Christopher stretched backwards to pull open one of the desk drawers, and took out a brand-new box that held two hundred. “Yes, he is cussed mean. He’s all right, though. Do you want one?” he added, breaking the seals of the packet and extending it, open.
“Where’s he from?” asked Tony, taking one.
“Nowhere in particular. D’you know, I only found out the other day that he was a Catholic? He goes to Mass on Sunday morning and has to cut breakfast.”
“Damned if I would.”
“No. Still, they get something to eat there.”
As the joke spread in ripples of appreciative chuckling, Eddy and Tony pulled chairs nearer the fire, stretching out their legs and expelling cigarette smoke in long contented breaths. Patrick came back with a large wicker basket full of bottles, which he placed on the hearthrug: John, feeling he should justify his presence in the room, took out some tankards from the cupboard, including one for himself, and handed them round.
“Oh, thanks. old man,” said Christopher. “I say, Pat, did you really put all this down to me?”
“Why not go and have a look?” suggested Patrick, grinning. “Are you overdrawn again?”
“Well, this stuff is blasted dear,” said Christopher complainingly, pulling out dark little bottles of stout. “We shall want an opener. Is there one in the drawer, John?”
There are numerous passages in music where the whole orchestra, which has previously been muttering and trifling along some distracting theme, suddenly collects itself and soars upwards to explode in a clear major key, in a clear march of triumph. Any of these moments would have described John’s feelings exactly as he bent over the drawer, repeating again and again to himself that Christopher had called him by his first name. When he turned round he could hardly keep from smiling. Almost the best part of the joke was his irrelevant remembrance of Whitbread’s words: “If you take my advice, you’ll let him know where he stands, pretty sharp.”
“Thanks.” Christopher took it carelessly. “Now then, glasses forward.”
“Pale ale for me,” said Eddy.
“Those four there are College Old,” said Patrick, pointing with the stem of his pipe. “I asked Bill for some specially. I’ll have that.”
“Right,” said Christopher, pouring.
Tony—his second name was Braithwaite—was one of the people who become boisterously excited as soon as they take a sip of anything alcoholic. Holding out his glass tankard in both hands, he laughed till his fair wavy hair flopped uncontrolledly, his broad shoulders heaving. “And do you remember when Potty Hurst brought that white rabbit in, and the thing just sat in the middle of the floor, too scared to budge?”
“Lord, yes; I’d forgotten Potty Hurst.”
“And Baxter thought it was a bit of white paper, and bent down to pick it up. The thing jumped ten yards, and old Baxter had such a fright he banged his head on a desk.”
The conversation continued to circle around Lamprey College, and Patrick (the only person, bar John, who was not a Lampreian) sat filling his pipe with a sardonic smile, cramming the hanging ends into the bowl expertly, and rolling up his pouch with care. “I remember we had rather a good rag at our place. The trouble is, I really can’t remember how or why it started. I know a rotten little rat of a prae fell foul of our dorm—something about a House game, I think it was.”
The others listened contentedly, their eyes not on him.
“At any rate, a gang of us—four or five—called round on him one night after lights-out in his room—praes had separate rooms at our place—and shaved his bush off.”
Eddy gave a cackle. “I’m damned,” he said. Patrick grinned at them.
“We kept it up that we were going to castrate him, you know. Lord, I’ve never seen a man so white. Absolutely as white as paper, white as this bloody wall. And there was damn-all he could do about it, either. It’s not exactly the kind of thing——”
“Ha, ha, ha!” roared Tony. “My God, no.”
“Of course, old Chris was a man for night work,” Eddy said, rubbing one eye with his finger. “Every night after lights out, you’d hear Christopher’s bed creak. ‘Where are you off to, Chris?’ ‘Oh, just a stroll round.’ Couple of hours later: ‘That you, Chris?’ ‘Sure thing.’ ‘Where was it tonight?’ ‘Oh, round and about.’ ‘Have a good time?’ ‘Fair to middling, thanks.’ Fair to middling. Ha, ha, ha! He was a close devil, was Chris.”
Christopher sat smiling softly, like one who is being praised. “Ah, those were the days,” he murmured. “Sound stuff.”
The glowing structure of embers in the grate collapsed, and Patrick added coal and two small logs, knocking out his pipe and relighting it. Sprawled in attitudes of enjoyment, the four of them lazily kept the conversation going, giving the impression of speaking on this subject for want of a better. Their stories were lustful and playfully savage, and John found they had extreme physical effect on him. He sat crouched on a hard chair, his fists clenched on his knees, gripped by an unreasoning terror that seized him whenever he heard of experiences that would have left him dumb. The life they described was intensely primitive to him. He tried to imagine himself set down amongst it, but blackness fortunately descended on his imagination before he could savour the whole impossibility of it. The astonishing thing was that he could catch here and there a note of regret in their voices, a nostalgia even. In the intervals of comparing notes and customs, they would sigh and gaze sadly at the fire, as if they were exiles gathered together far from their homes. And little by little John himself came to understand their sorrow, as what they had lost became clearer in his mind. To him it was wild and extravagant, a life that was panoplied and trampling compared with his own: it seemed to him that in their schooldays they had won more than he would ever win during the whole of his life. At first ill-treated, they had lived to be oppressors whose savagest desire could be gratified at once, which was surely the height of ambition. As the picture grew in his mind, he ornamented it with little marginal additions, until in the end the thing was an unreal as a highly-coloured picture of an ancient battle, but he had no inkling of its untruth, and he looked on them with curious respect. The pimply Eddy; Christopher, dark and unshaven as a boxer; the selfish and smiling Patrick, and even Tony Braithwaite—all took on a picturesqueness in his eyes, as if they were veterans of an old war.
Later in the evening, when nearly all the beer had been drunk, a quarrel broke out between Eddy and Christopher about money. Christopher insisted that Eddy owed him fifteen shillings, and he only contradicted Eddy’s denials with a perverse smile, lying back in his armchair and kicking Eddy repeatedly on the shin with each contradiction.
“Chuck that,” said Eddy.
“Give me that fifteen bob.”
“I said chuck that, you——”
Eddy leant forward suddenly and gripped Christopher’s ankle, jumping up and dragging him off his chair with a bump on to the floor. The others started up in alarm. Eddy, exerting all his force, managed to keep Christopher’s foot high in the air, grinning down at him the while.
“There, you fool——”
But with a sudden wrench and twist, Christopher got Eddy’s legs, and the two of them rolled furiously about the carpet, knocking over a half-full bottle. The air was full of their panting and oaths as they struck at one another with intent to hurt, for they were both rather drunk. John stood behind his chair nervously, while Patrick leant against the chimneypiece, hands in his pockets.
Christopher was much the stronger and in a moment had a wrestler’s hold on Eddy, pushing his head down so that he was powerless, his neck and ears growing a deep crimson. With a sudden exultance Christopher threw his whole weight on the grip, and Eddy screamed, and Tony took a step forward, raising his hand, but in a few seconds the whole incredible scene had dissipated. Eddy squatted on the hearthrug, sticking his horseshoe tiepin into his tie again, saying, “God, Chris, you are a swine,” while Christopher stood before the mirror combing his hair,
and John picked up three pennies and a propelling pencil that had fallen during the struggle. As he put them on the table, he noticed his own unused glass tankard: Christopher had not noticed he had taken one and had not offered him any beer.
John always regretted they did not spend more time together. After their first tutorial he suggested timidly that they should walk round the gardens, but Christopher said rather abruptly that he was meeting some people, and left him. But it was nevertheless this regret that came first to his mind when their Tutor, the day after, sent him a note asking him to be good enough to call on him.
“Come in, Mr. Kemp.” The Tutor smiled kindly, keeping one finger in the book he was reading. “Sit down. I wanted to ask you if perhaps you’d prefer me to take you alone in future.”
“Alone?”
“Alone, instead of with Mr. Warner.”
“Why—er—no, I don’t think so, sir.” He was flabbergasted and spoke without thinking.
“Are you sure? You don’t feel the present arrangement hinders you in any way?”
“Oh, no, sir.”
The Tutor covered his eyes for a moment with his hand and rubbed his forehead. His long body was clothed in a rough green tweed suit.
“Well, as you please. It wouldn’t be any trouble.” He waited a few seconds, but John said nothing, keeping his eyes fixed on the brightly-polished fire-irons in the hearth. “All right, that’s all I wanted to say.”
John left the room, and walked back round the cloisters, the shadows of the pillars falling across his path and his long black gown billowing out behind him. He met Christopher just lounging down the steps of staircase fourteen and told him eagerly what the Tutor had said.
“I hope you put a stopper on it.”
“Oh, I did, yes.”
“Good show. I suppose he thinks if he gets us alone he can screw more work out of us.”
“I’m glad you think I did right.”
Christopher nodded briefly, and strolled off, keeping his hands in his pockets and his head erect. John watched him go, and then went into the rooms. He was trembling slightly as he hung up his gown behind the door, partly from the nervousness that any contact with authority produced, and partly with pleasure that he had done Christopher a service. If the empty days that meandered past had any object at all, it was to please Christopher and win his favour. Whenever Christopher entered the room, John could not help brightening up and getting ready to laugh: he did not expect to be included in the talk, but it seemed a great privilege simply to be allowed to listen to them as they stood talking casually, the collars of their coats turned up, discussing where they should go of an evening. He had a keen sensation of their presence, like the smell of a fine cloth or leather. The night before their second tutorial, when they had known each other for exactly a fortnight, Christopher took John’s notes and hashed up a careless rigmarole to present in the morning, sitting in the lamplight with a cigarette in his mouth. His pen moved quickly over the paper. When he had done, he pushed the papers aside with a sigh of relief.
“Thank God that’s finished. White of you to lend me all this.” He studied his wrist-watch, yawning unconcernedly. “What about a drink?”
John laid his pen very carefully down across his notebook.
“A—er—where, d’you mean?”
“Oh, somewhere out.” Christopher stood up and picked up his scarf from the top of the cupboard; he blinked at John in a way that suggested that he had only just realized who he was talking to. “Oh, it doesn’t matter, if you’re working.”
“But of course—yes, of course!” John shoved his chair back, jumping to his feet. He bundled on his overcoat, keeping an eye on Christopher, as if he might suddenly disappear or the invitation be rescinded. Christopher crossed to the looking-glass and passed a hand over his hair from back to front: then, catching sight of the small clock that stood on the mantelpiece, picked it up and wound it a few times.
“Ready!” said John, by the door. There was a look on his face that fleetingly recalled the expression of a child who is being taken to a circus. As they walked round the cloisters and across the first quadrangle together, he regretted it was too dark for them to be seen. A light came on in the Master’s lodgings, but almost instantly a maid drew a heavy plush curtain across it, and there was no light anywhere. Christopher paused at the Lodge, where he found a postcard inviting him to play in a trial football match. He put it in his pocket.
“We’ll go to the Bull, shall we?” he said. “Eddy might be there.”
John did not want to see Eddy, but he was content to let Christopher go where he wanted, so they turned left on leaving the great gates. The bells were chiming for half-past six, and from the centre of the town came a mournful hooting of traffic, while from a taxi-rank near by a telephone rang persistently. The night air was cold. An aeroplane, bearing red and green pilot lights, flew diagonally across the sky.
As they turned up a little alleyway, John wondered what the Bull would be like: it had figured prominently in the anecdotes he had heard, and he had always pictured it as a tiny den. He was surprised, therefore, to enter a dazzlingly bright bar, where the light glanced off the chromium fittings and the mirror behind the counter, and a powerful coke fire slumbered in the grate. The room was empty except for the landlord, who read the newspaper, and a tremulous old man sitting in a corner with an untouched pint of beer before him.
“Evening, Christopher,” said the landlord, folding the paper up.
“Good evening, Charley. Two bitters, if you please.”
John took his with a gesture so casual that he nearly spilt it. It would never do to let Christopher think he had never drunk before, as was the case; that was something to be hoarded up till it had ripened into an anecdote. He imagined himself saying in the future: “D’you remember that time we went to the Bull, old boy. In our first term? D’you know, that was really and truly the first time I’d ever seen the inside of a bar.…” (“Oh, come off it, old boy!”) “S’fact! My dear fellow, it’s absolutely bloody gospel! Here, after you with the—whoops! Don’t drown it.…” His voice would be rich and husked with tobacco.
Aloud he said: “Thank you.”
“Not busy yet, Charley.”
“Not yet, sir.” Charley laid his hands palm downwards on the counter and watched Christopher light a fresh cigarette from the stub of an old one. “It’s the black-out. That’s what it is.”
Christopher nodded seriously.
“It is, I tell you. I’ve just been reading a bit in this paper”—he made a gesture as if to unfold it, but contented himself with tapping it several times—“all about the British pub Jerry can’t kill. Garrh! ’E’s killing it. ’E is! Why, at this time we’d have an ’ole barful of fellers—commercial, office chaps.…”
John listened impatiently, but as Christopher looked interested and amused, he tried to look interested and amused also.
“You won’t be sorry to see the lights go up again, then.”
Charley gave a short burst of laughter and drank: John drank too. Ugh, what a vile taste. The old man in the corner parted his mouth in a grin, and, speaking as if with difficulty, said:
“I reckon you’ll shut down—an’—an’ drink the place dry yerself!”
It was hard to hear what he said.
“Now that,” said Christopher, with a laugh, “is what I call taking a really unfair advantage.
Charley grinned too, and wiped the bar down with a foul wet rag. But before he could think of an answer more men came in, and the conversation dropped. John and Christopher took further swallows of beer, John trying to decide whether he really disliked it or whether he just found it unpleasant. Then he beat desperately about his mind for something to say: he felt that unless he flung nets of words over Christopher he might escape, borne off by another unaccountable whim, perhaps to seek Eddy or Patrick. “Do—er—do the Proctors ever come in here?” he inquired with a nervous laugh. “Have you ever seen them here?”
; “I’ve never seen them anywhere,” replied Christopher, stirring. “They don’t bother about the little places much.”
“Is this a little place?”
“Fairly, but you see it’s early yet. They don’t come out till after Hall.”
When Christopher blew out smoke, it was like cloudy breath—why was that?
Suddenly realizing Christopher had finished his beer, he drank his own and ordered two more, noticing that a group of men in the corner had switched on the light over the dartboard and begun to play. His pale face, with a hanging lock of yellow hair, looked back at him excitedly from the mirror, and he wondered how soon he would begin to feel drunk.
“I expect you managed to drink a good deal at school,” he ventured.
As expected, Christopher looked interested at once. “I don’t know about a good deal,” he began, lifting his full glass. “It wasn’t so easy. But there were ways, you know … I remember once——”
But before he could say more, the door swung open and Eddy Makepeace with another young man appeared, both dressed in raincoats, and after a second’s squinting in the light, made straight for Christopher.
“There you are, you elusive bastard,” greeted Eddy, coughing noisily. “It’s foggy outside. Here, come down to the King’s. Know who’s there?”
“Who?”
“Brian Kenderdine.”
“No.”
“Fact. Here for a night. He’s been to Narvik. He asked after you—we called at your rooms, but you weren’t there. I said I’d look for you here, while Brian and the boys went along to the King’s.”
Eddy stopped, licking his lips, and took a swig of Christopher’s beer. John, vainly trying to compose his disappointed heart, noticed that Christopher was already tightening his muffler and looking more animated than he had yet done that evening.
“It’ll be good to see Brian again. Is he tight? I know he always liked to get off a train tight, to make an impression.”
“He hitched,” said the young man in a disagreeable mincing London voice.
“No, soon will be though. Actually he’s been in a naval hospital—looks much thinner.”
Jill Page 6
