The Go-Between (23 page)

  “I didn’t mean to,” I repeated, not to be cheated of
my apology.

  At that moment the clapping grew louder and some
enthusiasts coupled Ted’s name with it. Though we were all heroes,
he was evidently the crowd’s favourite; and I dropped back so that
he might walk in alone. His fellow batsmen in the pavilion were
making a great demonstration; even the ladies of our party, sitting
in front, showed themselves mildly interested as Ted came by. All
except one. Marian, I noticed, didn’t look up.

  As soon as we were back at the Hall I said to
Marcus: “Lend me your scoring-card, old man.”

  “Why didn’t you keep one, pudding-face?” he asked
me.

  “How could I, you dolt, when I was fielding?”

  “Did you field, you measly microbe? Are you quite
sure?”

  When I had punished him for this, and extracted his
score-card from him, I copied on mine the items that were
missing.

  “E. Burgess c. sub. b. Ld. Trimingham 81,” I read.
“Why, you might have put my name in, you filthy scoundrel.”

  “ ‘C. sub.’ is correct,” he said. “Besides, I want
to keep this card clean, and it wouldn’t be if your name was on
it.”

  13

  THE SUPPER at the village hall was graced by various
local notabilities, as well as by the two teams; it seemed to me
far the most magnificent occasion I had ever been present at. The
decorations, the colours, the heat, the almost overpowering sense
of matiness (a quality I greatly valued), went to my head quite as
much as the hock-cup that was poured into my glass. At times I lost
all sense of myself as a separate entity; at times my spirit
fluttered round the peaked ceiling of the hall, among the Union
Jacks and paper streamers, a celestial body, companion of the
stars. I felt that I had fulfilled my function in life, nothing
more remained for me to do: I could live forever on my capital of
achievement. My next-door neighbours, both of them members of the
village team (for we were dovetailed; at this democratic festival
it was not thought proper for two members of the Hall party to sit
together), must have found me poor company, for though I communed
with them freely in the spirit, I had almost nothing to say to them
in the flesh. Not that they minded; they were intent upon their
food, and sometimes made remarks to each other across me as if I
was not there. These I could seldom understand, but they evoked
hilarious laughter; a nod or a grunt passed for a sally, until to
my besotted senses the whole world seemed one laugh.

  After the supper Mr. Maudsley made a speech. I
expected it would be a very halting one, for I had never heard him
say half a dozen words consecutively. But he was amazingly fluent.
Sentence after sentence poured out, just as if he was reading it;
and just as when he was reading prayers, his voice was uninflected
and monotonous. Because of this, and the speed he went at, some of
his jokes misfired; but those that took effect were all the more
successful because of their dry delivery. With what seemed to me
consummate skill he contrived to bring in almost every player by
name and find something noteworthy in his performance. As a rule I
turned a deaf ear to speeches, classing them with sermons as things
intended for the grown-up mind; but this one I did listen to, for I
hoped to hear my own name mentioned, nor was I disappointed. “Last,
but not least, except in stature, our young David, Leo Colston, who
slew the Goliath of Black Farm if I may so describe him, not with a
sling, with a catch.” All eyes were turned on me, or so I thought;
and Ted, who was sitting nearly opposite, gave me a tremendous
wink. Wearing a lounge suit and a high starched collar he looked
even less like himself than he did in flannels. The more clothes he
put on, the less he looked himself. Whereas Lord Trimingham’s
clothes always seemed part of him, Ted’s fine feathers made him
look a yokel.

  Speeches droned on—it was as if the flight of time
had been made audible—and then songs were called for. On the dais
at the end of the hall stood an upright piano, with a revolving
plush-upholstered stool set invitingly in front of it. But now a
murmuring began, the import of which at last reached me: where was
the accompanist? He was called for, but he did not appear.
Explanations were forthcoming. He had sent a message that he was
seedy, but inexplicably the message hadn’t been delivered. A wave
of disappointment swept the assembly. What was a cricket match,
what was a supper, without songs? A chill settled on our
wine-warmed spirits and there was no more wine to thaw it. It was
early: the evening stretched ahead, an unending black. Would no one
volunteer to fill the gap? Lord Trimingham’s ill-matched eyes,
which always had the gleam of authority behind them, roved round
the room and were avoided as sedulously as if they had been an
auctioneer’s; certainly I kept mine fixed on the tablecloth, for
Marcus knew that I could play the piano a little. But suddenly,
when everyone seemed to be rooted in his place, immovably, never to
rise, never to look up as long as an accompanist was being sought
for, there was a movement, a flutter to the vertical, almost as if
a standard was being raised; and before the relaxation of relief
had had time to ease our stiffened bodies, Marian had walked
swiftly down the hall, and was seated at the piano-stool. How
lovely she looked in her Gainsborough-blue dress between the
candles! From there, as from a throne, she looked down at us,
amused and a little mocking, as though to say: “I’ve done my part,
now you do yours.”

  It was the custom, so I afterwards learned, that the
first singers should be members of the two teams; all were called
upon and some were badgered, but it was pretty well known, I fancy,
who would oblige and who would not. The former, it appeared, had
brought their music with them; this they produced apparently from
nowhere, sometimes with a guilty and self-conscious, sometimes with
a brazen, air; but one and all they seemed to be in awe of the
accompanist, standing as far away from her as they could. Her
playing fascinated me and I listened to it rather than to the
songs. I could see her white, slender fingers (in spite of the
perpetual sunshine, she had managed to keep them white) sliding
over the keys, and what delicious sounds she coaxed out of that old
tin-pot piano! I could tell how irregular its touch must be, but
the runs came as smooth as water trickling. What fire there was in
the loud passages, and what sweetness in the soft! And it was
almost miraculous the way she was able to flick up the key that
stuck and put it back in commission. A tactful as well as a skilled
accompanist, she followed the singers and did not try to hurry or
retard them; but her performance was in such a different class from
theirs that the two did not quite match: it was as though a
thoroughbred had been harnessed to a carthorse. The audience
appreciated this and their applause was respectful as well as
rollicking.

  When Ted Burgess was called upon he did not seem to
hear and I thought he actually hadn’t heard. But when his friends
in the various parts of the room began to repeat his name, adding
facetious encouragements: “Come on, Ted! Don’t be bashful! We all
know you can!”—he made no movement to rise; he sat on in his place
looking stubborn and embarrassed. The company enjoyed this; their
cries redoubled and became almost a chorus, whereat he was heard to
mutter, rather ungraciously, that he didn’t feel like singing. Lord
Triming-ham joined his voice to theirs. “Now don’t disappoint us,
Ted,” he said (the “Ted” surprised me; perhaps it was a concession
to good-fellowship). “You didn’t keep us waiting in the cricket
field, you know.” In the laughter that followed, Ted’s resistance
seemed to crumble; he got up clumsily, carrying a fat roll of music
under his arm, and stumbled towards the dais. “Careful, now!”
somebody called out, and there was more laughter.

  Marian appeared to take no interest in all this.
When Ted reached her she raised her eyes and said something and he
reluctantly handed her his sheaf of songs. Quickly she looked
through them and put one on the music rack; I noticed that she
dog-eared the page, which she had never done before. “Take a Pair
of Sparkling Eyes,” announced Ted, as if they were the last thing
one could want to take, and someone whispered: “Cheer up, it isn’t
a funeral!” At first the singer’s voice was much less audible than
his breathing, but gradually it gained strength and steadiness and
colour and lent itself to the dancing lilt of the song, so in the
end it was quite a creditable performance, which the audience
seemed to appreciate all the more for its shaky start. An encore
was called for, the first of the evening. Again Ted had to confer
with Marian; their heads came close together; again he seemed to
demur, and abruptly he left the piano and made a bow in token of
refusal. But the applause redoubled; they liked his modesty and
were determined to overcome it.

  The new song was a sentimental one by Balfe. I don’t
suppose it’s ever sung now, but I liked it, and liked Ted’s
rendering of it and the quaver that threaded his voice.

     
When other lips and other
hearts

     
Their tales of love shall
tell

     
In language whose excess
imparts

     
The power they feel so
well.

  I remember the pensive look on the faces of the
audience as they listened to this resigned and mellifluous presage
of infidelities to come, unaware of its underlying bitterness; and
I expect my face reflected it, for it seemed to me that I knew all
about other lips and other hearts telling their tales of love, and
knew how sad it was, and yet how beautiful; nor was I a stranger to
the language whose excess imparts the power it feels so well. But
what sort of experience, if any, I connected it with, I have no
idea. To me it was a literary mood evoked by the sounds of words I
liked, words from the grown-up world, which made poetry for me and
which yet had reality too—the reality of their meaning for
grown-ups, which I was content to take on trust. Songs were about
such matters. It never occurred to me that there might be hard
feelings when other lips and other hearts began to tell their tales
of love, or that they told them in any other way than to the
accompaniment of a piano in a concert-room. Least of all did I
connect such manifestations with the phenomenon called spooning; I
should have been horrified if I had. I sat in ecstasy as though
listening to the music of the spheres, and when the lover finally
asked nothing more than that his sweetheart, in the midst of her
dallyings with another, or others, should remember him, tears of
happiness came into my eyes.

  At the conclusion of the song there was a call for
the accompanist, and Marian left her stool to share the applause
with Ted. Half turning, she made him a little bow. But he, instead
of responding, twice jerked his head round towards her and away
again, like a comedian or a clown wisecracking with his partner.
The audience laughed and I heard Lord Trimingham say: “Not very
gallant, is he?” My companion was more emphatic. “What’s come over
our Ted,” he whispered across me to my other neighbour, “to be so
shy with the ladies? It’s because she comes from the Hall, that’s
why.” Meanwhile Ted had recovered himself sufficiently to make
Marian a bow. “That’s better,” my companion commented. “If it
wasn’t for the difference, what a handsome pair they’d make!”

  As though alive to the difference, Ted came down
from the dais blushing furiously, and once back in his place he
turned a frowning, sulky face to the congratulations and sly
witticisms of his friends.

  I minded his discomfiture and yet I enjoyed it too,
for it made the party go, keeping it up, enriching it with the
spice of malice. Ted the mountebank was just as popular as Ted the
hero, perhaps more so, for prolonged hero-worship puts a strain
upon one’s vanity. Comic or romantic, the songs that followed were
less eventful; mistakes were made, which Marian negligently covered
up, but they were mistakes that did not catch the imagination of
the audience; indeed, being all on one side, they slightly
diminished the hilarity of the evening by giving it the air of a
music lesson. This, too, had its piquancy for me, for it affirmed
the superiority of the Hall, and I was beginning to bask in this
and add it to my other sensations, when, in a pause that followed
the last song, I heard Lord Trimingham say: “What about our twelfth
man? Can’t he give us something? Latest from school and all that.
Come on, Leo.”

  For the second time I was called upon to exchange
the immunities of childhood for the responsibilities of the grownup
world. It was like a death, but with a resurrection in prospect:
the third time it happened, there was none. Even as I left my
seat—for it never occurred to me that I could refuse—and felt my
mouth going dry, I knew that I should get back to what I had been,
just as certainly as, the third time, I knew that I should not. I
had no music, but I had a song— Lord Trimingham was right about
that. I had several songs. One I had sung at a school concert and
it never dawned on me until I reached the platform that I couldn’t
sing it by myself.

  “Well, Leo,” Marian said, “what is it to be?” She
spoke in her ordinary voice, as if there was no one else in the
room, and it didn’t matter if there was.

  Envisaging the walk back to my place, the
catastrophic absence of applause, the sense of failure stripping me
naked, I said helplessly: “But I haven’t the music.”

  She smiled, a starry smile that I still remember,
and said: “Perhaps I can play the accompaniment without. What is
it?”

  “The Minstrel Boy.”