pyjamas and slippers in the briefcase, and dressed with great difficulty. His face in the mirror was puffed and mottled and belonged to a stranger. When he raised his hand to comb his hair, it went dead again; so he abandoned the idea.

And now he was afraid to go out; to be seen. The troubled, contemptuous scrutiny of others. How would he buy his ticket with these hands? Would he even be able to complete the walk without fainting?

And was there anywhere to go to?

His mother’s scrutiny?

There seemed to be nothing except this place which had been so monstrously fateful to him. Nothing.

He decided he would not stay sane if he remained in this room, and suffered a fresh onrush of fear. He opened the door. On the outside he had, last night, pinned his favourite motto in order to avert a return visit by Rich and his lady. He left it there – it was true this time – and set off shakily along the corridor.

Safe, so far.

It was eerily deserted as he made his way between the borders and under the arch of the vine. An odd reflection came from somewhere – no one had replaced the ‘Pedant’s Palace’ sign. The sun was brilliant. It was an insult to the day to feel this weakness, this darkness. He held on tight to the thin green railing at the top of the steep concrete steps. Parents’ cars were pulling up on the drive, under the oak-trees. There was a group of boys piling the last load of trunks on to the open grey van which McCaffrey was about to drive to the station. Their faces were indistinct. The one face was not there. He seemed safe from attention, and descended, willing himself not to fall. The thing to do, he decided, was to walk very quickly. A woman, seated passively in the front of her car, waiting for her offspring, gazed at him curiously, turning her head. A cloud of dust came up from the back of McCaffrey’s van, as it bucketed away on the ill-laid concrete. The distance to the Gate Lodge suddenly seemed immense and impossible. He felt that there was nothing to do now but to lie down on the grassy verge and sleep. But he stumbled on. Somewhere behind was his love, and his perversion. No, the latter went with him – inescapably. Who else was there? J.L.M., the forerunner, the ideal, the prime cause, the forever, was gone – out in the world; denying, obliterating, smiling down from the pulpit at ladies in flowered frocks. And Rowles? Rowles was a schoolmaster. Paolo, in Assisi. Dear old friend, my sixth sense tells me. . . . There was something remote about him now, something artificial and protected; as if he only had a sixth sense. The Old Man was dead. What would he have said? There was nothing to say.