The Go-Between (17 page)

  “What for instance?”

  I was flattered by her interest; but pinned down, I
could only think of one thing.

  “I might go for a walk.” Even to me this sounded a
pedestrian thing to do.

  “Where shall you walk to?”

  I had an inkling that she was guiding the
conversation, and half clairvoyantly I followed her lead.

  “Well, I might slide down a straw-stack.”

  “Whose?”

  “Well, perhaps Farmer Burgess’s.”

  “Oh, his?” she said, and sounded so surprised. “Leo,
if you go that way, will you do something for me?”

  “Of course. What is it?” But I knew before she
spoke.

  “Give him a letter.”

  “I was hoping that you’d say that!” I exclaimed.

  She looked at me, seemed to debate with herself,
then said:

  “Why? Because you like him?”

  “Ye—es. Not so much as Hugh, of course.”

  “Why do you like Hugh better? Because he’s a
Viscount?”

  “Well, that’s one reason,” I admitted, without any
false shame. Respect for degree was in my blood and I didn’t think
of it as snobbery. “And he’s so gentle, too. I mean, he doesn’t
order me about. I thought a lord would be so proud.”

  She considered this.

  “And Mr. Burgess,” I went on, “he’s only a farmer.”
I remembered his reception of me before he knew where I came from.
“He’s rather rough.”

  “Is he?” she said, but not as if she regarded it as
a fault. “I don’t know him very well, you see. We sometimes write
each other notes—on business matters. And you say you like taking
them.”

  “Oh yes, I do,” I said enthusiastically.

  “Because you like T—Mr. Burgess?”

  I knew she wanted me to say I did, and I was ready
to accommodate her, the more so that an overwhelming desire to
testify came over me, and I saw my chance to voice it.

  “Yes. But there’s another reason.”

  “What is it?”

  I had no idea that when I came to them the words
would be so difficult to say; but at last I brought them out:

  “Because I like you.”

  She gave me an enchanting smile, and said: “That’s
very sweet of you.”

  She stood still. We had reached a parting of the
ways. One path, an ill-kept one, led to the back premises; the
other, a broader one, which I seldom took, led to the front of the
house.

  “Which way were you going?” she asked.

  “Well, I was going with you—to the croquet
lawn.”

  A cloud came over her face. “I don’t think I shall
go after all,” she said, almost snappily. “I’m rather tired. Tell
them I’ve got a headache. Or tell them that you couldn’t find
me.”

  The bottom seemed to drop out of my world. “Oh!” I
exclaimed. “But Hugh will be so disappointed!”

  It wasn’t only that: I should be disappointed at
being deprived of my catch, and of the triumph of bringing her in
alive or dead.

  A gleam of humour returned to Marian’s face. “I get
so mixed up with all these Hughs,” she said. “Do you mean that I
shall be disappointed, or that Hugh will be?”

  “Hugh,” I said, trying to whistle it as she did,
though I didn’t quite like doing that—it sounded like mockery.

  “Well, then, I suppose I must go,” she said. “What a
slave-driver you are! Only I think I’ll go alone, if you don’t
mind.”

  I did mind, terribly. “But you’ll tell them I sent
you, won’t you?” I begged.

  She looked back at me teasingly. “Perhaps I will,”
she said.

  9

  BETWEEN the next day, Tuesday, and the cricket
match, which was on Saturday, I three times carried messages
between Marian and Ted Burgess: three notes from her, one note and
two oral messages from him.

  “Tell her it’s all right,” he said the first time;
then: “Tell her it’s no go.”

  It wasn’t difficult to find him, for he was usually
working in the harvest fields on the far side of the river; from
the sluice platform I could see where he was. The first time I went
he was riding on the reaper, a newfangled machine that cut the
wheat, but did not bind it; it was called the “spring-balance,” I
remember. I walked beside it until the standing wheat was between
us and the three or four farm labourers who were binding the
sheaves, and then he stopped the horse and I handed him the
letter.

  Next day the area of uncut wheat had dwindled; and
he was standing with his gun watching for the rabbits and other
creatures that clung to their shelter till the last moment before
bolting out; this was so exciting that for a time I quite forgot
the letter and he stood with narrowed eyes, apparently having
forgotten it too.

  My excitement mounted, for I thought that this last
strong-hold would be stuffed with game; but I was wrong: the last
stalks fell and nothing came out.

  The man on the reaper drove it off towards the gate
that led to the next field; turning their backs on us, the
labourers plodded to the hedgerow to retrieve their coats and rush
baskets. The farmer and I were left alone.

  The field that had been cut looked very flat, and he
was much the tallest thing in it. I had the fancy that he, standing
there, the colour of the wheat, between red and gold, was a sheaf
the reaper had forgotten and that it would come back for him.

  I gave him the envelope, which he at once tore open;
and then I knew he must have killed something before I came, for,
to my horror, a long smear of blood appeared on the envelope and
again on the letter as he held it in his hands.

  I cried out: “Oh, don’t do that!” but he did not
answer me, he was so engrossed in reading.

  The other time I went in search of him he was not in
the field but in the farmyard, and it was then he gave me the
letter to take back.

  “No blood on this one,” he said humorously, and I
laughed, for there was a part of me that accepted the blood and
even rejoiced in it as part of a man’s life into which I should one
day be initiated. I had a great time sliding down the straw-stack;
indeed, I did this on all three occasions when I took him letters;
it was the climax of the expedition, and when I got back to the
party reassembled at tea, I was able to tell them with perfect
truth that that was how I spent my afternoons.

  They were golden afternoons in more than one sense,
and I did not realize till Thursday came, and Mrs. Maudsley told
me, in her after-breakfast orderly-room, as someone called it, that
they were going out to lunch at a house where there were children,
and I was to go with them, how right Marian had been to say I
should be happier at home. There is a lot of ice to be broken
between children, they do not make friends easily, their worlds are
private, even their games are mysteries; and I could not readily
learn the rules when I remembered the much more important business
that I was leaving undone. Perhaps their kind of make-believe was a
little insipid to me because it shed no blood.

  For I took my duties as a Mercury very seriously,
all the more because of the secrecy enjoined on me, but most of all
because I felt I was doing for Marian something that no one else
could. She chattered to her grown-up companions to pass the time;
she turned a smiling face to Lord Trimingham, sat next to him at
meals, and walked with him on the terrace; but when she handed me
the notes, young as I was, I detected an urgency in her manner
which she did not show to others— no, not to Lord Trimingham
himself. To be of service to her was infinitely sweet to me, nor
did I look beyond it. I did, however, impose on my errands to and
fro a meaning of my own—several meanings, indeed—for I could not
find one that satisfied me. Even in the world of my imagination no
hypothesis as to why Marian and Ted Burgess exchanged their
messages quite worked. “Business” they both said. “Business” to me
was a solemn, almost sacred word; my mother spoke it with awe: it
was connected with my father’s office hours, with earning a living.
Marian did not need to earn a living, but Ted Burgess did; perhaps
she was helping him; perhaps in some mysterious way these notes
meant money in his pocket. Perhaps they even contained
money—cheques or bank-notes—and that was why he said: “Tell her
it’s all right”—meaning he had received it. I was thrilled to think
I might be carrying money, like a bank messenger, and be set upon
and robbed; what confidence she must have in me, to entrust me with
such precious missives!

  And yet I only half believed in this, for no
bank-note that I could see ever came out of the envelope. Perhaps
she was telling him something, something that might be useful to
him in farming; I could not imagine what, but, then, I knew nothing
about farming. Or perhaps she was comparing notes with him, notes
about the temperature, for instance, the daily readings of the
thermometer, which she had means of finding out that he had not.
The last day’s readings, though they did not reach Monday’s height,
had been satisfactory: eighty-three on Tuesday, eighty-five on
Wednesday, nearly ninety-two on Thursday and on Friday. (I have
since had the curiosity to check my figures by the official
records, and found them not far out.) Or if it was not an interest
in the temperature, it might be something that corresponded in the
adult mind to such an interest, which I should understand if it was
explained to me. Betting, perhaps: I knew how important betting was
to grown-up people. Perhaps they were having bets on how soon this
or that field would be finished.

  Suppose he was in some kind of trouble and she was
trying to help him out. Suppose he was wanted by the police and she
was trying to save him. Suppose he had committed a murder (the
smear of blood made it easier to think he had). Suppose only she
knew about it and was keeping him informed of the movements of the
police?

  This, being the most sensational, was also my
preferred solution to the problem. But it did not really satisfy
me, and when I was in her presence or in his, receiving the notes
or delivering them, it struck me as inadequate like the others.
Neither he nor she behaved, it seemed to me, as people would in any
of the circumstances that I had imagined.

  Behind my instinctive wish to find an imaginatively
satisfying explanation there lurked a sneaking curiosity, of which
I was half ashamed, to know the real one. But I did not act on it.
I had no desire to play the spy; my privilege in being associated
with the movements of the heavenly bodies had so inflamed my
self-esteem that I did not require minor proofs of my own
cleverness. Also I suspected that if I found out the real reason I
should be disappointed. And so it proved: I was.

  Two things happened on the Friday before the cricket
match; and one in a way led to the other. The first was that
Marcus, cleared of the imputation of measles, came downstairs. He
was not allowed to go out, but it was understood that he would be
well enough to watch the cricket match. I knew of course that he
was better, but his coming down took me by surprise: his
temperature had only been normal that morning for the first time,
and my mother would have kept me in bed another day. I supposed all
doctors had the same rules. Still, I was very pleased to see him
when he appeared at luncheon, for though he was not a great friend,
he gave me the sense of familiar companionship, for which there is
no substitute. I could say to him whatever was uppermost in my mind
in a language that we shared; I did not have to translate what I
said, or flounder in grown-up thoughts and ways of expression. Or
so I thought. We sat together and chattered at a great pace,
oblivious of the others; and then, half-way through the meal, the
implication of his being again in circulation suddenly dawned on
me.

  I should not be able to carry any more messages. It
was one thing to engage in this clandestine traffic while I was on
my own. I was free to go and come as I pleased; I was asked only
the most perfunctory questions about what I did with myself, and to
these sliding down the straw-stack provided a sufficient answer.
But I could not so easily pull the wool over Marcus’s eyes—those
rather expressionless grey eyes that took in so much more than they
seemed to. He was less interested in pretending than I was; he did
not have so much imaginative life; he would play at being Lord
Roberts or Kitchener or Kruger or de Wet with me, but only for a
limited time and only on condition that the English won: he was a
strong patriot as well as being no supporter of lost causes. I
could tell him many things, but not my fantasy of myself as Robin
Hood and his sister as Maid Marian.

  He would slide down a straw-stack with me once or
twice, but he would not want to make a daily habit of it—the way he
took my references to it was proof. It was one thing to hoodwink a
few farm labourers, who anyhow were not interested in what I did;
it was another to give Ted Burgess a letter, or take even an oral
message from him, with Marcus looking on. Besides—the difficulties
began to crowd into my mind— he wouldn’t want to talk to the farmer
at all, except in the most distant way, and would oppose my doing
so; in matters of degree he was a realist, though unlike me he did
not carry his snobbery into the heavens. He certainly would not
want to go into the kitchen and hang about while Ted laboriously
composed a letter.

  The more I thought about these expeditions in
Marcus’s company, the more impracticable did they seem and the less
I liked the prospect of them. Nor, though I was practised in deceit
and an uncritical upholder of the no-sneaking tradition, did I
relish the idea of deceiving Marcus—not on moral grounds, for any
system of ethics, as distinct from the school code, I barely
recognized—but because I felt it would spoil our relationship.

  So for one part of me. Another part was still in
love with the adventure and told me how dull the colours of my life
would be without it. My counsels of prudence hadn’t reckoned with
that; they had not reckoned with the emotional impoverishment (an
intimation of which, like the first pangs of a want, was beginning
to steal over me) which I should suffer when I could no longer run
to do Marian’s bidding. I did not realize how much, in Marcus’s
absence, the focus of my life at Brandham Hall had changed. How
could I tell her that I didn’t mean to serve her any longer, and
that Robin Hood was faithless to his trust?