“I should say it would do for the moment,” smiled Patrick, taking the folded note and making another entry in his book. By accident John caught Christopher’s eyes and the latter thrust his hand into his pocket again.
“God, all right, don’t tell me, I owe you something, too. What a bloody life. Here, take that to be going on with.”
He held out two half-crowns with the action of tipping a porter. John blushed sharply.
“That’s all right—if you’re short——”
“Take it.”
“No, it’s quite all right.”
“What the hell d’you mean? Take it. I don’t want you to give me money.”
He accented, or so John fancied, the words “you” and “me”, and flung the two coins down on the open book John had begun to read. John sat silently, red in the face, not touching them.
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, Chris,” said one of the second-year students, “you won’t pay men who don’t want to be paid. Your fine sense of honour will have become dulled. In any case, I was relying on you to stand me a flick this afternoon.”
Laughter released a more general conversation, and, unnoticed, John picked up the five shillings and pocketed it, because, after all, as he ashamedly thought, he was glad to get it, having spent more money in the last few days than he could really afford. Then he got up and left the room, overwhelmingly conscious that Jill and all she represented must be kept hidden away from Christopher, absolutely at a loss to remember why he had ever mentioned her name at all.
This was the afternoon that Whitbread and he had been invited to tea at the Dean’s house, so he idled about in his room, writing a letter to his parents, until it was time to set off. He had arranged to meet Whitbread in the College lodge at four o’clock, and carried the letter with him. The two of them set off along the road in the bright afternoon sunshine, neither wearing hats. Under his overcoat Whitbread had on a black jacket and a pair of striped trousers that made him look like an office-boy.
“Do we pass a postbox?” inquired John, knowing that Whitbread could be relied upon to know such things.
“We can do. You could have posted that in t’lodge.”
“Is there a box there?”
“Yes, of course there is, man. Have you never seen it?”
John confessed he hadn’t. An old man hobbled along the pavement picking up cigarette stubs from the gutter. Whitbread walked along with an air of satisfaction.
“Ay! The Dean only asks scholars to these little do’s. Shows what he thinks of us. It gives you a chance to make a good impression.”
“I don’t know him well,” said John, resenting the intimacy with which Whitbread addressed him.
“He’s O.K. You’ll have to show him you’re not tarred with t’same brush as that fellow Warner—Dean’s had a bit of trouble with him already. I don’t know what he comes up here for. If it’s just drink and women he wants, he might as well stay in London. After all, he doesn’t want a degree—he hasn’t got to earn a living.”
“Not that he’d get one,” said John, with sudden spitefulness, glad when Whitbread laughed and agreed. They walked on, up the Banbury Road, passing young married couples who strolled slowly along, attended by tottering children or pushing perambulators. Wet leaves struck to the dry pavement. The tree trunks had white rings painted on them about three feet from the ground. In the distance a brass band could be heard playing a simple hymn tune and a single aeroplane crawled along the very top of the sky, so high it was practically invisible.
“This way if you want to post that letter,” said Whitbread, turning to cross the road. “It just means we come into the road where he lives by the other end.”
The silence of the afternoon was remarkable, and they reached the pillar-box in an entirely empty avenue.
“That’s the house,” commented Whitbread, nodding towards one fenced house in a row of others. “Not bad for a junior fellow’s screw.”
He opened the gate and stood aside for John to pass through. As he did so, Jill cycled slowly by, with the deliberation of a mirage. One hand rested on the handlebars, the other was in the pocket of her loosely-belted coat; she lounged on the saddle, pedalling negligently, whistling once more. Her hair tumbled in the wind, the sun tinting it with a bronze shade he had not noticed before.
John was paralysed. The habit she had of appearing just at the moment when he was unable to follow her—as now, when Whitbread had rung the doorbell and was waiting, pulling down the points of his waistcoat and listening for the steps of the maidservant across the hall—this habit seemed part of a dreamlike frustration. He took a step back through the gate, seeing her sailing away like a small boy’s model yacht, irretrievable into the distance.
“Come on!” hissed Whitbread, as he hesitated. “Here, Kemp, stop wool-gathering.”
It was no use. Before another ten seconds had passed, she had turned the corner and was lost to sight, and the maid was just opening the door.
Two days after this, during which time John had seen no more of Jill at all and was beginning to prepare himself for the realization that she had gone for ever, Christopher sauntered in after lunch and sidled up to the mirror, rubbing his jaw in an interrogative way that suggested he was about to shave. In this, as in other physical habits, he was not regular. Leaning forward, he protruded his face critically, inspecting his jaw from several angles, then, with a dissatisfied grunt, he took off his jacket and put on his scarlet dressing-gown. Lodging the kettle on the fire, he lit a cigarette.
John was working quietly at the desk.
When the kettle boiled Christopher slopped a little water into one of John’s teacups which had lost its handle, placed it steaming on the mantelpiece and fetched his shaving things from the bedroom.
“My barber tells me”, he said, working up a froth, “that the secret of shaving is to lather for eight minutes.” The foam grew around his jaw. “That’s what he says.”
John raised his attention from his book. “I thought you shaved yesterday. What are you shaving today for?”
“True. I did shave yesterday.” Christopher laid down his cigarette, lathered his upper lip, then replaced it. “I did indeed.… And for a very good reason, I may add.” He frowned at his reflection. “I went to tea with Elizabeth.”
“Well, and today——?”
“Today Elizabeth is coming to tea with me.”
“Have a good time,” said John, with a nervous laugh.
“Oh, I shall.” He gave an exclamation and paused again, this time to stop water trickling down his right wrist and up his cuff. “Oh, I shall indeed. Trust a Warner.” He wiped the butt of his shaving brush on the towel slung round his neck and continued lathering. “We shall be having the ne plus ultra of good times unless I’m mistaken.” John, taking a few seconds to grasp the implications of this, gave at length another halfhearted laugh. “Unless I’m very much mistaken indeed.” He gave a grin, which on his lather-covered face seemed particularly disquieting. Then he dipped his safety-razor into the water. “And I don’t think I am.” The brittle sound as he began to scrape played on the silence. “Oh, we shall be sporting the oak all right.”
John said nothing, continuing to smile. Christopher chanted, rinsing the razor:
“One more river, and that’s the River of Jordan,
One more river, there’s one … more … river … too—oo.…”
He manipulated a delicate turning. “Of course, if it weren’t the first time I shouldn’t be taking all this trouble,” he said in his normal voice.
“The first time?”
“First time with her. That surprises you, does it? You aren’t the only one.…”
“Well, really, I did think——”
Christopher threw his cigarette away, blowing out a cloud of smoke that fell downwards till it was sucked up the chimney, and began to shave under his nose. “No, the first time,” he said with a sigh. “Girls are queer about that sort of thing, as you’ll find o
ut, my lad.”
“Then how d’you know——”
There was curiosity in John’s voice, but there was a troubled note as well. Quite to his surprise an agitation was beginning to fume up inside him as if he were being threatened in some way.
“Oh, well, I don’t know,” Christopher drawled. “It’ll be all right.… She’ll come up to scratch, not a doubt about it.…”
“But has she said——”
“One doesn’t say everything in this life.” Christopher lathered his face for the second time. “There are some things that don’t need saying.… In fact there are some things it’s definitely advisable not to say. If I asked her she’d say no. All right. I shan’t ask her.…
“Matter of fact,” he continued, scraping a different way from the first time, “I did ask her once. Last September that was, in London.… I’d only known her about three weeks. She said no.
“Of course it’s possible she’ll jib. There’s something a bit queer about her and Patrick. I told you Patrick suddenly turned Catholic, didn’t I? Well, that’s very odd, look at it as you please. And Elizabeth.… She had a terrific purity ramp at one time; well, when I knew her first. Wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you?”
“No,” John admitted. He got up and walked about the room. Christopher’s words made him uneasy. He knew that he lacked the other’s confidence.
“I’d better go out, then,” he said.
“Well, in the circumstances, old man, I think your presence might be a drag on the conversation,” said Christopher waggishly. He dried his face on a towel and lightly shook talcum powder into the palm of his left hand. “Here!” he said over his shoulder, “there’s no need to go yet.”
But the door closed. John had slipped on his overcoat and was walking round the cloisters, looking up at the sky from which rain had ceased to fall, where the wind was blowing patches of cloud away, revealing blue distances. He wanted to walk and be alone: he was actually trembling, shaking at the knees, and it was some time before he could come to grips with his perturbation. In the meanwhile he had turned out of the College and down some dirty streets leading away from the picturesque part of the town: here there was the hospital, cheap lodgings, fish-and-chip shops, shops that sold second-hand furniture with the price scrawled in white on the mirrors. It might have been a street from his own home. Some children played around the entrance to a cinema and broke off their game to ask if he were going in. He did not answer.
What shocked him (for he felt shocked) was the enormous disparity he had stumbled upon between his imagination and what actually happened. When he thought of Christopher in his dressing-gown, legs straddling, his hand steadily working the razor and talking reflectively about what was going to happen, he knew with a sickening certainty that he could never sustain that position; that he would, in fact, turn and run long before it came. Even now he had turned and run, run away from that room, although he knew that he would think of nothing else all day, and in all conscience it had little enough to do with him. If this was what his quest for Jill was leading to, he would give it up without a second thought.
He came out of the allotments at the end of the town and following the path across the fields soon reached the river, which he crossed by the wooden bridge. There was a clear walk then for a mile or two, along the towpath, and he followed it, going out into the country, where cows strayed near the path and a pair of horses stood facing different ways; at a distance rose the dark slopes of a wood. The wind whistled in the bushes, the choppy water was the colour of steel, and a swan, with a tempestuous beating of wings, half rose out of the water as if to break into flight, but then thought better of it and subsided back again.
By this time he had arrived at a different conclusion. It would be all right if he could keep her away from Christopher. He must keep them apart. If he could make friends with her he must push her back into her own life, where he himself could follow. Never must she be allowed to go outside her own life. And then through her he might enter this life, this other innocent life she led. He was glad of the conversation with Christopher. It had brought him down to earth a little and forced him to consider the facts he was dealing with. He recognized first of all (with a certain shameful relief) that it was not likely he would ever get to know her, but if he did, it must be away from his present surroundings that they must move. And as he knew that he would lack Christopher’s rather brutal self-confidence when the time came (what was the time?), he must also see to it that the time never did come.
Pleased with his reaction into decisiveness, he continued his walk till he came to a village at the end of the towpath and waited at the ’bus stop. His agitation had died down and though his thoughts still circled the room cautiously, he no longer felt stronger aversion from it than he would feel from a room where a delicate and unpleasant surgical operation was taking place. Indeed, he had convinced himself that it was actually as rare and accidental as that would be. It was not connected with him any more. He would return to the centre of the town by ’bus, and, entering a café, have tea. He would skirt the College till after six, for he remembered that Christopher and Elizabeth were going to the theatre at that time.
After a while the ’bus came, and when it moved off at last he eventually recognized the extreme north end of the town, the unbroken lines of houses with quiet avenues leading off. The day had clouded over as a mirror clouds when breathed upon. It was Jill territory, and out of habit he kept a watch for her. And presently he saw her: he was sitting upstairs on the offside and the ’bus pulled up at a stop to let an old lady alight. An avenue led away on the other side of the road and down this Jill came running at full speed. The old lady had edged over the platform, gripping both handrail and silver-banded stick, and was preparing for the descent, cautiously extending one foot in the direction of the ground. The conductress waited with her hand on the bell. Jill came nearer, and, with a slight swerving in her direction so that she aimed at the back of the ’bus, showed John that she was trying to catch it. But nobody had seen her because she was approaching from the off side. The old lady, half off, was nerving herself for the final severance. Hardly had the situation grasped him than the bell rang twice, there was a second’s sickening pause and then the ’bus lurched forward. Jill had just reached the opposite kerb and as the ’bus drew away was lost to sight. And while he was still twisted in anguish in his seat, there was a quick patter of feet up the stairs and, flushed, breathless, but smiling from a remark exchanged with the conductress, Jill appeared, holding her handbag, looking for a seat. It seemed that the impetus of her great last effort to catch the ’bus had carried her on up the stairs.
She sat at the back. He dared not look round for fear she should recognize him. There was something about having her behind him that changed their roles: he became the one that was hunted, and it made him uncomfortable. He did not hear what fare she paid, so himself paid to the terminus so that he could alight at any point she chose. It was not likely that she would get off again so soon, but every time the ’bus stopped he turned his head very slightly so that out of the corner of his eye he could make sure the fawn blur of her coat was still there.
As she had been so eager not to miss the ’bus, she must either be late for an appointment or be going a good distance. Though he did not know exactly what time it was he imagined the second alternative was probably correct: it was not the time of day to start going far and most likely she was wanting to get into the town before the shops shut to buy something, some small urgent thing. It was certainly too late to be going out to tea and too early to be going to the cinema or theatre. But wherever she was going, he determined that this time she should not escape, this time he would run her to earth and follow her back home, even if he missed tea and dinner and breakfast next morning to do it.
The ’bus ran into the broad St. Giles’, where lighted windows shone through the leafless trees on either side, and as he expected when the ’bus began to slow up for the stop at th
e other end she rose and he saw her fawn shoulders disappearing down the stairs. This was a popular stopping place, and in the general crush it was some moments before he could get clear of the people, and in that time she had gone some twenty yards, briskly alternating her fast steps every now and then with a little skip. Her very direction puzzled him. It was not towards the shopping centre, unless indirectly, nor the cinema. It was towards the quieter precincts of some colleges. He was so surprised by this that he very nearly got himself run down. And when she led him along under the walls of his own College, his astonishment began to curdle, and when she disturbed a group of students who lounged talking at the gate and stepped inside so that she was lost to view, he stopped dead, his heart having come suddenly up into his throat. Then he ran, the sweat starting out all over him as in a dream. He came panting into the porch to hear the porter giving her directions, and they were the same ones that nearly six weeks ago he had himself listened to. “Staircase fourteen’s on the right-hand side,” the porter was saying. “You can’t miss it.”
Thanking him, she set off quickly across the gravel quadrangle, swinging her handbag by the broad strap. A few tilts of her head set her hair roughly back into place. John grabbed at the porter’s sleeve as he was turning away.
“Where’s she going?” he demanded excitedly.
“Why, your room, sir; your room she’s going.”
“Does she want me?”
“Couldn’t say, sir,” said the porter, giving him a cold look, which John disregarded on account of the sudden terrible remembrance that was spreading over him. “But she can’t go there,” he exclaimed. She vanished through the archway. “She can’t,” he repeated, breaking into a run after her. “She can’t,” he echoed in the archway to the cloisters, hearing the tapping of her shoes going round the far side, the two different-sounding scrapes as she mounted the steps, and then through the gaps in pillars he saw her throw off her hesitation and plunge inside. His mouth dried and he felt almost sick, as if he had seen a person unwittingly enter a room full of poisonous snakes. For all that nothing happened: three rooks flew across the square of the sky and the distant sound of jazz could be heard as usual. What he expected to happen he did not know, but he felt the suspense of one who has lighted a powder trail leading to an ammunition dump.
Jill Page 18
