Adrian Glynde

by Martin Armstrong

  “Yes, sir, he’s Oliver Glynde.”

  Mr. Heller was at once thrown back into incoherence by the news. “Oh, but … this … but this is … er … really … Why did I … er … I never … and the name so … er … so uncommon, too. Oh, well … my … er … my dear boy … you, you, you … have a high … a very high … er … ideal to … to live up to. A true classic, my dear Glynde, a true … er … classic, if ever there was one.” He turned in his chair and waved a large hand towards his bookshelves. “There he is, you see. There on the … er … second … er … shelf, complete,” and Adrian, glancing at the shelf, saw the familiar row of volumes which he was accustomed to see, undisturbed month in month out, in the bookcase in the Yarn morning-room. “He’s the only … er … modern I read,” said Mr. Heller, “except Paul Valery, and him, my dear Glynde, you … er … you … well, you won’t know.”

  XV

  So for Adrian the term passed in school-work, with its horrible tedium and its brief and cloudy glimpses, in a Greek or a Latin passage here and there, into the mysterious crystalline world which his grandfather had revealed to him; in smiles from Dakyn and scowls from Ellenger; in the strenuous self-forgetfulness of football and fives; in the enthralled secret readings in Dakyn’s study of books which his grandfather had given to him, small volumes of Herrick, Campion, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Robert Bridges; in the secluded and thrilling hours with Mr. Heller in which he explored more and more deeply the mysterious world of music. He took to music as to his proper element: his powers developed with a speed which surprised the old man. It seemed not so much that he was acquiring new powers as that dormant powers already acquired were being daily reawakened in him. Just as old Heller himself was transformed when playing the piano, from a queer withered, grinning, mumbling, inarticulate, tragicomical old bird of prey into a masterful and perfectly balanced creator of worlds, so it was with Adrian. When he played, his nervousness, his diffidence, his sense of his own insignificance were left behind and he stepped into a rich golden world in which the current of life ran more warmly, more fully and more potently, in which he had a free and conscious control of faculties of which in the world of every day he was only intermittently and weakly aware. But the musical Adrian was not without his influence on Adrian the schoolboy. The schoolboy was developing, maturing. He was growing, in his quiet way, more self-confident, less tongue-tied. He began to reply to Dakyn’s talk, in their brief occasional meetings, with something more than blushes and monosyllables and downcast looks: he came to feel a little less abject in the presence of the hateful Ellenger, and though it was not to be expected that he should give him back as good as he suffered from him, yet he sometimes gave him scowl for scowl.

  As the term drew towards its close he discovered, to his relief, signs that Ellenger’s star was on the wane. One day, going to the study with a pair of Dakyn’s shoes, he found Ellenger standing with his back to him in the doorway. He was talking to Dakyn, who was inside. Adrian paused with the shoes in his hand.

  “But couldn’t you manage a week, even, toward the end of the hols.?” Ellenger said. His tone was humble, reproachful, but stubbornly persistent.

  Ronny’s voice, careless and free, replied from inside. “I can’t, Len. I’m full up, I swear. Haven’t I explained already?” In the cheerful voice Adrian detected a faintly unnatural brightness, as if Ronny were deliberately excluding from the question the seriousness into which Ellenger was trying to force it.

  Ellenger, a large incubus, stood his ground in the doorway. “You could if you wanted to,” he said dully and doggedly.

  Ronny’s lively voice replied again. There was a touch of impatience in it now. “Look here, old man; don’t keep on at it. I’ve told you I’d come if I could.”

  “And you could if you wanted to. It’s simply that you won’t.”

  Bright, incisive, matter-of-fact, and irritated, the invisible Ronny’s voice rejoined: “You’ve said that once before, Len. If you really think it’s because I don’t want to, why do you keep on at it?”

  Ellenger made no reply. It was as if his voice, which, in sharp contrast with Ronny’s lively and cheerful tones, had grown with each new insistence duller, thicker, and more sluggish, had solidified into the even more immovable resistance of silence. His motionless bulk, blocking the doorway, presented to Adrian, who hovered in the passage with the shoes in his hand, the very shape and symbol of stubbornness. But actually his stubbornness was broken. Adrian heard a deep sigh, and the large dark body swayed a little in the sunny rectangle of the half-open doorway.

  “Well “—the voice was dull, weary, and bitter—” I suppose you think me a god-damned nuisance. You don’t bother to … to … think that it means a lot to me, even if it’s nothing to you.”

  No reply came from within, and there was, for Adrian, something pitiable in the movement with which Ellenger turned. Seeing Adrian there, he gave an instantly suppressed start: then with a face, sombre, unhappy, and closely shut, he pushed past him and went slowly down the passage.

  Adrian still hesitated. Suddenly he had felt shy of intruding upon Dakyn, and he turned and went quietly away, taking the shoes with him.

  During the remaining fortnight of the term Ellenger hardly ever came to the study. The change was an unhoped-for holiday for Adrian. He could sit at ease in the study now, free from the constant fear of hostile interruption, and as Dakyn, when there, was more often alone, he was more inclined to chat with Adrian. But for Ellenger, he thought regretfully, life would always be like that. Yet at odd moments the image of Ellenger turning miserably away would recur unexpectedly to his mind, bringing a brief accusatory sense that his happiness was founded on the unhappiness of his old enemy.

  But the occultation of Ellenger proved to be temporary, for when the Easter holidays were over and Summer Term began, he and Dakyn resumed their old friendship and once more Adrian’s share in the study was small and precarious.

  So days, weeks, and months passed, work days and holidays, every waking moment with its degrees and half degrees of pain or happiness measured out by the sensitive, restlessly oscillating needle of the heart; times full and rich in the living, packed with emotions, yet, when Adrian looked back upon them in after-years, a brief episode, a bitter-sweet quintessential drop stored in one of the sealed crystal cells of his being, sweet with the pure fragrance of springtime and bitter with its irreparable loss.

  It was after the completion of his second year at Charminster, on the day after the beginning of the autumn term, that Adrian discovered, to his surprise and relief, that Ellenger had left. He had known during the previous term that others were leaving, but he had heard nothing of its being Ellenger’s last term; and now, without a sign, without so much as a final hostile word, his old enemy had suddenly abandoned his long hostility and quietly dropped out of his life. This sudden, silent disappearance of Ellenger’s affected him inexplicably. It was not that he was not delighted that he had gone; on the contrary, it seemed almost too good to be true. But Ellenger had meant much in his life, he had been inescapably and horribly real to him, and this sudden cessation of his reality, this sudden noiseless lapse into non-existence was baffling, incredible. The disappearance of some of the other boys—boys whom he had not particularly liked or disliked—left him unmoved, but it seemed that to lose an enemy did not leave one unmoved. There was in it a shock that, with all its difference, had a strange resemblance to the unexpected loss of a friend.

  All that intruded of Ellenger now was his letters to Ronny. Adrian would not have known of them had he not seen one lying on Ronny’s study table. It lay there as though thrown hastily aside: at the bottom of the page, which was closely written in a small, very neat hand, “Yours, Len” stood out in larger writing. That was all that Adrian saw of it, but the writing, like everything else that pertained to Ellenger, fixed itself on his mind, and among the letters that came for Ronny he noticed an envelope addressed in that writing about once a week. How often,
if ever, Ronny replied, Adrian never knew.

  He had now reached a position at Charminster in which he was no longer liable for fagging. During the previous term it had been fairly obvious that he would be promoted, and the prospect of this had haunted him like a threat of exile; for promotion would mean that he ceased to be Ronny’s fag. That would make life at Taylor’s hardly bearable; for, as he knew well enough, he would entirely lose touch with Ronny. He would see no more of him than he saw of the other prefects—a distant view at prayers, a chance glimpse in the passages, on the stairs, or out-of-doors. In his fear of this terrible eventuality he had slacked in his work in the hope that he would avoid promotion. But though he could refrain from putting forward his best efforts, he could not bring himself to abandon all standards deliberately and do bad work: and so it became more and more certain that he would be promoted. He comforted himself with the thought that he would be able to volunteer to go on as Dakyn’s fag even if he were promoted. But he was uncertain if Dakyn would agree, and he longed to be certain while disaster might still be averted.

  In his anxiety he determined, to screw himself up to the point of asking Dakyn. When, after long delay, he did so, his scheme was shattered at once. Dakyn would not hear of it.

  “You can’t be a fag if you’re in Remove. Besides, why should you be, if you needn’t?”

  “Because … because I’d rather, if you don’t mind. I … I don’t want to stop.”

  “You’d rather go on than not?”

  “Yes.”

  Dakyn was touched and flattered. He had many friends and admirers, but now that Ellenger was gone, he had no worshipper but Adrian, and unconsciously he demanded worship; it was almost a necessity to him. He thought for a moment; then shook his head.

  “No, no. It wouldn’t do, little man. I’m afraid it wouldn’t do. You see, it would be quite out of order.”

  “Then I won’t go into Remove,” said Adrian.

  “But you can’t help yourself, man. You can’t refuse.”

  “I can do a rotten exam.,” said Adrian stubbornly.

  Dakyn put his hand on his shoulder. “No, no. Damn it, Glynde.” He paused: then a bright idea came to him. “Look here, you can go on using the study, even though you aren’t a fag. Won’t that do?”

  Of course it would do. It solved all Adrian’s troubles instantly.

  And so at the beginning of his third year Adrian ceased to polish Ronny’s shoes. He became, in fact, though the difference in their ages and position made it impossible that he should be on such intimate terms with him as Ellenger had been, a kind of second Ellenger, and a little rat of a boy, no bigger than Adrian had been when he first arrived at Charminster, took over his job as fag.

  And this fag was a little nuisance, just as Adrian himself had been to Ellenger. He was always bursting in, with one excuse or another, when Adrian was sitting in the study, or Adrian found him there sweeping the floor or polishing the window when he wanted to sit there. And perhaps if he had acted on impulse he would have bundled the little rat out. But he didn’t. He remembered what a curse Ellenger had been, and he remembered too the life that the small boys led in the endless riot of Common-room. The poor little devil was probably taking refuge from Common-room when Adrian found him fooling about in the study. So he disguised his impatience, and though he could not, if he would, talk freely and, as it were, on equal terms to boys who were still no more than children, he tried in brief, stilted phrases to be pleasant to the boy, and the boy, shy and grateful, replied in monosyllables. He even condescended so far for Ronny’s sake, as to instruct the boy in some of the niceties of his job.

  Adrian had grown much in the last two years. He was not, even now, big for his age, but the difference in size between him and this young fag was greater, much greater, than the difference between Ronny and him. And he was no longer the helpless victim of Commonroom. Quietly and unassumingly he had acquired a position there that the riot did not disturb. Besides, he was good at football. There was a chance that he might play for the house this term. This and his quiet inscrutability had gained for him the same respect that others gained by violent aggressiveness. He was looked upon as rather a queer bird, but quite all right. It was thought funny that, being good at footer, he should be so good at the piano. But that was a part of his queerness. Piano-playing by itself—especially Adrian’s kind of piano-playing, which was fearfully highbrow, superbly contemptuous of jazz and ragtime—would have been despicable; but even highbrow piano-playing was pardonable when backed by football-playing, and, when done so astonishingly well as Adrian did it, almost a little admirable. He joined Mr. Heller in a Sunday concert, a recital for two pianos, and later in the term gave a recital of his own at which there was an unusually large audience, for the most part made up of Taylor’s boys, most of whom came out of curiosity. Even the unmusical ones were impressed, and the verdict was that he was a real pro., a damned sight better than Teddy and Old Hell.

  Phipps told him so, and got little thanks from Adrian for the compliment.

  “Shows how little you know about it, Flipper,” he said. “Better than Teddy, if you like. Who isn’t? But Old Hell’s a genius. I shan’t cut him out for years, if ever.”

  “Well, anyhow, you didn’t half knock sparks out of the old box,” said Phipps.

  “She’s not got many sparks in her to knock,” said Adrian, still grimly resentful of the intractable old school piano.

  “What, isn’t she a good one? She seemed to make a hell of a noise.”

  Adrian grinned. “She’d be all right as a steam-roller,” he said, “or a gas-meter, or a penny-in-the-slot machine, or … or a second-hand set of false teeth, but as a piano she’s a bit … a bit out of her element.”

  Adrian and Phipps were great friends. Phipps, round-faced, lively, inexhaustibly good-humoured, wide awake, but untroubled by an intellect, roused the gay and irresponsible in Adrian. In Phipps’s company he felt light-hearted and free, marvellously free. He talked cheerful nonsense to Phipps and Phipps received it with loud mirth. The cleft between his actual relationship with Ronny and his feelings for him often oppressed him. He began to realise now, as his mind matured, that his vague and impossible longings could never coincide with reality; that the Ronny of his dreams and the Dakyn with whom, even now, he was not on very intimate terms, were not, and, it seemed, never could be, the same person. This discovery produced in him intermittent fits of despair. He felt profoundly unsettled: he became moody and introspective. Yet he could not detach himself either from the real or the imaginary Dakyn. Both of them had become vital parts of his life.

  Nor was this all that disturbed him. A ferment of growth seethed in the hidden places of his mind, new perceptions, new awarenesses, new desires, fed by his deeper knowledge of music and his keen and miscellaneous reading. All these things sprouted and pushed and struggled within him, and there was no one to whom he could talk of them. He felt sometimes as if they were about to rise up and choke him. But in his friendship with Phipps there was none of the stress and hungry dissatisfaction of his relation with Dakyn. Neither demanded of the other more than he received: when together they were free, gay, on equal terms. Though their point of contact was small, their encounters were vivid; like those of a couple of billiard-balls, they resulted in cheerful noise and stimulating shocks. He could not talk to Phipps of the things that germinated within him: if he were to do so, Phipps, he felt, would hardly know what he was talking about. But with Phipps he could escape from them, rest from them, throw off youth’s perplexities and growing-pains and refresh himself in its cheerful simplicity. Only to look at Phipps’s round, red-cheeked, smiling face, his dancing, mischievous eyes, to come into contact with his high spirits and irrepressible energy, was a tonic and a holiday. He seemed to be always on the dance, always breathlessly eager, always up to one thing or another. He had many of the qualities that Adrian lacked. Shyness and diffidence were things unknown to him. He was ready for anything or anybody. In his cheerful
amiability he was no respecter of persons, and in consequence people liked and respected him. Early in his career at Charminster he had been nicknamed Flipper, a name which suited him as well as his own. He was a kind of boy who invited a nickname, whereas it was typical of Adrian that he should have remained simply “Glynde “until now, when his friends began to call him Adrian. Dakyn, who in fatherly amusement at his small, compact demureness, had at first often called him “little man,” did so still, the title having, in the course of time, become in his mind a proper name; and the patronising endearment it implied was precious to Adrian, who—infatuated creature that he was—heard in it much more than Dakyn put into it.

  Not that Dakyn was indifferent to Adrian. He felt for him an amused affection: he liked to have him about, to find him in his study when he went there. It pleased him to entice him out of his shyness, to draw him out and discover his unsuspected qualities, his liveliness and humour—the Glynde humour—which gradually, under the encouragement of their slowly growing intimacy, emerged in surprising flashes.

  At the end of this term Adrian was promoted again. He was in the upper school now: the distance between him and Dakyn had diminished. He was no longer an insignificant child: he was no longer a child at all. He was only three inches less that Dakyn in height. This closer approach to Dakyn, though it made Adrian extremely happy and diverted him from his tendency to depression and self-absorption, was unfortunate, for it narrowed the unbridgeable gulf between the ideal and the real, awoke again those romantic longings which he was beginning painfully to grow out of, and so postponed his chances of escape. Adrian himself knew it, but how could he deliberately turn his back on this unhoped-for gift of the gods. His starved heart could not bear to forego such chances of happiness, even though it should end, as he foresaw it would end, in misery. But even now it would be misery to reject it: in either case he was in for his portion of misery. Why not, then, recklessly grasp the happiness that waited ready to hand: though the later separation would be still more painful, the happiness he had enjoyed would enable him to bear it more stoutly. Separation was surely coming, for Dakyn was leaving Charminster at the end of the summer term. That prospect loomed like the mountainous pile of a distant storm on the far confines of this brief, radiant spring. At night before he fell asleep and when he awoke in the morning its ghostly presence stood by his bed, breathing the chill of death. It seemed to Adrian almost a foregone conclusion that when Dakyn left Charminster he would lose touch with him. Dakyn’s gaiety and charm would attract a cluster of new friends, and he, in his free, easy fashion, would settle down within the new circle. Adrian thought of Ellenger. What, he wondered anxiously, had happened to him? He still wrote to Ronny, though, Adrian noticed, not so often; about once a fortnight now. But did Ronny ever reply? The answer to that question would have told him much, too much perhaps, for his peace of mind. What a couple of besotted fools they were, himself and Ellenger, Adrian thought to himself with a sigh. Other boys, breezy folk like Flipper, or Ronny himself for that matter, were not bothered by this kind of thing. Flipper regarded it as a harmless lunacy, like piano-playing. The difference between Ronny and Flipper was that Ronny was quite ready to accept adoration, while Flipper would certainly have refused it with amiable but heavy-handed ridicule. Adrian smiled to himself as he imagined Flipper’s reception of a worshipper: “Dip the headlights, old man. Switch off the vox humana, if you don’t mind.” But actually the thing would never reach such explicitness with Flipper. He would have disposed of it at a much earlier stage by mere behaviour. Words would never be needed. No, a fellow who set his affections on Flipper would have a thin time of it; but not, in the end, so thin a time as Adrian himself was going to have, for at least his cure would have been a quick one.