The Sparsholt Affair

by Alan Hollinghurst

  ‘Connie’s gone home for a couple of nights for her uncle’s funeral. And anyway, there’s a side of Drum that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Well, no doubt—’

  ‘I mean he doesn’t make sense in the sense that you mean sense.’ There was something tryingly riddling about Evert today, a mixture of defiance and anxiety. But he was probably right. I thought of Sparsholt’s unexpected visit to my rooms the day before, and the question he’d asked, almost reluctantly, as to where Evert was. And now I glimpsed, with a wary curiosity close to envy, the two of them together. It wasn’t envy for Evert’s act, however I pictured it, that troubled me, but for his having acted. His body held a knowledge that could neither be expressed nor forgotten, but which invested it, in my young eyes, with the indefinable aura of experience.

  I’m not sure if I provoked him into telling me the story, or if he was set on doing it anyway. He seemed still astounded himself that it had happened, that love had flowered in this unlikeliest of places. He wanted to get it clear, and I felt that what I was hearing was the primary text: it would be no good deciding later on that something different had been said or done. I don’t rule out to this day that he may have exaggerated certain points; and I sensed a strange relish that his victory over Sparsholt was a victory over me, of whom he had long been pointlessly jealous. But I saw even so that I was the recipient of the essential truth. Again I give the story as he let me see it.

  *

  During Hall the previous night they had twice caught each other’s eye: the first time, David looked instantly away, but the second time there was the flicker of an eyebrow and suppression of a smile as he turned his head to speak to his neighbour, and Evert believed that over the following minute David was conscious of him, and that something had not only been acknowledged but promised. Something tiny, no doubt – it was the frail first chapter of a friendship, that might still be screwed up and thrown away without much sense of loss on David’s part. But that they were friends, since their evening in the pub, was surely beyond question. When they stood for grace there was no more than a glance before the bowing of the head – but it now felt to Evert inevitable that on the stairs outside, as they made their way down in the dark like so many fireflies, a hand should grip his elbow and a light flash upwards on the face beside his own. He looked devilish like that, and still gleamed on the eye in the darkness half a minute later, when he could barely be made out in fact; though it wasn’t at all clear what was happening, and neither of them said a word till they were out in the quad, where they would normally have turned in opposite directions. The blackout was no place for polite indecision – in a moment Evert might have lost him. He knew that the grip, and the flash of the torch, might be no more than childish clowning; he foresaw the scene of misunderstanding, the mortified return to his own room, alone; but his pounding heart made him walk on beside David, and then quite accidentally he stumbled against him in the dark – he felt his strong hand grab at him again and steady him. ‘All right there, Evert?’ he said, with a quick laugh; and then, in a very flat voice, in which all the things he would rather have done seemed to loom and die, ‘So what are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Oh . . . nothing,’ said Evert, with a half-glimpsed image of Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle, the subjects of this week’s essay, tumbling into a dark chasm, where Dryden’s plays and the Life of Johnson already lay abandoned.

  ‘You don’t fancy a pint, later on?’ And now it was all the other men David might have gone drinking with that Evert pictured, in a shadowy crowd.

  ‘Oh, well, yes – if you like,’ he said, sounding nearly reluctant with excitement. It was the question he’d failed to ask a dozen times himself, and he thought he detected a slight airy nervousness in David, as if he too had rehearsed it. But he kept his head. ‘Will Connie be joining us?’

  ‘No . . . no, she’s gone home for a couple of nights. Her uncle’s been killed.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Evert – and in his happiness he almost was sorry for her, in a generous overspill of feelings. Though of course what this meant was that David simply needed someone to fill the time with: no doubt this peculiar second-year man who seemed to quite like him would do as well as any. Evert’s job, very likely, would be to condole with him on Connie’s absence, and to say repeatedly what a great girl she was. ‘What time would suit you?’ he said.

  ‘I expect you’re too busy,’ said David.

  ‘No, no – really,’ said Evert.

  ‘Then what about eight?’

  ‘Yes, perfect.’ There was something in him that seized on this forty-five minutes’ reprieve, and he went to his room and paced back and forth, glancing at his watch and thinking by turns it had stopped or was running fast.

  When he went down to the Tom Gate, David was already waiting, and sounded impatient. ‘Do you want to go to the Marlborough House?’ he said. Evert felt he might be regretting his invitation.

  ‘Wherever you like,’ he said amiably, though his heart was racing. A smooth remoteness of manner covered him sometimes, the trance of tension. It was a ten-minute walk to the Marlborough, over Folly Bridge and away from the centre of town, into a part where fewer students went. He felt David had chosen it because he wanted to be alone with him; and it was only once they’d set off down St Aldate’s that he saw it was just as likely he didn’t want his rowing friends to see them together. Well, perhaps both things were true. ‘Good to get some exercise,’ he said.

  ‘If you call this exercise,’ said David – in the dark it was hard to tell if he was teasing. Evert felt already his humour was a thing of situations more than tones, and that irony might nettle him if it didn’t elude him altogether.

  ‘Not to you, of course,’ said Evert firmly, and rubbed shoulders with him for a step or two. He knew that he was older, and much more sophisticated, but he’d surrendered so much in advance to the figure beside him that it was hard to remember they were barely friends. He saw the heavy disproportion in their feelings for each other, but was too light-headed to worry about it. Surely both of them felt the novelty of their first walk alone together. They heard the far-off drone of planes passing high up to the west, and David grunted and looked skyward. The moon, nearly full, was hidden by the high walls of the College as they went downhill, and disappeared behind cloud as they approached the river. He seemed to Evert both uneasy and determined.

  There was a square way round to the pub by road, but halfway over the bridge Evert felt David touch his arm and they crossed to the far side – thirty seconds later he was following him down the narrow footbridge that breaks off through a gap in the parapet to the riverbank below. Evert would never have taken the towpath alone at night, it seemed even darker than the street they had left, the river nothing at first but a quick and irregular licking sound, and then, as they walked on, a broad barely visible presence, curving northwards – the sheds and chimneys of the gasworks on the far bank just beginning to show against grey cloud. It was a further little test of nerve, Evert flashed his torch with an anxious laugh, and David said, ‘Best not to use that’ – as though they might give themselves away.

  At the pub they groped their way into the cheering glare of the public bar, where a few heads turned, and Evert himself stared at David with disbelief. He said quietly, ‘What will you have?’ But David seemed puzzled, not by the momentary attention of the room or by Evert’s gleaming look but perhaps by the bar itself not matching the idea he had had of it when they set out.

  ‘There’s another bar, isn’t there?’ he said; and after they’d peered through the door into the empty snug – ‘Let’s go in here.’ To Evert it had the air of taking a room in a hotel – he pushed the door to behind them and found he couldn’t quite look at David. They unbuttoned their coats and hung them on the stand, Evert purchased their pints of mild and bitter, and brought them over to where David was sitting, beneath the dim ceiling light, in the odd raw smell of the blackout curtains and the banked coke fire. He
saw now that David had changed to come out, into old flannels and a home-knitted jersey surely made for the much smaller boy he had been two years ago. The low table had a beaten copper top, and the glass roared a little as he slid it towards him. He raised his own glass to his chin, met David’s eye, and for the first time in his life said, ‘Cheerio!’

  When they left the pub they had each had three pints, and Evert found himself in the most unexpected, exciting and worrying position – he had made a huge advance, but into territory he had never dreamt of. The rush of drunkenness and the immediate return to the dark outside world made things all the more confusing and inescapable. The three pints themselves were like the acts of a drama – a strange, experimental one, spoken in fragments and murmurs, but to Evert the most intense he had known, dark with surprises and decisions; the decisions seemed almost to make themselves, in the liberty of drink and the irrefusable presence of the man he adored.

  To begin with their shyness made them rush at things. The outing was David’s idea, but he hadn’t suggested it had a purpose, and to Evert simply being with David was purpose enough. Still, he heard something forced and masochistic in his own first question: ‘How’s Connie getting on in her new job?’

  David looked into the barely smouldering fire. ‘Oh, all right, thanks, Evert – it’s, you know, very long hours.’ He spoke consciously as one of a couple. It was a place, a view, that Evert had never inhabited, but he took some small amusement from the frown.

  ‘So you don’t see much of her?’

  ‘It’s not perfect,’ said David, flatly stoical.

  Evert left a considerate pause. ‘Still, it’s better than nothing!’ he said. David grunted and looked again at the fire. He perhaps didn’t want to talk about his private life, any more than Evert wanted to hear about it; even so, to hear about it was to move in the magic zone of his confidence, to be privy to his secrets. ‘I wasn’t quite clear the other night what she’s actually doing. She’s . . . well, she’s so bright!’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said David, as if that were both a proud fact and a bit of a problem. Was it possible something was wrong, there was some intimate obstacle with which he needed help? He spoke bluntly, as though impatient with Evert for not knowing: ‘Well, you know she’s at Blenheim Palace, she’s working there.’ For a second he had the glare of efficiency, he was the soldier in mufti, the opposite of Evert, the essential civilian; who said,

  ‘Ah, yes, I see,’ though in fact it was mere rumour to him what was going on at Blenheim. He sensed he’d missed hints before.

  ‘Along with our friend Mr Green,’ said David.

  Evert said, ‘Quite so . . .’ as if discreetly concealing his own knowledge of this confidential matter. He was surprised, and pleased, by that cool ‘Mr Green’. Then he found David was giving him a sly but rather beautiful smile, and he held his gaze for as long as he could, and then looked down in confusion. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but he hoped to take advantage of it.

  Evert of course couldn’t judge how David saw their evening going – perhaps just a pint and then a quick walk back to College. He loved sitting close to him, looking at him as much as he liked, laying his hand on his arm now and then to make some amusing point – the smoky drabness of the bar was to him a golden privilege . . . but it was painful too, because it forced a recognition: he was his friend now, but he would never be more. As Evert finished his beer David stood up and said, ‘The same again, then?’ as if in his view the evening was going well – perhaps only just getting started. There was the same small fraction of play-acting, as there was in his being engaged, or at other times in rowing kit. Evert watched him at the bar, the old flannels tight too around his over-developed backside and thighs, and almost worn through under his seat – he was standing a drink but it was obvious he had very little money.

  It was only when David sat down again that Evert saw he had something particular on his mind, and thought for a second it might be some gentle but awful rebuke, and that their first time alone together was designed exactly to be their last. ‘Cheers!’ said David again. ‘So you haven’t heard about my bit of trouble?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Evert. ‘Back home, do you mean?’

  ‘Not that, no – though that’s pretty bad’ – and he seemed ready to talk about the air raids instead, but stopped himself: ‘No, I mean this business in College.’

  ‘I haven’t heard a thing,’ said Evert, sounding slightly indignant. A number of ideas appeared to him like figures glimpsed in a room before the door is shut. ‘What is it? – if you want to tell me, that is.’ He thought it would be very hard after that for David not to.

  David glanced at him with a quick provisional smile and took a swallow of beer before he answered. ‘I’m in trouble with the Censor.’

  ‘Oh, yes . . . ?’

  ‘I didn’t know the ropes, you see – I see that now.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Evert, pretending even to himself he didn’t see what was coming. But then, ‘You mean to do with Connie?’

  David pursed his lips and nodded. Was he going to make Evert come out with it for him? ‘I see,’ said Evert, feeling there was still some welcome ambiguity.

  ‘Yep,’ said David, and drank some more. ‘No, what happened, if you want to know, was that my scout came in first thing two days ago and found us together. And he’s reported me to the Censor. He’s never liked me, since that business with Sangster downstairs – well, you wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘The scout hasn’t, you mean . . .’

  ‘Well, or the Censor.’ It was that baffling idea, for Evert, of anyone not liking Sparsholt, or giving him the widest licence.

  ‘So what did the Censor say?’ Evert found he was picturing the moment of discovery, the threshold of the blacked-out bedroom where he himself had first met Gordon Pinnock. He was appalled to think David might be about to leave in disgrace, never to be seen again. ‘He can’t send you down for that,’ he said, in solid defiance of the truth.

  ‘Oh, he’s not sending me down,’ said David. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Ah good,’ said Evert.

  ‘No, he says in view of the fact that I’m about to leave anyway, he doesn’t want to mess up my service career.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’

  ‘And of course the fact that we’re engaged, which must make a difference.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  In the pause that followed, while David nodded and then drank and set down his glass, it was as though there were no problem after all. ‘No,’ said David, ‘but he is going to fine me.’

  ‘Oh, well . . .’ said Evert, and thought he sounded too careless. ‘A lot?’

  ‘Twenty quid,’ said David.

  Evert winced sympathetically. ‘Quite a lot.’ It was exactly what he was going to pay his North Oxford contact for a second little landscape by Stanley Goyle – in another two weeks, when his December allowance from his father came through. ‘Can you manage?’

  David flung himself back in his chair, in a gesture of defeat that was also a kind of display. He showed his wounded magnificence, his sweater tight across his chest as he spread his arms and shrugged. And he looked directly at Evert, with the perfect blankness of someone calculating a move. ‘I can’t ask my parents, of course’ – he gave a curt laugh, and now his look at Evert seemed faintly accusing.

  ‘I can see that might be difficult.’

  ‘I mean, they’re very strict – you know what parents are.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Evert kindly. He thought his own father, though he’d complain about it, would be hugely relieved to hear that he’d had a woman in his room. David sighed deeply, and slid further down in his chair, in a strange abandonment of his normal alertness; one leg pressed against Evert’s calf. ‘Will you be able to manage?’

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ said David, curtly. ‘We’ve got a bit put away, you know, for the wedding. But that’s untouchable.’

  ‘No, quite,’ said Evert.

 
; ‘That has to be untouchable.’

  The word seemed to Evert oddly provoking. His eyes played over his friend in a stunned inventory of his merits. It was a reckless, sickening decision, that must be made briskly and completely. ‘Can’t I help you out?’ he said. David stared back at him, with respect, as well as the proper gloom of someone who must decline the offer they have just solicited.

  ‘I couldn’t accept,’ he said; but there was something else, as he sat up and leant forward, the dull glint of the tactician, to whom winning is everything.

  ‘I don’t have a lot of money,’ said Evert, ‘but I could probably lend you, you know . . . what you need . . . tomorrow.’

  ‘Really?’ said David. Now he seemed all anxious solicitude for him. ‘Isn’t it too much? It’s a hell of a lot. Well, that’s grand’ – sticking out a hand, to shake on it, in a way both gracious and inescapably businesslike. Before he let the hand go he jerked Evert forward, flung his other arm round him and hugged him; did he even kiss his ear? – clumsily spontaneous, it was too as if he’d found a moment to do something long planned. Or so Evert was to feel the next day. ‘You’re a real friend.’ And he sat back, manly and capable again, staring at the table as at the barely doubted outcome of a daring act: he seemed to see his rightful future given back to him.

  With the third pint they moved away from the fine and the loan, though the question still gaped darkly for Evert. The beer carried them along for the moment. ‘So tell me more about your family,’ said David, a diplomatic new line. And for a minute or two Evert did so, but stumbling and exaggerating out of worry that he wouldn’t find them interesting. David nodded and gave occasional small smiles of recognition. His question was (Evert sensed it already) the inattentive politeness of a man who still wanted mainly to talk about himself, or who had not yet quite learned the art of conversation. Evert said how his sister was living in Tenby with their mother.