The Sparsholt Affair

by Alan Hollinghurst

  ‘And he’s a friend of yours’ – reassessing me in the light of this. I had a confused sense that I might have to defend Evert – that Sparsholt had already marked him down as a pest. Should I concede that he had strange habits – was, as we said then, ‘over-emotional’? Loyalty seemed pliable, for a moment. ‘Well, if he’s the person I’m thinking of,’ Sparsholt said, ‘he seems very decent.’ He pulled his cap down low on his forehead and shrugged on his greatcoat.

  ‘Why don’t you come along?’ I said, ‘ – to the Club.’

  But he shook his head again. ‘I’ve got no time for reading,’ he said, and with that he clambered off up the narrow stair into the dark. I savoured the dry comedy of his remark, as I sat down and poured another inch of coffee into the Thermos lid; and then there was the knowledge that Evert, in so far as he figured at all in his mind, was ‘decent’: he’d been friendly, surely, was what he meant, unlike others in this cold college. Evert, besotted by this great hunk of a boy, his thoughts about him no doubt indecent in the extreme. I picked up Enid and Mark’s romance again but distracted and even guilty at the thought of the longings that had so far escaped young Sparsholt’s detection. My eyes passed across the scant features of the room, barely seeing the gilt-lettered boards that gave the age and weight of the bells, and the framed testimonials to feats of change-ringing.

  I can’t now recall the exact order of our passing encounters, on the difficult ribbed leads or on the steep companionway. But as the slow night turned and intermittent winds piled up and then dispersed high continents of cloud, we fell into conversation of a kind that I’ve known only in the War, brief dislocated intimacies, a blurring of boundaries between person and person in the surrounding dark. One time he came up quickly, and stood next to me, saying nothing – I knew from the way his breathing stilled and he shifted almost noiselessly in his greatcoat that he was glad of the company, the mere proximity of another person watching. I pictured a dog, brought back on the invisible leash that links it to a man, standing panting at first, then merely waiting and breathing. Soon a plane was heard, the first of the night, silent after the first doubtful rumble, then more sustained, though distancing already: still we said nothing as we recognized a Wellington – the rumble of reassurance rather than fear. We were standing on the north side of the tower, the squat spire of the Cathedral close by, and beyond that mere conjecture. It was the moment when I sensed the real tenor of Sparsholt’s concern – I saw I had been slow, although something in him repudiated sympathy, or the weakness of requiring it. In that vast northward view (or lack of view) was the world he came from. I said, ‘By the way, I hope your people are all right?’

  He said they were, so far, though they’d had a dozen or more air raids already. I asked what they did. His father was a manager at a steel-plant, and his mother worked on the drapery counter at Freeman’s, the local department store. He was an only child – ‘though we also have a cat,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose your father’s in a reserved occupation?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sparsholt. ‘To be honest, though, I’m more concerned about him getting killed up there.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s been bad already but we’re still expecting, you know, the big one.’

  We stared blindly into the darkness, and I felt for him. To me home was a place tucked away, unsignalled, with the great stone bulwarks of the Moor between it and Plymouth, to the south, which had already been the target of the bombers. But to Sparsholt, gazing north, the world of home lay open as if on a tray, the factories, foundries, munition works offered up to the beak and claws of the enemy. They would have AA guns, he said, but we both knew these were badges of hope and faith more than practical defences.

  ‘Let’s hope they come through,’ I said. His silence might have covered any number of things, and I wasn’t sure in the dark if we had both settled down on the idea of his home, or if we had drifted apart into separate reflections. He didn’t ask about me; I felt my exemption from service made him uneasy, as if there might be something shameful and embarrassing about the whole Green family. I could have told him that my half-brother Gerald was in Crete right now, a captain in the special forces; and there were things I was prevented from telling him about what I was up to myself. ‘Right, I’ll go down,’ I said, and for a second I was startled to see, in the quick play of my flashlight, the face of a determined young stranger – in the darkness he’d softened into quite another figure, with subtle elements of several other people I knew, and who was I suppose a mere fantasy fathered by his presence.

  At another change of the watch he must have found me asleep – and sleeping heavily too, with the weight of sleep postponed. A noise in a dream brought with it a complete rationale of history and consequence, which fled away as I opened my eyes to find Sparsholt staring into my face with mingled apology and impatience and saying again, ‘It’s five o’clock,’ or whatever lonely time of the night we had reached. I apologized myself, with a fuddled sense of foolishness and a trace of something else, a kind of mutinous pleasure in having succumbed. ‘It’s no good falling asleep,’ he said, as if about to list the reasons; but making do with a stare and a quick nod. I saw that something almost hidden was playing out through the night, a little game of seniority. As I pulled on my coat and reached in the pockets for my gloves I felt that my greater age and experience, the people I knew and the thousands of books I’d read, counted for nothing in his eyes. The War had levelled us, and on this platform he was already standing taller and stronger. I might have won the Chancellor’s Essay Prize in my first year, and the Gifford Medal in my second; but to him I was just an eccentric weakling, close friend of other eccentrics, with whom he was thrust into a fleeting alliance.

  And yet there was something unguardedly boyish about him too. There was even a strange moment towards dawn, when it felt colder than ever, when he asked me what some vaguely emerging landmark was, and leaning by me in the stepped opening of the battlements he put his arm around my shoulders, while with the other hand he pointed and I squinted down his finger as through the sight of a gun. I had never been used to physical contact, and his loose hug flustered me before it warmed me and even cheered me. He gave off, at this late end of a long day, the faint mildewed smell of someone thirsty, unwashed and unshaven. ‘Thanks for being so decent, Green,’ he said. He half-turned in the grey early light, and I thought, as I peered up at him, that he was smiling. He gave me a squeeze, a quick sample of his withheld power, as he let me go, and his train of thought was no doubt subconscious: ‘Well, I’ll have my Connie here today!’

  ‘She’s Connie, is she?’ I said, and nodded. I felt I should have asked about her before. He paced off to the far end of the roof, where I saw from his stance he was relieving himself into the corner drain – delayed and just audible came the thin cascade through the gargoyle’s mouth on to the flagstones far below. It was his turn to go down but when he strolled back he said, ‘I’ll stay up a bit and see the day in.’ In fact he had his own question, put with that throwaway air which doesn’t quite conceal a longer curiosity:

  ‘So do you have a sweetheart?’ he said.

  Like his ‘decent’, the word touched me. ‘Well . . .’ I murmured. Something in me longed to say yes, and dress up a mere hope as a certainty, or a boast. But could Jill, even if things went well, ever turn into a sweetheart? I said, ‘As it happens, there is someone, yes.’

  ‘Is she in Oxford?’

  ‘Yes, at St Hilda’s.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said David. ‘Do you think you’ll get married?’ This was rather a jump, and I felt my claim had been put to an immediate test.

  ‘Well, it would be nice to think so,’ I said. ‘What are your plans?’

  He seemed conscious of speaking beyond his years. ‘We’re hoping to do it as soon as I leave. Connie’s moving to Oxford at the end of the month.’

  ‘Well, you’re the lucky one, in that case. Is she a student too?�
�

  ‘No, we’re friends from home. She’s just managed to get a job down here.’

  ‘In the university, you mean?’

  I could see him lean forward and peer down, as though even here we might be overheard; but all he said was, ‘No, something else.’

  ‘Well, there’s a lot of something else going on in Oxford these days,’ I said and looked at him slyly to see his reaction.

  ‘She’ll be putting up at Keble College,’ he said. ‘She’s a qualified shorthand typist.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I see,’ I said, ‘I see.’

  He seemed warily relieved that I did. ‘Can’t say much more about it,’ he said.

  When we left the roof he said, ‘I had another look at that book of yours,’ and he made one or two remarks about how ‘fancy’ the writing was, and how far-fetched the narrative. ‘I don’t know what Enid sees in Mark Gay,’ he said; ‘I don’t think a real woman would have felt like that about such a boring bastard.’ He laughed briefly, conscious but not ashamed of his disrespect. I thought it was the kind of criticism that might have ensued if readers with no literary training were to write the newspaper notices instead of professional reviewers; but I was on the back foot as I found myself trying to defend Victor Dax, since what Sparsholt said, though ignorant, was lethally true. ‘I think there’s rather more to it than that,’ I said, regretting my superior tone. ‘You know it’s all based on Arthurian legends.’

  We turned off the light and began our descent from the ringing chamber to the quad and the blessed humdrum of gowns and breakfast. Our conversation had again that air of inadvertent candour: I was coming down rather cautiously with the back of his cap and his close-cropped neck a foot or two below me. ‘Do you know a man called Coyle?’ he said.

  ‘Well, I know Peter Coyle,’ I said, glad he couldn’t see me – it was the very first time I’d been caught unawares by the Sparsholt affair, and I blushed hotly. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘He asked if he could draw me. Now he wants to paint my picture, for some reason.’

  ‘Oh, well, I hope you’ll let him,’ I said.

  There was a pause as he felt for the light switch for the lower stair. ‘I suppose he’s a bit of a pansy,’ he said. I felt the word itself was a bit of an experiment for him.

  ‘Peter? Lord, yes,’ I said. ‘But I imagine you can look after yourself.’

  Now I wanted to see his face. There was a good deal in reserve in his short laugh.

  Once on the ground, I pulled the door to and locked it – in that detail, I hoped, regaining my dignity. As I pocketed the key we stood looking at each other, two friends who’d seen something through. Or merely two chance colleagues? There was no knowing what the relations were between us. Was he, were both of us, chafing to be free? Or did we mean gracefully to carry our alliance through to the moment after breakfast when, like husband and wife, we would have to part and get on with our separate days? It struck me that if I saw Evert as I went into Hall I could ask him to join us, and break the news of the double swop that had given me the prize he longed for: I could bring them together then for a few minutes at least. But I doubted at once if Evert would be able to carry this off – I saw myself reassuring each of them, out of my intimacy with the other. It was a kind of reprieve when Sparsholt was hailed by a rowing friend, and taken off without a backward glance to their table nearest the door.

  7

  I met Connie a few hours later. I had slept all morning, and after lunch went out for a stroll round the Meadow. It was a dazzle of autumn sunshine, eights and fours flashing by on the river, and on the faces of passing couples the wartime pleasure in daylight. As I came back down the avenue I saw the lamp on in Evert’s window, and had a troubled image of him shut up in there, in his fury of desire and suspicion. He was furious, at least, about my night with Sparsholt, and had reacted to the facts I passed on over breakfast – the stuff about Nuneaton, and the steel-works and the marriage plans – with envious mistrust.

  I was almost at the College gate when I saw a couple approaching down the centre of the Broad Walk, among the spinning and drifting leaves, the man a good head taller and leaning over sideways to keep his left arm round the girl’s shoulders. There was something clumsy in their linked progress, and I wouldn’t have looked at them again if he hadn’t raised his right arm and held it high – a command as much as a greeting. I stopped, nodded, and moved slowly towards them, seeing him tell her in a quick phrase (what was it?) who I was.

  ‘Green!’ he said. ‘I want you to meet my Connie.’

  I came up to them, smiling with a mixture of pleasure, curiosity and faint irritation at Sparsholt’s matey tone. Connie was a healthy-looking girl, with thick dark hair under a red beret, rather prominent teeth, and a bosom which was all the more striking in a woman of modest height. Tightly covered in green jersey, and crossed by the broad lapels of a belted mac, it seemed to come between us, to be a kind of brag on Sparsholt’s part, unmentionable, but undeniable. I didn’t find her otherwise especially pretty, but she had the interest of being what he wanted. ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘Freddie Green.’

  We shook hands and Connie said, ‘I’ve just been hearing about last night.’

  ‘Ah, yes!’ I said. I saw that Sparsholt was anxious for a moment about what she might repeat. He said cheerfully,

  ‘So did you get some sleep?’

  ‘I did,’ I said, ‘I missed two lectures,’ and smiled complacently rather than utter the question which lurked in the air about us, as to how much sleep they had had. ‘I thought you might be on the river,’ I said airily.

  ‘Not this weekend,’ said Sparsholt, and grinned, as did Connie, colouring but confident. If she hadn’t been there I’d have said a quick word to him about keeping his scout sweet, all the more important if he was unpopular on his staircase. A fiver (or so I’d heard) would buy a scout’s silence about having a woman in College overnight.

  ‘I hear you’re a great reader,’ Connie said. She had the West Midlands twang more clearly than he did, and a directness, a curiosity as she looked at you, that I enjoyed. There was a flattering suggestion that they’d talked about me quite a lot. ‘What have you got there?’ She nodded at my coat pocket, square with the bulk of Horseman, What Word?. I tugged the book out, wondering how to describe it, and she craned forward to see it. ‘Oh, A. V. Dax,’ she said, ‘yes – do you like him?’

  ‘I’m not sure any more,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Well, I love the trilogy,’ she said. ‘I’ve read it three times.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ I said, anxious again not to sound superior. ‘I’m re-reading them all at the moment, as it happens. You know Dax is coming to speak to this club of ours – if you’re free next Thursday evening, come along. You’d be very welcome.’ This appeared a mere kindness to a new arrival in Oxford, but I felt too I was making a bit of mischief.

  ‘Oh, drum,’ she said, and grinned eagerly but narrowly at her fiancé. I took this at first as a genteel curse, like ‘oh drat’, but she shook her head. ‘Drum won’t want to come. He never reads a thing.’

  ‘I do!’ said Sparsholt happily. I had a salutary sense of their differences exposed and forgiven long before they’d taken their wedding vows. ‘Drum’ must be his nickname – or of course his second name, short for Drummond. It suited him much better than his first.

  ‘Well, I’ll see,’ said Connie.

  ‘No, you go with Freddie,’ said Sparsholt, ‘I’ve got training on Thursday night.’

  It was touching that he trusted me, even if again he took a lot for granted. I saw that in his eyes I presented no threat. I said smoothly: ‘I’ll drop you a line. I think you’ll be at Keble?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I shall,’ she said, and I saw she was surprised not only that I knew, but by the idea itself – it was still a novelty to her.

  ‘You’d better tell me your surname.’

  ‘It’s Forshaw,’ she said, ‘yes,’ and nodded as if hearing all that was satisfac
tory in the word.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ I said.

  Sparsholt said, ‘We’re on our way to see a pal in St Peter’s,’ and Connie smiled and snuggled under his arm – the pal, I suspected, would be Gordon Pinnock, that true intimate of Sparsholt’s, whom I’d never met, but whom Evert envied and almost detested, after their encounter in the loved one’s rooms.

  We turned and separated (Sparsholt wasn’t one for saying goodbyes), they slipped at once into their own murmured talk, and it was ten seconds later that Connie called out – ‘Oh . . . Freddie . . . Won’t you join us for a drink tonight – in the pub?’ She spoke as if there were one pub in Oxford, rather than two hundred.

  ‘Well, if I can,’ I said, as they came back to me.

  ‘We’ll be at the Gardener’s Arms,’ she said. ‘At half-past eight.’ I noted the way she threw out the name of this place she could never have seen. I had no real desire to go, and believed it would look odd, a third-year man out drinking with a freshman and his girl; but the strange mood of the Sparsholt affair made me feel I might regret missing it.

  ‘Bring your girl along,’ said Sparsholt.

  ‘Oh, well . . . yes. I’ll find out if she’s free.’ I didn’t suppose she had a very full diary, but I couldn’t see her in a pub – unless she took it, in her resolute way, as a challenge.

  ‘What’s her name, by the way?’

  ‘She’s called Jill.’

  Was there something charitable in his hint of a smile? ‘Ah, that’s a nice name.’

  ‘Well . . .’ I said. It had always made me uneasy, it was too close to chill, and to jilt, and not at all far from gill, a quarter-pint of cold water.

  As I left them and turned back to the gateway I glanced up at Evert’s window and saw him standing there, staring down. I nodded and raised a hand, but there was no response, and I went back to my rooms in a muddle of unexpected guilt and excitement.

  I hadn’t been to the Gardener’s Arms since my first year. It was one of those dim little locals in St Ebbe’s, with a front of glazed ox-blood brick, and a Public and a snug. I could picture the mild glow of its windows, the cheap Windsor chairs, the shove-ha’penny board by the door at the back. In the blackout it wasn’t so easy to find. I made my way cautiously through the narrow streets, self-conscious in spite of the darkness. It was a pub where you might run into your scout, or people from the market. In fact I made a wrong turning, and took two or three minutes to find the way back. There were others about, of course, indecipherable signallers with their taped-over flashlights; but the dark doorways and alleys re-awoke my sense of being watched or even followed by noiseless figures. I knew the pub, when I came to it, by the noise it made. In its entranceway two curtains were fixed, with a narrow lung of changeable darkness between them, from which I groped half-panicking into the commonplace light of the saloon. I saw Sparsholt and Connie in the far corner and decided I would leave as soon as I’d done my good deed.