by Alec Waugh
‘Don’t you mind?’
He shook his head. ‘On the whole I’m quite glad to have them think it. It’s a useful alibi. Not for the fact that I don’t happen to like women in that way, but that I don’t happen to be neuter. Very far from it. Does that surprise you?’
‘Yes.’
He laughed. ‘I suppose I’d better tell you the whole story of my life.’
This is just when I should have my tape with me, Myra thought, but even as she thought it, she suspected that this wasn’t going to be a confession that would be of any use to her.
Gerald was smiling calmly. ‘By the time I’ve finished you may be surprised at my telling you all this, but you’re the kind of person to whom I feel I can talk openly, because I believe that you’d respect a confidence. And even if you weren’t, I’m not ashamed of what I’m going to tell you, of the explanation that I’m going to give of how I became the man I am. I fancy it’s an unusual story, but then we all fancy ourselves unusual. We think we’re special and unique. At any rate, here is my story.
‘You don’t need telling, it’s general knowledge of the devious behaviour that goes on between boys in English public schools. If you incarcerate for eight months of the year, in a monastic atmosphere, boys of eighteen who are grown men and boys of thirteen who have only just ceased to be children, you must expect drama to ensue. Fifty years ago those in authority refused to believe that such things could happen except in a bad house, in a bad school, in a bad time. Now we’ve gone to the other extreme. We imagine that everyone in an English public school is indulging in—what shall I say?—classical revels. I fancy that the extent of the problem is as overrated now as it was underrated fifty years ago. I think that actually much less goes on than is supposed; and that, in my opinion, is because there is so little emotional reciprocity. A prefect of seventeen is attracted towards a small boy of thirteen because he is small and weak and pretty, because he is in fact girlish. Now that boy of thirteen, unless he is potentially homosexual—and now and again he is—feels no attraction for the older boy. Because he doesn’t and because the elder boy usually has a genuine affection for the younger boy, the relationship remains relatively platonic. There is, naturally, a certain amount of, shall we say, dirtiness between boys in the same age group, but it’s something that is casual and unimportant, in which no emotions are involved, which does not go deep, which is quickly outgrown when the boys concerned enter the adult world of women. That is the case ninety-nine times in a hundred. My own case was different. It was the hundredth case: I was involved in a relationship where there was deep reciprocated emotion. I have never got over it.’
He paused. He was still smiling; there was nothing self-pitying in his voice. He was treating as a pleasantry something that was clearly most serious for him.
‘He was a year and a half younger than I was. But because I went to school a little early, I was two years his senior on the roster. He was in the choir. At Fernhurst the choir sat in the front of the chapel, on both sides of the aisle, facing one another, at right angles to the main body of the pews. I noticed him right away. For me it was the coup de foudre. He was in another house, and at my school, as at most schools for that matter, boys are not encouraged to meet boys in other houses until they are quite senior. There was no chance of my seeing him until he had caught up with me in form and games.
‘I made inquiries about him. He was, I learned, bright in class. He was only one form lower than myself. He was clearly going to be something of an athlete. He had come from a preparatory school that played Rugby football, so he had a start on the other new boys. He had made a mark of a kind within two terms. He was tried for the Colts, the under-sixteen side; he didn’t get in, but he was given a trial. I thought to myself, In a couple of years we may be in the same sides.
‘It was all very distant and romantic, the cherishing of an ideal. At our school, in the terminal roll book, they put against each boy’s name the various classes that he attends, so that by finding out which boys in my house were in the same classes that he was, I could work out which classroom he would be in at every hour of the day. We each had a chart which we pinned up in our studies, showing where we would be each hour. I put on my chart in red ink the places where he would be. I would think at the start of one day for instance, I shall be working in my study between ten and twelve. At eleven, when classes change, I shall see him cross the courts between the science laboratories and Mr. Churchill’s history hour. It was silly but it was romantic. And it was exciting too, because gradually as one term led to another, he became aware that I was watching him. We could not speak to one another. But we exchanged glances. We smiled at one another. We were conscious of each other. A mutual attraction was building up. We were looking forward to the day when we should both be seniors—we could guess when it would happen. Next autumn, I would think, we shall both be in the football side, we shall both be in the top form—the sixth. Then we shall be able to see each other. Later we should be in the cricket side; do you see the point? As a junior you play only with your own house; as a senior you graduate into an international set, in terms of school life, that is to say. I don’t suppose we’d spoken to each other half a dozen times, until the first day of that September term when we both appeared together on the firstfifteen field—it was called “The Upper”. We looked at each other and we smiled. We both knew what was in the other’s mind.
‘After the game it was usual to go to the school tuckshop for tea and sausages. Now we could sit at the same table. Our talk was easy and natural; we might have been brought up in the same village all our lives. At the end of tea I said, “Why don’t we go for a walk next Sunday?” It was as easy as all that.’
He paused. Myra was reminded of Anna and that older girl at the summer camp.
‘We never talked about it,’ he went on. ‘“Never seek to tell thy love.” It would have embarrassed us to talk about it. We saw each other when we could. It wasn’t easy. A schoolboy doesn’t have much privacy, and we had to be careful. We visited each other in the holidays, but in term time there were only those Sunday walks and it rained quite often. It was enough though; there was the companionship of the football field. I was scrum half, he was fly half. We understood each other’s moves. We had our own sign language. They still say at Fernhurst that we were the finest pair of halves they’ve had. When the ball came out of the scrum, I’d know exactly where he was; I’d fling the ball out to him, watch him cut through, or open up the threes. Sometimes he’d punt ahead and I’d be there, anticipating. Rugger’s a lovely game. It was a miracle for the two of us during the two seasons when we played together. There was the thrill of the game itself, and linked with that there was the oneness that we felt together. It was an extension of our Sunday walks.
‘It was the same in the cricket season. I was the steadier bat; but he was the more dashing, the more exuberant. I went in number 4, he came in at 6. I played my innings in terms of his, wearing down the bowling for him, so that he could flog it round the field. Very often we’d be in together. What a good moment that was when the fourth wicket fell and I saw him come down the pavilion steps. There’s a wonderful comradeship about a stand together at the wickets. They used to say in the days of feudal England that village cricket was the cement that held the social structure in its place, that when the squire and the blacksmith had put on twenty runs for the first wicket, they had laid the basis of a friendship that no politician could destroy. We had a number of long partnerships, he and I. Each batted better when the other was at the opposite end. The way we stole short runs—we never needed to call, we knew when we could steal one. And it wasn’t only the cricket and the football. We were in the sixth together. We were discovering English literature. Between fifteen and eighteen one is unearthing a new poet every month. First of all it had been the Romantic revival, Keats, Byron, Shelley, with Browning and Tennyson thrown in; then we were introduced to Swinburne, and the decadents of the nineties; then through Rupert Brooke
we went back to Donne and Webster. We were alive, as alert mentally as we were physically. It was the old Greek ideal: the gymnasia of Athens. We were complete as we could never expect to be again. The golden age.’
He paused. His voice had taken on a new, a deeper tone. There was no undercurrent of a tremor.
‘For eighteen months it was ideal,’ he said, ‘and then.’
‘What happened then?’
‘A car skidded.’
‘Were you with him?’
‘No. Sometimes I wish I had been. Provided I could have been killed outright as he was.’
‘How did you learn?’
‘From my father. I can see him walking out of his library into the garden: “I’m afraid I’ve bad news. A telegram’s come through on the telephone.” Then he told me. A part of my life stopped that morning.’
He stopped again. She did not interrupt. She waited for him to continue. ‘I’ve never got over it,’ he said. ‘Emotionally, I’ve remained in exactly the same place that I was on that April morning. I’ve talked to doctors; I’ve done my best, believe me. They tell me that it’s a case of arrested development. If there hadn’t been that fatal accident, we’d have gone up to Oxford; our relationship would have changed, would have become a friendship. We’d have picked up girls together, married, gone our separate ways. That would have been the normal development. That is what everybody tells me. But …’ Again he paused. Myra thought, this isn’t a time when that tape would have been any use. He hasn’t done anything that he’s ashamed of; if he is ready to talk like this to me, he must have done the same with quite a number of others. It’s not as though we were particularly close. For all I know he may have told his mother. Anyhow, it was time for her to make a contribution to the talk.
‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you’re not telling me that you’ve remained faithful to a memory for fifteen, seventeen, however many years it is.’
He laughed. ‘Oh heavens, no; but what I have is a fixation as regards physical attraction on the young masculine adolescent. That’s what I respond to, and that’s the only thing that I respond to. If I’d outgrown it, as I should have normally, I would, as I said, have gone on to the next course on the menu, but as it was “coupé net en pleine ardeur,” to quote Maupassant, I’ve stayed, immobilised.’
‘That sounds rather tragic.’
‘Tragic is too big a word. But it’s … well, perhaps “awkward” is the right word. Because a very young man only remains attractive for a little while. There’s a bloom on him which vanishes quite soon. It’s a matter of eighteen months. His features coarsen, he sprouts a beard; his limbs lose their coltish suppleness; he has a masculine odour. A man can fall in love with a girl at fifteen and stay in love with her till she’s over fifty. She alters but she doesn’t change. But my kind of man cannot stay attracted to an adolescent beyond a certain age. I don’t say mine is a common case, but it is not exceptional. There are others like me. And men like me are unable to make a lasting emotional relationship, as quite a number of homosexuals do. We know that it can’t last.’
‘So that you go on being attracted to a succession of young men?’
‘That’s so.’
‘Isn’t it very dangerous, with the law being the way it is? You can never be protected by that “consenting adults” clause.’
‘I have to be very careful, in this country. But not in others, where it’s not against the law. In Arab countries, for example, where women are very strictly chaperoned, there’s not much alternative for young men. My job lets me travel. I take every opportunity of going to North Africa. I manage.’
‘I suppose you’ve taken medical advice?’
‘Naturally. I’ve even tried head-shrinkers, but it didn’t do any good. Perhaps I was on my guard with them. I didn’t want to have my personality altered. I think that one is wise on a lot of counts not to try to cure one’s complexes, but to find out what they are and learn to live with them.’
‘But you have made experiments with women?’
‘Of course. But it didn’t work.’
‘It didn’t work at all?’
‘Not satisfactorily. I felt disgusted afterwards, and, which is quite illogical, resentful towards the woman.’
‘Rather like women feel who are made love to by husbands when they are not in the mood.’
‘I guess it is. I wouldn’t know. Anyhow, it’s a long time since I’ve tried.’
‘Isn’t it awkward when they fall in love with you? I’m sure they do.’
‘My mother’s a good alibi.’
‘Heather’s accepted it.’
‘Yes, but that’s quite different. We’re simply friends; that’s why we are such good partners on the golf course. There hasn’t been any suggestion there of funny business.’
‘But surely, at the beginning, wasn’t there?’
He shook his head. ‘Her marriage put her off men completely.’
‘How so?’
‘You don’t know the story?’
‘No.’
‘It was tragic; the story’s got around that he was a brute who bullied her. It wasn’t that. He wasn’t a bad chap, in many ways. But he was a man who should not have ever married. He had syphilis.’
‘I thought that that kind of thing hadn’t happened for fifty years. It sounds like something out of Ibsen.’
‘It was hereditary. Perhaps he didn’t know he had it; or perhaps he thought that as it was hereditary it didn’t count. At any rate she got it, without knowing it, of course. Then she became pregnant. The baby was born dead. Perhaps because of the syphilis. I don’t know. At any rate she was very ill. It’s scarcely surprising that she’s through with men.’
‘Surely she could get a divorce on those grounds?’
‘Perhaps. But it isn’t so easy to divorce a man who’s resolved not to be divorced. As you know, he is a Catholic. Perhaps she doesn’t want to be divorced. She doesn’t want to have anything more to do with men. And being married to a Catholic is a safeguard.’
‘Her alibi, like your mother myth.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Poor Heather. Poor, poor Heather.’
10
Victor caught the late train after an early supper. He wanted to be at his office fresh next morning. Myra waved him goodbye soon after nine o’clock. I wonder if Heather’s on her own, she thought. Gerald was leaving the next morning. Heather was staying on for another week, for the sake of the sand and sun, and a lot of work in connection with her next term’s syllabus. Myra called her room. ‘I was wondering if you were on your own,’ she said.
‘I’m on my own.’
‘I was wondering if you’d like to have a drink with me.’
‘I’d like to very much. Downstairs or in your suite?’
‘It’s cosier in my suite.’
Heather was wearing a cerise silk blouse that fitted tightly at the wrist but had loose sleeves. There was a wide bow at her throat. It made her look very collegiate and young; the need to protect and cherish her welled up again in Myra. She was so dear and sweet. It was cruel that fate should have dealt so harshly with her.
‘Gerald’s bar is much better stocked than mine,’ said Myra. ‘But I do have on ice a half bottle of champagne that Victor overlooked.’
‘I don’t think that anything could be nicer than a half bottle of champagne. Golfers don’t seem to drink it much. They’re thirsty and want beer at lunch. In the evenings they want to be fortified with whisky.’
They sat side by side on a Chesterfield. Myra raised her glass and clinked it against Heather’s.
‘May next term be all that you deserve it to be. I suppose you’ll go back there as a conquering heroine.’
‘Nine out of ten girls don’t know I was ever in the thing.’
‘But your special pets will. I’m sure that you have special pets.’
‘I have them, yes.’
‘Pets who think that you are the sun, the moon, the stars and all that revolves in the celesti
al firmament.’
‘That’s rating it a little high.’
‘But a lot of the girls do have crushes on you, I suppose.’
‘You remember how schoolgirls are.’
‘What effect does it have on you?’
‘I do my best to be diplomatic. Not to have favourites, yet not to hurt the feelings of those to whom I am, how shall I put it, rather special.’
You are a most dear person, Myra thought. There was a pause. ‘Was your marriage as appalling as people say it was?’
‘I don’t know how appalling people say it was.’
‘I’ve heard some rather dismal stories.’
‘What have you heard?’
Myra shrugged. She was not going to let Heather know that she and Gerald had discussed her.
‘Victor said that he was a bully.’
Heather shook her head. ‘He was scarcely that. He was insensitive, but brutal, no.’
‘It wasn’t good though.’
‘It certainly was not.’
‘Has it left you with a feeling that you’ve had all you want of men?’
‘To put it mildly.’
‘That’s sad, but still …’ Myra paused. She was in a mischievous, a teasing, mood. At dinner she had shared a bottle of wine with Victor, and the champagne was now sending little ripples of excitement along her nerves. ‘There are consolations, I suppose.’
‘Consolations?’
‘Substitutes, shall I say?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Doesn’t your heart beat faster when those teenagers who have crushes on you gaze at you dewy-eyed?’
‘What a thing to ask. Of course it doesn’t.’
‘Not ever?’
‘Never.’
‘Not even hardly ever?’
They laughed again. Myra was conscious of a mounting tenseness, a quiver of anticipation. But she remembered Naomi’s advice. Keep it light. Don’t invoke high heaven.
‘What about the other mistresses?’ she asked.
‘What other mistresses?’
