Young Pattullo

by J. I. M. Stewart

  I became friends with Martin Fish as the result of an episode which, if it held a certain muted drama in itself, didn’t seem to presage disaster. One wouldn’t have thought of Fish as disaster-prone. He was an Australian, which is a circumstance observable as giving a man, whether agreeably or not, a birthright of toughness. I felt this in Fish from the start, although in him the quality was superficially obscured by an overlay of English manners, apparently acquired in a very Anglophile and expensive boarding-school in his native country. So he was a kind of half-foreigner, much as I was myself. The fact hadn’t established any bond between us; his circle of acquaintance was already formed, and we got along on what I used to think of as pausing terms. When we ran up against each other, that is to say, we didn’t make do with a mere nod or couple of words (as in the terminal stage of my relations with Stumpe) but would engage in what an anthropologist from an alien culture would probably have supposed to be a short ritual dance. It consisted of circling one another idly in a swaying and balancing act to the accompaniment of a brief exchange of remarks and inquiries about nothing very much, and the general idea was that of moderately pressing occasions of one’s own at play against a civil reluctance to part. We were probably both aware of it as a convention we had picked up from others more advanced than ourselves in the amenities and graces that English undergraduates evolve. And Fish had his genuine occasions at all times; he was a controlled and purposeful man, although not like Bedworth obsessively so, and was making his way with decision towards whatever goals he had set himself during his Oxford years. I thought of him as probably destined to own hundreds of thousands of sheep and a good deal of furniture of authentic antiquity. He was, in short, a sympathetic character in his way, and with a good deal of the impressive magic of adulthood already attaching to him. But it is deplorably true that the battle is not always to the strong nor yet favour to men of skill. Time and chance happeneth to them all.

  Although I was in love with Oxford I still didn’t greatly enjoy leaving home, and this feeling extended at least to the beginning of my first summer term. I knew that here was another chunk of the happiest days of my life starting up, but that I had left part of myself elsewhere, all the same. I was naturally more subject to this reaction than were boys who had been regularly packed off to boarding-school three times a year from the age of nine. (It must certainly have been in the first few days of this term or the preceding one that I had scratched in a secret place a kilted Rupert Bear saying, bubble-wise, ‘Ye maun thole it, Dunkie’.) So every now and then I would go off in a consciously brooding manner by myself. I had, indeed, something real to brood about. Janet had been in Skye, as was increasingly habitual with her, almost throughout the holidays, and our few meetings were unsatisfactory. I was aware that I hadn’t, so to speak, been pulling my weight in our relationship; that I was younger than I ought to be, and that Oxford, although absorbing, wasn’t improving the position; even that between Janet and myself there was developing a block, a no-go situation, which I didn’t understand a bit.

  These feelings, then, took me off by myself – perhaps not more than two or three times all told – in the first week of a May which to my northern sense already held all summer in its grasp. I decided to go on the river. Being alone on the Cherwell in a punt or canoe would picturesquely enhance my solitude, whether in my own regard or that of anybody who cared to observe me. Attending upon Timbermill in Linton Road had brought to my notice a boat-house scarcely a hundred yards from his hideous dwelling where craft could be hired with less bustle and difficulty than at Magdalen Bridge or elsewhere further down the river. I went out to this place on my bike after a twelve o’clock lecture, munched a sandwich in a tea-garden attached to it, and hired a canoe. I was offended when the man who pushed me off asked me whether I could swim, although he could only have been obeying some standard instruction. Swimming was among my more respectable athletic accomplishments. This proved to be just as well.

  The Cherwell is a stream about which idylls have been composed. Its waters sparkle, are crystalline, turn to a tumble of golden guineas as sunlight strikes through the willow-trees. Lush meadows line its either bank. Kine are to be observed peacefully pasturing, and the little clouds in the blue sky above are like well-tubbed sheep. On this afternoon in late spring I was giving these appearances a fair chance, and here and there the authentic Arcadian note was evident. On the whole, however, I found myself afloat on a sluggish and muddy river, lined with trees perfunctorily pollarded and so untidily overhanging the water as to threaten one’s head if one paddled, or equally vital parts if one was out with a punt. There were occasional bathing-places of varying degrees of pretension, but it was the same opaque stuff that ran through each and it didn’t look all that inviting. The miscellaneous debris floating slowly down stream ranged from chocolate-papers and ice-cream cartons to the fractured limbs of quite sizeable trees. Some of these last had got themselves stuck in the muddy bottom and presented alarming snags if you weren’t watching out.

  It was too soon after lunch for anyone to be around, on shore or afloat. Solitude made me fanciful, and I caught myself imagining that I was exploring the upper reaches of a tropical river. Here and there the main stream was joined by gloomy tributaries so canopied by black poplars as to seem as subterranean as Acheron. Savages performing obscene rituals in a krall would have been quite in order. But in fact nobody was visible.

  I told myself it was Mogridge who presumably went in for day-dreams of communing with Umslopogaas or She who must be Obeyed, and that juvenile fantasy with me was a thing of the past. All that I was honestly feeling about the Cherwell was its small likeness to the Corry or the Tummel. And this couldn’t be called its fault; it hadn’t invited me on any false pretences to repose upon its bosom. I decided to make the best of it, and struck out more vigorously with my paddle – an implement over which I had achieved just enough control to keep myself on a straight course. It was quite hard work, all the same, and by the time I reached Water Eaton I decided that I’d gone far enough up-stream for the day. Water Eaton is a house standing a little back from the river – which, at least at that time, seemed to be the only channel of communication it bothered to maintain with the outer world. It was old, seemingly untenanted, and as unpretentious as an ancient and spacious dwelling is ever likely to be. I found that I approved of it. It was the natural terminus to my outing, much as a glimpse of the college tower had been the end of my father’s tour of Oxford in quest of a place of education for me. I edged up to the bank, scrambled ashore, and secured the canoe to an exposed willow-root. The river curved here, the bank was eroded in places, and the water seemed surprisingly deep.

  There was short dry grass a few yards back, and a smell of clover in the air. The sun shone confidently in a clear sky, so that I judged the afternoon to be not so much warm as hot; invisible insects supported me in this view by producing a kind of midsummer hum. I sat down facing the river and with my back against a tree, and dutifully brought out a book. (The book was probably one the study of which had been enjoined upon me by Timbermill and not Talbert. I had become attached to Talbert, but only Timbermill was getting any work out of me.) I hadn’t opened it before I heard voices from the river.

  ‘I could, you know. I’m sure I could!’

  These words came to me, quite clearly, from what was still an invisible source. It was a woman who had spoken, and something indefinable in her tone rather than what she had said, made me wait with some curiosity for what was going to appear. There had been a man’s voice as well, and now it said something I couldn’t distinguish. But I guessed what sort of craft was coming down stream, since in addition to the slow plash of blades there was the cluck of oars in rowlocks. It must be a rowing-boat, and quite a small one.

  ‘Don’t be so absurd! Of course I can.’

  The voices had sunk to a murmur before the man replied in this way to something I hadn’t caught, and I couldn’t tell whether he was amused or annoyed. I did suddenly
know, however, who was speaking. That faintly antipodean accent belonged to my neighbour Martin Fish. In another moment he was in view. At least his back was, since he was at the oars of a tiny dinghy, sculling lazily. Facing him in the stern, and facing me, was a girl of about his own age. I had a glimpse of her as very pretty, and as in some state of what was no doubt attractive animation. This impression sharpened into a sense that she was putting on a turn. I could see that she was meant to be steering but was in fact doing nothing about it. As I continued to watch, Fish glanced over his left shoulder as he rowed – a precaution he must frequently have to take when with so regardless a companion. As I have noted, all sorts of inconvenient objects hang around in the Cherwell, anxious to cause trouble.

  ‘Shall I find out?’ the girl asked.

  This time, Fish made no reply, but turned back to regard her (I thought) doubtfully or fixedly. Were he to follow this up by looking to his right, he and I would be at once at gaze. I reacted to the perception by humping myself hastily away from the tree against which I had been leaning, stretching myself prone on the grass, and burying my nose in my book. From the river my appearance thus presented nothing more identifiable than the soles of a pair of shoes and a foreshortened view of grey flannel bags. This unsociable conduct was not occasioned by any suspicion that something awkward had blown up between Fish and his companion in the dinghy, which he wouldn’t thank an acquaintance like myself for taking a dekko at. It was the simple fact of his being out with a girl that made me shy, producing a recrudescence of the mere schoolboy in me. For had one of my form-mates, only a year before, encountered me walking along Princes Street with Janet, he would have been as likely to avert his gaze as take his cap off. On the other hand, my evasive action conformed to the then ruling Oxford mores as I have described them. If a man tagged around with a girl, you let it be his own affair.

  I heard the dinghy go past at an unhurried pace. Fish and the young woman had stopped talking, perhaps as having noticed my sprawled form within earshot. I stayed put for a couple of minutes, since Fish would now be facing me if I turned round and sat up, with the result that we should have to hail each other after all. When I did scramble upright the dinghy had disappeared round the next bend downstream. From that direction there now came fresh sounds which I took to have a different origin. People were shouting and splashing in a way that suggested the likely appearance, coming up river, of a rowdy party skylarking in a punt. But this impression lasted only for a moment. There weren’t all that many people involved, and the sounds didn’t, on reconsideration, in the least suggest jollity. I jumped to my feet, and raced off in their direction.

  The first thing I saw was the dinghy. It had capsized, and was floating keel-upwards down the river. Fish and his girl were bobbing about in mid-stream. The spectacle ought to have been instantly alarming, but seconds went by during which I was merely amused. Although it was so early in the summer term, I had already seen two or three punting tiros tumble over their poles into the water, and the incidents occasioning nothing more than unfeeling laughter from friends. Moreover, as one could punt up the Cherwell, it seemed improbable that it was anywhere more than five or six feet deep, and it certainly didn’t go in for the sort of current that would sweep one helplessly before it. I didn’t however enjoy a sense of diversion for long, and I was kicking off my shoes even as the first sense of sudden sharp crisis rose in me. The girl’s clothes were still holding her up rather than dragging her down; she might have been charitably described, moreover, as swimming. I didn’t feel all that interest in her. This was because I was looking at Fish, and Fish – momentarily – was looking at me. We were staring straight at one another – this was the dominant and horrid fact – and there was blind fear on Fish’s face. He cried out, he gurgled, he managed the imbecile gesture of waving his arms in air. And then he just disappeared. Whether or not he was actually out of his depth, he was contriving to drown expeditiously before my eyes. There could be no question of the priorities involved, and they weren’t of a chivalric order. This remained true even although the girl’s difficulties seemed likely to increase with an uncomfortable speed.

  ‘Float, blast you!’ I shouted at her furiously, and went after the muddy business of rescuing Martin Fish. It wasn’t very difficult, and he may be said to have behaved well. I had him on the bank quite quickly, and was in a position to haul out the girl before she had got too far in the direction of the North Sea.

  We then had the resource of collaring, righting, and bailing out the dinghy. I say ‘resource’ because the aftermath of the affair threatened to reek of embarrassment. There was the awkward business, for a start, of my being a hero. I hadn’t undergone the slightest risk – unless one were to imagine, in an access of melodrama, a demented Martin Fish clutching my throat and dragging me down to a watery grave. Still, there had to be gratitude and expressions of esteem. Then, again, the relationship of Fish and his lady must be supposed modified by the incident. For the present, however, it was in an unknown direction and unpredictable degree. I’d have formed a clearer idea about this had I been able to arrive at the slightest notion of what had been going on. It isn’t easy to overturn a dinghy on the placid waters of the Cherwell. My first guess was that the craft had been hopelessly wormed, and that either Fish or Martine (which, curiously, turned out to be the girl’s name) had put a foot through the bottom of it. Had this been so, only a little panicking and grabbing might have turned it turtle. But when we got it right way up again it proved perfectly sound.

  Then there were the snatches of conversation I’d overheard.

  ‘I could, you know. I’m sure I could!’ That seemed an easy one; Martine had been proposing to do something silly. But then, after brief exchanges I hadn’t made out, Fish had said, ‘Don’t be so absurd! Of course I can.’ They hadn’t, I felt, been making their respective claims about the same thing. Then, ‘Shall I find out?’ Martine had asked challengingly. And at that the couple had passed out of earshot.

  The puzzle all too clearly connected itself with the fact that Fish couldn’t swim. He couldn’t swim a stroke. Plenty of husky men are in that condition. Fish was thoroughly husky. Beside him, I was a mere rabbit. And Fish was an Australian, one of a race whom travel-advertisements at that time accustomed us to think of as perpetually perched on surf-boards amid Pacific breakers – either this or drilling in life-saving teams dauntlessly prepared to do battle with shoals of sharks. Thinking over these matters, I formed the provisional view that, as a girl-friend, Martine called for firm handling.

  At the moment, and in trying circumstances, she was being demonstratively nice to her humiliated lover. She was being nice to me too, but with a perplexing suggestion that something clandestine was necessary in thus including me in her regard. She seemed, in fact, a play-acting type. Of course misadventure, when it runs to a large element of the ludicrous, tends to produce false notes. And we were undoubtedly feeling silly. In our disgraced condition, muddy as well as wet, we had miles to go. With a sunny afternoon wearing on, the river was filling up. Nobody shouted at us, or even laughed, but we were undoubtedly the object of amused regard. It was something I didn’t myself want to suffer further on a long walk from North Oxford back to college, and I remembered with some relief that the canoe might be dropped at a boating-station further down the river. I could have stripped myself of everything except a pair of unnoticeable pants, shot ahead, and been taken for a wholly unremarkable devotee of early sun-tan. I thought perhaps I ought to do this, rather than present myself (at least to my two companions) as the solicitous convoy of a pair of branded incompetents. I decided, however, to paddle gently behind the dinghy, near enough for an exchange of cheerful remarks. These proved edgy.

  ‘I like my Fish best out of water,’ Martine shouted at me with gaiety and over her shoulder. Fish, tugging at the oars with the concentration of a man who seeks to get something over, produced a smile not easy to interpret. I was confirmed in my impression that her idea of niceness
was of a teasing sort. As a couple, Martin and Martine obscurely suggested the title of a mediaeval romance. Perhaps it was this quirk of nomenclature that had drawn them to one another in the first place. It seemed doubtful if they were exactly soul-mates now.

  ‘What about Parson’s Pleasure?’ Fish called out suddenly. ‘It’s going to be a bit awkward for Martine.’

  I realised, not without satisfaction, that this was so. The celebrated bathing place is no more than a short reach of the river, and is dedicated to the use of males, young and not so young, who favour swimming and sun-bathing unencumbered by garments of any sort. For this reason it exists behind a kind of stockade, and women boating up or down stream are required to disembark and by-pass it on foot. It did seem a little hard that Martine should be required to do this – thus exposing herself further to a public gaze – in her present dripping condition.

  ‘I could go in,’ I called back, ‘and see if there’s somebody to borrow a coat or something from.’

  Martine, however, vetoed this on the score of inconvenience to myself and the possible lender. Suspecting that an exhibitionistic strain, or Godiva complex, was really at work, I didn’t pursue my suggestion. As it was improbable that I’d know any of the available nudists, it would in fact have been an awkward commission. So Martine walked round Parson’s Pleasure as she was, and took rather long about it. Perhaps she paused to explain herself to acquaintances. As a result of this, Fish and I, when we had got the dinghy and canoe over a contraption known as the rollers, had to manage a couple of minutes alone in one another’s company. It ought to have been perfectly easy – a bit of a relief, indeed. Actually, we were slightly constrained.