The Impressionist (42 page)

‘Goodbye,’ says Gertler.

‘Look, Paul,’ starts Jonathan. He wants to tell him about himself, to give him something true to go away with. But it is too complex even to begin. ‘Good luck,’ he ends lamely. They shake hands.

‘Give my regards to Oxford. Tell them I’m coming to burn it down.’

With that Paul Gertler is driven away. Jonathan goes back to his study and stares at the cleared desk, the half-empty bookshelf. He has rarely felt so lonely.

‘The orchidae,’ says Dr Noble, ‘can take many forms.’ A week has elapsed since Gertler’s expulsion, and he is twining strands of wire over a wooden block to make a perch for a new epiphyte. ‘They can also appear to be many things. Their folk names reflect this, based as they often are on a perceived resemblance, a connection between the flower and some other aspect of nature. I am thinking for example of the Dove Orchid, the Tiger Orchid, the charming Birds-in-Flight orchid, the various Slipper Orchids, and particularly of
Aceras anthropophorum,
the so-called Man Orchid, with its clusters of little yellow blooms that are so unavoidably reminiscent of the human body. Rather like the root of the mandrake, I suppose, though I am not aware of similar superstitions attaching themselves to this species.’

Jonathan passes him a pair of secateurs.

‘On the other hand, some orchids are actively deceitful. The Bucket Orchids entice insects with attractive sexual scents, trap them and only release them when they are freighted with pollen. The little fly’s desire is cruelly manipulated for the flower’s own purposes. Decadent and beautiful. And yet above them all we have you, my dear, so elegant and yet so debauched.’

Jonathan hears a dull shattering sound. Somehow he has knocked a flowerpot on to the wooden floor.

‘Clumsy, Bridgeman,’ says Noble, shaking his head. Jonathan goes down on his knees to pick up the shards of pot. As he scrabbles about by Noble’s worn brown Oxfords, he realizes the speech was addressed to the little terrestrial in the planter in front of them, whose bright petals are variegated yellow and red.

‘Ophrys apifera,
commonly known as the Bee Orchid. Yes, my darling. Of course I mean you. With your exact picture of a receptive female bee, your enticing perfume. Good enough to fool the poor lovelorn worker. Good enough to draw him in.’

Noble bends down from the little flower to watch Jonathan on the floor.

‘We are not born, Mr Bridgeman. We are made. I, for example, did not always feel myself possessed of a pedagogical destiny. I was one of the generation of ninety – hothouse flowers all of us. We lived for artificial paradises, the exotic, the bizarre. Yet, when it became clear that my picture of myself as an aesthete would not wash, I entered the classroom. So here I am, Mr Bridgeman. Here I am.’

He turns his attention back to the Bee Orchid, stroking the flower’s lush mock-insect lower lip with rapt affection.

‘Why strive for naturalism? That was our question. True art should never deny itself. Now, Bridgeman, Mr Hoggart has indicated to me that he is not happy to have you in his house. He believes that you and Paul Gertler exert a debilitating effect. What do you have to say to that?’

‘Sir? I haven’t done anything. Neither did Paul.’

‘Nor had
Paul. Gertler is gone, Bridgeman. He will perhaps find a more suitable place somewhere else. And as for not doing anything, that may be precisely the problem. Inaction breeds all manner of evils. When we have time to contemplate, we are at our most vulnerable. You are an interesting case, Bridgeman. At least I find you so. Mr Hoggart obviously disagrees. However, you must try to conceal certain things, and work harder at fitting in.’

‘I –’

‘I suggest cricket. And that is what I shall tell Mr Hoggart.

Now that your university place has been secured, your immediate purpose at Chopham Hall is achieved. None the less, this is not a time for self-congratulation. For your own good, your attention must still be held. Otherwise you run risks, Bridgeman. Terrible risks. Excessive inwardness. Sloth. This, you will understand, is a common problem, and one to which the English public-school system has over several centuries evolved a solution. Cricket is that solution, Bridgeman. You must turn your attention to bat and ball. Every aspect of cricket proves it a marvellous game: its formal rigour; its extended duration; the reduced colour-palette which presents us with a green and white world centred around a darting red dot. A stroke of genius, that, Bridgeman, proof of a higher intelligence! Cricket is a relic of a slower age, an age exquisitely tuned to the vibrations of the higher planes, an age which allowed itself leisure to contemplate the quiddity of time and space. Cricket, in its complexity, in its ornamental quality, might be termed the last flowering of the Baroque. What could be more elevating? A game like – like a perfect automaton, yet an automaton somehow infused with spirit. A game which refers both player and spectator outside themselves, harkening out beyond the veil of gross matter to the music of the spheres. What could be more beautiful? It is life itself!’

He sighs, and falls silent, letting his head rest on his hands. After a while he begins to weep gently on to the workbench. Jonathan watches him, shuffling his feet. Best leave, he thinks, and tiptoes out. Dr Noble obviously has things to consider.

For a game so gentle, cricket has a disastrous effect. As Jonathan walks out on to the field on the first sunny day of term, his eyes stream and his nose leaks a fine colourless mucus. Both are soon red from rubbing, and the sleeves of his white shirt slimy and wet. The whole afternoon is torture. It is impossible to concentrate on the game, which appears to be taking place some miles away through the watery haze. Placed in the outfield he has nothing to do but feel sorry for himself, and when, some hours later, he is called to the crease to bat, the first ball hits his stumps almost without him noticing, so wrapped up is he in his own wretchedness. As he walks back to the pavilion, the opposing team give him a desultory round of applause, kicking their boots together and smirking.

Hayfever is an entirely new experience. It comes as a shock, as if the English countryside is taking revenge, making some point about people who belong, and people who may pretend but whose bodies betray them. As term progresses he starts to dread Saturday games afternoons, reduced to hiding indoors with a book, feigning hand injuries or (India is helpful for this) sudden touches of fever. Naturally his performance on the field is dreadful, and there is never any danger of him being picked for a team.

Cricket is necessary but cricket is impossible. Impasse. The Gordian knot is sliced by Fox the historian.

‘A scribe, Bridgeman. A monk in the scriptorium. You shall be the keeper of memory.’

So Jonathan becomes scorer, sitting on the pavilion steps with a log book across his lap and a pile of metal number-plates by his feet. When he is left on his own the allergy mysteriously lessens, and he even starts to enjoy himself. Marking the progress of a game is a kind of meditation. He feels as if he has found his place in the cricketing world. Neither inside nor outside, participant nor uninvolved spectator, he becomes a minor recording god, observing the actions of others with dispassionate concentration, marking them down as dots or little figures in his oblong-gridded book. Not taking sides, he views the affairs of men at a distance, noting the manner of their passing – stumped, run out, caught behind – their victorious sixes and fours, joining the six domino dots of a perfectly bowled over into a single M or W.

Ball by ball, the summer term heads towards a conclusion. Besides the big score book, there is still his own recording. The first pocket book is filled up and a second started, with entries on
Victoria sponge, bumble bee, fair play
and
groundsman.
Sometimes the two marking processes seem to refer to each other, the secret decoding of the world and the distant observation of politely warring cricketers. They combine to suggest a grammar of behaviour, a social language which might be written down and read off again, one day in the far future allowing Chopham Hall to be reconstructed from traced patterns of dots and figures.

Sometimes Jonathan thinks of Paul. He has not written since his expulsion. Jonathan considers asking Dr Noble for his address, but does not. He tells himself that it would reflect badly, which is true, but this is not the real reason. He feels he failed his friend. By not defending him. By not telling him the truth.

This feeling is made worse one night, when Fender-Greene knocks on his study door. Jonathan hears him before he comes. The tell-tale squealings and bangings of a lusher being chased round the junior prep room float up through the floor, followed by a heavy lumbering climb. Fender-Greene is obviously drunk. He lurches into the study like a sleep-walker, one side of his shirt hanging over his trousers in a wrinkled white curtain.

‘Johnny? There you are, Johnny.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Johnny. There you are. No hard feelings Johnny-boy. Not between you and me.’

Jonathan says nothing.

‘No hard feelings, Johnny-boy. You’re a lovely fellow. And you like me, really, don’t you? You like me.’ He leans heavily on the mantelpiece for support.

‘Look here, Bridgeman. Come over here. You’re a lovely fellow. You always look so lovely.’

‘Stay away from me.’

‘You’re so lovely.’

‘Piss off, Fender-Greene.’

Fender-Greene takes a step forward, then sees the look in Jonathan’s eyes. He hesitates for a moment, swaying backwards and forwards on the hearthrug.

‘I’ll do you yet,’ he says. ‘I’m going to be up at Christ Church next year.’ Then he lurches back out of the door.

On Founders Day, the last day of term, Jonathan walks on the lawn between two and four and is not shouted at. Boys and parents mingle with one another, clinking teacups and mentally ranking each other in order of precedence. Mrs Dodd marshals her girls to and from the kitchen, carrying large plates of cucumber sandwiches, while a fifth-form string quartet saw up Mozart under a striped awning. Since Mr Spavin is not in attendance, Jonathan can wander through the crowd alone, enjoying the feeling of loosening bonds, of Chopham Hall slipping away from him brick by brick. Around him floats a shimmer of barbed conversation, Though Dr Noble stands on a podium and makes a speech about
long roads
and
example
, Jonathan does not feel the need to take notes. These are things he now understands, which have worked underneath his skin. Instead he slips away and stands alone in the hall, hands (defiantly, illegally) in pockets, idly examining the faded photographs lined in rows along the oak-panelled front corridor. Old school teams, their backs straight and arms folded, the chosen ones of rugby, association football, athletics and cricket, stretching back into distant sepia time. Rugby, association football, athletics –
cricket
. There in 1893. There, tall and hulking in his whites, face like a roughly split half brick, is
F.M.V. Bridgeman
. Father of. Hurriedly, he walks away, and so does not see, standing slight and school-uniformed beside eleven white-clad figures, a pale boy with a large leather-bound book. According to the legend he is
R.A. Forrester, scorer
. If you were to look closely, you would see that his eyes are misty with hayfever.

Bridgeman, J. P. (Barab.)

His father was in the
– I
think it was the Colonial Service. Wants to follow in his footsteps apparently, although how fooling around with a lot of
–
well, you know I don’t want to speak ill of theatricals, but
Midsummer Night’s Dream
is hardly the stuff that built the Empire, now is it? Oh of course you disagree. How could I have – yes, absolutely, the English character, absolutely – yes, yes I walked straight into it, but all the same I must say it’s not as though we sent Shakespeare over to civilize the benighted Hindoo. In a sense, perhaps yes. But no. No! Now really, Willoughby, I think you’re being deliberately obtuse
…