In the Time of Greenbloom

by Gabriel Fielding

  2

  The First Wedding

  Do you love me? Yes I love thee

  Though I do not know what Love can be

  If Love be separate from me

  Or you be other than my love.

  The First Wedding

  She had seemed until this morning far away from him; Victoria had seemed so impossibly far away that from the very beginning of the term, he had refused to allow himself to think of her.

  He was good at this ‘not thinking’ now; it had taken him a few terms at the Abbey to learn the trick of it; but once mastered it had stood him in good stead, particularly at night time: for with the night, with lights out in the ‘Browns’ at nine o’clock, the sharpest and the most lovely of his memories would seek admission (like visitors from home), through the still blue curtain of his cubicle, their aspects profoundly dear yet terribly changed.

  The cubicle, with his name and school number printed clearly on the pasteboard slip:

  BLAYDON J. 55

  was their meeting place, their certain rendezvous, where, assisted by touches from Northumberland: a sprig of bell-heather, a cushion-cover from the old nursery, some letters and a photograph or two, they could be strongest and most importunate.

  But this morning, with the arrival of Victoria’s letter postmarked Richmond, the swift reply to his own hastily scribbled note of Sunday last, the rule had been waived; he could think of her again freely, for David had kept his promise and had invited her to his wedding.

  True, she had to be back at her own school by 5 p.m., but that could easily be managed; John himself could take her back to Richmond on the Underground. They would roar along in one of those fiery red trains eating sweets and talking about the wedding; and perhaps at the end of it all, when the time came for him to make his own lonely way back to Victoria and to four more confusing weeks at the Abbey, he would be clearer in his mind about Marston and know which of the two he loved the most and why.

  Slyly, at his desk in the middle row of the class room, he patted the crinkled envelope of Victoria’s letter as it lay in his pocket, and then turned his head slightly so that he could see Marston’s fair hair and dusky Madeira-sunned cheek as he leaned down over his desk and gazed intently at his Chardinal.

  At that moment, Monsieur Camambert, totally forgotten until now, raised his grey head against the blackboard and addressed him.

  “Blaydonne, you will now commence by translating from where Fleming ’as left off.”

  Remembering by some trick of the attention the last words Fleming had uttered, John found his place with a trembling finger and began to flute out the words. He felt suddenly triumphant, like a tightrope walker who has succeeded in doing a difficult pirouette and then swayed surely back on to his wire. Everything was going right for him today; nothing, he was sure, could go wrong; and, to crown it all, he would give the rest of them a lesson in French.

  “Dans notre jardin,” he began. “In our garden, nous avons des fleurs rouges et blancs, we have flowers both pink and white…”

  Monsieur Camambert looked up, and a head or two swivelled.

  “Rouge?” he demanded.

  “Red.”

  “Not peenk, mais ‘red’?”

  “Oui—I mean, yes, sir.”

  Monsieur Camambert frowned; he never smiled; he was either very very depressed or very very irritable, and whichever he was, he was equally dangerous.

  “Also,” he went on, “I do not see zer word ‘both’ in my Chardinal. Perhaps you ’ave it in yours?”

  “No sir.”

  If only the old fool would let him get started, he thought; already the others were beginning to take the wrong sort of notice. He had intended to have their admiration this morning, especially Marston’s; but if this went on they would soon, from mere force of habit, begin to laugh at him and by so doing would bring out the wasp in Monsieur Camambert.

  “Very well, do not translate words satt are not there, Blaydonne. Proceed!”

  “We have roses, I mean flowers, red and white,” John said flatly. “Nous avons aussi, des arbres et des petits oiseaux, we have also trees and little birds, qui chantent, tous les soirs, which sing every evening.”

  He paused; did they never have big birds in France? Why were les oiseaux always petits, and he pictured to himself a swarm of minute birds whistling and creakling every evening in the delicate land of France.

  “Well Blaydonne, why ’ave you discontinued? What is the difficulty?”

  “No difficulty sir—”

  “Proceed.”

  “Et dans l’Ete, nous avons des petits hirondelles—”

  Little what? obviously some sort of a bird. He had looked it up last night with Marston. They had shared sugar-cane from Marston’s home in Madeira and he had told him all about his eldest brother’s, David’s, wedding on Saturday. He hadn’t told him about Victoria though; he had wanted to, had longed in fact to tell him all about their bathing incident at the Tennis Tournament, the row with his mother and David’s cleverness in smoothing her down by explaining that it was only their innocence which had made it seem so dreadful. But somehow he had been unable to mention Victoria at all last night; she had seemed out of place, ‘a home person’ and therefore untouchable and unmentionable. Or at least so he had persuaded himself then though underneath he had had a feeling, scarcely acknowledged, that there had been another reason for his reserve, something very very uncomfortable and wrong if not actually wicked. But perhaps tonight, if Marston gave him the swimming lesson in the indoor bath and then came into his cubicle as he had promised, he would be able to tell him everything.

  Under the swiftness of his thoughts, he had still sought the missing word and still automatically measured the pause which his delay had necessitated. “And in the summer,” he repeated, “we have little—little—spadges.” The word projected itself into the silence before he even knew that it was there. Desperately he plucked at its tail, trying to crumple it down unnoticed by correcting himself loudly. “I mean sparrows, sir, Monsieur Camambert.”

  But already the expectancy, even the titters of the others, were filling the room. On the dais Monsieur Camambert was reaching for his red-ink pen. The fatal word, transmitted down the School year after year, never forgotten, never forgiven, was the centre of a joke almost as stored and yellow as the French master’s goatee beard, and for him, still as prickly and as proud; the very last insult which he would receive or which John had intended.

  Watching him search the pockets of his grey alpaca jacket for the tissue paper on which he wiped the nibs of his many pens, John saw the wedding and all that it meant receding like the train, the wonderful train to London which whistled and plumed over the marshes he could see from his cubicle window in the ‘Browns’.

  His pen poised like a tiny arrow in his left hand, Monsieur Camambert looked up.

  “One hour drill,” he whispered.

  “But sir—” John’s ears were glowing, his eyes floating in the superfluity of unshed tears. If only he could explain; the pen was moving now, delicately and remorselessly over the slip of paper on the desk.

  “For impertinence,” said Monsieur Camambert with satisfaction, “it is always One Hour Drill.”

  “But sir, excuse me sir, couldn’t you this once—I mean tomorrow is my brother’s wedding day, and if the Badger—I mean Mr. Bedgebury—”

  There was a roar of laughter from the others. Behind him Fleming put on his stage heroine voice.

  “Tomorrow ith my wedding day,” he squeaked in an absurd falsetto.

  Someone let out a peal of contralto laughter, and at the back Beckett Major, the dullest and most unenterprising of them all, unleashed the only turn in his repertoire: a long low infinitely lewd and mournful passage of wind.

  The sound of it, long continued, ending in a semitone that contrived to be at once a commentary and enquiry, so shocked them all that instantly there was silence.

  Monsieur Camambert trembled. His usually pale yellow
face took on momentarily the glow of health as his anger flushed up from his wing collar.

  “Two hours drill. And leave the class,” he pronounced in a whisper that sawed through the silence.

  John gathered together his books and stumbled out between the hard corners of the desks and past the intimately known faces to the red-tiled passage.

  He caught Marston when the class came out at twelve o’clock, managed to edge in behind him and follow him down to the locker-room in the basement where one or two of the others were collecting their swimming kit. Seizing his chance, he stooped down beside him as he kneeled to open his locker.

  “I say, you haven’t forgotten about my swimming lesson, have you?” Marston’s smooth cheek remained in profile; he did not even turn to look at him.

  “What swimming lesson?”

  “You know, you were going to teach me the crawl.”

  “Well, don’t whisper about it,” said Marston loudly as he closed his locker with a bang. “Fleming! I say Fleming! Shall we teach Blaydon how to do the crawl?”

  Fleming came waltzing in from the dark passage, his swimming trunks in his hand and his towel round his neck. He looked at John sharply for a moment, as though he were unused to giving him his serious consideration, then his eyes turned up and his mouth opened slowly like a clown’s showing his wet tongue and large white teeth.

  “Oh no,” he sang, “we never teach worms how to do the crawl, do we?”

  “Oh no,” said Marston.

  Fleming seized him round the waist and together they executed the dance they were rehearsing for the end-of-term concert: a high kick to the left, a high kick to the right, and then a pause on tiptoes.

  “Not even when tomorrow is their wedding day!”

  “Not even then,” shrieked Marston.

  “Oh no,” said Fleming. “And anyway he likes girls, doesn’t he?”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes,” cooed Fleming. “He writes letters to them and dreams about them in the si-hilence of his cu-hubicle.”

  “Fishy! fishy! fishy!” said Marston. “In Madeira we call them—”

  “And he’s a holy holy Roman,” said Fleming.

  “I’m not!”

  “Yes you are! You were confirmed by His Warship the Boss-shot of Lourdes last term, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes he was,” said Marston.

  “So if he wants to learn the crawl,” said Fleming, “he should get the Holy Father to let him practise in the font.”

  “He should,” said Marston, “in Madeira he’d be in the choir with all the dagos, and everyone knows what that means.”

  “In Madeira they’re even queerer,” shrieked Fleming, who had spent part of the Summer holiday with Marston in Funchal. “Come on, let’s get up to the baths and turf some other worm out of a cubicle.”

  They smiled at each other then as John had seen them smile after the Summer sports, when they went up to get their prizes for three out of every five of the events. Then side by side, they rushed up the staircase leaving him in the dimness of the locker-room heavy with its scent of old home-made cakes and incarcerated fruit.

  He was still standing there trying to collect the absurd hurts of his grief into one recognisable whole so that he could deal with it adequately and make some plan for the remainder of the day when Spot Fisher came in and found him.

  John looked with distaste at the small circular blemish on the tip of his nose. He hated Fisher both because he was a vicarage boy like himself and because he was a prowler and snooper who had never been found out by the masters. He was a Bishop’s son and clever too, head of the School and by dint of his large pear-shaped head and Summer tuition from his father had managed to get a scholarship to Eton. Next term, like John himself, he would be leaving; and already an ever more unsmiling air of responsibility was accompanying his every action and gesture.

  “Ah there you are Blaydon,” he said. “I’ve been searching the school for you. Mr. Bedgebury wants to see you in his study.”

  “You mean the Badger.”

  “I meant what I said—Mr. Bedgebury.”

  “Suck-up,” said John. “We can always spot a suck-up especially when he’s got one on his nose.”

  It was weak and crude, unsatisfying, not nearly so good as the retort he would think of later; but it annoyed Fisher. His round mouth closed and he blinked as he leaned odiously forward.

  “That’s guff,” he said. “I’ve half a mind to take you along to the Badger myself—to Mr. Bedgebury, to make sure you don’t sneak out of it.”

  “Try it,” said John. “I’ll kick and scream all the way.”

  “You’ll be doing that this afternoon; you’ve got two hours drill and the Sarn’t will be swiping your bottom every ten minutes.”

  “One of these days when I’m grown up I’ll come back to this filthy school and I’ll swipe the Sarn’t’s behind every five minutes; and if you’re anywhere about, I’ll squash your nose so flat that no one will be able to see the spot any more.”

  “You’re a nasty little squirt,” said Fisher, “just what one would expect from a High Church Vicarage; but I’ve no time to argue with you now. You’d better watch out for the rest of the term though, because I shall be on the lookout for you.”

  “Well mind you don’t get spots in front of your eyes,” said John edging quickly past the flying kick Fisher sent after him.

  He made his way slowly up the stairs, whistling purposely out of tune and rasping his hand along the worn rail of the bannisters. Reaching the corridor he straightened his tie and pulled out the flaps of his grey flannel pockets. The door to the gymnasium was open and the wide brown space empty. At the far end he could see the rack in which the wands were kept when not in use for punishment drill. Two hours, he thought, with the Sar’nt smoking that disgusting tobacco and strolling round flicking the tight little seats with his cane. Up and down, round and round, in and out, then places again, then up and down with that tense feeling at the back of the knees as the muscles stretched: the tickle of sweat and wool round the neck, the slow sickly thumping in the head keeping time like a metronome with the tick of the unmoving clock on the far wall.

  Next door there was water cool and blue in the indoor baths; but there would be no swimming for the drill class. At the half hour some would go; at the hour, he would be left alone with only the Sarn’t behind him.

  Mother had never met the Sar’nt, neither had Father nor David nor any of them. Yet they had sent him here and given the Sar’nt complete control of him for two hours this afternoon. The Sar’nt, the Badger and the Toad, all of them or any of them could do what they liked to John here in the far South whilst they, the Family and the home people, carried on their normal lives in the North where everything was perfect.

  He could not even write to them about this afternoon, about Marston, about the interview with the Badger. By the time he wrote, it would be all over; it would be back in time, nothing could be done about it; and anyway, if he were to put it all in a letter, everything, it would take him weeks to write it, to make it sound real.

  Outside the Badger’s door he paused. Suddenly he was totally unconcerned with whatever might await him on the far side. He no longer even minded about the wedding tomorrow. If the Badger stopped him going it could make no real difference, might in fact be better in the end. What was the good of getting out of this world for a day when you knew you had to come back to it at night? It only meant more difficulty in stifling thoughts and longings afterwards, more difficulty in getting to sleep at night, in keeping alive and alert to it during the day.

  They were none of them real; not the cricket matches, nor the Toad’s Latin prose classes when he slung you about in your desk by your collar, nor the Sussex hens with their huge green turds and suspicious glances, nor the polite Church services, nor the giant matron, nor Spot Fisher, nor any of them. They were all just a punishment which everyone had to undergo, a taste of unhappiness to make home all the more real and desirable; al
l except Marston of course. Marston was real, because you loved him. He was beautiful like a girl and strong like a man. Only Marston could really hurt or harm you in this place because he was the only one you loved, and that meant that only the things you loved could be real; what you hated was always unreal. In future he would think only of the things he loved; he would no longer discourage them when they tried to sneak into his cubicle at night; he would welcome them and discover them afresh.

  With one last tug at his tie he knocked on the door and the Badger’s voice said “Come in.”

  Above him, as he sat at his desk, there hung the portrait painted by the Old Boy who had worked in the Gym last year putting in the finishing touches to the picture which the School were presenting in commemoration of the Badger’s fifty years at the Abbey. Beneath it, in unreal and somehow lifeless replica of the wizened face which looked out of the canvas, the Badger sat at the bottom of his glasses gazing through their bone-rimmed tunnels from the shadows which surrounded him.

  The Badger rarely spoke; he was an old man of the night. Meticulously clean in his morning coat, gold-linked cuffs and high wing collar, he waited. A watch chain straddled the concavity of his sunken waistcoat and round his face the white hair stood out like a ruff.

  The Badger waited as he had always waited; as thirty years ago he must have waited for Fleming’s or for Fisher’s Father to commit himself and walk unwarily over one of the many deep caverns he had dug on the outskirts of his lair.

  Behind his glasses the milky eyes blinked once and then resumed their distant vigil over John’s forehead whilst he too waited obstinately knowing that there was plenty he could think about.

  There were the “Doctor’s” boxing-gloves for instance there on the window-sill behind him with the dust a little thicker than this time last year.

  Who had the ‘Doctor’ really been? And what had he really done? They said that he had loaded one of the gloves with a shoe of his sister’s Shetland pony and that the Sar’nt had found him out. There were slits in the gloves all right, and they looked under-stuffed as though some of the horsehair had been removed. But there had been more than that about the ‘Doctor’. Perhaps, after an interview like the one John was just beginning, he had been expelled for something; for something worse than cheating and more serious even than fouling at boxing. But no one really remembered the ‘Doctor’; he was just a name perpetuated by the older boys who remembered having heard about him when they first came to the school. There were stories about his nickname; that it had been given him because he had been so good at Biology. It was said that he had performed brilliant but terrible operations on the guinea pigs, toads, and white mice which then, as now, the boys were allowed to keep in the School stable.