2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

  It seems to me almost impossible, this challenge. In order to win my colours I must get a place in the First XV, which means, logically, I have first to find a place in the Second XV, from where I might have a chance, all being well, of being selected. Yet currently I am a reluctant left wing in the Soutar House XV, which resides third from bottom in the inter-house league table. It is clear I shall have to resort to nefarious ruses in order to succeed.

  The same conclusion had obviously struck Leeping because—as we were enjoying a calming cigarette before the misery of Corps—he began to moan about his challenge and said I had to give him a helping hand. I agreed, but in return said I would need some favours from him, so we shook on it. We both considered that Scabius had far the easiest road. He was already established (Thanks to us,’ Leeping wisely observed) as an eager mucker-out at the Home Farm, and although he had yet to meet the delectable Tess (he’d had to leave before she returned from the dentist), it was inevitable that the encounter would occur—and then it was up to him.

  29 January 1924

  I had a double free period before tea and asked the Lizard if I could take a bus to Glympton↓ to see Father Doig about a ‘religious matter’.

  ≡ The village where St James’s Roman Catholic church was located and where Abbeyhurst sent its Catholic boys for Mass. About three miles away from the school.

  The Lizard agreed instantly, the old toad. While I was waiting at the bus stop at the school gates—a vile, freezing day with an angled, sleety rain coming in off the sea—H-D pulled up in his motor, asked me where I was going and offered me a lift. He lives in Glympton, as it turns out, and he dropped me at the church door. He pointed out his house to me on the main street and invited me for tea after my ‘church business’ was over.

  Father Doig’s glee was almost disgusting when I told him I had a friend of ‘the Jewish persuasion’ who wanted to convert to Catholicism. I said it had to be done with the utmost discretion because if this boy’s parents ever found out…etc. etc. Doig could hardly contain himself and said to tell this boy to telephone and he would arrange private instruction, absolutely no problem, not so much a pleasure as a duty and the rest. Doig is really rather a slovenly fellow—he always looks in need of a good shave and his fingernails on his smoking hand are an unpleasant yellow colour from the nicotine.

  H-D, by contrast, is the quintessence of spic-and-span. He has a small, narrow, neat cottage giving on to a long, thin, neat garden at the rear. The front room was lined with bookshelves, the spines of the books all aligned like soldiers on parade, flush and precise. Everything on his writing desk was squared off: blotter, paper knife, pen rack. A good fire was burning efficiently in the grate, and H-D had changed into a cardigan and was wearing no tie. This was the first time I had ever seen him tieless.

  He served me tea and fruit scones and hot buttered toast with a choice of three jams. I admired his pictures—mainly watercolours and drypoint etchings—looked at some of his prize books and talked about my latest essay (on King Lear), which I was rather pleased with but which he had pedantically ranked alpha-beta plus query plus. Then I noticed on his chimney piece a brass artillery shell casing, which was intricately worked with a complex embossed pattern. I asked him where he had bought it and he said it was a gift from a wounded French soldier he had befriended at a base hospital near Honfleur. As he talked it became clear from the context that he had also been convalescing at the same time from some wound or injury.

  ‘Oh, so you were in the war, sir,’ I said—a bit breezily, I admit.

  ‘Yes. I was.’

  ‘Whereabouts? What regiment?’

  ‘I prefer not to talk about it, if you don’t mind, Mountstuart.’

  And that was that—said very abruptly, too—and it rather took the edge off our cosy tea. With the mood now formal and somewhat chill I said I thought I had better catch the 4.30 to Abbeyhurst and he showed me to the door. You could see the spire of St James’s from his small patch of front garden.

  ‘Odd day to go to church,’ he said.

  ‘I had to see Father Doig on a personal matter.’

  He looked at me fiercely and I wondered what I had said wrong this time.

  ‘You’re a very intelligent boy, Mountstuart.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Do you believe in your god?’

  ‘I suppose I do, sir.’

  ‘I’ve never understood how a person of real intelligence can believe in a god. Or gods. It’s all balls, you know—complete balls. You must enlighten me one day. Ah, there’s your bus.’

  Strange man, I thought on the way back. Not sexless, because he was leanly handsome enough, H-D, and sure of himself too. Very sure. Too uncompromising, really—perhaps that was it. Because it seems to me that to be human you have to be able to compromise. And sometimes there appears something inhuman about Mr Holden-Dawes.

  §

  Good news on my return. A letter from Lucy, and Leeping told me he’d spoken to Beauchamp—who runs our house team—and I am to play in the scrum for our next match. As hooker. So it begins.

  2 February [1924]

  Scabius has finally met the elusive and ineffable Tess. They worked on some giant of a shire-horse preparing it for a show—grooming it, varnishing its hoofs, plaiting its mane and tail with ribbons and the rest, spending a whole afternoon together. So, what was she like, we asked? Really quite shy, Peter said. We reminded him we were indifferent to her personality; it was her physical charms that intrigued us. ‘Well, she’s quite small,’ he said, ‘I tower over her. And she has this terrible frizzy corkscrew hair she’s ashamed of, always hiding it under hats and scarves. Quite well endowed in the bosom department, as far as I can tell. And she bites her nails, down to the quick.’ They seem to have liked each other well enough, however, and she had invited him back to the farmhouse for tea.

  Ben, in his turn, telephoned Father Doig and was told that, in the interests of absolute discretion, he should not come to the church at Glympton but rather meet in the house of one of his parishioners—a Mrs Catesby, who happened to live in Abbeyhurst itself- at times convenient to Ben. Thus Ben’s first encounter with Father Doig and the Roman Catholic Church is arranged for next Saturday afternoon in Mrs Catesby’s back parlour—a week from today.

  In the meantime, I have played my first rugby match as hooker.

  It was a wet, drizzly, cold afternoon as Soutar’s XV turned out on the south-east playing fields against Giffords’ XV. As both sides reluctantly stripped off and vaguely warmed up for the kick-off, it was apparent to me that we were the usual mix of lazy misfits, inept hearties and hopeless inadequates. Somewhere at the other end of the expanse of playing fields another match was going on and the routine shouts of encouragement and despair carried faintly to us over the sodden grass. We had one spectator, Mr Whitt, our assistant housemaster and theoretical coach of the house side, who, after we kicked off, bellowed and screamed on the touchline as if he were at a cup final. The teams were equally matched in terms of their deficiencies: balls were dropped, tackles fluffed, penalties missed. At half-time the score was 3-0 to Giffords’.

  I was slowly accustomizing myself to life in the scrum, which seemed mainly to involve galloping about the field chasing the ball (which I didn’t touch once in the first half). This herd-like meandering was interrupted by whistle blasts, when we would line up for a throw-in or a scrum down. The two packs would face each other and then interlock. We then became a 32-legged, human beetle trying to evacuate an oval leather ball. I knew the two props on either side of me: improbably named Brown and Smith (Smith minor, in fact, Smith senior was head boy). Brown was a muddy enthusiast, tireless and full of get-up-and-go; Smith minor—who has truly distressing acne—is a miscreant poseur like me. It was strange to be in the curious dark cave of the scrum: so many heads and faces so close to each other, strange smells and exhalations, strange cheeks rubbing against yours, arms gripping your thighs, and the mixed shovings and heavings against
your buttocks, aimless exhortations ringing in your ears, the scrumhalf with die ball screaming instructions (at, I suppose, me): ‘Ready, Soutar! Wheel right! Wheel right! Hold it! Coming, one, two, three!’ And there was the sodden dirty ball at my feet and I would hack away trying to heel it out and back, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, as everyone around me grunted and heaved and swore. This is not sport, I was thinking: give me my lonely, chilly isolation out on the left wing—at least there I could look at the landscape and the sky.

  And then the ball would be out of the scrum. The shouts and instructions would become more distant and we would break out of our crab-like clinch, look around to see where the game was and lumber off in pursuit. I have to confess I was in a state of some despair as we neared the end of the match: I was filthy, covered in mud, exhausted and I had no real idea how the score had reached 9-all.

  Then something happened in our half—a three-quarter kicked ahead and there was a fumble by the opposing full-back. Confusion, the ball over the line, fallen upon by one of the defending side. A tweet on the whistle and a drop-out on the twenty-five was ordered. Now I knew, from my perusal of the rule-book, that it was one of the hooker’s duties to confront the kicker of the 25-yard drop-out, to face him down and distract him as best he could. So I jogged up to the opponents’ 2.5-yard line, my boots as heavy as a deep-sea diver’s, my breath coming in great hoarse pants and with steam rising, it appeared, from every part of my body, from my shoulders and my bare knees. I still don’t know what made me do it, but, as I saw their fly-half stepping up to take the drop-kick, I simultaneously flung myself up and forward, arms raised in a vain attempt, at the very least, to put him of his stride. It worked: he kicked badly, low and hard, not high and hanging, and the ball blasted into the side of my face with such velocity that it rebounded a good twenty yards, close enough to the enemy line for one of our nippier three-quarters to dart in, snatch the ball up and score under the posts. Try converted—five points—victory to Soutar’s, 14-9.

  The side of my face was on fire. I remember that once my mother slapped me on the cheek for some misdemeanour and the same pulsing, peppery, eye-watering heat was the result. The scarred wet leather of the ball left a smarting red weal across my left cheek and on my forehead above the left eye: my face felt molten, my flesh prickly and seared.

  People—team-mates—were slapping me on the shoulders and on the back. Smith minor was shouting in my ear, ‘You mad bastard, you mad bastard!’ We had won and my inadvertent block had brought the win about: and somehow the pain I was in diminished, magically. Even Whitt, pipe jutting, thin hair strands blowing wildly, called out, ‘Damned good effort, Mountstuart!’

  Later, after I had showered and changed and the redness had faded to a blushing, warm pink, I was heading for our set when I encountered little Montague. ‘Well done, Mountstuart,’ he said. ‘Well done for what, you filthy harlot,’ I replied (uncharitably, I confess). ‘Well,’ he said, ‘your charge-down. Everyone’s talking about it.’

  My ‘charge-down’…So, this is how myths and legends are born. I realize now, with a small sense of absolute revelation, what the way ahead involves. The only possible route to the First XV and my colours is now revealed tome: I have to play with reckless, careless stupidity, the grossest foolhardiness. The more senseless I am, the more I risk life and limb, the more I will be recc and hailed. All I have to do is play rugby like a suicidal maniac.

  5 February 1924

  Letter from Mother announcing that the Mountstuart family will be going to Austria for Easter, to Bad Riegerbach, to be precise, where Father is to take the waters. ‘He has a sort of anaemia,’ Mother writes, which is making him lose weight and become easily tired. So he is now officially ill, it is no longer just a confidential matter between him and me—but what, pray, is a ‘sort of anaemia’? Ben had his first session with Fr Doig yesterday, which he described as ‘eerie’. Ben’s account sounded very Doig, to me, the man full of ill-concealed self-satisfaction at this potential scalp rather than displaying any concern to explore young Leeping’s religious doubts. They are to meet at least once a week at Mrs Catesby’s. Ben said that Doig could not conceal his huge disappointment that he was a lapsed Jew. An Anglican was small beer. At least, he’d said to Ben, you look Jewish. I think he was expecting some sort of bearded rabbinical figure with long curls dangling around his ears. Ben thinks his challenge will now be a walkover, Doig is so desperate. We both agree I have the most onerous task of the three of us.

  Wrote a Spenserian ode on loss of faith. Not very good. I quite liked the line: ‘When faith has died we must paint the colours on the sky.’

  11 February 1924

  Scabius, me, Lacey, Ridout, Sandal and Tothill all travelled to Oxford by train for our scholarship examinations. Eleven others went to Cambridge—Abbey boys have always been favoured by Cambridge colleges; but we are more of an unknown quantity in the City of Dreaming Spires. Peter and I deliberately lingered in the train until the last moment, so as to separate ourselves from the others, and then hired a pony and trap (more like a horse and cart) to take us and our luggage to our respective colleges. We were deposited on Broad Street—the Broad, as I must learn to call it—and Peter went to Balliol while I wandered up Turl Street with my suitcase looking for Jesus. As it happened I chose the wrong one (why do these colleges not post their names outside the main door?) and the porter at Lincoln, a surly brute, pointed me in the right direction.

  Jesus was neither inspiring nor disappointing: two rather elegant small quadrangles and a perfectly acceptable chapel. But no college, however grand, could have looked its best on a damp and drizzly February afternoon—the sooty façades of the quads rendered almost black by the rain and the lawns tufty and unmown. I was shown to my rooms and I dined in hall. There seemed to be a lot of bearded, moustachioed, older undergraduates and I was told they were war veterans taking up their places at the university after their time in the army. I slipped out of college and went to Balliol to meet Peter but found the place firmly locked up. It’s a bad start for Oxford, in my opinion: it seems a gloomy, dirty, dosed place. I feel I could find more kindred spirits at Abbey, it pains me to say. And Jesus, with all these mature men—like uncles, with their pipes and tweeds and facial hair—does not inspire. Perhaps Leeping is right: why do we want to waste three precious years of our life in these institutions?

  12 February [1924]

  A morning and afternoon spent taking the History papers, which seemed to pass off well enough. I answered questions on Palmerston’s second government, the French Revolution and Wal-pole’s financial reforms (dull stuff but full of arcane facts) and I think I gave a fair account of myself. After the afternoon paper I was summoned to meet the History fellow, Le Mayne—P. L. LE MATNE, it said on his door. This was the ‘friend’ H-D had talked about. He was a pugnacious, stocky, bearded man, and he looked me over with what can only be described as a mixture of distaste and mild curiosity.

  ‘Holden-Dawes says we should take you come what may,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why should we take you, Abbey boy?’

  I muttered a few platitudes—Oxford, distinguished college, huge privilege, the honour—but he cut me short.

  ‘You’re losing it,’ he said.

  ‘Losing what?’

  ‘What vestiges of good opinion I had of you—‘ stimulated by James. Why do you want to read History at Oxford? Convince me.’

  I don’t know what came over me—perhaps it was the sense that all was lost already, perhaps it was Le Mayne’s abrasive indifference, not to say his overt dislike of me, so I said, regardless: ‘I don’t give two farthings for history. The only reason I want to come to this depressing place is that it will give me time—time to write.’

  Le Mayne groaned, threw his head back and stroked his beard.

  ‘Heaven preserve me,’ he said, ‘another bloody writer.’

  I thought about walking out but decided to play this one t
hrough.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ I said suddenly, freshly audacious. ‘Please don’t expect an apology.’

  He was unperturbed and said nothing, glancing tiredly at me, and then shuffled through my examination papers.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he said wearily. ‘You can go.’

  §

  Later. Scabius told me that he had met three fellows and had even shaken the hand of the Dean of Balliol, Urquhart, himself. I had been in Le Mayne’s room about five minutes, if that. It seems to me that my Oxford career isn’t even going to get to die starting line. Before I came here Father wrote to say that there was always a job in junior management at Foley’s. I think I would rather slash my wrists.

  13 February [1924]

  Peter and I found a public house down by the canal where we drank beer and ate bread and cheese before catching our train back to Norwich. Peter’s tutor had shaken his hand at the end of the interview and said he looked forward to seeing him in September. I saw Le Mayne cross the quad in the morning and he had looked right through me with no sign of recognition at all.

  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?