The Young Desire It (11 page)

Penworth laughed, a barking, Alma-Mater, wit-appreciating laugh.

‘Well—not of this sort. Why, don't you like it here?'

‘No. At least, not very much, sir. I do like it when you talk to me like this, though. It makes me alive again.' He realized as he spoke that Penworth had been speaking to him as though to an equal; and, perhaps for that, he felt in some way an equal. In what way that was, he did not understand. Well, he thought, it will not last. To-morrow morning I shall have to pretend that I don't know him any better than anyone else does.

But he was wonderfully heartened by such kind friendship, which was not feigned, as he knew very surely, and clearly hid no intention of doing him bodily insult.

Penworth put an arm round his shoulders and rocked him gently to and fro.

‘Like it, do you?' he said quietly.

Charles felt tears suddenly burn his eyelids, and knew his face was flushing, as it did in any strong emotion.

‘Yes, sir.'

Penworth looked for what seemed a long time into his eyes, with a steady, searching gaze, holding him closely with one arm round his shoulders. The pupils of his eyes were dilated darkly, as they might be in the passion of rage, or fear.

He pulled himself away miserably. A moment later Penworth had gone. There were sounds of people coming up the other stairway. He could hear the light tenor tones of the Master with the sculpted features and carven eyelids, making some small and very quaint remark. He went to the stair. Penworth was gone.

The feeling of tears was gone also. It would be good to go out through the heat of day, to have tea with Mr. Jones, now, in a place that looked like a home.

Charles's knowledge of world-creation had come to him from hearing read aloud parts of the Old Testament, which taught him in untroubling words that God had made the world in six days, and in the seventh had taken his ease in the front garden of His own creating; so that Charles imagined God as a full-bearded and venerable patriarch, and had never voluntarily approached the problem of creation to resolve it for himself. His thought was still largely shaped in immature and incoherent imagery; he knew, and was learning more widely, what things were pleasant and what were not; and the pleasant and unpleasant were gradually extending the scale of their degrees into subtlety and complexity, as he learned the positive and negative of life. As yet he was perhaps only looking through the spacious doorways of that real world where thought, conscious and deliberate and urgently objective, is exercised at large. The problem of God and of the world troubled him not, though its imagery was rich and pleasing.

If his knowledge of world-creation was mistaken but conscious, his understanding of that act of man-creation wherein lies our destiny was neither conscious nor existent at all. He supposed that man was an animal and did as they do, if he thought about it at all. His idea here was barren of all imagery and without warmth; he had watched creatures of the fields making sport in the gusty wind and sunshine of the brief spring, and understood that they did as they were supposed to do, and that it was good that they should. Once, when he was a few years younger, an older cousin, whom he seldom saw, one day watched a bull and a cow together in one of the fields near home, and, as he smacked his lips with all the appreciation of an enthusiastic connoisseur, he told Charles that so it was men and women behaved. To Charles at eleven years of age this was so obviously a fantastic fiction, and an unpleasant clumsy idea too, that he knew he was being deliberately lied to, and dismissed the whole thing from his mind with the thought that Dick, his cousin, was far from being grown-up yet, and therefore not likely to know. But as he himself grew older he understood that there must be some sort of physical agreement between all male and female creatures, including humans; but of what kind it was he still had no knowledge; so that his idea of love's physical desire and imperative intercourse was without an image, though love itself, as an extraordinary passion, he admitted and, in some Ariel-like, heavenly way, understood. From love of food he himself had progressed to love of colour; from that love to a joy in colour and form, and so to a love of life itself as it evidenced itself in colour and form. If, therefore, he should meet some girl who in colour and form mirrored the evidence of what he loved it might be supposed that he would love the reflection.

But as yet he knew nothing of this.

However, during that hot summer, and more noticeably since he had lived among boys and listened to the manly and experienced images in their talk, he was frequently aware at the back of his mind of a tightness in his own loins and a warmth there, as though some hot flower were about to break from the green bud, or some ripening fruit to burst and scatter rich juices through his whole body. Had this already happened and been assimilated into his widening self-consciousness before he came to the School, he might have made easier and happier progress through his first terms there; in the haunts of his untroubled solitude he might have explored his mind and body freely, secure and timeless.

His misfortune was to make the greatest of all discoveries, to become aware of his own manhood, in the School itself; and sleep, that had been his refuge and innocence, was now his concern, and for a long time haunted and troubled him. From those deepest depths some mysterious succuba flung him face-upwards into a dark and bewildered consciousness, and hot night bore down on him. The seconds-old memory of dreamed conflicting forms stretched repetitively in a chaotic perspective, confounding him; but in a while he fell asleep again, now tired and without thought beyond the innocent conviction that he had passed through a unique moment in that still dormitory. He may have been right.

So it came about that he took home with him a warm and lively secret, as well as a complete edition of the Shakespearian plays; two of the greatest discoveries of his life, happily made, and in his mind to be contemplated as one would contemplate the vast shores of a land unknown to the world, with wonder and longing. The Shakespeare he bought in town, during the time between his arrival from the School and the departure of the south-bound train in the late afternoon. The city was in a gloom of heat that broke in thunder and lightning, with a few wrung drops of rain falling like sweat from the straining sky. In honour of some occasion, flags were showing from the Post Office when he passed it after leaving the smoky darkness of the station; they hung lifeless, sultry flames of colour against its dusty stone, stirred now and then by gusts of wind from the north-east. In the dark unnatural glare of the afternoon, people's faces were green-white when they turned upwards to the sky as though in the fear of superstition; after the thunderstorm the air was still, and heavy traffic rumbled like the minor tone of drums, ominous and incessant.

Charles found his way after a time to the shop where some of his books had been bought. Here he was able to get the Shakespeare, complete in one volume of frail-looking India paper with red-cloth boards, for what seemed to him a small price. There was enough money left to make him consider what he might buy for his mother. Books were all about him, and in a confusion of titles he tried to think what she would like; she read many things, but he could not remember her choice nor decide upon her taste. Above a card printed THE LATEST FICTION spread long lines of bright-coloured volumes. He knew none of the authors' names; but after a great deal of hesitation he chose one of those, glad to be able to leave the shop at last and get the dazzling madness of dust-jackets out of his sight.

It was nearly time to catch his train. He walked back to the station as quickly as was possible in those crowded streets. The thunderstorm seemed to have increased the heat; his collar was sticky and perspiration made his shirt cling to his ribs. He thought how good it would be to get home again, after such noise and turmoil, after all those weeks; and his heart beat heavily and quick, as it had been beating since the beginning of the last morning class before that rowdy dinner in Hall. All that seemed very far away from him; yet it was with him, having already made him part of it; when he walked in the streets the School's badge on his hat and his grey coat pocket marked him out, labelled him and gave him, in the bright eyes of every schoolgirl, a degree and a background.

He found that he, too, was looking out for that badge. Several times boys he knew had passed him; once or twice hats were raised, as was proper in women's company, but they seemed not to look at him as they did it, and he supposed they must have seen him first. Once three merry-looking lads, one of whom was Saunders, called out to him as they swung past, upright, manly, busy giving the School's good name a polish up in the public memory. ‘Hullo, Foxy!' He turned his head to answer, but they were gone among the crowd.

At the station there was much bustling about and shouting. He redeemed his suitcase and ran along a platform. That might have been the train. He asked a porter.

‘Over the bridge, son—number six and you'll need to hurry.'

Charles thanked him breathlessly over his shoulder as he ran up the stairs. There it was. The rear end of a carriage was opposite him, and he climbed aboard. Along the corridor there was someone in each compartment; he hesitated, and hesitated again, and finally went into one. A corner seat welcomed him, and as he sat still, breathing quickly from so much haste and excitement, the rare smell of leather, smoke, burnt coal and a general humanity hung all about him. He began to feel calmer. When the train pulled out, gathering speed securely, he undid with hasty fingers the string of his parcel, and took up the book, thinking that never in his life had he known such a moment of rare happiness. Those covers were of red imitation leather; when it was stiffly open the dry, enchanting new-book smell came out from the leaves and conquered the hot odour of the carriage itself in his nostrils. Incredibly free and secure in that little space, he went through the mental actions of reading the words, but was not in them, and for the time they fell dead in his mind. His joy was to be among strangers who neither knew nor cared for him; the few other boys on the train, busy smoking cigarettes in a carriage of their own up near the engine, would not trouble him. These next few days were his; no one was to rob him of them. His heart grew big at the thought, and at the thought of how few they were.

An hour passed. Charles, with the carriage now to himself, continually interrupted his mechanical reading to look out beyond the spinning foreground to the hills in the distance. The line was coming nearer to them; they changed from pale blue to grey, from grey to dull green. Far off, their flanks burned grey and russet in the red evening sun. Now and then he could see the sharp, cool flash of water in the shadow of a valley. As time passed they became blue again, and appeared very remote and lonely in the level western light. Held in the opposite windows, the sun was already running along behind the tree trunks, keeping pace inexorably with the train. There was no cloud now; the heat was easing, but at every stop the merciless
obbligato
of the cicadas, rising clamorously as sunset drew down, made the sudden human voices in that stillness seem false and unreal.

There was a change of train. He found himself in an uncomfortable little box of a carriage, full of the blood-red dregs of sunset light. Another boy followed him in; that was Forrester, whose large and humble eyes reminded Charles of one of the cows that were even then being driven along a dusty road past the station, on their way out from the evening milking.

‘Do you mind much, me getting in?' Forrester asked, and Charles felt awkward as he said of course he did not. He stared at the neat badge on pocket and hat-band, and remembered that he too was wearing it.

‘I was up in another carriage,' Forrester said. His thick, plump face was red and marked.

‘Oh. Did they give you a good time?'

‘They chucked me round a bit when I said I didn't smoke. I didn't want to smoke, and they tried to make me; and other things too…you know.'

‘You were a fool to let them,' Charles said, surprised at his own unconcern. Forrester had made his explanation in a voice which suggested pride as well as a vaccine humility. Charles looked at him and said nothing more. Unknown to him, that same sort of treatment had already made him resent any mention of it by another. He would not speak of it himself. To have done that would have been to admit his own dislike and fear, which he intended never to do. It was as though speaking of it, putting it into words, gave it a power over him.

Forrester talked on, rather more freely now that they had left the station. Looking at him, Charles remembered to have heard him crying in his bed at night, once, during the first week of term. That again he mistrusted, feeling at the same time guilty for not being spontaneously sorry for him. Why should the fellow cry? What did he know of unhappiness? He was a flabby sort, with round cheeks and round red lips; one who fed himself well, Charles knew; a born butt for the more active minds and hands of others. Friendliness towards him made him become alarmingly familiar; Charles, having once tried friendship, had realized his mistake, which shocked him more than his immediate protective aloofness had hurt Forrester. Forrester was always the same.

The train rattled on, and the sun set in a final burst of heatless ruddy light. Above the orange radiance of the horizon, the sky was a colour of lemons, paling upwards through faint green to blue. The infinite sadness of the bush country at evening came into the carriage like a sigh; silence swept in a wave over the world. At length even Forrester was quiet, contenting himself with a blind gaze out through the open window, which let in a stream of air whose speed gave it the illusion of coolness. Against that western colour all the trees were as charred as though its fire had consumed them. Crickets took up the cicadas' song in a melancholy key that emphasized the vast silence of stopping-places where milk-cans rattled and beside the carriage could be heard the steady rip-rip of browsing beasts; in the east, where the sympathetic light was dying slowly above the line of purple hills, Charles saw the first stars come out.