The Go-Between (28 page)

  Suddenly he came in and said: “Have you a letter for
me, postman?”

  I gave it to him. I had forgotten it.

  “It looks as if you had been sleeping on it,” he
said, and took it with him into the scullery. He came back with a
tablecloth and some tea-things.

  “I’m on my own today,” he said, “my daily woman
doesn’t come on Sundays.”

  “Oh, do you have a woman every day?” I asked
politely, though not perhaps without an oblique reference to the
many servants at Brandham Hall.

  He shot me a quick look and said: “No, I told you
she doesn’t come on Sundays, and only in the mornings on
Saturdays.”

  I don’t know what made me think of Marian, but I
did. Suddenly I felt I could not stay to tea. I must get back to
face the music, which I now felt more able to do.

  “Have you any message for her?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “but do you want to take it?”

  I was totally unprepared for this question and felt
the tears coming back.

  “Not very much,” I said, “but if I don’t she’ll be
so angry.”

  It was out. I hadn’t meant to say it, but the
surprise of having my wishes consulted weakened me.

  “So it was her,” he said, and lit a cigarette, the
first I’d ever seen him smoke. I don’t know what he had meant to
say, but what he said was: “Tisn’t fair to ask you to do it for
nothing. What can I do to make it worth your while?”

  “Nothing,” I ought to have answered, and “Nothing”
is what I should have answered half an hour before. But since then
many impressions had overlaid my mind, already tired and strained
by too much emotion. Ted had once more imposed himself on me with
his gun, his cricket bat, his self-sufficiency, his panoply of
masculine endowments and accomplishments. The fact that he did not
seem to be angry with me gave me nothing to resist. Like many
uneducated people he was readier than the educated to talk to a
child on equal terms; his age was a physical but not a
conversational barrier.

  With the wish to please him some of my old relish
for my mission returned; the case against it seemed far away and
much less cogent. Instead of saying “Nothing” I temporized; I did
not reject his bribe as I had Marian’s money. Besides, I remembered
something.

  “The last time I was here,” I said accusingly, “you
said you’d tell me something.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, you said you’d tell me all about spooning.
That’s partly why I came.” This was not true; I had come because
Marian made me; but it served for an argument.

  “So I did, so I did,” he said. “I’m just going to
get some teacups,” he added, and presently returned with them. I
can see the teacups now. They were deep and cream-coloured, with a
plain gold line round the outside, and inside at the bottom, worn
by much stirring, a gold flower. I thought them rather
common-looking.

  It was odd to see a man laying the table, though of
course the footman did it at the Hall.

  Ted cleared his throat and said: “I did enjoy your
singing at the concert.”

  “I enjoyed yours too,” I said.

  “Oh, mine was nothing. I’ve had no lessons, I just
open my mouth and out it comes. I made a pretty good fool of
myself, really. But you sang just like—well, like a lark.”

  “Oh well,” I said lightly, “I practised those songs
at school. We’ve quite a good teacher. He’s an L.R.A.M.”

  “I never had much schooling,” Ted said, “but when I
was a nipper, hardly bigger than you” (his using me as a standard
of smallness came as a shock to me), “Mother took me one Christmas
to hear the carol-singing in Norwich Cathedral, and there was a lad
there with a voice just like yours. I’ve never forgotten it.”

  Gratified as I was by the comparison, I sensed that
he was putting me off; it was a trick all grown-ups had.

  “Thank you very much,” I said, “but you said you
were going to tell me about spooning. “

  “So I did, so I did,” he repeated, moving the plates
about the tablecloth with clumsy fingers. “But now I’m not sure
that I shall.”

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  “It might spoil it for you.”

  I thought about this and my tired mind suddenly
turned angry.

  “But you promised!” I exclaimed.

  “I know I did,” he said, “but it’s a job for your
dad, really. He’s the one to tell you.”

  “My father’s dead,” I said, “and”—contempt for the
stupid pastime suddenly blazed up in me—”I’m quite sure he never
spooned!”

  “You wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t,” Ted said
grimly. “And I believe that you know more about it than you let
on.”

  “I don’t, I don’t,” I cried passionately, “and you
did promise to tell me.”

  He looked down at me irresolutely and said: “Well,
it means putting your arm round a girl, and kissing her. That’s
what it means.”

  “I know that,” I exclaimed, wriggling and throwing
myself about in my chair, outraged by his perfidy. “That’s on all
the postcards. But it’s something else too. It makes you
feel
something.”

  “Well,” he said heavily, “it makes you feel on top
of the world, if you know what that means.”

  I did know: it was what I had felt last night and
this morning. But I didn’t think it was the same as the pleasure of
spooning and I said so.

  “What do you like doing best?” he asked me
suddenly.

  I had to think: it was a fair question and I was
annoyed with myself for not being able to answer it.

  “Well, something that happens in dreams, like
flying, or floating, or—”

  “Or what? “said he.

  “Or waking up and knowing that somebody you dreamed
had died was really alive.” I had dreamed this several times about
my mother.

  “I’ve never had that dream,” he said, “but it’ll do,
it gives you the idea. Think of it, and add some, and then you’ll
know what spooning’s like.”

  “But—” I began. But my protest was drowned by a
commotion in the scullery: rattling, bubbling, and hissing.

  “The kettle’s boiling over,” exclaimed Ted, jumping
up. He came back with the teapot in one hand and in the other a
plum cake on a plate. My mouth watered: I would stay, but only on
condition—

  “You haven’t really told me,” I said, “what spooning
is.”

  He carefully put down the teapot and the plate and
said patiently: “Yes, I have, it’s like flying, or floating, or
waking up and finding someone you thought was dead is really there.
It’s what you like doing best, and then some more.”

  I was too exasperated to notice how exasperated he
was.

  “Yes, but
what
more?” I cried. “I know you
know, and I won’t take any more messages for you unless you tell
me.”

  Some primitive instinct told me that I had him in a
corner; it also warned me that I had tried him too far. He towered
above me, as hard and straight and dangerous as his gun. I saw the
temper leap into his eyes as it had when he caught me sliding down
the straw-stack. Armoured by his nakedness, he took a step towards
me.

  “Clear out of here quick,” he said, “or you’ll be
sorry.”

  16

  BRANDHAM HALL

  NEAR NORWICH

  NORFOLK

  ENGLAND

  THE WORLD

  THE UNIVERSE

     ETC.

  DEAR MOTHER [I wrote],

  I am sorry to tell you I am not enjoying myself
here. When I wrote to you this morning I was enjoying myself, but
not now, because of the errands and the messages. They are very
kind to me as I wrote to you this morning and I like being here,
but please, dear mother, send a telegram to say you want me to come
back at once. You could say that you want me to come home for my
birthday because you would miss me too much and I would much rather
spend it with you. My birthday is on Friday July the 27th so there
is still plenty of time. Or if this is too expensive you could say
please send Leo back—I will write explaining. I don’t want to stay
here any longer than I or you can help. It is not that I am not
enjoying myself, but the messages.

  Here I paused. I knew I ought to be more explicit
about the messages, but how, when my lips were sealed? And did I
know myself what they were? I did not, except that they were to
arrange meetings between Ted and Marian. I knew that they were very
secret and aroused the strongest feelings— feelings which until
this afternoon I had not known that grown-up people possessed,
feelings that might lead—well, lead to murder. That was only a word
to me, but it was a fearsome word, and though I didn’t understand
the logic of the emotions, Ted’s violence, and his threats, and his
gun, which I had come to think of as a symbol of himself, gave me
an inkling of how the thing might happen in real life. And Lord
Trimingham would be the victim; I did not doubt that: the fate of
the fifth Viscount made it all too plain.

  I could not tell my mother any of this, but I could
use other arguments, arguments she would appreciate, to make my
aversion to the errands sound more plausible.

  It is nearly four miles there and back, and I have
to cross the river by a narrow Plank and go along a ruff farm road
which is very exhausting in the Grate Heat [“in the great heat” was
a stock phrase of my mother’s and, as I have said, she dreaded the
reality for which it stood], and on both sides there are some wild
animals or nearly so which frighten me. This I have to do nearly
every day otherwise they would be angry, they depend so much on the
messages.

  So much for the material and physical objections to
the errands. Now I would deal with their moral aspect; this, I felt
sure, would influence my mother. She had two phrases, Rather Wrong,
and Very Wrong; the former she applied often, the latter sparingly,
to any course of action that she didn’t approve of. I did not
believe in the idea of wrong myself, but I saw this was the moment
to invoke it.

  I should not mind this so much [I went on], only I
feel that what they are making me do is Rather Wrong and perhaps
Very Wrong [I thought I would get them both in] and something you
would not like me to do as well. So please send the telegram as
soon as you get this letter.

  I hope you are quite well, dear Mother, as I am and
should be very happy if not for the Errands.

  Your loving son

  LEO

  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

  PS. I am looking forward very much to coming
home.

  PPS. I have unfortunately missed the post today, but
if this letter arrives by the first post on Tuesday July 24th, your
telegram will arrive here about 11.15 on Tuesday morning and if it
arrives by the second post the telegram will arrive by 5.30 p.m. on
Tuesday at latest.

  PPPS. Perhaps you could send a telegram to Mrs.
Maudsley too.

  PPPPS. The Heat is Grate and growing Grater.

  I was naturally a good speller, and if I hadn’t been
tired and excited I shouldn’t have made so many mistakes.

  Although I felt much better for writing the letter,
the afternoon had put my mental age back and dealt my spirit a
shrewd blow or I could not have written it. I do not quite know
where the wound went deepest. True, my feelings had been hurt, but
they had been hurt twice over and the second blow had in a way
deadened the first. Ted’s outburst had almost obliterated Marian’s:
it had finished off the demolition of my temporary emotional
structure. For the second time that afternoon I had taken to my
heels: I had run out of the house as fast as my legs could carry
me. Looking back, I saw Ted standing at the farmyard gate, waving
to me and shouting; but I thought he was meaning to give chase, and
I ran the faster, like a street urchin fleeing from a policeman,
nor did I draw breath until my breath gave out. I did not cry,
however, because he was a man, and his anger touched a hardier
nerve in me than Marian’s had. By the time I reached the sluice,
the frontier between his land and ours, my fright had begun to wear
off, for I was beyond the reach of his arm, or even of his gun,
which I still dreaded.

  To bleed from many wounds may be more serious than
to bleed from one, but the pain, being less localized, is also
easier for the mind to bear.

  Perhaps more important to my well-being than my
feelings was my
amour-propre
. This had suffered in various
ways, but it had also been bolstered up by Ted’s references to my
prowess at cricket and singing, and in a way it dwelt in a part of
me which was almost inaccessible to my feelings: I had excelled at
cricket, I had excelled at singing; these were assets that hard
words could not devalue. At the same time it depended to some
extent on public recognition, and this is what I foresaw would be
lacking when I returned to Brand-ham Hall.

  I had got it into my head (the most unlikely thing
that could happen) that Marian would have told everyone what she
had told me, that I was a stupid little boy, a swollen-headed brat,
and so on, and, worst of all, a Shylock. I imagined that when I
entered the drawing-room, rather late for tea, everyone would treat
me as an outcast; and this, even after my other experiences, was a
prospect that daunted me.

  In fact, the opposite happened. I wasn’t even late;
I was greeted with acclaim; inquiries, both facetious and
solicitous, were made as to how I had spent the afternoon, which I
answered as best I could; and I was drawn into the circle in a
place of honour near the tea-kettle—the shining silver teakettle
that had always been my admiration.

  Marian was presiding over it. I had never seen her
so animated. She did not put the finesse into pouring out the tea
that her mother did, asking questions all round the table, making
each cup seem like a present, for she seemed to know by instinct,
or to remember from other times, just how everybody liked his tea.
“Yours is with lemon, isn’t it?” she would say, and so on. We were
a full house. Among the week-end guests were some older people,
whom I welcomed because they generally had more to say to me than
the younger ones. I can’t remember their faces, but I can remember
hers, and the challenge in her eye and the lift of raillery in her
voice. Her eyes were always fiercer than her mouth; they glinted
while it smiled. The guests seemed to enjoy being made fun of, for
there was flattery in it too. Lord Trimingham was sitting beside
her on a low chair, I could only see his head, and it struck me
that this was how they would be when she came to reign at
Brandham—she in full view and he half in shadow. There was a
sparkle on everything she did. In her mother’s absence she seemed
to be reigning already, there was such decision in her face and in
her gestures. I wondered where Mrs. Maudsley was; she had never
been away at tea before. This was another mastery than hers, less
subtle but more brilliant.