The Charioteer

by Mary Renault

  “I’m not going,” he said. “Not till this is over.”

  “Push off, Spud,” said Ralph drowsily. “I’m going to sleep.” He shut his eyes again.

  Laurie walked around him. He wasn’t going to speak to Bunny across him as if he didn’t count. “We can’t,” he said evenly, “just leave him here. What if the house gets a stick of incendiaries?”

  Bunny spread his hands in a vaguely mystic gesture, committing them all to the will of Allah.

  Laurie breathed sharply through his nose. “Christ—”

  He turned at a sound behind him. Ralph had picked himself up from the chair. He stood with his feet apart and his hands dug in his pockets, swaying slightly as if he were giving with a moving deck.

  “What in hell’s all this nonsense about? Stop flapping, Spud, and don’t be such a bloody nuisance.”

  “All right.” He could feel Bunny watching at his elbow. “Try and stay awake till you see how it goes.”

  “See how what goes? What’s eating you, for God’s sake?”

  “There’s a raid on.” As he spoke he heard a bracket of bombs go down; it was like heavy feet running a step or two.

  “All right, Spud, all right.” He stood there frowning, as if the raid were an obstruction which Laurie had called into being. Suddenly he narrowed his eyes tightly; something came into them, it seemed from an indestructible strong-point far behind. “Look after yourself. I’ll be ringing you. God bless.”

  “God bless,” said Laurie, meaning it. The last thing he saw of the room was Ralph settling back in the chair again. As he went out, he saw Bunny go back and take the lighted cigarette out of Ralph’s hand. He’s thinking of his nice carpet, Laurie thought.

  They went down without speaking. Laurie heard the dot-and-carry sound of his own feet on the stair-treads, and imagined Bunny in the hall below, hidden by the darkness, standing and listening to it.

  Outside in the street Bunny said, “We’ll have to use old Ralph’s car, I’ve lent someone mine this evening.”

  They got into the car, which Bunny started with a patronizing kind of carelessness. The guns were still going and a lot of searchlights were out; the streets were almost empty, till they came to one where a house lay half across the road with a rescue squad working, and they had to go another way.

  Laurie thought: Andrew wouldn’t judge too quickly. Andrew would say you should get free of yourself and try to understand. For example: Bunny had gone to a good deal of trouble, which only made sense if one assumed that he was much fonder of Ralph than he seemed. It was true that his methods had not been aristocratic; but he had probably had a very unhappy childhood, or something. Very likely he tormented himself as much as Sandy did, but hid it better.

  A bomb came down, not very near, somewhere behind them. Laurie thought of Ralph asleep in the deep tilted chair and wondered if it had been close enough to rouse him: but this did not further the effort to understand Bunny.

  “I’m afraid this is rather a way for you.” To say he was sorry Bunny had had to turn out would have been too much.

  “Oh, no, I adore driving at night, don’t you? Before the war I had one of those huge spotlights on my Riley. It made everything look madly dramatic, just like a color film. People used to look so funny blinking and staring in it, like fish in a tank. You’d love the Riley. I had her done specially, a sort of bronze, with cream upholstery. If I’d only known, I wouldn’t have lent her tonight. I hate doing it really, but this boy helped me out of a rather awkward predicament and saved a lot of unpleasantness, so one could hardly refuse. Of course, it would be tonight. Never mind, you must try her another time.”

  “Thanks,” said Laurie reluctantly. One could hardly pick a quarrel in the face of this unexpected civility, unless one had decided never to see Ralph again. After all, he thought, people were patchy; Ralph, who was no fool, had found something in Bunny to love; and there was always the risk of investing one’s snobbery with moral sanctions.

  “Most of the excitement seems to be the other side of town. We’ll be out in the country in a minute, then you’ll have to begin showing me the way. I didn’t mean to seem callous about Ralph, just now. I just happen to know that the old dear practically never passes out flat, no matter what he has; and that hag downstairs would wake him at a pinch. She adores him, you know, she thinks he’s a wicked romantic sailor; it would kill you, honestly, to see the way he plays up to her, and she’s such a dim draggle-tailed old thing, Christmas in the orphanage I always call it. My dear, I said, one dark night you’ll find you’ve given her so much self-respect, if that’s what you call it, that she’ll nip up the stairs and into bed with you and then you’ll be sorry. He got so annoyed, I think that must have really happened to him somewhere or other. There’s a lot of funny little kinks about old Ralph.”

  “Yes?” said Laurie, whose attention had wandered; he had been watching Bunny drive. Unable to stand it any longer in silence, he said, “You’ll only make the gears worse than they are, slamming them like that.”

  “Oh, my dear, the whole bus is just a Palladium turn. I think it originally went by steam, and they modernized it at great expense about 1920. Have you seen it in daylight?”

  “Yes.”

  “The thing that always astonishes me is to find the lever inside at all, and not sticking out of the mudguard in a brass casing.”

  “Ralph seems to manage it pretty well, considering what he’s got left of that hand. It must be a bit of an effort for him.”

  “Oh, but you know he adores effort, it’s his thing. He thinks comfort’s absolutely decadent. Now, I’m not a bit like that myself.”

  “No,” Laurie said.

  “The great thing, I think, is for everyone to be happy. What I always say is, life’s so simple really, if you don’t complicate it. It’s just a matter of live and let live, don’t you think so?”

  “For God’s sake, do put the clutch in properly when you’re changing down. If you grind them like that they’ll soon be jamming all the time.”

  “It’s all such a nonsense,” said Bunny petulantly. “Well, this is the very last time I lend the Riley.”

  Laurie’s hatred faded in spite of him. His mind groped over the personality beside him seeking something to grip on, and everything that had seemed salient resolved itself into a deficiency. He was too tired to be choice with words: Common, he thought inadequately. I thought after Dunkirk that would never mean anything again. How does he keep all this from Ralph?

  They were out in the country; the sounds of the raid behind were muted by distance. Less warmly than he would have spoken to a chauffeur, Laurie showed Bunny the way.

  “Oh, yes, I know. You’re an awfully reserved person, aren’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never thought about it.”

  “I get terribly bored with people who are just on the surface. They never give you any surprises, do they? That was the thing that first attracted me to Ralph, you know. He didn’t put everything in the shop window. Now, of course, I know him inside out, and it’s not that I’m not terribly fond of him, but—well, I wouldn’t tell just any one this, but it’s different telling you—”

  Laurie had to speak twice before he succeeded in interrupting. “I’m sorry; but if you don’t mind, I’d rather not hear about all this.”

  “I wouldn’t have told you,” said Bunny in a hurt, sincere voice, “without a very good reason.”

  Laurie said abruptly, “Well, you can tell me this, then. Why did you do it?”

  “Well, really, my dear, I was more or less swept off my feet. Between ourselves …”

  “Tonight, I mean. You gave him about five neat gins straight off. It was in the water-jug.”

  “Goodness, you are observant, aren’t you? Or is it an old trick in the army too?”

  “I wouldn’t know, I’m not an officer.”

  “Of course, it doesn’t work with everybody. If I’d tried it on you, you’d have spotted it straight away. But with hard-dri
nking types like old Ralph, who’ve got one or two on board already—”

  “I asked why you did it, that’s all.”

  Bunny stopped the car.

  “You awful boy,” he said. “You do believe in playing hard to get.”

  It was probably for not more than a second that Laurie was paralyzed by sheer incredulity. It seemed far too long. Though Bunny hadn’t got beyond the arm flung along the back of the seat and the deep intimate gaze, Laurie felt already a nauseous anticipation of contact.

  “Look,” he said, “shall we get something straight? I don’t like you. I don’t like you in any possible way that one person could like an other.” He paused for breath. When he remembered everything it didn’t seem enough. “If you were the last human being left alive, I’d sooner—” The phrase with which he finished took him by surprise. It was what Reg had said to the girls in the blackout. Laurie had never supposed that a time would come when he would use it with satisfaction.

  “My, my,” said Bunny. “Aren’t we butch?”

  Laurie thought, That got through.

  “In that case,” said Bunny. He leaned over and snapped at the catch of the door. “I should hate to force my company on anyone who felt like that about it. Good night.”

  Something primitive stirred in Laurie, as in a solitary man beset by the creatures of a swamp or forest “Oh, no,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t take that tone, if I were you.”

  This, thought Laurie, is what he doesn’t tell everyone. The practiced inflection had held many chapters of inadvertent autobiography.

  “You know,” he said, “Ralph’s going to wake up before long and ring the hospital to see I got back all right. If I haven’t, what do you expect me to do tomorrow? Back up your story?”

  “Why, you little—”

  “Yes, all right. You’ve bought this. It’s not even your car. You’re a volunteer for this job. You went to a lot of bother to drive me back. Now you damned well drive me.”

  The pain jumped in his knee; he was shaking a little, but not to notice in the dark. He waited.

  “Well,” said Bunny, “please don’t let’s have a scene about it in the middle of the road.”

  He let in the clutch.

  As the car ran on through the cold sweet autumn night, Laurie thought, All that was an impromptu. It wasn’t a deep-laid scheme or anything. He’s just a chancer.

  With a cold barren weariness that quenched the dry glow of anger, he thought, What can you do about these people? The terrible thing is, there are such a lot of them. There are so many, they expect to meet each other wherever they go.

  Not wicked, he thought: that’s not the word, that’s sentimentality. These are just runts. Souls with congenitally short necks and receding brows. They don’t sin in the sight of heaven and feel despair: they only throw away lighted cigarettes on Exmoor, and go on holiday leaving the cat to starve, and drive on after accidents without stopping. A wicked man nowadays can set millions of them in motion, and when he’s gone howling mad from looking at his own face, they’ll be marching still with their mouths open and their hands hanging by their knees, on and on and on. … No, Andrew wouldn’t like that.

  When they got to the hospital, Bunny said, “I suppose you won’t be able to run to Ralph fast enough with all this.”

  “You’re afraid of him, really, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” said Bunny shrilly. “He never caned me at school.”

  “No,” said Laurie. “Quite.” He got out of the car. “Don’t worry; I shall never mention you to Ralph again if it’s possible to avoid it. He’s a friend of mine. It’s a good old English word and I’m using it in the literal sense, if that conveys anything to you at all. Good night.”

  He got back to the ward within seven minutes of the time limit; but Andrew, he found, had finished his work and left.

  He had got to see Andrew. He felt a need more imperative than any he had experienced in the keenest crisis of personal love. He wanted to recover his belief in the human status.

  The late-pass men who had got off the last bus were still having cocoa in the kitchen; fairly drunk, but sober enough to be solemnly careful of the Night Nurse’s modesty, simmering with the things they had to tell when she had gone. As the door shut behind her, out it came. Laurie didn’t wait. It was no longer supposed, he thought, to be anything to do with him. He knew where Andrew would be: in the next ward, washing up and cleaning the kitchen. There were two night orderlies for four wards. He walked to the outer door; Nurse Sims came out from the linen room as he reached it.

  “Odell! Whatever on earth do you think you’re up to?”

  “Oh, sorry, Nurse.” He wasn’t in the least embarrassed, only occupied with the certainty that he would do what he had determined. “I’ve got to speak to Andrew Raynes for a moment. You don’t mind, do you? I won’t be long.”

  “Well, really, I don’t know. I suppose you’ve got enough sense not to let Sister see you. Don’t be there all night, then, will you? What a pair you two are. I always call you David and Jonathan.”

  Ward A kitchen was just the same as the one in Ward B, except that all the fittings were on the opposite sides, which gave one a feeling of stepping through the looking-glass. Andrew was at the sink with the taps running; their noise covered the sound of Laurie’s approach. Moving quietly, he got without being seen almost to Andrew’s elbow. You could tell it was his second lot of washing-up; his hands were red, the front of his hair was loose and limp. He had the look of hard concentration which Laurie recognized as his substitute for worry. Yes, Laurie thought with inexpressible comfort, Andrew was solid. One could imagine oneself being involved with him in utter disagreement, in exasperation even; but one would never chip the facing and find rubble behind. There was a number of demands one could never make on him; but perhaps this, which he had given unasked and unknowing, was in the end the best of all.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Laurie said.

  “Why, Laurie!” His look of startled happiness gave Laurie a sense of sudden inadequacy; there was more joy here than his tossed mind was capable of receiving. “Where did you come from?”

  “I didn’t want to turn in without saying good night.”

  “I thought by the time I could get back you’d be asleep.” He was holding a dish in his hand; he stared at it, smiled, and put it aside. “Is this all right? Don’t get yourself crimed whatever you do.”

  “Nurse Sims said I could. She says she always calls us David and Jonathan.”

  “Does she? How nice. Did you have a good time?”

  “The first part was all right. It got a bit boring later; too many people.”

  “How’s Ralph?”

  “He got a bit bored too.” It was a silhouette of trouble, flat now and unreal.

  Laurie picked up a tea-towel and they began drying the things together.

  “Did they tell you?” said Andrew. “Is that why you came?”

  “Tell me what?” The moment’s security dissolved; the secret wilderness crept back again, in which no good could be assumed of the unknown.

  “You just came,” said Andrew, as if a natural trust had been confirmed. “You don’t know about Dave, then?”

  “No, is he ill or something?” His treacherous imagination formed a picture of Andrew spending days at Dave’s bedside, claimed by an older loyalty.

  “I hope not, though it’s enough to make him. They sent for him to London. Cynthia’s been killed.”

  “Is that his sister?”

  Andrew stared at him. “But have I never—surely I—Cynthia’s his wife.”

  “His—!” Laurie realized after a moment that stupefaction was a lame response. “I’m most terribly sorry. Was it in a raid?”

  “Yes.” He stared at the cup he was rubbing, and added, “Dave’s got to identify her.”

  “God, I’m sorry.”

  “She was older than Dave. She must have been sixty at least.”

  “H
ave they got any children?”

  “They had one who died, and after that she couldn’t. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Dave’s always been so kind to me.”

  Laurie polished the china, thankful that with Andrew it was always possible to be silent.

  “I know the same thing’s happening all over the world,” said Andrew. “But I keep thinking about him. He’ll have to go to some gray mortuary and look at whatever there is, and then fill up forms, and when he’s done that someone will read what he’s written and say probably, as they did to another c.o. I knew in similar circumstances—no, he wouldn’t want me to tell anyone, even without the name.”

  “Dave’s big enough to take that,” said Laurie helplessly. Yes, he thought, I’m the one who was such good form just now at the gate. And worst of all I can feel the cold draft around my inferiority complex because I learn that he isn’t one of us.

  He stayed for another five minutes or so, to the limit of Nurse Sims’s estimated patience. Shortly before he left he said, “I say, Andrew. Do you believe in the proposition that all men are created equal?”

  “Not in the fact. Of course not. It would be a bit like believing in a flat earth, wouldn’t it? But I believe in the proposition right enough. It’s what you might call the working hypothesis of Christianity.”

  “Simple, isn’t it, after all?” He himself was unsure whether he spoke in irony or not.

  The All Clear sounded after he was back in bed. For a little while he lay awake, without quite owning to himself what he was waiting for. He hadn’t really supposed for a moment that Ralph would ring. It had been good enough to scare Bunny.

  “Can’t you sleep, Odell? Is it the leg?”

  “It’s not too bad, Nurse, thanks. I wouldn’t mind some A.P.C. next time you’re passing.”

  The telephone was silent. Laurie thought, He’s been in hospital himself, he knows what an uproar it makes if it rings late. Sensible of him really. Of course, he’s probably still asleep. Bunny will just come in and—

  “Oh, thank you, Nurse. No, I’ll be fine. I’ll drop off in a minute.”