The Go-Between (32 page)

  “Don’t do that,” Lord Trimingham said. “You make me
giddy.”

  I laughed, and blurted out: “Do you know anything
about Ted Burgess?”

  Now that I had neutralized him, it was safe to
mention him.

  “Yes,” he said, surprised. “Why?”

  “I only wondered,” said I, feebly.

  “Oh, you’re thinking of that catch, I expect,” said
Lord Trimingham, kindly supplying me with a reason. “Well, he’s
quite a decent feller”—I remembered he had said this about the
Boers—”but he’s a bit wild.”

  “Wild?” I repeated, thinking at once of lions and
tigers. “Do you mean he’s dangerous, Hugh?”

  “Not to you or me. He’s a bit of a lady-killer, but
there’s no great harm in that.”

  Lady-killer: what did that mean? I didn’t like to
ask too many questions. I did not think, however, Ted would kill
Marian; man-killer, that was what I had been afraid of. Now the
fear had passed away, lost its reality with the rest of my life at
Brandham Hall. I could scarcely believe that I had once felt I
ought to warn Lord Trimingham of his peril. The ninth Viscount
would never know that I had saved him from the fate of the fifth.
By removing myself I had removed the danger; it was my
master-stroke. I should not have cared to see it as an act of
self-sacrifice even if it had been one; for there is nothing clever
in self-sacrifice, nothing to pride oneself on. Considering the
scenes that Marian and Ted had made me, it was excusable that I
should regard myself as the linchpin of the whole business.

  Ever since I had arranged with mother for my recall,
I seemed to be living a posthumous life at Brandham, but I still
took a retrospective interest in the situation, in what might have
happened if I had let it.

  “Anything else I can tell you about him?” Lord
Trimingham asked. “He’s a bit hot-tempered—a word and a blow, you
know—flies off the handle.”

  I reflected on this, and then asked the question I
had come to ask, not realizing how apt it was:

  “What does it mean, getting your rag out? Has it
something to do with cleaning a gun?”

  Lord Trimingham laughed. “No, it hasn’t,” he said.
“But it’s funny you should ask; it means what I just said: flying
into a temper.”

  At that moment Mr. Maudsley came in. Lord Trimingham
rose, and I, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit.

  “Sit down, Hugh, please sit down,” Mr. Maudsley said
in his dry, level voice. “You’ve got a new recruit to the
smoking-room, I see. Have you been telling him some smoking-room
stories?”

  Lord Trimingham laughed.

  “Or showing him the pictures?”

  He indicated a row of small dark canvases, set deep
in heavy frames. I looked at the one nearest to me and saw men
wearing broad-brimmed hats, smoking long pipes, sitting on tubs
with tankards in their hands, or playing cards. Drinking with the
men or serving them were women. They wore no hats; their hair was
pulled back from high bare foreheads and kept in place by plain
white handkerchiefs. One woman was leaning on the back of a man’s
chair, watching the card-players with avid eyes: the chair-back
pressed against her breasts, which bulged over its rim and were of
a dirty colour between pink and grey. This made me feel
uncomfortable. I didn’t like the look of the picture or its
feeling; pictures, I thought, should be of something pretty, should
record a moment chosen for its beauty. These people hadn’t even
troubled to look their best; they were ugly and quite content to be
so. They got something out of being their naked selves, their faces
told me that; but this self-glory, depending on nobody’s approval
but their own, struck me as rather shocking—more shocking than
their occupations, unseemly as those were. They had forgotten
themselves, that was it; and you should never forget yourself.

  No wonder the pictures were not shown to the public,
for who could want to look at them? And they couldn’t be very
valuable, being so small.

  “He doesn’t like them,” said Mr. Maudsley,
flatly.

  I wriggled.

  “I thought they might be above his head,” Lord
Trimingham said. “Teniers is an acquired taste, in my opinion.” He
seemed anxious to change the subject, and said, without changing it
very much: “We were talking about Ted Burgess when you came in, and
I told Leo he was a lady-killer. “

  “He has that reputation, I believe,” Mr. Maudsley
said.

  “Yes, but it’s no business of mine, is it, what he
does with his week-ends?” Lord Trimingham seemed to shoot a glance
at me—one never knew which way he was looking—and added quickly:
“I’ve been talking to him about joining up. I approached him
tactfully, of course—easy does it. A likely man, single—no
ties—he’d make a first-rate N.C.O. Of course it’s different with a
rifle, but he’s a good shot too, by all accounts.”

  “He has that reputation, I believe,” said Mr.
Maudsley for the second time. “When did you see him, Sunday? I only
ask because somebody noticed him in the park.”

  “Yesterday, as a matter of fact,” Lord Trimingham
said, “and I went up to the farm. But I’d tackled him about it once
before. I’m not much of an advertisement for Army life, I’m
afraid.”

  He sometimes alluded to his disfigurement, to
accustom himself to the idea of it, I now think, and to make those
with him feel he didn’t mind. It didn’t always work that way,
however. After an uneasy pause Mr. Maudsley asked:

  “What did he say?”

  “The first time he said he didn’t want to, he was
quite happy as he was, and let others do the fighting. But
yesterday he seemed to have changed his mind—he thought he’d like
to have a crack at them. I said he might never get out there. The
situation’s changed since Roberts went into Pretoria, though De
Wet’s still likely to give trouble in the Transvaal.”

  “So you think he’ll go?” said Mr. Maudsley.

  “I think he may, and for myself I’m sorry; he’s a
good chap and I shan’t easily find another tenant like him. But
there you are, war’s war.”

  “He won’t be altogether a loss to the district,” Mr.
Maudsley said.

  “Why?” asked Lord Trimingham.

  “Oh, what you were saying just now,” Mr. Maudsley
answered vaguely.

  There was a silence. I had not quite followed the
drift of the conversation, but something in my heart was troubled
by it.

  “Is Ted really going to the war?” I asked.

  “So you’re on ‘Ted’ terms!” said Lord Trimingham.
“Well, it’s on the cards he will.”

  If only grown-ups would be more explicit! I tried to
think that “on the cards” meant some very remote contingency. As I
was shutting the door I heard Mr. Maudsley say to Lord
Trimingham:

  “They say he’s got a woman up this way.”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but thought he was
perhaps referring to Ted’s daily woman.

  19

  I HAD TOLD my mother, and myself, that the telegram
might arrive by eleven fifteen. Eleven fifteen came, but not my
marching-orders. I was not cast down; indeed, I was relieved. My
belief that the telegram would come was unshakable and now I had an
extra respite in hand, a respite from the respite, so to speak; for
I didn’t relish the prospect of breaking to Mrs. Maudsley the news
of my abrupt departure (which I had fixed in my mind for Thursday
at latest), nor did I know how I should get it to her, since she
was in bed. In bed my imagination could not reach her; she might as
well have been abroad.

  The explanation was, of course, that my letter had
been delayed. It would come by the second post.

  I spent most of the day with Marcus. We were on
excellent terms. Marcus had quite got over the irritation—or at any
rate the signs of it—that he may have felt with me on the score of
my late success; that wonder had not lasted the traditional nine
days and was now but sparingly referred to. We wandered rather
aimlessly about the park, speculating what the next term would
bring, testing each other’s vocabularies, bandying insults, and
offering each other physical violence, and sometimes walking arm in
arm. He told me many secrets, for he was shamelessly given to
gossiping, a thing I disapproved of but privately enjoyed. Contrary
to the proverb, I thought that tales out of school didn’t matter so
much. He told me about the coming ball, enlarging on its
splendours; he coached me in the part I should have to play. He
told me that Marian would bring me some white gloves from London—I
didn’t mind missing them, but ah, the bicycle, the green familiar
trailing after her: that rankled! He took a program from his pocket
and showed it me: Valse, Valse, Lancers, Boston, Barn Dance
(“that’s for old fogies like you,” Marcus obligingly explained;
“it’s out of fashion now”), Valse, Valse, Polka. Then supper, and
again Valse, Valse, and so on, down to Sir Roger de Coverley and
Galop.

  “But oughtn’t Galop to have two 1’s?” I asked.

  “Not in French, crétin,” Marcus told me crushingly.
“What a lot you have to learn! But I’m not sure we shall have Sir
Roger
and
a Galop: il est un peu provincial, vous savez,
to have both. We shall decide at the last moment. Papa will
probably give it out.” “And when will the news of the engagement be
given out?” I asked. “We may not give it out,” said Marcus; “we
rather think that we may let it
spread
. It won’t take long
to spread, I can tell you. But you and I will have been sent to bed
by then. They won’t let us stay up after twelve, out of respect for
your tender years, mon enfant. Oh, you are so yo—o—oung! “ he
carolled languishingly. “And do you know what you are as well?
“

  “No,” I said, unsuspectingly.

  “Well, don’t get angry, but you’re just a
teeny-weeny bit green,
vert
, vous savez.”

  I hit him and we fought for a bit.

  It was all most agreeable and most unreal, hearing
of these happenings in which I should take no part. Ever since I
came, the ball had loomed up as an obstacle to be got over somehow.
I was only just learning to dance, I couldn’t reverse properly, and
was sure I should acquit myself badly. But to imagine the ball
without being there was another matter.

  I didn’t feel that I was deceiving Marcus; such
dissimulation as I practised was necessary to my plan—my plan that
was to be for everybody’s good. Inconceivable as it seems to me
now, I was a man of action in those days, and in action I was a
realist for whom the end justified the means. My end, at any rate,
was irreproachable. It wasn’t like taking the messages, which could
only, I was convinced, end badly, and therefore Marian and Ted were
wrong to try to deceive me. Rather Wrong, Very Wrong? Wrong was not
a word I had much use for; the idea of Right and Wrong as two
gigantic eavesdroppers spying on my movements was most distasteful
to me. But surely something which might end in murder must be
wrong.

  So I listened unconcerned while Marcus talked about
the ball, but when, proceeding from the greater to the lesser, he
began to tell me of the preparations for my birthday (they were a
deadly secret, he informed me), I did have twinges of conscience.
And not only of conscience, but of regret. For everyone, it
appeared, had something for me; the green suit and its
accompaniments did not count—they had been strictly unbirthday
presents. “Another thing that’s worrying Mama,” said Marcus, “is
the cake. Not the cake itself, vous savez, mais les chandelles.
Mama is what do you call it, superstitious; she doesn’t like the
number thirteen—though of course everyone has to be thirteen some
time, especially you, you saignant baker’s dozen!”

  I thought this really witty and looked at Marcus
with a new respect.

  “But we’ve thought of a way out, only it’s too
secret to tell you, you’d blab to everyone. But the great moment,
the clou of the evening, if you can understand that, dunderhead,
will be when Marian gives you the bicycle. At the tolling of six
o’clock the doors will be thrown open and she’ll come in riding it,
and wearing tights, she says, if Mama will let her, which I doubt.
She may have to wear bloomers.”

  I closed my eyes against the enchanting vision and
for a moment my old feeling for Marian came back. Too late: the die
was cast. It was six o’clock on Tuesday, not on Friday, and at any
moment now the telegram would come.

  “Are bloomers safer than tights?” I asked.

  “Safer, good heavens no, but they’re not so
fast.”

  “But shouldn’t they be fast, for bicycling, I
mean?”

  “It’s not that kind of fast,” said Marcus, with
unexpected patience, “it’s the other kind, the kind that women are
who are not quite-quite. Men
can
be fast, I think, but
then it’s different. Bloomers were fast too, until a woman we knew
took to wearing them for bicycling in Battersea Park.”

  “I still don’t see why tights are faster,” I
confessed.

  “Eh bien, je jamais! Ask yourself!”

  I did, but got no answer.

  “And she wants to wear black tights, too.”

  “Are they worse?”

  “Of course they are, you owl! Much worse, Mama says.
Pas comme il faut—entièrement défendu.”

  The shadows lengthened, the light changed, taking on
its golden tint. The weather now obeyed the rules; at all times of
the day it was exactly what it should be. No caprices, no cloudings
over or threat of sudden storms. It was as good as its word, one
could rely on it. I have never known again— even abroad, even in
Italy—the meaning of “Set Fair.” It was as though the majestic
claims of science to absolute certainty had miraculously been
realized in the skies. This guaranteed serenity, as of a landscape
by Claude, had a curious effect on one’s spirits. One could ask for
nothing more, and the stirrings of discontent, instead of finding
an outlet in the weather, instead of finding their image in the
weather, were silently rebuked by it.