both the warmth and the assertiveness to lodge arrows in
others' hearts, and indeed it did not occur to me to try. I
simply took people as I found them and left it at that.
During the summer term at Bradfield there were three halfholidays
a week. Cricket was not compulsory after the end of
one's second year and one was free to roam the local countryside,
with or without a bicycle. To be alone suited me, and I
gained official approval for my ways by going in for wild
flowers and bird photography, once winning a prize in the
annual scientific exhibition with a small display of my better
pictures. I remember a lucky one of a heron alighting on its
nest, which attracted praise from several of the staff. For
organized games I had neither taste nor aptitude, though I
did get my colours for fencing. The sabre meant little to me,
but in the more delicate, precise discipline of foil and epee I
found satisfaction and even delight. The masked opponent,
reciprocal rather than adverse, the rectangle of alert judges,
the metallic slither and tap of the blades, the sudden, irrupt14
ing cry of 'Stop!', followed by the umpire's detailed resume
and adjudication: these, controlled, formal and dignified,
comprised for me all that a sport should be.
Swimming, too, I greatly enjoyed. I was never a competitive
swimmer, but came to love the solitude and rhythm of
unhurriedly covering a long distance in the same way as one
might go for a walk. On fine summer mornings I often used
to get up at six for the pleasure of strolling down through
the marshes and swimming half a mile in the almost-deserted
bath: no sound penetrating the splash and tumble of water
against the ear; no disturbance of the regular accord of limbs
and breathing. Coming out, I sometimes used to indulge the
fancy that I had actually made - created - the swim, so that
it was now standing, like a wood-carving or painting, in
some impalpable, personal pantheon. Chess I learned, and
put a fair amount of effort into, but contract bridge, more
social and gregarious, had little appeal.
One might almost say that I studied to be a nonentity at
Bradfield, leaving unsought, through a kind of natural diffidence,
any opportunity to distinguish myself or become a
'blood'. Certainly I rejected the only real chance that came
my way of showing myself to possess an unusual gift.
It happened in this way. During my third summer - that
is to say, when I was sixteen and, having taken my '0' levels
the previous year, had begun to specialize in modern languages
- one of the assistant science masters, a man named
Cook, let it be known that he was interested in extra-sensory
perception and was looking for volunteers to help him to
carry out some experiments. Naturally there was a fair flow
of applicants, all but a few of whom Cook turned down.
Probably he was afraid less that his leg would be pulled by
hoaxers than that over-enthusiasm would mislead people
into tackling the business without proper detachment and in
an un-scientific way. He was after cool heads and turnip
temperaments - boys not likely to act the prima donna or
make an ego-trip out of anything unusual which might happen
to show up.
Although I was now officially a fifth-form modern linguist
I still had, in my spare time, a fair amount to do with the
15
scientific side, on account of my natural history activities. It
had not occurred to me to volunteer for Cook's scheme, but
he himself tackled me one day in the labs, and, as they say,
twisted my arm. 'I need steady, unexcitable people', he said.
'You might be just the chap, Desland.' It sounded harmless
enough and no particular trouble. I agreed to oblige him,
though without any particular enthusiasm.
I remember little about the tests with numbered cards,
dice and so on. I don't think they yielded anything much. In
any case Cook was reticent about his actual findings - rather
like a doctor who questions you on your symptoms but carefully
shows no reaction to your answers. Perhaps he had been
cautioned by the headmaster to see that boys didn't become
excited or 'silly' over the business. However that may be, I
had already become rather bored with the whole thing when
one Friday he asked me to tea at his home the following
afternoon, together with a boy in 'B' House, whom I knew
slightly, by the name of Sharp.
Cook's wife, a strikingly pretty girl who took an active
part in College life and was much admired by the older boys,
gave us an excellent tea and made herself most agreeable.
While she was clearing it away, Cook continued chatting.
Evidently he was waiting for her to rejoin us, for as soon as
she had done so he said that he'd asked us to come because
he was keen to try one or two experiments of a rather different
kind.
'I don't know whether you've ever heard of this,' he said,
'but one school of thought has it that there are people with a
kind of extra-sensory perception - or at any rate, some sort
of hitherto-unexplained faculty - which tends to come out
more strongly in connection with anything sinister or lethal
- anything evil, if you like. You know, Gaelic second sight
into disaster and all that.'
He went on to tell us about an eighteenth-century 'murder
diviner', who apparently is said to have enabled the authorities
to follow two criminals to Marseilles, where they were
arrested for a crime committed in Paris. I have never felt
any inclination to find out more about this case and all I
16
can remember of it is the little that Cook told us that day.
'Anyway,' he concluded, smiling, 'I'm not going to ask either
of you to divine a murder, so don't worry. What I've got in
mind is something completely harmless. Perhaps you
wouldn't mind waiting in the next room for just a short time,
Desland, while we get to work on Master Sharp.'
Between five and ten minutes later Sharp came in to call
me back. In reply to my raised eyebrows he whispered, 'Absolute
balls. Still, decent tea, wasn't it? To say nothing of Ma
Cook.'
He returned with me into the drawing-room, where the
first thing I saw was a row of five identical lab. beakers standing
in a row on the table, each half-full of a colourless liquid.
Cook did his usual piece about banishing volition, making
the mind a blank and so on, and then said, 'Now, Desland,
four of these are full of water and one of sulphuric acid. My
wife's going to drink from each in turn. She doesn't know
which is which any more than you do. Speak up if you get
the idea that she's starting on the acid. If you don't I shall, of
course.'
There was nothing at all dramatic about what followed. I
had no odd premonitions, no visions of Mrs Cook writhing
in agony or anything of that sort. She poured some of the
first beaker into a
tumbler and drank it, and as she was pouring
another dose out of the second I had a vague but perfectly
straightforward feeling that it would be better if she
let it alone; rather as one feels when someone is about to
open a window which will let in the rain, or put a hot dish
down on a polished table. I waved my hand rather hesitantly
and said, 'Er -.'
'That's right,' said Cook at once. 'Now, can you tell me
what exactly came into your mind, Desland?'
I replied, 'Nothing, sir. Just - well - nothing, honestly.'
'But is it really sulphuric acid, sir?1 asked Sharp. Cook
tore off a strip of blue litmus and dipped it into the beaker.
It turned red as smartly as anyone could wish.
'Would you care to try it again, Desland?' he asked. I felt
no particular pleasure or satisfaction in what had happened
17
and was already beginning to wonder how to persuade Sharp
to keep quiet about it in College; but I could hardly refuse,
so I went outside again while Cook set the thing up.
This second time I felt completely bored and switched-off,
and simply sat enjoying the sight of Mrs Cook as she bent
forward to pick up the various beakers. In fact I had, in an
odd way, forgotten what we were all supposed to be doing,
when I suddenly realized that she had just drunk from the
fifth and last beaker. I suppose I must have shown some sort
of alarm, because Cook immediately jumped up and put a
hand on my shoulder.
'Don't worry,' he said. 'They were all water that time. I
played a trick on you; but you - or whatever it is - weren't
taken in, were you? Very interesting, Desland. Can you tell
us anything now about the way you felt?'
'No, I can't, sir,' I answered - much too brusquely for a
boy speaking to a master, 'and if you don't mind, I'd rather
not do any more just for the moment.'
I had begun to have a vague feeling, first of anxiety though
of what I had no idea - and secondly that Cook had
no - well, I suppose no moral business to be doing this; that
he was acting selfishly and irresponsibly, even though he
might not be aware of it himself. It might be nothing but an
experiment to him. To me, for some reason, it was turning
out to be something in which I felt I didn't want to get involved
any further.
There was a rather awkward silence. Cook seemed at a bit
of a loss. Then Mrs Cook took matters upon herself. She
got up, stood beside my chair and laid the palm of her hand
gently on my forehead.
'You feel all right, Desland, don't you?' she asked. 'There's
nothing to get upset about, you know. This is quite a recognized
phenomenon and one day it'll be fully understood. You
needn't worry about it at all.'
The soft firmness of one of her breasts - she was wearing
a thin, pale-blue twin-set, I remember - just touched the side
of my face and I could smell her light, warm femininity;
scented soap and the faintest trace of fresh sweat. I felt myself
erect - instantly and fully, as a boy does - and became
18
horribly embarrassed. I could not tell whether or not anyone
else had noticed. I stood up, coughing, and set things to
rights under cover of taking my handkerchief out of my
trousers pocket and unnecessarily blowing my nose.
Mrs Cook looked into my eyes and smiled as though we
had been entirely alone.
'Do you think you could do one more experiment - just for
me, Desland?' she asked. 'Something quite different? You
needn't if you don't want to, but I hope you will.'
At that moment I became as good as certain that Mrs Cook
had been the moving spirit behind this business all along and
that Cook, though not indifferent, was really acting in the
nature of her agent. I also knew - though I could not have
put it into words - that she enjoyed using her sexual attractiveness
to get her own way. I felt altogether out of my
depth: on the one hand excited and flattered by her attention,
the first such experience I had ever known; on the
other, oppressed by a cloudy notion that, although her interest
could not exactly be called frivolous or trifling, she
nevertheless had not the right to be putting this sort of
pressure on me, having no more idea than I of what the cost
might be. The difference between us was that I was nervous
- even afraid - and she wasn't. She was being unthinkingly
selfish from habit, like a spoilt child, or an Oriental princess
urging a young courtier to attempt some dangerous feat
purely for her titillation and amusement.
Naturally I agreed - I could hardly do anything else - and
she began to tell me about Professor Gilbert Murray's strange
ability - which, she said, he had always refused to exercise
except as a pastime - to perceive and identify some idea or
object which his family and friends had agreed to concentrate
upon while he was out of the room. This certainly
struck me as less sinister than a dose of sulphuric acid, and I
went outside for the third time, leaving the other three to
concert their subject.
This exercise stepped off into a total frost. I had no idea
how to go about the task that had been thrust upon me whether
to gaze into the eyes of the other three in search of
some 'message', or just to look at the floor and wait for in19
spiration; whether to speak my thoughts aloud and let them
lead me on, or simply to stand in a tranced silence and
await the gleam of revelation. Nothing happened. 'Daffodils',
I remember, turned out to be their first idea, but I cannot
recall the second. I had already caught Sharp's eye in a silent
appeal for help and departure, when Mrs Cook said she
thought we might have one last try.
This time I came back into the room feeling foolish and
embarrassed, but at the same time relieved and more relaxed.
The silly thing didn't work, thank goodness, and now
they would let me alone. There would be time to go down
to the Pang and throw a fly for twenty minutes before College
tea (which you had to attend, whether or not you had
been out to tea with a master). As I sat down, my glance
fell on a rectangular flower-bed outside the window and a
garden fork which had been left sticking in the newly-dug
ground. Without knowing why, I continued looking at the
fork. At first it was very much as though I were observing a
goldfinch on a gorse-bush, or a beetle on a patch of turf. That
is to say, the fork became the entire object of my attention
and interest, to the exclusion of all around it, and I took in
its e^ery detail. Then, with a kind of clammy thickness, repulsion
and fear came down upon me like the folds of a collapsing
tent. My feelings, so far as I can remember them,
might be compared to those of some war-time housewife
who, having begun by being mildly intrigued to see through
the window a policeman approaching her door and carrying<
br />
a telegram, suddenly realizes what this must mean. I seemed
to be standing alone in a deserted silence. The harmless fork
became a horror the mere sight of which filled me with choking
nausea. The garden beneath it I now knew to contain the
bodies of innocent, helpless victims, whose wanton murders
nullified the sunlight and flowers, nullified Mrs Cook and her
pretty breasts and cool hands. The worms - the worms were
coming, wriggling, slimy and voracious, to fill my mouth. The
world, I now saw clearly, was nothing but a dreary place, a
mean, squalid dump, whose inhabitants were condemned for
ever to torment each other for no reason and no purpose but
the pleasure of cruelty: a wicked Eden, its equivalent of
20
Adam a foul travesty whose very name was a jeering pun
on that of God's incarnate purity and compassion. Indeed
these, I now saw plainly, were nothing but lies - mere figments
to delude girls like Mrs Cook until their bodies could
be clutched, strangled, defiled and buried; a travesty whose
name was I
fell to the floor, vomiting my tea over the carpet, battering
blindly with my fists and choking out one word:
'Christie! Christie!'
Cook came out of it very well. He yanked me to my feet
in a moment and supported me into the fresh air, mopping
me up with some sort of towel or cloth which he must have
snatched up on our way through the hall.
'Come on, Desland,' he said, 'pull yourself together!' He
tore up some ragwort and held the crushed, pungent leaves
against my nose. 'How many telegraph wires are there up
there? Come on, count them! Count them to me, out loud!'
My teeth were chattering and I felt cold, but I did as he
said.
When we got back indoors Sharp had gone and Mrs
Cook had cleared up the mess. I could see that she had been
crying. She said, 'I'm most terribly sorry, Desland. Will you
forgive me?' This took me aback, for I had been feeling - as
one does at sixteen - that I was the one to blame. It was I
who had displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting with
most admired disorder. I believe I tried to say something to
this effect, though I can't exactly remember. When I had
rinsed out my mouth and more or less cleaned myself up with
T.C.P. and warm water. Cook walked back with me to College.
After a bit I said, 'Was that - you know - what you were
all thinking about, sir?'
'Yes, of course,' replied Cook shortly, in the tone of someone
who wants a subject dropped at once. 'Entirely my fault.'
(It wasn't, of course, and I knew it.)
He pulled a stalk of foxtail grass out of the bank, chewed
it for about half a minute and then said, 'Look, Desland,
you've evidently got some unusual sort of - I don't know gift
or faculty or something. Now, listen - I strongly advise
21
you to let it alone. Don't ever try to do anything like this
again, do you see? I can only say I'm extremely sorry to have
let you in for it. Sharp's promised my wife that he'll say
nothing to anyone and I think you'd be well-advised to do
the same. We'll consider the whole matter as closed and
done with. No one's going to hear anything from me, I can
assure you.'
I felt grateful to him. It did not occur to me that both
the headmaster and my parents, if they had known, would
have thought him and not me to blame, nor that I had it in
my power to make things awkward for him. I readily gave
him my word to keep silent.
However, the incident didn't remain altogether hushed up.
I still felt queasy, faint and cold, and that evening after tea
I went up to the house matron. She found nothing worse
than a distinctly sub-normal temperature, but kept me in
bed the next day and gave me a lecture about getting my
feet wet fishing. I seized on this and used it to answer such
few boys in the house as bothered to inquire what had been
the matter with me. All the same, Sharp must have said
something, for two days later Morton, a College prefect in
'B' House who had never spoken a word to me before,
stopped me coming out of Hall and said, 'Look, here, Desland,
what's all this about you getting the screaming habdabs
or something in Cook's drawing-room?'
I had already begun to think of the whole thing as a
The Girl in a Swing Page 2
