At last Christian said: ‘What is it you are reading?’ in a voice which was little more than a whisper, but which seemed to him to make an immense ripple in the still air of the shop. The boy started, and scrambled to his feet, snapping the book shut with one hand and pushing the hair off his white forehead with the other. He looked Christian full in the face, seemed to swallow once or twice, and then said:
‘It’s poetry, sir.’
Christian saw that his eyes were neither blue nor grey, but of a rich hazel, long and large, set under blond brows as clear and firm as the mouldings on a coin. They were as fine as, finer than, he had dared to hope, and the boy’s slow Dorset accent was something far removed from the vulgarly whining chirrup he had dreaded might come from between those lips.
Without saying anything, Christian put out his hand for the book, which the other gave him willingly. Their fingertips met. He saw that it was a scarcely-worn copy of Mrs Browning’s Aurora Leigh. His thoughts were not on the poem, though he had been meaning to read it himself, but on the fact that a boy whose appearance might have been designed with him in mind, who made the grey-eyed Greek beloved of his dreams look insipid, was flesh. His hands began to sweat with nervousness as he held the open book: then an idea came to him. He opened his mouth, about to say: ‘I’ll buy this for you, if you would like it,’ but at that moment the door was opened by a woman.
Suddenly he realised that to say such a thing would be crazy, almost wicked. He put the book quickly down on a table and dodged round the woman’s crinoline, out into the street.
It was some days before he dared go back. He lay awake at night wondering in hope and fear what the angel in the shop had thought of his behaviour and his looks, imagining he could never bring himself to try again. But the acquaintance was made in time, and on his very next visit he found out that the boy’s name was Jemmy Baker, that he was just sixteen, that he lived with his widowed mother, and that he loved poetry for its musical sounds.
10
It was a Sunday morning towards the end of September, and the Anstey-Wards were gathered round the breakfast-table in front of a french window, which stood wide open although the day was a little chilly. Rose, Christian and Chatty were dressed for church, but Dr Anstey-Ward, never having gone since he abandoned his practice in Weymouth, was not. His sister thought that whatever his beliefs, he ought not to flaunt them by dressing in weekday clothes on the Sabbath.
‘I shall not be here for dinner,’ Christian said, helping himself to tea. ‘If no one else is planning to use it, I would be glad to have the dog-cart.’
‘You don’t mean to say you’re going to spend the whole of Sunday with that little shop-walker in Salisbury again?’ said his aunt. ‘And miss afternoon service, I don’t doubt?’
‘Yes, I can see him for any length of time only on Sundays, you know, because his hours are very long,’ Christian replied. His tone was tranquil, soft even, because he was talking about Jemmy. He had not concealed his interest in Jemmy after his family began to ask questions about his frequent trips to Salisbury, because his interest in him was entirely chaste.
Dr Anstey-Ward’s heavy eyebrows drew together.
‘This is the fourth Sunday you have missed dining with us, Christian. I don’t like it. A piece of cold pie as a luncheon and a bite of supper are not sustaining enough for a boy of your age – and you don’t eat enough, even when you are here. It puzzles me that the tonic I prescribed has not done you more good – too much quinine perhaps.’
Christian had lost his appetite, which had never been good, since the excitement of meeting Jemmy. He said:
‘Perhaps we could dine rather later than usual? Then perhaps I could be here.’
‘I’ve no wish to keep London hours,’ said his father, a little peevishly. ‘Five o’clock is the time for a heavy meal: a later hour hinders good digestion.’
‘It is very old-fashioned, Father,’ said Rose. ‘I’ve heard that even in some of the colleges at Cambridge dinner in hall is now at six.’
‘Oh? And how do you come to know so much about Cambridge, miss?’
‘Mr Charlie Ibbotson happened to mention it.’
‘Well Christian,’ said Anstey-Ward, taking no notice of his daughter’s reply, ‘if we dine at six today – providing that your aunt finds it perfectly convenient – can you be with us?’
Very unwillingly, because he had been sure that dinner would not be postponed on his account, Christian said yes. ‘And may I take the dog-cart into Salisbury?’ The dog-cart was the Anstey-Wards’ only carriage.
‘You took it last Sunday,’ said his sister. ‘Aunt Chatty and I want it today.’
‘Very well,’ said Christian, setting down his cup. ‘Then if I’m to be in time for the cathedral service I must go now.’
The thought that Jemmy would be waiting faithfully for him in the cathedral’s limpid gloom, ready to share his hymn-book, scarcely compensated him for this disappointment. He had looked forward for days to driving Jemmy out to where they could walk along the banks of the Avon or the Bourne, as they had done only once before. It was so much easier to clasp Jemmy’s hand and tell him that he loved him out in the wild than in the cathedral close, where all he could do, somehow, was earnestly describe Plato and ‘Hellas’ and the true theory of love as they walked round and round. Jemmy had been more at ease in the country. So often he looked rather bewildered: though always pleased and flattered by the attentions of so clever and kind a young man, whom he said, when pressed, he liked very much.
Just as Christian pushed his chair back, his father did the same.
‘That boy is not a suitable friend for you, Christian,’ Anstey-Ward said.
‘So I have been saying this age past!’ said Chatty. ‘A boy who is not even a clerk, merely a shop-walker – it’s the most eccentric, provoking thing I ever heard of. When I think of the money it cost to send you to Charton –’
‘Is that what you mean, sir?’ said Christian, looking from his aunt’s ruddy face to his father’s. ‘That Jemmy and I belong to different classes of society?’
Anstey-Ward looked steadily at him.
‘I fancy a close friendship with a boy so far beneath you socially can one way and another do you little good, though I don’t deny he seems an amiable lad. Your aunt is right, Christian, it is very eccentric.’ He added: ‘That doesn’t, to be sure, make it wrong, but surely there are equally likeable young men of your own age and rank to be found.’
‘Jemmy Baker has a – purity of mind which it seems to me it is impossible to find among the upper classes, certainly if most Charton boys are representative – and their masters too,’ said Christian, looking out of the window. ‘I am glad you acknowledge that there can be no real harm in my being friends with Jemmy.’
‘That is not precisely what I said, my boy,’ said Anstey-Ward. ‘But I do acknowledge that I had rather you had a taste for low company, so long as it were not morally low, than were a mere tuft-hunter.’
‘Thank you, Father,’ said Christian. He excused himself to his aunt and sister, and then left the room.
*
After breakfast, in his library, Anstey-Ward took a large bag of fossils from his last collecting trip out of the cupboard, and began to label and catalogue them. He already possessed a vast collection, which he housed in specially made drawers, and sometimes he thought he ought to refrain from adding further specimens unless they were truly exceptional – but the idea was not attractive. Gathering and ordering fossils was a great pleasure to him, a pleasure that not even Rose could understand. There was also the consideration that his days were rather empty, and must be filled with constructive activity.
Though he had a rigid schedule to which he kept conscientiously, Anstey-Ward was not an effective worker. With his grizzled hair, shrewd eyes and portly figure, he looked to be extremely solid, but his was in fact a grasshopper mind. He had achieved little by his scientific researches because, like his son, he found it difficult to concentra
te for a long time on any one thing, and would constantly skip from one area of research to another, usually giving his attention directly to the large question rather than adding his mite to the small factual details which ran down and accumulated in the hour-glass of theory – or failed to do so. He did not even confine himself to the wide fields of palaeontology and geology, but had at various times been chiefly interested in mesmerism, in phrenology, and in the attempt to produce primitive forms of life out of inorganic matter by the use of electricity.
Just at present, Anstey-Ward was attempting to concentrate on something small and specialised. He was interested in theories of the transmutation of species, and it was his aim to discover a fossil which would be hard evidence in favour of an idea which he had found deeply intriguing, but only a shade less unlikely than that of a multitude of separate creations in each succeeding geological period. But so far, he had searched in vain for an obviously transitional form of life, and he was beginning to consider making a study of the mating habits of snails.
As he worked at his labelling, Anstey-Ward found himself thinking about Christian, of whom he considered himself to be very fond, yet with whom he could never have a thoroughly comfortable conversation. In his mind there was a picture of the boy he hoped to see in a year’s time, after Oxford had begun to do its work: a boy cured of shyness, of weak lungs, of eccentricity, and of vagueness about his future. He did not doubt that Christian would be happier at Oxford than he had been at Charton, and he believed that happiness could work wonders. The boy might even develop an interest in science, and be able to argue with his father in a friendly way – Anstey-Ward, though moderately reclusive, loved to argue with both friends and enemies, and he rarely had the chance to do either.
And, thought Anstey-Ward, fingering an ammonite, Christian’s odd friendship with the little bookseller’s assistant would certainly come to an end.
11
In the summer of 1859, Christian sat with Jemmy Baker under a willow-tree, sheltered from the sun’s glare by the layered curtain of its leaves. The river Avon flowed by like moving glass, and all else around them was still in the heat-haze – only a few crickets cheeped in the grass. The two young men sprawled with their coats off, their collars loosened, and their boots discarded, but they were still distressingly hot.
A year at Oxford had strengthened Christian, and given him both new friends and intellectual food, but it had not altered his feelings for Jemmy as his father hoped. Jemmy’s beauty, like Charton’s moral and physical squalor, remained constantly in his mind – as much at Oxford as in the vacations, when he had little to do. He wanted never to forget Jemmy, but he wished he could rid himself of all memories of Charton. It amazed him that in what ought to have been his present contentment, he could not stop thinking about the corruption he had seen there, and wondering precisely what it was Onslow and Bright had done together. Sometimes it crossed his mind that perhaps there had been nothing but a few kisses between them, but the words of Onslow’s note, hot as the day, seemed to make that unlikely. Christian still kept the three pieces of paper he had received nearly eighteen months ago: Bright’s note in chapel, Bright’s letter, Onslow’s extract.
Jemmy was, in his own fashion, as disturbing as memories of Charton. Even after a year’s friendship, he was wholly passive; he initiated nothing. He wrote short letters to Christian at Oxford only when Christian begged him, and never seemed really to understand the nature of the love which Christian explained. But he said that he liked to receive Christian’s letters, and he was still prepared to give up the greater part of his Sundays to him during the vacations. He admired Christian greatly, and was anxious to get on in the world: to this end Christian was teaching him a little Latin, at his own request.
This was the first Sunday of the Long Vacation, and Christian had not seen Jemmy for over two months.
‘I am so glad to have been able to see you before I leave for Switzerland,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. You’ll be away a long time, shan’t you?’ said Jemmy.
‘A month. Yes, quite a long time – I wish you might come too.’ Christian was to join a combined walking and reading party in the Swiss Alps, headed by two Fellows of his college, one of whom was a founder member of the Alpine Club, while the other looked forward to reading Romantic poems aloud in suitable natural surroundings as much as to exploring Greek texts. ‘If it had not been for seeing you, I would have remained in London till our party leaves,’ continued Christian.
‘Would you, sir?’ In general, Jemmy called Christian nothing, but occasionally a ‘sir’ slipped out.
‘Don’t call me sir, Jemmy. I wonder why you find it so hard to say Christian.’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like the right thing, precisely. I don’t know why.’
‘What a foolish boy you are.’
Christian rolled over on his stomach, and smelt the hay-like grass. Then he raised his head.
‘Why don’t we bathe?’
‘Bathe?’ said Jemmy stupidly. ‘But you can only bathe in the sea.’
‘Wherever did you get such a notion? At Oxford everyone bathes in the river – surely you have done so before?’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘That’s of no importance, the water’s not deep. Don’t you wish to?’
Jemmy said:
‘Maybe, but someone might see us.’
‘Oh, that’s hardly likely, this is a very secluded place. Come.’ Christian got up, and took off his waistcoat and necktie.
‘They’d think it wrong, if they did see.’
‘Jemmy, there is nothing wrong, immoral, about nakedness. All the athletes were naked in Greece.’ Christian’s heart beat fast as he said this.
‘We’re not living in Greece,’ said Jemmy. He added: ‘And I was not thinking of being naked, I was thinking of the fish. They’d say we were disturbing the fish.’
Christian, surprised by this, merely said:
‘No one will see, I’m sure of it.’ He wanted to say something to the effect that despite mere appearances, they were living in Greece, but somehow found it difficult, as he never had before.
‘I don’t know,’ Jemmy told him.
‘Surely you know that not a soul has come near us since we got here,’ said Christian, a little impatiently. ‘Well, even if you won’t bathe, I shall.’ He unbuttoned his trousers, and stood before Jemmy in his shirt-tails. His ruffled, flyaway hair made a shaggy halo round his head. Then he removed his shirt and undershirt and stood naked. His figure was not beautiful, but it was better than his face: its only real fault was that it was too thin.
‘Come Jemmy,’ he said.
‘Very well, if you want,’ said the other; and slowly, with lowered eyes, he began to undress.
Christian did not watch this process, because he sensed that Jemmy did not want him to. Instead, he made his way down the short bank and through the fringe of riverside plants, into the cool of the water. Sharply sucking in his breath, he flopped down into it, and performed a few breast-strokes. A mental picture of white nude Jemmy was constantly before his eyes as he waited for the reality to appear. Suddenly he thought: I’ll teach him to swim. Now Christian saw himself holding Jemmy up in the water.
‘Is it very cold?’
Christian turned quickly, and then saw that Jemmy still had his shirt on.
‘It’s delightful. Take your shirt off!’
Rather roughly, Jemmy obeyed him, and cast the shirt away. He stood there with his arms dangling uncomfortably, and a faint breeze lifting his hair. Then at last Christian saw that his figure was just as he had imagined: there before him were the square shoulders, the slim hips and the little bottom all as white as a white-fleshed peach. Jemmy’s penis was not large, but was well-shaped and well-coloured, surrounded by light brown hair. Christian glanced at it, then raised his eyes quickly to the boy’s face, though an image of it remained in his mind.
‘Let me teach you to swim,’ he said, wading forward, showin
g his own ruddy penis above the water-line. The river was less than four feet deep even in the middle, and Christian knew it was not the best place for learning to swim. But it would do.
‘If you like.’ Jemmy trod uncertainly towards the river, disliking the feel of plants under his bare feet.
‘Plunge in,’ said Christian, wanting to pull him into the water.
‘Ooh! It’s cold.’
Jemmy did not plunge in, but climbed doggedly down. Having agreed to bathe, he thought it would be cowardly to withdraw only because the water was colder than he had expected, but he wished he had never said yes.
‘Shall I teach you how to swim?’ said Christian again. ‘I’ll have to hold you up in the water.’
Jemmy, who had just forced himself to dip his head in, gazed at him out of eyes covered with fronds of hair-like pale seaweed.
‘Will you?’ he said, pushing his hair back.
‘You look like a male Nereid. Yes, I shall have to hold you, just at first.’ Christian gripped the slimy pebbles of the riverbed with his toes, put a hand on either side of Jemmy’s taut waist, and clasped it. ‘Now lie flat on your stomach,’ he said. ‘Imagine you are in bed. There. Let your legs rise up, the water will hold them.’
Jemmy managed to do as he was told, but had trouble keeping his face out of the water. ‘Paddle the water with your hands, and kick your legs,’ said Christian, still holding on tightly to Jemmy’s waist. ‘You’re swimming! I’m going to release my grip, very slowly …’ As soon as he did so, Jemmy gave way to temptation, and planted his feet back on the riverbed. Then he slipped, and went right under, and came up spluttering.
Christian laughed; not in mockery, even kind mockery, but out of happiness. After a second or two, Jemmy copied him. ‘I don’t think I’m just cut out for swimming,’ he said.
‘Nonsense! We could try again.’
‘No, thank’ee.’
The Fall of Doctor Onslow Page 8
