The Go-Between (15 page)

  “Then I’ll write it,” he said, “if you can
wait.”

  As he was moving away, a thought struck me. “But how
can you write to her when you don’t know her?” I asked.

  “Who said I didn’t know her?” he countered almost
truculently.

  “Well, you did. You said you didn’t know them at the
Hall. And she told me she didn’t know you, because I asked
her.”

  He thought for a moment, with the strained look in
his eyes that he had when he was swimming.

  “Did she say she didn’t know me?” he asked.

  “Well, she said she might have met you, but she
didn’t remember.”

  He drew a long breath.

  “She does know me, in a way,” he said. “I’m a kind
of friend of hers, but not the sort she goes about with. That’s
what she meant, I expect.” He paused. “We do some business
together.”

  “Is it a secret?” I asked eagerly.

  “It’s more than that,” he said.

  All at once I felt rather faint, as if the Psalms
had exceeded fifty verses. To my surprise (for grown-ups could be
very dense about this), he noticed it, and said: “You look all in.
Sit down and put your feet up. Here’s a stool. I haven’t any sofas,
I’m afraid.” He established me in the one easy chair. “I won’t be
long,” he said.

  But he was. He got out a bottle of Stephen’s
blue-black ink (I was rather shocked that it was not a proper
inkstand), and a sheet of blue-lined writing paper, and wrote
laboriously. His fingers seemed too large to hold the pen.

  “Should I just give her a message?” I said.

  He looked up with narrowed eyes.

  “You wouldn’t understand it,” he said.

  At last the letter was done. He put it in an
envelope, licked the flap, and laid his fist on it like a hammer. I
stretched out my hand, but he didn’t give it to me.

  “If you can’t get her alone,” he said, “don’t give
it to her.”

  “What shall I do with it?”

  “Put it in the place where you pull the chain.”

  One part of me wished he hadn’t said this, for I was
beginning to see my mission in romantic colours; but the other
appreciated the practical side of the precaution. I was a born
intriguer.

  “You can be sure I will,” I said.

  “Now,” I thought, “he will really let me have the
letter,” but still he kept it under his clenched fist, like a lion
guarding something with its paw.

  “Look here,” he said, “are you really on the
square?”

  “Of course I am,” I answered, hurt.

  “Because,” he said slowly, “if anyone else gets hold
of that letter, it will be a bad look-out for her and me and
perhaps for you, too.”

  He couldn’t have said anything more calculated to
put me on my mettle.

  “I shall defend it with my life,” I said.

  At that he smiled, lifted his hand, and pushed the
letter towards me.

  “But you haven’t addressed it!” I exclaimed.

  “No,” he said, and added with a rush of confidence
that excited me: “and I haven’t signed it either.”

  “Will she be glad to get it?” I asked.

  “I think so,” he said briefly.

  I wanted to have it all cut and dried.

  “And will there be an answer?”

  “That depends,” he said. “Don’t ask too many
questions. You don’t want to know too much.”

  With that I had to be content. Suddenly there was a
lull in my mind, like the
détente
after a retreating
thunderstorm, and I realized it must be late. Looking at my watch,
“Golly!” I exclaimed, “I must be off.”

  “How are you feeling?” he asked solicitously. “How’s
the knee, eh?”

  “A 1,” I said, bending it up and down. “The blood
hasn’t come through the handkerchief, “ I added, half
regretfully.

  “It will do, when you walk.” He gave me his hard,
searching stare. “You’re looking a bit peaked,” he said. “Sure you
wouldn’t like me to drive you some of the way? The trap’s there and
I can put the horse to in a jiffy.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “I’ll walk.” I should have
liked to drive, but suddenly felt the need of being alone. Being
too young to know how to take my leave, I lingered awkwardly;
besides, there was something I wanted to say.

  “Here, you’ve forgotten the letter,” he said. “Where
shall you put it?”

  “In my knickers pocket,” I said, suiting the action
to the word. “This suit has several pockets”—I indicated them— “but
a man who knew a policeman once told me that your trousers pocket
is safest.”

  He looked at me approvingly and I noticed for the
first time that he was sweating: his shirt was sticking in dark
patches to his chest.

  “You’re a good boy,” he said, shaking hands with me.
“Hop off, and be kind to yourself.”

  I laughed at this, it seemed so funny to be told to
be kind to yourself, and then I remembered what I wanted to say.
“May I come and slide down your straw-stack again?”

  “I’ll have it combed and brushed for you,” he said.
“And now you must scoot.”

  He went with me to the stackyard gate, and when I
turned round a little later he was still standing there. I waved
and he waved back.

  They were all at tea when I arrived. I felt I had
been away for months, so different was the atmosphere and so
estranging the experience I had been through. At the sight of my
knee they poured out sympathy and I told them how kind Ted Burgess
had been.

  “Ah, that’s the fellow at Black Farm,” said Mr.
Maudsley. “Good-looking chap, rides well, I’m told.”

  “He’s a man I want to see,” Lord Trimingham said. “I
expect he’ll be playing in the match on Saturday. I’ll have a word
with him then.”

  I wondered if Ted Burgess had been getting into
trouble; and I looked at Marian, expecting her to make some
comment, but she did not seem to have heard: her face had the
hooded, hawklike look it sometimes wore. I could hear the letter
crackling in my pocket and wondered if it showed. Suddenly she got
up and said:

  “I think I’d better dress that knee for you, Leo.
It’s looking a bit messy.”

  Glad to get away, I followed her. She went to the
bathroom; it was the only one, I think, in the whole house. I had
never seen it before; Marcus and I had a round bath in our
room.

  “Stay here,” she ordered, “and I’ll find you another
bandage.”

  It was a big room with, which seemed to me
unnecessary, a washstand in it: for why should people want to have
a bath and wash as well? The bath was encased in mahogany and had a
mahogany lid. It looked like a tomb. When she came back she lifted
the lid and made me sit on the edge of the bath while she took my
shoe and stocking off, as if she didn’t know that I was old enough
to do it for myself. “Now put your knee under the tap,” she
said.

  The water trickled down my leg deliciously cool.

  “My goodness,” she said, “you did come a cropper,”
but to my surprise she said nothing about Ted Burgess until almost
the end, after she had put on the new bandage. The old one was
lying on the edge of the bath, all creased and blood-stained, and
she looked at it and said: “Is that his handkerchief?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He said he wouldn’t want it back, so
shall I throw it away? I know where the rubbish-heap is”—it wasn’t
officiousness, I wanted to save her the trouble. And I welcomed the
chance to revisit the rubbish-heap, that grateful touch of squalor
in all the magnificence.

  “Oh, perhaps I’ll wash it out,” she said, “it seems
to be quite a good handkerchief.”

  Then I remembered the letter, which I had kept
forgetting, for while I was with her I only thought about her. “He
asked me to give you this,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket.
“I’m afraid it’s rather crumpled.”

  She almost snatched it out of my hand and then
looked round for somewhere to put it. “Oh, these dresses! Wait a
moment.” She disappeared, taking the letter with her, and the
handkerchief. A moment later she came back and said: “Now, what
about that bandage?”

  “But you’ve put it on,” I said, showing her my
knee.

  “Good gracious, so I have. Now I’ll put on your
stocking.”

  I protested; but no, she wanted to do it herself and
I cannot say I minded. “Was there an answer to the letter?” I
asked, disappointed that she had taken it all so lightly. But she
only shook her head.

  “You mustn’t tell anyone about this—letter,” she
said, looking away from me; “no one at all, not even Marcus.”

  I was rather bored by all these injunctions to
secrecy. Grown-ups didn’t seem to realize that for me, as for most
other schoolboys, it was easier to keep silent than to speak. I was
a natural oyster. I assured Marian again that her secret was quite
safe with me. I patiently explained that I couldn’t anyhow tell
Marcus, because he was in bed and I wasn’t allowed to see him.

  “Of course he is,” she said, “I seem to forget
everything. But you mustn’t breathe a word, I should be terribly
angry with you if you did.” Then, seeing me looking very hurt and
on the point of tears, she melted and said: “Oh no, I shouldn’t,
but you see it would get us all into the most frightful
trouble.”

  8

  ONE REMEMBERS things at different levels. I still
have an impression, distinct but hard to analyse, of the change
that came over the household with Lord Trimingham’s arrival.
Before, it had had an air of self-sufficiency and, in spite of Mrs.
Maudsley’s hand on the reins, a go-as-you-please gait: now everyone
seemed to be strung up, on tiptoe to face some test, as we were in
the last weeks at school, with the examinations coming on. What one
said and did seemed to matter more, as if something hung on it, as
if it was contributing to a coming event.

  That this had nothing to do with me I realized: the
quickly summoned smiles, the suppressed anxiety, were not for me;
in the conversation, which was never allowed to die away, I took
little part. Picnics or expeditions or visits were planned for
almost every day: Mrs. Maudsley would announce them after
breakfast; to the rest of us it sounded like a command, yet her eye
would flash an interrogation at Lord Trimingham as if he was a
signal that must be consulted before the train went on.

  “Suits me down to the ground,” he would say, or
“Just what I was hoping we should do.”

  I can remember sitting by some stream and watching
the hampers being unpacked, the rugs spread out, and the footman
bending down to change our plates. The grown-ups drank amber wine
out of tall tapering bottles; I was given fizzy lemonade from a
bottle with a glass marble for a stopper. I enjoyed the meal; it
was the conversation afterwards, while the things were being packed
away, that was the strain. I got as near to Marian as I dared, but
she did not look at me; she seemed to have eyes only for Lord
Trimingham, who sat beside her. I could not hear what they were
saying to each other, and I knew I shouldn’t have understood it if
I had. I should have understood the words, of course, but not what
made them say them.

  Presently Lord Trimingham looked up and said:
“Hullo, there’s Mercury!”

  “Why do you call him Mercury?” asked Marian.

  “Because he runs errands,” said Lord Trimingham.
“You know who Mercury was, don’t you?” he asked me.

  “Well, Mercury is the smallest of the planets,” I
said, glad to know the answer but suspecting an allusion to my
size.

  “You’re quite right, but before that he was the
messenger of the gods. He went to and fro between them.”

  The messenger of the gods! I thought of that, and
even when the attention of the gods had been withdrawn from me, it
seemed to enhance my status. I pictured myself threading my way
through the Zodiac, calling on one star after another: a delicious
waking dream, which soon became a real one, for in the midst of
chewing a long, succulent grass I dropped off to sleep. When I
awoke I did not at once open my eyes; I had a feeling they would
laugh at me for having slept and I wanted to put off the moment as
long as possible; and I heard Marian say to her mother: “I think he
must be bored to tears, Mama, trailing round with us; he’d be much
happier pottering about on his own.”

  “Oh, do you think so?” Mrs. Maudsley said. “He’s so
devoted to you, Marian, he’s your little lamb.”

  “He’s a darling,” Marian said, “but you know what
it’s like when you’re a child: a little of grown-up people’s
company goes a long way.”

  “Well, I can ask him,” Mrs. Maudsley said. “Just now
he makes us thirteen—I don’t know if that matters. It’s unfortunate
about Marcus.”

  “If Marcus has got measles,” said Marian carelessly,
“I suppose we shall have to put the ball off?”

  “I see no reason for that,” said Mrs. Maudsley with
decision. “We should disappoint so many people. And you wouldn’t
want to, Marian, would you?”

  I didn’t hear what Marian’s reply was, but I was
conscious of the clash of wills between them. After feigning sleep
a little longer, I cautiously opened my eyes. Marian and her mother
had moved away; most of the other guests were standing about, still
talking; the two carriages were drawn up in the shade; the horses
were tossing their heads and whisking their tails to keep the flies
off. Upright on their boxes the coachmen towered above me, their
cockaded silk hats almost touching the leafy branches and making
deeper tones of dark against the shade. The play of shadows pleased
me. As casually as I could I got up, hoping to escape notice; but
Lord Trimingham saw me.

  “Aha!” he said. “Mercury’s been off duty, taking a
nap.”

  I smiled back at him. I was aware of something
stable in his nature. He gave me a feeling of security, as if
nothing that I said or did would change his opinion of me. I never
found his pleasantries irksome, partly, no doubt, because he was a
Viscount, but partly, too, because I respected his self-discipline.
He had very little to laugh about, I thought, and yet he laughed.
His gaiety had a background of the hospital and the battlefield. I
felt he had some inner reserve of strength which no reverse,
however serious, would break down.