Not a sound breaks the silence except the mechanical heart-beats of a clock hung on the wall over the door that leads to Hall, for all the boys are out playing or watching games. In a little over an hour they will come, all sixty of them, swarming into the house to change and get their books for afternoon school.
Then into this airy, mechanically measured silence fall the sounds of small footsteps on the stone-paved passage. They are hard and hollow and regular, as if another and larger clock had joined its beats for a moment with the softer tic-toc of the clock on the wall. They approach, and round the half-open door Adrian looks cautiously into the empty room. He enters, and then pauses for a moment and glances at the ticking clock as if in doubt whether to go or stay. Obviously he ought not to be there, since no one else is there. He is probably committing some monstrous breach of rules or school etiquette. If discovered he will find himself an object of reprimand or ridicule. Then, deciding that it is more bearable to risk this and be surreptitiously alone, than to be publicly and patently alone out-of-doors, where every boy who is not playing a game has a companion, he tiptoes forward and sits down on one of the long forms, his elbows on the table, his chin cupped in his hands.
Since his arrival at Charminster three days ago. Adrian had lived in a state of bewilderment. He felt as if he were being swept along on a great stream, in which before he had mastered one novelty, he was swept on to the next. He kept discovering, to his horror, things he was supposed to have done which he had not done. That very morning, on going into school, he found that he was supposed to have prepared a chapter of Job as well as learnt by heart the Collect during prep, on the previous evening. He had waited in fearful expectation for his turn for a question, and when Mr. Storer, his form-master, had asked it, he had been able to do nothing but blush. The boy next him had answered it and had gone up above him.
This afternoon he had discovered that if you did not want to be left in the lurch all afternoon, you had to book a companion before-hand. He had heard boys inviting other boys to “come out this afternoon,” but had not known how necessary it was to do the same. How was it that the other new boys had known? For he seemed to be the only one who was left alone. But whom could he have asked? He had made no friend yet, and he would not have dared to invite a boy he hardly knew.
Still, though he felt bewildered and very much alone, Adrian felt too that the great flood did carry you along to whatever you were expected to do; that though you omitted things and made minor mistakes on the way, you did arrive, merely by following the stream, at the various destinations at which it was your duty to arrive. And it was generally easy, too, in the crowd, to avoid appearing as lonely as you really were. This was the first time he had found himself actually isolated.
There were nine new boys this term besides himself. He did not yet know them all by name nor even by sight, though he had distinguished four, Harting, Jones, Clouston Minor, and Phipps, who seemed to be the nicest. But the names and appearances of new boys were of no real importance. It was his duty, he had already been told, to know who were the captains of the school football and cricket elevens and every member of the teams, and the same of the teams of Taylor’s, his own house; who played for the school at racquets and fives, which houses belonged to which games-clubs and what were the colours of those clubs, besides a mass of other facts in which the new boys had to pass an examination in a fortnight’s time.
He had not got very far yet in the acquirement of all this knowledge. He did not yet know even the names of the six prefects of his own house. He had already had two opportunities of gazing at them with awe on Saturday and Sunday evenings when, at house-prayers in Common-room, one of them had stood beside Mr. Wisborough at the high table and read a passage from the Bible and the other five had stood behind them with their backs to the wall, while the rest of the boys were gathered in rows round the lower tables.
Adrian had particularly noticed the sixth prefect, a handsome, merry-looking boy with fair hair and blue eyes. There was something in his gay, good-humoured expression, his quick, determined movements, even in the mere shape of him, that made him seem twice as alive as any of the others. He had just been made a prefect, Adrian discovered, and the others seemed pleased and a little amused by the fact. It was obvious that he was a great favourite. Adrian had gathered at first that his name was Ronny, but soon discovered that it was really Dakyn and that Ronald was his Christian name.
From the first Adrian was captivated by him. He knew well enough that this enchanting person was too far above him ever to become a friend of his: probably he would never so much as speak to him. But that did not trouble him. He was content to admire at a distance.
But now, as he sat in the empty Common-room with his elbows on the table, he was not thinking of Dakyn. He was recalling his sudden arrival at his grandfather’s a month ago. He recalled how he had awoken on the morning after his mother had announced her intention of taking him to the Crowhursts with the determination to revolt. It was as if all his misery of the previous night had solidified during his sleep into this firm determination. He would simply refuse to go. She was not very much bigger than he was, and she could not drag him to the Crowhursts by main force if he was determined not to go. But next moment he had realised that it would be extremely awkward for his uncle and aunt if he made a scene in their house. He was sufficiently aware of the situation between them and his mother to see that his mother would probably blame them for his bad behaviour to her, and that, though they would really agree with him, they would be forced to side with her.
And then he thought of his grandfather. Obviously the best way would be simply to go to his grandfather’s without a word to anyone. He decided to walk to the village after breakfast and ring up his grandfather from the post-office.
How delighted the old man had been when he arrived that evening at Abbot’s Randale. Adrian had found him waiting on the platform when he got out of the train. He had told his grandfather nothing on the telephone except that it would fit in better if he might come to-day instead of the following week when he was due. But on the drive from the station he explained everything.
The old man had chuckled. “Well, upon my word! The young devil!” he had remarked.
“But wasn’t it the best thing to do?” said Adrian.
“Well, if you ask me as man to man,” Oliver had replied, “certainly it was. But by rights I suppose I ought to pack you straight back to your mother.”
“But you won’t,” replied Adrian confidently.
“But, as you say, I won’t,” said his grandfather. “I shouldn’t dream of it. A guest, after all, is sacred. But they’ll be in a fearful stew at Yarn, you know, when you don’t turn up to-night. What about your aunt and uncle?”
“I’m going to write to Aunt Clara,” said Adrian.
“I’ll tell you what,” said his grandfather. “Why not send your uncle a wire saying you’re all right. You needn’t say where you are, just’ Am all right. Don’t worry. Writing later,’ or something like that.”
Adrian had agreed that it would be a good thing to do, and they had stopped at the post-office and wired there and then. For some days he had been a little afraid that his mother might find out where he was and come down in a fury. He had pictured her hurrying towards him across the lawn, the angry, black-clothed figure of his dream. But days passed and nothing happened, and he felt as if, by his sudden resolute action, he had woken himself from the bad dream which his mother had haunted.
Before the end of the holidays Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob had turned up at Abbot’s Randale. One afternoon, as they walked together in the garden, Aunt Clara had said to him in her discreetly humorous way:
“I heard from your mother a fortnight ago, Adrian. If I am to believe her, a visit to the Crowhursts is an experience so delightful as to be almost intoxicating. You wouldn’t, of course, agree with that view.”
Adrian smiled. “Not quite!” he said.
“It’s extraordinary,” said
Aunt Clara meditatively, “how tastes differ. When I was a girl at school, a friend offered me a shilling if I would eat a snail. I accepted, but found the experience so revolting that for two days I could eat nothing else. Yet there was another girl at the same school who ate them by the dozen, free of charge, and declared them delicious. Her name, I remember, was Matilda Slatterley, and I thought, and still think, that it served her right.”
Adrian, dreaming alone in the Common-room at Taylor’s, smiled to himself as he recalled Aunt Clara’s absurd anecdote. Then he suddenly took his elbows off the table and sat up. Quick footsteps, which he recognised from their sound as the steps of barred and studded football boots, came ringing down the passage. Now they had reached the door, and their sound suddenly changed from the ring and squeak of nails on stone flags to a hollow knocking on the boards of Common-room floor. Adrian glanced over his shoulder. Round the edge of the half-open door the face of Ronny Dakyn appeared and surveyed the room. Then he caught sight of Adrian. “Hello, nipper,” he said, fixing his bright blue eyes on him. “No one else about? Then you might get me a jug of hot water, will you? Know where to get it?”
Adrian jumped up and answered that he did.
“Bring it up to Prefects’ Room. And look sharp: I’ve got to be changed in five minutes.”
The bright face disappeared and the footsteps tramped down the passage, and as Adrian hurried out to get the hot water he heard Dakyn dashing noisily up the stone stairs.
At first he had been overcome with shame at being discovered, idle and alone, in Common-room, but now he was all aglow at the chance of doing something for this godlike person whom he so much admired.
He got the hot water, climbed the stairs, and knocked at the door of the prefects’ bedroom. It seemed almost profane that he, a mere new boy, should enter that august chamber. Dakyn, his boots and stockings already off and flung on the floor, was struggling out of his shirt. “Thanks, nipper!” he said, emerging red-faced and touzle-haired and flinging the shirt on his bed. “Shove it on the washstand. Is it hot?”
“Yes, very!” said Adrian.
“You’re a new boy, aren’t you?” asked Dakyn over his shoulder, as he poured the water into the basin. “What’s your name?”
“Glynde,” said Adrian.
“You oughtn’t to have been frowsting in Commonroom, you know.”
Adrian blushed. “I … I had no one to go about with,” he stammered.
“I see. Yes, it is a bit awkward at first. You ought to get hold of some other chap if your name isn’t down for a game. It’s rotten wandering about alone. Are you any good at footer?”
“Not very,” said Adrian, hanging his head.
Dakyn glanced at him again. “That’s a pity,” he said. “You must try and improve. And of course there’s fives and squash.” He spoke in jerks as he scrubbed his face and neck and armpits with soap. “Anyhow, you mustn’t hang about in Common-room in the middle of the afternoon. It isn’t done. It’s a good thing it was only me that caught you. You mustn’t turn into a little frowster. See?” His kind blue eyes glanced at Adrian again. “You’d better skip off now. Understand, don’t you?” he said as Adrian turned to go.
Adrian smiled back at him and said: “Yes, thank you!” and as he went downstairs he heard, two flights below him, the boys swarming back into the house.
At the bottom of the stairs he was swallowed unobserved into the multitude, and all at once he felt that he was one of them, that he had settled down and was no longer a single, lonely new boy.
When the boys returned to the house after morning school they crowded round the games-board that hung on the wall in Common-room to see if their names were down for a game that afternoon. On entering Commonroom next day Adrian found such a seething, struggling crowd round the board that he couldn’t get at it. Bolder spirits than he hurled themselves into the throng and, pushing to the front, gained a glimpse of the lists by main force. But Adrian was incapable of such vigorous tactics and stood timidly on the fringe, waiting. A new boy, struggling out of the mêlée, passed him. “Your name’s down for footer, Glynde,” he said, and Adrian’s heart sank. Yes, as he saw for himself a minute or two later, his name was down to play on Ground 8. He had always been a little afraid of football. It was not that he was afraid of being hurt, but that he felt himself somehow incapable of the unself-conscious impulse and cheerful self-assertion that the game demanded. He felt foolish and awkward and was haunted by the fear of making himself ridiculous. The thought of having to play this afternoon filled him with apprehension; but Dakyn had said yesterday, when he had confessed that he was no good at footer, that he must try to improve, and he now made a stern resolve to shake off his fears and throw himself recklessly into the game. In one way he was glad to be playing: it would save him from the necessity of finding someone to go out with this afternoon, a problem which had been troubling him all morning. Before lunch, he had been telling himself, he must at all costs ask one of the other new boys, otherwise he would find himself left in the lurch again. But now his afternoon was at last provided for, and after lunch he rushed off to the boot-room and there, among a shouting and pushing and struggling crowd, he changed into footer things and went off with Phipps, who was down to play in the same game, to find Ground 8.
Adrian was put outside left. He was pleased to find that there was no master present. At Waldo Mr. Austin had always supervised games loudly and insistently. “Go on now, Glynde. Get at him. Run. You’re not at a funeral. You ought to be there; not here.”
Those encouraging shouts of Mr. Austin’s had always paralysed Adrian. They had somehow made it impossible for him ever to do what they urged him to do. But here at Charminster he found that no one paid any special attention to him. Everyone was playing: there were no spectators; and Adrian, full of his new resolve, discovered, when to his amazement half-time was called, that he had been getting along just like everyone else. During the second half he found himself running with the ball in front of him, far ahead of the rest. How it had come about he did not know. There seemed to be no one in front of him, and he paused, feeling sure that he must be off-side. Somebody shouted “Go on!” and he went on, and then a voice shouted “Shoot!” He glanced up and saw the goalkeeper rushing at him, and he shot. Somebody behind him said “Good man,” there were a few formal hand-claps, and he discovered to his astonishment that he had shot a goal. He glanced round shyly, but no one was taking any notice of him. Apparently it was a matter of course that he, like anyone else, should get a goal. He ran back to his place full of a warm, surprised satisfaction, and in a moment he was lost once more in the engrossing whirl of the game. When the whistle blew, he turned, expecting it was for an offside and could hardly believe that the game was over. He was breathless, happy, and tingling all over his body. For the first time in his life he had achieved the state of a healthy young animal.
IX
That evening Adrian was told that he was wanted in Hall. “Me?” he asked, wondering uneasily what he was wanted for.
“Yes, you!” said the boy who had delivered the message. “You’re Glynde, aren’t you?”
Adrian with beating heart approached the sacred door, opened it, and went nervously in. For the first time he beheld that sanctuary, with its battered armchairs, its two long tables, and ancient benches, the great glasspanelled bookcase that contained the house library, and the exalted persons of the upper school taking their ease in the chairs and on the benches. He stood with his back to the door, his hand on the door-knob behind him, timidly waiting. For a moment it seemed to him that immense numbers of eyes were staring at him, but no one spoke. He was conscious of Ronny Dakyn sitting at the far end of one of the tables diligently writing. Adrian could see nothing of him but his bright golden head bent over two black arms. Waiting there, he felt horribly embarrassed.
Coulter, the head prefect, glanced round the room. “Who sent for this fag?” he asked.
Dakyn raised his head from his writing and saw Adr
ian. “Oh, it’s all right. I sent for him,” he said and beckoned to Adrian, who made his way towards him through the armchairs as if through a hostile jungle. When Adrian reached him, Dakyn had resumed his writing and Adrian stood waiting beside his chair. He cast a quick side-glance across the room, but no one, he saw with relief, was any longer conscious of his presence. The room was full of talk. Dakyn pushed away the list he was making out and looked up at him. “Would you like to be my fag, Glynde?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” Adrian replied almost in a whisper. He did not know what the offer implied, but whatever it implied he would unhesitatingly have accepted.
“It’s not a bad job, you know,” said Dakyn. “You’ve got to do jobs for me and look after my study, and you get off all other fagging.”
“Thank you!” Adrian murmured.
“Right!” said Dakyn. “Come to my study in about ten minutes and I’ll put you up to some of the jobs.”
Adrian threaded his way back through the chairs to the door. It seemed to him that his unspoken desires were being miraculously fulfilled. When he had shut the door behind him, he received the stare of Common-room as he had received the stare of Hall.
“Well?” asked a noisy, inquisitive boy called Jenkins whom Adrian had hated from the first. He was sitting near the door beside another boy with a large mouth.
“Dakyn’s made me his fag,” said Adrian.
“You? Well, I’m damned.”
“Know him at home?” asked the big-mouthed boy.
“No,” said Adrian.
The big-mouthed boy wagged his head mysteriously at Jenkins.
“Must be a case,” he said with mock disapproval.
Adrian Glynde Page 9
