“What information are you talking about?” Graham demanded. “Just before I kick your arse out of the door.”
“Let’s go and sit down”, suggested Tyldesley. “Even if you have developed the manners of a Barbary ape there’s no reason why we can’t discuss the matter like gentlemen.”
“There is”, said Graham very sharply, as the last remaining vestiges of patience slipped from him. “There’s only one gentleman here, for one. I’m not intending to sit down before I go out, for two. And you’re not going to be here long enough to sit down, for three. Get on with it, do you understand me? Or else.” He drew himself up, so visibly preparing to suit the action to the word that Tyldesley apparently realized for the first time that he was in real danger of being ejected.
“Well, the fact is, Graham”, he said, levelly enough now, “I was given a little item of information about you, which I thought I might turn to account.” He paused, organizing his thoughts.
“As you well knew, dear, I was very—terribly—upset when you walked out on me. You were the first lover who’d ever done that to me. It hurt my feelings badly, I can tell you.”
“Hurt your amour propre more like it”, said Graham in a hard voice. “I know you like to be the one who does the ditching and walking out yourself. Must’ve been a nasty blow in the vanity when I beat you to it.”
“No need to be bitchy, dear. Well, I wanted you badly. Funny, I only realized how badly after you’d gone. But when you’d gone, well, I was as horny as a boatload of rhinos. But I needed you, too, Graham. You put some much-needed order into my life. I still need you, now. More than ever. We always got on well enough. I know you seem to have this need to put on these manly manners and this butch act that you’re giving me today, but we were good for each other, and you know it.” He waited, to give Graham the chance to comment, but Graham said nothing. Tyldesley shrugged theatrically, and went on.
“Well, I knew pretty clearly from what you said when we met up again after that three-month sabbatical you took — most uncalled-for, that — that there wasn’t a lot of chance of it. But I always hoped you might see sense and come back and start enjoying life again, instead of rotting away here being a dowdy schoolmaster in your stuffy school. Well, there was nothing much I could do except ask you, and as I’m sure you remember, I asked often enough, love, and got precious little reward for my pains, as I don’t need to remind you.
“Well now things are a little different. I still want you just as badly. You don’t know how I’ve felt when you’ve come to town and treated me as if I wasn’t there, or as just another of the crowd, while all the time I was remembering what we once had going. How humiliating it was for me. All the same, I still wanted you, just like now. I’m sitting here, wanting you just as I always wanted you. You do terrible things to me, Graham, and always did.”
“I think you may be right about that, at least. I’ve got a feeling I may well be doing terrible things to you before you’re much older”, agreed Graham.
“Let me finish, and spare me the butch jokes, please. I still need you, too. That’s the biggest thing of all. You were good for me. It was why I used to put up with all your sulks and moods, when you got these macho fits on you. That’s something else you don’t know about yourself, Miss Curtis, how bloody silly you used to look, treating me as if I was some powder-puff drag queen and you acting like Clint Eastwood. But I put up with all that, because I wanted you and needed you, and I’d put up with it all over again, too. But as I said, things are going to be different now…”
Graham looked pointedly at his watch. “You’d better get to your point, if you’ve got one to get to”, he said, not troubling to conceal the rudeness of the interruption. “Four minutes.”
Tyldesley looked at him as if he could have killed him. “Oh, well, if you must have it in the throat, have it then”, he said in a heavy mock-sigh. “Well, dear Graham, I’ve been listening to a little birdie talking, and I’ve discovered that our plaster-saint in his dowdy schoolmaster’s sports jacket — have you got leather elbow-patches, by the way? — isn’t quite the stainless hero we’ve all been brought up to believe. Oh, no, not at all he isn’t.
“Do you remember the last time you saw me and the crowd in the pub? Remember me asking you if you’d found some scrummy little piece of arse among the little boys here at your school? Or maybe, I remember saying, maybe you’d found a pretty little prick to play games of hot cockles with behind the bike sheds. So romantic, I thought at the time. I had quite a nice little fantasy going myself, later that night, imagining the two of you, at it, you and this scrubbed little cherub with his nice hairless face and his nice hairless willy and his little baby’s bum.
“Well, of course I was only joking, as one does, you know. I never expected to hear that I was right on target. But that’s what I’ve heard, Graham darling. I’ve heard that you and this peachy boy are a raving old affair, right in the middle of his A-levels. Well, I salute you, darling. Good for you, I say. I would never have dreamed that an old sobersides like you would have had it in him. But I think it’s gone far enough, now. Yes, I really do think I must be ready to do my civic duty. And so there you have it, Graham my dear. There’s my conclusion, if I have one, as you so rudely put it. Putting it plain, I’m going to blow the whistle on you unless you care to pay my very, very reasonable price for keeping it under my bonnet. The price being, as you’ve no doubt guessed, a joyous return to our relationship of old, and us both living happily ever after. How does that sound to you, Graham, old fruit?” The jealousy, resentment and bitterness were coming out in gouts now, the contempt, almost hatred in his face and voice naked and ugly. “Well?” he said harshly, all the mock-irony discarded. “Give me your answer, do. You’ve got one minute”, he added cruelly, looking across at the kitchen clock.
Graham stood leaning on the wall with his head hung low, his expression hidden from Tyldesley. He remained like it for some time, doing some very hard thinking and making no response at all. Tyldesley watched him with gleeful malice, taking his attitude to indicate an utterly confounded and broken spirit.
At last Graham raised his head. “May I ask how you came by this…information?” he said. Watching Tyldesley’s face he had no difficulty in reading the conflicting emotions there. Natural prudence vied with the desire to flaunt superiority and appear clever.
Vanity won. “I was eavesdropping on some chat in the pub the other evening, and happened to overhear someone mention your friend — Wedgwood? No, Westwood, that was the old girl’s name. Very ill, so they said. Well, one of these people had paid him a visit, it seems. And while he was there Westwood slipped off into a delirium, and apparently, your name was mentioned. Well, of course, the old ears pricked up at that, and I got the rest the same way. Easy, you see. All you need is a teeny-weeny bit of luck. By the way, there’s no doubt about it being true. The person doing the talking was one of your friends — that stuck-up lecturer or professor or whatever he was, at Imperial College. Not a friend of mine at all, as he was kind enough to point out when I asked him to tell me more. There I was, all solicitous concern for your old friend, and he was like an oyster.”
During this account Graham had slumped back into his former posture against the wall, with his chin on his chest and his eyes cast down. After another long pause, during which he hardly moved, his head came slowly up once more. “And your price for not exposing an unprofessional and illegal sexual affair with a pupil here is that I resume our relationship as before?”
If Tyldesley had been a little less puffed up with his own cleverness and the apparent runaway success of his stratagem, he might have taken some warning from the ominously quiet voice and the emotionless demeanour. But he was puffed up and detected nothing. “Just so”, he said, preening.
“All right”, continued Graham, in the same quiet, dangerous tones. “But surely you wouldn’t get a lot of pleasure out of such a relationship, knowing it was only held together by duress? Wouldn’t even you find
it a bit false, knowing that I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t blackmailing me?”
“I think you’re forgetting how very good I can be at certain wicked accomplishments, darling. No, you leave me to worry about whether I’m enjoying life or not. I’ll soon tell you if I’m not. But I’d see you all right, and you’ll have forgotten this preposterous affair with this poor boy in no time, dear. By the way, Gray, I’m not altogether sure I liked that ‘even you’ very much. I can see you haven’t had that tongue of yours filed down. We must do something about that; but all in good time.”
“One more thing”, Graham said, still speaking very quietly, and standing in the same slumped position. “What guarantee have I got that if I resume our old relationship, you won’t tire of me in six months this time, and decide to blow the gaff about me and this boy after all?”
“You clever girl!” squealed Tyldesley fatuously. The high, queenish voice was affected to irritate Graham. Underneath the tasteful and restrained make-up the beautiful limpid eyes were hard and bright with intelligence; but he was too sure of his victory to be alert. “No guarantee at all, dear! I may decide I’m fed up with you. I may indeed. That may depend, in part, on you, dear Graham. It will be nice to feel that this time it will be you who has to behave, or risk the unthinkable. You’re going to know how it felt for me, Graham, dear, knowing if I kicked over the traces too hard I might lose you. Well this time the boot’s on the other foot, isn’t it, just a teensy-weensy bit; and you’re going to have to watch your step, or I may just possibly let a choice little titbit of information drop into the wrong ears.
“Of course, I may get tired of you and decide to let it drop anyway — just for a little bit of fun, you know; or an experiment — that’s it, it would be an experiment. Just to see what happened next, in the true spirit of enquiry.” The false, brittle banter ceased and his voice came out hard and merciless as machinery. “You’ll have to take your chance, as I took mine, and rely on my good nature, won’t you, Miss Curtis?”
“One thing I don’t understand at all”, muttered Graham into the third button of his shirt, “is why the hell you want me, feeling as you do. I mean, listening to you here it’s as clear as daylight that you hate me for whatever it is you fancy I did to you. So what the hell do you want me for?”
“I want you, my sweet little chicken, because you’re a very nice, succulent little piece of crumpet, which I want for myself, to amuse myself with for as long as it pleases me, and then to discard if it suits me, as you discarded me. But, like I said earlier, I still do want you, and I still do need you, you or someone like you, and I’m genuine as far as that goes. I’d like to get back to the old relationship. We really could have fun, Graham, you know, if you’d come down off that high horse you were always so fond of mounting.”
To his utter amazement, Graham saw that the further change in the man was also genuine. He really had become serious in the passing of a couple of sentences, and was speaking without the cruel hardness that had come out over the preceding ten minutes. The voice was all smooth, contemptuous and confident. He cast his mind back to the long talk he had had with Reggie Westwood, striving to recall as much of the exact conversation as he could. He remembered clearly that he had at no point mentioned Stephen’s name or anything by which he could be identified. He kept his head down for a further few moments and made his decisions. Then he looked up.
“You know the one thing I wish was different about you?” he asked tonelessly. Tyldesley raised an eyebrow contemptuously. “You couldn’t be expected to know this”, said Graham, pouring a far more than equal volume of contempt into his own voice, “but way back in — oh, the twenties, I should think — there were several very fine cricketers called Tyldesley. Spelt your way, too. Played for Lancashire, and one of them for England. And do you know, I really wish to God you didn’t share their name.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in, then, while Tyldesley was still registering amazement at the inconsequentiality of the remark, he went on, “still, that’s by the way. As far as your — er —proposition is concerned, you’ve been given false information, I’m afraid. Not that I’d have a moment’s truck with you even if you’d got it right. But as it is, you’ve wasted your time, your petrol, and all that venom you had stored up. You can go to hell, but for the moment, you can get out of here. I trust I’m not expected to soil my hands on you?”
Tyldesley stood open-mouthed. This defiance was the last thing he had expected, and he wondered where the easy-going, complaisant young man had gone in the past year or so, the restless, anxious young man who had his moods and tantrums but mainly worried in case he had upset his friend. This cold-eyed, raw-voiced man who had materialized out of the slumped, abject figure against the wall, was a stranger to him.
The stranger spoke. “You’re over your time. I’ll give you ten more seconds to start moving.”
And at last Tyldesley moved. “You bastard”, he breathed. “You insolent, arrogant bastard! You stood there and took all that—you…you let me hand you all that, knowing you were going to…” There was only one answer. “I’ll have your blood for that”, he cried furiously, clenching his fists. Graham raised an eyebrow in surprise. Tyldesley was no fighting man, as far as he knew. However, he tensed himself in readiness.
Tyldesley was quite a big man, a good two inches clear in height and reach of Graham’s compact five feet nine. But he was out of condition, whereas Graham was in full training, hard-muscled, lithe and fast. Tyldesley saw what he thought was an opening. “Here I come!” he roared.
“And there you go”, commented Graham, stepping aside and driving a fist home against Tyldesley’s ear so hard that he keeled over sideways and crashed to the floor of the kitchen, bowling over a chair as he fell. Graham heard wood snapping, and made a mental note to examine the chair for damage, while the enraged Tyldesley struggled to his feet, with tears of pain squirting from his eyes, and made another bull-like charge.
The fight, such as it was, was over in seconds. Tyldesley’s left ear was already angry and swelling; his right eye, which also got in the way of one of Graham’s paralyzing straight right jabs, was purple and swollen, and there was a lot of blood from his nose all over his face and shirt. He had no stomach for any more punishment of this order. Graham had not raised a sweat.
He hauled Tyldesley to his feet by his collar and hustled him roughly out of the flat. Then he retreated behind his front door to recover his breath and his composure. He watched through a window as the beaten Tyldesley barged down the path to his opulent car and roared off.
He was conscious of a feeling of suprise at his own calm and equanimity in the wake of a severe shock; but the cheerful mood had returned as Tyldesley had disappeared in a puff of exhaust round the corner of the road. It persisted while he examined the damaged chair, and while he deftly touched up the whitening on the pad and finished off the boot he had been working on when the doorbell had rung. That seemed like a lifetime ago, though it had been little more than half an hour.
When he finished he rang Stephen’s number and apologized for being late. At ten-fifteen, delayed by no more than a quarter of an hour, he picked up his cricket bag and went out to his car.
* * *
There was no logic in it at all, but somehow telling Stephen about the incident as he drove the sixty miles to the opening match brought a luxurious lessening of the tension that had existed between them for most of the last two terms.
Stephen’s eyes had opened wide when he had told him of the visit. When he came to the brief fight at the end the boy slewed in his seat and gazed at him in wonder and admiration. “Wow!” he said, and repeated it. “I’ve never had a master who’d thumped anyone”, he said, as proudly as if he had laid out the blackmailing intruder himself. Graham laughed. “You have”, he said. “I’m sure some of our bods have had their moments. Law of averages alone. But I see what you mean. It’s not a profession that sets a great deal of store by street-brawling competence.”
> “But he can’t actually do you any harm, Graham, can he?” asked Stephen next, the sparkle leaving his eyes as he considered the serious aspects of the matter.
“No, I don’t think so. Knowing where he came by the information is a comfort. I’m glad he couldn’t resist crowing about it, as if he’d been clever in some way. I never told Reggie anything about you or who you were, or gave anything away that you could be identified by. Of course”, he added, “it’s just conceivable that if someone knew about that idiot Colin Preston and his antics last season, and then heard this little titbit, he might put two and two together. But really, the chances of Andrew coming back here to make trouble after the reception he got this morning are — well, thin, to say the least.
“I must say, that’s the part that I find the most puzzling”, he mused. “I couldn’t reconcile the two things at all. I mean, you only had to get a quick look at his face, or hear the loathing and contempt in his voice, to know that he hated me like the very devil. And yet when he was talking about wanting me back, and still wanting and needing me, I was just as sure he meant it. I suppose he wanted to humiliate me, and thought he had me in his power to do it.” He shrugged.
“What would you have done if he really had had the goods on you, Graham?” asked Stephen curiously.
“To tell you the truth, I wondered that myself, because for quite a while before he told me where he’d got his information I was thinking he actually might have. I made my decision then, and I’m sure it’s what I’d do if it happened that way.”
“Yes?”
“I’d go to the old m…the headmaster and — up to a point — throw myself on his mercy”, said Graham, keeping his eyes on the road. “I’d have to resign on the spot, of course — there’d be no choice about that whatsoever. Schoolmaster in a boys’ school having an affair with one of the boys — the papers’d fry me, let alone the courts. So I’d be gone, there and then. But then I’d ask him, nicely at first, to leave it at that. He’d have to have you in and interview you, of course. But I’d trust that you’d back me up…”
Out of Bounds Page 20
