The Go-Between (19 page)

  I explained the difficulty about Marcus.

  He listened moodily and the vitality seemed to ebb
out of him. I could not help feeling half pleased to see him so
discountenanced and chapfallen.

  “Have you told her this?” he asked.

  “Who?” I parried, hoping to embarrass him still
further.

  “Miss Marian, of course.”

  I admitted that I hadn’t.

  “What will she say? She counts a lot on getting
these notes through.”

  I moved about uneasily and he pressed his
advantage.

  “She won’t know what to do, you see; no more shall
I.”

  I was silent; then I said:

  “What did you do before I came?”

  At that he laughed and said: “You’re an
old-fashioned one, aren’t you? Well, it wasn’t so easy then.”

  I was pleased by this.

  “Look here,” he said suddenly. “She likes you,
doesn’t she?”

  “I—I think so.”

  “And you want her to like you, don’t you?”

  I said I did.

  “And you wouldn’t like her to stop liking you?”

  “No.”

  “Now why?” he said, coming nearer to me. “Why
wouldn’t you like it? What difference would it make to you if she
stopped liking you? Where would you feel it?”

  I was half hypnotized by him.

  “Here,” I said, and almost instinctively my hand
strayed towards my heart.

  “So you have a heart,” he said. “I thought perhaps
you hadn’t.”

  I was silent.

  “She won’t like it, you know,” he said, “if you
don’t take the letters. She won’t be the same to you, you mark my
words. You won’t like that, will you?”

  “No.”

  “She counts on having ‘em, same as I do. It’s
something that we both look forward to. They’re not just ordinary
letters. She’ll miss them, same as I shall. She’ll cry, perhaps. Do
you want her to cry?”

  “No, “I said.

  “It isn’t hard to make her cry,” he said. “You might
think she was stiff and proud, but she isn’t really. She used to
cry, before you came along.”

  “Why? “I asked.

  “Why? Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told
you.”

  “Did you make her cry?” I asked, almost too
incredulous to be indignant.

  “I did. I didn’t do it on purpose, mind you. You
think I’m just a rough chap, don’t you? Well, so I am. But she
cried when she couldn’t see me.”

  “How do you know? “ I asked.

  “Because she cried when she did see me. Doesn’t it
follow?”

  To me it didn’t seem to follow, but I had an inkling
of what he meant. Anyhow, she had cried, and the thought brought
tears to my own eyes.

  I found myself trembling, troubled by his vehemence,
by the unfamiliar sensations he had aroused in me, and the things
he had made me say.

  He noticed this and said: “You’ve had a hot walk.
Come on in out of the sun.”

  I would rather we had stayed outside; for in the
badly lit, sparsely furnished kitchen, with its bare, hard, worn
surfaces, its utter lack of the femininity that children of both
sexes feel at home with, I instinctively felt that he was too much
on his own ground. And though he had moved me strangely, I still
did not want to go on taking the letters.

  “I thought I should find you in the field,” I said,
hoping this would be a safe topic.

  “So you would have,” he replied. “I came back to
take a look at Smiler.”

  “Oh, is she ill?” I asked.

  “She’s in the family way.”

  “What’s that?” I asked. “Do you mean she gets in
your way?” Horses did get in the way, and I thought he might count
himself as a family.

  “No,” he said, shortly. “She’s going to have a
foal.”

  “I see,” I said, but I didn’t see. The facts of life
were a mystery to me, though several of my schoolfellows claimed to
have penetrated it and would have been quite willing to enlighten
me. But I was not so much interested in facts themselves as in the
importance they had for my imagination. I was passionately
interested in railways, and in the relative speed of the fastest
express trains; but I did not understand the principle of the steam
engine and had no wish to learn. Yet now my curiosity was
kindled.

  “Why is she having one?” I asked.

  “It’s nature, I suppose,” he said.

  “But does she want to, if it makes her ill?”

  “Well, she hasn’t much choice.”

  “Then what made her have one? “

  The farmer laughed. “Between you and me,” he said,
“she did a bit of spooning.”

  Spooning! The word struck me like a blow. Then
horses could spoon, and a foal was the result. It didn’t make
sense. I put my hand to my mouth, a nervous gesture that I believe
dates from that day; I felt my ignorance shaming me like a physical
defect.

  “I didn’t know horses could spoon,” I said.

  “Oh yes, they can.”

  “But spooning’s so
silly
,” I said, and was
glad to have said it. It was almost like getting a tooth out. I
could not associate silliness with animals. They had their dignity;
silly they were not.

  “You won’t think so when you’re older,” he replied,
with a quietness of manner he had not used to me before. “Spooning
isn’t silly. It’s just a word that spiteful people use for
something—” He broke off.

  “Yes?” I prompted him.

  “Well, for something that they’d like to do
themselves. They’re envious, see. That makes them spiteful.”

  “If you spoon with someone, does it mean you are
going to marry them?” I asked.

  “Yes, generally.”

  “Could you spoon with someone without marrying
them?” I pursued.

  “Do you mean me?” he said. “Could I?”

  “Well, you or anyone.” I felt I was being very
crafty.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  I reflected upon this.

  “Could you marry someone without spooning with them
first?”

  “You could, but—” He stopped.

  “But what?” I demanded.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “It wouldn’t be a very
lover-like thing to do.”

  I noticed that he used the word “lover” not in a
disparaging sense, as I was accustomed to hearing it used, rather
the opposite. I wasn’t going to let him impose his standards on me,
but I wanted to know what he thought.

  “Would it be worse to spoon with them without
marrying them?” I asked.

  “Some folks would say so. I shouldn’t,” he said
shortly.

  “Could you be in love with someone without spooning
with them?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be natural.”

  For him the word “natural” seemed to be conclusive.
I had never thought of it as justifying anything. Natural! So
spooning was natural! I had never thought of that. I had thought of
it as a kind of game that grown-ups played.

  “Then if you spoon with someone, does it mean they
will have a baby?”

  This question startled him. His ruddy face went
mottled, and his cheekbones seemed to stand out under his skin. He
drew a long breath, held it, and let it out in a noisy sigh.

  “Of course it doesn’t,” he said. “What made you
think such a thing?”

  “You did. You said that Smiler had been spooning,
and that was why she was going to have a foal.”

  “You’re sharp, aren’t you?” he said, and I could see
him casting about in his mind for an answer. “Well, it isn’t the
same for horses.”

  “Why isn’t it?” I demanded.

  Again he had to think hard.

  “Well, Nature doesn’t use ‘em same as she does
us.”

  Nature again! I didn’t find the answer satisfactory,
and I didn’t like the idea of being used by Nature. I felt that he
was keeping something from me, and I took a fearful pleasure in
baiting him.

  “Now, isn’t that enough questions for one day?” he
said, persuasively.

  “But you haven’t answered them,” I protested.
“You’ve hardly told me
anything
.”

  He got up from the wooden chair and prowled about
the room, every now and then looking down at me with an expression
of distaste.

  “No, and I don’t think that I will,” he answered
almost pettishly. “I don’t want to go putting ideas into your head.
You’ll learn soon enough.”

  “But if it’s something so nice—?”

  “Yes, it is nice,” he conceded. “But you don’t want
to come to it before you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now,” I said.

  He laughed at this, and his face altered.

  “You’re a big boy, aren’t you? How old did you say
you were?”

  “I shall be thirteen on Friday the 27th.”

  “Well,” he said, “let’s make a bargain. I’ll tell
you all about spooning, but on one condition.”

  I knew what he was going to say, but for form’s sake
I asked:

  “What is it?”

  “That you’ll go on being our postman.”

  I promised, and as I promised, the difficulties in
the way seemed to dissolve. Really he needn’t have added that final
bribe. I suppose he wanted to make assurance doubly sure, but the
softening-up process, as we should call it now, which he had put me
through had been enough. He had made me realize something of what
Marian and he meant to each other, and though I did not understand
the force that drew them together, any more than I understood the
force that drew the steel to the magnet, I recognized its strength.
And with its strength went a suggestion of beauty and mystery that
took hold of my imagination in spite of all my prejudice against
it.

  But I can’t pretend that Ted’s promise of
enlightenment didn’t weigh with me, though I had no idea why I
wanted so much to know what spooning was.

  “You’ve forgotten something,” he said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “The straw-stack.”

  He was right. I had forgotten it. It seemed to stand
for something I had outgrown—physical exertion for its own sake: I
felt much less keen about it now.

  “You hop up the ladder,” he said, “and I’ll be
writing something. “

  11

  METEOROLOGICALLY Saturday was a disappointing day;
the thermometer only rose to seventy-eight, clouds came up —the
first clouds I had seen at Brandham since I came—and the sun shone
fitfully. And that is how I remember the day— in snatches.

  I remember a conversation at the breakfast table.
Marcus was having the luxury of breakfast in bed.

  “It all depends,” Denys was saying, “on whether we
can get Ted Burgess out before he’s set.”

  I pricked up my ears.

  “I don’t fancy he’s their best bat,” Lord Trimingham
said. “In my opinion—and—” (I have forgotten their names) “are more
likely to make runs than he is. He’s just a hitter, and the pitch
is a bit bumpy. “

  I glanced across at Marian, who was sitting next to
Lord Trimingham, but she made no comment.

  “But he’ll flog the bowling,” Denys persisted, “and
then where shall we be?”

  “We’ll get him caught in the deep field,” Lord
Trimingham said.

  “But if he
breaks the back
of the
bowling?”

  “If he shows signs of doing that, I shall put myself
on,” said Lord Trimingham, with a smile. He was our captain.

  “I know you’re a useful bowler, very useful, Hugh,”
said Denys, “no one knows that better than I do. But if he were to
just
capture
the bowling—”

  “I don’t think you’ll find he will,” said Mrs.
Maudsley unexpectedly. “I don’t know a great deal about cricket,
but I seem to remember that you made the same prophecy last year,
Denys, and this Mr. Burgess got out for a duke or whatever they
call it.”

  “Duck, Mama.”

  “Well, duck then.”

  Denys subsided in the general laugh, which was more
at his expense than Mrs. Maudsley’s. His unfinished features,
handsome when you didn’t look at them too closely, turned red, and
I too felt uncomfortable. As schoolboys we snubbed each other
unmercifully and it seemed the right thing to do: it was our code.
But I knew it was a deviation from the code of grown-ups, and I was
a stickler for codes.

  Presently, however, Denys piped up again.

  “And you know we haven’t settled the side yet. Who
is
going to be the A. N. Other?”

  At this there was a silence. One or two of the
breakfasters glanced at me, but I saw no significance in this. I
was interested in the composition of our side, of course, and had
speculated as to who would be playing; but in the Olympian
deliberations of the selection committee I had taken no part.

  “It’s rather a delicate question, isn’t it?” said
Lord Trimingham, stroking his chin.

  “Yes, it is a delicate question, I grant you, Hugh,
but we shall have to decide it one way or another, shan’t we? I
mean, we’ve got to put eleven men in the field.”

  That was undeniable, but no one offered an
opinion.

  “What do you think, Mr. Maudsley?” asked Lord
Trimingham. “There are two candidates for the place, I
believe.”

  Lord Trimingham often appealed to his host in this
way, and it always came as a surprise, for since his lordship’s
arrival it had seemed as though he, and not Mr. Maudsley, was the
master of the house. Mr. Maudsley, though he spoke so seldom, was
never at a loss for an answer.

  “Perhaps we had better go into conclave,” he said,
and the men of the party rose rather self-consciously and trooped
out.

  I hung about the smoking-room door (a room into
which I had never penetrated) so as to lose no time in satisfying
my curiosity and carrying the news to Marcus. They were so long
deliberating that I thought they must have gone out another way,
but at last the door opened, and one after another, with
portentously grave faces, they emerged. I tried to look as though I
was passing the door by accident. Lord Trimingham came last.

  “Hullo, there’s Mercury!” he said, and his face,
which he had to pull about to register any special feeling,
contracted into a grimace. “Hard luck, old fellow,” he said, “I’m
afraid I have bad news for you.”