Boys and Girls Come Out to Play

by Nigel Dennis

“I often feel you do, subconsciously. I know I’m not an intellectual.”

  “I know there is a cynical part of me,” said the tutor, “I thought I managed to keep it under … Do you know, I never respect and love you more than when you come out so frankly and admit to being ashamed of something? It makes me realize how cheap I am myself.”

  “Well, don’t let’s start grovelling.”

  A cold air of penance moved through the big house and followed its occupants in their walks through the grounds. It was noticeable only in the form which made it least recognizable—in a decorum that eliminated any strong personal disagreements or advances and encouraged a punctilio of over-amiable conversation and incessant toleration. The tutor took every chance he got of eating his meals in the big house, as though he were suddenly frightened of being alone. Mrs. Morgan managed to talk very little, but she became paler every day and her fingers, when she ate, trembled with confusion. The maids spoke in much lower voices and appeared uneasy. Morgan was by all odds the most at ease; he talked freely and naturally as though he were fond of every one; sometimes he laughed so heartily, as bishops do, that the others regarded him with nervous smiles. His grandfather was the most puzzled of the company: sensing trouble in the air, he ceased to speak at all, and crouched over his food like a cat. Once, he suddenly raised his head and cried, in a hysterical, querulous voice: “What goes on here? Is there something I’ve not been told?”

  Soon after, Mrs. Morgan put on a pair of old grey flannel slacks, took a heavy walking-stick and spent most of an afternoon out walking. That night, when her son was reading in bed, she knocked on his door and pulled a chair up beside him. She was more apprehensive than he had ever known her to be before. She said:

  “Jimmy, dear, I want to thank you very much for the way you’ve been behaving lately. I’m sure I’ve never known you so co-operative and controlled. You seem like quite another person.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I suppose I’m finding interests. But I haven’t noticed any change myself.”

  “Why, it’s hardly believable!” She gave a little laugh, and went on: “When I was out walking today I was thinking to myself that I must often have seemed a very dogmatic, difficult sort of mother to you.”

  He said nothing.

  “I know I have often been too much of a disciplinarian, even though I’ve known discipline is no good unless it draws the person closer to one.”

  He gave her a surprised, suspicious look.

  “I felt a little bit ashamed of myself today, Jimmy.”

  For a moment it seemed that he was inclined to reassure her; but he still said nothing.

  “What I think I ought to tell you, just in case you don’t realize,” she said, “is that I’m not like that—so much of a martinet—without any reason. I often wonder if you have any idea of what agonies I go through when I think of you’re being ill, or when I see you ill. Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I think about is if you are going to come down to breakfast; every minute that you’re late makes me want to run upstairs and see, I feel so tortured. Each time you go up that mountain alone, I think of you’re falling and being smothered or bitten by a snake. I have to always be asking you about taking your medicine, because even if it doesn’t seem to do you much good, I just can’t bear to think of how much worse you might be without it. If I don’t do these things, no one else is going to; a girl like Peggy is a hard little thing, really, and your grandfather always thinks everything just runs by itself. When your father was alive, I wasn’t the kind of person I am now; if he had lived he would be responsible for you too. Sometimes I don’t think you know how many things I keep from you and how much I try to make you free of anything that would make your life even more difficult. I shouldn’t even talk to you this way, I know, if it’s going to upset you; but I do feel you should know these things; you’re not a boy any more. I also realize that no matter how bad your health is, you can’t just go on staying here indefinitely—but I truly believe you shouldn’t do anything about going away for another year—or two. We could try and do something about college as well, if we could only find someone who could teach you enough to get you there; we could choose a college that’s near, perhaps.”

  At this, he flushed and started to pick at the bedclothes, avoiding his mother’s eye, as though he knew very well that his only hope was not to recognize that there was any appeal to his heart in her confession.

  “Or do you have any ideas of your own about it?” she asked, becoming bolder.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  His mother got up. “I felt I had better talk to you tonight,” she said, “just so as to make sure you would know that I am not just being difficult.”

  “I never did think that.”

  “Then everything’s all right, is it? I would so like to think it was.”

  “I guess so.”

  “That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic, Jimmy dear.”

  “I just mean that there doesn’t seem to be any change.”

  “Don’t you see that what I’ve been trying to explain tonight is why there can’t be any change?”

  “Yes; I suppose that’s why I don’t sound enthusiastic.”

  “And yet I did suggest some changes, though not for now.”

  He said nothing.

  “I don’t know quite what I mean, I’m afraid, but I think that when I came in tonight I hoped you’d give me some kind of an assurance that you didn’t feel too bad about things in general—so that I’d know you were in sympathy with me on plans, and so on.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “For instance, there’s the Colorado question. I could write to your uncle at once if we agree on it.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s all right if I do, you mean?”

  “Why not?”

  “But you do want to go, don’t you? Otherwise I wouldn’t even think of doing it.”

  “I don’t care, really.”

  After a pause, his mother said: “I’m afraid that you haven’t really taken in a word I’ve said this evening.”

  “Oh yes I have. I heard it all. I see all your points.”

  “But you’re not going to help me the least little bit, are you?”

  “Well, I can’t want something I don’t want.”

  “In other words, we’re in a real fix and you have no intention of helping out.”

  “I guess it’s something like that.”

  “This is a stupid question: I can’t imagine your saying yes; but I suppose it’s not possible that you’re still determined to go to Poland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ve just been wasting my time talking to you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “It makes no difference whatever to you that I have said No absolutely more than once and that there’s just no question any more?”

  “I want to go, just the same.”

  “Now, do you mind telling me why you, who have never shown the smallest interest in Poland, or politics, or anything of that kind, should suddenly overnight make going to Poland the only thing that matters?”

  “I was invited,” he answered, with much dignity.

  “I’ve told you before that Max Divver is not a particularly intelligent man. You know the kind of man who suggests that sort of a thing because he thinks it’s funny. The woods are full of them.”

  “He seems very intelligent to me. He doesn’t shoot his mouth off; he looks serious; he’s the kind of man I trust.”

  “Isn’t that just because he looks like a man who’s never been ill in his life?”

  “I hope I can see further than that in people.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t look so unhappy.”

  “What do you expect me to look? There’s just one thing I want to do.”

  “One thing you can’t do.”

  “O.K.”

  “Now will you try, just the same, to get used to the idea and not punish yourself by making yourself miserable?�
��

  “I certainly won’t go around pretending to be miserable, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, that’s something. And before I say good-night, are you coming with us to the Drinkwaters tomorrow?”

  “I’ll skip it, I think.”

  “You always like it when you get there, you know.”

  “Even so. I just don’t feel much like going out.”

  “Then what are you going to do with yourself?”

  “Oh, I’ll find something.”

  “I think you’re being obstinate, Jimmy.”

  “Oh, well….”

  “It really won’t help you one bit.”

  “I didn’t suppose it would.”

  *

  Mrs. Morgan had found her son’s politeness alarming; she found his next mood far worse. If he had seemed distant and impervious to annoyance, he was now so remote as to be untouchable. The change was noticeable the very morning after his mother had talked with him; when he sat down to breakfast he looked like a dead man. The life had gone out of his hair, his cheeks were white and hollow; over his eyes was a fog so thick that they showed not the vaguest reflection of objects that lay outside the lids. With this torpor of the spirit went a deadly clumsiness; his hands appeared over his plate in the gloomy manner of crabs; he let his head loll in a way that was no better than disgusting. He ate practically nothing; what he did eat took minutes to chew and was finally engorged with such a convulsion that one might have waited for a muted thud, as of a dropped pillow, to announce the food’s arrival at the bottom. His mother—who at once started to shiver with impatience and despair—began to prod him with brisk questions, as though testing his skin with pins; but he appeared not to hear most of the questions, and to misunderstand the rest. After breakfast he shambled over to the tutor’s cabin and quickly fell asleep over the table. At lunch his mother made one or two childish efforts to restore his vitality by appealing to his vanity: she asked him to repeat the opinions he had stated the other day about Russo-German relations, which she said were really serious, even unusual, and ought to be worked into one of next week’s editorials. But he had no recollection of the opinions.

  “Come now, Jimmy,” said his mother, testily winding her necklace into a knot; “you know perfectly well. There was the structure of the Ukraine.”

  “Oh that,” he said, drawing a huge sigh and shutting his eyes. “Yes, I do remember vaguely…. What’s this old stuff?” he added, mooning over a dish and prodding the mixture.

  “It’s your dessert. Don’t be so ridiculous. It’s mousse.”

  “Mousse; oh. Hello, mousse.” He gave a foolish laugh and pushed the silver spoon into the creamy mess, and then sat in a bored way watching the spoon rise slowly to the surface, after which it tipped into his lap, spattering his knees. “Excuse me,” he said, yawning, and lurched into the garden, where he entered the big hammock and went straight to sleep, leaving the mousse spots to cake on his trousers. Mrs. Morgan retired to her rattan chaise-longue in the summerhouse; her father ascended to his private porch; the secretary settled into a deep chair in the living-room, from where she could see her legs reflected in a mirror.

  The sun was hot; the special, country mood of the hour fell on the estate: no moving life except a bird or squirrel hopping slowly, with prolonged pauses, across a shaded patch of lawn; and here and there, carefully spaced out of one another’s way, the shape of a lethargic human body, slopped by general armistice into idlness, ennui and yielding weaves of twine and straw, breathing with the gusty despair appropriate to a relaxing siesta. This condition had lasted barely half an hour when it was interrupted—it would be hard to say by what; perhaps the click of a wooden gate, a suggestion of a laugh, a faraway flag of colour denoting a summer dress or a pair of slacks, perhaps only a sudden suspicion of the presence of foreign life—anyway, one of those unmistakable signals by which anyone who is half asleep in the country knows instantly that a neighbour, stuck with a week-end guest, is about to appear in full force, wreathed in smiles and crying: “Holl-oo-oo! Anyone at ho-ome! Oo-oo!” Through various chinks the household, suppressing their breathing, peered with disgust at the approaching enemy: the secretary pressed one side of her body against a wall of the living-room and manœuvred the edge of one eye a fraction outside the edge of the saffron curtain; on his high porch, the old man crept to the railing like a dog and, his eyebrows raised in high arcs, bent his nose down into the world; Mrs. Morgan turned in her long chair with scarcely a rustle and sidewise observed the pathway through a slit between two creosoted wall boards; sunk in the hammock, her son permitted his left eyelid to flicker upward to a point where the lashes allowed a sieved view of life, but deprived him of none of the sleeper’s security and privileges.

  “Perhaps they’ve all gone out!” cried a lady’s voice. “Oh no, they’re around; bound to be,” answered a gentleman confidently. “What a beautiful place!” exclaimed a third voice. “Is it not too beautiful?” replied the first lady. “Now, don’t you run down our little home just because you like this one better!” said the gentleman waggishly, and instantly cried again: “Anyone at ho-ome! Yo; there; hello; eh?” “I think we’ll have to look for them,” said the first lady grimly. “I hope we are not intruding on them,” said the second. “Not a bit of it,” said the gentleman, obviously an old hand in rural custom; “we’ll find them.”

  It being now too late for members of the household to spring suddenly into view, declaring that they thought they heard voices, they remained in assumed sleep, awaiting discovery. Mrs. Morgan was soon found in her long chair, and arose, rubbing her eyes and smiling. “Vaguely, in my dreams, far away, I was sure I heard …” she said. “How are you, dear Isobel? How do you do, Miss Greener! No, I’m only delighted you found us in … Peggy! Jimmy!” The secretary ran out through the French windows, tossing her golden hair back, and skipping. “Why, here’s pretty Peggy!” boomed the gentleman, who was president of the Eastern Council of Foreign Missions and wore a black-banded Panama, a white suit with an orange pin-stripe, parti-coloured brogues, and carried a bamboo cane. “Now, that’s the kind of secretary I’ve always wanted!” he exclaimed. “Don’t tempt me, Mr. Waters!” she replied, laying a lacquer-ended finger against her nose. “Why, there’s the boy, in the hammock!” shouted Mr. Waters. “I think he’s sound asleep,” said Mrs. Waters. “That’s fine, fine,” said Mr. Waters, looking very large and grave: “do the boy a world of good; the more he can sleep, the better. Now, how has his health been?” “He seems a little depressed,” said Mrs. Morgan, sighing. “Now, that’s too bad, too bad,” said the old gentleman, shaking his head vigorously. “Jimmy!” cried Mrs. Morgan. “Now, let him sleep, my dear!” protested Mr. Waters: “you radicals are all so energetic: you’d like to keep all of us in a permanent state of revolution, wouldn’t you? Status quo’s just not a part of your philosophy. Admit I’m right, Gertrude.”

  A hundred yards away, Morgan began laboriously to climb out of the hammock; his mother watched him out of the corner of her eye with much uneasiness. “You’ll hear me tease Mrs. Morgan a good deal, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Waters to Miss Greener, fairly shaking with laughter. “Do you know she’s made this part of the county a hot-bed of dangerous thought? Would you guess, now, that almost every Sunday she holds secret meetings of anarchists?” Miss Greener made a sibilant noise of horror and smiled confidently at Mrs. Morgan. “Well, she does, and it won’t be long, in my view, before we’re all wearing red shirts and giving the Communist salute. At any rate that’s how I tease Mrs. Morgan, who’s a very dear friend of mine from way back and for whom I have a very deep respect. I’m an old stick-in-the-mud Republican myself, but not so hidebound that I can’t respect every man-and-woman’s right to make this terrible world a better place, each in his or her own way, whether mine or their’s. I think that if my dear friend Mrs. Morgan’s Bolshevistic friends came to power tomorrow in this land I’d buckle to, with trust in their human honesty…. Or would they stand me up a
gainst a wall and shoot me? Would they decide I was a menace? You’d put in a word for me, Gertrude?” “Indeed I would, Harry,” said Mrs. Morgan, tapping one foot on the sward.

  Meanwhile her son was advancing on them, tacking along in a dismal zig-zag, his arms swinging low like a primate’s, his mouth open. Even at a distance a look of insolent boredom showed on his face. “Well, here’s the boy!” cried Mr. Waters, raising his cane and prodding Morgan in the navel with the ferrule: “I’ll bet you’re a worse Red than your terrible mother is. But what really troubles me,” he added, turning toward the secretary, “is to see a pretty girl like this caught by the Bolsheviks, when she ought to be marrying a nice young man like Petty and having lots of beautiful babies.” “Harry!” said his wife, “you are too awful! Don’t mind him, Peggy. He likes people to think that clergymen are human like the rest of us.” “And now what’s this I hear about you, James?” said Mr. Waters, turning again to Morgan and making a worried, cod’s mouth. “Your mother tells me you’ve not been so well.”

  Mrs. Waters and Miss Greener, who were more sensitive in such matters, caught their breath in anguish as Morgan gave his mother a look of trembling indignation. The ladies were honestly in torment as they glanced at Mrs. Morgan and noted the discomfort in her face; but they were also speechless, helpless, and on the rack in a way that was not entirely unpleasant to them; they were dreadfully ashamed and excited. As they expected, Morgan rose to the fight without a second’s besitation. “I’ve been very well,” he said, coldly and clearly, “except that I am not allowed to do anything I want and am treated like a child.”

  “Jimmy,” said his mother. “I don’t think we have any right to hash things like that over when Mr. and Mrs. Waters have come with a guest to pay us a friendly visit.”

  “Isn’t it true?” he retorted. “And who started hashing? What did you tell Mr. Waters?”

  “That you were not feeling at your best, simply.”

  “Yes, you were ashamed of me, so you warned them.”

  “I have known your mother for a great many years, James,” cried Mr. Waters, deeply upset and quite at sea, “and I know she could never be ashamed of one she loved. She is a great Christian, whatever her political views. I feel you are what we used to call hypersensitive; they have another name for it now.”