Any Human Heart

by William Boyd

  Writing this on the train back, fighting against a mounting sense of depression. Ridout and Tothill are playing gin rummy. Peter is asleep, confidently asleep. If I don’t get in to Oxford, what will I do? Go to Paris with Ben? Join Father’s firm? It’s all too damnably frustrating. Thank God we had the foresight to set ourselves these challenges this term: it is almost shaming to say this, but, currently, the one thing in my life that I anticipate with some excitement is the prospect of the match tomorrow against O’Connor’s. Younger said he might come and watch. Could this be the first step?

  14 February [1924]

  Scabius and the lubricious Tess held hands for a few minutes as they walked along some path somewhere after lunch. Peter says she took his hand but he didn’t dare do anything else, then she had to release it when they reached a stile and that was that. I said it was an excellent sign and in future he should take more advantage of such opportunities.

  Leeping meanwhile had a second meeting with Doig while we were away in Oxford (he says Mrs Catesby is really quite charming) that did not go so smoothly: he says he thinks Doig is becoming suspicious of him already. ‘Why on earth?’ I said. ‘He couldn’t wait to convert you.’ ‘I think the problem is because I have no doubts,’ Ben said. So I told him all he had to do was develop some doubts and Bob’s your uncle. But he couldn’t think of any convincing doubts, he said; he had no idea what a potential convert to Roman Catholicism would be doubtful about and so has asked me to suggest some. I think Transubstantiation is too obvious, safer to go with Purgatory and Hell, perhaps. Hell is always a bit of a poser. I’ll come up with something, something doctrinally meaty to soothe Doig, keep him happy.

  My own progress continues with some genuine triumph. This afternoon’s house league match between Soutar’s and O’Connor’s was watched by both Younger and Brodrick (who’s also in the First XV). Towards the middle of the second half of an unexceptional game (we were leading 11-3) in which I’d done nothing of any real note, I was suddenly passed the ball and as I received it was upended in a tackle and dumped on my head. I must have been knocked out briefly because everything went black and, when I came to, play had moved on to the other end of the field on the O’Connor line.

  I rose to my feet feeling suddenly nauseous and groggy, and, just as I did so, there was a break-out counter-attack from the O’Connor line in the shape of a fly-hack ahead. A whole group of forwards came pounding towards me, booting and dribbling the ball onwards as they went. Our full-back (a weedy fellow called Gilbert) tried to pounce on the ball and, naturally, missed, leaving me as the last line of defence.

  I think I must have still been slightly stunned because, to my perception, everything appeared to be happening with precise and logical slowness. I could see the mass of O’Connor forwards thundering on and was aware of our team scampering back trying to make up lost ground. There was a big black-haired brute of a man leading the O’Connor charge who kicked the ball too eagerly in front of him and I saw, with absolute clarity, what I had to do. Somehow I urged my legs into action, ran forward and, just as he was about to kick the ball again, fell upon it and gathered it into my arms.

  I heard the crack but felt no pain. I hugged the ball to my chest as bodies thudded heavily on top of me. The whistle blew. The big O’Connor forward (Hopkins? Pugh? Lewkovitch? – I can’t remember his name) was sobbing and moaning – he had broken his leg, badly: the normally straight line of his right shin below his sock now had a distorted kink in it. And blood, I quickly realized, was also streaming down my face. I managed to clamber to my feet and the referee tried to staunch the flow with his handkerchief as urgent calls were made for a stretcher to carry the injured man off. The game was abandoned.

  At dinner this evening an ironic cheer went up from the house when I came in, my head bandaged (four stitches). It was not my own injury that drew the admiration of my fellows so much as the damage I had inadvertently done to my opponent. ‘He broke the other man’s leg, clean through’ was the real symbol of my temporary renown rather than ‘He received a nasty gash above the eye’. Once again there was much gleeful banter about my alleged insanity, my death wish, my suicidal desire to die on the rugby field.

  After dinner, Younger approached: I am to turn up for Second XV training as soon as the wound is healed. I can hardly believe that two matches were all it took to advance this far up the rugby ladder, but there you are – perhaps the school team needs an insane hooker. However, a vague worry has started up alongside my self-satisfaction: I have established, with amazing rapidity, a reputation for maniacal, self-destructive courage, and so far my single badge of honour is a really rather nasty cut, but I’m a little perturbed at the thought of future injuries I might incur in the line of this particular duty – I can hardly go all coy and sensible, now. Leeping joyfully predicts all manner of horrible fates – a broken spine, a coma, an ear ripped off. But, while I’m concerned, I know I have to go on. I am going to emerge victorious: I am going to win this challenge.

  21 February 1924

  Lucy’s letters to me seem either strangely abstract or maddeningly matter of fact. I write to her and talk about what happened between us at Xmas and the night in the golf club and she replies with a lengthy account of an evening of Gregorian chant she attended at St Giles’ Cathedral. I write – poignantly, in the most heartfelt way – about how I miss her and how I detest my life in this school and she responds with detailed plans for her future life as an archaeologist or philosopher or – new, this – a veterinary surgeon.

  Ben L. says his new-found doubts about Purgatory have worked wonders with Doig. They spent a whole afternoon debating over just how long he – Ben – would have to linger there after a lifetime of run-of-the-mill, suburban sinfulness. He says he finds my religion positively bizarre’ and is amazed at how seemingly well balanced I appear with all this mumbo-jumbo in my background. Yes, I said, it’s all balls, isn’t it. H-D would be proud of me.

  It’s my birthday in a week – I’ll be eighteen. My only thoughts are of leaving school and beginning my life afresh at Oxford. I feel I cannot make any plans until I leave this place; it’s as if the years here have been some sort of tiresome, ultimately useless apprenticeship for the real thing that lies ahead. Indeed, these challenges prove the depths of my – our – boredom. This system has to be the most iniquitous and crippling way of educating the intelligent young (it may be wonderful for the stupid and backward young, for all I know) – four fifths of the things I’m obliged to do here strike me as an utter waste of time. Without the company of my few friends, English Literature, History and the rare engagement with some higher mind (H-D) this school – and the expense it entails my parents – strikes me as a national scandal.

  Parcel from Mother – the books I ordered: Baudelaire, De Quincey, Michael Arlen – and chocolate and a two-foot-long chorizo sausage. Do not forget, Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, your unique heritage. The sausage is delicious: hot, shouting with pepper and garlic – and irresistible. I was nibbling slices in chapel and I had this horrible feeling that a miasma of garlic was spreading along the pew. My cut is healing fast: I shall be back on the rugby field very soon. It has the makings of a rather interesting scar.

  After morning chapel Peter and I had a couple of free periods so we went into Abbeyhurst and took tea and crumpets at Ma Hingley’s. Hot crumpets with butter and jam – what could be more ambrosial? The day I can’t enjoy these pleasures will signal some kind of death of the soul. The place was empty apart from a couple of local crones gossiping about their bunions and arthritis. Peter told me he thought he was falling in love with the delectable Tess. I refused to humour him: this is a test, a challenge, I said, something coldly objective – we have to keep feelings completely out of it. But Peter went mooning on about her sweet nature, her innate sensuality, her firm, full figure and how he feels this strange union with her when they work in silence on the horses. I probed a bit further. She prefers men’s clothes, it turns out, for stable work: caval
ry twill trousers with elastic-sided ankle boots, and, beneath her jacket, wears braces. As he talked on I could see that it was this image of a girl turned stable lad that was stimulating him, it was the very absence of sexual allure that was arousing. I told him so and he seemed nonplussed. ‘You are two manual workers,’ I said, ‘she sees you as some sort of farm hand, a fellow groom and equal. How can you ever become lovers if you allow this to go on?’

  Then he confessed, or rather he blushed, and sipped his tea noisily. ‘She lets me kiss her,’ he said, ‘when we finish. In fact it was Tess who made the first move. She lets me touch her breasts – but only when we finish with the horses.’

  ‘Please don’t lie to me, Peter,’ I said. ‘It’s too shaming.’ But he protested and I could sense, from something in his demeanour, that he wasn’t lying. He swore to me that everything he said was true and this was why he had fallen in love with her. ‘She’s a bold, rare spirit,’ he said, and I felt the sour, bilious grip of envy around my heart. Well, you’ve won the challenge, I told him, congratulations. All you have to do now is find a way of letting Ben and myself witness your love-making. He nodded seriously: he seemed truly relieved to have told me all this. In fact he seemed all at sea, lost in this strange romance with the farmer’s daughter. Ben and I had a good, sophisticated laugh about it all later, but I was aware that Ben was as surprised – and vaguely irritated – as I was. This sort of thing, this fantastic good luck, was not meant to happen to Peter – it was meant to happen to us. But we agreed we felt sorry for him: poor old Peter Scabius suddenly face to face with sex. Perhaps we have done him a favour.

  25 February 1924

  Second XV match against Uppingham. Freezing, icy day with a strong east wind. I was extra man and ran the touchline and brought on the quartered oranges at half-time. I suppose what I have achieved in these few short weeks is extraordinary enough (even the Lizard congratulated me for my ‘unforeseen sporting zeal’), but, as ever, my predominant emotion is one of disappointment. The Second XV hooker is a blond oafish fellow called fforde who, I’m sure, in the fullness of time, I could supplant: he doesn’t have anything like my dash, my insane audacity. But beyond him lies the First XV, whose hooker is a man called Vanderpoel – small, wiry, sporty – who is also captain of the squash team. The term has a few weeks to run and I wonder if I can possibly advance beyond the position I have reached now, if I could supplant a real athlete – I wonder if it is even worth trying… A horrible thought: could this be the pattern of my life ahead? Every ambition thwarted, every dream stillborn? But a second’s reflection tells me that what I’m currently experiencing is shared by all sentient, suffering human beings, except for the very, very few: the genuinely talented – the odd, rare genius – and, of course, the exceptionally lucky swine.

  Peter Scabius, at the time of writing, seems extremely well placed in the second category. He has gone as far as to specify a location for the ‘witnessed kiss’. This will take place, according to him, the day after tomorrow on a bridle path in a wood near the farm – he will tell us exactly where to position ourselves. Ben, meanwhile, is as frustrated as I am: Doig has turned hostile again and has insisted that the meetings be moved from Mrs Catesby’s to the rectory at St James’s. Ben is convinced that this is merely a form of test, Doig’s thinking (transparent, according to Ben) working along the lines that if Ben is truly sincere then the effort of making his way to the rectory will not be an impediment.

  H-D told me this afternoon that Le Mayne had found me ‘diffident, but with underlying charm and intelligence’. Stark nonsense: I cannot think of a more inaccurate description of my personality.

  26 February 1924

  Ben and I met after second tea and hurried off to observe the famous ‘witnessed kiss’. Peter had been very precise in his directions and we found the sunken lane – not too far from the Home Farm – and then the blasted oak and the small grassy hollow to its left-hand side. Ben and I hid some fifty yards off, higher up and well screened by dense leafless bushes with nasty thorns. We huddled in our overcoats and shared a cigarette, wondering how Peter might initiate the erotic moment. Ben, typically, had brought some opera glasses so we would have an excellent view. We talked also about our respective challenges and their respective disappointments but both agreed that they had been worthwhile exercises and had at least livened up, somewhat, the dullest, deadest term of the year. Mrs Catesby, it transpired, has invited Ben for ‘tea and cake’ – sans Doig, interestingly.

  After a wait of about half an hour we saw Peter and Tess emerge from the direction of the lane. Peter spread his overcoat on the grass and they sat down with their backs to the blasted oak. Tess produced a packet of cigarettes and they both lit up – we could catch unintelligible snatches of their conversation and Tess’s rather deep (rather attractive) throaty laugh. A pale sun suddenly shone and the wintry scene took on the aspect of a modest bucolic idyll. They continued talking for a while – though the mood seemed to have gone more earnest, all laughter ceasing – and then Tess shrugged off her own coat and reached into Peter’s pocket for something.

  It was his handkerchief, as it turned out, and then Ben – who was peering through the opera glasses – whispered, ‘I don’t believe it. She’s unbuttoning his flies.’

  We watched in snatched five-second glimpses, Ben and I, as the solicitous Tess dug her hand into Peter’s open fly and fetched out his flaccid white penis. She then wrapped the handkerchief around it and proceeded to toss him off – which process seemed to last no more than thirty seconds (Peter with his head back, eyes screwed tight shut). When it was over Peter’s face registered more astonishment than rapture and when – the deed done – Tess handed him back his handkerchief, neatly folded into a thick two-inch square, he simply put it back in his coat pocket without a thought or a glance. Then they kissed for a while, lying back on the coat for about ten minutes or so, but Ben and I could no longer be bothered to watch: we were so astonished and both, we later concurred, so angry. Angry that we had dreamed up this challenge for Scabius (when we could have appropriated it for ourselves) and angry that he seemed to have carried it off so effortlessly – and with the bonus we had just witnessed being thrown in as the cherry on the sundae.

  We left before they did, pushing our way through the snaggy undergrowth, as they rolled around on Peter’s coat petting each other, kissing and caressing. We both agreed that Scabius was the luckiest bastard in the school, not to say the British Isles.

  Later. Peter could not keep the imbecilic smile off his face all through dinner. He kept leaning over and saying to us, ‘She touched it, actually touched it, took it in her hand.’ We both paid him the pound that the winner was due – which leaves me seriously short of funds this term (I shall have to borrow off Ben). But both Ben and I agreed that we would persevere with our challenges, if only to preserve our integrity rather than out of any enthusiasm. This wasn’t just a bet – there is a more philosophical urgency and import to the whole enterprise. As we filed out of hall, Peter said that he was now ‘definitely in love’ with Tess. I find the idea utterly disgusting.

  29 February 1924

  Ben arrived back early from his meeting with Doig in Glympton, saying that Doig had thrown him out. I reminded him that we had both made a pact to continue our challenges. ‘But Peter’s already won,’ he said with some weariness. ‘I just couldn’t see the point of sitting there in front of that reprobate talking about angels and the Virgin Birth.’

  Hard to disagree, I suppose. It turned out that Ben kept bringing the discussion back round to the priest’s vow of celibacy and the difficulties involved in maintaining it. Doig eventually lost his patience and told him to leave forthwith – Ben protesting all the time that if he felt a genuine calling for the priesthood then he had every right to examine all the pros and cons. He said Doig got in a fearful bate and practically hurled him out of the door.

  Anyway, I told him I was going to persevere, come what may, and, now that he wasn’t doing
anything perhaps he might be able to help me out: we only had a few weeks left of term and I still had to reach the First XV, let alone play well enough to earn my colours. He said he thought I was a mad fool, but if I wanted to continue I could count on his full and unswerving support.

  Sunday [2 March 1924]

  After Mass, just as I was trying to slip away from the church unnoticed, Doig confronted me and drew me back into the shelter of the porch.

  ‘What’s going on, Mountstuart,’ he said, plainly furious, ‘with you and your Jewboy friend?’

  ‘That’s not very charitable, Father,’ I said.

  ‘What’s your game, boy?’

  ‘There’s no game.’

  ‘Lying little gobshite.’

  ‘Leeping was perfectly sincere in his desire to convert,’ said I. ‘In fact I think he found you the disappointment. I’m thinking of writing to the bishop about your feeble proselytizing –’

  Well, he really blew up at that and threatened to report me to the Lizard. I kept a straight and pious face throughout. When I told them about it, Ben and Peter awarded me another sub-magnificent. We all agreed it had been extremely droll.

  After the row, while we were waiting at the bus stop for the bus back to Abbey, Holden-Dawes walked by with a young woman on his arm – quite a pretty young woman. I said ‘good morning’ and he gave me his usual sardonic look, without, however, introducing me to his paramour. I watched them continue on their Sunday stroll, thinking it odd to see H-D with a female; I had always thought him quite sexless, somehow.

  4th March [1924]

  Ben said he had been making discreet inquiries about Vanderpoel, seeing if there were any possibilities for blackmail, but as far as he could tell the man was sinless and had no obvious passions for any of the sprats. I wondered if we could get little Montague to whore for us, but Ben wisely counselled caution – corruption of minors and the rest. Then I had my grand idea – not blackmail but bribery. I would bribe Vanderpoel to feign injury, thus opening up a gap in the first team for me. But how much money would we need to seduce the sinless Vanderpoel? Ben was commissioned to be my go-between.