The Go-Between (34 page)

  But I reached my bedroom at last, and this is what I
read:

  My Darling Boy,

  I hope you won’t be disappointed at not getting a
telegram and I hope you won’t be disappointed by this letter.

  Your letters both came by the same post, wasn’t it
strange? It took me a minute or two to discover which had been
written first. In the first you begged me to let you stay on an
extra week because you were so happy —and I can’t tell you how I
enjoyed hearing about the cricket and the songs, and how proud of
you it made me. Then in the second letter you said you weren’t at
all happy, and would I send you a telegram asking Mrs. Maudsley to
send you back. Well, my darling, I couldn’t bear to think you were
unhappy, and I needn’t tell you how much I miss you, at all times
when you are away, and not only at your birthday, though especially
then. So before I began my morning jobs I started off for the post
office to send the telegram. But on the way it seemed to me that
perhaps we were both acting in haste, which is seldom wise, is it?
I remembered that only a few hours before you wrote the second
letter you said you were happier than you had ever been in your
life, and this hurt me a little, I confess, because I hope you have
been happy here too. And I wondered what could have happened in a
few hours to make you feel so different and wondered if you hadn’t
exaggerated something a little—we all do that at times, don’t
we?—it’s what’s called make a mountain out of a molehill. You said
it was because you had to run errands and take messages, and you
didn’t like doing that. But I seem to remember you once enjoyed
taking them and besides, my darling, we can’t always do what we
like. I think it would be ungrateful to Mrs. Maudsley after all her
kindness to you if you were to grudge her this small service. [My
mother quite understandably assumed that the “they” of my letter
referred to Mrs. Maudsley.] It’s very hot here too, and I have
often felt anxious for you, but you have always told me you enjoyed
the heat, especially since Miss Maudsley gave you the thin suit
(I’m longing to see it, and you in it, my darling, you do believe
that, don’t you? though I’m not sure that green is
quite
the right colour for a boy). You have often walked more than four
miles at home (once you walked all the way to Fordingbridge and
back, do you remember?) and I am sure that if you took things
very quietly
and didn’t run, as you sometimes do, making
yourself unnecessarily
hot
, you wouldn’t find the walks
too much for you.

  You said that what you were doing might be wrong,
but, my darling, how could it be? You told me Mrs. Maudsley never
misses going to church and all the family and the visitors go too,
and that you have family prayers every day, which isn’t the case in
all
large houses, I feel quite sure (or even in small
ones!), so I
can’t
think she would want you to do anything
wrong —besides, what
can
be wrong in taking a message? But
I do think it would be rather wrong, though of course not
very
wrong (you
aie
a funny old thing! ) if you
even
showed
her that you didn’t want to go. She wouldn’t
be angry, I feel sure, but she’d be
puzzled
and wonder
what sort of home life you had had.

  But of course, I do know that the heat knocks one up
(it isn’t “grate,” my darling, it’s “great”—I never knew you spell
that wrong before—”grate” heat would be something quite different)
and I am sure that if you went to Mrs. Maudsley and explained
things to her, and asked her
very nicely
if someone else
could take the messages, she would say yes. You told me more than
once that there are twelve servants in the house; surely she could
spare one of them to go? But I expect she has no idea that you
don’t like going—indeed, I rather hope she hasn’t.

  My darling, I do hope that you won’t feel
disappointed and hurt with me, but I do think it would be a
mistake
for you to leave so suddenly. They wouldn’t
understand, and might think me a spoilt and unreasonable
mother!—which I am, my darling, but don’t want to be in this
instance. From what you have told me about them, they would be very
nice friends for you in after life. I hope this doesn’t sound
worldly, but we have to be worldly sometimes; your father didn’t
care about social life, but I think he made a mistake, and since he
died I haven’t been able to do much in the way of making friends
for you. I should like to ask Marcus here— but I don’t know how we
should entertain him—he must be used to
such
grand
ways!

  The ten days will soon pass, and so, my darling, I
think we ought to be
patient
. I say this to myself as much
as to you, for I long to see you and the sweetest part of your dear
letter was where you said you were looking forward to coming home.
But we can’t expect to be happy
all
the time, can we? We
both know that. Perhaps it wouldn’t be good for us to be. And you
are like your mother, sometimes up and sometimes down. I remember
only a little while ago you were rather unhappy because some bigger
boys teased you for using a long word, but you soon forgot about it
and were as happy as ever. I feel sure that by the time this
reaches you, you will be feeling so much happier that you will
wonder how you ever came to write the letter.

  Good-bye, my darling, darling boy. I shall write
again for your birthday and send you a little present; my real
present I am keeping until you come back. I wonder if you can guess
what it is.

  With all my love, my precious Leo,

  Your loving

  MOTHER

  xxxxx

  PS. What a long letter! But I thought you would like
to know
exactly
how I felt. I do think it would be a
mistake if you left now. All this will be an
experience
for you, my darling.

  Children are more used than adults to having their
requests met by a flat refusal, and also less capable of taking the
refusal philosophically. In spite of the reasonableness of its
tone, my mother’s letter amounted to a flat refusal, and as such it
not only blocked my mental view, it utterly disorientated me. I
literally did not know what to do next, in the smallest particular:
I did not know whether to stay in my bedroom or go out of it. I
should have liked to talk to somebody about my plight, but
instinctively dismissed this desire before it was formulated; I
could talk to no one. To be a nonconductor was my function: I was a
Tower of Silence on which lay whitening the bones of a dead
secret—no, not dead in that sense, but very much alive and
death-dealing and fatal.

  Or so I thought. For with my mother’s letter cutting
off escape, the perilous aspect of the situation again rose before
me; it was, in fact, the only aspect I could see.

  Soon from pure restlessness I left my room. Half
hoping, half dreading I should meet someone, I wandered about the
premises at the back, the wash-house, the dairy, the various
outbuildings whose purpose I hardly knew but whose placid, normal
functioning somehow reassured me; I even paid a half-hearted visit
to the rubbish-heap. I tried to accustom myself to the feel of my
new position, bring myself into harmony with it, as one does when
wearing a new suit; but I couldn’t. Some servants passed me and
smiled. I wondered how they were able to go about their jobs so
tranquilly, as if everything was just as it had been and should be
and no calamity was pending. From there I made my way towards the
front of the house, furtively, keeping behind trees and bushes,
until at last I heard the sounds of croquet on the lawn, and
voices, too far away from me to distinguish the speakers. I
wondered if Marian had come back.

  As far as I had a purpose, it was to avoid being
alone with her. She, I dimly realized, was the rock on which I had
split. Ted had frightened me more, perhaps, but she had hurt me
more; with men, as with boys, I knew more or less where I was: I
did not expect them to be nice to me. Schoolboys have a much
clearer perception of one another’s characters than grown-ups have,
for their characters are not obscured by a veil of good manners:
they deal in hard words, they have no long-term policy, as men
have, for asserting themselves, they prefer short profits and quick
returns. Ted was like a schoolboy, angry one moment, good-humoured
the next. I did not feel, until the end, that he had any greater
regard for me than one thrusting male has for another, and I was
prepared to take him on those terms; and though I idealized him,
and myself in him, I had sunk no great capital of confidence in
him.

  But in Marian I had. Against her I had no such
defences. She was my fairy godmother. She combined the roles of
both fairy and mother: the magical benevolence of the one, the
natural benevolence of the other. I had no more imagined that she
could turn against me than that the good fairy of a fairy story
could turn against the hero she protected. But she had, and so had
my real mother: that was a betrayal, too. The difference was that
Mother did not know what she was doing and Marian did.

  So my policy was to keep clear of her. I knew that
it was shortsighted and that I should have to see her some time, if
only to give her Ted’s message. And as to that I was gradually
coming to a conclusion that needed more resolution than anything I
had yet done at Brandham Hall. I did not know if I should be able
to bring myself to do it when the moment came; but it was the
logical outcome of seeing myself as the pivot of the situation: I
and only I could make the machinery break down, and if the
machinery broke down, so would the situation. On one thing I was
determined, that I would take no more messages.

  Our first meeting was uneventful. Marian was at
dinner, but she had brought two guests down with her; the table had
lengthened again, the talk was general. She smiled at me as she
used to and teased me a little across the table; then Marcus and I
went off to bed.

  Next morning, Thursday morning, Mrs. Maudsley
appeared at breakfast. She greeted me warmly—no, not warmly, for
warmth was not in her nature, but with a full and flattering sense
of what was due to a guest who had been unavoidably but most
regrettably neglected. I studied her, looking for symptoms of
hysteria, but could detect none. She was paler, I thought, than she
had been, but she was always pale; her glance still had its special
quality of not travelling but arriving, and her movements were as
deliberate as ever. Yet tension had returned to the breakfast
table; again I was afraid of making an awkward gesture, of spilling
something, of drawing unfavourable attention to myself. And after
breakfast, instead of the relaxation of the past three days, the
feeling of beginning the day on low gear, there came her voice, at
which other conversation died, and the ominous “Now,
today
...”

  As Marcus and I were going out he whispered to me
wickedly: “The awe-mongers have come back,” and I tittered, but at
the disloyalty, not at the joke. I was going to reply when a voice
behind us said: “Marcus, I want to borrow Leo from you for a
moment,” and I found myself following Marian.

  I can’t remember where the interview took place, but
I know that it was indoors and that the usual feeling one has that
someone might come in was absent.

  She asked me how I had been getting on without her
and I said: “Very well, thank you,” which I thought safe and
noncommittal, but it didn’t please her, for she said: “That’s the
first unkind speech I’ve heard you make.” I hadn’t meant it
unkindly and a man would not have thought it was unkind, yet
immediately I felt contrite and began to wonder how I could
propitiate her. She was wearing a new dress; I had got to know the
others and noticed the difference. “Did you enjoy yourself?” I
asked. “No,” she replied. “Someone asked me out to dinner, but I
felt more like dying than dining. I missed Brandham every minute.
Did you miss me?”

  I was thinking what I should answer, for I didn’t
want to be caught out a second time, when she said: “Don’t bother
to say yes if you didn’t.” She said this with a smile, and I said
untruthfully: “Of course I did,” and as I said it I half thought I
had; at any rate I wished I had. She sighed and said: “I expect you
think me a ghastly old governess, don’t you?—slanging you and
calling you names. But I’m not really—really I’m a good-natured
girl.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this; was she saying
she was sorry, as Ted had? Only once before had I known her to
apologize, except for something entirely accidental, like treading
on somebody’s toes. And this was her sole reference to the episode:
she seemed to regard it as closed.

  “I suppose you went about with Marcus?” she asked.
“Did you get into any mischief?”

  “Oh no,” I answered righteously. “We talked
French.”

  “French!” she said. “I didn’t know that French was
one of your accomplishments. What a lot you can do—singing,
cricket, French!” Her beautiful eyes searched me for a weak spot
and found it.

  But I was wary, I only said: “Marcus is much better
at French than I am. He knows the irregular verbs.”

  “Very irregular, I dare say,” Marian said. “But
anyhow you enjoyed yourself?”

  “Oh yes,” I said politely. “I’m sorry you
didn’t.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said surprisingly, “you’re not
sorry in the least. You couldn’t care if I dropped dead in front of
you. You’re a hard-hearted little boy, but then, all boys are.”

  Although she made it sound a compliment, and I would
rather have been called hard-hearted than soft-hearted, I didn’t
altogether relish this. But I couldn’t tell if Marian was
serious.