The Old Boys

by William Trevor

‘It is your house, of your choice. You are making me answerable for everything.’

  ‘You are answerable for the depths to which we have sunk. Peaches in tins, birds and cigarette ash.’

  ‘I shall not sleep again, woken at this hour.’

  ‘I have not slept at all. My eyes haven’t closed.’

  ‘So you share your sleeplessness with me. Wake Basil too, and make all three of us a pot of coffee.’

  ‘There is no need to wake Basil. There is no need for coffee. I have spoken to you of the matter in hand, and I shall bid you goodnight.’

  ‘You seem to be out of your senses. You are in senility. Shall I tell Dr Wiley that you woke me at this hour and talked ravingly about peaches? What would his rejoinder be? That we must attend directly to having you certified and put out of harm’s way?’

  ‘It is you, not I, who need all that.’

  ‘No, no. I do not walk through the rooms at night chanting about a tin of peaches. Do you think the Australians are planning an invasion of this country and send us poisoned food? Is that what goes on in your tortured mind? Paranoia seems well to the fore.’

  Mr Jaraby left the room.

  At breakfast Mr Jaraby said: ‘What do you make of this business? I cannot recall your having offered an opinion.’

  Mrs Jaraby, in a dressing-gown and still wearing her white hair-net, poured tea from a flowered pot. She preferred to dress at a later hour, since it was a rule of her husband’s that they sit down to breakfast at fifteen minutes past six. ‘What is it?’ she enquired vaguely. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Mr Jaraby sighed. ‘I am talking about the worry that has kept me awake all night.’

  ‘The peaches?’

  ‘Why on earth should they keep a man awake at night? I assure you I have more to think about than some stupidity over tinned fruit.’

  ‘I am racking my brain to find a reason for your sleeplessness.’

  ‘Why should you do that? If you ask I will answer you.’

  Mrs Jaraby smeared marmalade on toast. ‘Then I ask, I ask.’

  ‘Do you know that in the night I counted up the amount I have spent on business for the Association during the last two years? Twenty-six pounds. That is a rough approximation: it may be far more. Add the cost of writing-paper and envelopes, blotting paper, ink, time and energy that might have been turned to some financial endeavour. Shall I tell you what this amounts to? A lesson in ingratitude.’

  ‘What is a lesson in ingratitude? I don’t follow.’

  ‘One to another they say: Jaraby’s work is done, Jaraby has had his position on the committee, now he goes to grass. That’s what they say: Jaraby’s work is complete.’

  ‘And is it complete? If you have spent all that money on stamps, you must have achieved something.’

  ‘It is not complete. I have other plans. Changes, reorganization. As President I would have implemented all that was in my mind.’

  ‘Then what can the trouble be? Are you not to be President any day now? And will it mean that you will have to spend so much money?’

  ‘I am eaten by doubt. I tell you that man-to-man. I fear that my election will not be automatic. Sanctuary seems unbalanced; Nox is a black trouble-maker.’

  ‘Do you know, that has never been apparent from your conversation.’

  ‘What has not?’

  ‘What you say: that Mr Nox is an African.’

  ‘An African? He is not an African. I did not say so. Of course he isn’t. He’s just a damned busybody. Ponders, Sole, Sanctuary, Boyns, Cridley, Turtle – putty in his hands.’

  ‘Well, certainly you have said that the last named is dead. And buried with appropriate ceremony.’

  ‘You are thoughtlessly irritating with these remarks. Have I not enough to think about without your attempting to make it worse?’

  ‘This hour for breakfast is no longer a satisfactory arrangement. Our nerves are frayed, our tempers imposed upon. Now that Basil is back, shall we make it nine o’clock? He does not rise as early as this, and as it is I am obliged to prepare breakfast twice.’

  ‘He must fit in with us, not we with him. This has always been our hour.’

  ‘Not mine; it is an imposition for me to rise like this. You no longer leave the house in the mornings; this is a needless relic of earlier days. It is an arbitrary time in our present life.’

  ‘It suits me to keep the habit up. It is not a bad one. What have you against it?’

  ‘Nothing, so long as I do not feature in it myself. As I shall not from tomorrow on. Breakfast at nine for three.’

  ‘So you deny me breakfast! You cannot buy things properly, and now you deny me my simple needs.’

  ‘If the housekeeping displeases you make fresh arrangements; or see to what irks you yourself.’

  ‘I cannot go on with these petty things. I was talking about the committee. Why did you side-track me? A unanimous confirmation, a vote of confidence, is that too much to ask? After every effort on my part, sleepless nights, train fares, speech-making, organizing?’

  ‘And the money on stamps. You must ask for it back if they do not make you President.’

  ‘I remember Nox. I remember Nox, he used to be my fag. Mark it well, that man wiped my boots daily for two whole years. And bloody badly he did them. A hairy-faced boy. D’you know, he nearly died on the cricket field? Struck by a cricket ball on the forehead, down like a ninepin. Lump the size of a mango, and off came our caps. Thinking, you see, we were in the presence of death. And there he is now, terrible little man. Every time I see him I think: kick in the pants, bloody great kick in the pants.’

  Mr Jaraby’s fingers drummed angrily on the table. He watched his wife dropping off to sleep. He ceased to play with his fingers, waiting for her head to droop; when it did, as her chin sank down on her chest, his voice began again:

  ‘I shall telephone Nox this morning. I shall speak to the man in an effort to clear the air and see what is in his mind. I cannot accept that, fool though he may be, he does not see that we of the same generation must stick together. You understand what I am talking about? You are not asleep, are you?’ He paused and continued: ‘The committee would be unanimous but for Nox. I’m sure of it. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Nox is the nigger in the woodpile.’ She had been dreaming when he woke her up in the night. She dreamed she was a child again and ran around in an Alice in Wonderland dress.

  ‘There was some trouble with Nox’s bladder,’ Mr Jaraby said, smiling a little. ‘I recall distinctly a red rubber mat on which he slept.’

  ‘I imagine all that is behind him now.’

  ‘Do you? And why should it be? The fellow is diseased, his difficulty may well be a symptom.’ He laughed, and was angered that she did not join in with him.

  Mrs Jaraby rose and collected the breakfast things on a tray. Her practice was to carry crockery and cutlery to the kitchen, tidy up generally, and return to bed.

  ‘Yes, I shall ring Nox this morning. In fact, suit the deed to the hour, I shall do it now.’

  ‘It is twenty-five past six.’

  ‘It is. He will hardly have left the house on some errand, if that is what you are suggesting.’

  ‘No, no. Merely that he may not be up yet.’

  ‘Are you so well in tune with the good Nox’s habits then? Ha, ha, is there something between you and this elderly ragamuffin?’

  ‘Oh, really –’

  ‘Why do you wear that awful hair-net?’

  But his wife had passed from the room, and, though hearing the question, saw no point in replying.

  ‘Look here, Nox, you can probably guess why I am telephoning.’

  There was a silence. Then a voice said: ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Jaraby, Nox. Jaraby here.’

  Again there was a moment of silence, before Nox said: ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘My good Nox, you are the better judge of that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jaraby. I would rather you came to the p
oint. Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Certainly, my dear fellow: it is precisely six-thirty.’

  ‘You woke me up.’

  ‘Look here, Nox, we must settle this matter of next session’s President once and for all.’

  ‘At this time of the morning? I do not sleep easily, Jaraby. I do not take kindly to this.’

  My God, Mr Jaraby thought, the swine has cut me off.

  Slowly, as meticulously as if engaged upon a surgical incision, Mr Nox opened his mail. He read the letters with equal industry, thus avoiding a bothersome return to the detail of their contents. There was little to interest him. He poured himself a cup of coffee and devoted his mind to the telephone call he had earlier received. It had resulted in his being obliged to lie in bed reading instead of continuing his sleep. How like Jaraby, he reflected, to impose such a discomfort on him. If the argument was that people do not change, he supposed that Jaraby was a good example of it. Jaraby today was much as Jaraby had been sixty years ago: a thoughtless fellow, crude in his ways. Jaraby had flung a boot at him and caused a bruise to rise on his forehead. From Jaraby’s lips had issued all the conventional insults about his family and their possessions.

  Mr Nox tried to put him from his mind. He prepared the room for the morning’s lesson. But as he sharpened the pencils and laid out paper he saw himself vividly in retrospect, standing perfectly still, obeying the instruction, while Jaraby sat and stared at him.

  Later that morning, at eleven forty-two, Basil Jaraby was arrested. Swingler, talking to a man who had just delivered coal to number fourteen, saw the black car draw up at number ten and watched the men walk heavily towards the front door. He paused in mid-sentence and drew the coalman’s attention to the proceeding, saying that it looked like trouble.

  On the Air Ministry roof it was eighty degrees Fahrenheit. In the London parks the attendants prepared for the lunchtime rush on deck-chairs. In offices in Mayfair and Holborn and the City men worked in shirt-sleeves, thinking of holidays and weekends. Mrs Strap, in her lilac underclothes and a pale dress, bought a sundae in the cafeteria at Bourne and Hollingsworth. At Lord’s England were eight for no wicket.

  In Crimea Road it was a quiet morning. A woman wheeled a shopping-basket on a handle. Another shelled peas in her back garden, a radio shrilling popular music beside her. ‘Is it all right,’ asked Basil in the police car, ‘to light a cigarette?’

  ‘Ah, Mr Swingler,’ said the sergeant at the desk. ‘Long time no see.’

  ‘Long time velly busy,’ said Swingler amusingly. ‘How about this Jaraby fellow?’

  22

  ‘I have information that would interest you,’ Swingler cooed into the telephone. ‘Interest you very, very much.’

  It would be in the papers. But before it got there, before Mr Nox knew anything about it, before Mr Nox knew that it was the kind of information he could read for free in time – before any of that came about, Swingler held a trump card.

  ‘Our association is done with, Swingler. I made that clear.’

  ‘Man dear, this is the goods. This is important. I’m telling you I have a first-class tip.’

  ‘I am in the middle of a lesson. If you have something to say, say it.’

  ‘I think, Mr Nox, you might find this worth something.’

  ‘Worth something? Worth what?’

  ‘Say fifty pounds?’

  ‘Now look here, Swingler –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter to me, Mr Nox. You just take it or leave it. I can offer you more than you ever asked me to discover. This is the real McCoy, as we call it.’

  ‘Come on then. Come on with it. Let me judge how real it is for myself.’

  ‘Fifty?’

  ‘Twenty, Swingler.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Nox, this is too good for less than fifty notes.’

  ‘All right, all right. Come to the point, please.’

  ‘Fifty in cash. Have fifty ready in cash. I shall be with you within the hour.’

  ‘You must tell me first –’

  ‘Ah, Mr Nox, that is not at all the usual procedure.’

  ‘But I am buying a pig in a poke.’

  ‘Precisely, Mr Nox. A first-class pig, a first-class poke! I am on my way to you. The winged Mercury makes haste to bear the tidings!’

  Swingler smiled. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. It was something he always did in a moment of triumph.

  ‘It cannot affect me,’ Mr Jaraby said to himself. ‘The son was disowned. There is nothing about the sins of the children being visited on the fathers. I am innocent in all this. No one will mention it.’

  ‘I shall mention it,’ cried Mrs Jaraby. ‘As often as you mention that frightful cat or Australian food.’

  ‘Do you threaten me?’

  ‘No. I put the sentence badly. What I should have said was: as often as you have mentioned those things in the past so often in the future shall I be given to mentioning the other thing.’

  ‘I was not thinking of you, of what you shall be given to saying or doing. I was thinking of other people.’

  ‘Other people will notice and note. In many minds you may be confused with your son, his action taken for yours. You may find that people fight shy of you, and do not care to have you about. Shopkeepers may serve you rapidly, other shoppers stand well away from you. Ours is not a usual name. One Jaraby is easily mistaken for another. It is the superficial thing, the name, that clings in people’s minds. They learn of these things carelessly, not bothering to remember the details or the age and appearance of the wrong-doer. I saw the house being pointed out today. It was as if a murder had taken place. We have much to prepare for; you more than I. I bear the name, but I am a woman: my sex sees me through.’

  ‘But I am entirely innocent. I have done nothing at all.’

  ‘Be that as it may – and I am not saying that I confirm your plea – you shall reap a savage harvest. A little time elapses and seeing you abroad they shall cry: “Jaraby is no longer imprisoned. Jaraby has paid for his crime. There he goes, a free man: three cheers for British justice!” But they will remember to shun you, and tell their companions of the story that surrounds your name.’

  ‘This is just wild talk again; nonsensical rambling.’

  ‘No, it is true. “Wasn’t there something disgraceful about that man?” they will try to recall. “Jaraby the name was, it was in the papers”.’

  ‘There is no need for it to be in the papers. It will be summarily and quietly dealt with; without publicity.’

  ‘You would have liked Basil to have called himself Brown or Hodges, would you? When years ago you disowned him you would have wished him to hand you back your name? To go away from us and live a stranger with a nom de guerre?’

  ‘It might have been the decent thing,’ cried Mr Jaraby. ‘It might have been the decent thing when he knew he displeased us, to go away and worry us no more, and take a name that cut off all connexion.’

  ‘You must not say he displeased us. He did not ever displease me. I love my son. You never learnt to like him.’

  ‘I was prepared to. Since he was a child on my knee I was prepared to.’

  ‘Being prepared is a pretty watery thing. You had more regard for your cat. The cat would take what you gave him, and you did not know if he hated you or not.’

  ‘Monmouth did not hate me.’

  ‘Do not be too sure. You must not take the dumbness of a beast to mean whatever you wish it to mean.’

  ‘Monmouth and I were friends. You cannot take that away.’

  ‘Your relationship with your late cat is entirely your own affair. You speak of a cat, I of a son. Is there something to be learnt from that?’

  ‘So in all your magnanimity you condone what has happened?’

  ‘If you mean, do I condone the crime for which Basil has been arrested, the answer is no. I do not condone it; but he is not yet guilty of it.’

  ‘The police would not have come had he been innocent. They would not have picke
d him out of all the millions in the country. He has a bad record; we should have expected something like this.’

  ‘His record, as you call it, is in his favour. It suggests a certain instability and may be a cause of leniency. But he is not on trial here. The law requires us to think of him as innocent.’

  ‘He should not have come back to this house. I should have shown more intolerance. I would give my right hand to have been spared this.’

  ‘Keep your hand; its use is limited when taken from the arm. We have not a monopoly of suffering in this affair. We are bystanders, as befits people of our age. Others bear the burden of the suffering.’

  ‘You are at the root of it, inviting him back, enticing him and those birds to the room upstairs. We would not be concerned but for that.’

  ‘How could we not be concerned since we are the parents? You cannot lock yourself in the past as you seek to do. The present is the only reality.’

  ‘I do not lock myself in the past. I am concerned with the present, and the future too.’

  ‘We will not muddle through an argument on that. We have time enough awaiting us. And this other thing takes precedence today.’

  ‘It cannot affect me,’ Mr Jaraby repeated. ‘It is wrong and unjust that it should.’

  ‘You have played a confidence trick on me,’ Mr Nox said. ‘The information is good, I grant you, but it would have come my way automatically.’

  ‘You had it early, sir. You can act on it at once. It is valuable to be a jump ahead.’

  ‘In this case it is of little value.’

  ‘Was I to know that? Was I in possession of that fact?’

  ‘No, Swingler, in truth you were not.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be saying cheerio then, Mr Nox.’

  ‘There is just one thing, Swingler.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘When this gets into the papers it would be a help if all the personal details were correct. For instance, a mention of the school the man attended.’

  ‘Yes, well –’

  ‘It might interest the public. To say that a man has been to a certain public school sets the scene.’

  ‘You are making sense, Mr Nox.’

  ‘And you with your influence should be able to drop the facts into a couple of reporters’ ears.’