Three Brothers (10 page)

“You can’t just dismiss them.”

“Yes I can. They’re pathetic. What does it matter to me that I’m living in the 1960s? Does that make anything so different?”

They had come to the fields outside Grantchester. “Sunday is the worst day,” Daniel said. “Don’t you feel it? It is so empty. So melancholy.”

“Now who’s the romantic?”

When the bell rang for dinner in Hall that evening, Daniel put on his black gown and walked down his staircase. The bell might have signalled a funeral.

“Squeeze in, dear.” Ernest Hughes was a plump young man who believed that he bore a resemblance to Oscar Wilde, whom he called “Oscar.” “There’s always room for one more. If there is semolina again, I shall scream.”

This prompted a snigger from Stanley Askisson, a young man from the north who had a great affection for the novels of D. H. Lawrence. Ernest looked at his soup with a placid expression. “Don’t you think, Stanley—”

“I do think.” He sniggered again. “Don’t I think I should be more polite?”

“Don’t you think that we should bring back the sedan chair?”

“Don’t talk shite.”

“I happen to believe it is the perfect form of transport.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Oh dear.”

“There’s a difference between me and you, Ernest. Not in money. Not in class. Not in brains. I have my gods. You have your gods.”

“Oscar said that gods are vulgar.”

“Oscar Wilde was a great fat insect. A spider.”

Ernest blinked and breathed hard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know a fake when I see one. He was false. False to himself, and false to others. Each man kills the thing he loves. I don’t think so.” He was very fierce. “Not unless that love is unnatural and obscene.”

Ernest now seemed close to tears. He put his spoon in the soup and said nothing. Daniel enjoyed sitting beside Stanley. He savoured his presence, and would from time to time lean over so that their bodies briefly touched.

The conversation, formal and hesitant, turned to a new album by a rock group of whom Daniel had never heard. “I hate that capitalist shit,” Stanley said.

“Capitalist? What’s so capitalist about entertaining the people?”

“The people? The people are fuckers.”

Daniel and Stanley went together to the college bar. “Hughes is a slug,” Stanley said. “He leaves a trail of slime. He uses words without knowing their meaning. He is all pretence.”

“I don’t mind him,” Daniel replied.

“Oh you don’t mind anything. You don’t mind the world. You want to get on in it.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Daniel experienced a sudden sharp surge of anger. No one had ever made him angry before.

“What’s wrong with it? Wherever you look, there’s hypocrisy. There’s sham. No one ever dares speak the truth. Say what they really think.”

Daniel felt that Stanley was accusing him of some crime
that he was not aware he had committed. “Why do you think I want to get on?”

“Because you’re weak.”

“Like Hughes?”

“No. Not like that. He is weak in the soul, in the life force. You are weak in the mind.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know yourself. So you don’t trust yourself.”

Again Daniel felt the anger rising within him. He felt threatened. He felt that he was being goaded. “I don’t know how you can say that.”

“I am not attacking you. I am attacking the false you. The false Daniel Hanway who works too hard and is nervous all the time.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Cruel to be kind. That’s the phrase, isn’t it?” Stanley went over to the bar, and brought back two more pints of lager. “Sup up,” he said. “Where I come from, we can drink that down in two minutes.” He had a cheerful grin that Daniel had not noticed before. “You mustn’t take me too seriously.”

Another student came up to them. “Have either of you got a copy of
Troilus and Criseyde
?” They shook their heads. “Oh well. Thought I’d ask.” When he walked away, they sat in silence for a few moments.

“Why is it,” Stanley asked him, “that we are all so uneasy with each other?”

“Lack of confidence?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ve been looking for some ideal friend. Some companion.” Daniel had been hoping to say this for some time. “But I’ve found no one.”

“I don’t think,” Stanley said, “that I’ll make it to thirty. I won’t survive that long. I’ll burn the years away. I’m always
going to be poor. I know it. But I don’t mind that. Poverty sings.” His eyes were very bright; he was looking away, over Daniel’s shoulder, with an expression of eagerness upon his face. “I don’t think I could stand to live for very long. It just gets harder all the time.”

“I know what you mean,” Daniel said. “Everything is difficult. I can’t look forward at all without shuddering.”

“Shudder. That’s a good word. Like slither.”

“Or mother.”

Stanley looked perplexed. “Now that’s a strange association. What have you got against your mother?”

“Nothing. I haven’t seen her for ten years.” Then he told him the story of his mother’s disappearance. He had never discussed it with anyone before. But in the company of Stanley he wanted to make an emotional impression; he wanted to convince him that in some way he had been deprived of love. In the telling of the story he feigned more hurt and surprise than he believed he felt. But his words were more truthful than he realised.

They were sitting in a corner of the bar, within an alcove on the walls of which were various
film noir
posters. Daniel had fallen silent after explaining how his father had never mentioned his mother again. Stanley then bent forward and kissed him on the lips. There was no one else near them. Daniel’s eyes widened, and he looked at Stanley in astonishment. Then he returned the kiss with such passion that he bit Stan’s lip. “Be careful,” Stanley said curtly. And then he added, “I don’t want this thing to happen. But it will happen.”

Daniel was still breathless. He was shaking with nervous excitement. “Do you want us to?” Stanley nodded. “I never thought—I never knew—”

“That I was queer? Well, I am. Sort of. And I am not. I knew you were. As soon as I saw you.” Daniel blushed.

They determined to keep their liaison a secret. It was not difficult. Their contemporaries would never have recognised or understood a relationship of this kind—it was beyond any possible range of their experience. Ernest Hughes may have sensed something—in a look, or in a gesture—but he said nothing. Sometimes he pursed his lips and looked superciliously at Daniel; but Daniel looked back at him with as innocent an expression as he could muster.

Daniel had hoped that in Stanley Askisson he had found his ideal companion, but he was soon disenchanted. There were many times when Stanley was curt and angry with him; Daniel came to dread his harangues. Their lovemaking was often awkward and unsatisfactory. Stanley would lie on his back, looking up at the ceiling, while Daniel would try to arouse him; when he did not succeed, he felt humiliated. Stanley would pick arguments with him, and even insult him.

“This is your life,” he said one day. He picked up a sheet of paper, and drew a series of squares with a pencil. “You are in a box every hour of every day. Work. Work.” He stabbed each square with the pencil. “I feel sorry for you. I pity you.”

“You want me to be more like you, I suppose.”

“You arrange your hours as if you were in some sort of military campaign. But who precisely is the enemy?” Daniel was silent. “Come on. Get out of your box. Let’s go for a walk.”

They competed with each other in their studies. One afternoon Daniel entered Stan’s room in order to see what books he was reading and what essay he was preparing. He wanted to look at his notes. “What are you doing here?” Stanley had come in unexpectedly.

“I was waiting for you.”

“So why are you going through my papers?” Daniel had disordered them on the desk.

“I was curious.”

“You were spying on me.”

“Why?” The word stuck somewhere in his throat.

“So that’s it.
I
am your enemy.”

“No. Of course not.” He did not sound convincing.

Their supervisor, Eric Hamilton, was an academic who had spent his career in the college. Despite all the appurtenances of middle age, including a brown tweed jacket and a pipe, he looked oddly boyish. His clothes were always crumpled. The bottoms of his fawn trousers were spattered with mud, after his bicycle ride to the college from his small terraced house in Trumpington Street. He had a habit of tilting his head to one side, listening with a slight smile to his students’ remarks.

“It seems to me,” he said in one morning supervision, “that
Volpone
comes from a city vernacular tradition.” It seemed to Daniel that half of his sentences began with “it seems to me that.” “What is the phrase Jonson employs? ‘Language that men do use.’ That is the vibrant thing. I would like to say that this has the sheer edge of actuality. Felt life. Do you see?”

Daniel had no idea what he was trying to say, and simply continued reading his essay in which Hamilton took no particular interest. Hamilton seemed more ready to listen to Stanley Askisson, however, who could talk about felt life and the vibrant thing for as long as was necessary. Daniel sensed the favouritism, and resented it.

So he retreated to the safety and the silence of the university library. He became known to the staff, and was told that there would be summer work in the understaffed accessions department. “You are very familiar with books,” the sub-librarian said. “Not to mention keen on them. We can do with you.”

Daniel put his name forward, for work in the vacation, and was accepted. He was also allowed to keep his room in college during the summer months. He wrote a short letter to
his father, announcing the good news, and prepared himself joyfully for a summer of toil. Stanley Askisson was going back to his mother’s house in Hartlepool.

And so the summer passed. He hardly noticed it. After finishing work in the library he drank alone, most evenings, in a small pub close to the college which was used by a local population of shopkeepers, workmen and retired couples. No one from the college or the wider university frequented it. He sat in the back parlour, drinking pints of bitter.

One evening, late that summer, a stranger walked into the pub and ordered a pint of cider. “Is anyone sitting here?” he asked Daniel, pointing to the bench beside him. Daniel shook his head. “Ta.” He had thick dark hair, swept back and rendered glossy with brilliantine; he seemed to Daniel to have a coarse but pleasing face, with a day or two’s growth of stubble. “Your very good ’ealth,” he said, raising his glass.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. I won’t.” He drank down some cider, and sighed. “That’s sweet. That’s the ticket. What do you do then?”

“I’m an undergraduate.”

“Ah. An
undergraduate
.”

“What do you do?”

“This and that. Sometimes this, and sometimes that. Sometimes both together.” He tapped the side of his nose. “You’re queer, aren’t you?”

Daniel was alarmed and embarrassed. “What makes you think that?”

“The way you looked at me. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind queers. I like them. What do you study?”

“English literature.”

“
Lit
erature? Is that a fact? What’s your name?”

“Daniel.”

“Pleased to meet you, Dan.” He held out his hand. “I’m Sparkler.”

“That’s a strange name.”

“You can call me Spark or Sparkie or Sparkle. I’m quick, you see.” The young man now held up Daniel’s watch. “Never shake hands with a stranger, Dan.”

“How did you do that?”

“It’s a gift, isn’t it. Can you keep a secret?” Daniel nodded. “Let’s go to another pub.” When they got outside Sparkler turned the corner and led him into the back yard. “Look,” he said. He plunged his hands into his pockets, and brought out watches and wallets.

Daniel was astonished. “Are you a thief?”

“That’s right. A tea-leaf. I came down here because the coppers don’t know me.” He stuffed the objects back into his pockets. “Let’s move.”

Daniel walked with him in a state of some bewilderment. He found himself enjoying the company of this good-looking young man, and was in fact exhilarated at the thought of his being a petty criminal. “How long,” he asked him, “have you been doing—”

“The thieving? Ever since I was that high. I’m a natural, aren’t I? It’s my calling. I get to travel. I’m my own boss. I don’t pay no tax.”

“Have you ever been caught?”

“Caught?
Caught?
Can you catch a firefly? You can catch fleas, I know, but not with your hands you can’t. No more can they catch me. You ask too many questions, under
graduate
.” He laughed, and put his arm around Daniel’s shoulders, causing him a shock of pleasure. “You’ve got to be hard. Hard and smart. And
quick
. These mods aren’t hard. They’re all flannel. You’re a Londoner, aren’t you?”

“Camden.”

“Why is a London boy doing literature, then?”

“I just like it.”

“Can you write good English?”

“I hope so.”

“Let’s go in here.” Sparkler took his arm from Daniel’s shoulders, and led him into another pub. “Two of your very finest pints, landlord,” he said as he went up to the bar. “I feel a terrible thirst coming on me. Makes me see red.”

“Pints of what exactly?”

“Two pints of Bulmer’s best. My young friend here insists on the best. Now then, gentlemen. I have a pack of cards about me somewhere.”

“No betting allowed,” the landlord said.

“No bets. No bets. Just a bit of harmless fun.” Then he performed a card trick, to the delight of the locals, before retiring with the two glasses to a corner of the pub where Daniel was sitting. “Keep them happy,” he said. “And then they don’t ask questions. They accept you. So you can write good English, can you?”

“Yes. I can.”

“I have a load of stories to tell, don’t I? You can write them down for me. How many pockets can a pickpocket pick before he pips Sparkler? I’ll give you something in return.” He winked at him, and then stretched his legs beneath the table. Daniel’s mouth went dry, and with trembling hand he raised his glass and drank from it. “This is what we’ll call it. The Sparkler Papers.”