by H. S. Cross
Mr. Grieves set down his pen.
—Of course. I’ve been meaning to thank you, Pearce, for your fine work this term stepping in when Austin was taken from his duties.
—You’re welcome, sir, and thank you, but that wasn’t what I …
Mr. Grieves raised his brow.
—I mean, I’ve been writing to Austin, sir, and he’s been writing me, advice and so forth, and he said he wouldn’t … I mean he might not be back next term.
—Oh, no?
—He thought it likely, I mean unlikely. He said his pater might send him to a crammer.
—Indeed?
—And what I wanted to say, sir, and I know it’s only on the off chance, you see my people want me to go up to Christ Church, and read law …
Mr. Grieves stood. People were waiting, trains going.
—My pater knows someone there, you see, one of the dons, and he knows the Head, and he says the docket system is the best preparation there is for—
—I see.
—You do, sir? I didn’t know how to say it.
—Obviously you’ll have the next available JCR post.
—Oh, thank you, sir, but it isn’t exactly that.
Mr. Grieves stepped around the desk.
—I mean it is, but, sir, Austin was Prefect of Hall, and if he should leave—
—Yes?
The clock raced. He should have written out what he had to say.
—I wanted to tell you, sir, that I believe in the truth, and I believe in the truth being told, and it seems to me that most of the time we’re more interested in avoiding awkwardness, but if we don’t tell the truth then we’re wandering in the dark, like what you say about those who don’t know their history.
—Pearce—
—And I should like to help the Academy that way, sir. I should like to help people see the truth and find the nerve to—
—For heaven’s sake, Pearce, you’ll be a prefect!
—But—
—As soon as possible, I promise. Stop fretting.
—It’s only—
—We can discuss it after the holidays. There’s no time now.
He passed him the journey money and shook his hand.
—Safe travels, happy Easter. Next!
He stumbled over the fringe of the rug. Outside, the queue glared.
—Must’ve been quite a tick-off, Moss said. Old Grievous read you the riot act?
Laughs, mock horror, Pious got a docket! And his hand was at Moss’s throat, and they were flailing, fists and feet, crashing together against the pigeonholes, and his arm was pinned, and Moss was landing blows, and pictures were flashing as they fell: Island, Green, Shepherd, Sheep. Like the voice in a whirlwind, the pictures told the truth. He was meant to read law, but they said something else. A shepherd of sheep on an island of green. If anyone should be Prefect of Chapel, it was he, not Moss.
—Pax!
The blows stopped, defeat his. Moss hauled him to his feet:
—Next time you get an attack of berserk, Pious, leave the pigeonholes out of it.
* * *
He couldn’t find her to say goodbye, but even if he could, there wouldn’t be a point. Good things always ended, bad things only paused. The school hymn was maudlin and the other song worse. He hated Lent. He hated Easter. Macabre, guilty, cloying, like the half-sweet smell of a sickroom.
The hunchback ignored him when he stepped into the room. Ultor, ultoris, ultori, ultorem. He took the journey money and put it in his pocket. Ultore—
—And this.
A letter addressed to his mother.
—Something to say, Riding?
Ultores, ultorum, ultoribus—
—What on earth?
Crash in the corridor, man to the door, he escaped the room and the House. The man had not concealed his disgust. He had seen the vileness inside him, pus no crucifixion could cure, and now he’d committed the fact to paper, sealed and addressed for the eyes of his mother. This world touched that one, and once she knew—ultores, ultoribus.
EASTER
18
He would never give her the letter. A solution so simple, Gray was astonished it took him so long to think of it. On the train, he had stuck it in the lining of his tuck box; for all anyone knew, it had gone missing in the tempest of the Woodling household.
Nearly a week he had been with his London cousins, tumbled around their somersault world. Uncle Alec and Aunt Beatrice presided over their menagerie with subdued calm and amiable chatter, respectively. Gray’s youngest cousins, Arabella and Rory, escaped their nanny more often than not and employed their freedom bickering or pestering the others to play with them. The eldest, Nick, had that term been appointed monitor at Harrow; he made it clear that he was a man with cricket to follow and couldn’t be expected to play with them as he used to. Tony, still at prep school, stuck to Gray like a limpet, plying him with one game after another, chiefly their old trope of Herr Wagner and Herr Schumann, secret agents whose business was to uncover treason and conspiracy. Gray’s mother had been lured from them by a nefarious romantic association, Herr Wagner judged, and there could be no doubt that Tony’s sister, Claire, was likewise engaged in subterfuge given the number of letters she wrote, received, and read surreptitiously at the table each day.
Claire was a year older than Gray but seemed suddenly older. She’d begun wearing stockings, her blouse swelled at the front, and although last summer in Norway she had climbed through windows, Gray couldn’t imagine her doing it now. During the outing to the British Museum, Gray had fallen into an argument with her over Egyptian relics and the girls’ school myths she had plied re. Howard Carter. Grieves had taught them everything about Carter’s expeditions and everything about the specious tales that surrounded him. When Gray peppered her with facts, Claire had accused him of arrogance:
—Boys always think they know better than girls.
—We do if that’s what you’ve been learning.
—You look down on everyone, you public school boys, but you don’t know the first thing about real girls. You swagger about in your cricket flannels and think you can make us melt like a pretty bunch of ninnies, nothing between our ears.
He didn’t tell her about the real girl he knew, the one with everything between her ears, a girl who could, if she tried, melt not only him but the snows of deep midwinter.
* * *
His mother arrived on Good Friday. He went with Aunt Bea to the station, but the train was late, and when she got down from the carriage, she looked drawn. As Bea organized the porter, his mother looked him over, as she did each time he returned from school. When he said she looked well, she burst into tears.
—What? What’s wrong?
Her tears turned to laughter as she realized she had frightened him. She was in perfect health, she said, only happy to see him and surprised at how he’d grown. He let her kiss him, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her as she expected. Usually at the start of holidays she was gay, and usually they spent Easter at home. This year everything was being handled by Bea and Alec. There was no reason for her to look strained. Her journey inspecting hospitals in Shetland (whatever that entailed) ought to have been good for her, but she felt thinner; he was going to have to see that she ate.
Everyone said his mother should marry again, but mercifully she’d always found their suggestions obnoxious. Widows did remarry—he knew several boys at the Academy with stepfathers, some of them even decent—but so long as she didn’t, they could avoid a second alteration, one perhaps more violent than the first. They had a tacit agreement, he thought, that so long as he looked after her and caused her no distress, she would not resort to it.
On the heels of his father’s funeral, she had been besieged by suitors; besieged was perhaps too strong a word, but she’d received three proposals, two from childhood sweethearts and one from an acquaintance. The very idea revolted her, she confided; she confided everything to him in those days, and he assured her they were entirely of
one mind. Some weeks later, Uncle William descended on Swan Cottage and proposed to supply the assistance his sister so plainly required. He had spoken to someone at his former prep school, he said, and they had agreed to take Gray. They would prepare him for the Harrow exam next year even though he hadn’t been put down for it when he ought. Harrow wasn’t Marlborough, Uncle William told her. Her husband’s views against public school were in their way understandable given the kind of place Marlborough had been when he was there, but Harrow was a proper school. Nicholas was happy there. William himself had been happy there. They all missed Tom, but just as she’d wisely rid the house of his unsanitary laboratory experiments, so should she ring down the curtain on her husband’s well-meaning but ultimately dangerous experiments in education. Uncle William implored her to think of her son. Keep your mind on the living. Her shouts had run out to the porch. She wouldn’t be steamrolled, she said. She could teach her son as well as Tom, if not better. Gray had traced the swan on the cast-iron bell, feeling she was a lion, roaring off those who would throw him in a pit.
She tried all autumn, and he tried to be taught. When she let him alone to read, they fell into fewer arguments and he didn’t have to explain all the ways she was wrong. By the end of November, she was spending every morning in bed, and when, mid-December, she announced to the family that the two of them couldn’t come to Norfolk for Christmas, Aunt Bea had pitched up at the cottage, followed two days later by Uncle William. They’d closeted themselves with his mother, jointly and in serial, and Aunt Bea had packed their things for Norfolk.
He didn’t remember much of that holiday except the morning Uncle William summoned him to the conservatory. The windows dripped, it smelled of mildew, and his uncle told him of St. Stephen’s. He would go there next week, his uncle said. She’s worn out. You can see that, can’t you? He’d wept, and his uncle scolded. Did he care for his mother or didn’t he? What would his father say if he could see how selfishly he was acting?
—Yoo-hoo!
Aunt Bea called them to the cab, and his mother pestered him about his coat, which wasn’t buttoned, and the fog that rolled up from the river, root of every fatal thing. As they rattled over cobblestones, his mother recounted the boat she’d taken back from Shetland:
—Three and a half days unrelenting seasickness.
—But you’ve never been seasick before, Aunt Bea said. You aren’t…?
—Heavens, no!
—Well, how were his parents?
—You met Peter’s parents? Gray interjected.
He knew she planned to see his godfather while she was in Shetland, but she hadn’t mentioned the parents, whom no one had ever met since they refused to leave their remote island croft.
—How on earth did you find the time to go all the way up to Unst? he asked.
Aunt Bea burst out laughing:
—Oh, he’s the spitting image of Tom! Pitch and word perfect.
A beat of fear, but his mother smiled:
—You mustn’t be envious, darling, they’re simply fearsome! And anyway Peter’s coming to see us once we’re home.
—He is?
She took his hand:
—I knew you’d be pleased.
The color had returned to her face. He had to stop seeing threats where none existed. First they had London, and now they would have Peter, too. Things couldn’t get worse forever. At a certain point, they had to go in the other direction.
That evening Uncle Alec presented an Easter surprise: theater tickets for the following evening. Gray had never been to the theater before, save pantomimes, and Uncle Alec said they would wear evening clothes. Gray had no such wardrobe, but Aunt Bea said his Sunday uniform would do, and Nick let him use his aftershave and Brylcreem. Claire did something peculiar with her hair, and his mother wore one of Aunt Bea’s gowns, striking and alien.
When they arrived at the theater, Uncle Alec led Nick, Claire, Tony, and Gray through a passage to a shop displaying Turkish delights. He purchased four bijoux boxes and presented them as if such sweets were compulsory. They sat in the stalls, the air sharp with cologne and quicklime. On his tongue a lemon square melted, recalling other lemons, other delights, until in a breath, darkness fell …
A wail.
A long, wretched tearing sound, curtain flying, lights on a stage filled with fog. A woman keening, soldiers carrying a body wrapped in sheets. Groaning below, thunder above. Lemon, rose, powder, plump.
Lights on a dinner, warm and festive. Restaurant, music, the woman with her son at a table full of friends.
Lights on a wedding. Time moving backwards. Wedding not of the son, but someone important. The woman indebted to the hostess, talk of husbands dead and husbands untrue, barbed repartee now the point of the play? The son won’t ask anyone to dance. His mother embarrassed, unpleasant scene, but interrupted by a messenger—Gray’s age? Nick’s?—riding a bicycle across the stage. Hair golden, uniform navy, cap red, cape silky white. He jingles his bell and they freeze, save the woman, who opens the telegram in fear. Another jingle and they move, chatter filling the stage, messenger boy riding away as if he’s never been. A servant appears and says they’re out of wine.
Back and back, the woman’s son is younger. She has a husband. They go on holiday, always worrying about their child. The boy himself is disobedient and cold, but the bicycle messenger warms the stage, never changing though the others do. He wheels each time from somewhere new—back of the stage, down the aisle, balcony—ring, ring!—folding her telegram into a paper airplane. Last square melting down his throat, time spinning faster, scenes shorter, something coming, good or bad?, something so big it could recast their life. Back and back, the woman as a girl, hair in plaits, reading. Again a rumble, and above, dust like snow. Still reading, rumble louder, dust into debris—the Messenger! climbing down a rope, raiment white, cloak flowing as he leaps. Through the noise, the golden boy speaks for the first time: Fear not, lady!
Silence. Sawdust settles. He whispers to the girl. She whispers back, then he, and she again until at last he rises—straight into the air!—only the hem of his cape in view: With God, nothing shall be impossible!
* * *
Valarious as an enterprise was wooden and dead, he saw. The real Valarious walked as vividly as any, but his creator lacked the power to draw him out where others could see. Would he ever become the kind of writer worthy of his subject, someone who could set Valarious on a stage with lights and ropes and make him live before thousands? The Messenger would make a perfect Valarious, his white cape swapped for green, a living steed in place of the bicycle. How long, O Lord, until other people could know him as Gray did?
In the wake of The Messenger, Tony had begun petitioning for a bicycle, Claire had sent and received several telegrams, and Nick had fallen under a spell, wishing nothing besides a romantic association with the actress who’d played the mother, or such was Tony’s interpretation of his brother’s new penchant for poring over theater reviews, even purchasing a magazine devoted to the stage. The Messenger played every evening the following week, Nick confided to Gray. They could get seats for pennies up in the gods on the day. When Gray proposed going a second time, his mother looked scandalized.
—See it again?
—With Nick. I’d use my own money.
She protested against their going alone and at night, but Gray reminded her that Nick would be eighteen next month. He appealed to his aunt and uncle. Neither of them could imagine why anyone would see a play more than once, but they conceded that Gray would be safe with his cousin and that the Audsleys drew a decent audience, even perhaps in the gods.
—I don’t know what that means, said the volunteer nurse starchily.
—The high gallery, Bea explained, though you’ll more likely find nosebleed there than divine inspiration.
Gray thought she’d recoil at the mention of nosebleeds, but something arrived in their midst, changing his luck and reconciling his mother to the idea.
Tony
wanted to join them, but Nick pointed out that Tony was skint. When Tony applied for an advance on his birthday money, Aunt Bea reminded him that his birthday wasn’t until August and that he still had another week without pocket money because of his Housemaster’s letter. Tony turned his efforts towards Nick and Claire but came up empty-handed, as he evidently owed each and had for some time. Undeterred, he petitioned Gray.
—You’ve got enough for two tickets, Tony said.
—But there’s the cab and the tax.
—And something to drink in the interval, Nick added.
—You could ask Aunt Elsa for the extra, Tony said. She never says no to you.
His mother frequently said no to him, though Tony refused to believe it. He continued to pester as they dressed, but when they put on their coats to leave, a bitterness descended and Tony declared that he hated them both.
In the cab, Nick passed him a cigarette, which settled his nerves. Gray asked about the actress playing the mother and how old she was.
—Ancient, Nick said.
—I thought you fancied her.
—God, no. She’s the manager’s wife!
—Tony thinks you’re eloping.
—Wrong end of the stick, as usual.
Nick’s crush was the young woman playing the actress, a certain Miss Worthington, known as the Nightingale of Shaftesbury on account of her singing. When Gray asked about the Messenger, Nick reported that he was the son of the manager. Played Romeo last season. Critics keenly disappointed with his small role in this.
—But he’s the title character, Gray said.
—He’s only got two lines.
Their seats in the gods gave a dizzying view, but Nick produced a pair of opera glasses and let him use them. In the orchestra pit, musicians practiced and smoked. A stagehand consulted the conductor, and then a man, the one who played the father—The manager, Nick whispered—emerged and begged their patience. Nothing was amiss, he told them, no players taken ill, not even dear Mr. Brazille after a heroic stint at the Queen’s Arms last night. The tuba trumped, and the orchestra laughed.
