The Charioteer (33 page)

“Hello, Ralph. I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“Just a minute,” Ralph said. Laurie heard the telephone laid down, and a sound like a door shutting. “Sorry, all right now. Well, Spud, how are you?”

“Fine.” Yes, he thought, it was going to be that kind of conversation. “How about you?”

“Fine. Look, Spud, will it be all right if I pick you up this afternoon after the treatment, and run you back? I’d like to have a word with you, and that way it won’t hold you up. One can’t say much on this line.”

“Of course. Thanks very much.” Bunny must have kept his story for a day or two, cooking. Now, it seemed, Ralph had decided to have it out. It would have to be got through. … “Odell. Lanyon wants you in his study after prayers.”

He said, “I’ll wait on the same bench as I did before.”

“Good.” There was a short pause. “There’ll be no one else coming.”

“All right.” It must certainly be trouble. “Five-fifteen, then. Goodbye.”

“Spud, just a minute.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t worry about anything.” The line went dead.

Before he left for Bridstow, he wrote a letter. It was for Madge, and was ostensibly an apology for the trouble he had given her. He wrote it with the incident of the Wurlitzer request program held steadfastly before his eyes. Afterwards he read it over to himself, with a kind of fascinated nausea. The thought that Madge might not destroy it, that it might continue to exist, even, by way of ultimate horror, that she might show it to the Major, who would accept it as a fair sample of his style—all this crept in his stomach and in the hair on his neck. The secret of its peculiar gruesomeness was that it wasn’t pure invention. Under the shaming sentimentality, the awful all-jolly-good-sorts-together, it was quite sincere.

He stuck it down quickly before he had time to dilute it, and gave it to the Sister when he went to catch his bus. She glared at him; but she had made herself his accomplice. She hadn’t told Reg anything.

Miss Haliburton’s puppy was noticeably bigger. The department was rather less busy than last week and she spent more time with him, asking questions about the leg. Something he said, which hadn’t seemed to him of the slightest significance, seemed to excite her. She whipped him out of the apparatus, put the boot on his bare foot and leg, and made him walk around the cubicle. To his extreme embarrassment she got down and, as he moved, followed on hands and knees; it was like being investigated by an Old English sheepdog. The bare leg with the boot on it already seemed to him pure Salvador Dali; he felt that, even for hospital, the macabre was being overstressed. He could hear her tut-tutting under her breath. The puppy waddled beside her, breathing eagerly.

“Who made this?” she barked suddenly. He presumed that it wasn’t the leg to which she was referring, and replied that it had been made by a small man with cross eyes and thick glasses, whose name he didn’t know.

Miss Haliburton called a senior student to her, and made a speech. “… everything so slapdash. No conscience about their work. Look at it, Miss Cardew. Look at this rotation here. Put your hand on the peroneus. (Just walk a few steps again, Odell.) There, feel that. And when the boy gets pain, first they give him aspirin three times a day and then they order faradism. Really, sometimes one despairs. How
does
a government like that expect to win a war?” Almost before he knew what was happening, she had him out of the boot again, drew lines on it with chalk, and, to his alarm, handed it over to a deliberate old character with a walrus mustache, who poked it with a blunt pencil, explained why he wouldn’t be able to make a right job of it, and took it away.

“You’ll have to have a new one, of course,” she said as he was watching it vanish. “But this will help meanwhile.”

At first he could think of nothing but the delay. It was nearly five-fifteen already; he felt he could bear anything except that Ralph should think he had run out on him, with things as they were; and he knew hospital too well to suppose there was any possibility of sending a message. It was only gradually that he began to understand what she was still trying to tell him. Hope trickled slowly, through a half-choked channel, into his mind. Pain had become as inevitable to him in these last weeks as any of the body’s natural demands, differing from them in being insatiable. Even now he wouldn’t trust himself to anticipation, but he remembered to thank her.

“Don’t thank me, my dear boy; I’m saving myself trouble in the long run. Now this bit of intensive treatment we’re starting will really do something for you. Ah, here’s Arthur. Now we’ll see.”

It was after five-thirty. He was almost too worried to notice what Arthur had done to the boot, which was largely a matter of altering the tilt of the thickened sole. It felt odd for the first moment, then very quickly seemed natural. He thanked everyone again and escaped.

When he couldn’t see Ralph anywhere in the hall, a wave of such misery struck him that he stood stock-still where he was, saying to himself stubbornly that it wasn’t true. He looked around again, refusing the facts, and, as if created by his act of will, Ralph was there after all. He was sitting on one of the benches, his back turned, listening attentively to what looked like a long story from a very old man. When Laurie had approached within a couple of yards he saw him, smiled, and motioned him to wait. Laurie heard him say at the end, “Well, sir, I can see I’ve missed a lot not shipping with you. I’ve enjoyed this very much.”

He fell into step beside Laurie, telling him, as if they hadn’t been separated for more than an hour, the old man’s story: the start in sail, the wool-clipper, the Chinese pirates, the torpedoing in 1917. Out of the tail of his eye Laurie saw the ancient captain, a stocky figure in a shiny old blue suit, look after Ralph with an old man’s sour approval, before settling down again to his long wait.

“Thanks for waiting. I was afraid you’d write me off.”

“Good Lord, I know hospital. I shouldn’t have started worrying for another hour. Did they tell you anything?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, this time they did.” He explained about the boot; he was getting used to the feel of it now, and it did begin to seem more comfortable than before. Ralph listened carefully and at the end said, “Nothing else?”

“Well, not yet.” This reserve reminded Laurie of the caution he had urged upon himself. “They wouldn’t say much more till they’ve seen how it works.”

“Good luck to it, anyhow.” They had got to the car. When they were in, he hesitated a moment. “I suppose you’ve not got time for a quick turn round the Downs?”

“Oh, I think so.”

Ralph drove in silence through the pink stone streets, took a half-turn around the Downs, and pulled off the road at the spot where cars stop to admire the gorge. Twilight was falling and no other cars were there. The steep side of the gorge with its sheer faces was out of sight below them: opposite were wooded slopes, with a scoop of quarry. The ebb-tide river flowed sluggishly at the bottom, a muddy thread between two long slopes of slime.

“It’s all right, Spud. I told you, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“I wasn’t worrying.”

“I brought you up here to tell you a bit of news, just in case it makes any difference to anything. Bunny’s gone.”

What had he done? With what clumsiness had he floundered in other people’s complex and dimly comprehended business? Playing for time, he asked, “Has he been posted?”

“Oh, no,” said Ralph coolly. “As a matter of fact he hasn’t even left his room. I can hardly expect him to, seeing what he’s spent on the fittings. I shall find another myself, as soon as I can. Still, he’s gone, in a manner of speaking.”

“Ralph, I—I’m most terribly sorry.”

“Sorry? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You mean it’s my fault. There doesn’t seem very much to say. Except that I’d give anything for it not to have happened.”

“Oh, come, Spud, don’t make yourself out a bigger fool than you are. Bunny was a long hangover after a short drunk. Far too long.”

The relief of this was at first enormous. Then he wondered what, exactly, had happened, and whether it hadn’t made Ralph a good deal more unhappy than he cared to admit. “I’m glad if that’s how it is.”

“By the way,” Ralph said in an almost impersonal voice, “I owe you an apology for last time.”

“If you mean about driving me back, you don’t. I can tell you now.” With more satisfaction than he liked to admit to himself, he explained about the water-jug.

“Good God, what a corny one to have fallen for.” He laughed, but Laurie already felt ashamed. He lit cigarettes in silence and for a minute or so neither spoke.

“I have a feeling,” Ralph said presently, “that a few other apologies may also be due. He did actually deliver you at the hospital, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I know I wasn’t very discreet that evening; did he make a scene about it?”

“No.”

“Something happened. All right, never mind; I expect it was embarrassing enough without being cross-examined on it.” Laurie let this go, hoping he would drop it. He did in fact fall silent for a couple of minutes. Just as Laurie had opened his mouth to change the subject, he said abruptly, “Look, Spud, this is shooting blind, but he didn’t try anything else on, by any chance, did he?”

Laurie had been thinking, the moment before, that after all some partings are only final for the first forty-eight hours; provided, that is, that no one interferes. Now neither truth nor lying seemed quite justified. In his irresolution he waited too long.

“Well,” said Ralph. “I see.” He spoke with a curious, precise flatness; he sounded almost bored. Yes, Laurie thought: all that about a short drunk is what he’d like to feel now. God, there’s no need to rub his face in it.

“It wasn’t serious, you know. I think it was just a sort of experiment to see how one would behave.”

After a pause Ralph said, in the same colorless and exactly pitched voice, “I suppose it’s all for the best that I didn’t know this sooner.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth, examined it, and put it back again. Speaking now conversationally, he remarked, “We began with a minor disagreement, and one thing led to another.”

“Yes?” Laurie said. He was feeling that he had managed badly. Knowing Bunny, one could have been sure that the showdown hadn’t been as complete as Ralph imagined, and that all sorts of things could still come out.

“Well, Spud, there it is. You saw enough for yourself: there’s no point in prettying it over. About all I can say is that I never told myself many lies about it; and whether that’s a recommendation or not depends on the point of view. Main thing is, it’s finished. Do you feel like believing that?”

“If you say so, of course.” And now, he thought, perhaps it really is my fault. No one who knew so little had the right to do this.

Ralph turned and adjusted the windscreen wiper, which was out of true and took him some minutes. Still fidgeting with it, he said, “Well, now, about this appointment of yours. I don’t know how urgent it is. I thought possibly you might just be feeling you’d seen enough of my domestic
ménage.
If I’m wrong, or if you still feel the same way about it, let it go and we’ll be on our way.”

“Oh,” said Laurie. He had completely forgotten. Ralph’s eye caught his and all at once they were smiling. “Well, I’ve not got a late pass, but it’s no more urgent than that … I did rather feel he and I might get in each other’s hair if we met again.”

“He’s on duty this evening, so you won’t do that. How long have we?”

“If you can lift me back, about an hour and a half.”

“Come on, then, let’s go.”

The strict room was wearing a half-smile of hospitality; there was a cloth on the table, and a plate of sandwiches bought ready cut and sealed in wax paper. There was something very comforting to Laurie in the matter-of-fact way Ralph made no bones about having expected him. There was a feeling of being looked after, a feeling almost of home. Ralph mixed a couple of drinks, lifted his glass, and seemed to hesitate. In the end he just said, “Happy days.”

“Happy days,” said Laurie smiling. If only he had got a late pass he could have kept Ralph company for the rest of the evening. At a time like this one would remember little things that had been harmless and happy and which one had expected always to remember with pleasure, and they would seem to look at one with a sneer. Laurie would have worked hard to make himself good company, if that had been necessary, but in fact they had plenty to talk about and the meal was quite gay. When they were washing up and making coffee in the little hole of a kitchen, Ralph said, looking up from his plate and tea-towel, “This is better, isn’t it, Spud?”

“Yes,” said Laurie, “of course it is.” If only he hadn’t outstayed his pass so recently. He hated the thought of leaving Ralph alone.

The popping blue gas fire had warmed to a spreading glow. Beyond the hooded reading lamp’s small orbit it touched the room with dusky gold and rose. Laurie sat as he was bidden in the armchair; he had learned to accept such things simply, like the old. Ralph, curled easily on the old hooked-wool rug, would have looked incongruous there to no one, probably, except to Laurie, who found ancient habits of precedence still haunting his mind. The senior studies at school had had gas fires. He looked down at Ralph; except for being seen from the wrong angle, he, too, in this mellowing dimness seemed very little changed. He had nice hair, Laurie thought; it still had that freshly washed look, and the neat cut was the same. Fine, light, and straight, it had a kind of innocence; it would be pleasant to touch. Then he remembered how this thought had come to him seven years ago, at the moment when Ralph was saying goodbye to him.

He said, “Do you still like your toast done thin and crisp? I feel I ought to be making it.”

Ralph looked up, his face turning from the light. In the deep shadow it could only be seen that he was smiling; his face was a dark brightness edged with fire.

“What do you know about it? You never fagged for me. I say, Spud.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got a bit of good news I’ve been saving up for you. When you hear it officially, don’t forget to look surprised.”